§ 2. The Revolt of Robert of Mowbray.
1095–1096.
Events contemporary with Donald’s second reign. The three years of Donald’s second reign were contemporary with much that we have already told, with the whole dispute between William and Anselm, with the preaching of the crusade, with the acquisition of Normandy. They were contemporary with stirring events in Wales which we shall speak of in another section. And they were contemporary with events in England which, as I have said, have a kind of connexion with the fate of Malcolm which makes it seem on the whole most natural to speak of them at this point. We will now therefore go on to the chief English event of the year which followed the second accession of Donald, namely the revolt of Robert Earl of Northumberland.
Conspiracy against William Rufus. It is not the least strange among the strange events of this reign that the only rebellion against William Rufus within his kingdom, after that which immediately followed his accession, was directly occasioned by one of the few good deeds which are recorded of him. The King did a simple act of justice; one of his greatest nobles at once openly rebelled, and the open rebellion of one brought to light the hidden conspiracy of many more. We may be sure that there had long been a good deal of lurking discontent which was waiting for even a slight opportunity to break forth into a flame. The conspiracy was devised among men of the highest rank and power, some of them near of kindred to the King; and the open rebel was certainly the foremost man of his own generation in the kingdom. There were in the days of Rufus grounds enough for discontent and revolt among any class, and there were special grounds which specially touched the men of highest rank. They are said to have been offended by the King’s general harshness, and, above all, by the strictness of his hunting-code.[78] The head and author of the seditious movement was the stern guardian of the northern frontier of the kingdom, Robert of Mowbray Earl of Northumberland. He is said to have been specially puffed up to rebellion by his successes against Malcolm and his Scots.[79] But, great as he deemed himself, he held that he might become greater by a powerful alliance. The gloomy Earl, with whom speech and laughter were so rare, thought to help his projects by taking a wife. Robert of Mowbray marries Matilda of Laigle. He married Matilda of Laigle, the daughter of that Richer who died so worthily beneath the keep of Sainte-Susanne,[80] the sister of that Gilbert whom we have seen foremost in the work of slaughter among the seditious citizens of Rouen.[81] Her mother Judith was the sister of Earl Hugh of Chester; and Robert seems to have entangled his new uncle in his rebellious schemes. His dealings with the Earl of Chester and the Bishop of Durham. One would have thought that Bishop William of Durham had had enough of rebellion. He was now as high in the King’s favour and counsels as any man in the realm. He was, or at least had been, on bad terms with his neighbour Earl Robert;[82] and it is hard to see what can have been his temptation to join in any seditious movement. Yet we know that there were churchmen concerned in the conspiracy;[83] it is certain that Bishop William lost the King’s favour about this time; and there seems little doubt that he was at least suspected of being in league with the Earl. Other conspirators. Others concerned are said to have been Philip of Montgomery, son of the late Earl of Shrewsbury,[84] Roger of Lacy, great in Herefordshire and in several other shires,[85] and one nearer to the royal house than all, William of Eu. William of Eu, the late stirrer up of strife between the King and his brother. Conspiracy in favour of Stephen of Aumale. The object of the conspiracy was said to be to put the King to death, and to give the crown to Stephen of Aumale, the son of Adelaide, whole sister of the Conqueror, by her third husband, Odo Count of Champagne and lord of Holderness.[86]
In short, the two men who had been the first to put castles into the King’s hands in Normandy were now plotting against him in England. Stephen of Aumale was to receive the English crown at the bidding of William of Eu. No general support for the plot. Such a conspiracy as this must have been merely the device of a few discontented nobles; it could have met with no broad ground of general support among men of any class. No doubt many men of all ranks and of all races would have been well pleased to get rid of William; but there must surely have been few who seriously hoped to set up Stephen of Aumale as his successor. No ground for Stephen’s claim. By a solemn treaty only five years old, the reigning Duke of the Normans was marked out as the successor to the English crown.[87] And if that arrangement was held to be set aside by later warfare between the brothers, there was nothing to bar the natural claims of Henry. Neither Norman nor English feeling could have endured that the man who was at once Norman and English should be set aside for a stranger from Champagne. Neither Norman nor English feeling could have endured that all the sons of the Conqueror should be set aside in favour of the son of his sister. Truly men of any rank or any race had good reason to revolt against William Rufus. But this was like the revolt of the Earls in the days of the elder William,[88] a purely personal and selfish revolt, which called forth no sympathy, Norman or English. Still a large party was ready to revolt on any occasion. And the occasion was presently found.
It was found, as far as Earl Robert was concerned, in a wanton breach of common right and of the law of nations, which it was assumed that the King would treat as an act of defiance against his authority. Four Norwegian trading ships had peacefully anchored in some Northumbrian haven. Earl Robert plunders the Norwegian ships. Earl Robert, his nephew Morel, and their followers, wantonly plundered the ships, and took away their whole cargoes. And the tale is told as if the act of plunder was meant directly as an act of rebellion against the King, whose peace was certainly broken in the most outrageous way.[89] The merchants complain to the King. The merchants, despoiled of all that they had, made their way to the King and laid before him their complaint against the Earl of the Northumbrians.[90] Had such an act been done by any of William’s own following, the injured men would most likely have met with no redress. But plunder done by anybody else on his own account was an outrage on the royal authority—one might perhaps say an encroachment on the royal monopoly of oppression—with which the Red King was not minded to put up. William straightway sent the strictest and sternest orders to Earl Robert to restore at once all that had been taken from the Norwegian merchants. Robert refuses redress. The Earl scornfully took no notice. The King then asked the amount of the merchants’ losses, and made it good to them from his own hoard. He is summoned to the King’s court. He then summoned the Earl to his court; but he refused to come.[91]
Such is the story which reached the cloister of Saint Evroul, a story altogether likely in itself, and which well fits in with and explains the entries in our own Chronicle. These bring us into the thick of the regular assemblies of this year of assemblies. The gathering at Rockingham dealt wholly with the affairs of Anselm; Gemót of Winchester. March 25, 1095. to the regular Easter assembly at Winchester which so soon followed it, Earl Robert, though specially summoned, refused to come. The King was very wroth against him, and sent word that, if he did not wish to be altogether put out of the King’s peace, he must come to the court to be held at Pentecost.[92] Signs in the heavens seem to have foretold that something was coming. The falling stars. April 4. It was now, on the night of the feast of Easter and again ten days later, that a crowd of stars was seen to fall from heaven, not one or two, but so thickly that no man could tell them.[93] If the stars fought against Malcolm on the day of Saint Brice, it was only in their courses, and no chronicler has recorded the fact. But it looks as if this special Easter shower, of which we have elsewhere heard other meanings,[94] was by some at least held to portend the fall of the great earl of the North. Messages between the King and Robert. The time between Easter and Pentecost, the time so busily occupied in another range of subjects by the coming of Cardinal Walter and the acknowledgement of Pope Urban,[95] was no less busily occupied by an exchange of messages between the King and his undutiful subject. Robert, like Godwine two-and-forty years before, demanded hostages and a safe-conduct, before he would risk himself before the Assembly.[96] This the King refused; Robert, arraigned on a definite charge of open robbery, had no such claim to hostages as Godwine, as King Malcolm, or even as his own neighbour Bishop William. Whitsun Gemót. Windsor, May 13, 1095. The Whitsun-feast was held; the King was at Windsor—not at Westminster—and all his Witan with him. Anselm was there, to be received into the King’s favour, and to engage to observe the customs of the realm.[97] But the Earl of the Northumbrians was not there.[98] The two accounts fit in perfectly without contradiction or difficulty. One gives us the cause of the special summons of Earl Robert to the Gemót; the other gives us its exact date and form.
The King’s march. Rufus, thus defied, at once took to arms. It would seem that he did not wholly rely on his mercenaries, but called out the national force of the kingdom.[99] He was again the King of the English, marching at the head of his people. He was marching against the rebel fortresses of the North, as he had once marched against Tunbridge, Pevensey, and Rochester. His motives. But these great preparations were not made simply to avenge the wrongs of the Norwegian merchants. Their wrongs were the outward occasion, and that was all. The refusal of Earl Robert to come to the King’s court was the counterpart of the more general refusal of the Norman nobles to come to the Easter Assembly seven years earlier.[100] The King knew, or had good reason to suspect, that there was again a wide-spread conspiracy afloat to deprive him of his crown and life. Of this conspiracy the open disobedience of Earl Robert was simply the first outward sign; the affair of the Norwegian merchants had merely brought matters to a head. Rufus may even have made use of their wrongs as a pretext for proving Robert’s doubtful loyalty. Robert was as yet the only open rebel. When the King drew the sword, he met with no resistance anywhere save where the Earl of the Northumbrians was in possession. Robert’s accomplices remained accomplices and conspirators; they did not dare to risk the chances of open rebellion. The Earl may have thought that the strength which had twice overcome a King of Scots might defy a King of the English also.[101] Robert resists. At all events, Robert of Mowbray withstood the King in arms, and a stirring and varied campaign followed.
It appears however from an incidental notice that Earl Robert and his fellows by no means trusted only to movements within the realm. Help expected from Normandy. It is certainly strange that a conspiracy in which William of Eu could be even suspected of taking a part should have found any support in Normandy; yet in those times men changed sides so easily that it is not impossible that he might have been again intriguing with Duke Robert himself. It is still more likely that some intrigue was going on, not with the Norman Duke but with the enemies of Rufus in Normandy as well as in England. It is certain that an invasion of south-eastern England was at this time daily dreaded;[102] and it is perhaps more likely that William of Eu, Stephen of Aumale, and the rest, were planning an expedition at their own risk than that Duke Robert was designing anything with the regular forces of Normandy. The invasion was plainly looked on as a serious danger; but there is no reason to think that it ever took place. The King thought it needful to take special means for guarding the coast. The King marches to Nottingham. He had gone on his northern march as far as Nottingham, accompanied not only, as we might expect, by many of his nobles, but what we might less have looked for, by both the archbishops and by the Cardinal Bishop of Albano.[103] Anselm’s command in Kent. One might almost think that some special news was brought to the King at this point; for it was now that Anselm, in this his short season of renewed favour with the King, was sent back to guard his city and diocese. He received the trust from the King’s own mouth; he went back to Canterbury, whither a writ from the King followed him bidding him stay in care of the city, ready at any moment, when news should be brought from the threatened havens, at once to gather together horse and foot for the defence of the land.[104] Anselm went back to his metropolis, and there stayed, as we have seen, ready to discharge these unusual duties, which, as the expected invasion never came, did not in the end involve any military action on his part.
Meanwhile the King went on, taking with him the Archbishop of York, who at Nottingham was already in his own province and diocese. The King draws near to Northumberland. When the march had gone on somewhat further, when the King and his host were drawing near to the borders of the Northumbrian earldom, that is, we may suppose, when they were near the banks of the Tyne, an incident happened which showed that the enemies of Rufus had other schemes besides those of open warfare either at home or abroad.[105] Gilbert of Clare or of Tunbridge, of whom we have already heard as a rebel in earlier days,[106] and who seems now to be looked on as a traitor in the King’s camp, calls the King aside, and, to his amazement, falls at his feet and craves his pardon for his offences. Confession of Gilbert of Clare. Let the King promise him forgiveness, and he will do something which shall deliver him from a great danger.[107] Rufus wonders and hesitates, but, after a little debate in his own mind, he promises the pardon that is asked for. Gilbert then warns the King not to enter a certain wood—have we again the tale of the hunting-party as the scene of assassination?[108] He was himself one of a body who had plotted the King’s death, and a party of them were now in the wood ready to slay him. He told the King their number and names;[109] but the story reads as if no immediate action was taken against them. The conspirators are baulked of their prey, and the King’s host marches on to attack the fortresses of the rebel Earl.[110]
Defence of Robert’s fortresses. Robert of Mowbray had made good preparations for defence. The main body of his followers, among them the men highest in rank and most trusted in valour, guarded the great frontier fortress of his earldom, The New Castle. the New Castle which Duke Robert had reared to guard the way to the further north by the old line of the Ælian Bridge.[111] Placed opposite the scene of Walcher’s slaughter at Gateshead,[112] it rose above the Tyne with far more of the usual position of a fortress than would be dreamed by one who merely passes so strangely near to it on the modern railway, or who lights almost by chance on gateway and castle imbedded in the streets of the modern town. The gateway, even the keep as it now stands, are both of later date than the time of our story. But the days of Monkchester were passed; the New Castle was already a place of arms, a strong post standing right in the way of the King’s advance against the rebellious land. Lower down the tidal stream, beyond the relics—they were then still something more than relics—of the great Roman rampart which left its name at Wallknol, at Wallcar, and at Wallsend[113]—fast by the mouth of the estuary whose shores and whose waters are now so thickly set with the works of modern industry—the Tynemouth. Earl’s castle of Tynemouth at once sheltered the rising monastery of Saint Oswine and guarded the approach to the river and to all to which the river led. Tynemouth was held by the Earl’s brother; Bamburgh. Robert himself, far to the north, kept the great stronghold of all, the old seat of Northumbrian power, which frowns over land and sea from the basaltic rock of Bamburgh. The King’s first attack was lucky; we have no details; but we read that the New Castle was taken, and that all the men that were in it were kept in ward. Taking of the New Castle. The choicest men of Earl Robert’s following were thus in the King’s hands; the inland centre of his power was lost; but he and his brother still held out in their fastnesses by the Ocean.