Henry goes to England. Summer, 1088. Henry, Ætheling on one side of the sea and now Count on the other side,[540] next thought of crossing the channel to seek for those estates in his native land which he claimed in right of his mother.[541] These lands, in Cornwall, Buckinghamshire, and specially in Gloucestershire, had mostly formed a part of the forfeited possessions of Brihtric, the man whose name legend has so strangely connected with that of Matilda.[542] Henry must have reached England about the time when the rebellion had been put down, and when the new King might be expected to be in a mood inclined either to justice or to generosity. William promises him the lands of Matilda. William received his brother graciously, and granted, promised, or pretended to grant, the restitution of the lands of their mother.[543] Henry, already a ruler on one side of the sea, a sharer in his father’s inheritance, went back to his peninsula in a character which was yet newer to him, that of a sharer in his father’s conquest, a great land-owner on the other side of the sea. But his luck, which was to shine forth so brightly in after times, forsook him for the present. If Henry ever came into actual possession of his English estates, his tenure of them was short. He seizes them again. At some time which is not distinctly marked, the lands which had been Matilda’s were again seized by William. They are granted to Robert Fitz-hamon.They were granted to one of the rising men of the time, one of the few who had been faithful to the King in the late times of trouble, to Robert Fitz-hamon, perhaps already the terror of the southern Cymry. Thus the old possessions of Brihtric passed into the hands of the lord of the castle of Cardiff, the founder of the minster of Tewkesbury.[544] In the next generation the policy of Henry was to win them back, if not for himself, yet for his son.[545]
Influence of Odo with Robert. If the Count of Coutances failed of his objects in England, a worse fate awaited him for a season on his return to Normandy. He had enemies at the court of Duke Robert; first of all, it would seem, his uncle Odo, lately Earl of Kent and still Bishop of Bayeux. He was now driven from his earldom to his bishopric, like a dragon, we are told, with fiery wings cast down to the earth.[546] Autumn, 1088. The tyrant of Bayeux, the worst of prelates—such are the names under which Odo now appears in the pages of our chief guide[547]—had again become Robert’s chief counsellor. His counsel seems to have taken the form of stirring up the Duke’s mind to abiding wrath against his brother of England, and against all who were, or were held to be, his partisans.[548] Henry brings back Robert of Bellême. When Henry left England to come back to Normandy, he brought with him a dangerous companion in the person of Robert of Bellême. That rebel of a few months back was now thoroughly reconciled to Rufus. Duke Robert was even made to believe that his namesake of Bellême, so lately his zealous supporter, was joined with Henry by a mutual oath to support the interests of the King of the English at the expense of the Duke of the Normans.[549] They are seized and imprisoned. The measures of Robert or of Odo were speedily taken; the coasts were watched; the voyagers were seized before they could disembark from their ships.[550] They were put in fetters, and presently consigned to prisons in the keeping of the Bishop. They had not even the comfort of companionship in bonds. While the Ætheling, Count of the Côtentin, was kept in Odo’s episcopal city, the place of imprisonment for the son of the Earl of Shrewsbury was the fortress of Neuilly, in the most distant part of Odo’s diocese, near the frontier stream of Vire which parts the Bessin from Henry’s own peninsula. The less illustrious captive was the first to find a champion. Earl Roger makes war on the Duke. Earl Roger, by the licence of the King, left England, crossed into Normandy, entered into open war with the Duke on behalf of his son, and garrisoned all his own castles and those of his son against him. Vassal of three lords, the lord of Montgomery and Shrewsbury, the father of the lord of Bellême, might almost rank as their peer. As a prince rather than as a mere baron, Earl Roger took to arms. His fortresses. The border-fortresses on the frontier ground of Normandy, Maine, and Perche were all put into a state of defence.[551] Alençon, by the border stream, was again, as in the days when its burghers mocked the Tanner’s grandson,[552] garrisoned against his son and successor. Bellême itself, the cradle of the house of Talvas—the Rock of Mabel, bearing the name of her who had united the houses of Talvas and Montgomery, and whose blood had been the price of its possession—Saint-Cenery on its peninsula by the Sarthe, another of the spoils of Mabel’s bloody policy—all these border strongholds, together with a crowd of others lying more distinctly within the Norman dominions, had again become hostile spots where the Duke of the Normans was defied.
The episcopal gaoler of Bayeux, in his character of chief counsellor of Duke Robert, is described as keeping his feeble nephew somewhat in awe. But his counsels, it is added, were sometimes followed, sometimes despised.[553] Odo’s exhortation to Robert. Now that all Normandy was in a blaze of civil war, Odo came to Rouen, and had an audience of the Duke, seemingly in an assembly of his nobles.[554] If our guide is to be trusted, Robert, who had no love for hearing sermons even from the lips of his father, was now condemned to hear a sermon of no small length from the perhaps even readier lips of his uncle. Odo gave Robert a lecture on the good government of his duchy, on the duty of defending the oppressed and putting down their oppressors. A long list of princes are held up as his examples, the familiar heroes of Persia, Macedonia, Carthage, and Rome, among whom, one hardly sees why, Septimius Severus takes his place along with the first Cæsar. Rivalry of Normandy and France. On the same list too come the princes of his own house, the princes whom the warlike French had ever feared, winding up with the name of his own father, greatest of them all.[555] In all this we hear the monk of Saint Evroul rather than the Bishop of Bayeux; but any voice is worth hearing which impresses on us a clearer understanding of the abiding jealousy between Normandy and France. But we may surely hear Odo himself in the practical advice that follows.The line of Talvas to be rooted out. Now is the time to root out the whole accursed stock of Talvas from the Norman duchy. They were an evil generation from the beginning, not one of whom ever died the death of other men.[556] It is as the son of Mabel, not as the son of Roger, that Robert of Bellême comes in for this frightful inheritance, and Odo could not foresee how pious an end the Earl of Shrewsbury was to make in a few years.[557] He reminded the Duke that a crowd of castles, which had been ducal possessions as long as his father lived, had been seized on his father’s death by Robert of Bellême, and their ducal garrisons driven out.[558] It was the Duke’s duty, as the ruler of the land, as a faithful son of Holy Church, to put an end to the tyranny of this usurper, and to give to all his dominions the blessing of lawful government at the hand of their lawful prince.
But the overthrow of the house of Talvas was not the only work to which Odo stirred up his nephew. Affairs of Maine. There was another enterprise to be undertaken before the great lord of the Cenomannian border could be safely attacked. These early days of Robert lead us on at once to that side of the continental wars and continental policy of Rufus which seems to have drawn to itself the smallest amount of English interest at the time,[559] but which is that on which we are now led to look with a deeper interest than any other. Before Robert could safely attack Bellême, he must make sure of Le Mans and of all Maine. Every mention of that noble city, of its counts and its bishops, its renowned church, and its stout-hearted citizens, has a charm which is shared by no other spot between the Loire and the Channel. Helias and Hildebert. And at no stage of its history did the Cenomannian state stand forth with greater brilliancy than in the last days of its independent being, when Le Mans had Helias to its count and Hildebert to its bishop. Those days are still parted from us by a few years; but the advice given by Odo to Robert brings us to the beginning of the chain of events which leads straight to them. The historian of William Rufus must now begin to look forward to the days when Rufus, like his father, tried his strength against the valiant men of the Cenomannian land and city, and tried it at a time when land and city could put forth their full strength back again under a leader worthy of them. But as yet the land of Maine has neither to deal with so mighty a foe nor to rejoice in the guardianship of so worthy a champion. In the stage of the tale which we have now reached, Rufus plays no part at all, and Helias plays only a secondary part. History of Maine under the Conqueror. The general story of Le Mans and Maine has been elsewhere carried down to the last mention of them in the days of the Conqueror.[560] It has been told how the land passed under 1063. William’s power in the days before he crossed the sea to win England[561]—how the city and land had revolted against the Norman—how, after trying the rule of a foreign branch of their own princely house, its people had 1073. risen as the first free commonwealth north of the Loire—how they had been again brought into William’s hand, and that largely by the help of his English warriors[562]—and how, after the final submission of the city, isolated spots of the Cenomannian land had again risen against the Norman power. The last act of this earlier 1083. drama was when a single Cenomannian fortress successfully withstood the whole strength of Normandy and England.[563] We have seen how Hubert of Beaumont beheld the Conqueror baffled before his hill fortress of Sainte-Susanne, the shattered keep which still stands, sharing with Dol in the Breton land the honour of being the two spots from which William had to turn away, conqueror no longer.[564] 1086. But, if Hubert had beaten back William from his castle, he had found it expedient to return to his allegiance; and, at the death of the Conqueror, Maine seems to have been as thoroughly under William’s power as Normandy and England. Dissatisfaction in Maine. Things changed as soon as the great King had passed away. The land and city which had striven so often against the Conqueror himself were not likely to sit down quietly under the feeble rule of Robert. Relations with Fulk of Anjou. And, besides the standing dislike of the people of Maine to Norman rule, there was a neighbour who was likely to be stirred up by his own ambition to meddle in the affairs of Maine, and to whom the actual provisions of treaties gave at least a colourable claim to do so. By the terms of the peace of Blanchelande, the new Duke of the Normans had become the man of Count Fulk of Anjou for the county of Maine.[565] It is true that the homage had been of the most formal kind. There had been no reservation of authority on the part of the superior lord, nor, as far as we can see, was any service of any kind imposed on the fief, if fief it is to be called. Robert’s homage to Fulk. The homage might almost seem to have been a purely personal act, a homage expressing thankfulness for the surrender of all Angevin rights over Maine, rather than an acknowledgement of Angevin superiority over the land and city. Still Robert, as Count of Maine, had, in some way or other, become Count Fulk’s man, and Count Fulk had, in some way or other, become Robert’s lord. A relation was thus established between them of which the Rechin was sure to take advantage, whenever the time came.
Robert Count of Maine. Robert, on his father’s death, had taken his title of Prince of the Cenomannians as well as that of Duke of the Normans,[566] and his authority seems to have been acknowledged at Le Mans no less than at Rouen. State of things in Maine. We may suspect that there was no very deep felt loyalty in the minds of a people whose rebellious tendencies had deeply impressed the mind of William the Great. He is said—though we may guess that the etymology comes rather from the reporter than from the speaker—to have derived the name of their land and city from their currish madness.[567] But there was as yet no open resistance. Of the three chief men in Church and State, Howel. Bishop Howel was an active supporter of the Norman connexion, while Geoffrey of Mayenne and Helias of La Flèche were at least not ready openly to throw it off. Geoffrey of Mayenne. Geoffrey, who had fought against the Conqueror twenty-five years before,[568] who had betrayed the young commonwealth of Le Mans fifteen years before,[569] must have been now advanced in life; but we shall still hear of him for some years to come. Helias. Helias, the chief hero of later wars, was of a younger generation, and now appears for the first time. His descent and position. He was, it will be remembered, the son of John of La Flèche and of Paula the youngest sister of the last Count Herbert.[570] He was therefore, before any other man in the land, the representative of Cenomannian independence, as distinguished both from Norman rule and from Angevin superiority. But his father had, in the Conqueror’s second Cenomannian war, remained faithful to the Norman, alike against commonwealth, Lombard, and Angevin.[571] His son for the present followed the same course. Story of Bishop Howel’s appointment. Bishop Howel was in any case a zealous Norman partisan; according to one story he was a special nominee of the Conqueror, appointed for the express purpose of helping to keep the people of Maine in order. According to the local historian, he had been appointed Dean of Saint Julian’s by his predecessor Arnold, and was, on Arnold’s death, freely and unanimously chosen to the bishopric.[572] In Normandy it was believed that King William, on Arnold’s death, offered the bishopric to one of his own clerks, Samson of Bayeux, who declined the offer on the ground that a bishop, according to apostolic rule, ought to be blameless, while he himself was a grievous sinner in many ways. The King said that Samson must either take the bishopric himself or find some fit person in his stead. Samson recommends him for the see. Samson made his nomination at once. There was in the King’s chapel a clerk, poor, but of noble birth and of virtuous life, Howel by name, and, as his name implied, of Breton birth or descent.[573] He was the man to be bishop of Le Mans. Howel was at once sent for. He came, not knowing to what end he was called. Young in years, slight and mean in figure, he had not the stately presence with which Walcher of Durham had once impressed the mind of Eadgyth, perhaps of William himself.[574] But Howel was not called upon, like Walcher, to be a goodly martyr, but only a confessor on a small scale. William was at first tempted to despise the unconscious candidate for the chair of Saint Julian. But Samson, who, sinner as he may have been, seems not to have been a bad preacher or reasoner, warned the King that God looked not at the outward appearance, but at the heart. William examined further into Howel’s life and conversation, and presently gave him the temporal investiture of the bishopric.[575] At the same time a congé d’élire went to Le Mans, which led to Howel’s “pure and simple” election by the Chapter.[576] A point both of canon and of feudal law turned up. Temporal relations of the bishopric of Le Mans. The old dispute between the Norman Duke and the Angevin Count about the advowson of the bishopric had never been settled; the Peace of Blanchelande was silent on that point. Legally there can be no doubt that the true temporal superior of the Bishop of Le Mans was neither Fulk nor William, but their common, if forgotten, lord King Philip.[577] But, whoever might be his temporal lord, no one doubted that the Bishop of Le Mans was a suffragan, and the suffragan highest in rank, of the Archbishop of Tours.[578] Yet, as things stood, as Tours was in the dominions of Fulk, a subject of William who went to that metropolis for consecration might have been called on to enter into some engagement inconsistent with his Norman loyalty. Howel consecrated at Rouen. April 21, 1085. By a commission therefore from Archbishop Ralph of Tours, Howel received consecration at Rouen from the Primate of the Normans, William the Good Soul.[579]
This story is worth telling, as it is thoroughly characteristic of the Conqueror; but there is this difficulty about it, that we can hardly understand either how the historian of the Bishops of Le Mans could fail to know the succession of the deans of his own church, or else how the head of the chapter of Saint Julian’s could be lurking as a poor clerk in King William’s chapel. Be this as it may, there is thorough agreement as to the episcopal virtues of Howel, as to his zeal in continuing the works in the church of Saint Julian,[580] Howel’s Norman loyalty. and as to his unwavering loyalty to the Norman house. And, builder and adorner of the sanctuary as he was, he did not scruple to rob the altars of the saints of their gold and silver to feed the poor in the day of hunger.[581] His loyalty to Robert seems to have carried with it, for a time at least, the submission of the city. Robert before Le Mans. The Duke drew near at the head of his army. Bishop Odo was again in harness as one of his nephew’s chief captains. With him came not a few of the lords who had seized castles in the Duke’s despite, but who were nevertheless ready to follow his banner. There was the elder Ralph of Toesny, he who had taken the strange message to King Henry after the day of Mortemer, and who had refused to bear the banner of Normandy on the day of Senlac.[582] With him was his nephew, William of Breteuil, the elder and more lucky of the two sons of William Fitz-Osbern. He had been one of Robert’s companions in his day of rebellion, along with the younger Ralph of Toesny and with Robert of Bellême, now their enemy.[583] The host entered Le Mans without resistance, and was received, we are told, with joy by clergy and citizens alike.[584] Messages were sent forth to summon the chief men of the county to come and do their duty to their new lord. Helias came; so did Geoffrey of Mayenne. General submission of the county. When two such leaders submitted, others naturally followed their example. All the chief men of Maine, it would seem, became the liegemen of Duke Robert. Ballon holds out. One obstinate rebel alone, Pagan or Payne of Montdoubleau, defended with his followers the castle of Ballon against the new prince.[585]
The castle of Ballon. The fortress which still held out, one whose name we shall again meet with more than once in the immediate story of the Red King, was a stronghold indeed. About twelve miles north of Le Mans a line of high ground ends to the north in a steep bluff rising above the Cenomannian Orne, the lesser stream of that name which mingles its waters with the Sarthe. The river is not the same prominent feature in the landscape which the Sarthe itself is at Le Mans and at some of the other towns and castles which it washes; it does not in the same way flow directly at the foot of the hill. But it comes fully near enough to place Ballon in the long list of peninsular strongholds. The hill forms a prominent feature in the surrounding landscape; and the view from the height itself, over the wooded plains and gentle hills of Maine, is wide indeed. He who held Ballon against the lord of Normandy, the new lord of Le Mans, might feel how isolated his hillfort stood in the midst of his enemies. To the south Le Mans is seen on its promontory; and, if the mighty pile of Saint Julian’s had not yet reached its present height, yet the twin towers of Howel, the royal tower by their side, the abbey of Saint Vincent then rising above all, may well have caught the eye even more readily than it is caught by the somewhat shapeless mass of the cathedral church in its present state. To the north and north-west the eye stretches over lands which in any normal state of things would have been the lands of enemies, the lands of the houses of Montgomery and Bellême. But at the moment of Robert’s siege the defenders of Ballon must have looked to them as friendly spots, joined in common warfare against the Norman Duke. To the north the eye can reach beyond the Norman border at now rebellious Alençon, to the butte of Chaumont, the isolated hill which looks down upon the Rock of Mabel. To the north-east the horizon skirts the land, at other times the most dangerous of all, but which might now be deemed the most helpful, the native home of the fierce house of Talvas. But, even if Ballon had been begirt on all sides by foes, its defenders might well venture to hope that they could defy them all. The hill had clearly been a stronghold even from præhistoric times. The neck of the promontory is cut off by a vast ditch, which may have fenced in a Cenomannian fortress in days before Cæsar came. This ditch takes in the little town of Ballon with its church. A second ditch surrounds the castle itself, and is carried fully round it on every side. The castle of Ballon therefore does not, like so many of its fellows, strictly overhang the stream or the low ground at its foot. At no point does it, like many other fortresses in the same land, mingle its masonry with the native rock. Ballon is more like Arques[586] on a smaller scale than like any of the strictly river fortresses. Within the ditch, the wall of the castle remains, a gateway, a tower, a house of delicate detail; but every architectural feature at Ballon is later than the days of Rufus; the greater part of the present castle belongs to the latest days of mediæval art. Siege of Ballon. This stronghold, to be fought for over and over again in the course of our story, now underwent the earliest of its sieges which concerns us. August-September, 1088. It held out stoutly for some time during the months of August and September. The loss on both sides was great. At last the besieged The castle surrenders.surrendered, and were admitted to the Duke’s grace.[587] Robert was for a moment the undisputed lord of all Maine.
Further schemes of Odo. The first part of Bishop Odo’s counsel was thus successfully carried out. But the submission of Maine was in Odo’s scheme only a means to the thorough rooting out of the house of Bellême. And Robert found himself in such sure possession of Le Mans and Maine that he could call on the warriors of city and county to follow him in carrying out the second part of the Bishop’s scheme. Robert attacks Saint Cenery. The first point for attack among the fortresses held on behalf of Earl Roger or his captive son was the castle of Saint Cenery. Description and history of the fortress. This was a border fortress of Normandy and Maine, one which could boast of a long and stirring history, and its small remains still occupy a site worthy of the tale which they have to tell. Just within the Norman border, some miles west of the town and castle of Alençon, not far from the junction of the lesser stream of Sarthon with the boundary river, a long narrow peninsula is formed by the windings of the Sarthe. It forms an advanced post of Normandy thrust forward with the Cenomannian land on three sides of it. The greater part of the peninsula consists of a steep and rocky hill,[588] which, as it draws near to its point, is washed by the stream on either side, though nearer to the isthmus the height rises immediately above alluvial meadows between its base and the river. The site was a tempting one for the foundation of a castle, in days when, though there might be hostile ground on three sides, yet no bow-shot or catapult from any hostile point could reach the highest part of the hill. Yet, as the name of the place is ecclesiastical, so its earliest memories are ecclesiastical, and its occupation as a fortress was, in the days of our story, a thing of yesterday. Cenericus or Cenery, a saint of the seventh century, gave the place its name. Monastery of Saint Cenery.A monastery arose, where a hundred and forty monks prayed around the tomb of their patron. His memory is still cherished on his own ground. A church contemporary with our story, a church of the eleventh century crowned by a tower of the twelfth, rises boldly above the swift stream which flows below the three apses of its eastern end. Within, the art of a later but still early age has adorned its walls with the forms of a series of holy persons, among whom the sainted hero of the spot holds a chief place.[589] But if the name of Saint Cenery first suggests the ecclesiastical history of the place, its surname[590] marks a chief feature in its secular history. The place is still Saint Cenery-le-Gerey. That is, it keeps the name of the famous house of Geroy, the name so dear to the heart of the monk of Saint Evroul.[591] For the monastery of Saint Cenery was but short-lived. The monks flee to Château-Thierry. When the wiking Hasting was laying waste the land, the monks of Saint Cenery fled away with the body of their patron, like that of Saint Cuthberht in our own land, to the safer resting-place of Château-Thierry in the land of Soissons.[592] As things now stand, the peninsula of Saint Cenery, with its church and the site of its castle, might suggest, as a lesser object suggests, a greater, the grouping of abbey and castle on that more renowned peninsula where the relics of Saint Cuthberht at last found shelter. The forsaken monastery was never restored. The holy place lost its holiness; over the tombs of the ancient monks arose a den of thieves, a special fortress of crime.[593] In other words, after a century and a half of desolation, a castle arose on the tempting site which was supplied by the neck of the peninsula.[594] Fragments of its masonry may still be seen, and its precinct seems to have taken in the church and the whole peninsula, though in the greater part of its circuit no defence was needed beyond the steep and scarped sides of the rocky hill itself. The castle founded by Geoffrey of Mayenne for William of Geroy.The castle was the work of a man whose name has been familiar to us for thirty years, a man who was still living, and who was actually in the host before the fortress of his own rearing. Geoffrey of Mayenne was closely connected, as kinsman and as lord, with William the son of Geroy. When Geoffrey fell into the hands of William Talvas, the faithful vassal ransomed his lord by the sacrifice of his own castle of Montacute, which stood just beyond the Sarthon within the borders of Maine. To repair this loss of his friend, no doubt also to repay the invasion of Cenomannian soil by a like invasion of Norman soil, and to put some check in the teeth of the house of Bellême, Geoffrey built the castle of Saint Cenery on the left bank of the Sarthe, and gave it as a gift of thankfulness to the son of Geroy.[595] But the inhabitants of the new stronghold, in their dangerous border position, never knew peace or good luck, but were visited with every kind of evil.[596] History of the descendants of Geroy. The sons of the pious and virtuous Geroy yielded to the influence of the spot; they fell into crime and rebellion, and were punished by banishments and strange deaths. The second lord of Saint Cenery, Robert the brother of William, had rebelled against the Conqueror; he had held his fortress against him, and he had died in a mysterious way of a poisoned apple.[597] His son and successor Arnold found how dangerous was the greed and hate of a powerful and unscrupulous neighbour. Roche-Mabille. Nearly north from Saint Cenery, at much the same distance as Alençon is to the east, not far from the foot of the hill of Chaumont which makes so marked a feature in the whole surrounding landscape, on a peninsula formed by a bend of the Sarthon, just within the borders of Maine as Saint Cenery is just within the borders of Normandy, rises the solitary rock which once had been known as Jaugy. There we still trace the ruins of the castle which bore the name of the cruel Countess, the despoiler of the house of Jaugy, the castle of the Rock of Mabel.[598] To the possessor of the Rock of Mabel the mightier rock of Saint Cenery, forming part of the same natural line of defence, could not fail to be an object of covetousness. Arnold died of poison, by the practice of the ruthless wife of Roger of Montgomery. Saint Cenery seized by Mabel. Saint Cenery became part of the possessions of the fierce line of Bellême; and, under its present master, it doubtless deserved the strongest of the names bestowed on it by the monk of Saint Evroul.
Saint Cenery held by Robert Carrel. At this moment Saint Cenery was held on behalf of Robert of Bellême by a specially valiant captain named Robert Carrel.[599] We have no details of the siege. We are told nothing of the positions occupied by the besiegers, The siege. or how they became masters of the seemingly impregnable height. We are told that the resistance was long and fierce; Surrender of Saint Cenery. but at last the castle was taken; and, as failure of provisions is spoken of as the cause, we may guess that the garrison was driven to surrender. If so, the surrender must have been to the Duke’s mercy, and the mercy of Duke Robert or of his counsellors was cruel. Robert Carrel blinded. The Duke, we are told, in his wrath, ordered the eyes of Robert Carrel to be put out. The personal act of the Duke in the case of the rebel leader seems to be contrasted with Other mutilations.the sentence of a more regular tribunal of some kind, by which mutilations of various kinds were dealt out to others of the garrison.[600] Yet personal cruelty is so inconsistent with the ordinary character of Robert that we are driven to suppose either that some strong personal influence was brought to bear on the Duke’s mind, or else that Robert Carrel had given some unpardonable offence during the course of the siege. But it is worth while to notice the words which seem to imply that the punishment of the other defenders of Saint Cenery was the work of some body which at least claimed to act in a judicial character. Question of the military tribunal. We can hardly look as yet for the subtlety of a separate military jurisdiction, for what we should now call a court-martial. That can hardly be thought of, except in the case of a standing body of soldiers, like Cnut’s housecarls, with a constitution and rules of their own.[601] But as in free England we have seen the army—that is, the nation in arms—act on occasion the part of a national assembly, so in more aristocratic Normandy the same principle would apply in another shape. The chief men of Normandy were there, each in command of his own followers. If Robert or his immediate counsellors wished that the cruel punishments to be dealt out to the revolted garrison should not be merely their own work, if they wished the responsibility of them to be shared by a larger body, the means were easy. There was a court of peers ready at hand, before whom they might arraign the traitors.
Claims of Robert, grandson of Geroy. But if there were those within Saint Cenery who were marked for punishment, there was one without its walls who claimed restitution. A son of Geroy’s son Robert, bearing his father’s name, had, like others of his family, served with credit in the wars of Apulia and Sicily. He was now in the Duke’s army, seemingly among the warriors of Maine, ready to play his part in winning back the castle of his father from the son of the murderess of his uncle. Geoffrey of Mayenne and the rest of the Cenomannian leaders asked of the Duke that the son of the former owner of the castle, Geoffrey’s own kinsman and vassal, should be restored to the inheritance of his father, the inheritance which his father held in the first instance by Geoffrey’s own gift. The warfare which was now waging was waged against the son of the woman by whom one lord of Saint Cenery had been treacherously slain. The triumph of right would be complete, if the banished man were restored to his own, at the prayer of the first giver. The castle granted to him. The Duke consented; Saint Cenery was granted afresh to the representative of the house of Geroy; Geoffrey saw the castle of his own rearing once more in friendly hands. The new lord strengthened the defences of his fortress, and held it as a post to be guarded with all care against the common enemy, the son of Mabel.[602]