Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (5)

Another bishop appeared at this gathering, whose coming was, for the time, less lucky for himself than that of Robert Bloet. Herbert of Thetford, struck with penitence for his simoniacal bargain, had, as it will be remembered, gone beyond sea on an errand which of all others was most offensive to the King. He had gone to receive again from the Pope――doubtless from Urban――the bishopric which he had already bought of the King.[1237] For this offence William now took away his staff; that is, he deprived him of his bishopric. With whose advice or consent this was done, and what line Anselm took with regard to such a step, we are not told. At all events the King now deprived a bishop of his office on the ground of what he deemed to be treason done without the realm. This was the converse of the act by which, forty-two years before, the nation had deprived another bishop on the ground of what they deemed to be treason within the realm.[1238] William however did not set up any doubtful Stigand of his own in the church of Thetford. About a year later Herbert was again in possession of his see.[1239] How he was restored to the King’s favour we are not told. He may have deemed it no sin to win it by means which he had learned to look upon as sin when applied to the obtaining of a spiritual office. Next year he removed the seat of the East-Anglian bishopric once more. Herfast had moved it from Elmham to Thetford. With the good will and help of Roger Bigod Herbert now translated it to its final seat at Norwich. He there began the foundation of that vast church and monastery, the creation of which caused his name to be ever since held in at least local honour.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Lent, 1094.]

[Sidenote: Anselm rebukes the minions.]

Meanwhile the north wind still refused to blow, and the King with his prelates, lords, and courtiers, still tarried at Hastings. Lent began before the fleet had a chance of sailing. The penitential season began with the usual ceremonies. The Archbishop said his mass and preached his sermon in the ears of the multitude who came together on the day of ashes, to receive, according to custom, the ashes of penitence from the hands of the Primate. Among them came the minions and young gallants of the court of Rufus, with their long combed and twined hair, their mincing gait, defying alike the commands of the Apostle and the dictates of common decency and manliness. The voice of Anselm rebuked them, as well he might, when the outward garb was but the sign of the deeper foulness within. Not a few were moved to repentance; they submitted to the loss of their flowing locks, and put on again the form of men.[1240] Others were stubborn; they received neither ashes nor absolution. In this battle with a foolish custom which was in truth far more than a foolish custom, Anselm had not a few forerunners or followers. Saint Wulfstan, Gundulf, Serlo of Seez, all preached and acted vigorously against the long hair which was the symbol of the crying vice of the time.[1241] Anselm deemed that the evil called for something more than a single act of discipline. The man of God felt called on to strike at the root of the mischief; he was moved to make a warning appeal to the conscience, if any conscience was left, of the chief sinner of them all, and he made it, after his wont, at once gently and vigorously.

[Sidenote: Anselm’s interview with the King.]

[Sidenote: His silence about the war.]

[Sidenote: He asks for help in his reforms.]

We may guess that the King had not been present at the ceremonies of Ash-Wednesday; had he been there, his presence would surely have been dwelled upon. It seems that Anselm, though openly out of the King’s favour, still visited him from time to time. One day therefore he went and sat down beside him, and spoke what was in his heart.[1242] The King was setting forth to conquer Normandy. It is to be noticed that Anselm does not say a word as to the right or wrong of the war. Perhaps, after the challenge of Robert, the cause of Rufus may have seemed, even to him, to be technically just. Perhaps he knew that anything that could be said on that subject would be fruitless. He may even have deemed, a view which had much to be said for it, that a conquest of Normandy by the Red King would be a good exchange for the rule of its present sovereign. And we must remember that wars of all kinds were in those days so constantly going on that they would seem like a necessary evil, a dark side of the economy of things, but one which could not be hindered. Even men like Anselm would come to look with less horror than one might expect on wars which were waged only by those whose whole business might seem to be warfare. Anyhow Anselm said nothing directly against the war, even though it was to be waged against the prince to whom he had lately owed allegiance and against the land which had been to him a second birth-place. But he asked the King whether he had any right to look for success in that or any other enterprise, unless he did something to check the evils which had well nigh uprooted the religion of Christ in his realm. He called on William to give him the help of the royal authority in his own schemes of reform. The King asked what form his help was to take,[1243] and Anselm then put forth his views at length.

[Sidenote: He asks leave to hold a synod.]

[Sidenote: Advantages of the synod.]

[Sidenote: No synod held under Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s appeal against the fashionable vices.]

First and foremost, the King was to help in the work of reform by allowing Anselm to hold a synod of the realm. It will be remembered that, by the laws of the Conqueror, no synod could be held without the King’s licence, and the acts of the synod were of no force without the King’s confirmation.[1244] But under the Conqueror Lanfranc had, on the conditions thus laid down, held his synods without hindrance. That is to say, the elder William, in all causes and over all persons within his dominions supreme, used that supremacy as the chief ruler of the Church from within, while the younger William turned that same supremacy into a weapon wherewith to assault the Church as an enemy from without. It is plain from the earnestness of Anselm one way――one might almost say, from the earnestness of Rufus the other way――that the synod was a real instrument for the reformation of manners. It is plain that the assembled bishops, when they came together in a body, could do more both for ecclesiastical discipline and for moral improvement than they could do, each one in his own diocese. One cause may have been that, in a synod, the assembled prelates might seem to be really speaking as fathers in God, while the exercise of their local jurisdiction was too much mixed up with the petty and not always creditable details of their courts, with those tricks and extortions of archdeacons and other officials of which we have often heard. Anyhow, as the Roman Senate had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of Nero, so an ecclesiastical synod had good enough left in it to call forth the hatred of William Rufus. Not one synod had he allowed to be held during the whole time of his reign, now in its seventh year.[1245] Anselm earnestly prayed to be allowed to hold one for the restoration of discipline and the reformation of manners. The King answered; “I will see to this matter when I think good; I will act, not after your pleasure but after my own. And, pray,” added he mockingly, “when you have got your synod, what will you talk about in it?” The man of God did not shrink from going straight to the crying evil of the time. What weighed most on Anselm’s mind was not any mere breach of ecclesiastical rule――such breaches he had to speak of, but he would not speak of them first;[1246] the burthen on his soul was the hideous moral corruption, a new thing on English ground, which had become rife throughout the land. Unless King and Primate, each in his own sphere, each with his own weapons, worked together to root out this plague, the kingdom of England might share the fate of the cities which it had come to resemble. A strict law was needed, the very hearing of which would make the guilty tremble.[1247] The words of Anselm were general; there was no personal charge against William; the Archbishop simply appealed to him as King to stop the sins of others. But all this makes us feel more strongly the wonderful character of such a scene, where two such men could be sitting side by side and exchanging their thoughts freely. But the heart of Rufus was hardened; he answered only by a sneer. “And what may come of this matter for you?” “For me nothing,” said Anselm; “for you and for God I hope much.”[1248]

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical grievances.]

[Sidenote: Wrongs of the church tenants.]

[Sidenote: He prays the King to fill the vacant abbeys.]

[Sidenote: The abbeys in what sense the King’s.]

[Sidenote: Hostile answer of Rufus.]

There is so much of simple moral grandeur in this appeal of the righteous man against moral evil that we might almost have wished that Anselm’s discourse had ended at this point, and that he had not gone on to speak of matters which to us seem to have less of a moral and more of a technical nature. Yet Anselm would doubtless have thought himself faithless to his duty, if he had left the King’s presence without making a special appeal about the special grievances of ecclesiastical bodies. Moreover the wrongs of the bishoprics and abbeys were distinctly moral wrongs; the King’s doings involved breach of law, breach of trust; they were grievances on which the head of the ecclesiastical order was, as such, specially bound to enlarge. But they were also grievances which did not touch the ecclesiastical order only; the wrongs done to the tenants of the vacant churches are constantly dwelled on as one of the worst features of the system brought in by Rufus and Flambard. Anselm therefore deemed it his duty, before he parted from the King, to say a word on this matter also, a matter in which there could be no doubt that the King himself was the chief sinner. No bishopric was now vacant; but several abbeys, Saint Alban’s among them, were in the hands of Flambard. Such a state of things called for his own care as Primate; he appealed to William to give him his help as King. In the monasteries which were left without rulers discipline became lax; the monks fell into evil courses; they died without confession. He prayed the King to allow the appointment of abbots to the vacant churches, lest he should draw on himself the judgement which must follow on the evils to which their vacancies gave cause.[1249] The King seems to have been less able to endure this rebuke than the other. The disorders of his courtiers and of his own private life he could not defend on any showing; but the demand that the abbeys should be filled touched what he looked on as one of his royal rights. Rufus burst forth in wrath. “Are not the abbeys mine? Tush, you do as you choose with your manors; shall not I do as I choose with my abbeys?”[1250] The answer of Anselm drew a distinction which was a very practical one in those days, and which affects our legal language still. To this day the King, the Bishop, the Chapter, all speak of any episcopal see as “our cathedral church,” and all speak, from their several points of view, with equal truth. Such a church is the king’s church by virtue of the fundatorial rights which he claims, in some cases by real historic succession, in all cases by a legal theory. By virtue of those fundatorial rights, he claims to be informed of every vacancy, and to give his consent to a new election. In this sense Anselm did not deny that the abbeys were the King’s abbeys; he did deny that they were the King’s in the further sense in which Rufus claimed them. “The abbeys are yours,” he said, “to defend and guard as an advocate; they are not yours to spoil and lay waste. They are God’s; they are given that his servants may live of them, not that you may make campaigns and battles at their cost.[1251] You have manors and revenues of many kinds, out of which you may carry on all that belongs to you. Leave, may it please you, the churches to have their own.” “Truly,” says the King, “you know that what you say is most unpleasing to me. Your predecessor would never have dared to speak so to my father. I will do nothing on your account.” When Anselm then saw that he was casting his words to the winds,[1252] he rose and went his way.

[Sidenote: Lanfranc and Anselm.]

[Sidenote: No need to rebuke the Conqueror on these points.]

[Sidenote: Estimate of Anselm’s conduct.]

[Sidenote: The Archbishop’s claim to the regency.]

It may be that William Rufus spoke truly, and that Lanfranc would not, in any case, have dared to speak to the Conqueror as Anselm dared to speak to him. Lanfranc, with much that was great and good in him, was not a prophet of righteousness like Anselm. But it is far more certain that Lanfranc was never put to the test. The Conqueror never gave him any need to speak to him as Anselm had now need to speak to his son. What we blame in William the Great, what men like Wimund of Saint Leutfred dared to blame in him, Lanfranc could not blame. The position of Lanfranc in England involved the position of William. And, once granting that position, there was comparatively little to blame in the elder William. The beheading of Waltheof, the making of the New Forest, stand almost alone; and the beheading of Waltheof was at least no private murder; it was the judgement of what was in form a competent court. The harshness and greediness with which the Conqueror is justly charged was, after all, a small matter compared with the utter unlaw of his son’s reign. And on the two subjects of Anselm’s present discourse, the elder William needed no rebuke at any time. His private life was at all times absolutely blameless, and, neither as Duke nor as King, did he ever turn his ecclesiastical supremacy into a source of gain. On both those points Lanfranc had as good a right to speak as Anselm; but on those points he was never called on to speak to his own master. Whether, in Anselm’s place, he would have dared to speak as Anselm did, we cannot tell. But surely the holy boldness of Anselm cannot be looked on as in any way blameworthy, as either insolent or untimed. To him at least the time doubtless seemed most fitting. He called on the King, before he exposed himself to the dangers of a campaign beyond the sea, to do something to win God’s favour by correcting the two grossest of the evils which were rife in his kingdom. The Assembly was clearly not dissolved when Anselm spoke; William could at once have filled the abbeys, he could at once have put forth a law against the other class of offenders, in the most regular form, by the advice of his Wise Men. Anselm might even have held his synod while the wind was waiting. The synod in Lanfranc’s day followed on the Gemót, and it took up only three days.[1253] Most of the bishops were present at Hastings; those who were absent had doubtless been summoned and, by the rule of the Great Charter and of common sense, they would be bound by the acts of those who obeyed the summons. Moreover, according to the precedents of the late reign, Anselm would be the sole or chief representative of the King during his absence. He might fairly ask to be clothed with every power, temporal and spiritual, which was needed for the fit discharge of kingly as well as pastoral duties.

[Sidenote: Anselm attempts to recover the King’s favour.]

[Sidenote: Advice of the bishops to give more money.]

Anselm was deeply grieved at the ill success of his personal appeal to the King. He was now wholly out of the King’s favour, and he felt that, without some measure of support from the King, he could not carry out the reforms, ecclesiastical and moral, for which he longed.[1254] He was ready to do anything that could be done with a good conscience in order to win back the King’s good will. He sent the bishops to William, to crave that he might, of the King’s free grace, be again admitted to his friendship. If the King would not grant him his favour, let him at least say why he would not grant it; if Anselm had wronged him in any way, he was ready to make the wrong good.[1255] The bishops laid the prayer of their metropolitan before the King. The answer was characteristic. “I have no fault to find with the Archbishop; yet I will not grant him my favour, because I hear no reason given why I should.”[1256] What those words meant in the mouth of Rufus the bishops knew very well. They went back to tell the Primate that the mystery was clear.[1257] The King’s favour was to be won only by money, and by money in no small store. Their counsel was that Anselm should at once give the King the five hundred pounds which he had before offered, and that he should promise him another gift of the same amount as soon as he could get it out of his men.[1258] On those terms they fully believed that the King would grant him his peace and friendship. They saw no other way for him; they were in the same strait themselves, and knew no other way out of it.[1259]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s grounds for refusing.]

[Sidenote: He will not oppress his tenants.]

[Sidenote: His answer to the bishops.]

[Sidenote: The King more hostile than ever.]

In the counsel thus given to Anselm by his suffragans we hear the words, not of utterly worldly and unscrupulous men, but of the ordinary prelates of the time, good men, many of them, in all that concerned their own personal lives and the ordinary administration of their churches, but not men disposed to risk or dare much, men disposed to go on as they best might in very bad times, without doing anything which might make things still worse. In the eyes of Anselm, on the other hand, things hardly could be made worse; if they could, it would be by consenting to them. By an unflinching assertion of principle things might be made better; in the worst case the assertor of principle would have delivered his own soul. In Anselm’s eyes the course which his suffragans suggested was sinful on every ground; moreover――an argument which some of them might better understand――it was utterly inexpedient. He refused to make his way out of his difficulties by the path which they proposed. The King allowed that he had no ground of complaint; he was simply angry because he could not get five hundred pounds out of him as the price of his favour. If now, while his appointment was still fresh, he should win the King’s favour at such a price, the King would get angry with him at any other time that might suit him, in order to have his wrath bought off in the same way. This last argument seems to show that Anselm was after all not so lacking in worldly wisdom as some have thought. But his main argument was that he would not commit the crime of wringing any more money out of his tenants. They had been frightfully oppressed and robbed during the vacancy; he had not as yet been able to do anything to relieve them; he would not lay fresh burthens upon them; he would not flay alive those who were already stripped to their skins.[1260] Again, he would not deal with his lord the King as if his friendship was a thing to be bought and sold. He owed the King faith and honour, and it would be doing him dishonour to treat his favour like a horse or an ass to be paid for in vile money. He utterly refused to put such an insult upon his sovereign. He told his suffragans that they should rather do their best to persuade the King to deal of his free grace as it was fit for him to deal with his archbishop and spiritual father. Then he, on his part, would strive to do all that he could and might do for his service and pleasure. This ideal view of the relation of King and Primate was doubtless above the heads of John of Bath, of Robert of Lincoln, of Robert of Chester, and of William of Durham in his present mood. It was surely one of them, rather than Osmund or Robert of Hereford, who answered; “But at least you will not refuse him the five hundred pounds which you once offered.” Anselm answered that he could not give that either; when the King refused it, he had promised it to the poor, and the more part of it had been given to them already. The bishops went back to the King on their unpromising errand. William bade them tell the Archbishop that he hated him much yesterday, that he hated him much to-day, and that he would hate him more and more to-morrow and every other day. He would never hold Anselm for father or archbishop; he cursed and eschewed his blessings and prayers. Let him go where he would; he need not stay any longer there at Hastings, if it was to bless him on his setting sail that he was waiting.[1261]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Anselm leaves Hastings.]

[Sidenote: William crosses to Normandy. March 19, 1094.]

[Sidenote: Vain attempts to settle the dispute.]

[Sidenote: Verdict of the guarantors against William.]

The Red King had thus cast aside another offer of grace. Our guide tells us; “We departed from the court with speed, and left him to his will.” The pronoun is emphatic. From that time, if not from an earlier time, English Eadmer was the inseparable companion of Anselm. Anselm and Eadmer then turned away, at what exact date we are not told. But the north wind seems not to have blown till more than half the month of March had passed. Then at last King William of England set sail from Hastings for the conquest of Normandy. He went without Anselm’s blessing; yet some of the ceremonies which had been gone through during his sojourn at Hastings must surely have dwelled in his mind. Fresh from the rite which in some sort marked the completion of his father’s work in England, the younger William set out so far to undo his father’s work as to bring Normandy into political subjection to England. At what Norman haven he landed we are not told; it was seemingly in some part of the lands of his earlier conquest, the lands on the right bank of the Seine. Before swords were drawn, an attempt was made to settle the dispute between the brothers. King and Duke met in person; what was their place of meeting we are not told; but no agreement could be come to.[1262] A second meeting took place, in which the guarantors of the former treaty were appealed to, much as Cnut had appealed to the witnesses of the treaty between him and Eadmund.[1263] The guarantors, the twenty-four barons, twelve on each side, who had sworn to the treaty, agreed in a verdict which laid the whole blame upon the King. The words of our account――it is the English Chronicler who speaks――clearly imply that the guarantors on William’s side agreed in this verdict no less than those who swore on behalf of Robert.[1264] And he adds from himself that Rufus would neither allow that he was in fault nor abide by his former engagement.[1265] This meeting therefore was yet more fruitless than the former; the brothers parted in greater anger than ever.[1266] The Duke went back to Rouen; the King again took up his head-quarters at Eu.[1267]

[Sidenote: Castles held by the King.]

[Sidenote: La Houlme.]

[Sidenote: Argentan.]

[Sidenote: Taking of Bures.]

Again on Norman soil, William began to practise the arts which had stood him in such stead in his former enterprise on the duchy. He hired mercenaries; he gave or promised money or lands to such of the chief men of Normandy as were willing to forsake the allegiance of Robert; he quartered his knights both in the castles which he had hitherto held, and in those which he won to himself by these means.[1268] Some of these last were very far from Eu. It shows how successful were the arts of Rufus, how wide was the disaffection against Robert, when we find castles, far away from one another, far away from the seat of William’s power in eastern Normandy, but hemming in the lands in the Duke’s obedience on two dangerous frontiers, garrisoned by the King’s troops. We are reminded of the revival of Henry’s power in the Côtentin when we read that the castle of La Houlme, at the junction of the two rivers Douve and Merderet, lying south-east from Valognes and nearly east from Saint Saviour, was now held for William.[1269] So was another stronghold in quite another quarter, not far from the Cenomannian border, the castle of Argentan on the upper course of the Orne, to the south of the great forest of Gouffers. Two famous captains held these threatening posts. Argentan was commanded by Earl Roger’s son, Roger the Poitevin.[1270] La Houlme was held by William Peverel, the lord of Nottingham and the Peakland.[1271] But the first military exploit of the campaign was wrought in a land nearer to Eu. Bures――whether still held or not by the faithful Helias we are not told――was taken, and the garrison were made prisoners; some of them were kept in Normandy, others were sent by Rufus for better safe-keeping in his own kingdom.[1272]

[Sidenote: Robert calls in King Philip.]

[Sidenote: Siege of Argentan.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Argentan.]

[Sidenote: Ransom of prisoners.]

[Sidenote: Robert takes La Houlme]

Rufus thus pressed the war vigorously against his brother, with the full purpose of wholly depriving him of the duchy. Robert, in his distress, again called on his over-lord, and this time with more effect than before.[1273] The French intervention was at least able to turn the balance for a while against Rufus. No object was more important for Robert than the recovery of the two strongholds which threatened him, one in the dangerous land on the upper Orne, the other in the no less dangerous Constantine peninsula. A joint expedition of the new allies was agreed on, and King and Duke appeared side by side before Argentan. The castle stood on a height of no great elevation above the river, with the town, as usual, spreading down to its banks. The existing fragments show that the fortress and its precinct covered a vast space, but no architectural feature remains as a witness of the siege of Argentan by Philip and Robert. The town contains several attractive buildings of later date, ecclesiastical, civil, and military. There are churches, town-walls with their towers, the later _château_ within the fortress; but of the stronghold which Roger of Poitou had to guard against the powers of Rouen and Paris but little can be traced. There are some massive and irregular pieces of wall, and part of a polygonal donjon, the latter at least far later than Roger’s day. But of the size and strength of the castle there can be no doubt. It is therefore with some little wonder that we read that the besiegers found its capture so easy a matter as they did, especially when its defender was one of the house of Montgomery and Bellême. On the very first day of the siege the castle surrendered without bloodshed. Roger of Poitou, with seven hundred knights and as many esquires――a name which we are now beginning to come across――and his whole garrison were made prisoners and were kept in ward till they were ransomed.[1274] Here we see the hand of Philip; we see, as in some other cases which we have come across already, the beginning of one of the institutions of chivalry. We shall presently see the custom of the ransom become a marked feature of the wars between France and England――so we shall soon find ourselves obliged to call them――in the eleventh century no less than in the fourteenth. But the bulky King of the French was for the present contented with this one exploit and with so valuable a stock of captives. Philip went back into France, and left his Norman vassal to go on with the campaign alone.[1275] Robert now drew some spirit from success. He marched westward, and attacked La Houlme. The castle surrendered; the lord of the Peak, with eight hundred men, became the prize of the Duke’s unusual display of vigour.[1276]

[Sidenote: Difficulties of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Further taxation.]

[Sidenote: Levy of English soldiers.]

[Sidenote: Flambard takes away the soldiers’ money.]

The war went on; each side burned the towns and took the men of the other side.[1277] But the tide had for the moment decidedly turned against the Red King. The loss of Argentan and La Houlme, with their commanders and their large garrisons, was a serious military blow. The payment of their ransoms might be a still more serious financial blow. And the payment of a ransom, by which he only got back again what he had had before, would be less satisfactory to the mind of Rufus than the payment of bribes and wages by which he had a hope of gaining something fresh. The hoard at Winchester seems at last to have been running low; but when William Rufus was king and when he had Randolf Flambard to his minister, there could be no lack of ways and means to fill it again. Specially heavy were the gelds laid on England both in this year and in the following.[1278] And money was gained by one device which surely would have come into the head of no king and no minister save those by whom it actually was devised. A great levy was ordered; King William sent over his bidding that twenty thousand Englishmen should come over to help the King in Normandy.[1279] Englishmen had by this time got used to service beyond sea. Nothing is said of any difficulty in getting this great force together. The troops were gathered at Hastings, ready to set sail. Each man had brought with him ten shillings, the contribution of his shire for his maintenance in the King’s service. For the men who answered to Rufus’ bidding were no mercenaries, not even housecarls; they were the _fyrd_ of England, summoned, by a perhaps unjustifiable but not very wonderful stretch of authority, to serve their king beyond the sea. But, when they were ready to sail, Flambard came, and by the King’s orders took away each man’s money, and bade them all go home again.[1280] One would like to know something of the feelings of the men who were thus strangely cheated; we should surely have heard if there had been any open resistance. Anyhow, by this amazing trick, the Red King had exchanged the arms of twenty thousand Englishmen for a sum of ten thousand pounds of English money. After all, the money might be of greater use than the men in a war with Philip of Paris.

[Sidenote: Rufus buys off Philip.]

If William thus reckoned, he was not deceived. He was still at Eu. Philip was again in arms; his forces joined those of Robert; again King and Duke marched side by side, this time with the purpose of besieging the King of the English in his Norman stronghold. The ten thousand pounds now served William’s turn quite as well as the twenty thousand men could have served it. The combined French and Norman host had reached Longueville on the Scie, with streams and forests between them and Eu.[1281] Longueville was the last stage of their march. Thither Rufus sent those who knew how to bring his special arguments to bear on the mind of Philip. The King again went back to France, and the confederate army was broken up.[1282]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Contemporary notices of the campaign.]

[Sidenote: Difference between England and Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Private wars go on in Normandy.]

There is something very singular in the way in which this second Norman war of William Rufus is dealt with by those who wrote at or near the time. Some make no mention of it at all; others speak of it only casually; our own Chronicler, who gives the fullest account of all, does not carry it on to any intelligible issue of success or of failure. In his pages, and in those of some others, the war drops out of notice, without coming to any real end of any kind.[1283] The monk of Saint Evroul, so lavish in local Norman details, seems to have had his head too full of the local strifes among the Norman nobles to tell us anything of a warfare which in our eyes comes so much nearer to the likeness of a national struggle. It must always be remembered that the local wars which tore every district of Normandy in pieces did not stop in the least because two hostile kings were encamped on Norman soil. There cannot be a more speaking comment, at once on the difference between Robert and either of his brothers and on the essential difference between the ordinary state of Normandy and of England. With us private war was never lawful; we needed not the preaching of the Truce of God.[1284] William the Great, when his authority was fully established, kept England in peace; and in his later years the peace of Normandy itself, as distinguished from the border lands, was broken only by the rebellion of his own son. So in England there still were rebellions alike against Rufus and against Henry; but, when the rebellion was crushed, the land was at rest. In Normandy, as soon as the hand of the great ruler was taken away, things fell back into the state in which they had been during his own minority. And they remained in that state till William the Red in his later years again established order in the duchy. One can well understand that the endless ups and downs in the local struggles which went on close to every man’s door really drew to themselves far more of men’s thoughts than the strife of King William, King Philip, and Duke Robert himself. The two kings were but two more disputants added to the crowd, and they were disputants who really did much less harm to the land in general than was done by its own native chiefs. It is not very wonderful then that we hear so little of this war from the Norman side. It is not wonderful that, on the English side, when stirring events began again before long to happen in England, the Norman war dropped out of sight. And presently events in the world’s history were to come which made even the warfare of England and France seem trifles amid the general stir of “the world’s debate.”

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Relations of Rufus and Henry.]

[Sidenote: Saint Cenery taken by Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Henry and Hugh summoned to Eu.]

[Sidenote: They go to Southampton. October 31, 1094.]

[Sidenote: They keep Christmas in London.]

[Sidenote: The King comes to England. December 28, 1094.]

[Sidenote: William and Henry reconciled.]

[Sidenote: Henry goes to Normandy, c. Feb. 9, 1095.]

[Sidenote: His warfare with Robert.]

[Sidenote: General results of the campaign.]

[Sidenote: Progress of Henry.]

For the last events of Rufus’ second Norman war we have to go wholly to our one witness in our own tongue. It is plain that the King, even after his gold had turned Philip back, did not feel at all at ease in his Norman quarters. He seems to have distrusted two important personages at the other end of the duchy, his other brother and one of the mightiest of his own subjects. Henry, Ætheling and again Count, was safe in his castle of Domfront, among the people who had chosen him as their protector. At one period of this year, he is described as at war with both his brothers at once.[1285] We find him taking the part of the lord of Saint Cenery, Robert son of Geroy,[1286] against the common enemy, Robert of Bellême. His help however did not hinder the cherished fortress from falling into the hands of the tyrant.[1287] We hear of him before the end of the war in a way which implies at least some suspicious feeling between himself and the King his brother. Besides Henry, Hugh of Chester――rather Hugh of Avranches or Hugh of Saint-James――was also in his own continental possessions. The King summoned both of them to come to him at Eu, and, as the state of the duchy did not allow them to come across Normandy by land, he sent ships to bring them.[1288] But Henry and Hugh, from whatever causes, did not choose to meet the King face to face. Instead of sailing to Eu or its port, they made for Southampton, where they landed and seemingly stayed――with what objects we are not told――for some weeks.[1289] Thence they went to London, and kept Christmas there. King William was not this year wearing his crown either at Westminster or at Gloucester. But it is clear that the movements of his youngest brother had an effect upon his own. For the first three days of the holy twelve he stayed at Whitsand. On the fourth day, the feast of the Innocents, the anniversary of the dedication of the West Minster, he crossed the sea and landed at Dover.[1290] Thence he seemingly came to London, where Henry was. Whatever quarrels or suspicions had sprung up between the King and the Ætheling were now made up. Henry was received into his brother’s fullest confidence. He stayed in England till Lent began, when he went to spend the penitential season in Normandy. But it was not to be an idle season; in the month between Epiphany and Lent, the Red King had made his preparations for a campaign in which Henry was to take his place. The Count of Coutances then went again beyond sea with great treasures to be used on the King’s behalf against his brother――Earl Robert, as English lips called him. “And ofttimes upon the Earl he won, and to him mickle harm either on land and on men did.”[1291] Here ends our story. We get no further details till William became master of all Normandy by quite another process. But though we get no details of the war from Norman sources, we do get a general picture of its results. The no-rule of Robert is once more set before us in speaking words. The soft Duke, who feared his subjects more than they feared him, was benumbed with softness and idleness.[1292] He is contrasted with both his brothers. Henry held his stronghold at Domfront, together with a large but undefined part of the duchy, including without doubt the more part of his old peninsular county. Some places he had won by arms; others, like Domfront itself, had sought his rule of their own free will.[1293] Within these bounds he yielded to his brother the Duke just so much service as he thought good,[1294] which at this particular moment would be little indeed. And the other brother who wore the diadem of England held more than twenty castles on Norman ground. He, unlike Robert, was a ruler whom men feared; and his gifts, and the fear of him together, kept many of the great men of the land, not only in his allegiance, but in his zealous service.[1295] If Normandy was not conquered, it was at least effectually dismembered.

[Sidenote: Norman supporters of William.]

[Sidenote: William of Eu.]

[Sidenote: Stephen of Aumale.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Meulan.]

[Sidenote: Walter Giffard.]

[Sidenote: Death of Roger of Beaumont. 1094.]

[Sidenote: Henry Earl of Warwick.]

[Sidenote: Death of Roger of Montgomery. 1094.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême succeeds his father in Normandy, and Hugh in England.]

[Sidenote: Death of Hugh of Grantmesnil.]

[Sidenote: His burial at Saint Evroul.]

[Sidenote: Death of Walter Giffard. 1102.]

[Sidenote: Eadmer’s judgement of the campaign.]

The list of the Norman nobles who joined the King from beyond sea takes in most of the names with which we are most at home. There is Ralph of Conches, Gerard of Gournay, Richard of Courcy. We hear now too of Philip of Braose, a name to become famous in more than one part of our island. And we find the names of men yet higher in power, and nearer to the ducal house. There is the first author of the late troubles, Count William of Eu, for the present still an adherent of Rufus, before long to be heard of in quite another character. With him stands Count Stephen of Aumale, also before long to play a part in our story wholly different from that which we find him playing now. And it is needless to say that Count Robert of Meulan was the Red King’s servant in his Norman, as well as in his English character.[1296] Nor do we wonder to find in the same list――for he was Earl of Buckingham as well as lord of Longueville――the name of Walter Giffard, him who appeared as an aged man forty years before.[1297] He still lived, while, during this very year, more than one of the elder generation of the famous men of Normandy passed away. The father of the Count of Meulan, the old Roger of Beaumont, renowned so many years before alike in arms and in council,[1298] died on the Norman soil which he had guarded so well, and which he seems never to have left. He had for some years left the world, to become a monk in the monastery of Preaux of his father’s rearing.[1299] His estates had passed to his son at Meulan, the mighty vassal of three lords. His younger son Henry had his lot cast in England, where, perhaps before this time, the Red King bestowed on him the earldom of Warwick. And, in the same year as the lord of Beaumont, died, far away in England, another Roger, like him a monk, but four days before a mighty earl, Roger of Montgomery, of Arundel, and of Shrewsbury, the youngest brother of the house beyond the Severn bridge of which he at least claimed to be the founder.[1300] His vast possessions were divided at his death. Robert of Bellême, already heir of his mother in the border-land, now became heir of his father in Normandy. The earldom of Shrewsbury and Roger’s other English estates passed to his second son Hugh, who bears the character of being the only one of the sons of Mabel who was mild and gentle[1301]――mild and gentle, we must understand, to Normans, perhaps even to Englishmen, but certainly not to captive Britons. Of Hugh, as well as of Robert of Bellême and Roger of Poitou, as well as of Arnulf of Montgomery, a fourth son of the same fierce stock, we shall hear much as our tale goes on. In England too, perhaps within his sheriffdom of Leicester, died Hugh of Grantmesnil, of whom we have lately heard in the civil wars both of Normandy and of England, and whom his own shire and his neighbours of Northamptonshire had no reason to bless. His body, we need hardly say, found its way across the sea, to lie among his loyal bedesmen at Saint Evroul.[1302] These men all left the world in the year with which we are now dealing, and left the hoary Earl of Buckingham to be for eight years longer the representative of an earlier day.[1303] The hands which eight and twenty years before had been too feeble to bear the banner of the Apostle[1304] were still, it would seem, ready to do whatever was still found for them to do in the service of the Red King. But the warfare of the King and his partisans is set down simply as one among the many ways in which Normandy was torn in pieces by her own children.[1305] An English writer meanwhile, on whose main subject the Norman campaigns of Rufus had but a very indirect bearing, speaks casually of this expedition as an undertaking on which a vast deal of money was spent, but by which very little was gained.[1306]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Wretchedness of England.]

[Sidenote: Causes for the King’s return.]

[Sidenote: Affairs of Scotland]

[Sidenote: and Wales.]

[Sidenote: Plots at home.]

It is indeed to be borne in mind, as supplying at least a partial explanation of the way in which the second Norman expedition comes to an end without any end, that things in England were, just as they had been three years and a half before, in a state which urgently called for the presence of the King within his kingdom. We know not whether it at all moved him that the heavy taxation which had been laid on his kingdom for the cost of his warfare had brought the land to the lowest pitch of wretchedness. Men, we are told, had ceased to till the ground; hunger followed; there were hardly left any who could tend the dying or bury the dead.[1307] These things might not have greatly stirred the heart of the Red King; but he may, like other tyrants, have felt that there was a bound beyond which oppression could not be safely carried. And there were political and military reasons which called him back. He could not afford to jeopard his undisputed possession of England for the sake of a few more castles in Normandy. He could hardly afford to jeopard for their sake the imperial supremacy of his crown over the whole isle of Britain, a supremacy which he was at that moment specially called on to assert. The year of the second Norman campaign was a year of special importance in the history both of Scotland and of Wales. While the Red King was warring and bribing in Normandy, Scotland had, as in the days of Siward, received a king from England, and, what had not happened in the days of Siward, her people had slain the foreign nominee, and had again chosen a king of their own. The first reign of Donald, the momentary reign of Duncan, the beginning of the second reign of Donald, all of them events which were not mere changes of sovereign, but real revolutions in the state of the nation, had happened between the death of Malcolm and the return of William from Normandy thirteen months later. Wales too had risen in a movement which had more than was usual of the character of real national insurrection, and the movement had called for all the energies of the new Earl of Shrewsbury and of the King himself on his return. And a plot yet nearer home, a plot to deprive the King of his crown and life, a plot devised by men who had been just now the foremost in supporting his cause, broke out soon after his return. It broke out so soon after it that one is tempted to think that it was already hatching, and that it was one of the causes which brought him back. The seeming break-down of the Red King’s second Norman campaign thus becomes more intelligible than some of the other cases where he began an undertaking and failed to finish it. William had plenty to do in Britain, both in camp and in council. As soon as he was assured of the adhesion of his brother Henry, he could afford, indeed he was driven, to leave him to do the work which had to be done in Normandy.

§ 4. _The Council of Rockingham. December, 1094-March, 1095._

[Sidenote: Notices of the year 1095.]

[Sidenote: Councils of the year.]

The year to which the last Christmas feast introduces us brings strongly home to us the singular way in which our general chroniclers follow one line of events, while the special biographer of the Archbishop follows another. There is no contradiction; but the gaps which have to be filled up in each narrative are remarkable. It is not perhaps wonderful that the biographer of Anselm should, even in a work which bears a general title, pass by events which in no way affected the history of Anselm. It is more remarkable that one of the most striking scenes in Anselm’s history should not have been thought worthy of notice by the more general annalists of our land. But so it is. The year 1095 is a year of very stirring events, and it is preeminently a year of councils. But, with a single exception, our two authorities do not record the same events and the same councils. Both tell us of the pallium being brought to Anselm; but, while one tells us nothing of the most striking of the assemblies in which Anselm bore a part, the other tells us nothing of the conspiracy, the revolt, the war, which specially mark this year in the general story of England.

[Sidenote: Alleged Welsh campaign. January 9, 1095?]

[Sidenote: Movements of William. January-February, 1095.]

If our story is rightly told, the Christmas meeting of William and Henry, followed before long by a Norman campaign on the part of Henry, was followed yet more immediately by a Welsh campaign on the part of William. The King took the affairs of his own island into his own hands, and, for the present, he left those of the mainland to the Count of Coutances. A winter campaign in Wales does not sound very promising, and we are not surprised to hear that it did not add much to the glory of the Red King’s arms.[1308] At all events it must have been short, for, in the course of January and February we find him at points at a considerable distance from the Welsh border. In January he was at Cricklade in Wiltshire; in February he was at Gillingham in Dorset, near to Ælfred’s monastery of Shaftesbury, and itself the scene of the election of the Confessor.[1309] In both cases we hear of the King’s movements through incidental notices in our ecclesiastical story. The second is part of the story of Anselm; the first does not concern Anselm himself; it forms part of the tale of the holiest of his suffragans.

[Sidenote: Death of Wulfstan.]

[Sidenote: Sickness of Wulfstan.]

[Sidenote: Easter, 1094.]

[Sidenote: He dines with “good men.”]

[Sidenote: General respect for Wulfstan.]

[Sidenote: His correspondence.]

[Sidenote: His increased sickness. Whitsuntide, 1094.]

[Sidenote: Wulfstan and Robert of Hereford.]

[Sidenote: Death of Wulfstan. January 18, 1095.]

[Sidenote: His appearance to Bishop Robert.]

[Sidenote: His burial. Jan. 22.]