Probable objects of William. But, when we look to some other terms of the treaty, it is possible that, in the mind of William at least, the spoliation of Henry had a deeper object. One purpose of the treaty was to settle the succession both to the kingdom of England and to the duchy of Normandy. Settlement of the English and Norman succession.Neither the imperial crown nor the ducal coronet had at this moment any direct and undoubted heir, according to any doctrine of succession. Both William and Robert were at this time unmarried; Robert had more than one illegitimate child; no children of William Rufus are recorded at any time. William and Robert to succeed one another. The treaty provided that, if either King or Duke died without lawful issue during the lifetime of his brother, the survivor should succeed to his dominions. I have spoken elsewhere of the constitutional aspect of this agreement.[772] Constitutional aspect of the agreement.It was an attempt to barter away beforehand the right of the Witan of England to bestow the crown of a deceased king on whatever successor they thought good. And, like all such attempts, before and after, till the great act of settlement which put an end to the nineteen years’ anarchy,[773] it came to nothing. Growth of the hereditary principle, But that such an agreement should have been made shows what fresh strength had been given by the Norman Conquest to the whole class of ideas of which the doctrine of hereditary succession to kingdoms forms a part.[774] But, putting this view of the matter aside, the objects of the provision, as a family compact, were obvious. It was William’s manifest interest to shut out Robert’s sons from any share in the inheritance of their father. and of the doctrine of legitimacy. This was easily done. The stricter doctrine of legitimacy of birth was fast growing.[775] It was but unwillingly that Normandy had, sixty years earlier, acknowledged the bastard of an earlier Robert; it was most unlikely that Normandy would submit to a bastard of the present Robert, while there yet lived lawful sons of him who had made the name of Bastard glorious. Robert, on the other hand, might not be unwilling to give up so faint a chance on the part of his own children, in order to be himself declared presumptive heir to the crown of England. But there were others to be shut out, one of whom at least was far more dangerous than the natural sons of Robert. The two Æthelings There were then in Normandy two men who bore the English title of Ætheling, one of the old race, one of the new; one whom Englishmen had once chosen as the last of the old race, another to whom Englishmen looked as the first of the new race who had any claim to the privileges of kingly birth. Henry; We must always remember that, in English eyes, Henry, the son of a crowned King of the English, born of his crowned Lady on English ground, had a claim which was not shared by his brothers, foreign born sons of a mere Norman Duke and Duchess.[776] Eadgar. The kingly and native birth of Henry might put his claims at least on a level with those of Eadgar, who, male heir of Ecgberht and Cerdic as he was, was born of uncrowned parents in a foreign land.[777] Indeed it might seem that by this time all thoughts of a restoration of the West-Saxon house had passed out of the range of practical politics, and that the claims of Eadgar were no longer entitled to a thought. The Red King however seems to have deemed otherwise. He was clearly determined to secure himself against the remotest chances of danger. Henry was to be despoiled; Eadgar banished from Normandy. Eadgar was to be banished. Eadgar had come back from Apulia;[778] he was now living in Normandy on terms of the closest friendship with the Duke, who had enriched him with grants of land, and, as we have seen, admitted him to his inmost counsels.[779] We know not whether Eadgar had given the Red King any personal offence, or whether William was simply jealous of him as a possible rival for the crown. At any rate, whether by a formal clause of the treaty or not, he called on Robert to confiscate Eadgar’s Norman estates and to make him leave his dominions.[780] William’s policy towards Henry and Eadgar. Neither towards Henry nor towards Eadgar would the policy of William Rufus seem to have been wise; but sound policy, in any high sense, was not one of the attributes of William Rufus. Whatever may be said of Henry’s relations towards Normandy, he was more likely to plot against his brother of England if he became a landless wanderer than if he remained Count of Coutances and Avranches. As for Eadgar, it might possibly have been a gain if he could have been sent back to Apulia or provided for in his native Hungary. As it was, he straightway betook himself to a land where he was likely to be far more dangerous than he could ever be in Normandy. Eadgar goes to Scotland. As in the days of William the Great,[781] he went at once to the court of his brother-in-law of Scotland.[782] It may be that William presently saw that he had taken a false step in the treatment of both the Æthelings. At a later time we shall see both Henry and Eadgar enjoying his full favour and confidence.
The man before whose eyes the crown of England had twice been dangled in mockery, and the man who was hereafter to grasp that crown with a grasp like that of the Conqueror himself, were thus both doomed to be for the moment despoiled of lands and honours. The followers of each side to be restored. To men of less exalted degree the treaty was more favourable. King and Duke alike, so far to the credit of both of them, stipulated for the safety and restoration of their several partisans in the dominions of the other. All supporters of William in any of those parts of Normandy which were not to be ceded to him were to suffer no harm at the hands of Robert. The rebels of 1088 to be restored. And, what was much more important, all those who had lost their lands in England three years before on account of their share in the rebellion on behalf of Robert were to have their lands back again. An exception, formal or practical, must have been made in the case of Bishop Odo. He certainly was not restored to his earldom of Kent.
The treaty sworn to. The treaty was sworn to by twelve chief men on each side.[783] The English Chronicler remarks, with perfect truth, It stands but a little while. that it stood but a little while.[784] But one part at least was carried out at once and with great vigour. William and Robert march against Henry. Within less than a month after William had landed in Normandy to dispossess Robert, he and Robert marched together to dispossess Henry. They spent their Lent in besieging him in his last stronghold. Lent, 1091.When the Count of Coutances heard of the coalition against him, he made ready for a vigorous resistance. Henry’s position. He put his two cities of Coutances and Avranches and his other fortresses into a state of defence, and gathered a force, Norman and Breton, to garrison them.[785] Britanny indeed was the only quarter from which he received any help in his struggle.[786] Earl Hugh of Chester and others betray their castles to William. Those who seemed to be his firmest friends turned against him. Even Earl Hugh of Chester, the foremost man in the land from which his father had taken his name,[787] had no mind to jeopard his great English palatinate for the sake of keeping his paternal Avranches in the obedience of the Ætheling. Henry’s other supporters, Richard of Redvers, it is to be supposed, among them, were of the same mind. They saw no hope that Henry could withstand the might, above all the wealth, of Rufus; they accordingly surrendered their fortresses into the King’s hands.[788] Henry takes up his quarters at Saint Michael’s Mount. One stronghold only was now left to Henry, one of the two which had been specially marked out to be taken from him, the monastic fortress of Saint Michael. The sacred mount was then famous and venerable through all Normandy, and far beyond the bounds of Normandy. The buildings on the Mount. Of that vast and wondrous pile of buildings, halls, cloister, church, buildings which elsewhere stand side by side, but which here are heaped one upon another, little could then have been standing. The minster itself, which crowns all, had begun to be rebuilt seventy years before by the Abbot Hildebert,[789] and it may be that some parts of his work have lived through the natural accidents of the next age[790] and the destruction and disfigurement of later times. But the series of pillared halls, knightly and monastic, which give its special character to the abbey of the Mount, are all of far later date than the war of the three brothers. Yet the house of the warrior archangel was already at once knightly and monastic. Abbot Roger. 1085. The reigning abbot Roger was, in strict ecclesiastical eyes, a prelate of doubtful title. He had come in—as countless other bishops and abbots of Normandy and England had come in—less by free election of the monks than by the will of the great Duke and King.[791] What personal share Roger took in the struggle is not recorded; but some at least of his monks, The monks welcome Henry. like the monks of Ely in the days of Hereward,[792] welcomed the small body of followers who still clave to Henry, and at whose head he now took up his last position of defence in the island sanctuary.[793]
Siege of the Mount. Lent, 1091 Here Henry was besieged by his two brothers, Duke and King. Yet we hear of nothing which can in strictness be called a siege. The Mount stands in the mouth of a bay within a bay. Its position. At high water it is strictly an island; at low water it is surrounded by a vast wilderness of sand—those treacherous sands from which thirty years before Harold had rescued the soldiers of the elder William[794] , and which stretch back as far as the rocks of Cancale on the Breton shore. The inner bay. In this sense the bay of Saint Michael may be counted to stretch from Cancale to the opposite point on the Norman coast, where the land begins to bend inwards to form the narrower bay. This last may be counted to stretch from the mouth of the border stream of Coesnon below Pontorson to Genetz lying on the coast nearly due west from Avranches. The Mount itself and its satellite the smaller rock of Tombelaine lie nearly in a straight line between these two points. Alternately inaccessible by land and by water, accessible by land at any time only by certain known routes at different points, the Mount would seem to be incapable of direct attack by any weapons known in the eleventh century. On the other hand, it would be easy to cut it off from all communication with the outer world by the occupation of the needful points on the shore and by the help of a blockading fleet. Later sieges. 1417–1424. And in the great siege three hundred and thirty years later—when Normandy had again a kingly duke of the blood of Rolf and Henry, but when the Mount clave to the King of Paris or of Bourges—we hear both of the blockading fleet of England and of the series of posts with which the shore was lined. No mention of ships. Without a fleet the Mount could hardly be said to be besieged; but, on the other hand, its insular position would be of no use to its defenders, unless they had either ships at command or friends beyond sea. In the present case we hear nothing of ships on either side, nor of any help coming to the besieged. Nor do we hear of any systematic occupation of the whole coast. Positions of the besiegers. We hear only that the besiegers occupied two points which commanded the two sides of the inner bay, On the north the Duke took up his quarters at Genetz; to the south the besiegers occupied Arderon, not far from the mouth of the Coesnon, while King William of England established himself in the central position of Avranches.[795] Character of the siege. The siege thus became an affair of endless small attacks and skirmishes. We hear of the plundering expeditions which Henry was able to make into the lands of Avranches and even of Coutances, lands which had once been his own, but which had now become hostile ground.[796] We hear too how, before each of the extreme points occupied by the besiegers, before Genetz and before Arderon, Combats the knights on both sides met every day in various feats of arms, feats, it would seem, savouring rather of the bravado of the tourney than of any rational military purpose.[797]
Edwᵈ. Weller
For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.
Map to illustrate the
SIEGE of Sᵀ MICHAEL’S MOUNT.
A.D. 1091.
Personal anecdotes. We now get, in the shape of those personal anecdotes in which this reign is so rich, pictures of more than one side of the strangely mixed character of the Red King. At the other end of Normandy William had won lands and castles without dealing a single blow with his own sword, and with a singularly small outlay of blows from the swords of others. At Eu, at Aumale, and at Gournay, the work had been done with gold far more than with steel. Beneath Saint Michael’s Mount steel was to have its turn; and, when steel was the metal to be used, William Rufus was sure to be in his own person the foremost among those who used it. The change of scene seemed to have turned the wary trafficker into the most reckless of knights errant. Amidst such scenes he became, in the eyes of his own age, the peer of the most renowned of those Nine Worthies the tale of whom was made up only in his own day. William compared to Alexander. We shall see at a later stage how the question was raised whether the soul of the Dictator Cæsar had not passed into the body of the Red King; by the sands of Saint Michael’s bay he was held to have placed himself on a level with the Macedonian Alexander. The likeness could hardly be carried on through the general military character of the two princes; for Alexander, when he began an enterprise, commonly carried it on to the end. And it may be doubted whether Alexander ever jeoparded his own life in the senseless way in which Rufus in the tale is made to jeopard his. We must picture to ourselves the royal head-quarters between the height of Avranches and the sands of Saint Michael’s bay. Knight-errantry of William. The King goes forth from his tent, and mounts the horse which he had that morning bought for fifteen marks of silver.[798] He sees the enemy at a distance riding proudly towards him. Alone, waiting for no comrade, borne on both by eagerness for the fray and by the belief that no one would dare to withstand a king face to face, he gallops forward and charges the advancing party.[799] The King upset. The newly bought horse is killed; the King falls under him; he is ignominiously dragged along by the foot, but the strength of his chain-armour saves him from any actual wound.[800] By this time the knight who had unhorsed him has his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to deal a deadly blow. William, frightened by the extremity of his danger, cries out, “Hold, rascal, I am the King of England.”[801] The words had that kind of magic effect which is so often wrought by the personal presence of royalty. From any rational view of the business in hand, to slay, or better still to capture, the hostile king should have been the first object of every man in Henry’s garrison. To no case better applied the wise order of the Syrian monarch, “Fight neither with small nor great, save only with the King of Israel.”[802] But as soon as a voice which some at least of them knew proclaimed that it was a king who lay helpless among them, every arm was stayed. The soldiers of Henry tremble at the thought of what they were so near doing; with all worship they raise the King from the ground and bring him another horse.[803] His treatment of the knight who unhorsed him. William springs unaided on his back; he casts a keen glance on the band around him,[804] and asks, “Who unhorsed me?” As they were muttering one to another, the daring man who had done the deed came forward and said, “I, who took you, not for a king but for a knight.” A bold answer was never displeasing to Rufus; he looked approval, and said, “By the face of Lucca,[805] you shall be mine; your name shall be written in my book,[806] and you shall receive the reward of good service.” Here the story ends; we are to suppose that William, instead of being carried a prisoner to the Mount, rode back free to Avranches, having lessened the small force of Henry by a stout knight and two horses.
Character of the story. The tale is told as an example of the magnanimity of the Red King. And there is something which moves a kind of admiration in the picture of a man, helpless among a crowd of enemies, yet bearing himself as if they were his prisoners, instead of his being theirs. The point of the story is that Rufus did no harm, that he felt no ill will, towards the man who had unhorsed, and all but killed him; that he honoured his bold deed and bold bearing, and promised him favour and promotion. But had the soldiers of Henry done their duty, William would have had no opportunity, at least no immediate opportunity, of doing either good or harm to his antagonist. William assumes that the enemy will not dare to withstand him, and his assumption is so far justified that he is withstood only by one who knows not who he is, and whose words imply that, if he had known, he would not have ventured to withstand him. Trusting to this kind of superstitious dread, William is able to speak and act as he might have spoken if the man who unhorsed him had been brought before him in his own tent. Comparison with Richard the First. Richard of the Lion-heart, when the archer who had given him his death-wound was brought before him, first designed him for a death of torture, and then, on hearing a bold answer, granted him life and freedom.[807] In this, as in some other cases, the Red King, the earliest model of chivalry, certainly does not lose by comparison with the successor who is more commonly looked on as its ideal.[808]