French and other crusaders. Those among the recorded crusaders whose names come more immediately home to Englishmen did not join the holy war till a later time. But not a few names which have been long familiar to us are to be found in the list of those who joined in the first regular expedition 1096. which set forth in the course of the year which followed the assembly at Clermont. Hugh brother of King Philip. Beyond the bounds of England and Normandy we may mark the names of Hugh surnamed the Great, the brother of King Philip, Count of Vermandois, Count of Valois in succession to the holy Simon,[1498] but who appears in our chief list of crusaders by the lowlier title of the Count of Crêpy. He went to the work, leaving his fiefs to his sons. His daughter Isabel or Elizabeth he gave in marriage to Count Robert of Meulan, by this time no very youthful bridegroom.[1499] Robert of Meulan marries his daughter. Among princes of greater power, but of less lofty birth, the foreign allies of the Norman house were represented by the younger Count Robert of Flanders, nephew of the Conqueror’s queen, and by Stephen Count of Chartres and Blois, husband of Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Chartres. the Conqueror’s noblest child, and father of a king of England and of a bishop of an English see more personally eminent than his royal brother. Rotrou of Mortagne and Walter of Saint Valery went from the border lands so closely connected with Norman history. In Everard of Puiset we hear the name of a house which was in the next century to become famous in England on the throne of Saint Cuthberht, the throne at that moment empty and widowed by the death of William of Saint-Calais. The brothers from Boulogne; And from a house most hateful to England, but which had received no small share of the spoils of England, went forth three brethren, one of whom was to show himself the worthiest, and to be placed the highest, in the crusading host. Eustace, Eustace of Boulogne, a prince beyond the sea but in England lord of lands scattered from Mendip to the Kentish and East-Saxon shores,[1500] marched with his two brothers, both of whom were to reign as kings in the Holy City. Baldwin, The part of Baldwin in the enterprise had been already foreshadowed in visions told in the hall of Conches.[1501] Visions were hardly needed to foretell the Godfrey of Lorraine. greatness of Godfrey of Lorraine, who had won his duchy as the prize of faithful service to the Emperor, but who was none the less ready to discharge the duties of a higher allegiance at the bidding of the Pontiff. From Normandy itself went, among a crowd of others, some of that younger generation which is beginning to supply the chief actors in our tale. Norman crusaders. Philip, the son of the lately deceased Roger of Montgomery, Ivo and Alberic the sons of the lately deceased Hugh of Grantmesnil,[1502] all went forth; so did Gerard of Gournay and his wife Eadgyth, he to die, she to come back for another marriage.[1503] And with them went another married pair whose names carry us back to earlier times. Ralph of Wader. The double traitor, Ralph of Wader, traitor to England, traitor to William, went forth with his valiant Emma, to do something to wipe out his old crimes by good service beneath the walls of Nikaia, and to leave his bones and hers in lands where his memory was not a memory of shame.[1504]
Duke Robert. We may be sure that among the crowd of men of every rank who were stirred by the voice of Urban none took up the cross with a more single mind than the Duke of the Normans. It was an appeal which spoke at once to the better side of him, an appeal which took him away from that land of his birth and dominion which was to him a land of such utter failure. As a son and a ruler, he had much to repent of; as a warrior, a worthy object of warfare was for the first time opened to him. His need of money. But how was he to go, at least how was he to go as became the prince of a duchy which under other princes had been so great? His hoard was empty; half his barons were in practical rebellion; his brothers held no small part of his duchy. He is driven to apply to William. He had no resource but one, to seek help, at whatever cost, from the brother who could command the wealth of England, even though the price should be nothing short of yielding the whole of Normandy to him who already held a part. It is needless to say that King William of England had no thought of going on the crusade himself. Position of William. He was not indeed hindered, as the Emperor and the King of the French were hindered, by actually lying under the censures of the Church. But he was as little likely as either of them to gird on his sword in the great quarrel. The voice which stirred the heart of Robert to the quick found no kindred chord to strike on in the mocking soul of Rufus. The enemy of God felt no call to march in the cause of God. He was not likely to spend his treasures or to display his chivalry in warfare which could not bring him any direct increase of wealth or power. It was rather for him to stay at home, and to reap what he could in the way of either wealth or power at the cost of those whose madness led them on errands which could bring in neither. Palestine was far away and hard to win. Normandy, so much as was left of Normandy, so much as was not already his own, was near and was easy to win with his own special arms. William Rufus was not at all likely to turn aside from any offer of the kind which Robert might make to him.
Mission of Abbot Jeronto. The brothers were however at war, and the services of a mediator were needed to open negotiations between them. The Pope becomingly undertook the office, and sent a prelate from the more distant parts of Gaul, Jeronto, Abbot of Saint Benignus at Dijon, to make peace between the King and the Duke. We are told that Walter of Albano’s greediness and subserviency to the King had brought the name of Legate, and of Rome itself, into discredit. Jeronto was therefore trusted with a commission to make an appeal to William, such as Walter had clearly never made, about the evils which were allowed to go on under his government.[1505] Of the two branches of this commission one prospered better than the other. Jeronto rebukes William. At first, we are told, the Abbot’s righteous boldness and plainness of speech seemed to have made an effect on the King, while it raised general hopes of reform among the nation.[1506] But the King or his counsellors knew how to deal, if not with Abbot Jeronto, at least with those in greater authority. He had, so the story runs, sent a messenger of his own to the Pope—most likely during his sojourn in northern Gaul, of which we shall hear again—carrying with him the weighty argument of ten marks of the purest gold.[1507] Trusting to this means of gaining his end, the King kept the Abbot of Dijon with him, till the Easter of the next year. The Pope sends his nephew. Easter, April 13, 1096. By that time the King’s messenger came back, bringing with him a commissioner from the Pope, a layman, the sister’s son of Urban, by whose word of mouth it would seem the Abbot’s commission was cancelled and all questions were adjourned till the next Christmas.[1508] When the next Christmas came, the King was not in England, to attend to ecclesiastical reform or to anything else.
Peace between Robert and William. The other object for which Jeronto came to England was fully carried out, whether Jeronto himself had any real hand in bringing it about or not. Peace was made between the Duke of the Normans and the King of the English. Normandy pledged to William. 1096. In order that Robert might have money to go to the crusade, the duchy of Normandy was pledged to his brother for a sum of ten thousand marks. The transaction was not a cession or a sale; it was a mere pledge. The duchy was to pass to William merely for a season, for three years, or for so long a time as Robert should be away. If the Duke should come back, and should find himself able to pay the money, the duchy was to be his again.[1509] Still William’s possession seemed likely to be a lasting one. There seemed but small chance of Robert’s ever coming back, and smaller still of his coming back with ten thousand marks to spare out of the spoils of the infidels. If he ever did come so laden, William Rufus doubtless trusted that, by some means either of force or of fraud, his brother’s restoration to his duchy might be either evaded or withstood.
The price not large. The price for which Normandy was thus handed over does not, when compared with other payments of the time, seem a large one. It was not very much higher than the sums which Herbert Losinga was said to have paid for a bishopric for himself and an abbey for his father.[1510] The price to be paid for at least a three years’ possession of all Normandy was not much more than three times the sum which courtiers at least had looked on as a reasonable contribution for an Archbishop of Canterbury to make towards a single Norman expedition.[1511] Heavy taxation to raise the money. Yet the sum which was now to be paid is spoken of as a drain upon the whole kingdom. Rufus had no thought of paying the money out of any rightful revenues of the crown or out of any stores which he had already wrung from his people. Something was to be wrung from them yet again for the special object of the moment. The time would seem to have been the summer of the year which followed the gathering at Clermont, the year which in England began with the death of Bishop William of Durham and the frightful punishment of Count William of Eu. Whitsun Assembly, 1096. The matter may have been discussed at the Whitsun Assembly of that year, of which we have no record. At any rate a heavy tax was laid on the whole kingdom; we may be sure that the Red King took the occasion to wring more out of the land than the actual sum which he had to pay to his brother. Otherwise, except on the view that everything had been taken already, the payment of a sum less than seven thousand pounds could hardly have weighed on the whole kingdom as this benevolence is said to have weighed. Extortion of the benevolence. For a benevolence it was, at least in form; men were invited to give or to lend; but we gather that some more stringent means was found for those who failed to give or to lend willingly.[1512] The English Chronicler sends up his wail for the heavy time that it was by reason of the manifold gelds, and he tells us how, as so often happened, hunger followed in the wake of the extortioner.[1513] Other writers describe the King as demanding loans and gifts from his prelates, earls, and other great men. Oppression of tenants. The great lay lords, we are told, raised their share by the plunder of the knights who held fiefs of them and of the churls who tilled their demesne lands.[1514] It is the cry of these last that we hear through the voice of the Chronicler. Protest of the prelates. The bishops and abbots are said to have made a protest, a thing which almost passes belief on the part of the bishops of the Red King’s day. When called on for their shares, they are said to have answered, in the spirit, or at least in the words, of Ælfheah, that they could not raise the money by any means save the oppression of the wretched tillers of the earth.[1515] Judged by the conduct of the two classes at Rockingham, the prelates and the lay barons seem to have changed places. Comparison of the prelates and the lay lords. It is the churchmen now who have the conscientious scruple. Yet the difference is not wonderful. The barons were used to general havoc and violence of every kind; what they scrupled at was the deliberate perversion of formal justice to crush a single man who claimed their reverence on every ground, official and personal. The prelates, on the other hand, might be ready for any amount of cringing and cowardice, and might yet shrink from being made the agents of direct oppression in their own persons. Anyhow another means of payment was suggested by the cunning agents of the impious King. It may have been the future Bishop of Durham who answered, “Have ye not chests full of the bones of dead men, but wrought about with gold and silver?”[1516] Plunder of the churches.In this strait the churchmen took the sacrilegious hint. The most sacred objects were not spared; books of the gospels, shrines, crucifixes, were spoiled of their precious ornaments, chalices were melted down, all the gifts of the bounty of the old time were seized on, not to relieve the poor, but to fill the coffers of the King with the money that was needed for his ambitious schemes.[1517]
In all this we have learned to suspect some exaggeration; extreme measures taken at some particular places must have been spoken of as if they had been universal throughout the land. In one case, and that the case of the highest personal interest, we get the details, and they are a good deal less frightful than the general picture. Contribution of Anselm. Among the other great men of the land, the Archbishop of Canterbury was called on for his contribution. His friends advised compliance with the request, and he himself did not complain of it as unreasonable.[1518] But Anselm had no great store of money in hand. He consulted the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, Walkelin and Gundulf, and by their advice he borrowed a sum of money from the hoard of his monks, who seem to have been better provided than himself. He mortgages the manor of Peckham to his monks. The convent, by a vote of the majority, agreed to help the Archbishop with a present sum of two hundred pounds, in return for which Anselm made over to them for seven years his manor of Peckham, which brought in thirty pounds yearly. The money supplied by the monks, together with what Anselm could raise himself, made up a sum which seems to have satisfied the King; at least no complaint or dispute is recorded.[1519]
The ten thousand marks were raised and paid. We may well believe that more than the ten thousand marks were raised; but we may be sure that not a penny more than his bargain entitled him to found its way into the hands of Duke Robert. In September the whole business was finished. Conference between William and Robert. King William crossed the sea, and met his brother in a conference held under the mediation of the King of the French, at some point of the border-land of the Vexin, at Pontoise or at Chaumont, places of which we shall have to speak again.[1520] The money was paid to the Duke; the duchy was handed over to the King, Robert sets forth on the Crusade. September, 1096.
His companions, Robert, Stephen, and Odo. and Robert of Normandy set forth for the holy war. He went in company with his cousin the Count of Flanders and his brother-in-law the Count of Chartres. And with them went a kinsman of an elder generation, whose long history, though not specially long life, is now drawing to an end. Bishop Odo of Bayeux could not bear to stay in Normandy again to become a subject of the nephew to whom he had surrendered himself at Rochester.[1521] He joined the forces of his elder nephew, and with him went the eloquent Bishop of Evreux, Gilbert, who had preached the funeral sermon of the Conqueror.[1522] Conduct of Robert.The Duke on his armed pilgrimage showed new powers. He could now, often but not always, overcome his love of idleness and pleasure, and whenever the moment of real danger came, he was ever foremost, not only in the mere daring of the soldier, but in the skill and counsel of the commander.[1523] Another hand has traced his course with all vividness, but with less sympathy than one could have wished for the general objects of the holy war.[1524] A few points in Robert’s eastern career are all that need now be touched on. He and his companions passed by Lucca, and there received the blessing of the orthodox Pope Urban.[1525] Robert at Rome. They went on to what should have been Urban’s see, and found how truly the English Chronicler spoke when he said that Urban nothing had of the settle at Rome. When they went to pay their devotions in the basilica of Saint Peter, they met with much such entertainment from the followers of the schismatic Clement as the monks of Glastonbury had met with from their abbot Thurstan.[1526] His reception by Roger of Apulia. They reached southern Italy, now a duchy of the house of Hauteville, and the reigning Duke Roger, son of the renowned Wiscard, is said to have welcomed his natural lord in the head of the ducal house of his ancestral land.[1527]
At the time of their coming, Duke Roger, his uncle Count Roger of Sicily, who had won back a realm for Christendom, and his brother Bohemond—Mark Bohemond we find him accurately called[1528]—were warring Siege of Amalfi. against the famous merchant town of Amalfi,[1529] rebellious in their eyes against the Norman Duke, in its own eyes loyal to the Eastern Emperor. Bohemond takes the cross. At the coming of the crusaders Bohemond took the cross, and rent up a goodly cloak into crosses for his followers.[1530] Count Roger was left almost alone to besiege Amalfi, and he went back to his own island. The crusaders winter in Apulia. 1096–1097. Yet, after this outburst of pious zeal, those who were highest in rank among the warriors of the cross tarried to spend a merry winter in that pleasant land, while many of the lower sort, already weary of the work, turned aside and went back to their homes.[1531] The Norman prelates, from whatever motives, crossed to the great island of the Mediterranean, a trophy of Norman victory only second to the yet greater island of the Ocean. There, under the rule of the Great Count of Sicily, the whilom Earl of Kent might see how conquerors of his own blood could deal with the men of conquered lands after another sort from that in which he had dealt with the men of his English earldom. There, in the happy city of the threefold speech,[1532] the Bishop of Bayeux might mark, in the great temple of Palermo, once church, then mosque, and now church once more, those forms of art of the Greek and the Saracen, which had lost in grace, if they had gained in strength, in taking the shapes which he had himself followed in his great work in his own Saxon city. Odo dies at Palermo. February, 1097. There the Earl and Bishop at last ended a career of which Kent and Bayeux could tell so different a tale. Gilbert of Evreux discharged the last corporal work of mercy for his fiercer brother; and the tomb of Odo of Bayeux arose within the walls of the great church of Palermo, soon to boast itself the head of the Sicilian realm.[1533] And, after all the changes of later days, amid the small remains which the barbarians of the Renaissance have left us of the church of English Walter, we may, even beside the tomb of the Wonder of the World, stop for a moment to remember that the brother of our Conqueror, the scourge of our land, found his last resting-place so far away alike from Bayeux, from Senlac, and from Rochester.
Duke Robert crosses to Dyrrhachion. The Bishop went no further than Palermo; the Duke went on by the course which the warfare of the Apulian Normans had lately made familiar. They entered the Eastern world at Dyrrhachion, where the valour of Normans and Englishmen had been lately proved.[1534] Use of the Bulgarian name. They passed, in the geography of our authors, through Bulgaria;[1535] that is, they passed through those Illyrian and Macedonian lands where the rule of Byzantium had again displaced the rule of Ochrida, but to which the name of the people whom Samuel had made terrible still clave, as in the language of fact, though not of diplomacy, it cleaves still. They reached Thessalonica, they reached Constantinople, and wondered at the glories of the New Rome.[1536] Robert does homage to Alexios. There, as in duty bound, they pledged their faith to the truest heir of the Roman majesty, whose lost lands they were to win back from the misbelievers. Before the throne of Alexios Robert the Norman knelt; he placed his hands between the Imperial hands, and arose the sworn liegeman of Augustus.[1537] The homage of Harold to Robert’s father was not more binding than the homage of Robert to Alexios; but an English earl and a Norman crusader were measured in those days by different standards. The host passed on; at Nikaia, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, Robert was ever foremost in fight and in council. Yet the old spirit was not wholly cast out. Robert at Laodikeia. When the English Warangians at Laodikeia hailed their joint leaders in the son of their Conqueror and in the heir of their ancient kings,[1538] the pleasures of Asia, like the pleasures of Apulia, were too much for the Duke, and it needed the anathemas of the Church to call him back from his luxurious holiday to the stern work that was before him.[1539] Before the walls of Jerusalem he found a strange ally. Hugh of Jaugy joins the crusades. Hugh of Jaugy, one of the murderers of Mabel, after his long sojourn among the infidels, greeted his natural prince, returned to his allegiance, and by his knowledge of the tongue and ways of those whom he forsook, did useful, if not honourable, service.[1540] A worthier comrade was a noble and valiant Turk, who of his own accord came to seek for baptism and for admission to share the perils of the pilgrims.[1541] The Norman Duke ever appears as the fellow-soldier of his kinsman and namesake of Flanders; the two Roberts are always side by side. The “rope-dancers” at Antioch. It is needless to say that neither of them shared in that shameful descent from the walls of Antioch which gained for some of the heroes of Normandy the mocking surname of the rope-dancers.[1542] It is hard to find any absolutely contemporary authority for the statement which was very soon afloat, Robert said to have refused the crown of Jerusalem. that the crown of Jerusalem was offered to Robert and was refused by him.[1543] Robert could not have been as Godfrey; but we can believe that his career would have been more honourable in a Syrian than in a Norman dominion. He was at least one of the first to stand on the rescued walls of the Holy City;[1544] and in the fight for the newly-won realm against the Fatimite Caliph, it was not merely by cutting down the Saracen standard-bearer with his own hand, but by a display of really skilful tactics, that Robert did much to win the day for Christendom.[1545] His return. He then turned his face towards Constantinople and towards Apulia, and we shall meet him again in his own land.
William takes possession of Normandy. As soon as Robert had set forth for Jerusalem, William took possession of the duchy of Normandy—in modern phrase, he took upon him its administration—without opposition from any side. There was indeed no side, except the side of mere anarchy, from which opposition could come. It was perhaps a little humiliating for a great duchy to be handed over from one prince to another by a personal bargain, like a house or a field. But there was no practical ground for opposing William’s entry. All classes, save mere robbers, lordly or vulgar, must have had enough of Robert. And now Robert was gone, and in going, he had handed them over to the prince for whom many of them had fought or intrigued, and who already held some of the most important points of the country. Whether it was good or bad for England and Normandy to have the same ruler, it was clearly a gain for all Normandy to have only one ruler. In one sense indeed this object was not even now attained. William’s first step was to dismember the duchy which he had bought. Grants to Henry. Henry, it will be remembered, had been left in Normandy a year and a half before, and had been, perhaps ever since, acting in William’s interests against Robert. He now received the reward of his services in a noble fief indeed. He became again acknowledged Count of the whole Côtentin. And to his peninsular dominion he was allowed to add the whole Bessin, except the city of Bayeux and the castle and town of Caen.[1546] The spot which contained the foundations of his parents, the tombs of his parents, William Rufus could not bring himself to give up, even to reward the faithful service of a brother.