The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

“Harold,” he said, after a long pause of deliberation—“Harold, my son, since you have made me this request, and that your noble heart seems set on its accomplishment, it shall not be my part to do constraint or violence to your affectionate and patriotic wishes. Go, then, if such be your resolve, but go without my leave, and contrary to my advice. It is not that I would not have your brother and your kinsman home, but that I do distrust the means of their deliverance; and sure I am, that should you go in person, some terrible disaster shall befall ourselves and this our country. Well do I know Duke William; well do I know his spirit—brave, crafty, daring, deep, ambitious, and designing. You, too, he hates especially, nor will he grant you anything, save at a price that shall draw down an overwhelming ruin on you who pay it, and on the throne of which you are the glory and the stay. If we would have these hostages delivered at a less ransom than the downfall of our Saxon dynasty—the misery of merry England—another messenger than thou must seek the wily Norman. Be it, however, as thou wilt, my friend, my kinsman, and my son.”

Oh, sage advice, and admirable counsel! advice how fatally neglected—counsel how sadly frustrated! Gallant, and brave, and young; fraught with a noble sense of his own powers, a full reliance on his own honorable purposes; untaught as yet in that, the hardest lesson of the world’s hardest school, distrust of others, suspicion of all men—Harold set forth upon his journey, as it were, on an excursion in pursuit of pleasure. Surrounded by a train of blithe companions, gallantly mounted, gorgeously attired, with falcon upon fist, and greyhounds bounding by his side, gayly and merrily he started, on a serene autumnal morning, for the coast of Sussex. There he took ship; and scarcely was he out of sight of land, when, as it were at once to justify the words of Edward, the wind, which had been on his embarkation the fairest that could blow from heaven, suddenly shifted round, the sky was overcast with vast clouds of a leaden hue, the waves tossed wildly with an ominous and hollow murmur; and, ere the first day had elapsed, as fierce a tempest burst upon his laboring barks as ever baffled mariner among the perilous shoals and sandbanks of the narrow seas. Hopeless almost of safety, worn out with unaccustomed toil and hard privations, for three days and as many nights they battled with the stormy waters; and on the morning of the fourth, when the skies lightened, and the abating violence of the strong gales allowed them to put in, and come to anchor, where the Somme pours its noble stream into the deep, through the rich territories of the count of Ponthieu, they were at once made prisoners, robbed of their personal effects, held to a heavy ransom, and cast as prisoners-of-war into the dungeon-walls of Belram, to languish there until the avarice of the count Guy should be appeased with gold.

Still Harold bore a high heart and a proud demeanor, bearding the robber-count even to his teeth, set him at defiance, proclaiming himself an embassador from England to the duke of Normandy, and claiming as a right the means of making known to William his unfortunate condition. This, deeming it perchance his interest so to do, the count at once conceded; and before many days had passed, Harold might see, from the barred windows of his turret-prison, a gallant band of lancers, arrayed beneath the Norman banner, with a pursuivant and trumpet at their head, wheeling around the walls of the grim fortress. A haughty summons followed, denouncing “the extremities of fire and of the sword against the count de Ponthieu, his friends, dependants, and allies, should he not instantly set free, with all his goods and chattels, his baggage and his horses, friends, followers, and slaves, unransomed with all honor, Harold, the son of Godwin, the friend and host of William, high and puissant duke of Normandy!” Little, however, did mere menaces avail with the proud count de Ponthieu; nor did the Saxon prince obtain his liberty till William had paid down a mighty sum of silver, and invested Guy with a magnificent demesne on the rich meadows of the Eaune.

Then once more did the son of Godwin ride forth a freeman, in the bright light of heaven, escorted—such were the strange anomalies of those old times—by a superb array of lances, furnished for his defence by the same count de Ponthieu, who, having held him in vile durance until his object was obtained, as soon as he was liberated on full payment of the stipulated price, had thenceforth treated him as a much-honored guest, holding his stirrup at his castle-gate when he departed, and sending a strong guard of honor to see him in all safety over the frontier of the duke’s demesne. Here, at the frontier town, William’s high senechal attended his arrival; and gay and glorious was his progress through the rich fields of Normandy, until he reached Rouen. The glorious chase—whether by the green margin of some brimful river they roused the hermit-tyrant of the waters, that noblest of the birds of chase, to make sport for their long-winged falcons, or through the sere trees of the forest pursued the stag or felon wolf with horn, hound, and halloo—diversified the tedium of the journey; while every night some feudal castle threw wide its hospitable gates to greet with revelry and banqueting the guest of the grand duke. Arrived at Rouen, that powerful prince himself, the mightiest warrior of the day, rode forth beyond the gates to meet the Saxon; nor did two brothers long estranged meet ever with more cordiality of outward show than these, the chiefs of nations long destined to be rival and antagonistic, till from their union should arise the mightiest, the wisest, the most victorious, and enlightened, and free race of men, that ever peopled empires, or spread their language and their laws through an admiring world. On that first meeting, as he embraced his guest, the princely Norman announced to him that his young brother and his nephew were thenceforth at his absolute disposal.

“The hostages are yours,” he said—“yours, at your sole request; nor would I be less blithe to render them, if Harold stood before me himself a landless exile, than as I see him now, the first lord of a powerful kingdom, the most trusty messenger of a right noble king. But, of your courtesy, I pray you leave us not yet awhile; though if you will do so, my troops shall convey you to the seashore, my ships shall bear you home!—but, I beseech, do this honor to your host, to tarry with him for a little space: and as you be the first—for so you are reported to us—in all realities and sports of Saxon warfare, so let us prove your prowess, and witness you our skill, in passages of Norman chivalry.”

In answer to this fair request, what could the Saxon do but acquiesce? Yet, even as he did so, the words of the gray-headed king came sensibly upon his memory, and he began to feel as if in truth the net of the deceiver were already round about him with its inevitable meshes. Still, having once assented, nothing remained for him but to fulfil, as gracefully as possible, his half-unwilling promise. So joyously, however, were the days consumed—so gayly did the evenings pass, among festivities far more refined and delicate than were the rude feasts of the sturdy Saxons, wherein excess of drink and vulgar riot composed the chief attractions—that, after one short week had flown, all the anxieties and fears of Harold were lost in admiration of the polished manners of his Norman hosts, and the high qualities of his chief entertainer. From town to town they passed in gay cortége, visiting castle after castle in their route, and ever and anon testing the valor and the skill each of the other, in those superb encounters of mock warfare—the free and gentle passage of arms—which in the education of the warlike Normans were second only to the real shock of battle, which was to them, not metaphorically, the very breath of life.

Nor in these jousts and tournaments, whether with headless lance or blunted broadsword, or in the deadlier though still amicable strife at outrance, did not the Saxon, though unused to the menêge of the destrier and equestrian combat with the lance, win high renown and credit with his martial hosts. The Saxon tribes had, from their earliest existence as a people, been famed as infantry; their arms, a huge and massive axe; a short, sharp, two-edged sword, framed like the all-victorious weapon of the Romans; a target, and ponderous javelin, used ever as a missile. Cavalry, properly so called, although their leaders sometimes rode into the conflict, they had none; and by a natural consequence, one of that people for the first time adopting the complete panoply, mounting the barbed war-horse, and tilting with the long lance of the Gallic chivalry, must have engaged with the practised champions of the time at a fearful disadvantage. Still, even at this odds, such was the force of emulation acting upon a spirit elastic, vigorous, and fiery, backed by a powerful and agile frame, inured to feats of strength and daring, that little time elapsed ere Harold could abide the brunt of the best lance of William’s court, not only without the risk of reputation, but often at advantage. After a long and desperate encounter, wherein the Saxon prince had foiled all comers, hurling three cavaliers to earth with one unsplintered lance, William, in admiration of his bravery, insisted on bestowing on his friend, with his own honored blade, the accolade of knighthood—buckled the gilded spurs upon his heels; presented him with the complete apparel of a knight—the lance, with its appropriate bandrol—the huge, two-handed war-sword; and, above all, the finest charger of his royal stables, which, constantly supplied from the best blood of Andalusia, at that time were esteemed the choicest stud in Europe. It may now be supposed that honors such as these, coming too from a Norman, for the most part esteemed the scorner of the Saxon race—nor this alone, but from the most renowned and famous warrior of the day—produced a powerful effect on the enthusiastic and ambitious spirit of the young Englishman; nor did the wily duke fail to observe the operation of his deep-laid manœuvres, nor, when observed, did he neglect by every means to strengthen the impression he had made. To this end, therefore, not courtesies alone, nor the high-prized distinctions of military honor, nor gorgeous gifts, nor personal deference, were deemed sufficient instruments. To finish what he had himself so well begun, to complete the ensnarement of the Saxon’s senses, the aid of woman was called in—woman, all-powerful, perilous, fascinating woman! Nor did he lack a fair and willing bait wherewith to give his prize. In his own court, filled as it was with the most lovely, or at least—thanks to the prowess of the Norman spear—the most renowned of Europe’s ladies, there was not one that could compete in beauty, wit, or grace, with Alice, his bright daughter. Too keen a player with the passions and the characters of men—too wise a judge of that most wondrous compound, that strange mass of inconsistencies, of evil and of good, of honor and deceit, the human heart—too close a calculator of effects and causes, was William, to divulge his purpose, or to hint his wishes, even to the obedient ear of Alice. He cared not—he—whether she loved, or feigned to love, so that his object was effected. Commanding ever his wildest passions, using them but as instruments and tools to bend or break men to his purposes, he never dreamed or recked of their ungovernable force upon the minds of others. It was but a few days after the arrival of his guest, that he discovered how he gazed after, and with signs of evident and earnest admiration, on the young damsel, to whose intimacy he had been studiously admitted as an especial and much-honored friend of his host: and her father, to fan this flame on Harold’s part, it needed little art from so consummate an intriguer as the duke; while as to Alice, young as she was, and thoughtless, delighted with attention, and attracted by the fine form and high repute of the young stranger, and yet more by the raciness and trifling singularities of his foreign though high-bred deportment—a fond, paternal smile, and an approving glance, as she toyed with her young admirer, sufficed to give full scope to her vivacious inclinations.

Daily the Norman’s game became more intricate, daily more certain; when suddenly, just as the Saxon—flattered and half-enamored as he was, began to feel that he had no excuse for lingering longer at a distance from his country and his sovereign—began to speak of a return before the setting-in of winter, an accident occurred, which, with his wonted readiness of wit, William turned instantly to good account.

The ducal territories, which had descended to the Norman line from their first champion, Rollo, were separated by the small stream of Coësnor from the neighboring tract of Brittany, to which all the succeeding princes had possessed a claim since Charles the Simple, in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, had ceded it to that great duke, the founder of the Norman dynasty. The consequence of this pretence—for such in fact it was—were endless bickerings, small border wars, aggressions and reprisals, burnings, and massacres, and vengeance! Some trivial skirmish had occurred upon this frontier, just as the duke had perceived that he must either suffer Harold to depart before his projects were accomplished, or force him to remain by open violence. In such a crisis he resolved at once upon his line of action; and, instantly proclaiming war, he raised the banner of his dukedom, summoned his vassals, great and small, to render service for their military tenures; and in announcing to his guest his march against the forces of his hereditary foe, claimed his assistance in the field as a true host from his well-proved guest, and a godfather-in-arms from the son whom he had admitted to the distinguished honor of the knightly accolade. Intoxicated with ambition and with love, madly desirous of acquiring fame among the martial Normans, and fancying, with a vanity not wholly inexcusable, that he was doing service to his country in acquiring the respect of foreign powers, he met half-way the proffer. And, in the parlance of the day, right nobly did he prove his gilded spurs of knighthood. In passing the Coësnor, which, like the See, the Seluna, and the other streams that cross the great Grêve of St. Michel, is perilous from its spring-tide and awful quicksands, Harold displayed, in recovering several soldiers, who, having quitted the true line of march, were on the point of perishing, a noble union of intrepidity and strength.

During the whole course of the war, the Norman and his guest had but one tent and one table; side by side in the front of war they charged the enemy, and side by side they rode upon the march, beguiling the fatigue and labor with gay jests or graver conversation: and now so intimate had they become, so perfect was the confidence reposed by the frank Englishman in his frank-seeming friend, that the sagacious tempter felt the game absolutely in his power, and waited but a fitting opportunity for aiming his last blow. Nor was it long ere the occasion he had sought, occurred. Some brilliant exploits, performed in the last skirmish of the campaign, by the intended victim of his perfidy, gave him a chance to descant on the national and well-proved hardihood and valor of this Saxon race. Thence, by a stroke of masterly and well-timed tact, he touched upon the beauties, the fertility, the noble forests, and the rich fields of England—the happy days which he had passed amid the hospitalities of that fair island. The praises of the reigning monarch followed, a topic wherein Harold freely and eagerly united with his host.