After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed in Normandy for several years. His ill luck now began. Before the year 1076 was out, he entered, we know not why, on a Breton campaign. But he was driven from Dol by the combined forces of Britanny and France; Philip was ready to help any enemy of William. The Conqueror had now for the first time suffered defeat in his own person. He made peace with both enemies, promising his daughter Constance to Alan of Britanny. But the marriage did not follow till ten years later. The peace with France, as the English Chronicle says, “held little while;” Philip could not resist the temptation of helping William’s eldest son Robert when the reckless young man rebelled against his father. With most of the qualities of an accomplished knight, Robert had few of those which make either a wise ruler or an honest man. A brave soldier, even a skilful captain, he was no general; ready of speech and free of hand, he was lavish rather than bountiful. He did not lack generous and noble feelings; but of a steady course, even in evil, he was incapable. As a ruler, he was no oppressor in his own person; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity to say No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than the oppression of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others. William would not set such an one over any part of his dominions before his time, and it was his policy to keep his children dependent on him. While he enriched his brothers, he did not give the smallest scrap of the spoils of England to his sons. But Robert deemed that he had a right to something greater than private estates. The nobles of Normandy had done homage to him as William’s successor; he had done homage to Fulk for Maine, as if he were himself its count. He was now stirred up by evil companions to demand that, if his father would not give him part of his kingdom—the spirit of Edwin and Morkere had crossed the sea—he would at least give him Normandy and Maine. William refused with many pithy sayings. It was not his manner to take off his clothes till he went to bed. Robert now, with a band of discontented young nobles, plunged into border warfare against his father. He then wandered over a large part of Europe, begging and receiving money and squandering all that he got. His mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William and Matilda after so many years of faithful union. William rebuked his wife for helping his enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded the mother’s love for her first-born. The mother was forgiven, but her messenger, sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery.
At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in the border-fortress of Gerberoi. The strife between father and son became dangerous. William besieged the castle, to undergo before its walls his second defeat, to receive his first wound, and that at the hands of his own son. Pierced in the hand by the lance of Robert, his horse smitten by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to the ground, and was saved only by an Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggod of Wallingford, who gave his life for his king. It seems an early softening of the tale which says that Robert dismounted and craved his father’s pardon; it seems a later hardening which says that William pronounced a curse on his son. William Rufus too, known as yet only as the dutiful son of his father, was wounded in his defence. The blow was not only grievous to William’s feelings as a father; it was a serious military defeat. The two wounded Williams and the rest of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siege of Gerberoi was raised.
We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peace between father and son. In the course of the year 1080 a peace was patched up, and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert’s energies in an expedition into Scotland. In the autumn of the year of Gerberoi Malcolm had made another wasting inroad into Northumberland. With the King absent and Northumberland in confusion through the death of Walcher, this wrong went unavenged till the autumn of 1080. Robert gained no special glory in Scotland; a second quarrel with his father followed, and Robert remained a banished man during the last seven years of William’s reign.
In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the Truce of God again renewed which we heard of years ago. The forms of outrage on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which the strong hand of William had put down more thoroughly than the Truce would do, had clearly begun again during the confusions caused by the rebellion of Robert.
The two next years, 1081–1082, William was in England. His home sorrows were now pressing heavily on him. His eldest son was a rebel and an exile; about this time his second son died in the New Forest; according to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of Edwin, who had never forgotten her English lover, was now promised to the Spanish King Alfonso, and died—in answer to her own prayers—before the marriage was celebrated. And now the partner of William’s life was taken from him four years after his one difference with her. On November 3, 1083, Matilda died after a long sickness, to her husband’s lasting grief. She was buried in her own church at Caen, and churches in England received gifts from William on behalf of her soul.
The mourner had soon again to play the warrior. Nearly the whole of William’s few remaining years were spent in a struggle which in earlier times he would surely have ended in a day. Maine, city and county, did not call for a third conquest; but a single baron of Maine defied William’s power, and a single castle of Maine held out against him for three years. Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont and Fresnay, revolted on some slight quarrel. The siege of his castle of Sainte-Susanne went on from the death of Matilda till the last year but one of William’s reign. The tale is full of picturesque detail; but William had little personal share in it. The best captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain against this one donjon on its rock. William at last made peace with the subject who was too strong for him. Hubert came to England and received the King’s pardon. Practically the pardon was the other way.
Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the Conqueror. Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful in all. One last success was indeed in store for him; but that was to be purchased with his own life. As he turned away in defeat from this castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of domestic sorrow, he may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse of Waltheof, the curse of the New Forest, was ever tracking his steps. If so, his crimes were done in England, and their vengeance came in Normandy. In England there was no further room for his mission as Conqueror; he had no longer foes to overcome. He had an act of justice to do, and he did it. He had his kingdom to guard, and he guarded it. He had to take the great step which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture of his reign be painted for all time as no reign before or after has been painted.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM.
1081–1087.
Of two events of these last years of the Conqueror’s reign, events of very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken. The Welsh expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on British ground, and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of England. William now made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but he was constantly called over to England. The Welsh campaign proves his presence in England in 1081; he was again in England in 1082, but he went back to Normandy between the two visits. The visit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more characteristic act of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it. The cruelty and insolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much more than he deserved, had passed all bounds. In avenging the death of Walcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself or allowed any other man to do. And now, beguiled by a soothsayer who said that one of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed of succeeding to the throne of Gregory the Seventh. He made all kinds of preparations to secure his succession, and he was at last about to set forth for Italy at the head of something like an army. His schemes were by no means to the liking of his brother. William came suddenly over from Normandy, and met Ode in the Isle of Wight. There the King got together as many as he could of the great men of the realm. Before them he arraigned Ode for all his crimes. He had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he had shown himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the realm. Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for the defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on his wild schemes in Italy. How was he to deal with such a brother, William asked of his wise men.
He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak. William then gave his judgement. The common enemy of the whole realm should not be spared because he was the King’s brother. He should be seized and put in ward. As none dared to seize him, the King seized him with his own hands. And now, for the first time in England, we hear words which were often heard again. The bishop stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the privileges of his order. He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge him but the Pope. William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his answer ready. “I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom I set over my kingdom.” So the Earl of Kent was carried off to a prison in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for the release of the Bishop of Bayeux.