10. King Edward and Earl Godwine.—Edward was a devout and well-disposed man. His love of foreigners he could hardly help; his chief fault was now and then giving way to fits of passion, in which he sometimes gave rash and cruel orders. But in these cases he seems to have been commonly stirred up by his favourites. Otherwise he was remarkably free from cruelty or any other of the common vices of his time. Being thus a really good and pious man, and one whom both Normans and English could agree in reverencing, he was very early looked on as a saint and thought to work miracles. But he was a weak man and quite unfit to govern his kingdom. The first nine years of his reign were one long struggle whether England should be ruled by the King’s foreign favourites or by the English Earl Godwine. Godwine, along with his friend Bishop Lyfing, had the chief hand in bringing about Eadward’s election, and this claim on the King’s gratitude made him yet more the first man in the kingdom than he was before. The King married his daughter Edith, and his sons were gradually raised to earldoms, some of them while they were very young. Godwine was beyond all doubt an Englishman who loved his own land and folk; but he was over-grasping on his own behalf and on that of his children. In marrying his daughter to the King, he no doubt looked forward to a grandson of his own wearing the crown; but Edward had no children, and, at least in the early part of his reign, he seems to have had little love for his wife. And the gathering together of many earldoms in the one house of the Earl of the West-Saxons gave offence, not only to the Normans, but seemingly to the earls and people of the rest of England. Thus these first years of the reign of Eadward tell us the tale both of the power of Godwine and of his fall.
11. The Earldoms.—It will be well here to explain who were the chief men of England at this time, and what were the earldoms which they held. At this time an earldom was not a mere rank or title, but meant the government of one or more shires over which the earl was set by the authority of the King and his Wise Men. There were now four chief earldoms, answering to the four greatest of the ancient kingdoms, those of Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland, and East-Anglia. There were always these four; but there were also others as well, and shires were often taken from one earldom and given to another, as was thought good at the time. The Mercian shires above all, those in the middle of England, were very often handed to and fro between one earl and another. When Edward was elected, Godwine was Earl of the West-Saxons, that is, of all England south of the Thames. Siward, a famous Dane, was Earl of the Northumbrians, that is of all England north of the Humber and the Ribble, and also of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire. Leofric was Earl of the Mercians, but he had only the western part of Mercia under his immediate rule. Who was Earl of the East-Angles we do not know. Besides these there were other earls who held one or more shires, seemingly under the great earls; and as these smaller earldoms became vacant, room was found both for the King’s friends and for the family of Godwine. Thus the King’s nephew Ralph was Earl, first of Worcester and then of Hereford. And Godwine very soon got earldoms for his elder sons Swegen and Harold, and for his wife’s nephew Beorn, the brother of the Danish King Swegen. Swegen had a strangely-shaped government, taking in Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire. Harold had East-Anglia; Beorn had all eastern Mercia except Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire. Thus the power of Godwine and his house was very great; but it was perhaps shaken by the crimes of his eldest son Swegen, who killed his cousin Beorn. For this he was banished, but was afterwards restored to his earldom.
12. Norman influence in England.—The way in which Godwine had to strive against the King’s love of strangers is shown, as we have said, in the appointment of bishoprics and other great offices in the Church. Early in his reign, in 1044, the see of London was given to Robert, Abbot of Jumièges in Normandy, the first time that an English bishopric had ever been held by a French-speaking man. Robert had great power over the King, which he used against the English and especially against Godwine. At last in 1051 Robert himself became Archbishop of Canterbury; other bishoprics were given to Normans, and Norman clerks and knights held benefices and estates in various parts of the kingdom. But the King did not venture to give an earldom to any Norman, or to any foreigner except his own nephew Ralph. One fashion which the Normans brought in with them was that of building castles. The English were used to fortify towns, and their kings and other chief men had lived in halls, often on the tops of mounds and fenced in by a palisade. But the Normans now began to build castles, that is, either strong square towers, or strong stone walls crowning the mounds. Thence they could oppress the people in many ways, and the writers of the time always speak of the building of the castles with a kind of shudder.
13. The Banishment of Godwine.—The appointment of Robert to the archbishopric marks the time when the Normans had things most thoroughly their own way. About this time the King’s brother-in-law, Count Eustace of Boulogne, came to pay him a visit. As he went home, he and his followers rode into the town of Dover, and tried to quarter themselves where they pleased in the houses. So a fight followed, in which several men were killed on both sides. Then the Count rode back and told the King how insolently the men of Dover had dealt by him. Then Edward flew into one of his angry fits, and bade Godwine go and lay waste Dover with fire and sword. But Godwine said that he would do no such thing; he would do nothing to any man in his earldom except according to law; the men of Dover should be lawfully tried before the Wise Men, and, if they were found guilty of any crime, they should be lawfully punished. While these things were doing in Kent, there came also a cry from Herefordshire about the deeds of certain Normans there, Richard and his son Osbern, who had built a castle called Richard’s Castle, and had greatly oppressed the people. And at the same time the Archbishop and the other Normans were setting the King against Godwine more than ever, and bringing up the old story about his brother Alfred. Godwine and his sons therefore gathered the men of their earldoms, and demanded that the King should give up the foreigners, Count Eustace among them, for lawful trial. Edward got together the forces of the rest of the kingdom under the Earls Siward, Leofric, and Ralph, and made ready for war. The West-Saxons and East-Angles accordingly marched on Gloucester, where the King was; but actual warfare was hindered by Leofric, and it was agreed that all matters should be judged in an assembly in London. The King came there with an army. The assembly met; Swegen’s outlawry was renewed; Godwine and Harold were summoned to appear as criminals for trial. As they refused to come without a safe-conduct, they were outlawed. Harold and Leofwine found shelter in Ireland, Godwine and the rest of the family in Flanders. The King’s wife, the Lady Edith, stayed in England, but she was shorn of her royal rank, and sent to the monastery of Wherwell. The Normans now had for awhile everything their own way. They thought it a good time for Duke William to come over and pay a visit to his cousin the King. William was now about twenty-three years of age, and he had been called Duke ever since he was a child of seven. We will now go back and see what had been going on in Normandy during these early years of his reign.
CHAPTER IV.
The Youth of Duke William.
1. The Birth, and Accession of Duke William.—We have already spoken of Duke Robert, and how he tried to bring back his cousins the Æthelings to England. Towards the end of his reign Duke Robert determined to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to pray at the tomb of Christ and win the forgiveness of his sins. Before he went, he wished to settle the succession to his duchy, in case he should die on so long and dangerous a journey. He had no lawful children, and it was not at all clear who among his kinsfolk had the best right to succeed him. So, after some difficulty, he was able to persuade the wise men of Normandy to accept as their future duke his little son William, who, as his parents had never been married, was called William the Bastard, till he had won a right to be called William the Conqueror and William the Great. William was born before his father became Duke, while he was only Count of the land of Hiesmes, of which Falaise, the town of the rocks, was the capital, where Count Robert had a castle. There is a famous castle there still, but it is somewhat later than William’s time, and he certainly was not born in it. But there is no doubt that William was born at Falaise, and that his mother Herleva was the daughter of a tanner of that town, whom Robert afterwards made his chamberlain. Herleva had also a daughter Adelaide by Duke Robert, and after his death she married a knight named Herlwin of Conteville, to whom she bore two sons, Odo and Robert, William’s half-brothers, who play a great part in our story. William was not at all ashamed of the lowliness of his birth on the mother’s side, and, when he was duke, he raised her sons to high honour. As he was not Duke Robert’s lawful son, he had no right to succeed according to modern law; but the rules of succession were then not at all fixed, and the Normans above all thought but little of lawful marriage and birth in such matters. The chief objection to William’s being acknowledged as the future duke was that he was a mere child, about seven years old, so that, if his father died while he was away, he would not be able to govern. But Duke Robert said, “He is little, but he will grow,” and at last the wise men of Normandy sware to him. Then Robert went on his pilgrimage and never came back. He died on his way home, in 1035, a long way from his own land, at Nikaia in Asia, where the famous Council of the Church was held in the days of Constantine, and was buried there.
2. William’s Childhood.—It was after William became duke, but before he was a full-grown man, that the Ætheling Alfred had come to his sad end in England, and that the Ætheling Eadward had been chosen King there. We cannot say how much William had personally to do with either matter. He came to his duchy as a child; but his childhood and youth were of a kind which made him a man, and a strong and wise man, very early. The Norman nobles were very hard to govern at any time, and when the prince was a child, they did whatever they chose. They were always fighting with one another, and sometimes murdering one another by craft. And they were always rebelling against their young duke, and sometimes seeking his life. For it must be remembered that they had not at all wished to have Herleva’s son for their lord, and there were several kinsmen of Duke Robert who thought, and rightly according to our notions, that they had a better right to the duchy than William. The young duke had good and faithful guardians, but several of them were murdered. The land in short was in a state of utter confusion. And now that Normandy was divided and weak, the old friendship with France began to give way, and the French and their kings began again to remember that the settlement of the Normans had cut off France from the sea. So Henry the King of the French joined himself to William’s other enemies, and took his castle of Tillières on the French border. Thus he was William’s enemy early in his reign, and he became his enemy again afterwards; but in the most dangerous moment of William’s Norman reign, the French king was his firm friend. This was in 1047, when a large part of Normandy rose in rebellion against William, of which we must say a little more.
3. The Revolt of Western Normandy.—It will be remembered that the western part of Normandy, the lands of Bayeux and Coutances, were won by the Norman dukes after the eastern part, the lands of Rouen and Evreux. And it will be remembered that these western lands, won more lately and fed by new colonies from the North, were still heathen and Danish some while after eastern Normandy had become Christian and French-speaking. Now we may be sure that, long before William’s day, all Normandy was Christian, but it is quite possible that the old tongue may have lingered on in the western lands. At any rate there was a wide difference in spirit and feeling between the more French and the more Danish districts, to say nothing of Bayeux, where, before the Normans came, there had been a Saxon settlement. One part of the duchy in short was altogether Romance in speech and manners, while more or less of Teutonic character still clave to the other. So now Teutonic Normandy rose against Duke William, and Romance Normandy was faithful to him. The nobles of the Bessin and Côtentin made league with William’s cousin Guy of Burgundy, meaning, as far as one can see, to make Guy Duke of Rouen and Evreux, and to have no lord at all for themselves. Their leader was Neal, the Viscount of the Côtentin, the son of the Neal who had beaten back the English invasion in Æthelred’s day. When the rebellion broke out, William was among them at Valognes, and they tried to seize him. But his fool warned him in the night; he rode for his life, and got safe to his own Falaise.
4. The Battle of Val-ès-Dunes.—All eastern Normandy was loyal; but William doubted whether he could by himself overcome so strong an array of rebels. So he went to Poissy, between Rouen and Paris, and asked his lord King Henry to help him. So King Henry came with a French army; and the French and those whom we may call the French Normans met the Teutonic Normans in battle at Val-ès-dunes, not very far from Caen. It was William’s first pitched battle, a battle of horsemen, in which King and Duke fought hand to hand against the rebels, and each slew some of their chief men. Yet King Henry was once thrown from his horse by a spear from the Côtentin, a deed of which the men of the peninsula sang in their rimes. But they were beaten none the less, and the whole land which had rebelled submitted. Neal escaped, and was after a while pardoned, nor was Duke William’s hand at all heavy on his vanquished enemies. But he had vanquished them thoroughly. He was now fully master of his own duchy; the battle of Val-ès-dunes finally fixed that Normandy should take its character from Romance Rouen and not from Teutonic Bayeux. William had in short overcome Saxons and Danes in Gaul before he came to overcome them in Britain. He had to conquer his own Normandy before he could conquer England, and we shall see that, between these two conquests, he had in some sort to conquer France also.
5. Duke William’s Visit to King Edward.—Thus Duke William was for the first time master in Normandy, and four years later it was no doubt said that King Edward was for the first time master in England. Godwine was gone, and the King’s Norman favourites had everything their own way. And now the young Duke came to pay his cousin a visit. With so many Normans at the court and in other parts of the land, it might almost seem to him that he was still in his own duchy. Was it now that the thought first came into his head that he might succeed his childless kinsman in a kingdom which looked as if it had already become Norman? Certain it is that William always said that Edward had promised him the crown at his death; and this visit seems a more likely time for such a promise than any time before or after. Of course we must remember that Edward could not, by English law, really leave William the crown; the utmost that he could do would be to recommend the Wise Men to choose him at his death. But just at this time neither William nor Edward was likely to think much about English law, and Edward’s Norman counsellors were still less likely to think about it than either of them. We cannot say for certain how it was; but we can hardly doubt that Edward did make William some kind of promise, and this seems the most likely time for it. At any rate William had now conquered Normandy and had visited England. These are two steps towards the time when he again came to England, not as guest but as Conqueror.