Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy

by Charles W. David

But with all this fitful energy, the duke’s love of ease and his desire ‘to sleep under a roof’ called him home too often in mid-campaign.[175] He lacked the resolution to carry a difficult and laborious enterprise through to the end. Seeking mere temporary advantages, he was prone to adopt the easy but fatal expedient of allying himself with the turbulent barons whose lawlessness it should have been his first concern to curb. Upon the fall of Saint-Céneri he seemed to be in mid-course of victory over the notorious house of Talvas. The shocking punishment visited upon the surrendered garrison had caused fear and consternation to spread among the supporters of Roger of Montgomery. The garrisons of Bellême and Alençon are said to have been ready to surrender at the mere approach of the ducal forces. Yet to the general amazement the war went no further. The duke suddenly made peace with Roger and released Robert of Bellême from captivity.[176]

And the peace then made with the rebel was a lasting one. Not again, until after his return from the Crusade, did the duke fight against Robert of Bellême. Evidently he had decided that in his future difficulties it would be better to have the house of Talvas for him rather than against him. Not a check was placed hereafter by the duke upon this most notorious tyrant of the age. Robert of Bellême was “a subtle genius, crafty and deceitful.” His ability challenged admiration. But his cruelty, avarice, and lawlessness knew no bounds. Plundering and oppressing all over whom he had power, he came to be regarded by contemporaries as the veritable incarnation of Satan.[177] He built a castle in a dominating position at Fourches, and forcibly transferred the inhabitants of Vignats thither. He also erected Château-Gontier in a strong position on the Orne, and thus placed his yoke upon the district of Le Houlme.[178] Against Geoffrey of Mortagne he waged a war for the possession of Domfront.[179] He did not hesitate to besiege Gilbert of Laigle, the duke’s loyal vassal, at Exmes.[180] His intolerable violence drew down upon him a concerted attack by his neighbors in the Hiémois. But he was able to bring the duke to his aid and to besiege his enemies at Courcy, in January 1091.[181] Later he waged a successful war against Robert Géré of Saint-Céneri and a formidable combination of the lords of Maine. Again on this occasion he gained the assistance of the duke, and so compelled the destruction of a castle which Géré was attempting to fortify at Montaigu.[182] He was said to be the possessor of thirty-four strong castles,[183] and he was, perhaps, more powerful than the duke himself. Indeed, in his dealings with the duke the relation of lord and vassal seems at times almost to have been inverted, as when Robert Curthose acted as his ally in private warfare.

One might perhaps suppose that considerations of policy led the duke to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards Robert of Bellême, his most powerful subject. But in his dealings with other barons Robert showed himself equally weak and vacillating. He made no effort to check the long and desperate war by which William of Breteuil was seeking to bring his rebellious vassal, Ascelin Goël, back to his allegiance.[184] Indeed, he sought rather to gain some temporary financial advantage from it. When Ascelin, in defiance of feudal right and honor, seized Ivry, the castle of his lord, Robert did not scruple to take it from him and to compel William of Breteuil to redeem it by a payment of 1500 livres.[185] And a little later he took the other side in the struggle, and, in exchange for ‘large sums’ joined with Robert of Bellême, King Philip of France, and other hirelings whom William of Breteuil was gathering from every quarter, in the overthrow of Ascelin at the siege of Bréval.[186] When a bitter feud broke out between William of Évreux and Ralph of Conches, Robert sought to avoid becoming involved in the struggle. But his failure to respond to the appeal of the lord of Conches merely drove the latter into the arms of William Rufus.[187]

The expulsion of Prince Henry from the Cotentin and the Avranchin after the siege of Mont-Saint-Michel had been no lasting victory for the duke. In 1092 Henry suddenly reappeared in western Normandy in secure possession of the town and castle of Domfront. The inhabitants had revolted against the intolerable oppression of Robert of Bellême, and, recalling Henry from exile, had accepted him as their lord.[188] Secure in the possession of this impregnable stronghold, Henry set himself to recover the lands from which he had been expelled and to establish himself in an independent position in the southwest. He defied Robert of Bellême,[189] and made war upon the duke with much burning, pillage, and violence.[190] With the aid of Earl Hugh of Chester, to whom he gave the castle of Saint-James, and of Richard de Redvers, Roger de Mandeville, and others, he gradually won back the greater part of the Cotentin.[191]

The pages of Ordericus Vitalis are filled with lamentations over the evil times that had fallen upon the duchy. Through the indolence of a soft and careless duke all that the Conqueror had created by his vigor and ability was allowed to fall into decay and confusion. The whole province was in a state of dissolution. Bands of freebooters overran villages and country, and plundered the unarmed peasantry. The church’s possessions were wrung from her by force. Monasteries were filled with desolation, and the monks and nuns were reduced to penury. Adulterine castles arose on every hand to become the dens of robbers who ravaged the countryside with fire and sword. A depopulated country remained for years afterwards a silent witness to the evil day.[192]

That the indignant outbursts of Ordericus Vitalis are not mere rhetoric, is amply proved by a more prosaic narrative of the nuns of La Trinité of Caen.[193] In the cartulary of their abbey they have tersely recorded the long list of their injuries and losses in men and revenues and lands and cattle. “After the death of King William,” they say, “William, count of Évreux, took from Holy Trinity and from the abbess and the nuns seven arpents of vineyard and two horses and twenty sous of the coinage of Rouen and the salt pans at Écrammeville and twenty livres annually from Gacé and from Bavent. Richard, son of Herluin, took the two manors of Tassilly and Montbouin. William the chamberlain, son of Roger de Candos, took the tithe of Hainovilla. William Baivel took twenty oxen which he had seized at Auberville. Robert de Bonebos plundered the same manor …;” and so the complaint continues through a long list of some thirty offenders, among them such well known names as Richard de Courcy, William Bertran, and Robert Mowbray. Even Prince Henry takes his place in this remarkable catalogue of sinners. It is a little startling to learn that in his government of the Cotentin he was not altogether worthy of the polite compliments which have been paid him by the chroniclers. The nuns complain that he “took toll (pedagium) from Quettehou and from all the Cotentin, and forced the men of Holy Trinity in the said vill and county to work upon the castles of his men.” It is significant that in this extraordinary entry in the Caen cartulary the record of violations of right stands alone. We hear nothing of suits for the recovery of the alienated lands and goods. The distressed nuns appear to have been patiently preserving the record of their grievances against the day when there should be a government and courts to which they could appeal with some prospect of obtaining redress.

Indeed, orderly government and the regular operation of courts of law seem to have been suspended almost entirely during Robert’s reign. With the exception of a fragment of a charter of donation in favor of Saint-Vincent of Le Mans,[194] no single record of an administrative or judicial act by the duke for Maine has been preserved. And for Normandy we have nothing but a few scattered references to the curia ducis[195] and one imperfect record of a suit before that court in 1093.[196] The study of Robert’s charters, which have now at last been collected and set in order,[197] reveals a state of disorder and of irregularity hardly conceivable so soon after the reign of the Conqueror. The duke had a chancellor and evidently some semblance of a centralized administration. Yet the chancery seems hardly ever to have performed the most common functions of such an office, viz., the issuing of ducal charters. Most of Robert’s acts were drawn up locally and according to the prevailing forms of the religious houses in whose favor they were issued. Evidence of any systematic taxation is wholly lacking; and the extent to which Robert was neglectful of ducal customs and rights of justice stands patently revealed by the inquest of Caen, held when, for a moment, with the assistance of William Rufus, a more vigorous régime was in contemplation.[198] Rare occasions when the duke asserted himself to compel the destruction of an adulterine castle[199] or the submission of a refractory noble stand out as wholly exceptional in a reign of weakness, indifference, and indecision.[200]

It was, of course, the clergy who suffered most from this reign of lawlessness and who were at the same time able to make their woes articulate. The lamentful narrative of Ordericus Vitalis and the bare record of the nuns of Caen have already been sufficiently dwelt upon. Yet it should in justice be noted that Robert Curthose was not a wilful oppressor of the church. He was no impious tyrant such as William Rufus or Ranulf Flambard. His offences against the clergy were rather the sins of weakness than of malice. His sale of lay rights over the sees of Coutances and Avranches to Prince Henry[201] when he was preparing for the invasion of England was doubtless dictated by the sudden needs of the moment. So, too, in 1089 he granted the manor of Gisors, a property of the church of St. Mary of Rouen, to his overlord, King Philip, “non habens de proprio quod posset dare.”[202] On the other hand, the duke often acted in a perfectly just and cordial coöperation with the clergy. There is every indication of harmony in the relations between Robert and the bishops and abbots at the synod held at Rouen in June 1091, for the election of Serlo as bishop of Séez.[203] So, too, soon after, he gave his willing assent to the election of Roger du Sap as abbot of Saint-Évroul, and “committed to him by the pastoral staff the care of the monastery in worldly affairs.”[204] So, also, upon the election of Anselm, abbot of Bec, as archbishop of Canterbury, he gladly consented to his resignation of the abbey,[205] and afterwards entirely accommodated himself to Anselm’s wishes with regard to his successor at Bec. There is a note of real affection in the words with which Anselm in a letter to the prior and monks of Bec refers to Robert on this occasion: “By the grace of God, our lord the prince of the Normans has sent me a most kindly letter asking pardon if his love of me and his sorrow at my loss have caused him to think or say of me anything unseemly because of my election to the archiepiscopate. In the same letter he has graciously sought my counsel concerning the appointment of an abbot for you, and has promised to accept it gladly not only in this matter but in other things as well.”[206]

Of the duke’s relations with the papacy in this period we know almost nothing, except that his attitude, on the whole, was one of obedience and accommodation. The violence which Robert had done to the property of St. Mary of Rouen in granting the manor of Gisors to King Philip caused Archbishop William to lay the whole province under an interdict. This, in turn, brought on a controversy between the archbishop and the abbey of Fécamp, and in the sequel the Pope suspended the metropolitan from the use of his pallium for having exceeded his authority. At this point the duke intervened, and at the expense of acknowledging himself subject to the jurisdiction of the apostolic see, “saving only the privileges of his ancestors,” he obtained for the archbishop at least a temporary restoration of his pallium, while further investigations were pending.[207] The church and clergy often suffered from Robert’s weakness, or his sudden temptation to gain some temporary advantage, but rarely, if ever, from his ill will.

Inexcusable weakness and the steady disintegration of ducal authority, either through his own rash grants, or through the usurpations of his turbulent subjects, or through the insidious aggressions of William Rufus, these are the outstanding features of Duke Robert’s unfortunate reign.