William, deaf to all entreaty, kept him a close prisoner, and finally, at the Pentecostal Gemôt held at Winchester, had sentence of death pronounced upon him. Swiftly and secretly the order was carried out, and on May 31, St. Petronilla’s day, at early dawn, while the men of Winchester were in their beds, Waltheof was led out to execution on St. Giles’s Hill. He came arrayed in full dress as an earl, wearing his badges of rank, and on reaching the place of execution knelt down to pray. He continued sometime in prayer while the executioner, fearing interruption, grew restive and impatient. “Wait yet a little moment,” pleaded the victim; “let me, at least, say the Lord’s Prayer for me and for thee,” and the Earl’s voice was heard uttering the petitions one by one, till at the words, “Lead us not into temptation,” the axe descended. But, as the severed head fell from the body, the lips were seen still to be moving, and the words, “But deliver us from evil,” were distinctly heard. Such is the moving account we have of Waltheof’s death. The last chapter of the story belongs rather to Crowland than to Winchester. Buried in the first instance obscurely at Winchester, his body was later on permitted to be reinterred at Crowland, and, on raising it, the head was found to be miraculously reunited to the trunk, a thin red line alone revealing the death he had died. Kingsley has told it in masterly style in Hereward the Wake and the episode of his false wife Judith’s visit to her husband’s tomb forms a thrilling incident most picturesquely told.
Of Hereward himself Winchester history is silent, but Kingsley, in another striking passage, brings him too upon our local stage, when he rides to Winchester to make submission to the king. With his companions he rides along the Roman road which leads still from Silchester, till, from the top of the downs, they catch sight of the city lying beneath them.
Within the city rose the ancient Minster Church, built by Ethelwold—ancient even then—where slept the ancient kings, Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf, the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma, his wife, and Ethelred’s before him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died not twenty but two hundred years ago; and it may be an old Saxon hall upon the little isle, whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the downs which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which they saw with curses deep and loud—the keep of the new Norman castle by the west gate.
We will not stop to discuss this striking passage; and though Hereward be but a figure imported into our local history, the castle which he saw was, both then and for many years to come, the most noticeable and striking feature in Winchester, as also the leading outward symbol of the Norman presence and power. For centuries it was to hold its place supreme, to see one sovereign after other add and re-add to its palace, to stand siege and battery, to be the residence of kings and queens, to witness the birth of more than one heir to the throne, to gather within its walls councils and parliaments. For 600 years it was to endure till Cromwell laid siege to it, and then razed it to the ground, all save the great Hall, built in Plantagenet days, by Henry III. which still remains glorious in its associations as in the beauty of its proportions. Yes, Hereward and his companions might utter curses loud and deep, for the rebirth of the nation, which the Norman period heralded, was not accomplished without much labour and travail, both of body and of spirit; but could he have looked forward, as we can look back, upon all that Norman rule has been the stepping-stone to, both in Winchester and elsewhere, he would have found, like the unwilling prophet of old, a blessing on his lips and not a curse, and we too shall be ready to offer up our Te Deum in a spirit of thankfulness, earnest and sincere, though the appropriate accompaniment to it be rather a subdued strain, and in a minor key, than an unbroken outburst of triumphal joy.
CHAPTER XI
LATER NORMAN DAYS
They shot him dead on the Nine-stone Brig
Beside the Headless Cross,
And they left him lying in his blood
Upon the moor and moss.
Barthram’s Dirge.
When William the Conqueror died, the link with Normandy was temporarily severed, and during the reign of Rufus of evil memory Winchester declined in political importance; nor, apart from one or two episodes, are the Winchester memories of the reign of a striking character. It witnessed, indeed, the practical completion of Walkelyn’s life-work—the great cathedral—as well as the institution of St. Giles’s Fair, as already mentioned, but these belong in essence, though not in time, rather to the epoch of the Conqueror than to that of his violent-minded successor.
Most characteristic of all events of the reign was the long-drawn-out struggle between Rufus and Archbishop Anselm—“the fierce young bull and the old sheep,” as Anselm himself had in dismal prognostication dubbed them. On Lanfranc’s death in 1089 William kept the see vacant for several years, as was his practice in matters of church preferment, in the meantime shamelessly appropriating the temporalities of the see; and when as a result of a dangerous illness he at last agreed to appoint a successor, it was only with extreme reluctance and forebodings of ill that Anselm was at last prevailed on to accept the king’s nomination. Anselm’s fears were fully justified, and a state of hopeless strife soon existed between the two. To all Anselm’s demands, particularly his demand to go to Rome for investiture, the king returned an inflexible refusal, until a crisis was reached at a great council held in Winchester, memorable as the last personal meeting between the king and the archbishop. Every form of pressure was brought to bear on Anselm; he refused, as a matter of conscience, to give way, and finally announced his intention of going to Rome without the king’s sanction, as he could not go with it.
The king raged and stormed in vain, till Anselm, as he turned to leave the royal presence, begged permission to give him his blessing. “I refuse not thy blessing,” said the king, somewhat subdued; he inclined his head, and Anselm signed the sign of the cross over him. They never met again.
The last scene of all in the reign is, however, Winchester’s most dramatic, as well as tragic, recollection. On the afternoon of Lammas Day (August 1), 1100, news came to Winchester that the Red King, who had been hunting that day in the New Forest, had