Chapter IV: The Primacy of Anselm and the Acquisition of Normandy.903 (8)

A more shameless plea than this could hardly be thought of, but Anselm does not seem stirred by its shamelessness. He simply answers the doubt which was cast on his own appointment and consecration as calmly as if it had been started by some impartial outsider.[1469] Those who consecrated him were not schismatics; no judgement had cut them off from the communion of the Church. They had not cast off their allegiance to the Roman Pontiff; they all professed obedience to the Roman See; they had not in any way denied that Urban was the lawful Pope; they had simply, in the midst of the controversy which was going on, doubted whether it was their clear duty to receive him as such.[1470] That his own position was perfectly good was shown by the conduct of the Pope himself. Urban knew all that had happened between him and the King, together with all the circumstances of his consecration. So knowing, he had treated him as lawfully consecrated, and had sent him the pallium by Walter’s own hands.[1471] If such objections had any force, why had not Walter spoken of them before he, Anselm, had received the pallium?[1472] Another passage in this letter would seem to imply that some complaint had been made as to Anselm’s dealings with the monks of his own church. The Cardinal asks Anselm to leave them in free possession of their goods.[1473] Anselm answers that he earnestly desires the peace and advantage of his monks, and with God’s help he will do all that lies in his power to settle everything for their advantage.[1474] Anselm and his monks seem to have been commonly on the best of terms. Still we seem here to see the beginnings of those disputes which grew into such terrible storms a hundred years later. The lands of the monks had, as we have seen,[1476][**dup anchor] not been spared during the vacancy of the archbishopric. And it may be that some wrong had been again done to them when the King was molesting the Archbishop’s men during the time of truce. We heard not long ago of great complaints going up during that time; some of them may have taken the formal shape of an appeal to the Cardinal. Anselm’s reeves may have been no more scrupulous than the reeves of other men. Indeed we find a curious witness that it was so. The question was raised why Anselm, a monk and a special lover of monks, did not always live at Canterbury, among his monks.[1475] Several answers are given. The most remarkable is that his presence in his manors was needed to protect his poorer tenants from the oppression of his reeves.[1476] When such care was needed on behalf of the tenants, it is quite possible that the reeves might sometimes meddle wrongfully with the possessions of the monks also.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gemót of Windsor and Salisbury. Christmas, 1095-1096.]

[Sidenote: Anselm attends the Bishop of Durham on his death-bed. January, 1096.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of bishops.]

[Sidenote: Samson Bishop of Worcester.]

[Sidenote: Gerard Bishop of Hereford, Archbishop of York 1100.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Gerard and Samson. June 6, 1096.]

A time of peace for Anselm followed, though hardly a time of peace for England. Before the year was out the King had put down the revolt in Northumberland; Earl Robert of Mowbray was his prisoner. An expedition against the Welsh was less successful, and Scotland still remained under the king of her own choice. The Christmas Gemót, of which we shall have presently to speak at length, was a famous, and, what was not usual in our early assemblies, a bloody gathering. It was held at Windsor and was then adjourned to Salisbury; at the former place at least Anselm was present, and he had an opportunity of showing Christian charity to an enemy. At Windsor Bishop William of Durham sickened and died. His latter days are so closely connected with the fall of Earl Robert that they will be better spoken of elsewhere. It is enough to say here that his last hours were cheered by the ghostly help of the holy man against whom he had so deeply sinned. Meanwhile Anselm, comforted by the recall of his friend Baldwin,[1477] was doing his duty in peace; ruling, writing, exhorting, showing love to every living creature,[1478] ever and anon called on to discharge the special duties of his office. In this interval he consecrated two bishops to sees within the realm. The churches of Worcester and Hereford were vacant by the deaths of the two friends Wulfstan and Robert. Both sees were filled in the year after they fell vacant. Were they filled after the usual fashion of the Red King’s day, or was Anselm, now, outwardly at least, in William’s full favour, able during this interval of peace to bring about some relaxation of the crying evil of this reign? There is no direct statement either way; we can judge only by what we know of the characters of the two men appointed. Neither of them, one would think, was altogether to the mind of Anselm. In the place of the holy Wulfstan, the diocese of Worcester received as its bishop, and the monks of Worcester received as their abbot, a canon of Bayeux, Samson by name, a brother of Archbishop Thomas of York. The influence of the Northern Primate may perhaps be seen in the appointment of his kinsman to a see so closely connected with his own. Samson was one of the school of learned men with whom Odo――it was his one redeeming merit――had filled his church of Bayeux.[1479] He was as yet only in deacon’s orders, and he was possibly married, at least he is said to have been the father of the second archbishop Thomas of York.[1480] He seems to have been one of those prelates, who, without any claim to special saintship, went through their course at least decently. He was bountiful to all; to the monks of Worcester he did no harm――some harm seems to have been looked for from a secular――beyond suppressing their dependent monastery of Westbury.[1481] Of the new Bishop of Hereford we know more. He was that Gerard who had helped to bring Cardinal Walter to England, one of the King’s clerks, not even in deacon’s orders, and a thorough time-server.[1482] We cannot help suspecting that his bishopric was not granted for nothing, whatever may have been the case with Samson at Worcester. The bishops-elect came to Anselm for consecration. He was then with his friend Gundulf at Lambeth, then a manor of the see of Rochester. In the chapel of the manor Anselm ordained them priests.[1483] The next day he consecrated them in the cathedral church of London, with the help of four of his suffragans, three of whom, Thomas of York, Maurice of London, and Gundulf of Rochester, had in different ways a special interest in the ceremony. The fourth was Herbert, described as of Thetford or Norwich. It was in the course of this year that he began his great work in his last-named see.[1484]

[Sidenote: Anselm consecrates Irish bishops.]

This year too Anselm was able to show that his style of Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea was not an empty title. It was now that he consecrated two bishops to sees in Ireland, Samuel of Dublin and Malchus of Waterford. They were both Irish by birth, but monks of English monasteries, Samuel of Saint Alban’s, Malchus of Winchester. They came with letters from the clergy and people of their sees, and from King Murtagh or Murchard, of whom we shall hear again, and who takes to himself the sounding title of King of Ireland. Both were consecrated by Anselm, Samuel at Winchester, Malchus at Canterbury.[1485] It was no new claim; two predecessors of Samuel had already been consecrated by Lanfranc.

§ 6. _The Crusade and the Mortgage of Normandy. November, 1095-March, 1097._

[Sidenote: Council of Piacenza. March 7, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Appeal of the Emperor Alexios.]

[Sidenote: Council of Clermont. November 18, 1095.]

[Sidenote: The first Crusade.]

[Sidenote: Bearing of the crusade on our story.]

[Sidenote: No king engaged in the first crusade.]

[Sidenote: The crusades a Latin movement.]

[Sidenote: Name of _Franks_.]

[Sidenote: Share of Normandy and Flanders.]

[Sidenote: Place chosen for the council.]

We must now for a while again turn our eyes to Normandy, but to Normandy mainly as affected by the most stirring scenes in the history of the world. We have seen Urban at Piacenza; we have heard him there make his appeal to Western Christendom on behalf of the oppressed churches and nations of the East. Their cry came up then, as it has come up in our own ears; and it was answered in those days as one only among Christian nations has been found to answer it in ours. In those days the bulwark and queen of the Eastern lands still stood untouched. The New Rome had not then to be won back for Christendom; it had simply to be preserved. By the prince who still kept on the unbroken succession of Constantine and Diocletian and Augustus the appeal was made which stirred the hearts of nations as the heart of one man. The letters of Alexios had been read at Piacenza; the great call from the mouth of the Western Pontiff was made in the ears of a vaster multitude still in the memorable assembly of Clermont. But the tale of the first Crusade needs not to be told here. The writers of the time were naturally called away from what might seem the smaller affairs of their own lands to tell of the great struggle of two worlds. Some of the fullest accounts of the gathering and march of the crusaders are to be found in the writings to which we are in the habit of turning in every page for the history of England and Normandy.[1486] Our native Chronicler can spare only a few words, but those are most pithy words, to set forth the great stirring of the nations.[1487] And in our present tale the holy war directly comes home to us, chiefly because so many men whom we have already heard of took a part in it. Above all, it places two of our chief actors before us in parts eminently characteristic of the two. We see how Duke Robert of Normandy went forth to show himself among the foremost and the worthiest in the struggle, and how King William of England took occasion of his brother’s zeal to gain his duchy by money wrung from English households and English churches. I have noticed elsewhere,[1488] as has been often noticed before, that the work of the first crusade was strictly the work of the nations, and of princes of the second rank. Dukes and counts there were many in the crusading army, but no king of the West joined in its march. The Western Emperor was at open war with the Pope who preached the crusade. The kings of Spain had their own crusade to wage. The kings of England and France were of all men in their kingdoms the least likely to join in the enterprise. The kingdoms of the North were as yet hardly stirred by the voice of Urban. It is indeed plain that the whole movement was primarily a Latin movement. It is with a true instinct that the people of the East have from those days onward given the name of _Franks_ to all the Christians of the West. It is a curious speculation, and one at which I have already hinted elsewhere, what would have been the share of England in the crusades, if there had been no Norman Conquest.[1489] As it was, the part of the Teutonic nations in the crusades is undoubtedly secondary to that of the Latin nations. Germany takes no leading part till a later stage; Scandinavia takes no leading part at all; England is brought into the scene as an appendage to Normandy. The English crusaders served under the banner of the Norman Duke.[1490] Among the secondary powers Flanders indeed appears among the foremost; but Flanders, a fief of the crown of Paris, was, as a power, though not as a people, more Latin than Teutonic. The elder Count Robert had won the honour of forestalling the crusade by sending help to the Eastern Emperor on his own account.[1491] It was fittingly in a Latin city, in a Gaulish city, that Urban, himself by birth a Frenchman in the stricter sense,[1492] called the nations of the West to arms. But it was equally fitting that it should not be within the immediate dominion of a king who had no heart for the enterprise, of a king whose own moral offences it was one of the duties of the Pontiff and his council to denounce. Not in the dominions of any king, not in the dominions of any of the great dukes and counts who were in power on a level with kings, but in the land of the lowlier counts, not as yet dauphins, of Auvergne, the assembly met whose acts were to lead to the winning back of the Holy City for Christendom, but with which we are more directly concerned as causing William the Red to reign at Rouen as well as at Winchester.

[Sidenote: Decrees of the council.]

[Sidenote: Lay investiture forbidden.]

[Sidenote: Sentences against Clement and the Emperor; against Philip and Bertrada.]

[Sidenote: Urban preaches the crusades; his geography.]

The preaching of the crusade was not the only business of the great assembly at Clermont. A crowd of canons of the usual kind were passed against the usual abuses. Those abuses were not confined to England and Normandy. We are told that in all the lands on our side of the Alps――and we may venture to doubt whether things were likely to be much better on the other side――simony prevailed among all classes of the clergy, while the laity had taken to put away their wives and to take to themselves the wives of other men.[1493] The great example of this last fault was certainly King Philip of France, whose marriage or pretended marriage with Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Count Fulk of Anjou, was one of the subjects of discussion at the council. All abuses of all these kinds were again denounced, as they had often been denounced before, and were often to be denounced again. But what concerns us more immediately is the decree that no bishop, abbot, or clerk of any rank, should receive any ecclesiastical benefice from the hand of any prince or other layman.[1494] This struck straight at the ancient use both of England and of Normandy. It forbad what Gregory the Seventh had, if not allowed, at least winked at, during his whole reign, in the case of the common sovereign of those two lands.[1495] This decree, we cannot doubt, had an important bearing on the future position of Anselm. Wibert, calling himself Clement, was of course excommunicated afresh, along with the Emperor as his supporter. So were the King of the French and his pretended queen, for their adulterous marriage. So were all who should call them King and Queen or Lord and Lady, or should so much as speak to either of them for any other purpose except to rebuke their offences.[1496] The thunders of the Church could have found only one more fitting object than the reformation of this great moral scandal. But we see to what a height ecclesiastical claims had grown, when the council took on itself to declare the offenders deprived of their royal dignity and their feudal rights. Then followed the great discourse which called men to the Holy War. Urban told how, of the three parts of the world, the infidels had rent away two from Christendom; how Asia and Africa were theirs――a saying wholly true of Africa, and which, when the Turk held Nikaia, seemed even more true of Asia than it really was. Europe alone was left, our little portion. Of that, Spain had been lost――the Almoravids had come in since our last glimpse of Spanish matters[1497]――while most of the northern parts of Europe itself were still shrouded in heathen darkness. It needs some little effort to remember how true to the letter Urban’s religious geography was. The south-western peninsula was then, what the south-eastern is now, the land of Christian nations slowly winning back their own from infidel masters. And, before Swedish kings had crossed the Baltic, before Sword-brothers and Teutonic knights had arisen, before Russia had made her way northward, southward, and eastward, all north-eastern Europe was still heathen, while Scandinavia, Poland, and Hungary, were still recent conquests for the faith. Into the central strip of Christian land which lay between the heathen of the north and the Turks and Saracens of the south, east, and west, the enemy was now ready to cross. Urban called on his hearers to go forth and stop the way; and not a few of the men whose names have been famous, some whose names have been infamous, in our own story were among the foremost to go forth on the holy errand to which the voice of the Pontiff called them.

[Sidenote: French and other crusaders.]

[Sidenote: 1096.]

[Sidenote: Hugh brother of King Philip.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Meulan marries his daughter.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres.]

[Sidenote: The brothers from Boulogne;]

[Sidenote: Eustace,]

[Sidenote: Baldwin,]

[Sidenote: Godfrey of Lorraine.]

[Sidenote: Norman crusaders.]

[Sidenote: Ralph of Wader.]

Those among the recorded crusaders whose names come more immediately home to Englishmen did not join the holy war till a later time. But not a few names which have been long familiar to us are to be found in the list of those who joined in the first regular expedition which set forth in the course of the year which followed the assembly at Clermont. Beyond the bounds of England and Normandy we may mark the names of Hugh surnamed the Great, the brother of King Philip, Count of Vermandois, Count of Valois in succession to the holy Simon,[1498] but who appears in our chief list of crusaders by the lowlier title of the Count of Crêpy. He went to the work, leaving his fiefs to his sons. His daughter Isabel or Elizabeth he gave in marriage to Count Robert of Meulan, by this time no very youthful bridegroom.[1499] Among princes of greater power, but of less lofty birth, the foreign allies of the Norman house were represented by the younger Count Robert of Flanders, nephew of the Conqueror’s queen, and by Stephen Count of Chartres and Blois, husband of the Conqueror’s noblest child, and father of a king of England and of a bishop of an English see more personally eminent than his royal brother. Rotrou of Mortagne and Walter of Saint Valery went from the border lands so closely connected with Norman history. In Everard of Puiset we hear the name of a house which was in the next century to become famous in England on the throne of Saint Cuthberht, the throne at that moment empty and widowed by the death of William of Saint-Calais. And from a house most hateful to England, but which had received no small share of the spoils of England, went forth three brethren, one of whom was to show himself the worthiest, and to be placed the highest, in the crusading host. Eustace of Boulogne, a prince beyond the sea but in England lord of lands scattered from Mendip to the Kentish and East-Saxon shores,[1500] marched with his two brothers, both of whom were to reign as kings in the Holy City. The part of Baldwin in the enterprise had been already foreshadowed in visions told in the hall of Conches.[1501] Visions were hardly needed to foretell the greatness of Godfrey of Lorraine, who had won his duchy as the prize of faithful service to the Emperor, but who was none the less ready to discharge the duties of a higher allegiance at the bidding of the Pontiff. From Normandy itself went, among a crowd of others, some of that younger generation which is beginning to supply the chief actors in our tale. Philip, the son of the lately deceased Roger of Montgomery, Ivo and Alberic the sons of the lately deceased Hugh of Grantmesnil,[1502] all went forth; so did Gerard of Gournay and his wife Eadgyth, he to die, she to come back for another marriage.[1503] And with them went another married pair whose names carry us back to earlier times. The double traitor, Ralph of Wader, traitor to England, traitor to William, went forth with his valiant Emma, to do something to wipe out his old crimes by good service beneath the walls of Nikaia, and to leave his bones and hers in lands where his memory was not a memory of shame.[1504]

[Sidenote: Duke Robert.]

[Sidenote: His need of money.]

[Sidenote: He is driven to apply to William.]

[Sidenote: Position of William.]

We may be sure that among the crowd of men of every rank who were stirred by the voice of Urban none took up the cross with a more single mind than the Duke of the Normans. It was an appeal which spoke at once to the better side of him, an appeal which took him away from that land of his birth and dominion which was to him a land of such utter failure. As a son and a ruler, he had much to repent of; as a warrior, a worthy object of warfare was for the first time opened to him. But how was he to go, at least how was he to go as became the prince of a duchy which under other princes had been so great? His hoard was empty; half his barons were in practical rebellion; his brothers held no small part of his duchy. He had no resource but one, to seek help, at whatever cost, from the brother who could command the wealth of England, even though the price should be nothing short of yielding the whole of Normandy to him who already held a part. It is needless to say that King William of England had no thought of going on the crusade himself. He was not indeed hindered, as the Emperor and the King of the French were hindered, by actually lying under the censures of the Church. But he was as little likely as either of them to gird on his sword in the great quarrel. The voice which stirred the heart of Robert to the quick found no kindred chord to strike on in the mocking soul of Rufus. The enemy of God felt no call to march in the cause of God. He was not likely to spend his treasures or to display his chivalry in warfare which could not bring him any direct increase of wealth or power. It was rather for him to stay at home, and to reap what he could in the way of either wealth or power at the cost of those whose madness led them on errands which could bring in neither. Palestine was far away and hard to win. Normandy, so much as was left of Normandy, so much as was not already his own, was near and was easy to win with his own special arms. William Rufus was not at all likely to turn aside from any offer of the kind which Robert might make to him.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mission of Abbot Jeronto.]

[Sidenote: Jeronto rebukes William.]

[Sidenote: The Pope sends his nephew. Easter, April 13, 1096.]

The brothers were however at war, and the services of a mediator were needed to open negotiations between them. The Pope becomingly undertook the office, and sent a prelate from the more distant parts of Gaul, Jeronto, Abbot of Saint Benignus at Dijon, to make peace between the King and the Duke. We are told that Walter of Albano’s greediness and subserviency to the King had brought the name of Legate, and of Rome itself, into discredit. Jeronto was therefore trusted with a commission to make an appeal to William, such as Walter had clearly never made, about the evils which were allowed to go on under his government.[1505] Of the two branches of this commission one prospered better than the other. At first, we are told, the Abbot’s righteous boldness and plainness of speech seemed to have made an effect on the King, while it raised general hopes of reform among the nation.[1506] But the King or his counsellors knew how to deal, if not with Abbot Jeronto, at least with those in greater authority. He had, so the story runs, sent a messenger of his own to the Pope――most likely during his sojourn in northern Gaul, of which we shall hear again――carrying with him the weighty argument of ten marks of the purest gold.[1507] Trusting to this means of gaining his end, the King kept the Abbot of Dijon with him, till the Easter of the next year. By that time the King’s messenger came back, bringing with him a commissioner from the Pope, a layman, the sister’s son of Urban, by whose word of mouth it would seem the Abbot’s commission was cancelled and all questions were adjourned till the next Christmas.[1508] When the next Christmas came, the King was not in England, to attend to ecclesiastical reform or to anything else.

[Sidenote: Peace between Robert and William.]

[Sidenote: Normandy pledged to William. 1096.]

The other object for which Jeronto came to England was fully carried out, whether Jeronto himself had any real hand in bringing it about or not. Peace was made between the Duke of the Normans and the King of the English. In order that Robert might have money to go to the crusade, the duchy of Normandy was pledged to his brother for a sum of ten thousand marks. The transaction was not a cession or a sale; it was a mere pledge. The duchy was to pass to William merely for a season, for three years, or for so long a time as Robert should be away. If the Duke should come back, and should find himself able to pay the money, the duchy was to be his again.[1509] Still William’s possession seemed likely to be a lasting one. There seemed but small chance of Robert’s ever coming back, and smaller still of his coming back with ten thousand marks to spare out of the spoils of the infidels. If he ever did come so laden, William Rufus doubtless trusted that, by some means either of force or of fraud, his brother’s restoration to his duchy might be either evaded or withstood.

[Sidenote: The price not large.]

[Sidenote: Heavy taxation to raise the money.]

[Sidenote: Whitsun Assembly, 1096.]

[Sidenote: Extortion of the benevolence.]

[Sidenote: Oppression of tenants.]

[Sidenote: Protest of the prelates.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of the prelates and the lay lords.]

[Sidenote: Plunder of the churches.]

The price for which Normandy was thus handed over does not, when compared with other payments of the time, seem a large one. It was not very much higher than the sums which Herbert Losinga was said to have paid for a bishopric for himself and an abbey for his father.[1510] The price to be paid for at least a three years’ possession of all Normandy was not much more than three times the sum which courtiers at least had looked on as a reasonable contribution for an Archbishop of Canterbury to make towards a single Norman expedition.[1511] Yet the sum which was now to be paid is spoken of as a drain upon the whole kingdom. Rufus had no thought of paying the money out of any rightful revenues of the crown or out of any stores which he had already wrung from his people. Something was to be wrung from them yet again for the special object of the moment. The time would seem to have been the summer of the year which followed the gathering at Clermont, the year which in England began with the death of Bishop William of Durham and the frightful punishment of Count William of Eu. The matter may have been discussed at the Whitsun Assembly of that year, of which we have no record. At any rate a heavy tax was laid on the whole kingdom; we may be sure that the Red King took the occasion to wring more out of the land than the actual sum which he had to pay to his brother. Otherwise, except on the view that everything had been taken already, the payment of a sum less than seven thousand pounds could hardly have weighed on the whole kingdom as this benevolence is said to have weighed. For a benevolence it was, at least in form; men were invited to give or to lend; but we gather that some more stringent means was found for those who failed to give or to lend willingly.[1512] The English Chronicler sends up his wail for the heavy time that it was by reason of the manifold gelds, and he tells us how, as so often happened, hunger followed in the wake of the extortioner.[1513] Other writers describe the King as demanding loans and gifts from his prelates, earls, and other great men. The great lay lords, we are told, raised their share by the plunder of the knights who held fiefs of them and of the churls who tilled their demesne lands.[1514] It is the cry of these last that we hear through the voice of the Chronicler. The bishops and abbots are said to have made a protest, a thing which almost passes belief on the part of the bishops of the Red King’s day. When called on for their shares, they are said to have answered, in the spirit, or at least in the words, of Ælfheah, that they could not raise the money by any means save the oppression of the wretched tillers of the earth.[1515] Judged by the conduct of the two classes at Rockingham, the prelates and the lay barons seem to have changed places. It is the churchmen now who have the conscientious scruple. Yet the difference is not wonderful. The barons were used to general havoc and violence of every kind; what they scrupled at was the deliberate perversion of formal justice to crush a single man who claimed their reverence on every ground, official and personal. The prelates, on the other hand, might be ready for any amount of cringing and cowardice, and might yet shrink from being made the agents of direct oppression in their own persons. Anyhow another means of payment was suggested by the cunning agents of the impious King. It may have been the future Bishop of Durham who answered, “Have ye not chests full of the bones of dead men, but wrought about with gold and silver?”[1516] In this strait the churchmen took the sacrilegious hint. The most sacred objects were not spared; books of the gospels, shrines, crucifixes, were spoiled of their precious ornaments, chalices were melted down, all the gifts of the bounty of the old time were seized on, not to relieve the poor, but to fill the coffers of the King with the money that was needed for his ambitious schemes.[1517]

[Sidenote: Contribution of Anselm.]

[Sidenote: He mortgages the manor of Peckham to his monks.]

In all this we have learned to suspect some exaggeration; extreme measures taken at some particular places must have been spoken of as if they had been universal throughout the land. In one case, and that the case of the highest personal interest, we get the details, and they are a good deal less frightful than the general picture. Among the other great men of the land, the Archbishop of Canterbury was called on for his contribution. His friends advised compliance with the request, and he himself did not complain of it as unreasonable.[1518] But Anselm had no great store of money in hand. He consulted the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, Walkelin and Gundulf, and by their advice he borrowed a sum of money from the hoard of his monks, who seem to have been better provided than himself. The convent, by a vote of the majority, agreed to help the Archbishop with a present sum of two hundred pounds, in return for which Anselm made over to them for seven years his manor of Peckham, which brought in thirty pounds yearly. The money supplied by the monks, together with what Anselm could raise himself, made up a sum which seems to have satisfied the King; at least no complaint or dispute is recorded.[1519]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Conference between William and Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert sets forth on the Crusade. September, 1096.]

[Sidenote: His companions, Robert, Stephen, and Odo.]

[Sidenote: Conduct of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Rome.]

[Sidenote: His reception by Roger of Apulia.]

The ten thousand marks were raised and paid. We may well believe that more than the ten thousand marks were raised; but we may be sure that not a penny more than his bargain entitled him to found its way into the hands of Duke Robert. In September the whole business was finished. King William crossed the sea, and met his brother in a conference held under the mediation of the King of the French, at some point of the border-land of the Vexin, at Pontoise or at Chaumont, places of which we shall have to speak again.[1520] The money was paid to the Duke; the duchy was handed over to the King, and Robert of Normandy set forth for the holy war. He went in company with his cousin the Count of Flanders and his brother-in-law the Count of Chartres. And with them went a kinsman of an elder generation, whose long history, though not specially long life, is now drawing to an end. Bishop Odo of Bayeux could not bear to stay in Normandy again to become a subject of the nephew to whom he had surrendered himself at Rochester.[1521] He joined the forces of his elder nephew, and with him went the eloquent Bishop of Evreux, Gilbert, who had preached the funeral sermon of the Conqueror.[5122] The Duke on his armed pilgrimage showed new powers. He could now, often but not always, overcome his love of idleness and pleasure, and whenever the moment of real danger came, he was ever foremost, not only in the mere daring of the soldier, but in the skill and counsel of the commander.[1523] Another hand has traced his course with all vividness, but with less sympathy than one could have wished for the general objects of the holy war.[1524] A few points in Robert’s eastern career are all that need now be touched on. He and his companions passed by Lucca, and there received the blessing of the orthodox Pope Urban.[1525] They went on to what should have been Urban’s see, and found how truly the English Chronicler spoke when he said that Urban nothing had of the settle at Rome. When they went to pay their devotions in the basilica of Saint Peter, they met with much such entertainment from the followers of the schismatic Clement as the monks of Glastonbury had met with from their abbot Thurstan.[1526] They reached southern Italy, now a duchy of the house of Hauteville, and the reigning Duke Roger, son of the renowned Wiscard, is said to have welcomed his natural lord in the head of the ducal house of his ancestral land.[1527]

[Sidenote: Siege of Amalfi.]

[Sidenote: Bohemond takes the cross.]

[Sidenote: The crusaders winter in Apulia. 1096-1097.]

[Sidenote: Odo dies at Palermo. February, 1097.]

At the time of their coming, Duke Roger, his uncle Count Roger of Sicily, who had won back a realm for Christendom, and his brother Bohemond――Mark Bohemond we find him accurately called[1528]――were warring against the famous merchant town of Amalfi,[1529] rebellious in their eyes against the Norman Duke, in its own eyes loyal to the Eastern Emperor. At the coming of the crusaders Bohemond took the cross, and rent up a goodly cloak into crosses for his followers.[1530] Count Roger was left almost alone to besiege Amalfi, and he went back to his own island. Yet, after this outburst of pious zeal, those who were highest in rank among the warriors of the cross tarried to spend a merry winter in that pleasant land, while many of the lower sort, already weary of the work, turned aside and went back to their homes.[1531] The Norman prelates, from whatever motives, crossed to the great island of the Mediterranean, a trophy of Norman victory only second to the yet greater island of the Ocean. There, under the rule of the Great Count of Sicily, the whilom Earl of Kent might see how conquerors of his own blood could deal with the men of conquered lands after another sort from that in which he had dealt with the men of his English earldom. There, in the happy city of the threefold speech,[1532] the Bishop of Bayeux might mark, in the great temple of Palermo, once church, then mosque, and now church once more, those forms of art of the Greek and the Saracen, which had lost in grace, if they had gained in strength, in taking the shapes which he had himself followed in his great work in his own Saxon city. There the Earl and Bishop at last ended a career of which Kent and Bayeux could tell so different a tale. Gilbert of Evreux discharged the last corporal work of mercy for his fiercer brother; and the tomb of Odo of Bayeux arose within the walls of the great church of Palermo, soon to boast itself the head of the Sicilian realm.[1533] And, after all the changes of later days, amid the small remains which the barbarians of the _Renaissance_ have left us of the church of English Walter, we may, even beside the tomb of the Wonder of the World, stop for a moment to remember that the brother of our Conqueror, the scourge of our land, found his last resting-place so far away alike from Bayeux, from Senlac, and from Rochester.

[Sidenote: Duke Robert crosses to Dyrrhachion.]

[Sidenote: Use of the Bulgarian name.]

[Sidenote: Robert does homage to Alexios.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Laodikeia.]

[Sidenote: Hugh of Jaugy joins the crusades.]

[Sidenote: The “rope-dancers” at Antioch.]

[Sidenote: Robert said to have refused the crown of Jerusalem.]

[Sidenote: His return.]

The Bishop went no further than Palermo; the Duke went on by the course which the warfare of the Apulian Normans had lately made familiar. They entered the Eastern world at Dyrrhachion, where the valour of Normans and Englishmen had been lately proved.[1534] They passed, in the geography of our authors, through Bulgaria;[1535] that is, they passed through those Illyrian and Macedonian lands where the rule of Byzantium had again displaced the rule of Ochrida, but to which the name of the people whom Samuel had made terrible still clave, as in the language of fact, though not of diplomacy, it cleaves still. They reached Thessalonica, they reached Constantinople, and wondered at the glories of the New Rome.[1536] There, as in duty bound, they pledged their faith to the truest heir of the Roman majesty, whose lost lands they were to win back from the misbelievers. Before the throne of Alexios Robert the Norman knelt; he placed his hands between the Imperial hands, and arose the sworn liegeman of Augustus.[1537] The homage of Harold to Robert’s father was not more binding than the homage of Robert to Alexios; but an English earl and a Norman crusader were measured in those days by different standards. The host passed on; at Nikaia, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, Robert was ever foremost in fight and in council. Yet the old spirit was not wholly cast out. When the English Warangians at Laodikeia hailed their joint leaders in the son of their Conqueror and in the heir of their ancient kings,[1538] the pleasures of Asia, like the pleasures of Apulia, were too much for the Duke, and it needed the anathemas of the Church to call him back from his luxurious holiday to the stern work that was before him.[1539] Before the walls of Jerusalem he found a strange ally. Hugh of Jaugy, one of the murderers of Mabel, after his long sojourn among the infidels, greeted his natural prince, returned to his allegiance, and by his knowledge of the tongue and ways of those whom he forsook, did useful, if not honourable, service.[1540] A worthier comrade was a noble and valiant Turk, who of his own accord came to seek for baptism and for admission to share the perils of the pilgrims.[1541] The Norman Duke ever appears as the fellow-soldier of his kinsman and namesake of Flanders; the two Roberts are always side by side. It is needless to say that neither of them shared in that shameful descent from the walls of Antioch which gained for some of the heroes of Normandy the mocking surname of the _rope-dancers_.[1542] It is hard to find any absolutely contemporary authority for the statement which was very soon afloat, that the crown of Jerusalem was offered to Robert and was refused by him.[1543] Robert could not have been as Godfrey; but we can believe that his career would have been more honourable in a Syrian than in a Norman dominion. He was at least one of the first to stand on the rescued walls of the Holy City;[1544] and in the fight for the newly-won realm against the Fatimite Caliph, it was not merely by cutting down the Saracen standard-bearer with his own hand, but by a display of really skilful tactics, that Robert did much to win the day for Christendom.[1545] He then turned his face towards Constantinople and towards Apulia, and we shall meet him again in his own land.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William takes possession of Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Grants to Henry.]

As soon as Robert had set forth for Jerusalem, William took possession of the duchy of Normandy――in modern phrase, he took upon him its administration――without opposition from any side. There was indeed no side, except the side of mere anarchy, from which opposition could come. It was perhaps a little humiliating for a great duchy to be handed over from one prince to another by a personal bargain, like a house or a field. But there was no practical ground for opposing William’s entry. All classes, save mere robbers, lordly or vulgar, must have had enough of Robert. And now Robert was gone, and in going, he had handed them over to the prince for whom many of them had fought or intrigued, and who already held some of the most important points of the country. Whether it was good or bad for England and Normandy to have the same ruler, it was clearly a gain for all Normandy to have only one ruler. In one sense indeed this object was not even now attained. William’s first step was to dismember the duchy which he had bought. Henry, it will be remembered, had been left in Normandy a year and a half before, and had been, perhaps ever since, acting in William’s interests against Robert. He now received the reward of his services in a noble fief indeed. He became again acknowledged Count of the whole Côtentin. And to his peninsular dominion he was allowed to add the whole Bessin, except the city of Bayeux and the castle and town of Caen.[1546] The spot which contained the foundations of his parents, the tombs of his parents, William Rufus could not bring himself to give up, even to reward the faithful service of a brother.

[Sidenote: Rule of William in Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Synod of Rouen. 1096.]

[Sidenote: Truce of God confirmed.]

[Sidenote: Other decrees.]

[Sidenote: The days of King William.]

But for Henry, in full friendship with his brother, to hold a corner of Normandy as a fief of his brother was a partition of Normandy of quite another kind from such a partition as had been when William, as Robert’s enemy, hemmed in Robert in his capital. There can be no doubt that the exchange from Robert to William was an unspeakable gain to the duchy. During the remainder of the life of Rufus Normandy had a stern master; but, after the anarchy of Robert, what the land most needed was a master of almost any kind. The kind of work which was needed is shown in the acts of a synod which had been gathered at Rouen by Archbishop William, while Robert still nominally ruled, almost immediately after the greater gathering at Clermont. Three Norman bishops had been at Clermont in person, Odo of Bayeux, Gilbert of Evreux, and Serlo of Seez. They brought back the decrees of the council to their brethren, who forthwith assembled to accept and enforce in their own province all that had been ordered at Clermont for the Church and the world in general. They confirmed the Truce of God[1547] with all its enactments on behalf of the more useful and helpless members of society. They drew up an oath to be taken under pain of anathema by all men, which bound them to observe the Truce in their own persons, and to give the help of the temporal arm to the efforts of the ecclesiastical powers against those who should break it.[1548] In those days at least peace could be had only through war, and the Truce of God itself became the occasion of more fighting against those who scorned its wholesome checks. Other anathemas were pronounced against robbers, false moneyers, and buyers of stolen goods, against those who gathered themselves together in castles for purposes of plunder, and against the lords who sheltered such men in their castles. Such castles were put under an interdict; no Christian rite might be done in them.[1549] In going on to pronounce further anathemas against the invaders of ecclesiastical rights, against the unlawful occupiers of Church lands, against laymen who claimed to have a right in tithes and other Church dues,[1550] the synod uses a formula which shows how keenly Normandy felt the difference between the great William and his eldest son. What the days of the Confessor were in England, the days of the Conqueror were in his own duchy. The synod decreed that all churches should enjoy their goods and customs as they had been in the time of King William, and that no burthens should be laid upon them but such as King William had allowed.[1551]

[Sidenote: Small results of the synod.]

[Sidenote: William’s rule in Normandy.]

[Sidenote: His appointments to prelacies.]

[Sidenote: Tancard Abbot of Jumièges. 1096-1101.]

[Sidenote: Etard Abbot of Saint Peter’s. 1096-1107.]

[Sidenote: February, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Turold Bishop of Bayeux. 1098-1195.]

It would be too much to think that William the Red at once brought back the Norman duchy to the state in which it had been in those golden days of William the Great. And it is still less needful to stop to prove that even the days of William the Great would not have seemed golden days as compared with the state of any well-governed land in our own time. But there can be no doubt that the coming of the new ruler wrought a real reform. And a reform was grievously needed. We read that very little came of the well-intentioned decrees of the synod. The bishops, Odo among them, did what they could――it is Odo’s last recorded act in the lands with which we have to deal, and it is something that he leaves us in the shape of a reformer and not in that of an oppressor. But very little came of the efforts of the prelates. The Duke did nothing to help them――his mind was perhaps too full of the crusade――and things were at the moment of William’s coming in almost greater confusion than ever.[1552] He at least gave the land the advantage of a strong rule; he kept the luxury of oppression to himself. The lesser scourges of mankind were thoroughly put down. We hear no more of that private warfare which had torn the land in pieces in the days of Robert. William recalled many of the lavish grants of Robert; what his father had held, he would hold.[1553] Even in ecclesiastical matters Rufus is not painted in such dark colours in Normandy as he is in England. He is not charged with keeping ecclesiastical benefices vacant in order that he might enjoy their revenues. He found two great abbeys vacant, those of Jumièges and Saint Peter-on-Dives; and he at once supplied them with abbots. They were abbots of his own choosing, but it is not said that they bought their places.[1554] Tancard, the new abbot of Jumièges, may lie under some suspicion, as a few years after he was deposed on account of a shameful quarrel with his monks.[1555] Saint Peter’s was vacant, not by the death, but by the deposition and banishment――unjust we are told――of its abbot Fulk. William appointed a monk of Jumièges called Etard or Walter, who ruled well, we are told, for eleven years, till Fulk came back with letters from the Pope, on which his successor cheerfully made way for him again.[1556] No Norman bishopric was vacant at the time of William’s entry, nor did any become vacant for more than a year. Then in the midst of events which are to be told hereafter, the news came that the throne of Bayeux was vacant by the death of Odo far away at Palermo. William at once bestowed the staff on Turold the brother of Hugh of Evermouth, seemingly the same Hugh who figures in the legend of Hereward as his son-in-law and successor.[1557] This prelate sat for seven years, and then, for reasons of his own, gave up his see, and became a monk at Bec.[1558]

§ 7. _The Last Dispute between William and Anselm. 1097._

[Sidenote: Christmas, 1096-1097.]

[Sidenote: State of Wales at the end of 1096.]

[Sidenote: Easter, April 5, 1097.]

[Sidenote: William comes to England.]

[Sidenote: Assembly of Windsor.]

[Sidenote: Seeming conquest of Wales.]

[Sidenote: Good hopes for the future.]

[Sidenote: William complains of Anselm’s contingent to the Welsh war.]

[Sidenote: Estimate of the complaint.]

[Sidenote: Position of the Archbishop’s knights.]

[Sidenote: Anselm summoned to the King’s court.]