William, Robert, and Eadgar now took their journey back again, as it is specially marked, from Northumberland into Wessex.[853] Return of William. The realm of Ælfred is still looked on as the special dwelling-place of his successors from beyond the sea. But it would seem that, at some stage of their southward journey, at some time before the year was out, they joined with other men of royal and princely descent in setting their crosses to a document, in itself of merely local importance, but which is clothed with a higher interest by the names of those who sign it. Evidence of the Durham charters. A grant of certain churches to the convent of Durham becomes a piece of national history when, besides the signatures for which we might naturally look, it bears the names of King William the Second, of Robert his brother, of Henry his brother, of Duncan son of King Malcolm, of Eadgar the Ætheling, and of Siward Barn.[854] This is the only time when all these persons could have met. There is no sign of any later visit of Robert to England during the reign of William. But the signatures of Henry and Duncan teach us more. Duncan. Duncan, it will be remembered, had been given as a hostage at Abernethy;[855] he had been set free by the Conqueror on his death-bed; he had been knighted by Robert, and allowed to go whither he would.[856] Had he already made his way back to his own land, or did he come in the train of his latest benefactor? In the former case, had he been again given as a hostage? Or had William found out that the son of Ingebiorg might possibly be useful to him? It is certain that, two years later, Duncan was at William’s court and in William’s favour; and it looks very much as if he had, in whatever character, gone back to England with the King. Eadgar. The signature of Eadgar shows that the document must be later than the treaty with Malcolm by which he was reconciled to William, that is, that it was signed on the journey southward, not on the journey northward. Henry. The signature of Henry is our only hint that he had any share at all in the Scottish business, and it throws a perfectly new light on this part of his history. He was plainly in England, seemingly in favour with both his brothers, and things look as if he too, though he is nowhere mentioned, must have gone on the march to Scotland. Siward Barn. Siward Barn, like Duncan, was one of those who were set free by William the Great on his death-bed. We now learn that he shared the good luck of Duncan and Wulf, not the bad luck of Morkere and Wulfnoth. He signs as one of the great men of the north, with Arnold of Percy, with the Sheriff Morel, and with Earl Robert himself.
One thing is plain, namely, that this document was not signed in the regular Christmas Assembly of the year. By that time Robert and Eadgar were no longer in England. By that time Robert and William had again quarrelled. Fresh dispute between William and Robert. We may guess that some of Robert’s old partisans had been less lucky than the Bishop of Durham. At all events, some points in the treaty of Caen remained unfulfilled. Then, as in later times, a diplomatic engagement was not found strong enough to carry itself out by its own force, like a physical law of nature. We are not told what was the special point complained of; but something which the Red King should have done for Robert or for his partisans was left undone.[857] It was simply as a man and a king that Rufus had entered into any engagements with his brother. His knightly honour was not pledged; the treaty therefore came under the head of those promises which no man can fulfil.[858] We are told in a pointed way that Robert stayed with his brother till nearly the time of Christmas. The matter in dispute, whatever it was, might have been fittingly discussed in the Christmas Assembly; only it might have been hard to find the formula by which the Duke of the Normans was to appeal the King of the English of bad faith before his own Witan. Robert and Eadgar leave England. December 23, 1091. Two days before the feast Robert took ship in Wight, and sailed to Normandy, taking the Ætheling Eadgar with him.[859]
Natural phænomena. Fall of the tower at Winchcombe. October 15, 1091. Either the reign of Rufus was really richer than other times in striking natural phænomena, or else they were specially noticed as signs of the times. About the time of the King’s Scottish expedition, the tower of the minster at Winchcombe was smitten by a mighty thunderbolt, and fell in ruins on the body of the church, crushing the most hallowed images in its fall. The Chthonian Zeus had no place in the mythology of the times; but this destruction, which left behind it a thick smoke and an evil smell, was deemed to be the work of the evil one, the signs of whose presence were got rid of only by the most solemn chants and processions.[860] Two days later, Great wind in London. October 17, 1091. London was visited by a fearful wind, which blew down seven churches and houses to the number of six hundred. Above all, the wooden roof of the church of Saint Mary-le-bow was carried off, and its beams were hurled to the ground with such force that they were driven into the hard earth, and had to be sawn off as they stood.[861] Two men who were in the church were crushed. The citizens could have hardly repaired their houses before another blow came upon them. Fire in London. March 28, 1092. Early in the next year the greater part of London was destroyed by fire.[862] By Eastertide the cathedral churches of two of the dioceses whose seats had been moved in the late reign stood ready for consecration. Consecration of the church of Salisbury. April 5, 1092. On the waterless hill which then was Salisbury, within the everlasting ditches of the elder time, looking down on the field of battle which had decreed that Britain should be English[863] and on the field of council which had decreed that England should be one,[864] Norman Osmund, the doctor of the ritual lore of England, had finished the work which Lotharingian Hermann had began. The new mother church of the lands of Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset, the elder minster of Saint Mary, whose stones were borne away to build the soaring steeple of its successor but whose foundations may still be traced on the turf of the forsaken city, now awaited its hallowing. There was then no archbishop in southern England; the rite was done by Osmund himself with the help of his two nearest episcopal neighbours, Walkelin of Winchester and John of Bath.[865] The ceremony had thus a specially West-Saxon character. The three bishops who came together at Salisbury represented the three—once four—churches, among which the old West-Saxon diocese, the diocese of Winchester, had been parted asunder.[866] But at Salisbury too, the elements, if somewhat less hostile than at Winchcombe and London, were by no means friendly. The tower roof thrown down. April 10. Five days only after the hallowing, the lightning fell, as at Winchcombe; the peaked roof or low spire which sheltered the tower—doubtless of wood covered with lead—was thrown down, and its fall did much damage to the walls of the new minster.[867]
A day later by a month had been fixed for another ceremony of the same kind, the crowning of the work of a prelate who seems to have wished for a more stately ceremony and a greater gathering than the almost domestic rite which had satisfied Bishop Osmund. Remigius, Almoner of Fécamp, Bishop of Dorchester, Bishop of Remigius of Lincoln. Lincoln, was drawing near the end of his famous episcopate. He had reformed the constitution of his chapter and diocese; and we hear that he was no less zealous in reforming the manners of his flock.[868] The darling sin of Bristol—most likely the darling sin of every great trading-town—was rife at Lincoln also; and Remigius, like Wulfstan, preached against the wicked custom by which men sold their country-folk, sometimes their kinsfolk, to a life of shame or of bondage in foreign lands.[869] Completion of the minster. But beyond all this, he had finished his great work on the hill of Lincoln; the elder church of Saint Mary had grown into the great minster of which later rebuildings and enlargements have still left us some small remnants.[870] The eastern limb had as yet no need to overleap the Roman wall of Lindum; but Remigius had reared, and sought to consecrate, no fragment, but a perfect church. His doorways are there in the western front to show that the building has received no enlargement on that side from Remigius’ day to our own. The work was done, and its founder felt his last end coming. He was eager to see the house which he had builded dedicated to its holy use before he himself passed away. But an unlooked-for hindrance came. The only archbishop in the land, Thomas of York, claimed the district in which Remigius had built his church as belonging to his own diocese.[871] Thomas of York claims the jurisdiction of Lindesey. This does not seem to have been by virtue of the claim that the whole diocese of Dorchester came within his metropolitan jurisdiction.[872] The argument was that Lindesey, won for the Christian faith by Paullinus, won for the Northumbrian realm by Ecgfrith, was part of the diocesan jurisdiction of the Bishop of York. And, whatever the truth of the case might be, the warmest of all admirers of Remigius goes some way to strengthen the doctrine of Thomas, when he speaks of Lindesey almost as a conquered land won by the prowess of Remigius from the Northumbrian enemy.[873] The time was not one for doubtful disputations. Remigius wins over the King. Remigius, saint as he is pictured to us, knew how to use those baser arguments which were convincing above all others in the days of the Red King. His original appointment in the days of the Conqueror had not been altogether beyond suspicion;[874] and it was now whispered that it was by the help of a bribe that he won the zealous adhesion of William Rufus to his cause. Rufus was at least impartial; he was clearly ready to give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wages, and what he would do for a Jew he would also do for a bishop. All the bishops of England were bidden by royal order to come together at the appointed day for the dedication of the church of Lincoln.[875] Gathering for the consecration at Lincoln. May 9, 1092. A vast crowd of men of all ranks came to Lincoln; the course of the story suggests that the King himself was there; all the bishops came, save one only. Robert of Hereford, the friend of Wulfstan, the Lotharingian skilled in the lore of the stars, knew by his science that the rite would not take place in the lifetime of Remigius. He therefore deemed it needless to travel to Lincoln for nothing.[876] Death of Remigius. May 6, 1092. His skill was not deceived; three days before the appointed time Remigius died.[877] The dedication of the church was delayed; it was done in the days of his successor, some years later.[878] Meanwhile Remigius himself won the honours of a saint in local esteem, and wonders of healing were wrought at his tomb for the benefit of not a few of divers tongues and even of divers creeds.[879]
§ 5. The Conquest and Colonization of Carlisle.
1092.
William’s conquest of Carlisle. It was seemingly from this fruitless gathering at Lincoln that William the Red went forth to what was in truth the greatest exploit of his reign. He went on a strange errand, to enlarge the bounds of England by overthrowing the last shadow of independent English rule. Hitherto the northern border of England had shown a tendency to fall back rather than to advance, and a generation later the same tendency showed itself again. But Rufus did what neither his father nor his brother did; he enlarged the actual kingdom of England by the addition of a new shire, a new earldom—in process of time a new bishopric—and he raised as its capital a renewed city whose calling it was to be the foremost bulwark of England in her northern wars. Whatever any other spot on either side of the sea may be bound to do, Carlisle, city and earldom, is bound to pay to the Red King the honours of a founder. And the Saxon branch of the English people must see in him one who planted a strong colony of their blood on the lands of men of other races, kindred and alien. Mistakes as to the position of Cumberland and Westmoreland. There is a certain amusement in seeing the endless discussions in which men have entangled themselves in order to explain the simple fact that Cumberland and Westmoreland are not entered in Domesday, forgetful that it was just as reasonable to look for them there as it would have been to look there for Caithness or the Côtentin. Cumberland and Westmoreland, by those names, formed no part of the English kingdom when the Conqueror drew up his Survey. Parts of the lands so called, those parts which till recent changes formed part, first of the diocese of York, afterwards of that of Chester, are entered in Domesday in their natural place, as parts of Yorkshire.[880] The other parts are not entered, for the simple reason that they were then no part of the kingdom of England. It was now, in the third or fourth year of William Rufus, that they became so.
History of Carlisle. Lugubalia or Caerluel was reckoned among the Roman cities of Britain. It was reckoned too among the cities of the Northumbrian realm, in the great days of that realm, 603–685. from the victory of Æthelfrith at Dægsanstan to the fall of Ecgfrith at Nectansmere.[881] Then the Northumbrian power fell back from the whole land between Clyde and Solway, and all trace of Lugubalia is lost in the confused history of the land of the Northern Britons. Its site, to say the least, must have formed part of that northern British land whose king and people sought Eadward the Unconquered to father and lord.[882] It must have formed part of that well nigh first of territorial fiefs which Eadmund the Doer-of-great-deeds granted to his Scottish fellow-worker.[883] It must have formed part of the under-kingdom which so long served as an appanage for the heirs of Scottish kingship. But, amidst all these changes, though the land passed under the over-lordship of the Basileus of Britain, yet it never, from Ecgfrith to Rufus, passed under the immediate dominion of any English king. And, as far as the city itself was concerned, for the last two centuries before Rufus the site was all that was left to pass to any one. Scandinavians in Cumberland. The history of Scandinavian influence in Cumberland is one of the great puzzles of our early history. The Northman is there to speak for himself; but it is not easy to say how and when he came there.[884] But one result of Scandinavian occupation or Scandinavian inroad was the overthrow of Lugubalia. Carlisle destroyed by Scandinavians. We gather that it fell, as Anderida fell before Ælle and Cissa, as Aquæ Solis fell before Ceawlin, as the City of the Legions fell before Æthelfrith.[885] But now the son of the Conqueror was to be to Lugubalia what the daughter of Ælfred had been to the City of the Legions. The king who made the land of Carlisle English bade the walls of Carlisle again rise, to fence in a city of men, a colony of the Saxon land.
Dolfin lord of Carlisle. At this moment the land of Carlisle, defined, as we can hardly doubt, by the limits of the ancient diocese, was the only spot of Britain where any man of English race ruled. Its prince, lord, earl—no definite title is given him—was Dolfin the son of Gospatric, a scion of the old Northumbrian princely house and sprung by female descent from the Imperial stock of Wessex.[886] When or how Dolfin had got possession of his lordship we know not; but it can hardly fail to have been a grant from Malcolm, and it must have been held by him in the character of a man of the Scottish king.
Dolfin driven out, the city restored and the castle built. 1092. We are not told whether either Dolfin or Malcolm had given any new offence to William, or whether there was any other motive for the King’s action at this moment. We can record only the event. Rufus went northward with a great force to Carlisle. He drove out Dolfin; he restored the forsaken city; he built the castle; he left a garrison in it, and went southward again.[887] But this was not all.The Saxon colony. Not only was the restored city to be a bulwark of England, but the conquered land was to become a colony of Englishmen. Many churlish folk were sent thither with wives and cattle, to dwell in the land and to till it.[888] We thus see, what seems always to be forgotten in discussions of Cumbrian ethnology, that, at least in the immediate district of Carlisle, the last element in its mixed population was distinctly Saxon.[889] Supposed connexion with the making of the New Forest. Ingenious writers have guessed that the men who were now settled at Carlisle were the very men who had been deprived of their homes and lands at the making of the New Forest. There is no evidence for this guess, and every likelihood is against it. Though I hold that the dispossessed land-owners and occupiers of Hampshire are not an imaginary class,[890] yet I cannot think that they can have formed so large a class as to have gone any way towards colonizing even so small a district as the old diocese of Carlisle. But it is plain that the land needed inhabitants, and that the new inhabitants were sought for in the south of England. In the Carlisle district then the order of settlement among the races of Britain is different from what it is anywhere else. Elsewhere it is Briton, Angle or Saxon, Dane or Northman. Here, as far as one can see, the order must be Briton, Angle, Pict, Northman, Saxon.
The land and earldom of Carlisle. The land now added to England is strictly the land of Carlisle. We do not hear the names of Cumberland or Westmoreland till after the times with which we are dealing. The restored city gave its name to the land, to its earls, when it had earls, to its bishops when it had bishops.[891] And truly of all the cities of England none is more memorable in its own special way than that which now for the first time became a city of united England. History and character of the city. The local history of Carlisle stands out beyond that of almost any other English city on the surface of English history. It has not, as local history so often has; to be dug out of special records by special research. Called into fresh being to be the bulwark of England against Scotland, Carlisle remained the bulwark of England against Scotland as long as England needed any bulwark on that side. In every Scottish war, from Stephen to George the Second, Carlisle plays its part. Its analogy with Edinburgh and Stirling. Nor is it perhaps unfit that a city whose special work was to act as a check upon the Scot should itself have in its general look somewhat of a Scottish character. The site of the city and castle instinctively reminds us of the sites of Edinburgh and Stirling. It is a likeness in miniature; but it is a likeness none the less. The hill which is crowned by Carlisle castle is lower than the hills which are crowned by the two famous Scottish fortresses; but in all three cases the original city climbs the hill whose highest point is crowned by the castle. At Carlisle the castle stands at the northern end of the city, and its look-out over the Eden, towards the Scottish march, is emphatically the look-out of a sentinel. It looks out towards the land which so long was hostile; but it looks out also on one spot which suggests the memories of times when Scots, Picts, and Britons may have been there, but when they found no English or Danish adversaries to meet them. The Roman wall avoids Lugubalia itself, though the inner line of foss, which runs some way south of the wall itself, is said to be traced along the line which divides the castle from the city. But among the most prominent points of view from the castle is Stanwix, the site of the nearest Roman station, which seems to bear about it the memory of the stones of the ancient builders. The wall and the castle. Here, on the brow of the hill, cut off by a ditch like so many headlands of the same kind, on a site which had doubtless been a place of strength for ages before the Roman came, the Red King reared the new bulwark of his realm. Of the works of his age there are still large remains; how much is the work of Rufus himself, how much of his successor, it might be hard to say. The square keep is there, though sadly disfigured by the unhappy use of the castle as a barrack; a large part of the wall, both of city and castle, is still, after many patchings and rebuildings, of Norman date; it is still in many places plainly built out of Roman stones. Here and there one is even tempted to think that some of those stones in the lower part of the wall may have stood there since Carlisle was Lugubalia. Castle and city bear about them the memories of many later times and many stirring scenes in history. Works of Rufus and Henry at Carlisle. But on that spot we are most called on to trace out, in church and city and castle, every scrap that reminds us of the two founders of Carlisle, the two royal sons of the Conqueror. The names which before all others live on that site are those of William who raised up city and fortress from the sleep of ages, and of Henry who completed the work by adding Carlisle to the tale of English episcopal sees.[892]