Banishment of the Earl of Surrey. Earl William of Warren too paid the penalty of rebellion, rebellion aggravated by personal gibes against the King. If our accounts are correct, he was disinherited so soon that he went away to Normandy in company with Duke Robert. He is said to have had other companions in the same case.[1053] He was afterwards restored at Robert’s intercession; but the chronology is confused, and we may guess that his fall did not happen quite so soon as is said. If he did suffer forfeiture directly after the treaty, it must have been on some other ground, and not that of taking Robert’s side during the quarrel, which would have been covered by the treaty. On Earl William chastisement had a good effect; His restoration. he came back to be a loyal subject and special friend of King Henry during the rest of his reign.[1054]
Henry’s rewards and punishments. Other dangerous persons were got rid of one by one, as occasion served. Henry rewarded bountifully all who served him faithfully; but no enemy escaped him; no traitor avoided forfeiture or heavy fines.[1055] Forfeiture came before long on some men who were, after the earls, among the greatest of the men of Norman birth in England. Banishment of Robert Malet; of Robert of Pontefract. Such was Robert Malet, son of the gossip of King Harold, a man great in the east of England. Such was one equally great in the north, Robert of Pontefract, the son of Ilbert of Lacy. Charges were brought against them in the King’s court, and forfeiture and banishment followed.[1056] In another case we know the exact nature of the charge, nor can we condemn the punishment, except so far as it was turned to the private advantage of a favourite. Private war unlawful in England. It was our boast in England that we needed not the Truce of God, that, alike before and after King William came into England, private war, the dearest privilege of the continental noble, was always a crime against the law.[1057] Ivo of Grantmesnil harries his neighbours’ lands. But now Ivo of Grantmesnil, the rope-dancer of Antioch, took upon him to bring the licence of Normandy into England, and to lay waste the lands of some of his neighbours. This was a deed which could not be passed by in the days of the King who had come to make peace in the land. His trial, and conviction. A trial, and a huge fine on conviction, followed.[1058] Ivo, on the verge of ruin, betook himself to Count Robert of Meulan. He asks help of Robert of Meulan. Bargain between them. Let the Count reconcile him to the King, and he would again go to the crusade, and try to wipe out the shame of his former pilgrimage.[1059] A bargain was struck; Count Robert was to give Ivo five hundred marks towards his journey to Palestine, and was in return to take possession of all Ivo’s lands for fifteen years. Then they were to go back to his son Ivo, now a child, who was to marry the Count’s niece, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick.[1060] The elder Ivo went on his second crusade with his wife, the daughter of Gilbert of Ghent, and died on his pilgrimage. With him ended the short-lived greatness of the house of Grantmesnil in England. The inheritance of his father and grandfather passed away from the younger Ivo to swell the fortunes of the chief counsellor of the King.[1061]
Origin of the earldom of Leicester. The subtlety of the Count of Meulan was famous, and it enabled him to change his fifteen years’ possession of the lands of Ivo of Grantmesnil into a great hereditary earldom. A chief part of Ivo’s position came from his relations to the town of Leicester. Ivo’s relations with Leicester. He had succeeded his father as Sheriff of the shire and farmer of the royal revenues. He was also castellan of the fortress above the Soar, the fortress which the elder Eadmund won back for England and for Christendom,[1062] where a mound older than Æthelflæd[1063] looks down on the church of Robert of Meulan and the hall of Simon the Righteous. Other lords in Leicester. But the lordship of the house of Grantmesnil over the old Danish borough was not complete; besides the King and the Bishop of Lincoln, some rights in Leicester belonged to Earl Simon of Northampton.[1064] Robert Earl of Leicester. 1103. The cunning Count of Meulan contrived to unite all claims in himself, and became the first of the Earls of Leicester,[1065] that title which has passed to so many names, and which has drawn to itself alike the glory of a Montfort and the shame of a Dudley. Dies, 1118. Earl Robert kept his office and his prosperity for the remaining fifteen years of his life, and then died, fifty-two years after the great battle, with the wrongs of Ivo of Grantmesnil upon his conscience.[1066] Married, as we have seen, somewhat late in life,[1067] he was the father of two sons, both of whom were brought up with such care that they could, while still young, hold logical disputations with cardinals.[1068] Of these brothers, Robert, the elder, became a prosperous Earl of Leicester in England, while his brother Waleran became an unlucky Count of Meulan beyond the sea.[1069] Of one of his daughters we have already heard as helping to swell the irregular household of King Henry.[1070] The Earl himself remained the King’s counsellor, keeping on friendly terms with Anselm, while cleaving steadfastly to the ancient law of England in the matter of investitures.[1071] He too was an ecclesiastical benefactor, though on no very great scale. His college at Leicester. 1107. He founded or restored a college of canons within the castle of Leicester, where the small church of his building may still be seen embedded in the greater fabric into which it has grown.[1072] Its endowments transferred to Leicester abbey. 1143. But the greater part of its endowments were taken by the second Earl Robert to enrich the abbey of our Lady of his own foundation, the abbey where a more famous cardinal than those with whom its founder had disputed 1530. came to lay his bones.[1073]
Christmas Gemót. 1101–1102. King Henry had thus overthrown several of his open or secret enemies, and he doubtless wore his crown at the Christmas Gemót at Westminster with a greater feeling of safety. But the greatest work of all had still to be done. There was still one man in England whose presence was utterly inconsistent with the rule of any king whose mind was to give peace to his kingdom. Danger from Robert of Bellême. Peace, in Henry’s sense of the word, could not be in a land where Robert of Bellême was, to say the least, the mightiest man after the King. Henry knew his man; he knew that, sooner or later, the struggle must come between himself and such a subject. The King watches him. For a whole year he kept his eye upon the Earl of Shropshire and all his doings. Spies sent from the King watched all that he did; every blameworthy act was carefully reported and set down in writing.[1074] A bulky volume, one would think, must have been added to the library of the learned King. At last the moment came when Henry thought that it was time to act, and the form of action which he took was one which followed more than one precedent in earlier reigns. Easter Gemót. April 6, 1102. The Easter Gemót was to be held at Winchester. The King summoned Earl Robert to appear before the Assembly, and to answer openly on forty-five distinct charges of offences done either against the King or against his brother the Duke.[1075] Robert asks a licence to be accompanied by his men. We do not read that Robert, like others in the like case on earlier occasions, demanded a safe-conduct to go and to return; but we do read that he demanded—and it is implied that the demand was an usual one—a licence to come accompanied by his men. The licence is given. They were to serve, we may suppose, either as compurgators or as defenders by the strong hand, as things might turn out.[1076] The demand was granted; Earl Roger set forth; the King and his barons were waiting for his coming at Winchester; but he came not. Robert does not come. On the road he changed his mind; he knew that the result of any legal trial must be against him; he deemed, and doubtless with truth, that he would be safer in his own strong castles than he could be in the King’s court. He fled, we are told, breathless and afraid, a description which does not savour much of the fierce lord of Bellême. But at any rate the King’s messenger had to report that the Earl of Shropshire had gone elsewhere, and was not on his way to obey the King’s summons.[1077] The King’s proclamation. Henry did not hurry; he put forth a proclamation, declaring that the Earl, lawfully charged with various crimes, had not come to make his defence, and that, if he did not come at once to do right—to abide his trial—he would be declared an outlaw.[1078] He again summons Robert, who refuses to come. Along with the issue of the public proclamation, the King, clearly anxious to give no occasion for any man to say that the Earl had been harshly or informally treated, sent him a second personal summons to appear before the Assembly. This time Robert directly refused to come,[1079] and open war broke out. The war begins. The work of King Henry, as we have already heard, was to destroy the ungodly within his kingdom.[1080] He had to begin by doing that useful work on an offender whose ungodliness was on the grandest scale of all.
Greatness of Robert’s possessions. The overweening greatness of the house of Montgomery or Bellême, and the personal energy of its members, is shown in the range both of warfare and of negotiation which was opened by what was in its beginning a mere legal process on the part of the King of the English against an offending subject. We must always remember that, whatever Robert was at Shrewsbury or at Montgomery, at Bellême he was something more than an ordinary vassal of either king or duke. His acquisition of Ponthieu. He had lately increased his continental power by taking possession of the county of Ponthieu, the inheritance of his son, who bore the name of his own maternal grandfather, the terrible William Talvas.[1081] The Earl of Shrewsbury was thus entitled to deal with princes as one of their own order. His brothers Arnulf and Roger. He and the two best known of his brothers, those whom we have already seen leagued with him, Arnulf of Montgomery, lord of Pembroke, and Roger of Poitou, once lord of the land between Mersey and Ribble, were now again firmly joined together against the King.[1082] Wide range of warfare and negotiation. And they contrived to draw no small part of Northern Europe into a partnership in their private quarrel. That Robert of Bellême should be able to get together a large body of Welsh allies is in no way wonderful. He was indeed the sternest enemy of their nation; Welsh alliance of Robert. but, among that divided people, enmity on the part of one tribe or dynasty was a claim to support on the part of another, and all tribes and dynasties forgot every enmity and every wrong when there was a chance of harrying the fields and homes of the Saxon. Welsh allies of the rebel Earl play an important part in the story, and the more distant powers of Ireland and Norway are also brought within its page.
Just at this time the Welsh seem to have been stronger and more united than usual. We have seen that their momentary subjugation after the death of Earl Hugh of Shropshire had led to a successful movement while his successor was busy on the continent.[1083] Revolt in Gwynedd. The men of Gwynedd could not bear Norman rule; whether it took the form of law or of unlaw, it was equally against the grain. Their leader now was Owen son of Edwin, who, we are told, had been the first to bring the French into Mona.[1084] Settlement of Gruffydd and of Cadwgan and his brothers. This was before the end of the year of Earl Hugh’s death; it was in the next year that Cadwgan and Gruffydd came back from their Irish shelter.[1085] The phrase of the Welsh writer, that they came to terms with “the French,” must be understood as referring to their relations with Robert of Bellême. Cadwgan kept Ceredigion and a part of Powys, for which he and his brothers Jorwerth and Meredydd became the men of the Earl of Shropshire. Gruffydd seems to have held Anglesey as a wholly independent prince; there is at least no mention of vassalage in his case.[1086] Robert calls on the Welsh for help; Earl Robert now called on his British vassals to help him in his struggle with the King. As there is no sign that they had become the men either of King Henry or of any earlier king, the law of Salisbury did not apply to them. his gifts and promises. The promises of Robert of Bellême were splendid; so were his gifts; he almost seems to have won the help of the Britons by a promised restoration of complete freedom to their country.[1087] In the allies thus drawn to his banners he professed the most boundless trust. He put into their hands—so the Welsh writer tells us—his wealth and his cattle, perhaps also, what a Norman lord would specially value, the horses of noble breed which he had brought over from Spain, and whose race flourished in the land of Powys long after.[1088] A great and motley host was thus got together, which entered zealously into the cause of the Earl, and did not pass by so good an opportunity of finding great spoil.[1089]
Arnulf’s dealings with Murtagh. Meanwhile the Earl’s brother Arnulf at once strengthened the castle of Pembroke and looked further for allies than the land of Ceredigion and Powys. By the hands of his steward at Pembroke, Gerald of Windsor, he sent to Ireland to King Murtagh, to ask for the king’s daughter in marriage and for help in the struggle.[1090] Negotiation with Magnus. From what followed, and from the connexion between Murtagh and Magnus, we can hardly doubt that the negotiations of Arnulf reached to Norway as well as to Ireland, and that Magnus himself was a party to the course which was at once followed by Murtagh. Murtagh sends his daughter to Arnulf. The Irish king promised his daughter to the lord of Pembroke, in some sort his neighbour, and actually sent her to her affianced husband on board a great fleet designed to support the rebel cause.[1091]
King Henry had thus plenty of foes to strive against in his work of bringing back the reign of law and order in his kingdom. Henry’s negotiation with Duke Robert. But he too could negotiate beyond sea; he could stir up a diversion against the Count of Bellême and Ponthieu, which might do something to weaken the power of the Earl of Shropshire and lord of Arundel. The King sent letters to his brother Duke Robert, setting forth how Earl Robert had incurred forfeiture in the dominions of both of them, and how he had treasonably refused to appear in the general Assembly of England. He called on his brother to do as he was doing himself, and to smite the man who was a traitor to both his lords with the vengeance that was his due.[1092] The Duke attempted something after his fashion, that is his fashion in Normandy and not his fashion in Syria. The man who had been foremost in the crusading host had on his native soil sunk again into the feeble and half-hearted ruler whom we knew of old. Duke Robert besieges Vignats. Yet he did make an attempt to subdue the castles which held out for Robert of Bellême in the land of Hiesmes. He laid siege to Vignats, a castle lying south-east of Falaise, on a height looking to the north, not far from one of the tributaries of the Dive. It was an old possession of the house of Talvas, and in the next generation it became the site of an abbey of Benedictine nuns.[1093] It was now held on behalf of Robert of Bellême by a captain named Gerard of Saint Hilary. The garrison, if their state of mind is rightly described, wished the besiegers to make a fierce assault that they might have an excuse for surrendering without dishonour.[1094] But, under the generalship of Duke Robert on Norman ground, no fierce assault followed. Treason of Robert of Montfort and others. There were even traitors in the Duke’s camp. Robert of the Norman Montfort, whom we have heard of in the wars of Maine,[1095] and other lords in the Duke’s army, being, it would seem, in league with the rebels, burned their quarters and fled, no man pursuing them. They even constrained the loyal part of the army to flee with them.[1096] Victory of the besieged. It was not wonderful then that the garrison of Vignats plucked up heart, made a vigorous sally, and chased the voluntary fliers with loud shouts.[1097] A war followed, in which the whole land of Hiesmes was laid waste. Not only Vignats, but Fourches, Argentan, and Château-Gonthier further down the river, were all held by the rebels. Ravage of the Hiesmes. The loyal lords on both sides of the Oudon, Robert of Grantmesnil, the other son of the old Sheriff of Leicestershire, his brother-in-law Hugh of Mont-Pizon, and his other brother-in-law, Robert of Courcy, strove in vain to defend their lands. But the rebels were too strong for them, and the whole of that district of Normandy was laid waste with havoc of every kind.[1098]
Robert of Bellême strengthens his castles. Works at Bridgenorth. King Henry managed matters better in his island. The rebel Earl put all his castles in a state of defence. Arundel, Shrewsbury, and Tickhill, were all garrisoned, all supplied with provisions. So too was the Castle by the Bridge, where, as well as at Careghova, the works, still, it would seem, not wholly finished, were pressed on by day and night.[1099] The King’s plans. The King had to choose which fortress he would attack first. His plan seems to have been first to cut off Robert’s outlying possessions, before he made any attack on the strongholds of his power on the Welsh border. He besieges Arundel. And, first of all, he led his force—the host of England it is emphatically called—to the siege of the Earl’s great South-Saxon castle, that which lay open to the chance of help from the supporters of the rebel cause in Normandy.[1100] The King marched to Arundel; he set up, after the usual fashion, two evil neighbours to keep the fortress in check.[1101] He then gave part of his army leave of absence while the work of blockade went on.[1102] Truce with the besieged. The zeal of the defenders of Arundel in the cause of their rebel lord does not seem to have been strong; but they had a keen sense either of the honour of soldiers or of the duty of vassals. This last, to be sure, was a mistaken sense, according to the laws of England, above all according to the great law of Salisbury. They craved a truce, during which they might ask Earl Robert either to send them help or to give them leave to surrender. Robert was far away in his Mercian earldom, busy on two works. Robert and Arnulf harry Staffordshire. The defences of Bridgenorth were strengthening day by day, and Robert and Arnulf, at the head of their Gal-Welsh and Bret-Welsh forces—it is significantly hinted that Englishmen had no share in the evil work—were harrying the neighbouring parts of Staffordshire. A great booty of cattle, and some human captives, were carried off into Wales, the price of the help given by Cadwgan and his brother.[1103] The messengers from Arundel found their lord at some stage of these employments, and set forth to him the danger in which they stood from the King’s leaguer. Terms of the surrender of Arundel. Mournful, but feeling himself unable to send help to so distant a post, Robert of Bellême gave his garrison of Arundel full leave to make what terms they could with the King.[1104] They surrendered at once and with great joy; but they honourably stipulated that their lord Earl Robert should be allowed to go safe into Normandy. The King received them graciously and rewarded them with rich gifts.[1105] Arundel passed into the royal hands, to become in the next reign the seat of a more abiding earldom in the hands of the famous houses of Aubigny and Fitzalan, and to pass through them to the more modern, but perhaps more English, line of Howard.[1106]
The surrender of Arundel took away all fear lest any help should come to Robert of Bellême from his Norman partisans. But before the King made any movement towards the lands on the Severn, he marched far to the north-east, to the lands watered by the tributaries of the northern Ouse, on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Surrender of Tickhill. Here the mound of Tickhill was still held for the rebel Earl, and the new gate-house of his predecessor’s building still frowned defiance in the teeth of any advancing enemy.[1107] But Tickhill proved yet an easier conquest than Arundel. It needed no Malvoisin, no messages sent to Shrewsbury or Bridgenorth, to persuade its garrison to surrender. Question of the King’s presence. According to one version, the siege was not even deemed worthy of the royal presence. While Henry himself marched to the greater enterprise at Bridgenorth, a spiritual lord was deemed to be captain enough for the siege of Tickhill. Action of Robert Bloet. The work to be done there was entrusted to the hands of Bishop Robert of Lincoln.[1108] According to another version, which is perhaps not quite inconsistent with the other, the King himself appeared before Tickhill, and the garrison at once marched forth with all readiness to meet their natural lord--cynehlaford to Normans and Englishmen alike, cynehlaford above all to Yorkshiremen, if he was really born in their shire—and received him with all fitting joy.[1109] Later history of Tickhill. The castle of Tickhill or Blyth passed back again for a while to the kinsfolk of its former owner, and afterwards became a possession of the Crown.[1110] A collegiate chapel was founded within its walls by the first Queen Eleanor, and in the reign of her son Richard the ground between Tickhill and Blyth became the special scene of fantastic displays of chivalrous rashness.[1111] There was no licensed tournament-ground at Tickhill or elsewhere in the days of the King who made peace for man and deer.[1112]