Matilda had several suitors, but she fixed her heart upon a young Saxon noble named Brihtric, who on account of the fairness of his complexion was called Meaw, meaning “snow.” He was the Lord of Gloucester, and was made envoy at the court of Flanders by King Edward the Confessor.
But he did not return Matilda’s love, and he afterwards married another; this slight Matilda never forgot, and in time she retaliated.
But Matilda, though ignored by the Saxon, was most chivalrously loved by the bravest prince of all the courts—William of Normandy. This prince was the son of Duke Robert, though his mother was of humble birth; but as his father had no other heirs, he declared this child his lawful successor to the ducal throne, and then Duke Robert departed upon his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from which he never returned.
William was educated at the court of Henry I. of France, where he remained until the Normans sent to claim him as their duke.
At the time when William sought the hand of Matilda of Flanders in marriage, he asserted that Edward of England had named him his heir; but some looked upon this as an idle boast, and fair Matilda seems to have been so little in love with her warlike cousin, that he sued for her for seven years in vain. At last, determining to prove that a “faint heart never won a fair lady,” he resorted to a most uncommon and hazardous mode of courting.
For seven long years he had wooed Matilda, who, absorbed in her vain fancy for the indifferent Lord of Gloucester, turned a deaf ear to brave William’s glowing ardor, until at length he was roused to desperate boldness.
One morning, as Matilda was returning from early mass in the city of Bruges, she was suddenly confronted by the unexpected appearance of Prince William, who, with glaring eyes and lips quivering with intense passion, accused her of loving Brihtric of Gloucester; and as she disdained to deny it he cried in bitter tones:—
“Edward, England’s king, has named me his heir, and by the holy cross, the Saxon churl who dares aspire to thy hand, shall ere long be crushed by the vengeance of our royal resentment.”
“Mighty words, easily spoken, and verily proof neither of greatness nor of valor,” replied the princess; then, laughing aloud in his face with disdainful manner, she continued: “The doubtful Duke of Normandy, monarch of England!—truly, a most excellent joke! But why does not my aspiring and politic cousin declare himself the future emperor of all Christendom?”
Stung by her sarcastic words and the implied insult regarding his birth, Prince William was driven to a frenzy of anger; he seized Matilda, rolled her in a muddy pool near by, and even struck her, in his wild fury, and leaving her fainting upon the ground, he leaped upon his charger, and galloped out of town. Strange wooing, surely! and yet after-events would seem to imply its efficacy. Truly, none but a William the Conqueror would ever again have dared to enter Matilda’s presence. Matilda’s father, incensed at the treatment his daughter had received, made war upon William of Normandy; but the king of Flanders was so badly beaten in the contest that he was glad to make terms of peace with his Norman conqueror. As Brihtric, the Saxon lord, refused to marry the princess of Flanders, Matilda’s love turned to hate, and she received the victor, William, when, with amazing boldness, he renewed his suit, with every mark of courteous forgiveness, and consented to accept him, declaring “that she thought the duke must be a man of the highest courage and most daring spirit, to come and beat her in her father’s city.” “So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,” this brave knight won his bride; and never was wooing so fiercely bold, nor fair lady so strangely won. King Baldwin V. of Flanders was only too ready to receive this brave knight as a son-in-law, and quickly concluded the marriage contract, having already had sufficient experience of the powerful sword of this fierce wooer. Matilda and William were married at Château d’Eu, in Normandy; and her father gave her a rich dower, in lands, money, jewels, and costly trousseau. William then conducted his bride with much pomp to his duchy; and she made her public entry into Rouen in magnificent array. The bridal mantles of William and Matilda, richly adorned with jewels, were long preserved in the treasury of Bayeux Cathedral. As William and Mary were cousins, the Archbishop of Rouen declared that their marriage was illegal, and excommunicated them. But the dauntless William was not to be terrified by any monkish bulls, and appealed to the Pope, who nullified the sentence of the archbishop, and sanctioned their marriage, on condition that they should each build an abbey at Caen, and found a hospital for the blind. This they willingly agreed to do; and Matilda, who possessed much taste in architecture, took great delight in the erection of the stately abbeys of St. Stephens and the Holy Trinity; the former was endowed by William, for the monks, and the latter by Matilda, for the nuns.