NORMAN ARCHERS
From the Bayeux Tapestry.
Now these liberties, and others that have sprung from them, we have enjoyed so long that they have become part of ourselves. They are like the air we breathe. When an Australian or an American builds a new town, he brings with him, without thinking of it, the rights of the freeman, the right of inheritance, the right of owning no master but the State. We cannot understand a condition of society in which these rights could be withheld. Picture to yourself, if you can, a country in which the king imposed his own judges upon the people; a king who could order them as he pleased; could sentence, fine, banish, imprison or hang without any power of appeal; who could make in his own interest his own laws without consulting any one; who could seize estates at their owner’s death and could give the heirs what he pleased, as much or as little; who could hand these heirs over to be the prey of a feudal lord, who only suffered them to live in order that he might rob them. That was the position of a city under a feudal lord, but it was never the position of London.
It must be added that William’s Charter conferred no new liberties or privileges upon the City. London asked for none: the City was content with what it had. William surrendered none of the power or authority of the sovereign. London asked for no such surrender. We shall see, in the charters which followed, how jealously the royal authority was guarded.
From a modern point of view it would seem an unpatriotic thing for the City to throw over the Saxon heir; but we must remember that Cnut, the best and strongest king they had had since Alfred, was a Dane, that the City was full of Normans, and that the memory of the Saxon Ethelred was still rankling among them. What better argument could the Bishop advance than the fact that William was known everywhere to be a just man, faithful to his word, and strong—the strongest man in western Europe? Above all things the country desired in a king, then and always, so long as kings ruled and after kings began to reign, was that he should be strong and faithful to his word.
The principal citizens[24]—among them Edgar Atheling himself—rode forth, met William, and giving hostages, made their submission, and he “concluded a treaty with them,” that is, he promised to respect their laws. According to the A.S. Chronicle, William “vowed that he would be a loving lord” to the City.
William was crowned at Westminster. It is uncertain whether the rival whom he had slain had been crowned at Westminster or at St. Paul’s—probably the latter, as the cathedral church of London. William, in that case, was the first of our kings to be crowned at Westminster. The place was chosen because it contained the tomb of the Confessor, to whom William claimed to succeed by right.
Dean Stanley has told the story of this memorable coronation with graphic hand. It was on Christmas Day. The vast Cathedral, which, newly built, was filled with the burgesses of London—sturdy craftsmen for the most part—“lithsmen” or sailors, merchants—anxious to know whether the old custom would be observed of recognising the voice of the people. It would: every old custom would be jealously observed. But there was suspicion: outside, the Cathedral was guarded by companies of Norman horse. Two prelates performed the ceremony: for the Normans, Godfrey, Bishop of Coutances; for the English, Aldred, Archbishop of York. Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, had fled into Scotland. When the time came for the popular acclamation, both Bishops addressed the people. Then came the old Saxon shout of election, “Yea—yea.” The Norman soldiers, thinking this to be an outbreak of rebellion, set fire to the Abbey Gates—why did they fire the Gates?—upon which the whole multitude, Saxon and Norman together, poured out in terror, leaving William alone in the church with the two Bishops and the Benedictine monks of St. Peter’s. A stranger coronation was never seen!
Stanley points out the connection, which was kept up, of the Regalia with King Edward the Confessor.
