Duke Robert was not fated to enjoy a captivity so mild. He had suffered defeat on the 14th of October, 1106, the anniversary of the day when forty years previously his father had won the battle of Hastings. "God thus disposing," says the Chronicle, "that Normandy became subject to England on the same day that England had become subject to Normandy." Ralph Flambard had regained his bishopric of Durham by giving up to the king the town and fortress of Lisieux; but Robert had been conveyed to England, and lodged in the castle of Cardiff, in Wales, which had recently been conquered by the Normans. He enjoyed there a certain amount of liberty, and hunted in the surrounding forest. One day he leaped upon his horse and took to flight. He was not well acquainted with the way; his horse sank into a bog. He was captured and taken back to his prison. When the king was acquainted with this attempt at escape, he ordered that the prisoner's eyes should be burnt out by means of a bason of red-hot iron. The captivity of the unhappy duke became complete; but his robust constitution withstood all these misfortunes. He lived twenty-eight years in his prison, blind and alone, without news of the son whom he had left a child in Normandy, and preserving to the last the dignified pride of his race. One day some new clothes were brought to him from the king; Robert handled them and discovered that one of them was unript at the seam. He was told that Henry had tried on the doublet and had found it too small for him. The duke threw all the clothes to a distance, exclaiming, "So then my brother, or rather my traitor, that cowardly clerk who has dismembered and deprived me of sight, holds me now in such contempt—I who was once held in such honor and renown—that he makes me alms of his old clothes as to a valet!"
Robert was nearly eighty years of age when he died in 1135, some months before his brother, King Henry. He had survived in his captivity and suffering almost all the chief warriors with whom he had fought before Jerusalem.
Robert had, however, a son, William Cliton, or as they soon afterwards called him, William of Normandy; but the boy was only seven years old when his uncle, finding himself in possession of the whole of Normandy, began to besiege Valaise, where he was under guard. No one thought of declaring himself in favor of the little prince. He was taken and conducted to the king. The child cried and asked for mercy; he had reason to tremble, for his life was a great obstacle to the repose of his uncle. But making a violent effort to banish evil thoughts, the king desired to remove the little William from his presence, and he confided him to a faithful servant of his household, Helie of St. Saen. Sometime afterwards the king had changed his mind and desired to take back the little prince, but Helie carried him off secretly, and both took refuge at the court of the king of France, Louis the Fat. He was there growing up when King Henry was marrying his daughter Matilda, aged eight years, to Henry III., Emperor of Germany. The marriage of an eldest daughter was one of those occasions which gave the right to the feudal lord to levy taxes from their vassals, and King Henry used this right in such a way that the whole English people groaned under the burden. The splendor of the retinue which accompanied the little princess on her departure from England was soon forgotten; but when she returned to her native land people still remembered the tears which her marriage had cost.
King Louis VI. had promised William Cliton the investiture of Normandy, when in 1113 war again broke out between France and England. It lasted for two years, and all the castles on the frontiers were captured from Henry. His able diplomacy procured him in 1115 an advantageous treaty, which assured to prince William of England the hand of Matilda of Anjou, daughter of the Count Fulke. No one thought of reserving the rights of William Cliton over Normandy, and when the great Norman barons were convoked in 1117 to take the oath of allegiance to Prince William, no claim was advanced in favor of the exile. His uncle had made an attempt to entice him into England, promising him the gift of three large counties; but the young man was not willing to trust himself to his father's jailor, and we meet with him again in 1119 at the head of a confederation formed on the Continent against King Henry. At the battle of Brenville, which preceded by some years the close of a war of mingled success and disaster, William Cliton, or FitzRobert as he was often called, penetrated into the presence of his uncle; but his knights were repulsed, and the marriage of Prince William with Matilda of Anjou, celebrated sumptuously in 1120, destroyed the hopes which his cousin had conceived. King Louis accepted the homage of Normandy represented by the son of the king of England, thus sparing the regal pride of Henry. The policy of this prince prevailed: he resolved to return in triumph to England, and on the 25th of November, 1120, he prepared to set sail from the little port of Barfleur, when a mariner well known upon that coast advanced towards him, presenting a mark of gold. "Stephen, son of Erard, my father served yours on the sea," said he, "and it was he who steered the vessel aboard which your father sailed for the conquest. Sire king, I entreat you to grant me in fief the same office. I have a vessel called the Blanchenef, well fitted out."
The king's ship was already prepared; he promised Stephen to give him as passengers the Prince William and his sister, Lady Mary, countess of Perche. The Blanchenef was a large vessel. Three hundred persons went aboard her as he set sail. The king had preceded them on the sea, but Thomas FitzStephen was proud of the fast sailing of his vessel, and made no haste to depart, thinking to overtake the squadron without difficulty. There was dancing and drinking upon the poop of the vessel: all the company were excited when at length they set out. Night had come on; the moon had risen; the wind was fresh. They advanced rapidly, for the sailors lent aid with the oars. They were coasting, when suddenly the ship struck upon a rock at the level of the water, then called the Raz de Catte, now the Raz de Catteville. The Blanchenef's planks were opened by the shock, and she began to fill with water. The cry of terror which arose from those aboard reached the vessel of the king, sailing at a considerable distance; but no one understood the cause of the noise. Henry disembarked quietly. His children had launched a boat on the sea; and Prince William had entered it with some of his companions, but the cries of his sister, the Lady Mary, induced him to return to the foundering vessel; he had nearly rescued her when the other passengers, driven wild with despair, sprang in a mass into the feeble skiff, which immediately disappeared with all its occupants. The vessel sank almost at the same instant. Two men only clung to the mast, a butcher of Rouen and a young nobleman named Gilbert de Laigle. For a moment the head of Thomas FitzStephen appeared above the waves. "What has become of the king's son?" he cried to the two survivors. "He has disappeared with his sister, and every one with him," they replied. "Unhappy me!" exclaimed the pilot, as he plunged again into the waves. Gilbert's hands were frozen; he relaxed his hold of the mast which supported him and was drowned before the eyes of his companion, who was well wrapped in his sheepskin and hardened against the effects of rough weather. He held out until the morning, and was rescued by some fishermen on the coast. From his lips they learned the news of the disaster which had befallen the Blanchenef's. In England they did not dare to apprise King Henry, who was awaiting the arrival of his children. At length a boy presented himself before him and cast himself at his feet. Henry assisted him to rise, and the child related the story of the wreck of the Norman vessel. "And from that time the king was never seen to smile," say the chroniclers, without, however, expending any more tenderness over the fate of Prince William, whose pride and harshness had caused apprehensions in England. "If I ever come to reign over these miserable Saxons," he was accustomed to say, "I will compel them to draw the plough like oxen." "So he perished on a quiet night and in calm weather," repeated the Saxons; "and it came to pass that his head, instead of being encircled by a crown of gold, was broken upon the rocks. It was God himself who decreed that the son of the Norman should not behold England again."
King Henry had no male heir, although he had married again with the daughter of the duke of Louvain. Many of the barons seemed inclined to rally round William FitzRobert, who had lately excited another revolt. Henry resolved to settle the crown upon his daughter, the Empress Maud, who had lately become a widow. All the ability of the king could not prevent at first a feeling of repugnance among the great nobles: but the royal power had become very great, supported as it was by the antagonism of two hostile races between whom the king alone held the balance. The Normans yielded. On Christmas Day, 1126, the Empress Maud was declared heiress to the kingdom, and six months later she married Geoffrey Plantagenet, [Footnote 2] son of Fulke, count of Anjou, whose father had transferred to him his domains on setting out for the Holy Land. Maud had for some time resisted the plans of her father for her marriage, which had been kept so secret that the barons protested, maintaining that the king had not the right to dispose without their approval of their future sovereign. The nuptial festivities lasted three weeks. Heralds, armed and in magnificent costume, traversed the streets and squares of Rouen, crying aloud, "In the name of King Henry, let no man here present, inhabitant or stranger, dare to absent himself from the royal rejoicings; for whosoever shall not take part in the amusements and games shall be deemed guilty of offence towards his lord the king."