“Res miranda, et Dei virtus et viri bonitas nimis in hoc prædicanda; nam statim hostes, ut sparsi vagabantur per agros, tanta membrorum percutiuntur debilitate, tanta exteriori oculorum attenuantur cæcitate, ut vix arma valerent ferre, nec socios agnoscere, nec eos discernere qui eis oberant ex adversa parte. Illos fallebat cæcitatis ignorantia, nostros confortabat Dei et episcopalis benedictionis confidentia. Sic illi insensati nec sciebant capere fugam, nec alicujus defensionis quærebant viam; sed Dei nutu dati in reprobum sensum, facile cedebant manibus inimicorum.”
Now this is a legend of the very simplest kind; or rather it is not strictly a legend at all, but only a story on the way to become a legend. Beyond a slight change in the order, there is no reason to suspect that the facts of the case are at all misrepresented; they are simply coloured in the way in which it was natural that the successful party should colour them. There is in strictness no miraculous element in the story; it has merely reached the stage at which the germs of a miraculous element are beginning to show themselves. That Wulfstan would encourage his people to fight in a good cause, that he would pray for their success, we may feel certain. That his exhortation might take the shape of a promise—perhaps only a conditional promise—of victory is no more than was natural. And an anathema pronounced against the rebels is as natural as the blessing pronounced on the royal troops. We may be sure that men stirred up by such exhortations and promises would really fight the better for having heard them. And if the fact that Wulfstan had pronounced an anathema, or even that he was likely to pronounce an anathema, anyhow came to the knowledge of the rebels, it is hardly less certain that they would fight the worse for hearing of it. The only thing in which there is even the germ of miracle is the statement that the invaders were smitten with lameness or blindness or something like it, at the very moment when the Bishop pronounced his excommunication. Now, in all stories of this kind, we must bear in mind that mysterious power of φήμη (see [vol. ii. p. 309]), which I do not profess to explain, but which certainly is a real thing. News certainly does sometimes go at a wonderful pace; and the rebels might really hear the news of Wulfstan’s excommunication so soon that it would be a very slight exaggeration to say that it wrought an effect on them at the very moment when it was uttered. A body of men who had already broken their ranks and were scattered abroad for plunder hear that a sentence has been pronounced against them by a man whose office and person were held in reverence by all men, French and English—for the Britons I cannot answer. At this news they would surely fall into greater confusion still, and would become an easy prey to the better disciplined troops who had the Bishop’s exhortations and promises still ringing in their ears. To say that such men, confused and puzzled, not knowing which way to turn, were struck with sudden blindness and lameness would be little more than a poetical way of describing what really happened. That all this was owing to the prayers and merits of Wulfstan would of course be taken for granted; that the victory was owing to his prayers and merits is taken for granted in those versions of the story which do not bring in the least approach to a miraculous element. One change only in the story itself would seem, as I have already hinted, to come from a legendary source. I have in my own text, while following the details of Florence, not scrupled so far to depart from his order as to make the Bishop’s anathema come before, instead of after, the march of the royal troops from the city. That is, I have made the blessing and cursing take place at the same time. This seems better to agree with the account in the Gesta Pontificum. And, following, as it seems to me, the words of the Chronicle (geseonde), I have ventured to make Wulfstan actually see the havoc wrought by the invaders, while we should infer from Florence, as from Simeon, that he only heard of it. It is of course part of the wonder that his anathema should work its effect on men at a distance. By making these two small changes—which the other accounts seem to bear out—in the narrative of Florence, we get a version in which there is really no legendary element at all, beyond the pious or poetical way in which the discomfiture of the enemy is spoken of. To say that the enemy were smitten with blindness and lameness was an obvious figure of speech. To say that they were so smitten by virtue of the Bishop’s anathema was, in the ideas of those times, no figure of speech at all, but a natural inference from the fact. To say that they were smitten, while still at a distance, at the very moment when the Bishop pronounced the anathema was an improvement, perhaps rather a devout inference, so very obvious that it hardly marks a later stage in the story. The tale is as yet hardly legendary; it is only on the point of becoming so. But it is the kind of story which one would have expected to grow. Yet those later writers who mention the matter seem simply to copy Florence, without bringing in any further improvements of their own. It is strange that, in the local Annals, as in the Life of Wulfstan, the deliverance of Worcester is left out altogether.
The story of the deliverance of Worcester may be compared with the story of the overthrow of Swegen at Gainsburgh. See N. C. vol. i. p. 366. But the Worcester story is in an earlier stage than the Gainsburgh story. The main difference is that the hero of the one story was dead, while the hero of the other story was alive. The living Bishop of Worcester could not, even in a figure or in a legend, be brought in as acting as the dead and canonized King of the East-Angles could be made to act. The utmost that could be done in this way was when Henry of Huntingdon speaks of the exploits of the loyal army as the personal exploits of the Bishop whom he describes as lying before the altar. Wulfstan, notwithstanding his youthful skill in military exercises (see N. C. vol. ii. p. 470), could not be brought in as smiting the enemy, lance in hand, as Saint Eadmund did Swegen.
Another story of an army smitten with blindness is that of the Normans at Northallerton in 1069 (see N. C. vol. iv. p. 241). And a scene not unlike the scene before Worcester, though the circumstances are all different, and the position of the bishop in the story is specially different, is to be found in the rout of the Cenomannian army before Sillé in 1073 (see N. C. vol. iv. p. 553).
Two small questions of fact arise out of the comparison of our authorities. The expressions of the Chronicler (“forðig him was betæht þe castel to healdene”), of Simeon, and of William of Malmesbury in the Gesta Regum (“cui custodia castelli commissa erat”) would certainly lead us to think that Wulfstan was actually commanding for the King in the castle when the rebellion began. The detailed narrative in Florence makes him go to the castle only at the special request of the garrison when the enemy are on their march. There is perhaps no formal contradiction. Wulfstan had before now held military command (see N. C. vol. iv. p. 579), and he might have the command of the castle without being actually within its walls. But the story in Florence does not set Wulfstan before us as an actual military commander, but rather as a person venerated of all men whose approval of the course to be taken was sought by those who were in command. It is safest to take the detailed story in Florence, and to take the words of the Chronicler and of Simeon and William as the laxer way of speaking used by men who did not aim at the same local precision. The Bishop might in some sort be said to have the castle entrusted to him when the garrison had asked him to come into it.
The other point is that William of Malmesbury in both his versions seems to make Earl Roger present in person before Worcester. But the language of the other accounts (see [p. 47]) seems carefully to imply that, though he joined in the “unrede,” and though his men were engaged in the revolt on the border, yet he had not himself any personal share in that campaign. It is certain that, when we next hear of him (see [p. 58]), it is in quite another character and in quite another part of England.
A lately published record brings in a new actor in the defence of Worcester. This is the “Annales de ecclesiis et regnis Anglorum” in Liebermann’s “Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen,” 22. This contains an account of the deliverance of Worcester, enlarged from Florence, in which Abbot Guy of Pershore appears as Wulfstan’s military lieutenant; “Intererat quidam consilio providus Wido Persorcusis abbas. Hunc ultro se offerentem jus pontificale creans ad tempus militem, statuit belli ducem totum in Deo et in orationibus episcopi confidentem.” Guy was the successor of Thurstan (see N. C. vol. iv. pp. 384, 697) who died in 1087. He was one of the abbots deposed by Anselm in 1102. As Anselm himself had held a military command, the deposition could hardly have been on the ground of Guy’s exploits on this day.
The Attempted Landing of the Normans at Pevensey.
It is with some hesitation that I have spoken as I have done in the text, because it is hard to reconcile our authorities without supposing that the siege of Pevensey was accompanied by a sea-force on the part of the King. No ships have been spoken of before; none are distinctly mentioned now; some of the descriptions might be understood only of a land-force lining the shore; but operations on the water seem implied in some of the accounts, and they may be understood in any. There is no need to think of a great fleet; the sea-faring men of the neighbourhood could surely do all that is recorded to have been done.