§ 3. The Invasion of Robert.
January-August, 1101.
Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101. The first year of the twelfth century was a stirring time for England, though it was not crowded with great and striking events like the last year of the eleventh. It reads like an earlier chapter of our story coming over again. We have now again to tell well nigh the same tale which we told at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Again we have a Norman rebellion on English soil; again we have a Norman invasion; again the English people cleave steadily to the king whom they have chosen; again the Primate and the bishops in general take the side which was at once the side of the King and of the people. Action of the Bishop of Durham, And, as if to make the likeness square in the smallest details, a bishop set free from bonds is the foremost stirrer up of mischief, and again three sons of Earl Roger are the most active leaders of the revolt. of the sons of Earl Roger. The part of Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the former rebellion is in the present played to some extent by Bishop Randolf of Durham; the part of Robert of Bellême is played again in more than all its fulness by Robert of Bellême himself. Plots to give the crown to Duke Robert. There is again a party eager to place the Duke of the Normans on the throne of England; but this time that party is balanced by another which in the other tale does not appear till later, A party in Normandy for Henry. a party eager to place the King of the English in the ducal chair of Normandy.
Character of Robert and Eadgar. Robert, like his chosen companion Eadgar, could play an active and honourable part anywhere save in his own country. Both alike show to far greater advantage in Palestine and in Scotland than in Normandy or in England. The seeming inconsistency is not hard to understand. Neither of them perhaps lacked mere capacity—Robert certainly did not. And Robert most certainly did not lack generous feeling. But both lacked that moral strength without which mere feeling and mere capacity can do very little. Such men can act well and vigorously now and then, by fits and starts, when some special motive is brought to bear upon them. They can act better on behalf of others than they can on behalf of themselves, because, when they act for others, a special motive is brought to bear upon them. Their own cause they may, if they like, neglect or betray—forgetting that, when a prince betrays his own cause, he commonly betrays the cause of many others; but it is a point of honour not to betray or to neglect the cause of another which is entrusted to them. Thus it was that both Robert and Eadgar, who could do nothing for themselves, could do a good deal for others, whether as counsellors, as negotiators, or as military commanders. Robert as crusader. The crusade had brought out all Robert’s best qualities; but we have seen that, even on the crusade, he had yielded to any great and sudden temptation. Amidst so many noble and valiant comrades, he could not shrink from the siege or the battle; and, once brought up to the siege or the battle, he showed himself, not only a daring soldier, but a skilful captain. But at Laodikeia he had been the same man that he was at Rouen. His relapse on his return to Normandy. Now that he was again at Rouen, Antioch and Jerusalem passed away; it was all Laodikeia with him. The dream of winning the English crown floated before his eyes, and at last stirred him up to action. His renewed misgovernment. Otherwise he sank into his old listlessness, his old lavishness, his old vices and follies of every kind. It may be an overdrawn picture which paints him as lying in bed till noon, and neglecting to attend mass, because he had no clothes to go in; the base persons of both sexes who surrounded him had carried them all off. Some odd chance that happened once must have been spoken of as a habit.[998] But there is no ground for doubting the general description of Robert’s misgovernment or rather no-government, both before he went to the crusade and after he came back from it.
Parties in England and Normandy. It may at first sight seem a paradox that there should be at the same moment a party in Normandy anxious to hand over the duchy to Henry and a party in England anxious to hand over the kingdom to Robert. But quiet men in Normandy, who wished their country to enjoy some peace, would naturally wish to place it under the rule of Henry, while the kind of men who, at the accession of Rufus, had wished to bring Robert into England would equally wish to bring him now. Henry’s strict rule distasteful to the Norman nobles. They had perhaps already found out that where Henry reigned none might misdo with other, and to misdo with other was to a large part of the Norman nobles the very business of life.
Their plots against him. The greater part of those nobles were now beginning to plot against the King. The estates which most of them held in Normandy gave them special opportunities for so doing, by giving them excuses for going to and fro between England and Normandy. Robert of Bellême and his brothers. Of this they were not slow to take advantage. The three sons of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, Robert of Bellême and his brothers Arnulf and Roger, were busy in this work; Robert of Pontefract. Ivo of Grantmesnil. so was Robert the son of Ilbert of Lacy, beginning to be known as Robert of Pontefract; so was Ivo of Grantmesnil, son of the deceased Sheriff of Leicestershire, himself best known as the rope-dancer of Antioch. Earl Walter. And we are somewhat surprised to find on the same list, now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard, lord of Longueville and Earl of Buckingham. All these were in secret communication with the Duke.[999] But none of them, Robert of Bellême least of all, was inclined to serve the Duke or any other lord for naught. Duke Robert’s grants to Robert of Bellême. Duke Robert distributed castles and lands among them, and promised to give them greater gifts still when he should be king of England.[1000] To Robert of Bellême he granted the forest of Gouffers, and the castle of Argentan of whose siege we heard seven years before;[1001] he further confirmed him in a claim very dear to the house of Bellême, by granting him the ducal right of advowson over the bishopric of Seez.[1002] He gives back Gisors to Pagan. And, strangest of all, the Duke gave back the fortress of Gisors, the bulwark of his duchy, to its former holder Theobald or Pagan, because he had once hospitably entertained him.[1003] Did not Robert of Bellême ask that, if his own master-piece of engineering was to pass out of the hands of the prince, it should pass into no hands but his own? Thus Duke Robert’s way of making ready for the conquest of England was to squander the resources of Normandy. Every inch of his territory, every stone of his fortresses, stood ready to be granted away, almost to any one who would take the trouble to ask for them.
Christmas Gemót at Westminster. 1100–1101. Things were thus brewing through the winter without any open outbreak. At Christmas King Henry wore his crown at Westminster.[1004] That was a better place than Gloucester for watching movements beyond the sea. And soon after the feast and assembly the cause of Robert was strengthened by an unexpected helper, whose coming seems to have put a new life into his supporters. Escape of the Bishop of Durham. The Bishop of Durham, Randolf Flambard, suddenly showed himself in his native land of Normandy. We saw him but lately shut up, to the joy of all men, in the Conqueror’s Tower. His keeper, William of Mandeville, may have been negligent; at all events his captivity was easy.[1005] The King clearly did not mean it to be harsh, as he allowed him two shillings a day for his keep. Flambard, with all his sins, was a pleasant and liberal companion, and he kept many friends, even in his fall.[1006] He was allowed the company of those friends; with them he made merry in his prison, and gave costly banquets to them and to his keepers.[1007] At last the means of escape were given to him; a rope was brought hidden in a vessel of water or wine. The Bishop made a feast for his keepers, and plied them well with the wine. When they were snoring in their drunken sleep, Flambard tied his rope to the small column which divided one of the double windows usual in the architecture of his day.[1008] Even at such a moment, he did not forget that he was now a bishop; he took his pastoral staff with him, and began to let himself down by the rope. But he had forgotten another, and at that moment a more useful, part of the episcopal dress. He left his gloves behind; so his hands suffered sadly in his descent. Moreover the Bishop was a bulky man and his rope was too short; so he fell with a heavy fall, and lay groaning and half dead.[1009] But his friends and followers were at the foot of the Tower ready to help him. How they came there it is not easy to see, unless there was treason in the fortress; they should surely have been kept out by the wall with which Rufus, at such cost to his people, had surrounded his father’s Tower.[1010] So however the tale is told. The Bishop’s faithful helpers had got good horses ready and his treasure all safe. They set sail for Normandy; Flambard went in one ship, his witch mother with the treasure in another. Adventures of his mother. This second vessel was seized by pirates and the treasure carried off; the old woman and the crew reached Normandy despoiled and sad.[1011] His reception by Duke Robert; he stirs him up against Henry. Flambard made his way to the court of Duke Robert, became his chief counsellor, and worked hard to stir him up by every means to an invasion of England.[1012]
Easter Gemót. April 21, 1101. Meanwhile King Henry held the Easter feast at Winchester. The questions between the King and Anselm adjourned. The only recorded business of the meeting is that, as the messengers who had been sent to the Pope had not come back, the matters in dispute between the King and the Archbishop were adjourned till their return.[1013] But meanwhile most of the chief men of Norman birth in England were, of their mickle untruth, the Chronicler says, plotting with the Duke against the King.[1014] Growth of the conspiracy. Any excuse was enough for treason; if Henry refused to make lavish grants after the manner of his brother, the refusal made another traitor.[1015] Instead of a list of the conspirators, we get a list of the few who remained faithful. The few faithful. These were the two Beaumont brothers, Roger Bigod, Henry’s old friend Richard of Redvers, and the lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan, Robert Fitz-Hamon.[1016] To these we ought surely to add old Earl Hugh; but he was drawing near to the end of his days. The rest sent secret messages to Robert, and mocked openly at Godric and Godgifu. It would seem however that there was as yet no open rebellion on English ground.
Whitsun Gemót. June 9, 1101. Popular character of the assembly. The King next kept the Whitsun feast; the place is not mentioned, but it was doubtless Westminster; and the malecontents do not seem to have followed the old tactics of refusing to appear in the assembly. This Pentecostal gathering is spoken of as a vast assemblage both of the nobles and of the people in general.[1017] In an assembly held close to London the popular element would, as in the days of Stephen, be better able to make itself felt than at Winchester and Gloucester. Advice of Robert of Meulan. And it was on the popular element that the King relied. We are told that his subtle counsellor from Meulan taught him that, at such a moment as this, he must be lavish of promises, even to the length of promising London or York, if they should be asked for.[1018] He must promise now, and, when peace comes again, he may take all back again.[1019] In the assembly, King and nobles met with mutual suspicions. Mediation of Anselm. The common voice of all ranks put Anselm forward as the mediator between the nation and its sovereign. It was indeed his constitutional place, a place which in the late reign Anselm had never been able to fill, but in which he was now called on to act, and in which he acted honourably and vigorously. Renewed promise of good laws. A second promise of good laws was the result.[1020] Parties were now divided very much as they had been at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Anselm played the part of Lanfranc; The Church and the people for Henry. the bishops were all loyal; the English people clave unswervingly to the king of their own choice, the king born on their own soil, the king who could speak to the hearts of Englishmen in the English tongue. They, we are emphatically told, knew nothing of the rights of any other prince.[1021] They were for the English king, son of a king; they had no part or lot in the foreign duke, son of a duke. And it is implied that, not only the English by descent, but that men of all classes and all races, except the few great men who had a vested interest in anarchy, were with one consent steady in their loyalty to the King and ready to fight for him against any invader. England united against Norman invasion. There was again an united nation, a nation perhaps more united than it had been five-and-thirty years before, ready to withstand the new, the last attempt, at a Norman conquest of England. If a few earls and great lords played a game of yet more active treason than had been played by Eadwine and Morkere, they were not able, as Eadwine and Morkere had been able, to keep back any part of the force of England from joining the national standard.
Importance of the campaign of 1101. The campaign which now followed, if campaign is the right word when armies merely look at one another without fighting, marks an important stage in the process which it was the work of Henry’s reign finally to carry out, Fusion of Normans and English under Henry. Last opposition of Normans and English. the fusion of Normans and English in England. The siege of Rochester was the last time when Normans and Englishmen, by those names, met in arms as enemies on English ground. Now, at Pevensey and at Portsmouth, we for the last time hear of Englishmen on English ground spoken of in such a way as to imply that there were other dwellers in England who were not English. In the first year of Henry such language was still true; to go no further, the chief counsellor of the King was the man who had been the first to break down the English barricade on Senlac. Long before the last year of Henry, the men who had fought on Senlac on either side had passed away; the sons and grandsons of the conquerors had put on the nationality of the conquered. Warfare of 1102. The struggle which did not come to blows this year did come to blows in the next; the fighting which was found not to be needed against Robert of Normandy was found to be needed against Robert of Bellême. Peace of King Henry. 1102–1135. Then for thirty-three years there was peace in the island, though there was often war on the mainland. Englishmen believed that the old score was wiped out when they won Normandy for an English king; and the belief, if partly a delusion, was not wholly so. English feeling about Tinchebrai. 1106. On English ground the distinction of races died out during the long peace of Henry; when the anarchy came, men tore one another in pieces on other pretences. But now Englishmen still go forth to withstand a Norman invasion, Englishmen marked off by the English name, not only from men of other lands, but also, though for the last time, from men who were not English within the English kingdom itself.
Meanwhile the exhortations of the Bishop of Durham had had their effect on the sluggish mind of the Norman Duke. Robert’s fleet. July, 1101. In the course of July the fleet which was to win England for Robert was ready at Tréport.[1022] The ducal navy bore the force that was designed for the new conquest, horsemen, archers, and foot-soldiers of other kinds. King Henry meanwhile brought together the hosts of England. Henry’s levy. As of old, the fyrd flocked together from all parts, pressing on with a good will to the defence of England and her King. Henry now, like his brother thirteen years before, had on his side the two great moral powers, the people and the Church. Anselm and his contingent. There was no need this time to throw scorn on the men who came as the military contingent of the see of Canterbury. With them Anselm came in person,[1023] not surely to wield weapons with his own hands; but doubtless to bring about peace, if so he could, and, failing that, to exhort his flock to the last and most terrible of duties, to fight without flinching in a righteous war, when peace has become hopeless. It was not Anselm’s first sight of warfare; but he might now learn the difference between Duke Roger’s war of aggression against Capua, and the war which the English people were ready to wage for their native land and their native king.[1024] The English at Pevensey. The King and the Primate, the national force ready to act at their bidding, the stranger nobles ready to betray them to the invader, gathered once more on the old battle-ground of Pevensey.[1025] There two invading Norman fleets had already shown themselves, with widely different results from their invasions. William Count of Mortain. The third was looked for on the same spot, perhaps all the more because of the very doubtful faith of the new lord of Pevensey, Count William of Mortain. For that same reason it was all the more needful to secure such a post against the invaders. At Pevensey then, under the ancient walls and the new donjon, the army came together, waiting for the coming of the hostile fleet. But Henry took means to check them on their voyage. The English fleet sent out. He sent forth his ships to watch the coasts, to watch the enemy and to hinder them from landing.[1026] But here we are met with a somewhat strange fact. Some of the crews desert to Robert. This is not the first time that we have found Englishmen at sea less faithful than Englishmen on land. Tostig found allies among the sailors who were sent to meet him;[1027] so now did Robert. Some of the crews threw aside their allegiance, joined the invaders, and guided them to land. Alleged agency of Flambard. This piece of treason is attributed to the craft and subtlety of the Bishop of Durham, perhaps only, as in the case of Eadric, from the general belief that, whatever mischief was done, he must have been the doer of it.[1028]