THE SEAL OF ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX, HALF-BROTHER OF WILLIAM I.
Archæologia, vol. i.
One of the many great fires which have from time to time ravaged London occurred in 1077, and another in 1087 or 1088; this burned St. Paul’s. Maurice, Bishop of London, began at once to rebuild it. Matthew of Westminster, writing at the beginning of the fourteenth century, says “necdum perfectum est.”
It is a great pity that William’s Domesday Book does not include London. Had it done so, we should have had a Directory, a Survey, of the Norman City. We should have known the extent of the population, the actual trades, the wealth, the civic offices, the markets, motes, hustings, all. What we know, it is true, amounts to a good deal; it seems as if we know all; only those who try to restore the life of early London can understand the gaps in our knowledge, and the many dark places into which we vainly try to peer.
A second Charter granted by William the Conqueror is also preserved at the Guildhall. It is translated as follows:—
“William the King friendly, salutes William the Bishop and Sweyn the Sheriff, and all my Thanes in East Saxony, whom I hereby acquaint that I have granted to Deorman my man, the hide of land at Geddesdune, of which he was deprived. And I will not suffer either the French or the English to hurt them in anything.”
Of this Deorman or Derman, Round (Commune of London, p. 106) makes mention. Among the witnesses to a Charter by Geoffrey de Mandeville, occurs the name of “Thierri son of Deorman.” It is impossible not to suppose that this “Deorman” is the same as William’s “man” of the Charter. Thierri belonged to a rich and prosperous family; his son Bertram held his grandfather’s property at Navington Barrow in Islington, and was a benefactor to the nuns of Clerkenwell. Bertram’s son Thomas bestowed a serf upon St. Paul’s about the beginning of the thirteenth century.
It has always been stated that William the Conqueror brought Jews over with him. But Mr. Joseph Jacobs (Jews of Angevin England), investigating this tradition, inclines to believe that there were no Jews in England before the year 1073 or thereabouts, when there is evidence of their residence in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Their appointed residence in London was Old Jewry, north of Cheapside.
Stanley recalls the memory of one of those mediæval miracles which seem invented in a spirit of allegory in order to teach or to illustrate some great truth. It was a miracle performed at the tomb of Edward the Confessor:—
“When, after the revolution of the Norman Conquest, a French and foreign hierarchy was substituted for the native prelates, one Saxon bishop alone remained—Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester. A Council was summoned to Westminster, over which the Norman king and the Norman primate presided, and Wulfstan was declared incapable of holding his office because he could not speak French. The old man, down to this moment compliant even to excess, was inspired with unusual energy. He walked from St. Catherine’s Chapel, where the Council was held, straight into the Abbey. The King and the prelates followed. He laid his pastoral staff on the Confessor’s tomb before the high altar. First he spoke in Saxon to the dead king: ‘Edward, thou gavest me the staff: to thee I return it.’ Then, with the best Norman words that he could command, he turned to the living king: ‘A better than thou gave it to me—take it if thou canst.’ It remained fixed in the solid stone, and Wulfstan was left at peace in his see. Long afterwards King John, in arguing for the supremacy of the Crown of England in matters ecclesiastical, urged this story at length in answer to the claims of the Papal Legate. Pandulf answered, with a sneer, that John was more like the Conqueror than the Confessor. But, in fact, John had rightly discerned the principle at stake, and the legend expressed the deep-seated feeling of the English people, that in the English Crown and Law lies the true safeguard of the rights of the English clergy. Edward the Confessor’s tomb thus, like the Abbey which incases it, contains an aspect of the complex union of Church and State, of which all English history is a practical fulfilment.” (Westminster Abbey, p. 35.)
The City already contained a mixed population of Saxons, Danes, Normans—“men of Rouen,” and Germans—“men of the Emperor.” There were also Norwegians, Flemings, Gascons, and others of foreign descent in the City when William succeeded. Without insisting too strongly on the actual magnitude of the trade, small indeed compared with that which was to follow, we may point to this gathering of various peoples as a proof that the trade of London was already considered by the whole of western Europe as considerable, and, indeed, of the highest importance. Many more Normans came over after the Conquest. It is said that they chose London in preference to Rouen, because it was “fitter for their trade, and better stored with the merchandise in which they were wont to traffic.” There was also a large settlement of craftsmen in London and in other towns; among them, especially, were weavers and builders. Of these the weavers became, and remained for many generations, extremely unpopular. Cunningham (Growth of English Industry and Commerce, p. 179) suggests an explanation for the otherwise unintelligible hostility of the people towards the weavers. He thinks that before the Conquest weaving was not a national industry; that weavers were brought over by William and remained foreigners, not as taking “scot and lot” with the people.