Story of Henry on the day of William’s death. On the day of the Red King’s fall Count Henry was hunting in the New Forest, but not in the same immediate part of it as his brother. The tale ran that the string of his bow broke, that he went to the house of a churl to get wherewithal to mend it. While the bowstring is mending, an old woman of the house asks one of the Count’s companions who his master was. He answers that he is Henry, brother of the king of the land. She tells them that she knows by augury that the King’s brother shall soon be king himself, and bids them remember her words.[836] Henry turns again to his sport, but, as he draws near to the wood, men meet him, one, two, three, then nine and ten, telling him of the King’s death.[837] Henry hastes to Winchester. In this account, he goes in grief to the place where the corpse lay;[838] a more likely version carries him straight to the hoard at Winchester, where, as lawful heir of the kingdom, he demands the keys at the hands of the guard.[839] The tale reminds us of Cæsar and Metellus.[840] William of Breteuil maintains the claim of Robert. Popular feeling for Henry. William of Breteuil withstands the demand. He pleads the elder birth of Robert and the homage which both Henry and himself had done to him. Robert had waged wars far off for the love of God; he was now on his way to take his crown and kingdom in peace.[841] A fierce strife arose; a crowd swiftly gathered, and it was soon seen on which side the feelings of the people lay. Men pressed together from all quarters to swell the company of him who in their eyes was the lawful heir claiming his right. The voice of England—so much of England as had heard the news—rose high against the stranger who dared to withstand the English Ætheling, the son of a crowned king born in the land. Thus, four-and-thirty years after the great battle, Englishmen still looked on the son of William Fitz-Osbern, nay on the son of William the Great born to a duke in Normandy, as outlandish men. But the son of William the Great, born to a king in their own land, they claimed as their own countryman. Strengthened by the favour of the people, the Ætheling put his hand on his sword’s hilt; he would endure no vain excuses to keep him out of the inheritance of his father.[842] A stop seems to have been put to this open strife, perhaps by night, perhaps by the coming of the lowly funeral pomp of the fallen king on the Friday morning. Formal meeting for the election. August 3. The unhallowed ceremony over, the Witan came together in a more regular assembly for the formal choice of a king.
The place of their meeting, whether in the minster or in the king’s palace, is not recorded.[843] Division of the assembly; Wherever it was, other voices were now to be heard besides those of the Englishmen of Winchester and the coasts thereof. These called with one voice for their own Ætheling; but the voices of the Norman lords were by no means of one accord. English and Norman supporters of Henry; Some of the immediate companions of the late king had hastened at once on his fall to pledge themselves to the cause of Henry. supporters of Robert. But in the assembly which now came together a strong party, Normans we may be sure to a man, supported the cause of Robert. There are few assemblies of which we would more gladly hear the details than of this, in which the claims of two candidates for the crown were debated, not without fierce strife, but at least without bloodshed. Comparison with the assembly after the death of Cnut. 1035. We are reminded of the assembly which, sixty-five years before, peaceably decided between the claims of Harthacnut and the first Harold.[844] But then the question was settled by a division of the kingdom; now such a thought is not breathed. The Conqueror had made England a realm one and indivisible; it was doubtful to which of his sons it was to pass, but, to whichever it passed, it was to pass whole. The divided kingdom now impossible. Unluckily, when debates concerned the kingdom only, without touching any ecclesiastical question, no Eadmer or William Fitz-Stephen was found to report them. We know only the result. Henry chosen; Henry was chosen, and he largely owed his election to one special friend. influence of Henry Earl of Warwick. This was his namesake Henry, Earl of Warwick, the younger son of the old Roger of Beaumont and brother of the more famous Count of Meulan, soon to be Earl of Leicester. Earl Henry and his wife Margaret of Mortagne bear a good character among the writers of their time, and they seem to have been designed for a more peaceful age than that in which their lot was cast. Chiefly by the influence of Henry of Warwick, Henry of Coutances and Domfront was chosen to the English crown. The work was almost as speedy as the burial of Eadward, the election and the crowning of Harold. Quite as speedy it could not be, when the Gemót of election was held at Winchester, while the precedents of three reigns made it seem matter of necessity that the unction and coronation should be done at Westminster. Before the sun set on the day after the death of Rufus, England had again, not indeed a full king, but an undisputed king-elect.
The hoard opened to the king-elect. Against a king-elect the gates of the hoard could no longer be shut. Not five thousand pounds only, but the whole treasure of the kingdom was now Henry’s. His first act was to stop one of the many sources by which the hoard was filled. One of them was found in the revenues of the vacant bishopric of the city in which they were met. Henry, still only chosen and not crowned, took on him to do one act of royal authority which all men would hail as a sign that the new reign was not to be as the last. He grants the bishopric of Winchester to William Giffard. As the uncrowned Ætheling Eadgar had confirmed the election of Abbot Brand by the monks of Peterborough,[845] so the uncrowned Ætheling Henry bestowed the staff of the see of Winchester on the late king’s Chancellor, William Giffard, doubtless a kinsman of the aged Earl of Buckingham. In his appointment we may perhaps see a wish on the part of a king who was emphatically the choice of the English people to conciliate at once the Norman nobles and the royal officials.[846] But seven years were to pass before the bishop-elect appointed by the king-elect became a full bishop by the rite of consecration. Consecrated 1107; died 1129. And what we should hardly have looked for in a minister of the Red King, some of those years were years of confessorship and exile endured by the new prelate on behalf of an ecclesiastical principle.[847]
But Henry, Ætheling and Count, was not long to remain a mere king-elect. The interregnum ended on the fourth day. Need for hastening the coronation. It was not a time to tarry; it was needful that the land should have a full king at the first moment that the rite of his hallowing could be gone through. It was known that Robert was on his way back from Apulia, and Henry and his counsellors feared lest, if the Duke should show himself in England or even in Normandy before the crown was safe on the new king’s brow, the Norman nobles in England might repent of an election in which it is clear that they had not very heartily agreed.[848] From Winchester therefore Henry went to London with all speed, in company with Count Robert of Meulan, who kept under the new reign the same post of specially trusted counsellor which he had held during the reign of Rufus.[849] Henry crowned at Westminster. August 5, 1100. On the Sunday after that memorable Thursday, Count Henry was admitted to the kingly office in the West Minster. As the Primate was far away, the rite of consecration was performed by the highest suffragan of his province, Maurice Bishop of London.[850] Form of his oath. The form of Henry’s coronation oath seems, like the oaths of his father and his brother,[851] to have had a special reference to the circumstances of the time. It is the oath of a reformer, of a king who has to bring back right after a season of wrong. As the memory of Rufus had been branded in his burial as the memory of no other king ever was, so it was branded no less in the coronation rites of his successor. He swears to undo the evils of his brother’s reign. The new king swore, as usual, to hold the best law that on any king’s day before him stood; but he swore further to God and to all folk to put aside the unright that in his brother’s time was.[852] These weighty promises made, Bishop Maurice of London hallowed Henry to king, and, according to the great law of his father, all men in this land bowed to him and sware oaths and became his men.[853] The work was now done; the diplomatic meshes of nine years before had been broken asunder by the strong will of the English people. England had again a king born on her own soil, a king of her own rearing, her own choosing, King of the English in a truer sense than those who went either before him or after him for some generations. Joy at Henry’s accession. Great was the gladness as the news spread through the length and breadth of the land. The long hopes of the English, the dark sayings of the Britons, were fulfilled in the coming of the king sworn before all things to undo the wrongs of the evil time. The good state was brought back; the golden age had come again; the days of unlaw had passed away; the Lion of Justice reigned.[854]
He puts forth his Charter. Before the Sunday of his consecration had passed, King Henry had put the solemn promises which he had made before the altar into the shape of a legal document. That very day he set forth in writing that famous charter which formed the groundwork of the yet more famous charter of John.[855] Its provisions. I have commented on its main provisions elsewhere, and I have tried to show how it at once establishes the new doctrines as to the tenure of land, and promises to reform the abuses to which they had already led.[856] I will now go through its main provisions in order. First, Henry, King of the English, does his faithful people to wit that he has been crowned king by the common counsel of the barons of the whole realm of England.[857] He had found the realm ground down with unrighteous exactions. The Church to be free; For the fear of God and for the love which he has to his people, he first of all makes the Church of God free. He will not sell the Church nor put her to farm.[858] ecclesiastical vacancies. When an archbishop, bishop, or abbot, dies, he will take nothing during the vacancy from the demesne of his church or from its tenants. And he will put away the evil customs with which the realm of England was oppressed, which evil customs he goes on to set down in order.
Reliefs. Secondly, he touches the question of reliefs. The heir of lands held in chief of the crown shall no longer, as was done in his brother’s time, be constrained to redeem his land at an arbitrary price; he shall relieve it by a just and lawful relief.[859] And as the King does by his tenants-in-chief, he calls on his tenants-in-chief to do in their turn by their under-tenants.
Marriage. Thirdly, he comes to the abuse of the lord’s rights in the matter of marriage.[860] He will take nothing for licence of marriage, nor will he meddle with the right of his tenants to dispose of their daughters or other kinswomen, unless the proposed bridegroom should be the King’s enemy. The rights of the childless widow are also secured.
Wardship. The fourth clause touches the case of the widow with children. The mother herself or some fitting kinsman shall have the wardship.[861] And as the King does by his barons, so shall they do in the case of the daughters and widows of their men.
The coinage. Fifthly, the coinage is to be brought back to the state in which it was in the days of King Eadward, and justice is denounced against false moneyers and other retailers of false coin.[862] Sharp justice it was, as we know from the annals of Henry’s reign.
Debts and suits. Sixthly, The King forgives all debts owing to his brother, and stops all suits set on foot by him. This is not the first time in which it is presumed that claims made by the crown must be unjust. Henry excepts debts arising out of the ordinary farming of the crown lands; he excepts also anything that any man had agreed to pay for the inheritances or other property of others.[863] Does this refer to property confiscated and sold by the King? Payments which had been made in relief for a man’s own inheritance are specially forgiven.[864]