Tynemouth and Bamburgh both stood long sieges. The strong site of the monastic stronghold enabled it to bear up for two months, while the fortress of Ida remained, as far as any strictly military operation was concerned, untaken during the whole war. Siege of Tynemouth. Tynemouth, which had so lately seen the burial of Malcolm, had now to endure the assaults of the royal force in the cause of Malcolm’s chief enemy. The holy place of Saint Oswine was strong alike by nature and art. Description of the site. At the mouth of the great Northumbrian river, on that bank of it which lay within Robert’s earldom, two headlands, divided by a small bay, stand forth boldly to meet the waves of the German Ocean. In later times the fortified precinct took in both points. Both came within the wall and ditch which cut off the peninsulas from the mainland. The castle of Tynemouth, strictly so called, covered the southern height immediately above the river. The northern promontory was crowned by the church and the monastic buildings, themselves sheltered by a vast gatehouse, which itself grew into a castle. Such, there is reason to believe, was the arrangement in the days of Malcolm and William. The castle of Robert of Mowbray rose sheer above the estuary, on its left bank. To the north, on the other headland, protected by a smaller fortress, stood the church and monastery which were growing up at his bidding, a tribute paid by the conquerors to the ancient worthies of the land. The monastic peninsula. The peninsula crowned by the monastic stronghold stretches forth into the waters, like a miniature of that which is at once the oldest and the newest Syracuse, since the art of man joined the island of Ortygia to the mainland of Sicily. While the neck is strengthened by works of defence, the rocky headland rises boldly from the waves on two sides. To the south the ground rises more gently above the bay between the two peninsulas, the bay to which the monastery above it gave the name of the Prior’s haven. The town which grew up in after times sprang up directly to the west of the approach to the northern headland; it now spreads itself on all sides save only on the two headlands themselves. Taking of Tynemouth. July? 1095. The first attack must have been made from the older site of the town; the small fortress, that most likely which guarded the neck of the monastic headland, was taken. The main castle to the south fell at the end of two months, and the Earl’s brother and the knights who defended it shared the fate of the defenders of the New Castle.
And now came the hardest struggle of all, the struggle for the old home of Ida and Bebbe. The castle of Bamburgh. Bebbanburh, Bamburgh—the royal city of Bernicia, which its founder had fenced first with a hedge and then with a wall or earthwork—the city small but strong, with its steep height approached only by steps[114]—though its main purpose was military and not religious, contained within its walls a sanctuary and a relic as worshipful as aught that was sheltered by Tynemouth or Jarrow or Durham itself. The relic of Saint Oswald. The ancient church of Bamburgh was honoured by the presence of the wonder-working hand of the martyred Bretwalda Oswald. That relic had in earlier days helped, along with the prayers of Aidan, to save Bamburgh from the fires of Penda; we are not told whether it was by the favour of the martyr that the elder Waltheof sheltered himself within the impregnable walls, while his valiant son marched forth to victory. The city, the small city which took in the space only of a few fields, had doubtless by this time given way to the Norman fortress, strengthened by all the arts which the Norman had brought with him. The castle precincts, in their widest extent, clearly cover the whole of the ancient site; at the south-western end they are still approached by steps which doubtless represent those which in the days of the old Northumbrian chronicler were the only means of mounting the height. At Bamburgh, as elsewhere, we are met by the never-failing difficulty which besets the student of the castles of that age. Can any of the work at Bamburgh which bears the impress of Norman art be safely assigned to the eleventh century? The keep. Or must we give up all to the twelfth, and believe that no part of the great centre of the building, the keep “huge and square,” was already in being when Robert of Mowbray defied the Red King from his rock? On such a point it is dangerous to be over-positive. The surrounding walls are of all dates down to the basest modern imitations; the chapel which guarded the relic of Saint Oswald, standing apart in the great court with its eastern apse overlooking the sea, was clearly, when perfect, no mean work of the next age. But whatever was the character or the material of the defences of Robert’s day, they were doubtless as strong as any skill within the Northumbrian earldom could make them. There, from the castle raised on the land side on the bulwarks of the rock out of which its walls and bastions grow, rising on the sea side over deep and shifting hills of sand, the eye might take in the long indented coast, the sea dotted with islands of which many play a part in the sacred story of northern England,[115]—Farn and its fellows hard by, hallowed by the abode and death of Saint Cuthberht—Holy Island itself further to the north-west, the landscape bounded in the far distance by the border hills of the two British kingdoms, beyond which Malcolm no longer stood ready to ravage the pastures of Northumberland. Robert defends Bamburgh against the King. Within that ancient fortress, rich with so many earlier associations, the proud and gloomy Earl now kept his ground, adding a new and stirring page to the long history of Bamburgh. His brother and his best knights were the King’s prisoners; but, strong on his rocky height, the Earl of the Northumbrians, heedless of the lesson of seven years earlier, dared to bid defiance to the King of the English and to the whole strength of his kingdom.
Strength of the position. And in truth the event proved that the rebellious daring of Robert of Mowbray had better grounds than the daring of those who had held Rochester and Pevensey, Tynemouth and the New Castle, against their sovereign. The well of the purest water, hollowed out on the highest point of the rock, and then, or at some later day, taken in within the massive walls of the huge keep, made Robert safe from all such dangers as threatened the Ætheling Henry when he held out on the rock of Saint Michael.[116] Direct attacks fail. All the power and skill of the Red King was brought to bear upon the ancient stronghold; but all was in vain; the castle of Bebbe was not to be taken by any open attack. William therefore took to slower means of warfare. Making of the Malvoisin. He made one of those towers which were so often made in such cases, to act as a check on the besieged castle, to form in fact an imperfect kind of blockade. This tower must have stood on the land side, to cut off all hope of help from any friendly quarter. It therefore could not have stood very far from the site of the present village; and in the fields nearly south of the castle some faint traces of earthworks seem not unlikely to mark the site of the tower to which the King gave the significant name of Malvoisin. Its effects. The new work is described as exercising all the energies of the royal army, and as striking such fear into the hearts of the besieged that many of Robert’s party now forsook him and entered the King’s service. Alleged despair of Robert. We are even told that the fierce Earl looked out from the height of Bamburgh in all fear and sadness, crying out to his accomplices by name to be mindful of the traitorous oaths which they had sworn to him. The King and his friends were merry as they heard, and none of those who were appealed to, tormented as they were with fear and shame, went back to share the Earl’s waning fortunes. Be this as it may, as far as open force went, Bamburgh and its lord remained unsubdued. The castle still not taken. To bring either of them under his power, the King and his followers were fain to have recourse to false promises and cruel threats.
The Evil Neighbour of Bamburgh was built; it was well stocked with guards, arms, and victuals. But Bamburgh itself was not taken any the more. William did not in this case, as he did in some of his continental enterprises, throw up the whole undertaking, because he did not succeed in the first or second attack. So to have done would have been pretty much the same as throwing up his crown; it would have been to unteach the great lesson of his reign, and to declare that the Earl of the Northumbrians was stronger than the King of the English. He might turn away in wilfulness from this or that Norman or Cenomannian fortress which he had attacked in wilfulness; but he knew the art of reigning better than to leave Bamburgh in the possession of a rebel earl. The King goes away. The work was to go on; but he was so far tired of it that he left it to be done by others. When the Malvoisin was well strengthened, the King turned away, and appeared no more before Bamburgh during the rest of the campaign.
Michaelmas, 1095. When Rufus left Bamburgh, he went southward; he then went to the war in Wales, and left the garrison of the Malvoisin to keep watch over their besieged neighbour. It may be left to casuists in chivalry to judge whether the knightly king approved of the means which were now taken in order to entrap the besieged earl. Robert entrapped by a false message. The garrison of the New Castle, doubtless not without the knowledge of the garrison of the Malvoisin, sent a false message to Robert, saying that, if he came thither privily, he would be received into the castle. The Earl, naturally well pleased at such a prospect of winning back his lost stronghold, set forth by night for the New Castle at the head of thirty knights. The men from the Malvoisin watched and followed him, and sent to the men of the New Castle to say that he was on the way. Knowing nothing of what was going on, Earl Robert drew near to the New Castle on a Sunday, expecting, it would seem, to be received there with welcome. His hopes were vain; he was taken, and the more part of his followers also were taken, killed, or wounded. He flees to Tynemouth. The version which goes most into detail says that, when he saw that he was betrayed by the garrison of the New Castle, he fled, with a part at least of his following, to his own monastery at Tynemouth. It is not easy to see how this could be, unless he was able either to win back the small fortress on the neck of the monastic peninsula, or else to climb up from the seaside at some less steep or less strongly defended point of the height. But the tale is so told that there must be at least some kernel of truth in it. He is besieged in the monastery, We read that the Earl stood something like a siege in his own monastery. He was able, with his small party, to defend himself in it for six days, and to kill and wound many of his assailants. At last, on the sixth day, he himself received a severe wound in the leg; the whole of his followers were taken, some of them also as wounded men. The Earl, himself among the latter, contrived to drag himself to the church of his own rearing, where still lay the body of the Scottish King whom some looked on as his victim. If claims of sanctuary were thought of, they were not allowed, and one who had turned the consecrated precinct into a castle had perhaps little claim to plead such privileges, even within his own foundation. taken, and imprisoned. Earl Robert was dragged away from his own church, and was kept in prison to await the King’s pleasure.
Bamburgh defended by Matilda of Laigle. A tale of twenty years back now repeats itself in our story. A strong castle is again defended by a valiant bride. As Norwich, after the revolt and flight of Ralph of Wader, was defended by Emma of Breteuil, so Bamburgh, after the revolt and capture of Robert of Mowbray, was defended by Matilda of Laigle. Married just as the revolt broke out, she had had, we are told, but little taste of joyful or peaceful wedlock; but she was at least zealous in the cause of her husband. She had Morel to her counsellor and captain, and the two held out in the ancient stronghold against all attacks. November, 1095. It was now winter, and King William had come back from Snowdon, not covered with much glory. He felt no mind to renew the siege of Bamburgh in his own person; but he bade that the captive Earl should be taken thither, and led before the walls, with the threat to his wife and nephew that, if the castle was not at once given up, the eyes of its lord should be then and there seared out in their sight. She yields to save her husband’s eyes. To this threat Matilda and Morel yielded, and the gates of the unconquered fortress were thrown open to the King’s forces. The valiant Countess thus saved her husband’s eyes; but his eyes were all that she could save. Robert was sent back to prison at Windsor, to live in bonds, at least for a season, and in no case to return to the rights and duties of an earl or a husband. Later history of Robert; two versions. But there are two widely different stories as to his later fate. The local history of Saint Alban’s told how one who, however guilty towards others, was at least a benefactor to that house, was allowed to spend his remaining days as a monk within its walls. At Saint Evroul a widely different tale was believed. It was there recorded by the contemporary writer that Robert survived his capture thirty years, but that the whole of that time was passed in hopeless imprisonment. If so, he must have been looked on as dangerous by the calm prudence of Henry no less than by the wrath or the revenge of Rufus. The story indeed runs that his imprisonment was deemed so irrevocable that it was held to amount to a civil death. The once proud Earl of Northumberland was counted to have passed away from among men as much as if the grave had closed over him alongside of Malcolm in his own Tynemouth. Later history of Matilda; her second marriage and divorce. By a special permission from Pope Paschal, Matilda was allowed to marry again, as though she had been his widow and not his wife. Nigel of Albini became her second husband; but, after the death of her brother Gilbert of Laigle, he thought he could better himself by marriage in another quarter. His marriage with Matilda was declared void, not on the ground that Robert was alive, but because of some kindred, real or alleged, between Robert and Nigel. The papal dispensation must have been badly drawn, if it did not provide for the lesser irregularity as well as for the greater. Of Matilda we hear no more; Nigel took him another wife of the house of Gournay. Gerard had by that time died on his way to the crusade;[117] his widow Eadgyth had married again, and their son Hugh was lord of Gournay. Their daughter, who inherited the name of Gundrada from her mother’s mother, took the place of the forsaken Matilda, who was thus left in a strange plight, as the widow, so to speak, of two living husbands.
Morel turns King’s evidence. Meanwhile her partner in the defence of Bamburgh, Morel, the nephew and steward of the fallen Earl, made his peace with the King by naming all who had any share in the late conspiracy. Not a few men of high rank, clerical and lay, were accused by him.[118] The time of the Midwinter Gemót drew nigh, at which the offenders would regularly be brought for trial. The King’s prisons were full,[119] and he determined that the gaol delivery should be a striking and a solemn one. Christmas Gemót of 1095–1096. The Assembly of that Christmas-tide was to be a Mickle Gemót indeed, a Gemót like those which had gathered in King Eadward’s day beneath the walls of London and in King William’s day upon the plain of Salisbury. A summons of special urgency went forth, bidding all men who held any land of the King, if they wished to be deemed worthy of the King’s peace, to come to his court at the appointed time.[120] The call was answered. The appointed place of meeting was Windsor, and there the Assembly came together. But the business to be done needed a longer time than the usual twelve days of Christmas, and the gathering was greater than the royal castle and its courts could hold. Adjourned from Windsor to Salisbury. January 13, 1096. The work began at Windsor; but an adjournment was needed, and on the octave of the Epiphany in the opening year we find the King and his Witan at Salisbury.[121] The wide fields which had seen the great review and the great homage in the days of the elder William could alone hold the crowd which came together to share in the great court of doom which was now holden by the younger.
Constitutional importance of the meeting. The Gemót of this winter, and specially the strict general summons sent forth by the King, are of high constitutional importance. They show how, even under such a king as Rufus, the old constitutional forms went on. They show how great is the error of those who dream that the Norman kingship in England was as thorough a despotism in form as it undoubtedly was in substance. Continuance of the old forms. In the eleventh century, as in the sixteenth, the whole future of English history turned on the fact that constitutional forms still went on, that assemblies were still brought together, even if they came together for little more than to register the edicts of the King.[122] So now Rufus himself, when about to make a great display of kingly power, specially summons no small part of the nation to take a share in his acts. Import of the summons. On the one hand, the need of the summons shows that, unless at some specially exciting moment, men did not flock eagerly to such gatherings.[123] On the other hand, the fact of the summons shows that kings then knew, that Rufus himself knew, that the gathering of such an assembly was both a sign and a source, not of weakness but of strength, on the part of the kingly power.[124] But in the form of the summons we may see that the assembly, though still large, is gradually narrowing. Tenants-in-chief only summoned. The summons goes, not to all freemen, not to all land-owners, but only to the King’s tenants-in-chief. Their great number. These, it must be remembered, were a very large body, including land-owners on every scale, from the greatest to the smallest. And it must be further remembered that in this body a vast majority of the influential members were strangers by birth, but that a great numerical proportion, most likely a numerical majority, were natives. The King’s thegn, who had kept a scrap of his old estate, was as much a member of the court as Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury or Earl Walter of Buckingham, though he was not so likely to be listened to in any debate that might arise as Earl Hugh or Earl Walter was. Still the special summons to the King’s tenants-in-chief marks a change; it marks the growth of the new ideas. The immediate reason was doubtless to be found in the main object for which the Assembly came together. The main work of the earlier Gemót of Salisbury was that all men in the realm, of whatever lord they held, should become the men of the King. Comparison with the Conqueror’s Gemót at Salisbury. William the Great therefore summoned the men of other lords, who had not up to that moment been his own men, who owed obedience to him as head of the kingdom, but who was not bound to him by any more personal tie. He summoned them in order that they might bind themselves to him by that personal tie, that they might become his men as well as his subjects. But the main work of the present Gemót was to sit in judgement on a crowd of offenders, of various ranks and orders, but all of whom were likely to be tenants-in-chief of the King. According to the notions which were coming in, the right court for their trial was the court of their peers, their fellow tenants-in-chief. The King, who could summon whom he would, who sometimes summoned few and sometimes many, this time, for this special purpose, summoned the whole body of his tenants-in-chief, great and small, and summoned no others. Effects of the practice of summons. But, as every summons tends practically to the exclusion of those who are not summoned, this summons of a particular class marks a stage in the process by which the Assembly shrank up from the crowd which decreed the restoration of Godwine to a House of Lords of the reign of Henry the Eighth.[125] Still the actual gathering, even of the summoned members only, must have been very great. Action of the Assembly. When it came together, the Assembly must have followed the same law as all other assemblies of that age. Practically it decreed as the King willed; only a few of the great men were likely to say anything to guide the King’s will; the mass of the assembly were not likely to do more than to make the King’s acts their own by crying Yea, Yea. We must however remember that they had not the slightest temptation to cry Nay, Nay. No general sympathy with the accused. The mass of the inhabitants of the land, Norman and English alike, were not likely to have the faintest sympathy with any one who really had a share in the late treason. The only question was whether any were accused who had no share in it. In the case of those who were charged only with conspiracy and not with open revolt, this might easily be. Otherwise the Red King, in the vengeance which he now took, did no more than justice, as justice was deemed in his day. But his justice was far sharper than the justice of the old kings, far sharper than the justice of his father. And the tone in which the story is told implies that men at the time felt that it was so.
Sickness of the Bishop of Durham. One of the great men of the realm, who, whether guilty or not, seems to have been at least suspected, died, while the Assembly was in session, before any formal charge had been brought against him. Before the Bishop of Durham came to Windsor, it was known in his own diocese that he had not long to live. Portents foretelling his death. One of his knights, Boso by name, had, while lying under a dangerous sickness, been favoured with trances and visions, which told him much that was comforting about the monks of Durham, and much that was fearful about other folk. He saw the old inhabitants of the land, he saw the new French settlers, above all, he saw the priests’ wives—these seem to be looked on as three classes of offenders, gradually increasing in blackness—suffering each a grievous doom.[126] His visions about the Bishop himself might perhaps point to an intermediate destiny; at all events they were understood as implying his speedy death.[127] His work at Durham. 1083. 1093. His work perhaps was done. Thirteen years before he had filled the church of Durham with monks;[128] three years before he had begun the great work of its rebuilding; and, by pressing it on with almost incredible speed, he had carried it on so far as to set an example of unsurpassed grandeur in its own style, an example which his own monks could not follow, but which Randolf Flambard could.[129] He is summoned to take his trial. William of Saint-Calais came to the Gemót, and was summoned by the King to appear to take his trial.[130] He pleaded sickness as his excuse for not appearing. Rufus declared, with his usual oath, that the excuse was a feigned one.[131] He sickens and dies. December 25, 1095-January 1, 1096. It was however thoroughly real. Bishop William was sick, and sick unto death. He was smitten on the day of the Nativity, and died on the day of the Circumcision.[132] His death-bed. He was comforted in his sickness by the presence and exhortations of several of his brother bishops who had come together for the business of the Assembly. There was Anselm whom he had withstood at Rockingham; there was his own metropolitan Thomas; there was Walkelin of Winchester; there was John of Bath, born, like himself and Anselm, beyond the bounds either of England or of Normandy. Debate as to his burying-place. These prelates debated concerning the place of his burial. They argued that he who had done such great things for Saint Cuthberht’s abbey should be buried in the place of highest honour within its walls. He himself declined any such place. He would be no party to any breach of Saint Cuthberht’s own rule, which forbade that any man should be buried within his minster.[133] The bishops therefore ruled that he should be buried in the chapter-house, so that his monks, when they came together, should have the tomb of their founder ever before their eyes.[134] So it was; He is buried in the chapter-house. he was borne to Durham, and there laid in the place which the bishops had chosen for him, among the tears and wailings of the brotherhood which he had founded, any one of whom, we are told, would gladly have died for him.[135]
This touching picture of the death which ended the varied life of William of Saint-Calais comes as an episode in the middle of the stern doings of the Gemót of Windsor and Salisbury. The Red King did not bear the sword in vain. Sentences of the Gemót. Yet, if his justice was sharp towards those whom it did smite, it was certainly somewhat capricious, or at least guided by expediency, with regard to those whom it smote and those whom it failed to smite. Some of the offenders were men of the highest rank, some even, it is implied, of the rank of Earl. But these powerful rebels, ashamed and weakened by the fall of their brother of Northumberland, were now deemed fitting objects of mercy. By the advice of the Wise Men, they were spared a public trial;[136] but some of them were made to pay a heavy price for being left safe in life, limb, and estate. Hugh of Shrewsbury buys his pardon. One is mentioned by name. Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury, who was at least suspected of a share in the plot, was dealt with privately by the King as his father had been at Arundel.[137] He bought his restoration to favour at the high price of three thousand pounds.[138] Roger of Lacy. Roger of Lacy lost his lands and was banished, as he would have been in the days of King Eadward, and his possessions were given to his loyal brother Hugh. But heavier penalties, unknown in King Eadward’s days, were in store for others of the conspirators, including one of the loftiest descent. January 13, 1097. At the adjourned meeting at Salisbury, Geoffrey of Baynard, bearing a name famous in London city, appealed no less a man than William of Eu of treason against the King, of conspiring to slay him, and to give his crown to Stephen of Champagne.[139] Combat of Geoffrey of Baynard and William of Eu. The charge was denied, and, as both parties were Frenchmen, the trial was, by the law of the Conqueror, referred to the wager of battle. The judicial combat which followed is memorable in the history of the time, and forms one of the landmarks in our early jurisprudence.