Chapter VIII (5)

Normandy was now at rest, enjoying the rest of hard-won peace and prosperity. England was also at rest, if we may call it rest to lie prostrate in a state of feverish stillness. She rested, as a nation rests whose hopes are crushed, whose leaders are torn from her, which sees for the moment no chance of any doom but hopeless submission [Sidenote: William’s visit to England. 1051.] to the stranger. It was at this crisis in the history of the two lands that the Duke of the Normans appeared as a guest at the court of England.[906] Visits of mere friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days. The rulers of the earth seldom met, save when a superior lord required the homage of a princely vassal, or when Princes came together, at the summons of the temporal or the spiritual chief of Christendom, to discuss the common affairs of nations and churches. Such visits as those which William and Eustace of Boulogne paid at this time to Eadward were, in England at least, altogether novelties. And they were novelties which were not likely [Sidenote: Estimate of William in English eyes.] to be acceptable to the national English mind. We may be sure that every patriotic Englishman looked with an evil eye on any French-speaking prince who made his way to the English court. Men would hardly be inclined to draw the distinction which justice required to be drawn between Eustace of Boulogne and William of Rouen. And yet, under any other circumstances, England, or any other land, might have been proud to welcome such a guest as the already illustrious Duke. Under unparalleled difficulties he had displayed unrivalled powers; he had shone alike in camp and in council; he had triumphed over every enemy; he had used victory with moderation; he was fast raising his Duchy to a high place among European states, and he was fast winning for himself the highest personal place among European Princes. Already, at the age of twenty-three, the Duke of the Normans might have disputed the palm of personal merit even with the great prince who then filled the throne of the world. He had, on a narrower field, displayed qualities which fairly put him on a level with Henry himself. But, in English eyes, William was simply the most powerful, and therefore the most dangerous, of the greedy Frenchmen who every day flocked in greater numbers to the court of the English King. William came with a great following; he tarried awhile in his cousin’s company; he went away loaded with gifts and honours.[907] [Sidenote: Eadward’s alleged promise of the Crown to William probably made at this time.] And we can hardly doubt that he also went away encouraged by some kind of promise, or at any rate by some kind of implied hope, of succeeding to the Kingdom which [Sidenote: General appearance of things favourable to William.] he now visited as a stranger. There was indeed everything to raise the hope in his breast. He landed in England; he journeyed to the court of England; his course lay through what were in truth the most purely English parts of England; but the sons of the soil lay crushed without a chief. On the throne sat a King of his own kin, English in nothing but in the long succession of glorious ancestors of whom he showed himself so unworthy. His heart was Norman; his speech was French; men of foreign birth were alone welcome at his court; men of foreign birth were predominant [Sidenote: Norman predominance in England.] in his councils. The highest places of the Church were already filled by Norman Prelates. The Norman Primate of all England, the choicest favourite of the King, the man at whose bidding he was ready to believe that black was white, would doubtless be the first to welcome his native sovereign to his province and diocese. The great city which was fast becoming the capital of England, the city beneath whose walls Eadward had fixed his chosen dwelling, had been made to own the spiritual rule of another Norman priest. A short journey, a hunting-party or a pilgrimage, would bring King and Duke within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of a third Norman, the unworthy stranger who disgraced the episcopal throne of Dorchester. Among the temporal chiefs of the Kingdom there was already one French Earl, kinsman alike of William and of Eadward, who would not fail in showing honour to the most renowned of his speech and kindred. Norman Stallers, Treasurers, personal officers of every kind, swarmed around the person of the King. Norman Thegns were already scattered through the land, and were already filling the land with those threatening castles, of which the wise policy of William had destroyed so many within his own dominions. Robert the son of Wymarc, Richard the son of Scrob, and the whole herd of strangers who were fattening on English soil, would flock to pay their duty to a more exalted countryman who came on the same errand as themselves. They would tell him with delight.and pride how the insolence of the natives had been crushed, how the wrongs of Count Eustace had been avenged, and how the rebel leaders had been driven to flee from justice. They would speak of England as a land which Norman influences had already conquered, and which needed only one exertion of the strong will and the strong hand to enable the Norman to take formal possession. The land was fast becoming their own. Some wild tribes, in parts of the island to which William’s journey was not likely to extend, might still remain under aged chieftains of English or Danish birth. But even these rude men had been found, whether through fear or policy, ready to fall in with the plans of the Norman faction, and to range themselves against the champions of the national cause. And the richest and most civilized parts of the land, the very parts which had been so lately held by the sturdiest champions of Norman innovations, had now become one great field for Normans of every class to settle in. From Kent to Hereford they might enrich themselves with the lands and largesses which a gracious King was never weary of showering upon them. That King was childless; he had no heir apparent or presumptive near to him;[908] he had had a brother, but that brother had been done to death by English traitors, with the fallen captain of traitors at their [Sidenote: Lack of direct heirs in the royal house.] head. Not a single near kinsman of the royal house could be found in England. The only surviving male descendant of Æthelred was the banished son of Eadmund, who, far away in his Hungarian refuge, perhaps hardly occurred to the minds of Norman courtiers. William was Eadward’s kinsman; it was convenient to forget that, though he was Eadward’s kinsman, yet not a single drop of royal or English blood flowed in his veins. It was convenient to forget that, even among men of foreign birth, there were those who were sprung, by female descent at least, from the kingly stock of England. Ralph of Hereford was the undoubted grandson of Æthelred, but the claims of the timid Earl of the Magesætas could hardly be pressed against those of the renowned Duke of the Normans. It [Sidenote: Constitutional aspect of the promise.] was convenient to forget that, by English Law, mere descent gave no right, and that, if it had given any right, William had no claim by descent to plead. It was easy to dwell simply on the nearness by blood, on the nearness by mutual good offices, which existed between the English King and the Norman Duke. There was everything to suggest the thought of the succession to William’s own mind; there was everything to suggest it to the foreign counsellors who stood around the throne of Eadward. Probably William, Eadward, and Eadward’s counsellors were alike ignorant or careless of the English Constitution. They did not, or they would not, remember that the Kingdom was not a private estate, to be passed from man to man either according to the caprice of a testator or according to the laws of strict descent. They did not remember that no man could hold the English Crown in any way but as the free gift of the English people. The English people would seem to them to be a conquered race, whose formal consent, if it needed to be asked at all, could be as easily extorted as it had been by Swend and Cnut. If they dared to refuse, they might surely be overcome by the Norman no less easily than they had been overcome by the Dane. It would probably seem to them that the chances were all in favour of William’s being able to succeed quietly as the heir or legatee of Eadward. If those chances failed, it would still be open to him to make his entry by arms as the avenger of the blood of Ælfred and his companions.

[Sidenote: No direct evidence on the point.]

The moment was thus in every way favourable for suggesting to William on the one hand, to Eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by which William should succeed to the English Crown on Eadward’s death. We have no direct evidence that any such arrangement took place at this time, but all the probabilities of the story lead irresistibly to the belief that such was the case. The purely English writers are silent, but then they are silent as to any bequest or arrangement in William’s favour at any time. They tell us nothing as to the nature of his claim to the Crown; they record his invasion, but they record nothing as to its motives.[909] The Norman writers, on the other hand, so full of Eadward’s promise to William, nowhere connect it with William’s visit to England, which one only among them speaks of at all.[910] But Norman writers, Norman records, the general consent of the age, confirmed rather than confuted [Sidenote: Negative evidence of the English writers.] by the significant silence of the English writers, all lead us to believe that, at some time or other, some kind of promise of the succession was made by Eadward to William. The case of Eadward’s promise is like the case of Harold’s oath. No English writer mentions either; but the silence of the English writers confirms rather than disproves the fact of both. All those Norman calumnies which they could deny, the English writers do most emphatically deny.[911] The fact then that they never formally deny the reports, which they must have heard, that Harold swore an oath to William, that Eadward made a promise in favour of William, may be accepted as the strongest proof that some kind of oath was sworn, that some kind [Sidenote: _Some_ promise of Eadward, and _some_ oath of Harold, historical, but the Norman details untrustworhy.] of promise was made. Had either Eadward’s promise or Harold’s oath been a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded both in the way that he did in the eyes of Europe; he could never have turned them to the behoof of his cause in the way that he so successfully did. I admit then some promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But that is all. The details, Eadward and some oath of Harold, historical, but the Norman details untrustworthy. as they are given by the various Norman writers, are so different, so utterly contradictory, that we can say nothing, on their showing, as to the time, place, or circumstances of either event. We are left with the bare fact, and for anything beyond it we must look to the probabilities of the case. The oath of Harold I shall discuss at the proper time; at present we are concerned with the bequest of the English Crown said to have been made by Eadward in favour of William.

Every one who has grasped the true nature of the English Constitution, as it stood in the eleventh century, [Sidenote: No power of bequest in the King, only of recommendation.] will fully understand that, strictly speaking, any bequest of the kind was altogether beyond the power of an English King. The Law of England gave the King no power to dispose of a Crown which he held solely by the free choice of the Witan of the land. All that Eadward could constitutionally do was to pledge himself to make in William’s favour that recommendation to the Witan which the Witan were bound to consider, though not [Sidenote: Eadward’s change of purpose; his final recommendation of Harold.] necessarily to consent to.[912] That, when the time came, Eadward did make such a recommendation, and did not make it in favour of William, we know for certain. The last will of Eadward, so far as such an expression can be allowed, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold. We shall see, as we go on, that there is the strongest reason to believe that Eadward at one time designed his namesake the Ætheling as his successor. It is even possible that his thoughts were at one time directed towards his nephew Ralph of Hereford. In a weak prince like Eadward changes of purpose of this kind are in no way wonderful. And in truth the changes in the condition of the country were such that a wiser King than Eadward might well have changed his purpose more than once between the visit of William and his own death. Now there is not the slightest sign of any intention on behalf of William during the later years of Eadward; first the Ætheling, and then the great Earl, are the persons marked out in turn for the succession. And yet, as we have seen, it is impossible not to believe that some promise was, at some time or other, made in William’s favour. The details of the Norman stories are [Sidenote: Impossibility of the Norman accounts.] indeed utterly incredible.[913] The version which is least grotesquely absurd represents Eadward as promising the Crown to his dear cousin and companion William, when they were both boys or youths living together in Normandy. It is enough to upset this tale, taken literally, if we remember that Eadward, who is here represented as the familiar and equal companion of the boy William, was, when he left Normandy, nearly forty years old, some five and twenty years older than his cousin. He is moreover made to dispose of a Crown which was not yet his, and which he afterwards assumed with a good deal of unwillingness. Yet this story is distinctly less absurd than the other versions. It is even possible that William or his advisers may have begun to look on the succession to the English Crown as a matter within the scope of their policy, from the time when the English embassy came to bring the King-elect Eadward from Normandy to his own Kingdom.[914] It is a far wilder story which describes Archbishop Robert as going over to announce to William the decree of the English Witan in his favour, a decree confirmed by the oaths of the Earls Leofric, Siward, and—Godwine! But even this story is less marvellous than that which represents Harold himself, at a time when he was the first man in England, and when his own designs on the Crown must have been perfectly well known, as sent by Eadward into Normandy to announce to the Duke the bequest which the King had made in his favour. All these stories are simply incredible; they are simply instances of that same daring power of invention by virtue of which Dudo of Saint Quintin describes William Longsword and Richard the Fearless as reigning over half the world,[915] by virtue of which Guy of Amiens describes Robert the Devil [Sidenote: William’s visit the only opportunity for the promise.] as the actual conqueror of England.[916] Yet some promise must be accepted, and some time and some place must be found for it. What time and place are so obvious William’s visit the only opportunity for the promise. as the time and place when Eadward and William, once and once only during their joint reigns, met together face to face? Every earlier and every later time seems utterly impossible; this time alone seems possible and probable. At the moment everything would tend to suggest the idea both to the King and to the Duke. The predominance of the Norman faction, the actual presence of the Norman Duke, the renown of his exploits sounding through all Europe, the lack of any acknowledged English heir, the absence of any acknowledged English leader, all suggested the scheme, all seemed [Sidenote: Later circumstances unfavourable to William.] to make it possible. Everything at that moment tended in favour of William’s succession; every later event, every later change of circumstances, tended in favour of the succession of any one rather than of William. At that moment the Norman party were in the full swing of power. Before another year had passed, the cause of England had once more triumphed; Eadward had Englishmen around him; he gradually learned to attach himself to men of his own race, and to give to the sons of Godwine that confidence and affection which he never gave to Godwine himself. He either forgot his promise to William, or else he allowed himself to be convinced that such a promise was unlawful to make and impossible to fulfil. But William never forgot it. We may be sure that, from that time, the Crown of England was the great object of all his hopes, all his thoughts, all his policy. Even in his marriage it may not have been left quite out of sight. The marriage of William and Matilda was undoubtedly a marriage of the truest affection. But it was no less undoubtedly a marriage which was prompted by many considerations of policy. And, among other inducements, William may well have remembered that his intended bride sprang by direct, if [Sidenote: Matilda’s descent from Ælfred.] only by female, descent from the stock of the great Ælfred.[917] His children therefore would have the blood of ancient English royalty in their veins. Such a descent would of course give neither William, nor Matilda, nor their children, any real claim; but it was a pretension one degree less absurd than a pretension grounded on the fact that Eadward’s mother was William’s great-aunt. [Sidenote: Nature of William’s claims.] And William knew as well as any man that, in politics, a chain is not always of the strength only of its weakest link. He knew that a skilful combination of fallacious arguments often has more practical effect on men’s mind than a single conclusive argument. He contrived, in the end, by skilfully weaving together a mass of assertions not one of which really proved his point, to persuade a large part of Europe that he was the true heir of Eadward, kept out of his inheritance by a perjured usurper. That all these schemes and pretensions date from the time of William’s visit to Eadward, that the Norman Duke left the English court invested, in his own eyes and in those of his followers, with the lawful heirship of the English Crown, is a fact which seems to admit of as little doubt as any fact which cannot be proved by direct evidence.[918]

[Sidenote: William’s visit an important stage in the history.]

In short, it marks one of the most important stages of our history, when “William Earl came from beyond sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the King him received, and as many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again.”[919] From that day onwards, we feel that we have been brought nearer, by one of the longest stages of our journey, to the fight of Senlac and the coronation of Westminster.

[Sidenote: Lack of details.]

William then visited England at the moment while Godwine was sheltered at the court of Bruges, while Harold was planning vengeance at the court of Dublin, while Eadgyth was musing on the vanity of earthly things in her cell at Wherwell. He therefore met none of the family who were most steadily hostile to all his projects. But we ask in vain, Did he meet the stout warrior Siward? Did he meet the mediator Leofric? Did he meet the Primate who was, fifteen years later, to place the Crown on his own brow, or that more stout-hearted Primate who either refused or was deemed unworthy to bear any part in that great ceremony? And we cannot but ask, Did he meet the now aged Lady, through whom came all his connexion with England or English royalty, the wife and mother of so many kings, the victim of so many spoliations? With what grace could Eadward bring his kinsman into the presence of the parent through whom alone William could call him kinsman, but between whom and himself there had been so little love? At all events, if Eadward was now for a season set free from the presence of his wife, he was soon set free for ever from the [Sidenote: Death of Emma. March 6, 1052.] presence of his mother. Early in the next year died Ælfgifu-Emma, the Old Lady, the mother of Eadward King and of Harthacnut, and her body lay in the Old Minster by Cnut King.[920]

The course of our story has thus brought us once more to the shores of our own island. In our next Chapter we shall have to begin the picture of the bright, if brief, regeneration of England. We shall have to listen to the spirit-stirring tale, how the champions of England came back from banishment, how the heart of England rose to welcome her friends and to take vengeance on her enemies, how for fourteen years England was England once again under the rule of the noblest of her own sons.