Chapter VII (3)

Anselm now went back to Lyons, where another monk of Canterbury met him, bringing with him a formal letter from the convent of the metropolitan church, praying him, now that the tyrant was dead, to come back without delay to comfort his children.[891] He took counsel with his friend Archbishop Hugh, and by his advice began his return to England, to the great grief, we are told, of the whole city of Lyons and all the lands thereabouts.[892] He had not reached Clugny when he was met by a still more important bearer of tidings. A messenger came in the name of the new King of the English and his lords, bearing a royal letter, calling on Anselm to come back, and even blaming his delay in not coming sooner.[893] We have its text, every word of which deserves to be studied, as showing how popular the constitution of England still was in theory, and what was the kind of language which had to be used by one who was called on to play the part of a popular king. Henry, in setting forth his right to the crown, uses more popular language than is to be found in the charter itself. There he spoke of the choice of the barons; in the letter to Anselm he tells the Archbishop that his brother King William is dead, and that he is chosen king by the will of God and by the clergy and people of England.[894] He excuses his hasty coronation in the Archbishop’s absence on the ground of the urgency of the time. He would more gladly have received the blessing at his crowning from him than from any one else; but the necessity of the moment forbade; enemies had arisen against him and against the people whom he had to rule; his barons therefore and his whole people had thought that the coronation could not be delayed. He had therefore, against his will, received the rite from Anselm’s vicars, and he trusted that Anselm himself would not be displeased.[895] Himself and the whole people of England, all whose souls were entrusted to Anselm’s care, prayed him to come back with all speed to give them the benefit of his counsel.[896] He committed himself and the whole people of England to the counsel of Anselm and of those who ought to consult with Anselm for the common good.[897] He would have sent messengers with money of his own for Anselm’s use; only since the death of his brother the whole world is so stirred against the kingdom of England that he could not send any one with any safety.[898] Anselm is earnestly prayed not to pass through Normandy, but to sail from Whitsand and land at Dover. There some of the King’s barons shall be ready to meet him with money which will enable him to pay anything that he may have borrowed.[899] The letter ends in a pious and imploring strain; “Hasten then, father, to come, lest our mother the church of Canterbury, so long tossed and desolate for your sake, should any longer suffer the loss of souls.” The signatures to the letter should be noticed. It is said to be signed by other bishops and barons as well, but the actual names are Gerard Bishop of Hereford, William Bishop-elect of Winchester, William of Warelwast, of whom we have heard so often, Henry Earl of Warwick, in some sort a milder king-maker, Robert Fitz-hamon, and his brother Hamon the _dapifer_.[900] It is worth notice that the Achitophel of Meulan does not set his name either to this letter or to the charter. Was it to give as national a character as might be to both documents that Robert, as yet only a French count and not an English earl, abstained from putting his name to them? One can fancy no other reason for its absence from the earlier document. By the time the letter to Anselm was sent, the Count of Meulan’s presence may well have been needed in Normandy.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Dangers of the King and kingdom.]

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Duke Robert.]

[Sidenote: Renewed anarchy in Normandy on William’s death.]

The dangers which, according to King Henry’s letter, beset the kingdom of England may have been somewhat exaggerated in his picture of them; but they were perfectly real. And no description of them could be better than that which the King gave when he spoke of them specially as dangers which beset the King and the people whom he had to rule. It was most truly the King and the people of England who were threatened by the intrigues of the great Norman nobles with the restored ruler of Normandy――if ruler he may be called. The effects of the Red King’s death were exactly opposite in Normandy and in England. In England his reign of unright was at once changed for a rule as strong and more righteous. In Normandy, which had seen the better side of him, where he had brought back peace of some kind after the anarchy of Robert’s first reign, anarchy came back again the moment the news of his death came. Within a week the forces of Evreux and Conches were again in motion, this time indeed not in order to attack one another, but for a joint raid against the lands of the Norman Beaumont, the possessions of the Count of Meulan. The Count, we are told, had abused his influence with Rufus to do both of them some wrongs, which, while Rufus lived, they were unable to avenge.[901] They now took the law into their own hands; so did everybody else. Normandy again became the same confused field of battle, with every man’s hand against every other man, which it had been before William the Red at least did it the service of putting one tyrant in the room of many.[902]

[Sidenote: Return of Robert to Normandy. September, 1100.]

[Sidenote: His renewed no-government.]

[Sidenote: Henry keeps his own fief.]

[Sidenote: War between Henry and Robert.]

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Normans in England with Robert.]

[Sidenote: Return of Anselm. September 23, 1100.]

To this disturbed land Duke Robert came back in the month of September, bringing with him his wise and beautiful Duchess from Conversana. They went to Saint Michael in-Peril-of-the-Sea to give thanks for their safe return,[903] and Robert was held to have again taken possession of his duchy. The English Chronicler says that he was received blithely;[904] it was certainly not the interest of those whom a ruler like Henry would have checked in their evil ways to make any opposition to his fresh acknowledgement. As soon as Robert was again in his native land, all the energy and conduct which he had shown in the East once more forsook him. The old idleness, the old wastefulness, came back again. He had already squandered all the money which he had received from his father-in-law; luckily the death of Rufus relieved him from the necessity of repaying the sum for which the duchy had been temporarily pledged. It had not been alienated for ever, and Henry had no claim to it during Robert’s life. Robert therefore had no difficulty in taking possession――such possession as he could take――of all Normandy, except the districts which formed the fief which Rufus had granted to Henry. There, in the lands of Coutances, Avranches, and Bayeux, King Henry’s men still kept the land for him, and withstood all Robert’s attempts to dislodge them.[905] A border warfare thus began between the brothers almost from the first moment of the reign of Henry, the second reign of Robert. And it would seem that, though there was no open outbreak till the next year, the turbulent Norman nobles in England were, from the very beginning, making Robert the centre of their intrigues against a prince whose rule was eminently inconvenient for them.[906] The Lion of Justice was exactly the kind of ruler for whom they did not wish; Robert, who would put no check upon them, was far more to their tastes. Could they only put him on the throne, they might have their own way in all things in England as well as in Normandy. The same schemes which disturbed the second year of the reign of Rufus disturbed the reign of Henry from the very beginning. It was in the midst of all these disorders, directly after Robert’s return, that Henry’s letter was sent to Anselm. It was therefore not without reason that the King warned the Archbishop not to come back through Normandy, but to make his way to Whitsand. To Whitsand Anselm accordingly came, and crossed safely to Dover a few days before Michaelmas.[907] The whole land from which he had been now nearly three years absent received him with a burst of universal joy.[908]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Connexion of Anselm with Norman history.]

The chief points in the primacy of Anselm had all along had a singular connexion, by way of coincidence at least, with the changes of things in the Norman duchy. It was when William was making ready for his second Norman expedition that Anselm had first drawn on himself the Red King’s anger by the alleged smallness of his gift towards its cost.[909] It was just before the King set out that the Primate had given him his most memorable rebuke.[910] The return of William was at once followed by the interview at Gillingham[911] and the great assembly at Rockingham. The collection of money for the final occupation of the duchy did not directly lead to the second dispute;[912] but the connexion of time is still marked. Rufus comes back from Normandy to find fault with Anselm’s contingent of troops for the Welsh war;[913] and he does not go again to the mainland for the French and Cenomannian wars till after he has driven Anselm from England. Now that the Red King is dead, everybody seems to come back to his old place. Robert comes back to Rouen; Anselm to Canterbury. And along with them, a third actor in our story, whom, like them, Rufus had dispossessed, came back also. Before the year was out, Maine was again free; Helias had won back city and castle without slash or blow.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Helias returns to Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: The King’s garrison holds out in the royal tower.]

[Sidenote: Helias calls in Fulk of Anjou.]

[Sidenote: Siege of the tower;]

[Sidenote: courtesies between besieged and besiegers.]

[Sidenote: Conference between Walter and Helias.]

[Sidenote: The garrison know not whose men they are.]

[Sidenote: A truce is made; they apply to Robert,]

[Sidenote: and to Henry.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of the castle.]

As soon as the news of his enemy’s fall reached the Count of Maine in some of those southern possessions from which he had never been driven, he at once gathered a force and marched to Le Mans. But no force was needed; the loyal city received its banished prince with all joy.[914] But possession of the city did not give Helias possession of the royal tower; that was still held by the garrison which had been placed in it by the Red King. One of their commanders was a man whom we know already, Walter of Rouen, the son of Ansgar.[915] The castle was well provided with arms and provisions, and all that was needed for defence. Helias, before undertaking a siege, sought the alliance and help of Fulk of Anjou, whom he acknowledged as over-lord of Maine.[916] The two counts sat down before the castle of the Conqueror; but no strictly warlike operations followed. Besieged and besiegers seem to have been on the most friendly terms. They sometimes exchanged threats, but more commonly jokes. It was agreed between the two parties that Count Helias should, whenever he chose, put on a white tunic, and should, by the name of the White Bachelor, be received within the tower.[917] Such was the chivalrous confidence shown on both sides that the Count of Maine went in and out as he chose, and much that was sportive and little that was hostile went on between the two parties. At last Walter and his colleague Haimeric[918] opened their minds to Helias. They were in exactly the opposite case to the Confessor when he told the churl that he would hurt him if he could.[919] They explained to their supposed enemy that they could hurt him if they would, but that they had no mind to do so. The ground and the defences of the castle gave them the stronger position. They were not afraid of his artillery, and they could shower down stones and arrows upon him at pleasure.[920] But they had no mind to fight against one for whom they had a deep regard, especially as they did not know for whom they were fighting. They had been the men of the late King William; they did not now know whether they were the men of King Henry of England or of Duke Robert of Normandy. They proposed a truce, during which they might send messengers to both their possible lords; when they got answers, they might settle what to do.[921] The messenger came to Robert, and asked him whether he wished to keep the royal tower of Le Mans or not. If he wished to keep it, he must send a strong force to rescue it from its Angevin and Cenomannian besiegers. The Duke, tired, we are told, with his long journeyings and more anxious for the repose of his bed than for the labours of war,[922] is made to give two somewhat contradictory reasons for leaving matters alone. On the one hand, he was satisfied with the duchy of Normandy; on the other hand, the nobles of England were inviting him to come and take the crown of that kingdom. He told them that they had better make an honourable peace with the besiegers. The messenger, without going back to Le Mans, crossed to England, and told King Henry exactly how matters stood. Henry was too busy at the moment to meddle in affairs beyond the sea.[923] He rewarded the messenger, he sent his thanks to the garrison, and left them to their own discretion. When the answer came, a message was sent to the White Bachelor, asking him to visit the tower. The day was now come when he might rejoice in the possession of that for which he had long wished. If he had any money in his hoard, he might now make a fine bargain. He asked what they meant. They told him that he had not conquered them, that they were quite able to withstand him, but that they had no lord to serve and were quite willing to give up the castle to him. They knew his worth and valour; they chose him of their own free will, and made him that day truly Count of Maine.[924] They gave up the castle and all that was in it; Helias of course treated them with all honour, and gave them a strong guard to shelter them from any attacks on the part of the citizens whose houses they had burned the year before.[925]

[Sidenote: Last reign of Helias. 1100-1110.]

[Sidenote: His friendship for Henry.]

[Sidenote: His second marriage. 1109.]

[Sidenote: Later fortune of Maine.]

[Sidenote: Descent of the Angevin kings from Helias.]

Thus, after all struggles, Helias of La Flèche was at last undisputed lord of the Cenomannian city and county. He reigned, in all honour and seemingly in perfect friendship with Bishop Hildebert,[926] for ten years longer. He was the firm friend, and in some sort the vassal, of King Henry of England, and did him good service at Bayeux and at Tinchebrai.[927] Under his second reign Maine seems to have been peaceful; but there must have been some wars and fightings on its borders, as we find Rotrou Count of Perche a prisoner in the Conqueror’s tower.[928] The year before his death Helias married a second wife, Agnes, the daughter of Duke William of Aquitaine and widow of Alfonso King of Gallicia.[929] But his only child was Eremberga, the daughter of his first wife Matilda of Château du Loir. Helias, as he was the worthiest, was also the last, of the counts who held Maine as a separate sovereignty, and who had for some generations filled no small place in their own quarter of the world. Maine became the heritage of his daughter, and passed to her husband the younger Fulk, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem,[930] and to her son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Thus Maine became an appendage to Anjou, to Normandy, to England. And every sovereign of England, from the first Angevin king onwards, could boast that he had in his veins, besides the blood of William and Cerdic, the blood, less famous it may be, but assuredly not less worthy, of Helias of Le Mans.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Meeting of Anselm and Henry;]

[Sidenote: beginning of fresh difficulties.]

[Sidenote: Changes in Anselm.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of the dispute between Anselm]

[Sidenote: and Rufus and the dispute between Anselm and Henry.]

[Sidenote: Henry calls on Anselm to do homage.]

Anselm landed in England after Helias had been received at Le Mans, but before he had won back the royal tower. The King and the Primate soon met, and difficulties at once arose between them. The truth is that Anselm had come back, in some things, another man. Or rather the man was the same; his gentleness, his firmness, his perfect single-mindedness, had not changed a whit. But he had learned doctrines at Rome and at Bari which had never been revealed to him at Bec or at Canterbury. The tale of Anselm’s dispute with Henry, his second banishment, his second return, goes beyond the prescribed limits of our story, and I have pointed out its leading features elsewhere.[931] There is hardly anything in which the difference between William Rufus and Henry the First stands out more strongly. But we are here concerned only with the very earliest stage of the dispute, if indeed it is to be called a stage of the dispute at all. Henry and Anselm met at Salisbury. The King received the Archbishop with joy; he again excused himself by the necessities of the time for having received the royal unction from another prelate. Anselm fully admitted his excuses.[932] There was less agreement between them on the next point which the King started. Henry called on Anselm to do homage to him after the manner of his predecessors, and, in the language of the time, to receive again the archbishopric at his hands.[933]

[Sidenote: Phrase of receiving the archbishopric.]

[Sidenote: Effect of the new teaching on Anselm’s mind.]

This last phrase has, I think, sometimes been misunderstood. It has nothing in common with the fresh commissions which the bishops of Edward the Sixth’s day took out after the death of Henry the Eighth. It has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual office; in this phrase, as in so many others, by the “archbishopric” is to be understood simply the temporalities of the see. These were at this moment in the King’s hands through their seizure in the days of Rufus. Since then a new reign had begun; England had a new king; her inhabitants had a new lord; for the archbishop, like any other subject, to become the man of the new king was simply according to the law of Salisbury. For him to receive back his lands was his right; for him to receive them as a fief was no more than he had already done at the hands of the Red King. Anselm had then done without scruple all that he was now asked to do. But since then the decrees of Piacenza and Clermont, above all the decrees of Bari and Rome, where he had been himself present, had been put forth. And by those decrees the ancient customs of England were condemned, and the censures of the Church were denounced against all who should conform to them. Anselm deemed it his duty, in all single-mindedness, to obey the bidding of Rome rather than the law of England. We may regret, but we can neither wonder nor blame. Anselm, after all, was not an Englishman; he could not help looking at things with œcumenical rather than with insular eyes. He fairly told the king’s counsellors how matters stood; he was bound by the new decrees. If Henry would accept them, there might be perfect peace between them.[934] If not, he himself could be of no use in England; he would have to refuse to communicate with any to whom the King might give bishoprics or abbeys in the ancient fashion; he could not stay in England on the terms of disobeying the Pope. He asked of those to whom he spoke that the King would consider the matter, and tell him his decision, that he might know which way to turn himself.[935]

[Sidenote: Difficulties of Henry.]

[Sidenote: A truce made till Easter;]

[Sidenote: the Pope to be asked to allow the homage.]

[Sidenote: No personal scruple on Anselm’s part.]

[Sidenote: Effects of the reign of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Abasement of the kingly power.]

Henry was now, at the very beginning of his reign, in a great strait. He was naturally unwilling to give up one of the chief flowers of his crown, one which had been handed down from all the kings before him.[936] To give up the investiture of the churches and the homage of their prelates would be to give up the half of his kingdom. On the other hand, he felt that it would not do to quarrel with the Archbishop at the very moment of his return to England, or to allow him to leave England while he himself was not yet firm on his throne. He feared――doing Anselm, we may be sure, utter injustice――that, if Anselm left England, he might go to Robert, and take up his cause. It would be perfectly easy, as he knew very well, to persuade Robert to accept the new decrees. And on those terms, Anselm might, so the words run, make Robert King of England[937]――that is, he might bestow on him a consecration more regular than that which Henry had himself received from the Bishop of London. It was therefore agreed on both sides to make a truce or adjournment of all questions till the next Easter. Meanwhile both King and Archbishop should send messengers to the Pope, to pray him so to change his decrees as to allow the ancient customs of the kingdom to stand.[938] We here see, on the one hand, that Anselm still had no kind of scruple of his own about the homage and investiture; it was with him simply a question of obedience to a superior. Let Paschal withdraw the decrees of Urban, and Anselm was perfectly ready to do by Henry as earlier archbishops had done by earlier kings. On the other hand, we see how the temporal power had been weakened and the spiritual power strengthened through the late King’s abuse of the temporal power. Rufus had given the foreign dominion a moral advantage, of which Henry now felt the sting. Men had come to look on the King as the embodiment of wrong, and on the Pope as the only surviving embodiment of right. The King of the English was driven to ask the Bishop of Rome to allow the ancient laws of England to be obeyed. True this was while the King’s hold on his crown was still weak; when his position was more assured, he took a higher tone; but it marks the change which had happened that an English king, and such a king as Henry, should be driven so to abase himself even for a moment.

[Sidenote: The truce agreed to; provisional restoration of the Archbishop’s temporalities.]

By the terms of the truce, things were to remain as they were for the present. Anselm was to be restored to his temporalities without homage or other conditions; but, if Paschal could not be brought to yield on the matter of the decrees, they were to pass to the King again.[939] Anselm looked on all this as useless; he knew the temper of the papal court better than the King and his friends did. But he agreed for the sake of peace; he wished to avoid the slightest suspicion of any wish to disturb the King in the possession of his kingdom.[940] The truce was therefore agreed to; the messengers were sent, and Anselm, when the court broke up, went once more in peace to his metropolitan city or to some other of his many houses.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Reformation of the court.]

[Sidenote: Personal character of Henry.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s mistresses and children.]

[Sidenote: Robert Earl of Gloucester.]

[Sidenote: Henry son of Nest.]

[Sidenote: Matilda Countess of Perche.]

[Sidenote: Robert son of Eadgyth.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s daughter by Isabel of Meulan.]

[Sidenote: Richard son of Ansfrida.]

[Sidenote: Story of his mother and her husband Anskill.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s son Richard.]

But, besides settling the affairs of his Church and realm, Henry had other more distinctly domestic and personal duties to discharge. He had to reform the household which he had inherited from his brother; he had also――so we are told that the bishops and others strongly pressed upon him――to reform his own life.[941] The vices of Henry were at least not the vices of Rufus; inclination as well as duty led him to cleanse the court of its foulest abuses, to make a clean sweep of the works of darkness.[942] But it was only in a wholly abnormal state of things that Henry the First could have been hailed as a moral reformer. His private life was very unlike the life of his father. Unmarried, like both of his brothers till the recent marriage of Robert, he was already the father of several children by mothers of various nations. Of his eldest and most famous son, Robert, afterwards the renowned Earl of Gloucester, the mother is unknown; but she appears to have been French.[943] The British Nest, of whom we have often heard, the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, had, before her marriage with Gerald of Windsor, borne a son to Henry who bore his own name.[944] Two of his mistresses bore the characteristic English name of Eadgyth. One was the mother of Matilda Countess of Perche, who died in the White Ship;[945] the other, who afterwards, like Nest, obtained an honourable marriage with the younger Robert of Ouilly, was the mother of a Robert who plays a part in the civil wars forty years later.[946] His birth therefore most likely came long after the times of which we are speaking, as did the birth of the daughter whom Henry is said to have had by a woman of a Norman house of the loftiest rank, Isabel, daughter of his chief counsellor, Robert Count of Meulan and Earl of Leicester.[947] The list of Henry’s natural children is not yet exhausted――we have no account of the mother of the valiant Juliana; but the birth of one who is second in personal fame to Earl Robert of Gloucester had already taken place, and it is connected with a characteristic story which is worth telling. A wealthy man of Berkshire, Anskill by name, was one of the chief tenants of the church of Abingdon. As far as his name is concerned, he might be Norman; he might be English or rather Danish. His enemies brought a charge against him to the Red King, who caused him to be kept in so sharp a prison that before long he died of his hardships.[948] He left a widow, whose name is given as Ansfrida, and a son named William. The King then seized on the manor of Sparsholt, which Anskill had held of the abbey, and gave it――or perhaps only its wardship――to one of his officers named Toustain, without reserving any service to the Church.[949] By this grant both the young William and the church of Abingdon were wronged. For the wardship of its tenant would even, by Flambard’s own law, go to the abbey. The widow, by what instinct we are not told, betook herself to Henry to ask his intercession with his brother the King. Young William did not get back his land, which was recovered for the abbey at a later time. But his mother presently gave him a half-brother, Richard, who afterwards distinguished himself in the French wars, and died in the White Ship.[950] The interest of Henry, if it did not get back Sparsholt for its lawful tenant, was enough to secure for his new mistress the safe possession of her dower, and to provide for her legitimate son by an advantageous marriage.[951] Ansfrida herself was in the end buried in the minster of Abingdon with honours of which Saint Hugh would hardly have approved, and her lawful son did not fail to give gifts to the place of his mother’s burial.[952]

[Sidenote: Henry is exhorted to marry.]

[Sidenote: He seeks for Eadgyth daughter of Malcolm.]

[Sidenote: Policy of the marriage.]

[Sidenote: Eadgyth looked on as English.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s descent from Ælfred.]

Henry then, if he was fully entitled to reform the worst abuses of his brother’s household, stood in some need of reformation himself. His counsellors exhorted him to mend matters by giving himself a wife and his kingdom a queen. He had not far to look for one when policy and inclination led him the same way. Notwithstanding all his irregularities, we are told that he had long loved Eadgyth or Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm, and it is further implied that his love was returned on her part.[953] It is not clear where she was at this moment, but seemingly no longer with her aunt Christina in her monastic shelter at Romsey.[954] She was now about twenty years old, some say of remarkable beauty, at all events of a pleasing face, and mistress of an amount of learning which must have equalled or exceeded that of her clerkly lover.[955] She had no great worldly possessions;[956] but she came of a stock which made a marriage with her the most politic choice which the King could make at the moment. Eadgyth had lived so long in England that men seem to have forgotten that she was the daughter of Malcolm, and to have remembered only that she was the daughter of Margaret. As such she was held to be of the right kingly kin of England,[957] marked out as the most fitting bride for a king whose purpose was to reign as an Englishman. True she came of the blood of Cerdic only by the spindle-side, and by the spindle-side Henry came of the blood of Cerdic himself.[958] But no one was likely to remember that a daughter of Ælfred was a remote ancestress of Henry’s mother, while everybody remembered that Eadgyth was the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadward, the son of Eadmund, the son of Æthelred, the son of Eadgar. It was for the English King to take an English Lady, and to hand on the English crown to kings born in the land and sprung of the true blood of its ancient princes.

[Sidenote: Objections made to the marriage.]

[Sidenote: Eadgyth said to have taken the veil.]

[Sidenote: Anselm holds an assembly to settle the question.]

[Sidenote: Eadgyth declared free to marry.]

So thought the people; so thought the King; so seemingly thought the daughter of Malcolm herself. But not a few mouths were opened to denounce the marriage as contrary to the laws of the Church. Eadgyth, they alleged, was a consecrated virgin, and a marriage with her would be sacrilege. She had, they said, taken the veil at Romsey, when she was dwelling there with her aunt Christina.[959] She appealed to the Archbishop, to whom all looked to decide the matter.[960] She told her story, as we have already heard it, and called on Anselm to judge her cause in his wisdom. The Archbishop called together at Lambeth――the manor of his friend the Bishop of Rochester――an assembly of bishops, abbots, nobles, and religious men, before whom he laid the matter, and the evidence bearing on it.[961] There was the evidence of the maiden herself; there was the evidence of two archdeacons, William of Canterbury and Humbald of Salisbury, whom Anselm had sent to the monastery, and who, after inquiries among the sisters, reported that there was no ground to think that Eadgyth had ever been a veiled nun.[962] The Archbishop then left the assembly, and the rest, who are spoken of as the Church of England gathered into one place,[963] debated the question in his absence. Much stress was laid on the case of those women who, in the first days of the Conquest, had sought shelter in the cloister from shame and violence, but who had not taken religion upon themselves.[964] The late Archbishop had declared them free to marry, and the judgement of the assembly was that the same rule applied to the case of the daughter of Malcolm.[965] Anselm came back, and the debate and the decision were reported to him. He declared that he assented to the judgement, strengthened as it was by the great authority of Lanfranc.[966] Then Eadgyth herself was brought in, and heard with a pleased countenance all that had passed.[967] She then offered to confirm all that she had said by any form of oath that might be thought good. She did not fear that any one would disbelieve her; but she wished that no occasion should be left for any one to blaspheme.[968] Anselm told her that no oath was needed; if any man out of the evil treasure of his heart should bring forth evil things, he would not be able to withstand the amount and strength of the evidence by which her case was proved.[969] He gave her his blessing,[970] and she went forth, we may say, Lady-elect of the English.

[Sidenote: Other versions of the story.]

[Sidenote: Anselm made to object.]

[Sidenote: Story of Rufus and the Abbess.]

[Sidenote: Decision in favour of the marriage.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s scruples and warning.]

In another version, also contemporary but not resting on the same high authority, things are made to take another turn. The King bids Anselm perform the marriage rite between himself and the nameless daughter of Malcolm, called in this version David.[971] Anselm refuses on the ground that, having worn the veil of a nun, she belonged to a heavenly, not to an earthly bridegroom. The King says that he has sworn to her father to marry her, and that he cannot break his oath, unless it can be shown by a canonical judgement that the marriage is unlawful.[972] Anselm is therefore bidden to summon the Archbishop of York, and the rest of the bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastical persons of all England, to come together and examine the matter.[973] The Abbess is brought before them, and she tells the story of the Red King’s visit to her flowers.[974] The King bids Anselm call on the synod for its judgement. The assembled fathers debate; canons are read, and it is judged that the maiden is free to marry, chiefly on the ground that, if she was veiled, it was while she was under age and without her father’s consent.[975] The King asks Anselm whether he objects to this decision; Anselm says that he has no fault to find with it. Henry then asks Anselm to marry them at once. Anselm pleads that, though the judgement is right, yet, as the maiden had somehow or other worn the veil, it were better that she should not marry; there were others, daughters of kings and counts, one of whom the King might marry instead. Henry still insists; Anselm performs the ceremony; but with a warning that England would not rejoice in the offspring of the marriage.[976] The fate of the White Ship and the wars of Stephen and Matilda are quoted as a proof of Anselm’s prophetic power.

[Sidenote: Later fables.]

The tone of this story is quite unlike that of the more trustworthy version; yet there is perhaps no actual contradiction between them. But the foreign writer stumbles greatly in his names and pedigrees, and writes by the light of forty years later. We may see in his version the beginnings of the wild stories of later times, where Eadgyth is pictured as forced into the marriage against her will, and even as devoting her future offspring to the fiend.[977]

[Sidenote: Marriage of Henry and Eadgyth. November 11, 1100.]

[Sidenote: She takes the name of Matilda.]

[Sidenote: The wedding and coronation.]

[Sidenote: Anselm’s speech.]

[Sidenote: Objections not wholly silenced.]

A few days later, on the feast of Saint Martin, the marriage was celebrated by Anselm, and Matilda, as we must now call her, was hallowed to Queen.[978] It is only a guess that this was the time of her change of name. One hardly sees its motive; it was Henry’s policy at this moment to be as English as possible, and the name of his bride was one of the few English names which the Normans now and then adopted. Could it be Henry’s abiding reverence for his mother which made him wish to place another Matilda on his throne? Be this as it may be, the new Queen bears no other name. All the great men of the kingdom and a crowd of folk of lower degree came together to her wedding and crowning. At the door of the West Minster, as the multitude thronged towards the King and his bride, the Archbishop stood on high and harangued the people. He told them how the whole matter had been settled, and on what grounds. And he once again called on any one who had aught else to say against the marriage to stand forth and say it.[979] The only answer was a general shout of assent to the judgement and the marriage.[980] The rite was done. But there were still some who blamed Anselm for the course that he had taken;[981] and years afterwards the validity of Matilda’s marriage, and the consequent legitimacy of her children, was called in question by those whose political objects it suited to do so.[982]

[Sidenote: Novelty of a queen.]

[Sidenote: Regular life of the King and Queen.]

[Sidenote: “Godric and Godgifu.”]

[Sidenote: 1100-1118.]

[Sidenote: Children of the marriage.]

[Sidenote: William;]

[Sidenote: the Empress Matilda.]

[Sidenote: Later life of Henry and Matilda.]

[Sidenote: Her character.]

[Sidenote: “Good Queen Mold.”]

It is somewhat singular that Matilda practically stepped into the place of the Lady whose name she had forsaken. There had been no queen constantly living in England since the elder Eadgyth. The elder Matilda had been but little in England; William Rufus had been pre-eminently the “bachelor king.” It must have been a wonderful change when the riot and foul excess of the Red King’s court gave way to a household presided over by a devout and virtuous woman. For a time at least Henry as well as his wife lived a sober and regular life. As a generation back the strict conduct of Henry’s father had called forth the jeers of the profligate scoffers of his day, so now the profligate scoffers of another generation jeered at the decorous court of Henry and Matilda, and mocked the English King and his English Lady by the characteristic English names of Godric and Godgifu.[983] The married life of Matilda reached over eighteen years only; of her two children, both born early in her wedlock, she did not live to see her son, the Ætheling William, cut off in the White Ship; she did live to see her daughter of her own name raised to a place which had never before been filled by a daughter of England, sitting as a crowned Augusta in the seat of Livia and Placidia.[984] After a while Henry seems to have fallen back into his old courses; some at least of his natural children must have been born after his marriage; and the same kind of language which was used about his first marriage was used about his second.[985] The Queen, for whatever reason, ceased to follow the endless wanderings of the court; and lived in all royal pomp at Westminster.[986] Her piety rivalled that of her mother; it was shown in all the usual forms of the time; and her brother David, not an undevout prince, went so near to a scoff as to ask his sister whether King Henry would care to kiss the lips which had kissed the ulcers of the lepers.[987] Her boundless liberality to the poor, to clerks, scholars, and strangers of every kind, was perhaps not the less amiable for a manifest touch of vanity.[988] We read that the means for her lavish bounty in this way had to be found by harsh exactions from her tenants; but, here as ever, the blame is laid upon the reeves rather than on their mistress.[989] The memory of “good Queen Mold” was long cherished, and we can hardly doubt that her presence by Henry’s side did much to help the fusion of Normans and English in her husband’s kingdom.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Guy of Vienne comes as Legate.]

[Sidenote: Earlier Legates.]

[Sidenote: Guy’s pretensions not acknowledged.]

Two ecclesiastical events wind up the last year of the eleventh century. One of them showed that there were limits to Anselm’s submission to the see of Rome. Guy Archbishop of Vienne came into England, professing to be papal Legate throughout all Britain. Legates had been seen in England before, but not with such a commission as superseded the authority of an acknowledged Primate. They had come both under Eadward and under William the Great; but they came in the doubtful days of Stigand, and the last time they came to set Stigand finally aside.[990] One Legate had come under William the Red; but it was to bring the pallium to Anselm.[991] But now all men were amazed at a foreign prelate claiming to exercise powers which had hitherto been held to belong to none but the Patriarch of the island world.[992] Legates waxed mightier before Henry’s reign was out;[993] this time Guy went back as he came. We get no details; but we read that no one acknowledged him as Legate, and that he was not able to discharge any legatine function.[994]

[Sidenote: Death of Archbishop Thomas. November 18, 1100.]

[Sidenote: The see of York given to Gerard of Hereford. Archbishop 1100-1108.]

The other event was the death of Archbishop Thomas of York, after an episcopate of thirty years. He died a few days after the King’s marriage, leaving a good name behind him as the honoured rebuilder of his church and legislator of its chapter.[995] This was the first prelacy which had fallen vacant since Henry’s accession. To deal with the vacant see after his brother’s fashion would have been in the teeth of all the new King’s promises. He therefore soon gave the church of York another shepherd. But his choice fell on a man of a character widely different from either Thomas or Anselm. The new archbishop was Gerard Bishop of Hereford, of whom we have already heard a good deal, and heard some things that are passing strange.[996] He held the throne of the northern metropolis for eight years, and, when he died, he had some difficulty in finding a resting-place in his own minster.[997]

§ 3. _The Invasion of Robert._

_January-August, 1101._

[Sidenote: Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101.]

[Sidenote: Action of the Bishop of Durham,]

[Sidenote: of the sons of Earl Roger.]

[Sidenote: Plots to give the crown to Duke Robert.]

[Sidenote: A party in Normandy for Henry.]

The first year of the twelfth century was a stirring time for England, though it was not crowded with great and striking events like the last year of the eleventh. It reads like an earlier chapter of our story coming over again. We have now again to tell well nigh the same tale which we told at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Again we have a Norman rebellion on English soil; again we have a Norman invasion; again the English people cleave steadily to the king whom they have chosen; again the Primate and the bishops in general take the side which was at once the side of the King and of the people. And, as if to make the likeness square in the smallest details, a bishop set free from bonds is the foremost stirrer up of mischief, and again three sons of Earl Roger are the most active leaders of the revolt. The part of Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the former rebellion is in the present played to some extent by Bishop Randolf of Durham; the part of Robert of Bellême is played again in more than all its fulness by Robert of Bellême himself. There is again a party eager to place the Duke of the Normans on the throne of England; but this time that party is balanced by another which in the other tale does not appear till later, a party eager to place the King of the English in the ducal chair of Normandy.

[Sidenote: Character of Robert and Eadgar.]

[Sidenote: Robert as crusader.]

[Sidenote: His relapse on his return to Normandy.]

[Sidenote: His renewed misgovernment.]

Robert, like his chosen companion Eadgar, could play an active and honourable part anywhere save in his own country. Both alike show to far greater advantage in Palestine and in Scotland than in Normandy or in England. The seeming inconsistency is not hard to understand. Neither of them perhaps lacked mere capacity――Robert certainly did not. And Robert most certainly did not lack generous feeling. But both lacked that moral strength without which mere feeling and mere capacity can do very little. Such men can act well and vigorously now and then, by fits and starts, when some special motive is brought to bear upon them. They can act better on behalf of others than they can on behalf of themselves, because, when they act for others, a special motive is brought to bear upon them. Their own cause they may, if they like, neglect or betray――forgetting that, when a prince betrays his own cause, he commonly betrays the cause of many others; but it is a point of honour not to betray or to neglect the cause of another which is entrusted to them. Thus it was that both Robert and Eadgar, who could do nothing for themselves, could do a good deal for others, whether as counsellors, as negotiators, or as military commanders. The crusade had brought out all Robert’s best qualities; but we have seen that, even on the crusade, he had yielded to any great and sudden temptation. Amidst so many noble and valiant comrades, he could not shrink from the siege or the battle; and, once brought up to the siege or the battle, he showed himself, not only a daring soldier, but a skilful captain. But at Laodikeia he had been the same man that he was at Rouen. Now that he was again at Rouen, Antioch and Jerusalem passed away; it was all Laodikeia with him. The dream of winning the English crown floated before his eyes, and at last stirred him up to action. Otherwise he sank into his old listlessness, his old lavishness, his old vices and follies of every kind. It may be an overdrawn picture which paints him as lying in bed till noon, and neglecting to attend mass, because he had no clothes to go in; the base persons of both sexes who surrounded him had carried them all off. Some odd chance that happened once must have been spoken of as a habit.[998] But there is no ground for doubting the general description of Robert’s misgovernment or rather no-government, both before he went to the crusade and after he came back from it.

[Sidenote: Parties in England and Normandy.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s strict rule distasteful to the Norman nobles.]

It may at first sight seem a paradox that there should be at the same moment a party in Normandy anxious to hand over the duchy to Henry and a party in England anxious to hand over the kingdom to Robert. But quiet men in Normandy, who wished their country to enjoy some peace, would naturally wish to place it under the rule of Henry, while the kind of men who, at the accession of Rufus, had wished to bring Robert into England would equally wish to bring him now. They had perhaps already found out that where Henry reigned none might misdo with other, and to misdo with other was to a large part of the Norman nobles the very business of life.

[Sidenote: Their plots against him.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême and his brothers.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Pontefract.]

[Sidenote: Ivo of Grantmesnil.]

[Sidenote: Earl Walter.]

[Sidenote: Duke Robert’s grants to Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: He gives back Gisors to Pagan.]

The greater part of those nobles were now beginning to plot against the King. The estates which most of them held in Normandy gave them special opportunities for so doing, by giving them excuses for going to and fro between England and Normandy. Of this they were not slow to take advantage. The three sons of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, Robert of Bellême and his brothers Arnulf and Roger, were busy in this work; so was Robert the son of Ilbert of Lacy, beginning to be known as Robert of Pontefract; so was Ivo of Grantmesnil, son of the deceased Sheriff of Leicestershire, himself best known as the rope-dancer of Antioch. And we are somewhat surprised to find on the same list, now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard, lord of Longueville and Earl of Buckingham. All these were in secret communication with the Duke.[999] But none of them, Robert of Bellême least of all, was inclined to serve the Duke or any other lord for naught. Duke Robert distributed castles and lands among them, and promised to give them greater gifts still when he should be king of England.[1000] To Robert of Bellême he granted the forest of Gouffers, and the castle of Argentan of whose siege we heard seven years before;[1001] he further confirmed him in a claim very dear to the house of Bellême, by granting him the ducal right of advowson over the bishopric of Seez.[1002] And, strangest of all, the Duke gave back the fortress of Gisors, the bulwark of his duchy, to its former holder Theobald or Pagan, because he had once hospitably entertained him.[1003] Did not Robert of Bellême ask that, if his own master-piece of engineering was to pass out of the hands of the prince, it should pass into no hands but his own? Thus Duke Robert’s way of making ready for the conquest of England was to squander the resources of Normandy. Every inch of his territory, every stone of his fortresses, stood ready to be granted away, almost to any one who would take the trouble to ask for them.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót at Westminster. 1100-1101.]

[Sidenote: Escape of the Bishop of Durham.]

[Sidenote: Adventures of his mother.]

[Sidenote: His reception by Duke Robert; he stirs him up against Henry.]