Denier of Robert le Frison

CHAPTER IX
THE LAST YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR

With the peace of Blanchelande we enter upon the last phase in the life of William the Conqueror, and this although more than the half of his English reign still lay in the future. It must be owned that no unity of purpose or achievement can be traced underlying this final stage; the history of these last years is little more than a series of disconnected episodes, of which the details themselves are very imperfectly known to us. It has, in fact, been customary for historians to regard this period as marking somewhat of a decline in the character and fortunes of the Conqueror; a decline which the men of the next generation were inclined to attribute to supernatural vengeance pursuing the king for his execution of Earl Waltheof in 1076. “Such was his resolution,” says Orderic, “that he still maintained a brave fight against his enemies, but success did not crown his enterprises now as formerly, nor were his battles often crowned with victory.”[[264]] This idea of retributive fate, characteristic of the medieval mind, has received from historians various adaptations and exemplifications, but perhaps a more reasonable explanation of the tameness of the last years of the Conqueror would be that the achievements of the decade between 1060 and 1070 inevitably make the succeeding history something of an anticlimax. The Conqueror’s last wars are indeed inconsiderable enough when compared with the campaigns of Le Mans and Hastings, but the most unique undertaking of his life falls within two years of its close; and with the Domesday Survey before us we need no further proof that the far-sightedness of the king’s policy and the strength of his executive power were still unimpaired at the very close of his career.

The main cause of the difficulties which beset the King in these latter years was the undutiful eagerness of Robert of Normandy to anticipate his inheritance. It was natural enough that Robert should wish to enjoy the reality of power; for a dozen years at least he had been the recognised heir of Normandy, and the peace of Blanchelande had recently assigned him the county of Maine. But so early as 1074 the earls of Hereford and Norfolk, in planning their revolt, are understood to have reckoned the disagreement between the King and his eldest son among the chances in their favour,[[265]] and it is certain that Robert had been bitterly discontented with his position for some time before he broke out into open revolt. The chronology of his movements is far from clear; but at some time or other he made a wild attempt to seize the castle of Rouen, and when this failed he found an immediate refuge and base of operations in the land of Hugh de Châteauneuf, a powerful lord on the border between Normandy and the royal demesne, who allowed him to occupy his castles of Raimalast, Sorel, and Châteauneuf. King William, on his part, confiscated the lands of the rebels; he also took into his pay Count Rotrou of Mortagne, the overlord of Hugh of Châteauneuf for Raimalast; and Robert was soon driven to seek a more distant exile in foreign parts. He first visited Flanders, but Robert the Frisian, notwithstanding his enmity towards his formidable brother-in-law, did not think it worth while to spend his resources upon his irresponsible nephew, for the latter is represented as wandering vaguely over Touraine, Germany, Aquitaine, and Gascony in great destitution. To such straits was he reduced, that his mother provoked the one dispute which varied the domestic peace of the Conqueror’s married life by sending supplies to her son in exile. The king, on discovering this, became convulsed with rage, poured reproaches on his queen for her support of a rebel, and ordered one of her messengers, who happened to be within his power, to be seized and blinded. The latter, however, a Breton named Samson, received a timely hint of his danger from persons in the confidence of the queen, and took refuge in the monastery of St. Evroul, “for the safety alike of his soul and body,” says Ordericus Vitalis, who for some forty years was his fellow-inmate in the abbey.

At last King Philip took pity upon the fugitive Robert and allowed him to establish himself in the castle of Gerberoi in the Beauvaisis. The king’s patronage of Robert ranks, as a matter of policy, with his gift of Montreuil to Edgar the Etheling in 1074; Philip was always ready to take an inexpensive opportunity of harassing his over-mighty vassal. Around Robert, in this cave of Adullam, there gathered a force of adventurers from Normandy and the French kingdom, including many men who had hitherto been good subjects to King William, but now thought it expedient to follow the rising fortunes of his heir. William retaliated by garrisoning the Norman castles which lay nearest to Gerberoi, so as to prevent the rebels from harrying the border; and in some way he must have brought the king of France over to his side; for when, in the last days of 1078, he laid formal siege to his son’s castle, we know on good authority that King Philip was present in his camp.[[266]] The siege lasted for three weeks, and in one of the frequent encounters between the loyalists and the rebels there occurred the famous passage of arms between the Conqueror and his son. William was wounded in the hand by Robert, his horse was killed under him, and had not a Berkshire thegn, Tokig, son of Wigod of Wallingford, gallantly brought another mount to the king,[[267]] it is probable that his life would have come to an ignominious close beneath the walls of Gerberoi. It was very possibly the scandal caused by this episode which led certain prominent members of the Norman baronage to offer their mediation between the king and his heir. The siege seems to have been broken up by mutual consent; William retired to Rouen, Robert made his way once more into Flanders, and a reconciliation was effected by the efforts of Roger de Montgomery, Roger de Beaumont, Hugh de Grentemaisnil, and other personal friends of the king. Robert was restored to favour, his confederates were pardoned, and he once more received a formal confirmation of his title to the duchy of Normandy. For a short time, as charters show, he continued to fill his rightful place at his father’s court, but his vagabond instincts soon became too strong for him and he left the duchy again, not to return to it during his father’s lifetime.

One is naturally inclined to make some comparison between these events and the rebellion which a hundred years later convulsed the dominions of Henry II. Fundamentally, the cause of each disturbance was the same—the anxiety of the reigning king to secure the succession, met by equal anxiety on the part of the destined heir to enjoy the fruits of lordship. And in each case the character of the respective heirs was much the same. Robert Curthose and Henry Fitz Henry, both men of chivalry, rather than of politics, showed themselves incapable of appreciating the motives which made their fathers wish to maintain the integrity of the family possessions; the fact that they themselves were debarred from rewarding their private friends and punishing their enemies, seemed to them a sufficient reason for imperilling the results of the statesmanship which had created the very inheritance which they hoped to enjoy. Robert of Normandy, a gross anticipation of the chivalrous knight of later times, represents a type of character which had hitherto been unknown among the sons of Rollo, a type for which there was no use in the rough days when the feudal states of modern Europe were in the making, and which could not attain any refined development before the Crusades had lifted the art and the ideals of war on to a higher plane. William the Conqueror, by no means devoid of chivalrous instincts, never allowed them to obscure his sense of what the policy of the moment demanded; Henry II. was much less affected by the new spirit; both rulers alike were essentially out of sympathy with sons to whom great place meant exceptional opportunities for the excitement and glory of military adventure, rather than the stern responsibilities of government.

We know little that is definite about the course of events which followed upon the reconciliation of King William and his heir. The next two years indeed form a practical blank in the personal history of the Conqueror, and it does not seem probable that he ever visited England during this interval. In his absence the king of Scots took the opportunity of spreading destruction once again across the border, and in the summer of 1079 he harried the country as far as the Tyne, without hindrance, so far as our evidence goes, from the clerical earl of Northumbria. The success of this raid was a sufficient proof of the weakness of the Northern frontier of England, and in the next year[[268]] Robert of Normandy was entrusted with the command of a counter-expedition into Scotland, with orders to receive the submission of the king of Scots, or, in case he proved obdurate, to treat his land as an enemies’ country. The Norman army penetrated Scotland as far as Falkirk, and, according to one account, received hostages as a guarantee of King Malcolm’s obedience. Another and more strictly contemporary narrative, however, states that this part of the expedition was fruitless; but, in any case, Robert on his return founded the great fortress of Newcastle-on-Tyne as a barrier against future incursions from the side of Scotland.

PITCHER, PHOTO. GLOUCESTER

TOMB OF ROBERT COURTHOSE