Another and perhaps better known story which is told of this siege puts the character of William Rufus in another light, while it brings out the character of Robert in a lively form. Contrast between William and Robert. The Duke, heedless of the consequences of his acts but not cruel in his own person, was, above all men, open to those passing bursts of generosity which are quite consistent with utter weakness and want of principle. William Rufus was always open to an appeal to his knightly generosity, to that higher form of self-assertion which forbade him to harm one who was beneath him, and which taught him to admire a bold deed or word even when directed against himself. But the ties of kindred, still more the ties of common humanity, sat very lightly on him. The gentler soul of Robert was by no means dead to them. He did not shrink from waging an unjust war against his brother and deliverer; he did not shrink from despoiling that brother and deliverer of dominions which he had sold to him by his own act for a fair price; but he did shrink from the thought of letting the brother against whom he warred suffer actual bodily hardships when he could hinder them. Lack of water on the Mount. The defenders of the Mount had, according to one account, plenty of meat; but all our narratives agree as to the difficulty of providing fresh water for the fortress which twice in the day was surrounded by the waves.[809] Henry asks to be allowed to take water. Henry sent a message to the Duke, praying that he might be allowed access to fresh water; his brothers might, if they thought good, make war on him by the valour of their soldiers; they should not press the powers of nature into their service, or deprive him of those gifts of Providence which were open to all human beings.[810] Answer of Robert and William. Robert was moved; he gave orders to the sentinels at Genetz not to hinder the besieged from coming to the mainland for water.[811] One version even adds that he added the further gift of a tun of the best wine.[812] This kind of generosity, where no appeal was made to his own personal pride, was by no means to the taste of Rufus; as a commander carrying on war, he was ready to press the rights of warfare to the uttermost. When he heard what Robert had done, he mocked at his brother’s weakness; it was a fine way of making war to give the enemy meat and drink.[813] Robert answered, in words which do him honour, but which would have done him more honour if they had been spoken at the beginning as a reason for forbearing an unjust attack on his brother—“Shall we let our brother die of thirst? Where shall we find another, if we lose him?”[814]
Such are these two famous stories of the war waged beneath the mount of the Archangel. Both are eminently characteristic; there is no reason why both may not be true. But we must withhold our belief when one of our tale-tellers adds that William turned away from the siege in contempt for Robert’s weakness.[815] A more sober guide tells us that when, for fifteen days, Henry and his followers had held up against lack of water and Henry surrenders. threatening lack of food,[816] the wary youth saw the hopelessness of further resistance, and offered to surrender the Mount on honourable terms. He demanded a free passage for himself and his garrison. William, already tired of a siege in which he had made little progress and which had cost him many men and horses,[817] gladly accepted the terms. Henry, still Ætheling, though no longer Count, marched forth from his island stronghold with all the honours of war.[818] We are to suppose that, according to the terms of the treaty, the King took possession of the Mount itself, and the Duke of the rest of Henry’s former county. William at Eu. William stayed on the mainland, in the parts of Normandy which had been ceded to him, for full six months, having his head-quarters at Eu.[819] He goes back to England. August, 1091. In August the affairs of his island kingdom called him back again; and, strange to say, both his brothers went with him as his guests and allies.[820]
Fortunes of Henry. At this moment the past and the future alike lead us to look with more interest on the fates of the dispossessed Ætheling than on those of any other of the actors in our story. But there is at first sight some little difficulty in finding out what those fates were. His presence in England in 1091. From our English authorities we could only gather that Henry was in England before the end of the year in which the siege took place, and that three years later he was again beyond sea, in favour with William and at enmity with Robert. From other writers we get a version, which Story of Henry’s adventures. takes no notice of any visit to England, but which gives us a moving tale of Henry’s experiences in Normandy and the neighbouring lands. It is one of those cases where a writer, telling his own part of the story, altogether forgets, perhaps without formally contradicting, other parts. In such a case he is likely to stumble in some of his dates and details; but this need not lead us altogether to cast aside the main features of his story. It is plain that, for some time after the surrender of the Mount, Henry was, to say the least, landless. In the pictures of his actual distress and adversity there may well be somewhat of exaggeration; but they draw from one who is not a flatterer the important remark that, having known adversity himself, he learned to be gracious in after years to the sufferings of others.[821] His alleged wanderings. We are perhaps startled by such a saying when we think of some particular acts of Henry; but this witness does not stand alone; and, among the contradictions of human nature, there is nothing impossible in the belief that such a spirit may have existed alongside of many particular acts of cruelty.[822] But it is certain that Henry’s season of adversity must have been shorter than it appears in the picture of it which is given to us. We are told that, soon after he left the Mount, he found himself very nearly a solitary wanderer. He first went into Britanny, the only land from which he had received any help, and thanked his friends there for their services. Thence he betook himself to France, and spent, we are told, nearly two years in the borderland of the Vexin, the land which had been the scene of his father’s last and fatal warfare, and which was again to be the scene of warfare before his brother’s reign was ended. There, with a train cut down to one knight, one clerk, and three esquires, Henry wandered to and fro, seeking shelter where he could.[823] Whatever truth there may be in these details, the time of Henry’s probation could not have been spread over anything like a period of two years. He may have been a wanderer during the few months which immediately followed the surrender of the Mount; but, if so, he was reconciled to both his brothers long before the end of the year. Or he may, from some unexplained reason, have again become a wanderer during some months of the following year. There is nothing in any way impossible or unlikely in either story. What is certain is that, before the end of the next year, Henry had again an establishment on Gaulish ground, and one gained in the most honourable way. Robert and Henry accompany William to England. And it is equally certain that when King William went back to England in the month of August in the present year he took both of his brothers with him.[824]
§ 4. The Scottish Expedition of William Rufus.
August–October, 1091.
Affairs of Scotland. The business which called William back to his kingdom was a serious one; it was no other than to drive back or to avenge a Scottish invasion. King Malcolm, who seems to have stayed quiet during the rebellion three years before, now took up arms. We cannot help connecting this step with the visit of his brother-in-law, and the words of the Chronicler seem directly to imply that Malcolm’s invasion was the consequence of Eadgar’s coming.[825] From one version we might almost think that Malcolm had been called on to do homage and had refused.[826] This is perfectly possible in itself; but the time of William’s special occupation with Norman affairs seems oddly chosen for such a summons. An earlier time, some point in the blank period between the rebellion and the Norman campaign, would have seemed more natural for such a purpose. Malcolm’s invasion of Northumberland. May, 1091. However this may be, now, in the month of May, Malcolm took advantage of William’s absence in Normandy to invade Northumberland for the fourth time. He designed, we are told, to go much further and do much more, words which might almost suggest a purpose of asserting the claims of Eadgar to the English crown. Whatever were his objects, they were not carried out, save one which was doubtless not the least among them, that of carrying off great spoil from Northumberland.[827] The furthest point that Malcolm reached was Chester-le-Street, a point unpleasantly near to the bishopless monks of Durham.[828] He is driven back. There the men in local command went against him and drove him back. In the national Chronicle they appear as “the good men who guarded this land.”[829] In this way of speaking, as in many other phrases in our own and other tongues, the word “good” means rank and office rather than moral goodness. The “good men.” Yet the latter idea is not wholly absent; the name would hardly be given to men who were engaged in a cause which the writer wholly condemned. The “good men” here spoken of must have been mainly Normans, with Earl Robert of Mowbray at their head. Earl Robert was not likely to have won much love from the English people. Yet he passed for a “good man,” when he did his duty for England, when he guarded the land and drove back the Scottish invader. Of any wish to put Malcolm in the place of either the elder or the younger William we see no trace at any stage of our story. Beyond this emphatic sentence, we get no details. As in so many other cases, if conquest was the object of Malcolm’s expedition, plunder was the only result.
William and Robert in England. August, 1091. The news of this harrying of the northern part of his kingdom brought King William back from Normandy in the course of August. With him, as we have said, came Robert and Henry. Why was the Duke’s presence needed? One account hints that his coming had some reference to the actors in the late rebellion, some of whom at least were now restored to their estates.[830] Relations between Robert and Malcolm. Another version speaks of an old friendship between Robert and Malcolm;[831] and there was a tie of spiritual affinity between them arising out of Robert’s relation as godfather to a child of Malcolm.[832] It was perhaps in this character that Robert came to act, if need should be, as a welcome negotiator with his Scottish gossip. Stronger side of Robert and Eadgar. One strange thing is that, on more than one occasion in our story, both Robert and Eadgar, two men who seem so incapable of vigorous or rational action on behalf of themselves, play a distinctly creditable part when acting on behalf of others. But this is really no uncommon inconsistency of human nature; men are often found who are good advisers in the affairs of others, while they are by no means wise managers of their own. Robert in truth appears to most advantage anywhere out of his own duchy. Neither the warrior of the crusade nor the negotiator with the Scot seems to be the same man as the Duke who could not be trusted to defend his own palace.
William sets forth. In the present case there was more of negotiation than of warfare. Of actual fighting there seems to have been none. William got together, as his father had done in the like case,[833] a great force by land and sea for the invasion of Scotland. With the land force the King and the Duke set forth; but seemingly with no haste, as time was found for a great ecclesiastical ceremony on the way. Durham in the absence of Bishop William. For three years the church of Durham had been without a shepherd, and the castle of Durham had been in the hands of the King. The monks of Saint Cuthberht’s abbey had feared that this irregular time would be an evil time for them. But they put their trust in God and their patron saint, and went to the King to ask his favour. The King’s favourable treatment of the monks. Rufus was specially gracious and merciful; he rose up to greet Prior Turgot, the head of the embassy, and he gave orders that the monks of Durham should be in no way disturbed, but should keep full possession of their rights and property, exactly as if the Bishop had remained in occupation of his see.[834] We may even venture to guess that they had a somewhat fuller possession of them during the Bishop’s absence. We are expressly told by the local historian that the Red King did not deal with Durham as he dealt with other churches; he took nothing from the monks, and even gave them something of his own.[835] Works at Durham. The new society—for it must be remembered that the monks of Durham were a body of Bishop William’s own bringing in[836]—flourished so greatly during this irregular state of things that it was now that they built their refectory.[837] But a time of more settled order was now to come. Reconciliation of Bishop William with the King. Bishop William of Saint-Calais, whatever had been his crimes three years back, was among those whom King William had engaged by his treaty with his brother to restore to their lands and honours. Besides this general claim, it was believed, at Durham at least, that the banished prelate had earned his restoration by a signal service done to the King. In the third year of his banishment an unnamed Norman fortress was holding out for the King; but its garrison was sore pressed, and its capture by the enemy seemed imminent. The Bishop, by what means of persuasion we are not told, but it does not seem to have been by force, caused the besiegers to raise the siege.[838] This service won the King’s thorough good He is restored to his bishopric. September 3, 1091. will, and William, on his march to Scotland, personally put the Bishop once more in possession of his see and of all its rights and belongings, temporal and spiritual.[839] Bishop William did not come back empty-handed; he brought with him costly gifts for his church, ornaments, gold and silver vessels, and, above all, many books.[840] And, at some time before the year was out, we find him confirming with great solemnity, with the witness of the great men of the realm, certain grants of the Conqueror to the monks of his church.[841] The return of the Bishop was an event not only of local but of national importance. His renewed influence with the King. He was restored by the King, not only to his formal favour, but to a high place in his innermost counsels. Bishop William was not one of those who come back from banishment having learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He had, in his sojourn beyond the sea, learned an altogether new doctrine as to the relations between bishops and kings.
The march which had been interrupted by the ceremony at Durham was clearly a slow one. William was at Durham in the first days of September; much later in the month a heavy blow fell on one part of the expedition. Loss of the ships. Michaelmas, 1091. The greater part of the ships were lost a few days before the feast of Michaelmas, and we are told that this happened before the King could reach Scotland. The King was therefore several weeks in journeying from Durham to the border of the true Scotland, the Firth of Forth; and we are told that many of the land force also perished of cold and hunger.[842] The army however which remained was strong enough to make Malcolm feel less eager for deeds of arms than he had most likely felt in May. William and Malcolm by the Scots’ Water.At last, near the shore of the Scots’ Water, the estuary which parted English Lothian from Scottish Fife, the two kings met face to face, seemingly in battle array, but without coming to any exchange of blows. It is marked in a pointed way that Malcolm had crossed from his kingdom to his earldom. He “went out of Scotland into Lothian in England, and there abode,”[843] There a negotiation took place. Mediation of Robert and Eadgar. The ambassadors or mediators were Duke Robert and the Ætheling Eadgar.[844] According to the most picturesque version, Malcolm, who is conceived as still keeping on the northern side of the firth, sends a message to William to the effect that he owes no homage to him, but that, if he can have an interview with Robert, he will do to him whatever is right. Conference of Robert and Malcolm. By the advice of his Wise Men,[845] William sends his brother, who is courteously received by the Scottish King for three days. Somewhat like the Moabite king of old, though with quite another purpose, Malcolm takes his visitor to the tops of various hills, and shows him the hosts of Scotland encamped in the plains and dales below. With so mighty a force he is ready to withstand any one who should try to cross the firth; he would be well pleased if any enemy would make the attempt. Malcolm’s homage to Robert. He then suddenly turns to the question of homage. He had received the earldom of Lothian from King Eadward, when his great-niece Margaret was betrothed to him. The late King William had confirmed the gifts of his predecessor, and, at his bidding, he, Malcolm, had become the man of his eldest son, his present visitor Duke Robert. To him he would discharge his duty; to the present King William he owed no duty at all. He appealed to the Gospel for the doctrine that no man could serve two lords, the doctrine which had been so practically pressed on Robert’s behalf three years before.[846] Robert admitted the truth of Malcolm’s statement; but he argued that times were changed, and that the decrees of his father had lost their old force. It would be wise to accept the reigning King as his lord, a lord nearer, richer, and more powerful, than he could pretend to be himself. Malcolm might be sure of a gracious reception from William, if he came on such an errand. He submits to William. Malcolm was convinced; he went to the King of the English; he was favourably received, and a peace was agreed on. It is added that the two kings then disbanded their armies, and went together into England.[847]
This last statement throws some doubt upon the whole of this version; for Malcolm’s alleged journey to England at this moment is clearly a confusion with events which happened two years later. Question as to the betrothal of Margaret. The references too to the earldom of Lothian and to an earlier betrothal of Margaret are a little startling; yet it is perhaps not quite hopeless to reconcile them with better ascertained facts. As I have elsewhere suggested, this earlier betrothal of Margaret to Malcolm is not necessarily inconsistent with his later marriage with her after the intermediate stage of Ingebiorg.[848] Malcolm may at one time have been in no hurry to carry out a marriage dictated by political reasons; yet he may have afterwards become eager for the same marriage after he had seen her whose hand was designed for him. Question of Lothian. As for the Lothian earldom, we here see the beginning of the later Scottish argument, that homage was due from the Scottish to the English king only for lands held within the kingdom of England. At this stage Lothian was the land held within the kingdom of England; it was what Northumberland, Huntingdon, or any other confessedly English land held by the Scottish king, was in later times. When Malcolm was restored to his crown by the arms of Siward,[849] no doubt Lothian was granted to him among other things. Only Malcolm takes up the line, or our historian thinks it in character to make him take up the line, of implying, though not directly asserting, that Lothian was the only possession for which homage was due. And, on the strictest view of English claims, Malcolm would be right in at least drawing a marked distinction between Scotland and Lothian. He owed both kingdom and earldom to the intervention of Eadward and Siward; but Lothian was a grant from Eadward in a sense in which Scotland was not. Over Scotland neither Eadward nor William could claim more than an external superiority. Lothian was still English ground, as much as the land which is now beginning to be distinguished as Northumberland.
Treaty between William and Malcolm. The version of Malcolm’s submission which I have just gone through is certainly worth examining, and I do not see that it contradicts the simpler and more certain version. According to this account, the negotiation was carried on between Robert and Eadgar. The agreement to which the mediators came was that Malcolm should renew to the younger William the homage which he had paid to the elder.[850] On the other hand, he was to receive all lands and everything else that he had before held in England, specially, it would seem, twelve vills or mansions for his reception on his way to the English court.[851] Malcolm does homage. On these terms Malcolm became the man of William; Eadgar also was reconciled to William. The two kings parted on good terms, but the Chronicler notices, in a phrase of which he is rather fond, that it “little while stood.”[852]