The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Edward A. Freeman

Map illustrating the
NORMAN CAMPAIGN.
A.D. 1091.

Submission of Saint Valery. The first point of the mainland which the Red King won was one which lay beyond the strict bounds of the Norman duchy; but no spot, either in Normandy or in England, was more closely connected with the fortunes of his house. And it was one which had a certain fitness as the beginning of such a campaign. The first spot of continental ground which was added to the dominion of one who called himself King of the English, and who at least was truly King of England, was the spot from which his father had set forth for the conquest of England. He won it by the means which were specially his own. “By his cunning or by his treasures he gat him the castle at Saint Valery and the havens.”[621] Englishmen had fought for the elder William in Maine and before Gerberoi;[622] but that was merely to win back the lost possessions of the Norman Duke. Now the wealth and the arms of England were used to win castles beyond the sea for a prince whose possessions and whose titles up to that moment were purely English. Beginning of English action on the continent. In the history of England as a power—​and the history of England as a power had no small effect on the history of the English as a people—​the taking of Saint Valery is the beginning of a chain of events which leads on, not only to the fight of Tinchebray and the first loss of Rouen, but to the fight of Crecy and the fight of Chastillon, to the taking of Boulogne and the loss of Calais.

Saint Valery had, by the forced commendation of the still reigning Count Guy, passed under Norman superiority;[623] but it was no part of the true Norman land. Submission of Stephen of Aumale. The first fortress within the Norman duchy which passed into the hands of Rufus was the castle of Aumale, standing just within the Norman border, on the upper course of the river of Eu. Its lord, the first of the great Norman nobles to submit to William and to receive his garrison into his castle, was Stephen, son of Count Odo of Champagne and of Adelaide, whole sister of the Conqueror, cousin-german therefore of the two contending princes.[624] Aumale was won, as Saint Valery had been won, by cunning or by treasure. Stephen may simply have learned to see that it was better for him to have the same lord at Aumale and in Holderness, or his eyes may have been yet further enlightened by the brightness of English gold. But the Red King had other means at his disposal, and it seems that other means were needed, if not to win, at least to keep Aumale. Aumale strengthened as the King’s headquarters. The defences of the castle were greatly strengthened at the King’s cost,[625] and it became a centre for further operations. “Therein he set his knights, and they did harms upon the land, in harrying and in burning.”[626] Other castles were soon added to the Red King’s dominion. Submission of Count Robert of Eu and his son William; Count Robert of Eu, whom we have heard of alike at Mortemer and in Lindesey,[627] the father of the man whom we have more lately heard of at Berkeley, still held the house where William the Great had received Harold as his guest,[628] hard by the church where he had received Matilda as his bride.[629] The Count had been enriched with lands in southern England; he is not recorded as having joined in his son’s rebellion; and the lord of Eu now transferred the allegiance of his Norman county to the prince of whom he held his command on the rocks of Hastings.[630] Aumale and Eu, two of the most important points on the eastern border of Normandy, are thus the first places which we hear of as receiving Rufus on the mainland. We shall hear of both names again, but in quite another kind of tale, before the reign of Rufus is over.

of Gerard of Gournay. The next Norman noble to join the cause of William was another lord of the same frontier, who held a point of hardly less importance to the south of Eu and Aumale. This was Gerard of Gournay, son of the warrior of Mortemer who had gone to end his days as a monk of Bec,[631] son-in-law of the new Earl of Surrey,[632] husband of perhaps the only woman on Norman ground who bore the name of English Eadgyth.[633] His castle of Gournay, from which many men and more than one place[634] in England have drawn their name, stood on the upper course of the Epte, close to the French border. The fortress itself has vanished; The church of Gournay. but the minster of Saint Hildebert, where the massive work of Gerard’s day has been partly recast in the lighter style of the next century, still remains, with its mighty pillars, its varied and fantastic carvings, to make Gournay a place of artistic pilgrimage. Nor is it hard to trace the line of the ancient walls of the town, showing how the border stream of Epte was pressed into the service of the Norman engineers. The adhesion of the lord of Gournay seems to have been of the highest importance to the cause of Rufus. The influence of Gerard reached over a wide district north of his main dwelling. Other castles of Gerard. Along with Gournay, he placed at the King’s disposal his fortress of La Ferté Saint Samson, crowning a height looking over the vale of Bray, and his other fortress of Gaillefontaine to the north-east, on another height by the wood of its own name, overlooking the early course of the Bethune or Dieppe, the stream which joins the eastern Varenne by the hill of Arques.[635] Gerard too was not only ready in receiving the King’s forces into his own castles, but zealous also in bringing over his neighbours to follow his example.[636] Among these was the lord of Wigmore, late the rebel of Worcester, Ralph of Mortemer.[637] Submission of Earl Walter Giffard. Old Walter Giffard too, now Earl of Buckingham in England, had English interests far too precious to allow him to oppose his island sovereign. His castle of Longueville. He held the stronghold of Longueville—​the north-eastern Longueville by the Scie, the stream which, small as it is, pours its waters independently into the Channel between Dieppe and Saint Valery-in-Caux. There, from a bottom fenced in by hills on every side, the village, the church where the hand of the modern destroyer has spared only a few fragments of the days of Norman greatness, the priory which has been utterly swept away, all looked up to a hill on the right bank of the stream which art had changed into a stronghold worthy to rank alongside of Arques and Gisors. Girt about with a deep ditch, on the more exposed southern side with a double ditch, the hill was crowned by a shell-keep which still remains, though patched and shattered, and a donjon which has been wholly swept away. In this fortress the aged warrior of Arques and Senlac received, like so many of his neighbours, the troops which William of England had sent to bring the Norman duchy under his power.

Ralph of Toesny and Count William of Evreux. The domains of all these lords lay in the lands on the right bank of the Seine, the oldest, but, as I have often remarked, not the truest Normandy. But the Red King also won a valuable ally in quite another part of the duchy. This was Ralph of Conches or of Toesny, with whom we are now most concerned as the husband of the warlike Isabel of Montfort, and, in that character rather than in any other, the enemy of the Countess Heloise and of her husband Count William of Evreux. The rival lords were in fact half-brothers. The old Roger of Toesny, the warlike pilgrim of Spain,[638] was succeeded by Ralph, who has so often played his part in our story, and whom we last met in Duke Robert’s army before Le Mans.[639] The widow of Roger, the mother of Ralph, had married Richard Count of Evreux, and was by him the mother of the present Count William.[640] Enmity of their wives. But this near kindred by birth had less strength to bind the brothers together than the fierce rivalry of their wives had to set them at feud with one another. The jealousy of these two warlike ladies kept a large part of Normandy in a constant uproar. Our historian bitterly laments the amount of bloodshed and havoc which was the result of their rivalry.[641] Countess Heloise of Evreux. Heloise was of the house of the Counts of Nevers, the Burgundian city by the Loire, a descent which carries us a little out of our usual geographical range.[642] Tall, handsome, and ready of speech, she ruled her husband and the whole land of Evreux with an absolute sway. Her will was everything; the counsels of the barons of the county went for nothing.[643] Violent and greedy, she quarrelled with many of the nobles of Normandy, with Count Robert of Meulan among them, and stirred up her husband to many disputes and wars to gratify her fierce passions.[644] At this time some slight which she had received from the lady of Conches had led her to entangle her husband in a bitter feud with his half-brother. Isabel of Montfort. Isabel or Elizabeth—​the two names are, as usual, given to her indifferently—​the wife of Ralph of Toesny, was a daughter of the French house of Montfort,[645] the house of our own Simon. Like her rival, she must now have been long past her youth; but, while Heloise was childless,[646] Isabel was the mother of several children, among them of a son who has already played a part in Norman history. This was that younger Ralph of Toesny who married the daughter of Waltheof and who had taken a part in the present Duke’s rebellion against his father.[647] Handsome, eloquent, self-willed, and overbearing, like her rival, Isabel had qualities which gained her somewhat more of personal regard than the Countess of Evreux. She was liberal and pleasant and merry of speech, and made herself agreeable to those immediately about her. Moreover, while of Heloise we read indeed that she stirred up wars, but not that she waged them in her own person, Isabel, like the ancient Queens of the Amazons, went forth to the fight, mounted and armed, and attended by a knightly following.[648] War between Conches and Evreux. The struggle between the ladies of Evreux and Conches was at its height at the moment when the castles of eastern Normandy were falling one by one into the hands of Rufus. Isabel and Ralph were just now sore pressed. Ralph in vain asks help of the Duke. The lord of Conches therefore went to Duke Robert and craved his help;[649] but from Duke Robert no help was to be had for any man. Ralph then bethought him of a stronger protector, in the sovereign of his English possessions. He submits to William.King William gladly received such a petition, and bade Count Stephen and Gerard of Gournay, and all who had joined him in Normandy, to give all the help that they could to the new proselyte.[650] Advance of William’s party. The cause of the Red King prospered everywhere; well nigh all Normandy to the right of Seine was in the obedience of Rufus. All its chief men had, in a phrase which startles us in that generation, “joined the English.”[651] And for them the King of the English was open-handed. Into the hoard at Winchester the wealth of England flowed in the shape of every kind of unlawful exaction. Out of it it flowed as freely to enable the new subjects of King William to strengthen the defences of their castles and to hire mercenaries to defend them.[652]

Helias of Saint-Saens. During all this time Duke Robert himself does not seem to have thought of striking a blow. But there was one man at least between Seine and Somme who was ready both to give and to take blows on his behalf. He marries Robert’s daughter. Robert had given one of his natural children, a daughter born, to him in his wandering days,[653] in marriage to Helias, lord of Saint-Saens.[654] Helias, like so many of the Norman nobles, came of a house which had risen to importance His descent.through the loves of Gunnor and Richard the Fearless.[655] A daughter of one of Gunnor’s sisters married Richard Viscount of Rouen, and became the mother of Lambert of Saint-Saens, the father of Helias.[656] Helias and the daughter of Robert had thus a common, though distant, forefather in the father of Gunnor. He has Caux as his wife’s dowry. With his wife Helias received a goodly dowry, nothing less, we are told, than the whole land of Caux.[657] Helias’ own lordship of Saint-Saens lies on the upper course of the Position of Saint-Saens. Varenne, in a deep bottom girt on all sides by wooded hills, one of which, known as the Câtelier, overhanging the town to the north, seems to have been the site of the castle of Helias. His stronghold has vanished; but the church on which the height looks down, if no rival to Saint Hildebert of Gournay, still keeps considerable remains of an age but little later than that with which we have to do. Importance of his position. The possessions of Helias, both those which he inherited and those which he received with his wife, made his resistance to the invader of no small help to the cause of his father-in-law. They barred the nearest way to Rouen, not indeed from Gournay, but from Eu and Aumale. They came right between these last fortresses and the domain of Walter Giffard at Longueville. Of the three streams which meet by Arques, while Helias himself held the upper Varenne at Saint-Saens, Bures. his wife’s fortress of Bures held the middle course of the Bethune or Dieppe below Gerard’s Gaillefontaine, and below Drincourt, not yet the New Castle of King Henry.[658] The massive church, with parts dating from the days of Norman independence, rises on the left slope of the valley above an island in the stream. But the site of the castle which formed part of the marriage portion of Duke Robert’s daughter is hard to trace. Helias holds Arques. But lower down, nearer the point where the streams meet, the bride of Helias had brought him a noble gift indeed. Through her he was lord of Arques, with its donjon and its ditches, the mighty castle whose tale has been told in recording the history of an earlier generation.[659] A glance at the map will show how strong a position in eastern Normandy was held by the man who commanded at once Saint-Saens, Bures, and Arques. But the son-in-law of Duke Robert deserves our notice for something better than his birth, his marriage, or his domains. Faithfulness of Helias towards Robert. Helias of Saint-Saens was, in his personal character, a worthy namesake of Helias of La Flêche. Among the crimes and treasons of that age, we dwell with delight on the unswerving faithfulness with which, through many years and amidst all the ups and downs of fortune, he clave to the reigning Duke and to his son after him.[660] But this his later history lies beyond the bounds of our immediate tale. What directly concerns us now is that Helias was the one noble of Normandy whom the gold of England could not tempt. It would be almost ungenerous to put on record the fact that, unlike most of his neighbours, he had no English estates to lose. The later life of Helias puts him above all suspicion of meaner motives. Saint-Saens, Arques, Bures, and all Caux, remained faithful to Duke Robert.

With this honourable exception, an exception which greatly lessened the value of his new conquests, William Rufus had won, without hand-strokes, without his personal presence, a good half of the original grant to Rolf, the greater part of the diocese of Rouen. William’s dealings with France. He was soon to win yet another triumph by his peculiar policy. By those arms which were specially his own, he was to win over an ally, or at least to secure the neutrality of an enemy, of far higher rank, though perhaps of hardly greater practical power, than the Count of Aumale and the aged lord of Longueville. Robert asks help of Philip. Robert in his helplessness cried to his over-lord at Paris. Had not his father done the same to Philip’s father? Had not King Henry played a part at least equal to that of Duke William among the lifted lances of Val-ès-dunes?[661] Philip had had his jest on the bulky frame of the Conqueror, and his jest had been avenged among the candles of the bloody churching at Mantes.[662] By this time at least, so some of our authorities imply, Philip had brought himself to a case in which the same jest might have been made upon himself with a good deal more of point. Philip comes to help. At the prayer of his vassal the bulky King of the French left his table and his dainties, and set forth, sighing and groaning at the unusual exertion, to come to the help of the aggrieved Duke.[663] It was a strange beginning of the direct rivalry between England and France. Meeting of the Norman and French armies. King Philip came with a great host into Normandy. And Robert must somewhere or other have found forces to join those of his royal ally. And now was shown the value of the position which was held by the faithful Helias in the land of Caux. They march on Eu. It must have been by his help that the combined armies of Robert and Philip were able to march to the furthest point of the Red King’s new acquisitions, to the furthest point of the Norman duchy itself, to the castle of Eu, which was held, we are told, by a vast host, Norman and English.[664] Let an honest voice from Peterborough tell what followed. “And the King and the Earl with a huge fyrd beset the castle about where the King’s men of England in it were. Philip bribed to go back. The King William of England sent to Philip the Franks’ King, and he for his love or for his mickle treasure forlet so his man the Earl Robert and his land, and went again to France and let them so be.”[665] A Latin writer does not think it needful to allow Philip the perhaps ironical alternative of the English writer. Love between Philip and William Rufus is not thought of. We are simply told that, while Philip was promising great things, the money of the King of England met him—​the wealth of Rufus seems to be personified. Before its presence his courage was broken; he loosed his girdle and went back to his banquet.[666]

The first English subsidy. Thus the special weapons of Rufus could overcome even kings at a distance. But, ludicrous as the tale sounds in the way in which it is told, this negotiation between Philip and William is really, in an European, and even in an English point of view, the most important event in the whole story. We should hardly be wrong in calling this payment to Philip the first instance of the employment of English money in the shape of subsidies to foreign princes. For such it in strictness was. It was not, like a Danegeld, money paid to buy off a foreign invader. Nor was it like the simple hiring of mercenaries at home or abroad. It is, like later subsidies, money paid to a foreign sovereign, on condition of his promoting, or at least not thwarting, the policy of a sovereign of England. The appetite[667] which was now first awakened in Philip of Paris soon came to be shared by other princes, and it lasted in full force for many ages. First direct dealings between England and France. Again, we have now for the first time direct political dealings between a purely insular King of England—​we may forestall the territorial style when speaking of England as a state rather than of Englishmen as a nation—​and a French King at Paris. The embassies which passed between Eadward and Henry, even when Henry made his appeal on behalf of Godwine,[668] hardly make an exception. Different position of the two Williams. William the Great had dealt with France as a Norman duke; if, in the latter part of his reign, he had wielded the strength of England as well as the strength of Normandy, he had wielded it, as far as France was concerned, wholly for Norman purposes. But William the Red, though his position arose wholly out of the new relations between England and Normandy, was still for the present a purely English king. Relation of England, Normandy, and France. The first years of Rufus and the first years of Henry the First are alike breaks in the hundred and forty years of union between England and Normandy.[669] Had not a Norman duke conquered England, an English king would not have been seeking to conquer Normandy; but, as a matter of fact, an English king, who had no dominions on the mainland, was seeking to conquer Normandy. And he was seeking to win it with the good will, or at least the neutrality, of the French King. This was a state of things which could have happened only during the few years when different sons of the Conqueror ruled in England and in Normandy. Whenever England and Normandy were united, whether by conquest or by inheritance, the old strife between France and Normandy led England into the struggle. But at the present moment an alliance between England and France against Normandy was as possible as any other political combination. Results of Rufus’ dealings with Philip. And the arts of Rufus secured, if not French alliance, at least French neutrality. But either alliance or neutrality was in its own nature destructive of itself. Let either Normandy win England or England win Normandy, and the old state of things again began. The union of England and Normandy meant enmity between England and France, an enmity which survived their separation.[670] Friendly dealings between William and Philip were a step towards the union of England and Normandy, and thereby a step towards that open enmity between England and France which began under Rufus himself and which lasted down to our fathers’ times. The bribe which Philip took at Eu has its place in the chain of events which led to Bouvines, to Crécy, and to Waterloo.

State of Normandy. But while things were thus, unknown to the actors in them, taking a turn which was permanently to affect the history of mankind, the immediate business of the time went on as before in the lands of Northern Gaul. In Normandy that immediate business was mutual destruction—​civil war is too lofty a name; in Maine it was deliverance from the Norman yoke. I am not called on to tell in detail the whole story of every local strife between one Norman baron and another, not even in those rare cases when the Duke himself stepped in as a judge or as a party in the strife. Those who loved nothing so well as slaughter, plunder, and burning, had now to make up for the many years during which the strong hand of William the Great had kept them back from those enjoyments. Private wars not interrupted by the invasion. They had no thought of stopping, though the kings of England and France, or all the kings of the earth, should appear in arms on Norman soil. Many a brilliant feat of arms, as it was deemed in those days, must be left to local remembrance; even at events which closely touched many of the chief names of our story we can do no more than glance. The revolt of Maine will have to be spoken of at length in another chapter; Action of Robert of Bellême. among strictly Norman affairs we naturally find Robert of Bellême playing his usual part towards his sovereign and his neighbours, and we find the tower of Ivry and the fortified hall of Brionne ever supplying subjects of strife to the turbulent nobles. We see Robert of Bellême at war with his immediate neighbour Geoffrey Count of Perche,[671] and driving Abbot Ralph of Seez to seek shelter in England.[672] We also find him beaten back from the walls of Exmes by Gilbert of Laigle and the other warriors of his house, the house of which we have heard in the Malfosse of Senlac and beneath the rocks of Sainte-Susanne.[673] William of Breteuil loses, wins, and loses again, his late grant of the tower of Ivry, and the second time he is driven to give both the tower and the hand of his natural daughter as his own ransom from a specially cruel imprisonment at the hands of a rebellious vassal.[674] Brionne forms the centre of a tale in which its new lord and his son, the other Roger and the other Robert of our story, play over again the part of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his son of Bellême. Robert of Meulan claims the tower of Ivry. Robert of Meulan comes from England to assert his claim among others to the much-contested tower of Ivry. The Duke reminds him that he had given Brionne to his father in exchange for Ivry. The Count of Meulan gives a threatening answer.[675] He is imprisoned, but set free at the intercession of his father. The Duke, with unusual spirit, puts him in prison, seizes Brionne, and puts it into a state of defence. Then the old Roger of Beaumont, old a generation earlier,[676] obtains, by the recital of his own exploits, the deliverance of his son.[677] He then prays, not without golden arguments, for the restitution of Brionne.[678] Robert takes Brionne. The officer in command, Robert son of Baldwin, asserts his own hereditary claim, and, at the head of six knights only, stands a siege, though not a long one, against the combined forces of the Duke and of the Count of Meulan and his father.[679] This siege is remarkable. The summer days were hot; all things were dry; the besiegers shot red-hot arrows against the roof of the fortified hall, and set fire to it.[680] So Duke Robert boasted that he had taken in a day the river-fortress which had held out for three years against his father.[681]

These events concern us only because we know the actors, and because they helped to keep up that state of confusion in the Norman duchy which supplied the Red King at once with an excuse for his invasion, and with the means for carrying out his schemes. Advance of Rufus. It must be remembered that the two stories are actually contemporary; while Robert was besieging Brionne, the fortresses of eastern Normandy were already falling one by one into the hands of Rufus. It is even quite possible that Robert of Meulan’s voyage from England to Normandy, and the demands made by him and his father on the Duke, were actually planned between the cunning Count and the Red King as a means of increasing the confusion which reigned in the duchy. But there are tales of local strife which concern us more nearly. The war of Conches and Evreux. The war of the half-brothers, the war of the Amazons, the strife between Conches and Evreux, between Isabel and Heloise, is an immediate part of the tale of William Rufus. The lord of Conches was strengthened in his struggle with his brother by forces directly sent to his help by the King’s order.[682] Movement at Rouen. The war went on; and, while it was still going on, a far more important movement began in the greatest city of Normandy, a movement in which the King of the English was yet more directly concerned. Up to this time his plans had been everywhere crowned with success. His campaign, if campaign we can call it, had begun soon after Easter. Half a year had passed, and nearly the whole of the oldest, though not the truest, Normandy had fallen into his hands without his stirring out of his island realm. It now became doubtful whether Robert could keep even the capital of his duchy.