CHAPTER VIII--ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR
Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William the Normanafterwards founded an abbey, which, under the name of Battle Abbey, was arich and splendid place through many a troubled year, though now it is agrey ruin overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had to do, was toconquer the English thoroughly; and that, as you know by this time, washard work for any man.
He ravaged several counties; he burned and plundered many towns; he laidwaste scores upon scores of miles of pleasant country; he destroyedinnumerable lives. At length STIGAND, Archbishop of Canterbury, withother representatives of the clergy and the people, went to his camp, andsubmitted to him. EDGAR, the insignificant son of Edmund Ironside, wasproclaimed King by others, but nothing came of it. He fled to Scotlandafterwards, where his sister, who was young and beautiful, married theScottish King. Edgar himself was not important enough for anybody tocare much about him.
On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westminster Abbey, under thetitle of WILLIAM THE FIRST; but he is best known as WILLIAM THECONQUEROR. It was a strange coronation. One of the bishops whoperformed the ceremony asked the Normans, in French, if they would haveDuke William for their king? They answered Yes. Another of the bishopsput the same question to the Saxons, in English. They too answered Yes,with a loud shout. The noise being heard by a guard of Normanhorse-soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance on the part of theEnglish. The guard instantly set fire to the neighbouring houses, and atumult ensued; in the midst of which the King, being left alone in theAbbey, with a few priests (and they all being in a terrible frighttogether), was hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed upon hishead, he swore to govern the English as well as the best of their ownmonarchs. I dare say you think, as I do, that if we except the GreatAlfred, he might pretty easily have done that.
Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the last disastrousbattle. Their estates, and the estates of all the nobles who had foughtagainst him there, King William seized upon, and gave to his own Normanknights and nobles. Many great English families of the present timeacquired their English lands in this way, and are very proud of it.
But what is got by force must be maintained by force. These nobles wereobliged to build castles all over England, to defend their new property;and, do what he would, the King could neither soothe nor quell the nationas he wished. He gradually introduced the Norman language and the Normancustoms; yet, for a long time the great body of the English remainedsullen and revengeful. On his going over to Normandy, to visit hissubjects there, the oppressions of his half-brother ODO, whom he left incharge of his English kingdom, drove the people mad. The men of Kenteven invited over, to take possession of Dover, their old enemy CountEustace of Boulogne, who had led the fray when the Dover man was slain athis own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by the Welsh, and commandedby a chief named EDRIC THE WILD, drove the Normans out of their country.Some of those who had been dispossessed of their lands, banded togetherin the North of England; some, in Scotland; some, in the thick woods andmarshes; and whensoever they could fall upon the Normans, or upon theEnglish who had submitted to the Normans, they fought, despoiled, andmurdered, like the desperate outlaws that they were. Conspiracies wereset on foot for a general massacre of the Normans, like the old massacreof the Danes. In short, the English were in a murderous mood all throughthe kingdom.
King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, came back, and tried topacify the London people by soft words. He then set forth to repress thecountry people by stern deeds. Among the towns which he besieged, andwhere he killed and maimed the inhabitants without any distinction,sparing none, young or old, armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick,Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. In all these places, and inmany others, fire and sword worked their utmost horrors, and made theland dreadful to behold. The streams and rivers were discoloured withblood; the sky was blackened with smoke; the fields were wastes of ashes;the waysides were heaped up with dead. Such are the fatal results ofconquest and ambition! Although William was a harsh and angry man, I donot suppose that he deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, whenhe invaded England. But what he had got by the strong hand, he couldonly keep by the strong hand, and in so doing he made England a greatgrave.
Two sons of Harold, by name EDMUND and GODWIN, came over from Ireland,with some ships, against the Normans, but were defeated. This wasscarcely done, when the outlaws in the woods so harassed York, that theGovernor sent to the King for help. The King despatched a general and alarge force to occupy the town of Durham. The Bishop of that place metthe general outside the town, and warned him not to enter, as he would bein danger there. The general cared nothing for the warning, and went inwith all his men. That night, on every hill within sight of Durham,signal fires were seen to blaze. When the morning dawned, the English,who had assembled in great strength, forced the gates, rushed into thetown, and slew the Normans every one. The English afterwards besoughtthe Danes to come and help them. The Danes came, with two hundred andforty ships. The outlawed nobles joined them; they captured York, anddrove the Normans out of that city. Then, William bribed the Danes to goaway; and took such vengeance on the English, that all the former fireand sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were nothing compared withit. In melancholy songs, and doleful stories, it was still sung and toldby cottage fires on winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards, how, inthose dreadful days of the Normans, there was not, from the River Humberto the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor one cultivatedfield--how there was nothing but a dismal ruin, where the human creaturesand the beasts lay dead together.
The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a Camp of Refuge, in themidst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy groundswhich were difficult of approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes,and were hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery earth. Now,there also was, at that time, over the sea in Flanders, an Englishmannamed HEREWARD, whose father had died in his absence, and whose propertyhad been given to a Norman. When he heard of this wrong that had beendone him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to wander into thatcountry), he longed for revenge; and joining the outlaws in their camp ofrefuge, became their commander. He was so good a soldier, that theNormans supposed him to be aided by enchantment. William, even after hehad made a road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire marshes,on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it necessary toengage an old lady, who pretended to be a sorceress, to come and do alittle enchantment in the royal cause. For this purpose she was pushedon before the troops in a wooden tower; but Hereward very soon disposedof this unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, tower and all. The monksof the convent of Ely near at hand, however, who were fond of goodliving, and who found it very uncomfortable to have the country blockadedand their supplies of meat and drink cut off, showed the King a secretway of surprising the camp. So Hereward was soon defeated. Whether heafterwards died quietly, or whether he was killed after killing sixteenof the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate that he did), Icannot say. His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very soonafterwards, the King, victorious both in Scotland and in England, quelledthe last rebellious English noble. He then surrounded himself withNorman lords, enriched by the property of English nobles; had a greatsurvey made of all the land in England, which was entered as the propertyof its new owners, on a roll called Doomsday Book; obliged the people toput out their fires and candles at a certain hour every night, on theringing of a bell which was called The Curfew; introduced the Normandresses and manners; made the Normans masters everywhere, and theEnglish, servants; turned out the English bishops, and put Normans intheir places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror indeed.
But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They were alwayshungering and thirsting for the riches of the English; and the more hegave, the more they wanted. His priests were as greedy as his soldiers.We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, the King, that hehad come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful servant, andthat property taken by force from other men had no charms for him. Hisname was GUILBERT. We should not forget his name, for it is good toremember and to honour honest men.
Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was troubled byquarrels among his sons. He had three living. ROBERT, called CURTHOSE,because of his short legs; WILLIAM, called RUFUS or the Red, from thecolour of his hair; and HENRY, fond of learning, and called, in theNorman language, BEAUCLERC, or Fine-Scholar. When Robert grew up, heasked of his father the government of Normandy, which he had nominallypossessed, as a child, under his mother, MATILDA. The King refusing togrant it, Robert became jealous and discontented; and happening one day,while in this temper, to be ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water onhim from a balcony as he was walking before the door, he drew his sword,rushed up-stairs, and was only prevented by the King himself from puttingthem to death. That same night, he hotly departed with some followersfrom his father's court, and endeavoured to take the Castle of Rouen bysurprise. Failing in this, he shut himself up in another Castle inNormandy, which the King besieged, and where Robert one day unhorsed andnearly killed him without knowing who he was. His submission when hediscovered his father, and the intercession of the queen and others,reconciled them; but not soundly; for Robert soon strayed abroad, andwent from court to court with his complaints. He was a gay, careless,thoughtless fellow, spending all he got on musicians and dancers; but hismother loved him, and often, against the King's command, supplied himwith money through a messenger named SAMSON. At length the incensed Kingswore he would tear out Samson's eyes; and Samson, thinking that his onlyhope of safety was in becoming a monk, became one, went on such errandsno more, and kept his eyes in his head.
All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange coronation, theConqueror had been struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty andbloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. All his reign, he struggledstill, with the same object ever before him. He was a stern, bold man,and he succeeded in it.
He loved money, and was particular in his eating, but he had only leisureto indulge one other passion, and that was his love of hunting. Hecarried it to such a height that he ordered whole villages and towns tobe swept away to make forests for the deer. Not satisfied with sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an immense district, to form anotherin Hampshire, called the New Forest. The many thousands of miserablepeasants who saw their little houses pulled down, and themselves andchildren turned into the open country without a shelter, detested him forhis merciless addition to their many sufferings; and when, in the twenty-first year of his reign (which proved to be the last), he went over toRouen, England was as full of hatred against him, as if every leaf onevery tree in all his Royal Forests had been a curse upon his head. Inthe New Forest, his son Richard (for he had four sons) had been gored todeath by a Stag; and the people said that this so cruelly-made Forestwould yet be fatal to others of the Conqueror's race.
He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France about some territory.While he stayed at Rouen, negotiating with that King, he kept his bed andtook medicines: being advised by his physicians to do so, on account ofhaving grown to an unwieldy size. Word being brought to him that theKing of France made light of this, and joked about it, he swore in agreat rage that he should rue his jests. He assembled his army, marchedinto the disputed territory, burnt--his old way!--the vines, the crops,and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But, in an evil hour;for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs uponsome burning embers, started, threw him forward against the pommel of thesaddle, and gave him a mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in amonastery near Rouen, and then made his will, giving England to William,Normandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds to Henry. And now, hisviolent deeds lay heavy on his mind. He ordered money to be given tomany English churches and monasteries, and--which was much betterrepentance--released his prisoners of state, some of whom had beenconfined in his dungeons twenty years.
It was a September morning, and the sun was rising, when the King wasawakened from slumber by the sound of a church bell. 'What bell isthat?' he faintly asked. They told him it was the bell of the chapel ofSaint Mary. 'I commend my soul,' said he, 'to Mary!' and died.
Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider how he lay in death!The moment he was dead, his physicians, priests, and nobles, not knowingwhat contest for the throne might now take place, or what might happen init, hastened away, each man for himself and his own property; themercenary servants of the court began to rob and plunder; the body of theKing, in the indecent strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone, forhours, upon the ground. O Conqueror, of whom so many great names areproud now, of whom so many great names thought nothing then, it werebetter to have conquered one true heart, than England!
By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and candles; and agood knight, named HERLUIN, undertook (which no one else would do) toconvey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it might be buried inSt. Stephen's church there, which the Conqueror had founded. But fire,of which he had made such bad use in his life, seemed to follow him ofitself in death. A great conflagration broke out in the town when thebody was placed in the church; and those present running out toextinguish the flames, it was once again left alone.
It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let down, in itsRoyal robes, into a tomb near the high altar, in presence of a greatconcourse of people, when a loud voice in the crowd cried out, 'Thisground is mine! Upon it, stood my father's house. This King despoiledme of both ground and house to build this church. In the great name ofGOD, I here forbid his body to be covered with the earth that is myright!' The priests and bishops present, knowing the speaker's right,and knowing that the King had often denied him justice, paid him downsixty shillings for the grave. Even then, the corpse was not at rest.The tomb was too small, and they tried to force it in. It broke, adreadful smell arose, the people hurried out into the air, and, for thethird time, it was left alone.
Where were the Conqueror's three sons, that they were not at theirfather's burial? Robert was lounging among minstrels, dancers, andgamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was carrying his five thousandpounds safely away in a convenient chest he had got made. William theRed was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the Royal treasure and thecrown.