Chapter XIII: The Negotiations of Duke William.752 (1)

January–August, 1066.

[Sidenote: Position of William at the death of Eadward.]

The people of England had made their choice. They had placed the Crown of England upon the head of the foremost man of their own race. Harold, the son of Godwine, the son of Wulfnoth, sat in the kingly seat which had never before received an occupant of other than kingly birth. The news was not slow in reaching the ears of that mighty rival beyond the sea, who had long marked that kingly seat as his own heritage, and who could now complain to the world that his heritage had been torn from him by his own sworn vassal. We cannot doubt that William had long been watching every breeze which could bring tidings from England. The failing health of Eadward was known at Rouen as well as at Westminster,[753] and William was doubtless ready to put in his claim at the first moment that the throne should be actually vacant. Even after the homage done by Harold, even if we enlarge that homage to the full extent which it assumes in the statements of William’s own laureate, the Duke could hardly have looked forward with any confidence to a peaceful succession to the English Crown. He might well doubt how far he had really bound Harold, and, if he had bound Harold, he had at least not bound England. [Sidenote: Effect on his scheme of the sudden election of Harold.] But William was doubtless ready for every occasion, ready, whatever might happen, with a plausible case to set before the world on his own behalf. His claim was not likely to meet with any acknowledgement in England, but it would at least be a gain for him to be able to say that it had been formally put forth at the right moment. And yet the course which events really took was perhaps, after all, still more to the wily Duke’s advantage. The death, the burial, the coronation, followed so fast upon one another that William had no opportunity of pressing his claim till after the choice of England had been irrevocably made. He might now, if he would, call on the reigning King to descend from an usurped throne; he could not call on the English nation to elect himself to a vacant throne. But he gained thereby an advantage of which the writers in his interest have not been slow to make use, the advantage of being able to represent the reigning King as an intruder. He could speak of him as one placed on the throne by some hasty and irregular act, as one reigning in any case in opposition to William’s own earlier right, perhaps even as reigning without the full and free consent of the English people. It is not to be forgotten that one count which Norman partizans bring against England is that the English people failed in gratitude to the deliverer who came to set them free from a tyrannical usurper.[754]

§ 1. _The Negotiations between William and Harold._

[Sidenote: The news brought from England to Normandy.]

Events had happened so fast at Westminster, on the eve of the Epiphany and on the festival itself, that the Duke of the Normans heard the whole story in a single message.[755] An English ship carried the news to Normandy; whether it was sent specially by any of William’s friends in England, or whether it went simply in the ordinary course of communication between two friendly countries, we are not distinctly told. But, as a special messenger brought the news to the Duke, we may conceive that some of the strangers whom Harold’s clemency had allowed to remain in the land[756] took the earliest opportunity of sending the news [Sidenote: Reception of the news by William.] to their native sovereign.[757] A graphic description is given of the reception of the news by the Duke.[758] He was in his park of Quevilly near Rouen,[759] with many knights and esquires[760] around him, going forth to the chase. He had in his hand his bow—the bow which, like that of Odysseus, no other man could bend[761]—strung and bent and ready for the arrow. He was in the act of giving it to a page to bear after him, when there came to the gate a messenger, a man-at-arms from England. The new comer went straight to the Duke; he greeted him, he took him aside, and told him the news privily and briefly. “King Eadward has ended his days and Earl Harold is raised to the Kingdom.”[762] The message at least acted as a respite for the destined victims of William’s bow, for the Duke had now other matters than hunting to think about. He turned aside from the craft of the woods; he was as a man in anger; ofttimes he laced and ofttimes he unlaced his mantle; he spake to no man and no man dared to speak to him.[763] He crossed the Seine in a boat; he went to his hall, and entered therein; he sat down on a bench and turned from one side to another. His head rested against a pillar,[764] and his face was covered with his mantle. Long time he thus sat in thought, no man daring to speak to him, though many asked one another what ailed him. [Sidenote: Dialogue between the Duke and William Fitz-Osbern.] At last one drew near whom long and intimate friendship allowed to deal more freely with his sovereign. The famous Seneschal, William Fitz-Osbern,[765] of whom we have so often heard, now rode back from the park and entered the hall, humming a tune[766] as he walked. He passed straight by the Duke, and many asked him what the news was which so ailed their sovereign. The Duke, hearing what passed between the Seneschal and the others, looked up. William Fitz-Osbern then told him that it was in vain for him to try to hide the news which he had heard, for that it was already blazed abroad through all the streets of Rouen. Every man in the city knew that Eadward was dead, and that Harold held the Kingdom of England. The Duke answered that that news was indeed the thing which grieved him. No news could grieve him more; he sorrowed alike for the death of Eadward and for the wrong done to him by Harold. Was he simply proving his friend? or were even his stout heart and wily brain cowed and perplexed for a moment by the suddenness of the tidings? At all events it is in the mouth of William Fitz-Osbern—the bold of heart[767]—that the first exhortation to action is placed in our story. He bids the Duke not mourn, but arise and be doing. Let him begin, let him carry through what he begins; let him, in a word, cross the sea and wrest the Kingdom from the usurper.

[Sidenote: William’s Embassy to Harold.]

The result of William’s deliberations with this trusty counsellor was the sending of an embassy to the King [Sidenote: Contradictory accounts of the nature of William’s message.] of the English. The nature of the message is as diversely told as the rest of the story of which it forms the sequel. Again the contemporary English writers are silent; they make no mention of Norman affairs till later in the year, till the very eve of the Norman invasion. And of the other writers, each naturally throws the message into such a shape as suits his own version of that oath of which the message was necessarily the counterpart. Whatever Harold had sworn, whatever it suited William to give out that Harold had sworn, that of course William now called on Harold to perform. But that demand ranges in different versions from a summons to Harold to resign his Kingdom to a simple summons to marry William’s daughter.[768] We hear of more messages than one, and in one account the tone of the second message is wonderfully lowered from the tone of the first. If Harold will not resign the Kingdom, nor give up the castle of Dover, nor do any of the other things which he has promised, let him at least marry the Duke’s daughter. If he declines to do even that, the Duke will certainly come against him in arms to support his rights. The date of the embassy, and the place of its reception by Harold, are as uncertain as the exact nature of the message or of the oath. It was a matter on which William was not likely to delay, and the number of events and negotiations which were crowded into a few months [Sidenote: Date of the Embassy uncertain.] show that he did not delay. But our only statement as to time is the assertion of a very untrustworthy writer that the message was either sent or received on the tenth day [Sidenote: [January 15, 1066?]] after Eadward’s death.[769] One would like on many grounds to know whether it was received before or after Harold had set forth on his mission to win the hearts of the malecontents of Northumberland. One would like to know whether Harold received the message of William when surrounded by his own West-Saxons, or whether it reached him, as an earlier embassy from Gaul had reached Glorious Æthelstan,[770] while he was engaged in arranging the affairs of the most distant and most troublesome portion of his [Sidenote: Possible bearing of the message on the discontents of Northumberland.] Kingdom. The point is interesting, as it is just possible that the Northumbrian opposition to Harold may have been in some degree connected with the challenge brought to him from Normandy. The succession of William was indeed not likely to be looked on with a whit more of favour in Northumberland than it was looked on in Wessex. But crafty spirits were at work, who might easily turn the claims of the Norman to their own ends. Such, it might be argued, were the results of the hasty election of Harold; such were the results of binding the free sons of the North by the voices of Wessex and East-Anglia. It would be better for the North again to choose its own King, a King who had never become the man of the stranger, a King whose right could not be challenged by any rival beyond the sea. Such arguments as these seem quite in character with the position of parties at the time, but we can neither affirm nor deny that they were actually used. The exact time of Harold’s northern journey, the exact time, place, and substance of the message which Harold received from the Norman Duke, are among those details of our story which must remain unknown to us.

[Sidenote: Object of William in the negotiation; the embassy intended
to be fruitless.]

Whatever was the exact purport of the embassy, there can be no doubt as to its object. It was sent simply in order that William might add another count to his indictment against the English King. It was sent in order that William might be able to say, not only that Harold had neglected to perform his engagements, whatever they were, but that he had formally refused to perform them when formally called upon. Whatever William demanded, we may be sure that he demanded it only in the expectation, and even in the hope, that Harold would refuse it. He could not seriously expect that Harold would, at his bidding, either come down from his throne or consent to hold his Crown in vassalage. William knew the temper both of England and of her King a great deal too well for this. Even the summons to marry William’s daughter could hardly have been seriously meant; if Harold were already married, it could only have been sent in mockery.[771] At all events, the one object of the embassy was to put Harold, according to William’s view of the case, still further in the wrong. Its object was to supply William with fresh topics for argument and for rhetoric in the appeal which he was about to make to Normandy, to Gaul, and to Christendom.

[Sidenote: Different forms given to Harold’s answer.]

The answer of Harold to the message is of course differently conceived, according as the message is differently conceived. The answer depends on the message, just as the message depends on the oath. But all accounts agree [Sidenote: His answer in any case a distinct refusal.] in describing the answer as a complete refusal. Whatever William summoned Harold to do, Harold refused to do it. And, according to some versions, if mockery was intended by the Norman, it was answered with mockery in return. The English King is called upon to fulfil his promise of giving his sister in marriage to a Norman noble. Harold answers that his sister is dead, and he asks whether the Duke wishes her corpse to be sent to him for the purpose.[772] When called on himself to marry the Duke’s daughter, he answers, according to one version, that the daughter whom he promised [Sidenote: Constitutional language attributed to Harold. He cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan.] to marry is already dead.[773] According to another account, he takes a high constitutional ground. A King of the English cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan of England. Such an act could not be done without doing great damage to his Kingdom.[774] This answer, whether ever really made or not, is not likely to point to any formal enactment on the subject of royal [Sidenote: English feeling with regard to foreign marriages.] marriages. But it expresses the universal feeling of the nation that none but Englishwomen were fit to be wives and mothers of English Kings. England had seen one Norman Lady, and one King who was Norman on his mother’s side. There was no wish among the English people to see such another Lady or such another King. The marriage of Emma, and the Norman connexion which followed it, had well nigh been the undoing of England. That they had not been wholly her undoing was due to the reigning King and his father. Their dynasty at least, the Kings of the House of Godwine, should be for ever kept free from all foreign elements. Harold’s own Danish mother, the kinswoman or ally of the great Cnut, could hardly be looked on as a stranger. Tostig and his foreign wife were in banishment, and England had no wish for their return. The whole nation was no doubt fully purposed that the next brood of Æthelings whom England saw should be no half-caste offspring of Norman or even of German or Flemish mothers, but Englishmen of purely English blood. Against such a feeling as this Harold, even if he had wished, could not have dared to struggle. The answer put into his mouth, whether historically genuine or not, well expresses uncorrupted English feeling on this important point. It well expresses too the necessity under which a King of the English lay, not only to obey the written Law, but to consult in all things the wishes and feelings of the English people.

[Sidenote: Argument attributed to Harold as to the validity of his
oath.]

Another form of the answer put into Harold’s mouth breathes an equally sound and constitutional spirit. William demands the Kingdom of England, which Harold, he alleges, had sworn to make over to him. The English King [Sidenote: The oath null without the consent of the Witan.] answers that such an oath was in itself void; to break it were a less evil than to keep it. The oath was one by which Harold bound himself to transfer to Duke William an heritage which was neither Harold’s nor William’s, but which only the voice of the English people could bestow on any man.[775] The oath or vow which a maiden in her father’s house made without her parents’ knowledge was void by the laws of God and man.[776] Much more then was the oath void which he, when still a subject, without the knowledge of King or people, had sworn under the pressure of a momentary constraint, on a matter touching the whole realm.[777] It was not reasonable to ask him to give up a Crown which had been placed on his head by the common voice of his countrymen, and of which their voice alone could lawfully deprive him.[778] Such is the doctrine which is put into Harold’s mouth by a writer whose divided [Sidenote: Constitutional importance of the answer.] sympathies lean decidedly to the Norman side. It is a doctrine most wholesome and necessary for a constitutional King, a doctrine which the historian himself allows to be true or at least highly plausible.[779] Valuable, if it be a genuine record of what Harold said, this speech becomes almost more valuable if we look on it as the speech which a writer a generation later deemed most in keeping with Harold’s character and position. The argument, for its own purpose, as an answer to William, is perfect. The accession of Harold was not the act of Harold only; it was equally the act of the English people. However guilty Harold might be towards William, the English people were free from all guilt towards William and towards all mankind. And, whatever might be the guilt of Harold, it was a guilt which, as his own argument assumes, lay wholly in taking the oath, not at all in breaking it.

[Sidenote: The Embassy fruitless in form, but William’s real point
gained.]

The errand then of the Norman ambassadors was a bootless one. No doubt it was the intention of him who sent them that it should be bootless. Whatever were their demands, whether they came once only or oftener, whether they raised their demands or lowered them, whether they dealt in persuasion only or in threats as well as persuasion,[780] Harold, evidently speaking the voice of the English people, refused all that was demanded of him. No other course indeed was possible. The point hardly needs to be argued. Harold could not, without the consent of the Witan, either resign the Crown to William or hold it of him in vassalage. And the consent of the Witan would certainly not have been given for any such purpose. The whole question in short was frivolous. The dispute had reached a stage which was past negotiation, and Harold and William alike knew that all negotiation was vain. What William gained by his embassy was again to entangle Harold in the meshes of his subtle craft. Harold could only refuse every demand of William; but Harold’s refusal of William’s demands made another point on William’s side, of which he was not slow to take advantage.

§ 2. _Claims and Arguments of William._

[Sidenote: William’s only hope lay in war.]

William had now no chance—in truth there had never been a time when he really had a chance—of winning the English Crown except by the sword. But, before he made that last appeal, he had many minds to work upon and to win over to his cause. An enterprise such as he designed was one such as no Norman Duke had ever before attempted. It was one which might seem altogether beyond the power of Normandy to achieve. William’s own father had indeed [Sidenote: 1028–1035.] contemplated an English war, and he had actually gathered together a fleet for the invasion of England.[781] But the enterprise of Robert was undertaken to restore the banished heir of England, driven from his native realm by a foreign invader. Such at least was the colour which Robert would put upon his schemes, and in carrying out such schemes he doubtless reckoned on a certain measure of English support. It was not really likely that Englishmen would have joined a Norman army to drive out Cnut in favour of the sons of Æthelred. But dreams of this kind are ever the food of exiles,[782] and of princes who take up the cause of exiles. But in William’s case there was [Sidenote: No English party in favor of William.] no room for any delusions of this kind. William had no rights but his own to assert, and those rights, he must have known very well, were not acknowledged by a single native partizan. He might gain somewhat by sowing dissensions within the island, by abetting any schemes on the part of Eadgar or Tostig or the sons of Ælfgar. But his only gain in this way would be the gain of dividing and weakening England. Any English party which was dissatisfied with the election of Harold would assert the claims, not of William but of some English competitor. For direct [Sidenote: Difficulties of his enterprise.] help in England William could look only to the Norman settlers whom Harold had allowed to remain in the country. He had, in short, to win the English Crown, if he won it at all, by no means but that of open war. And he had to wage his warfare at a time when England was ruled by a King who was his own peer in the art of war, when the land was defended by an army in the highest state of efficiency, an army which had never known defeat, and which was flushed with the remembrance of hard-won victories. William had in short to make good his rights in the absence of the least hope of native help, and withal in the teeth of King Harold and his Housecarls.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the Norman exploits in Apulia.]

Such an enterprise as this might well seem to be beyond the powers of a Duke of the Normans and of his Duchy. The successes of the Normans in Apulia might indeed make it seem as if no enterprise could be impossible to Norman valour. If private adventurers could thus carve out principalities for themselves, what conquests might not be made by the Duke himself at the head of the whole force of the Duchy? And no doubt the example of the conquests made by his countrymen in the South of Europe was ever present to the mind of William in planning his [Sidenote: Differences between the two cases.] great undertaking in the North. But the mere fact that the warfare was in the one case waged in the South and in the other in the North, was an important element of difference between the Apulian and the English enterprise. The actors indeed in the one case were private adventurers, while in the other it would be a sovereign at the head of his subjects and vassals. Duke William could no doubt command a far greater force than the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, but then he was also obliged to [Sidenote: Greater difficulty of the English enterprise.] wage a wholly different kind of warfare. The Duke of the Normans could not afford to sit down in some corner of England, and to win his way step by step, ever and anon gaining this or that skirmish or taking this or that castle. And again, without joining in any ignorant depreciation of Byzantine military prowess, we may doubt whether the sons of Tancred had ever joined battle with enemies who could be at all compared with the enemies with whom Duke William would have to join battle in England. If they had ever met with really equal foes, it was when they [Sidenote: 1053.] encountered Pope Leo’s German auxiliaries,[783] and, by that time, they had risen somewhat above the condition of private adventurers. They had waged a desultory warfare against a town here and a castle there, towns and castles defended for the most part by the mercenaries of a distant Emperor. They had never faced, what William would have to face in England, a native King at the head at once of an armed nation and of a native standing army. [Sidenote: William’s daring the highest prudence.] All ordinary prudence would naturally shrink from such a risk. It is only minds like that of William which can rise above all ordinary prudence, which know their own power as none but themselves can know it, which feel instinctively that undertakings which would be madness in [Sidenote: Necessity of winning public favour for his enterprise.] others are in their hands certain of success. But William himself could not hope for success, unless he could win over others far and near to look with favour upon his schemes, and unless he could inspire them with that confidence in themselves and in their leader without which [Sidenote: First in his own Duchy.] such an undertaking would be simply hopeless. He had first to deal with the chiefs and people of his own Duchy. Without their consent, without their thorough good-will, he could do nothing. To cross the sea to conquer England was quite another matter from putting down Norman rebels, from driving out French and Angevin invaders, or even from annexing neighbouring towns and provinces, like Domfront and Le Mans. William’s men were bound by their feudal tenure to follow his standard on the field of Val-ès-dunes and beneath the walls of Alençon. But it might well be doubted whether their feudal tenure bound them to follow his standard beyond the sea in an enterprise in which Normandy had no interest. At all events they were not likely to muster with the like zeal for the more hazardous undertaking. The Cenomannian war had been a war of aggression no less than the English war would be, and the spoils of conquered England would doubtless be far richer than the spoils of conquered Maine. But men would not be so ready to trust themselves in hope of spoil in the unknown land beyond the sea as they were to go on a foray in an adjoining province, from which it was an easy matter to make their way back to their [Sidenote: The Normans to be persuaded, not compelled, to the undertaking.] own homes. To attempt, by any mere stretches of the ducal authority, to carry men across the seas to win crowns for William’s own personal behoof would have been simply hopeless. William knew better than to risk his popularity and his authority by any attempt of the kind. His object was to carry the feelings of his people with him, and to conquer England by the swords of Norman volunteers.

[Sidenote: Various feelings to which William appealed.]

But the feeling to which William was about to appeal was something more than the mere desire of spoil, or even than the higher sentiment of feudal loyalty. Nor did he design to make his appeal to his own Normandy only. It suited William’s purpose and disposition to give his enterprise a [Sidenote: Religious character of the age; specially religious character of William.] far higher character and a far wider range. The age was a religious age; Normandy was an eminently religious country; William professed, and in many respects honestly practised, a devotion to religion beyond that of other men. It is not without real propriety that the panegyrist of William stops at this stage of his narrative to tell us of the flourishing state of Normandy and the Norman Church under a prince equally valiant, just, and devout. William laboured to preserve the peace of his Duchy by keeping down all its disturbers with the strong hand; the Truce of God was nowhere so strictly kept as in the Norman land.[784] William in his own person heard and judged the cause of the poor, the fatherless, and the widow; his justice kept back his courtiers and favourites from deeds of wrong; in his days the mighty man durst not remove the landmark of his poorer neighbour.[785] An orthodox believer, a diligent student of scripture, a devout worshipper and communicant,[786] a father careful for the education of his children,[787] William from his youth up, layman and prince as he was, set a model to priests and prelates. He chose the good among them for his friends and counsellors, and he visited the unjust and neglectful with his severest displeasure. A zealous reformer, he constantly attended in person at ecclesiastical synods,[788] and he kept a watchful eye over the administration of the episcopal and archidiaconal courts.[789] Under his government churches rose, monasteries were restored to the purity of their rule, Abbots, Bishops, all ranks of the clergy, became models [Sidenote: Influence of Lanfranc on William’s counsels.] of the due discharge of their several duties. Nor is it without reason that, immediately on this panegyric, our author adds his first mention of the great man whom William had now chosen as his special counsellor in all matters touching the Church and religion. The Prior of Bec, the renowned Lanfranc, was now, not indeed in rank but in influence, the first man in the Norman Church.[790] And it is impossible not to trace the hand of Lanfranc in the course which William now followed. The minds of the Duke and the Prior, exercised as they had been in such different pursuits, had still much in common. In both we see the same wide grasp, the same subtlety, the same daring. In many things Lanfranc would be the teacher, but he would ever find in William a pupil worthy of his teaching. The cosmopolitan traveller, who had migrated from Pavia to Bec—the scholar who had turned from the study of the laws of Cæsar[791] to the study of the laws of God—the theologian who had refuted the heretic face to face—the diplomatist who had won the consent of the [Sidenote: The religious character of the enterprise] Roman Court to his sovereign’s marriage—he it was, we cannot doubt, who put into William’s hands the surest weapon for his conquest. He it was who taught him to [Sidenote: probably due to Lanfranc.] lay his claim, not only before Normandy, but before all Christendom, and to cloke a wrongful aggression under the guise of a Holy War. He it was who taught him to gather round his standard crusaders from well nigh every Western land, and in the end to set foot on English ground, not as an adventurer avenging his private quarrel, but as the champion of the Church, marching forth with the approval and the blessing of the temporal and the spiritual chiefs of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Nature of William’s claim to the English Crown.]

Let us then see what was the case against Harold and against England which William thus brought to be judged, as we may say, by the public conscience of Europe. The pleading of William and his advocates, not only in his own Norman Parliament, but at the bar of the Pope, the Emperor, and the whole world, is one of the most memorable instances of human subtlety. It was a wonderful example of the way in which wily men, men like William and Lanfranc, can persuade others, and most likely persuade [Sidenote: No valid claim, either by hereditary right, by bequest, or by election.] themselves also, that the worse cause is the better. I have more than once incidentally shown that William had no valid claim of any kind to the English Crown. He had no claim by hereditary right; for the Crown of England was not hereditary, and, if it had been hereditary, no conceivable theory of succession could make William the heir. He had no claim by bequest; for a King of the English could not bequeath his Kingdom like a private estate, and such power of recommendation as the King did possess had been exercised in favour of another. He had no claim by election; for the people of England, in full Gemót assembled, had chosen another as their [Sidenote: Harold’s oath irrelevant to the question.] King. He had indeed suffered a wrong, whatever was its nature and degree, at the hands of the King whom England had chosen. Harold had sworn to do something, and he had not done what he had sworn to do. That was literally all, and, as a claim on the Crown of England, it was nothing. If Harold were to resign the Crown, if Harold were killed in battle or in single combat, William would not thereby gain any right to the Crown which he had not before. Harold had no power, any more than Eadward had, to make over the Crown to another; his resignation or death would simply create a vacancy, which the people of England might fill as they would. The utmost that could be said on William’s side was that Harold’s injury gave William a _casus belli_, and that a victory over Harold would give William, by right of conquest, all that Harold possessed, the English Crown included. But so odious a straining of the Law of Nations was too clearly unjust for William to venture publicly upon [Sidenote: The right of conquest not put forward. William’s appeal to public opinion a mark of advancing civilization,] it. The right of conquest was a right which he took care never to put prominently forward. He always claimed as a lawful heir defrauded of a lawful possession. And it marks a stage in the growth of European civilization, when William saw that his cause would be strengthened by making his claim, formally and solemnly, in the eyes of all men. The age of mere brute force was clearly past, when a prince claiming a foreign Crown took such infinite pains to win the public opinion of Europe, when he employed so many pens and so many voices on his side. Unjust and delusive as were his claims, it marks a great step in human progress that any man’s claims should be put forward in so solemn a way. It was a distinct [Sidenote: and of the growing power of the Papacy.] tribute to the power of law and right and opinion. But it was a tribute no less distinct to the growing power of the Papacy. The Bishop of Rome was invited, if not to dispose of the Crown of England, at least to determine who was its lawful possessor. Herein, if Lanfranc the Churchman triumphed, William the statesman undoubtedly erred. He did not indeed err as regarded his own personal interests. No crown that William held or won could ever be at the disposal of any other mortal. But he erred as regarded the common interest of Kings and [Sidenote: Effect of William’s application to Rome.] of all independent governments. He invited the alliance and interference of a power which he himself knew how to manage, but which proved too strong for smaller men. The blast of the Roman trumpet which declared Harold a perjured usurper, and William the lawful heir of England, was but the forerunner of a still mightier blast which pealed forth ten years later. The power which William now invoked to bless and hallow the schemes of his ambition learned, from the precedent set by William himself, to venture on that crowning act of daring which declared [Sidenote: 1076.] how King Henry, the son of Henry the Emperor, stood deprived of the Crowns of Italy and of the Teutonic Kingdom.[792]

[Sidenote: Fair colouring put by William and Lanfranc on a bad cause.]

The case then which William laid before Normandy, before Rome, and before all Western Christendom, was, in itself, a pretence utterly weak and fallacious. He claimed a crown which the solemn act of those who alone could dispose of it had, freely and lawfully, given to another. But the craft of William—we must doubtless add, the craft of his monastic ally—knew well how to put a fair colouring on their cause. The Law of England utterly rejected William’s claim; but the Law of England was likely to be known to few beyond the bounds of the island realm. Worthless as were William’s claims, they had a side which to many minds would be more attractive than that great principle of English Law that no man could reign in England save by the will of the English [Sidenote: Mixture of various irrelevant considerations.] people. It was easy to put William’s claims into a taking and rhetorical shape; it was easy to mix them up with a whole crowd of considerations, which had no real bearing on the case, but which were admirably fitted to enlist the sympathies of different classes of men. It was easy, by skilful management, to insist now on one point, now on another, with little care as to their logical consistency, provided one point gained one class of supporters and another point gained another.[793] In a large part of Europe, wherever the ideas of feudalism and chivalry had taken firm hold, the doctrine that the people alone had a right to choose their prince was fast passing [Sidenote: The hereditary principle was gaining strength on the Continent.] out of memory. The doctrine of hereditary right was daily spreading. It was daily taking firmer and firmer root, with regard both to the Crown of France and to the great fiefs which were held of that Crown. The doctrine that the King never dies had indeed not yet arisen; but the Parisian Kings had learned how to avoid the inconveniences of the interregnum and election by having their sons crowned in their own life-time.[794] That the Empire was other than elective no man had dared to affirm; no man then, or seven hundred years later, would have ventured to deny that the highest place on earth was in theory open to every baptized man. But the moment with which we are dealing was precisely the moment when the Empire was showing the strongest tendency to become practically hereditary. In the Teutonic Kingdom, no less than in Latin France,[795] the reigning King was at this moment a boy crowned as his father’s successor while his father still lived.[796] The great fiefs of both crowns were fast changing, from great magistracies like English Earldoms, into hereditary principalities. In France indeed they had passed the stage of change; they had been for some time, to all intents and purposes, sovereignties which passed as a matter of course to the heir of the last possessor. Kingdoms, Duchies, Counties, were now looked upon as, wherever strict feudal notions prevail, they cannot fail to be looked upon, as possessions in which the princes invested with them had a personal [Sidenote: Different position of England from other countries.] right. In England, almost alone, an Earldom still kept its character as a great office, for the good administration of which the magistrate entrusted with it was answerable to the power which appointed him, the King and the general Assembly of the Nation. In short, the political constitution, once common to every Teutonic people, still flourished in England, while it had greatly decayed in Germany and [Sidenote: Harold’s claim strange in continental eyes.] had quite died out in France. It follows that, to most continental hearers, the claim of Harold, a man not of kingly blood, to reign solely by the will of the people would already sound something strange and unnatural. The claim of William, a prince, would, simply because he was a prince, be looked on with more favourable eyes. A reigning prince, a kinsman of the late King, would seem far better fitted to reign than a mere subject, possibly the grandson of a churl.[797] Nor would the repugnance of the English to a King not of their own blood and speech be thoroughly intelligible on the Continent. England had never, except under constraint, chosen a foreign King, and Cnut the Dane was, after all, hardly a foreigner in the eyes of half the Kingdom. But on the Continent, at any rate among the nations of the various Romance tongues, princes had freely passed from one kingdom to another, as they could win them by conquest or by inheritance. Hugh of Provence had reigned in Italy;[798] Odo of Chartres had sought, not without a fair chance of success, for a kingdom in Burgundy;[799] and, the greatest instance of all, the Crowns of Burgundy and Italy, the Imperial Crown of Rome itself, were now, by the public Law of Europe, held to pass of right to the King of the Teutonic Kingdom. For the Duke of the Normans to grow into the King of the English would therefore seem a change far less strange in [Sidenote: No fixed law of succession anywhere.] continental than it seemed in insular eyes. And again, it was for William’s advantage that, though the doctrine of hereditary right was fast growing, the laws of hereditary succession had not yet been strictly fixed in any country. No one doubted that a son ought to succeed to his father, but it was by no means clear who ought to succeed to a prince who left no son. In fact this point has not to this day been settled by the common consent of Europe; it has followed in each kingdom the local law of that kingdom, and, I need not say, it is a point on which the Law of France and the Law of England have differed for ages. In truth it was only in an age when the law of hereditary succession was still very unsettled, that William the Bastard could have succeeded to anything, [Sidenote: No hereditary right in William.] whether in Normandy or in England. With regard to England, his claims would be at once set aside by a modern lawyer. He and Eadward had indeed a common ancestor in Richard the Fearless, but Richard the Fearless never was sovereign of England, nor was he in any line of succession which could have made him, under any circumstances, sovereign of England. Such a common ancestry [Sidenote: Doctrine of nearness of kin.] could give William no claim on the English Crown. But, till the law is very distinctly settled, the notion of nearness of kin is really more intelligible, and awakens more of sympathy, than the technical doctrine of representation. [Sidenote: Mixed nature of William’s claim.] William could therefore easily work on men’s minds by enlarging on his nearness of kin to Eadward, especially when that claim was mingled up with the claim founded on the alleged bequest of Eadward.[800] He could talk of the kindred by blood between himself and the English King; he could talk of their mutual affection and mutual good offices; he could tell of the promise of the succession made to him by his childless cousin. All this could easily be wrought up into a claim which, in the eyes of men ignorant of the Law of England and knowing no very strict law of succession of their own, might easily seem stronger than the claims of Harold, which rested solely on the election of the English people. As for Eadgar, nearer of kin to Eadward than William was, and born withal of the true kingly stock of England, it best suited William’s purpose to say nothing about him. Out of England his existence was most likely hardly known. Nay, in the unsettled state of men’s minds, William might, if the objection was ever started, argue that Eadward might rightly pass by an incompetent minor, and bequeath his Crown to a kinsman almost as near in blood and so much better fitted to rule.[801]

[Sidenote: William’s claim adapted to]

We thus see that William’s claim to the Crown, a claim artfully made up of bequest and hereditary right, was one [Sidenote: continental opinion at the time.] by no means ill suited to commend itself to many minds at the time. But it was not merely his claim as heir or legatee of Eadward that William now put forth to the world. There never was a more memorable example of the way in which one utterly fallacious argument can sometimes be made to bolster up another argument equally [Sidenote: The wrong done by Harold mixed up with William’s original claim.] fallacious. With William’s supposed original right by kindred or bequest the wrong done to him by Harold was cunningly mixed up. I have already argued that that wrong, whatever was its nature, could not really give William any right which he did not possess already. [Sidenote: Ingenuity and fallaciousness of this argument.] Neither Harold’s oath nor Harold’s breaking of his oath could, in law or morals, make William’s claim to the Crown one jot better or worse. But no tale could be better fitted further to inflame the minds of those who were already disposed to look on the Norman Duke as an injured man. It would indeed be a spirit-stirring tale in which William, and those who pleaded in William’s name, would set forth the wrong-doings of the faithless Englishman. [Sidenote: Aspect of the tale as told by William.] Harold, the sworn man of William, had turned against his lord; he had trodden under foot every duty of a vassal; rescued from the dungeon of Beaurain by William’s bounty, honoured with William’s personal friendship, admitted to the ranks of Norman chivalry by William’s hand, bound to William and his house by the promise of a daughter of Normandy to his wife—he had despised so many and so great favours; he had lifted up his heel against his lord and benefactor; the Kingdom which he had sworn to make over to William he had traitorously seized as his own; he had added, it might be, to his crime the further guilt of abusing the confidence of his own dying sovereign, and of wringing from him in his last moments an unwilling assent to the usurpation which he plotted. This was the light in which the tale of the election of Harold, a tale which seems so glorious in English eyes, would look in the eyes of those before whom William pleaded, of those on whom he called on to help him to assert his right and to chastise the wrong-doer. [Sidenote: Appeal to religious feelings.] Nor was this all; William had that to add which would speak at once to the deep religious feelings of his age and [Sidenote: Harold’s perjury no ordinary breach of feudal obligation, but a direct insult to the Norman Saints.] people. This was no common case of a vassal forgetting his duty to his lord. Who in that age could boast that he had always faithfully discharged all the duties arising out of the intricate, and often contradictory, relations of feudalism? On such mere backslidings as these William had never been unduly harsh. He had over and over again forgiven the men who had rebelled against him, and in the moment of victory he had ever kept his hands clean from bloodshed. But here was a wrong which he never could forgive, because a higher duty called on him to avenge it. He might pass by wrongs done against himself; but he would be himself a partaker in the guilt, if he passed by the wrongs done against a mightier power. Normandy had this time been wronged, not only in the person of her mortal sovereign but in the persons of her immortal guardians. Harold had done despite to all the saints of the Norman land; he had arrayed against him the wrath of every patron of every holy place from the stream of Eu to the Mount of the Archangel. The powers of Heaven were ready to fight against their blasphemer, and to bless the arms of him who stood forth as their earthly [Sidenote: The Crusades forestalled in William’s expedition.] avenger. Forestalling the enthusiasm with which, thirty years later, men pressed to wipe out their sins by a Crusade against the Infidel, William now called on all who would to win the favour of Heaven by going forth with him to avenge the insult offered to the saints of Normandy. William, in self-delusion, let us hope, rather than in conscious hypocrisy, called on all who would to aid him in the attack on an independent nation which he cloked under the name of a Holy War.

[Sidenote: General character of William’s case.]

Such was in truth the claim by virtue of which William threw down his challenge to England and to the King whom England had chosen. In the eye either of logic or of sound morals, his fabric was but as a house of cards; each fallacy rested on another fallacy as weak as itself, and when one frail support gave way, the fall of the whole must follow. But men are in general but little under the rule either of logic or of morals; they are apt to be guided by impulse rather than by judgement; they find it much less fatiguing to echo some easily repeated formula than to go into the facts or the reason of anything. A case then like William’s, artfully put together, and in which each fallacy fitted ingeniously into another, really told with more effect than the few plain facts which formed the defence of Harold and of England. Instead of being a house of cards, William’s fabric of fallacies, each resting on the other, did, as a matter of practical policy, win for itself the strength of the firmest arch. [Sidenote: Various incentives appealed unto.] And artfully mixed up with his formal claims were incentives of all kinds, adapted to the character and passions of the various kinds of men with whom he had to deal. [Sidenote: The plunder of England promised.] To all, of whatever nation, who would flock to his standard he offered a share in the spoils of England. He would lead them to a land abounding in all manner of good things, a land fruitful in meat and drink and rich in gold and silver.[802] The wealth of that goodly land should be the guerdon of all who had a share in its conquest. In that spirit of confident boasting which, in men like him, is often the highest wisdom, he promised beforehand all that was Harold’s, while Harold, he said, had not strength of mind to promise a single thing that was his.[803] William here lighted on the true difference between his own position and that of his rival. Harold, content with his own, planning no aggression against William or against any other man, was not likely to promise rewards in Normandy to his Thegns or his Housecarls. And, with his own people, William could appeal to feelings which were at least [Sidenote: Appeal to Norman patriotism.] higher than the mere love of plunder. It was possible to appeal to a certain vein of Norman patriotism, and to represent, not only the English King, but the English [Sidenote: Norman grudges against England.] nation, as laden with a heavy weight of offences against the Norman Duchy. The English invasion in Æthelred’s time[804] was perhaps forgotten—some critics may perhaps say that it never happened—at any rate it does not seem to have been prominently put forward. But William took care to announce himself as the true successor of his father in the expedition which his father undertook against England to support the rights of his cousins, [Sidenote: The murder of Ælfred.] the banished Æthelings.[805] He, the chosen heir of Eadward, went forth, among other high and righteous purposes, to avenge the blood of Ælfred, shed by the father of the reigning King, who was himself—so it was given out—art and part in his father’s deed.[806] The blood of a prince, partly Norman by birth, and endeared to Normandy by long residence in childhood and youth, might well call for vengeance at the hands of loyal Normans. [Sidenote: Expulsion of the Normans in 1052.] Then there was the wrong done, fourteen years back, to so many Normans, friends and guests of the late venerated King. Norman Knights and Prelates had had to flee for their lives before a lawless crowd of English rebels, hounded on against their own sovereign by the traitor Harold and [Sidenote: Special case of Archbishop Robert.] his traitor father. Chief among the victims was one whose wrongs, wrongs done against the Church and all godliness, were but the fit forerunners of the fouler wrong which had since been done directly against the saints in glory. The blasphemer of the Norman saints had been the despoiler of the Norman Primate. Robert of Jumièges, driven from the throne of Augustine, had come back to spend the remnant of his days in his own land, and to lay his bones beneath the slender towers and massive arches of the mighty minster which he himself had reared.[807] That the murder of Ælfred was a crime in which Harold could have had no share, that the flight of Robert was his own act, that his deprivation was a righteous process of English Law, that, even had Harold been the murderer of Ælfred and the unrighteous despoiler of Robert, neither count could in any way strengthen William’s claim to the English Crown—all these were points on which few minds in Normandy were likely to dwell. All these irrelevant matters could easily be made use of to stir up the mind of Normandy against Harold and against England. And, if this was done, no matter how logically weak were the arguments by which it was done, the aim of William was gained.

[Sidenote: General appeal against England.]