Chapter XIII: The Negotiations of Duke William.752 (2)

But William, in the course of this great argument, showed himself emphatically all things to all men. There were other minds than those of his own Normans to be persuaded, there were ears in which another line of argument [Sidenote: The invasion represented as a missionary enterprise.] would sound more convincing. No diplomacy short of that of William and Lanfranc could have contrived to represent the invasion of England as an undertaking designed for the spiritual welfare of England. No brains less subtle than theirs could have converted William and his host into armed missionaries, eager to reform at the sword’s point the evil lives and the ecclesiastical abuses of [Sidenote: Charges brought against the English Church.] the ungodly islanders.[808] A land which had not lost its ancient character of the Isle of Saints—a land which had so lately boasted of a King like Eadward and an Earl like Leofric—a land which was still illustrated by the virtues of the holy Wulfstan—a land where so many minsters were rising in increased stateliness, and where the wealth of the Church was daily added to—a land whose Earls and Bishops and sons of every degree pressed, year after year, to worship and to offer at the tombs of the Apostles—a land like this was branded as a land which needed to be again gathered [Sidenote: The Crusade preached against England.] in to the true fold, and the Crusade which had not yet been preached against Turks or Prussians or Albigenses was prematurely preached against the people of England. It was indeed easy to gather together, in England or in any other land, tales which showed that the Church had fallen from her first love. It was easy to tell of breaches of discipline and breaches of morals, to tell of the vast pluralities of Stigand and of the deeds of sacrilege wrought at Berkeley and Leominster. The orators of William may well have set forth tales like these before the Roman Court, alongside of the tale of the perjury of Harold and of the wrong done to their own master. But these were not the [Sidenote: Real crime of England its independence of Rome.] real crimes of England. Her crime in the eyes of Rome, the crime to punish which the Crusade of William was approved and blessed, was the independence still retained by the island Church and nation. A land where the Church and the nation were but different names for the same community, a land where Priests and Prelates were subject to the Law like other men, a land where the King and his Witan gave and took away the staff of the Bishop, was a land which in the eyes of Rome was more dangerous than a land of Jews or Saracens. Rome, ever watchful, ever mindful, had not forgotten the note of insular defiance when the heart of England spoke by the mouth of Tostig, and threatened the Pontiff on his throne.[809] Even under Eadward, England had been no unresisting bond-slave, and her independence, so boldly asserted by one son of Godwine, was likely to be as boldly maintained by another. The opportunity which Rome had doubtless long looked for now offered itself. A sword was put into her hand by which the rebellious islanders might be brought under her full obedience. It was a policy worthy of William to send to the threshold of the Apostles to crave their blessing on his [Sidenote: William outwitted by HILDEBRAND.] intended work of reducing the rebellious land. And it was a policy worthy of one greater than William himself to make even William, for once in his life, the instrument of purposes yet more daring, yet more far-sighted, than his own. On the steps of the Papal chair, and there alone, had William and Lanfranc to cope with an intellect loftier and more subtle than even theirs. The counsellor of so many Pontiffs, so soon to be himself the most renowned of Pontiffs, knew with whom he had to deal, and knew how to bide his time as well as William himself. William was sent on an errand which none but William could perform, but of which William himself knew not the full bearing. Under his rule no man could doubt that England would be subject to none but him. With William for her King, she was as little likely to be the unresisting slave of Rome as if Harold himself should continue to guard her. But a seed was sown which was to bear fruit in other times and under weaker rulers. When Rome once took upon her to adjudge the Crown of England, the path was opened for that day of [Sidenote: 1213.] shame and sorrow when a descendant of William stooped to receive the Crown of England as a fief of Rome.

§ 3. _The Norman Council and the Assembly of Lillebonne._

[Sidenote: Various negotiations carried on by William.]

The case of William had thus to be brought to bear on the minds of his own people, on the minds of the neighbouring countries whence he invited and looked for volunteers, on the minds of the foreign princes whose help or at least whose neutrality he asked for, and, above all, on the minds of the Roman Pontiff and his advisers. The order of these various negotiations is not very clear,[810] and in all probability all [Sidenote: He first consults a select Council of his own Duchy.] were being carried on at once. But there is little doubt that William’s first step, on receiving the refusal of Harold to surrender his Crown—or whatever else was the exact purport of the English King’s answer—was to lay the matter before a select body of his most trusty counsellors. The names of most of the men whom William thus honoured with his special confidence are already familiar to us. They were the men of his own blood, the friends of his youth, the faithful vassals who had fought at his side against French [Sidenote: Names and characters of the men assembled by William.] invaders and Norman rebels. There was his brother, Robert Count of Mortain, the lord of the castle by the waterfalls,[811] the spoil of the banished Warling.[812] And there was one closer than a brother, the proud William the son of Osbern, the son of the faithful guardian of his childhood.[813] There, perhaps the only priest in that gathering of warriors, was his other brother, Odo of Bayeux, soon to prove himself a warrior as stout of heart and as strong of arm as any of his race.[814] There too, not otherwise renowned, was Iwun-al-Chapel, the husband of the sister of William, Robert, and Odo.[815] There was a kinsman, nearer in legitimate succession to the stock of Rolf than William himself, Richard of Evreux, the son of Robert the Archbishop, the grandson of Richard the Fearless.[816] There was the true kinsman and vassal who guarded the frontier fortress of Eu,[817] the brother of the traitor Busac and of the holy Prelate of Lisieux.[818] There was Roger of Beaumont, who rid the world of Roger of Toesny,[819] and Ralph, the worthier grandson of that old foe of Normandy and mankind.[820] There was Ralph’s companion in banishment, Hugh of Grantmesnil,[821] and Roger of Montgomery, the loyal son-in-law of him who cursed the Bastard in his cradle.[822] There too were the other worthies of the day of Mortemer, Walter Giffard[823] and Hugh of Montfort,[824] and William of Warren, the valiant youth who had received the chiefest guerdon of that memorable ambush.[825] These men, chiefs of the great houses of Normandy, founders, some of them, of greater houses in England, were gathered together at their sovereign’s bidding. They were to be the first to share his counsels in the enterprise which he was planning, an enterprise planned against the land which, with so many in that assembly, was to become a second home, a home perhaps all the more cherished that it was won by the might of their own right hands.

[Sidenote: William consults the Council.]

To this select Council the Duke made his first appeal. He told them, what some of them at least knew well already, of the wrongs which he had suffered from Harold of England.[826] It was his purpose to cross the sea, in order to assert his rights and to chastise the wrong-doer. With the help of God and with the loyal service of his faithful Normans, he doubted not his power to do what he purposed.[827] He had gathered them together to know their minds upon the matter. Did they approve of his purpose? Did they deem the enterprise within his power? Were they ready themselves to help him to the uttermost to [Sidenote: Answer of the Council.] recover his right? The answer of the Norman leaders, the personal kinsmen and friends of their sovereign, was wise and constitutional. They approved his purpose; they deemed that the enterprise was not beyond the power of Normandy to accomplish. The valour of the Norman knighthood, the wealth of the Norman Church,[828] was fully enough to put their Duke in possession of all that he [Sidenote: They pledge their own service, but recommend the calling of a larger assembly.] claimed. Their own personal service they pledged at once; they would follow him to the war; they would pledge, they would sell, their lands to cover the costs of the expedition. But they would not answer for others. Where all were to share in the work, all ought to share in the counsel.[829] Those whom the Duke had gathered together were not the whole baronage of Normandy. There were other wise and brave men in the Duchy, whose arms were as strong, and whose counsel would be as sage, as those of the chosen party to whom he spoke. Let the Duke call a larger meeting of all the Barons of his Duchy, and lay his designs before them.

[Sidenote: The Assembly of Lillebonne.]

The Duke hearkened to this advice, and he at once sent forth a summons for the gathering of a larger Assembly. This is the only time when we come across any details of [Sidenote: Difference between Norman and English Assemblies.] the proceedings of a Norman Parliament. And we at once see how widely the political condition of Normandy differed from that of England. We see how much further England had advanced, or, more truly, how much further Normandy had gone back, in the path of political freedom. The Norman Assembly which assembled to discuss the war against England was a widely different body from the Great Gemót which had voted for the restoration of Godwine. Godwine had made his speech before the King and all the people of the land.[830] That people had met under the canopy of heaven, beneath the walls of the greatest city of [Sidenote: No Clergy or Commons in the Norman Assembly.] the realm. But in William’s Assembly we hear of none but Barons. The old Teutonic constitution had wholly died away from the memories of the descendants of the men who followed Rolf and Harold Blaatand. The immemorial democracy had passed away, and the later constitution of the mediæval States had not yet arisen. There was no Third Estate, because the personal right of every freeman to attend had altogether vanished, while the idea of the representation of particular privileged towns had not yet been heard of. And, if the Third Order was wanting, the First Order was at least less prominent than it was in other lands. The wealth of the Church had been already pointed out as an important element in the Duke’s ways and means, and both the wealth and the personal prowess of the Norman Clergy were, when the day came, freely placed at William’s disposal. The peculiar tradition of Norman Assemblies,[831] which shut out the Clergy from all share in the national deliberations, seems now to have been relaxed. It is implied, rather than asserted,[832] that the Bishops of Normandy were present in the Assembly which now met; but it is clear that the main stress of the debates fell on the lay Barons, and that the spirit of the Assembly was a spirit which was especially theirs.

[Sidenote: Place of Meeting.]

And, if the constitution of the Assembly differed widely from that of an English Gemót, the place of its meeting differed no less characteristically from the places of meeting most familiar to Englishmen. The law or custom of Eadward’s reign had chosen three of the chief cities of England to be, each in turn, the place of meeting for English national assemblies. The Norman Assembly met in a ducal dwelling far away from any of the great cities of the Duchy. It was gathered on a spot which had been a post of strength in far earlier times, and which, after ages of neglect, had been once more called into importance by [Sidenote: Juliobona or Lillebonne; its Roman remains.] William himself. The old Roman town of Juliobona stood at no great distance from the right bank of the Seine, and its representative, the modern Lillebonne, is familiar to travellers and students as one of the spots in Northern Gaul which are most rich in antiquities of Roman date.[833] Within the present century a Roman theatre has been brought to light, where the main arrangements of the building are still perfectly preserved. Its solid arches and vast masses of walls still attest that matchless skill of the ancient conquerors in the constructive art of the builder which has made their works survive those of so many later ages. So it has been at Lillebonne; the works of the Roman Cæsars have proved more permanent than [Sidenote: Decay of the place.] the works of the Norman Dukes. Juliobona seems to have sunk into insignificance during the later days of Roman sway. It seems that, before the Imperial dominion had fully ceased, while the land was wasted alike by the Teutonic invasions and by the disputes of contending Emperors or Tyrants, the ancient buildings of the city had been largely destroyed of set purpose, in order to employ their materials in the construction of defences to shelter what was allowed to remain. Juliobona dwindled away, and the town makes no figure in history, until William called it again into being, as if expressly to become the scene of [Sidenote: The castle built by William.] this memorable meeting.[834] On a slight elevation alike above the modern town and above the old Roman relic, William had reared a fortress which has now given way, partly to the military reconstructions of later ages, partly to the sheer barbarism of times which are almost our own. The site was a noble one. The theatre below, if it was not already hidden, might have seemed but a feeble reproduction by the hand of man of the glorious amphitheatre in which Lillebonne has been placed by the hand of nature. [Sidenote: Present state of Lillebonne.] From the top of a lofty tower of later days the eye looks down on the theatre on one side, on the other side on the modern town, with the graceful spire of its church, a work of the latest days of mediæval art. But the eye may almost pass by both to gaze on the wooded hills which, save at one point alone, shut in the view on every side. At that point, immediately above the Roman ruin, the hills, like the walls of the theatre, leave a gap which opens a view of the Seine glistening in the distance, and of the higher hills of the land between the Seine and the Dive which form the distant horizon. But no portion of the work of the great Duke now remains on that noble site. His donjon has given way to a grand round tower of later times, and to a taller one of octagonal shape, whose shattered walls still rise as the loftiest point of town or fortress. These changes were doubtless due to the fair requirements of the military art of later ages. But William’s noblest work has yielded to baser agents of destruction. Within his fortress, immediately above the theatre, as if to put the skill of his own age in direct competition with that of the old masters [Sidenote: William’s hall; its destruction.] of the world, William had built a noble hall, every stone of which has been destroyed in utter wantonness, but of whose general aspect a sufficient record has been preserved.[835] Like most halls of that and of the two immediately succeeding ages—like that noble episcopal hall at Angers which we may take as the best representative of the ducal hall at Lillebonne—a vaulted undercroft supported the hall itself. A lower range of doorways, above them a range of the small coupled windows of the age, marked the two stages, and produced the effect, at once rich and solid, so characteristic of the best works of Norman skill. Within that stately hall, divided, no doubt, by ranges of pillars and arches which were then fresh from the hand of the craftsman, William now, as on more than one other occasion,[836] gathered together the wisdom and valour of his Duchy, to hear and to ponder the mighty scheme on which his heart was bent.

[Sidenote: Genuine parliamentary spirit of the Assembly.]

Narrow as was the constitution of the Assembly, it showed, when it met, no lack either of political foresight or of parliamentary boldness. In a society so aristocratically constituted as that of Normandy was, the nobles are in truth, in a political sense, the people, and we must expect to find in any gathering of nobles both the virtues and the vices of a real popular assembly.[837] William had already consulted his Senate; he had now to bring his resolution, fortified by their approval, before the body which came as near as any body in Normandy could come to the character of an Assembly of the Norman People. The valiant gentlemen of Normandy, as wary as they were valiant, proved good guardians of the public purse, trusty keepers of what one knows not whether to call the rights of the nation or the [Sidenote: William’s opening speech; he assumes the willingness of the Assembly, and asks only what amount they will contribute.] privileges of their order. The Duke laid his case before them. He told once more the tale of his own rights and of the wrong which Harold had done him. He said that his own mind was to assert his rights by force of arms. He would fain enter England in the course of the year on which they had entered.[838] But without their help he could do nothing. Of his own he had neither ships enough nor men enough for such an enterprise. He would not ask whether they would help him in such a cause. He took their zeal and loyalty for granted; he asked only how many ships, how many men, each of his hearers would bring as a free-will offering.[839]

[Sidenote: The Assembly asks time to consider.]

A Norman Assembly was not a body to be surprised into a hasty assent, even when the craft and the eloquence [Sidenote: Mingled feelings of the Assembly.] of William was brought to bear upon it. The Barons asked for time to consider of their answer. They would debate among themselves, and they would let him know the conclusion to which they came.[840] William was obliged to consent to this delay, and the Assembly broke up into knots, greater or smaller, each eagerly discussing the great question. Parties of fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred, gathered round this or that energetic speaker.[841] Some professed their readiness to follow the Duke; others were in debt, and were too poor to venture on such hazards.[842] [Sidenote: Strong opposition to the enterprise.] Other speakers set forth the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Normandy could not conquer England; their fair and flourishing land would be ruined by the attempt.[843] The conquest of England was an undertaking beyond the power of a Roman Emperor.[844] Harold and his land were rich; they had wealth to take foreign Kings and Dukes into their service;[845] their own forces were in mere numbers such as Normandy could not hope to strive against.[846] They had abundance of tried soldiers, and, above all, they had a mighty fleet, with crews skilled beyond other men in all that pertained to the warfare of the sea.[847] How could a fleet be raised, how could the sailors be gathered together, how could they be taught, within a year’s space, to cope with such an enemy?[848] The feeling of the Assembly was distinctly against so desperate an enterprise as the invasion of England. It seemed as if the hopes and schemes of William were about to be shattered in their beginning through the opposition of his own subjects.

[Sidenote: Attempt of William Fitz-Osbern to cajole the Assembly.]

A daring, though cunning, attempt was now made by William Fitz-Osbern, the Duke’s nearest personal friend, to cajole the Assembly into an assent to his master’s will. He appealed to their sense of feudal honour; they owed the Duke service for their fiefs; let them come forward and do with a good heart all, and more than all, that their tenure of their fiefs bound them to. Let not their sovereign be driven to implore the services of his subjects. [Sidenote: He points out the danger of opposition.] Let them rather forestal his will; let them win his favour by ready offerings even beyond their power to fulfil.[849] He enlarged on the character of the lord with whom they had to deal. William’s jealous temper would not brook disappointment at their hands. It would be the worse for them in the end, if the Duke should ever have to say that he had failed in his enterprise because they had failed in readiness to support him.[850]

[Sidenote: He is commissioned to speak in]

The language of William Fitz-Osbern seems to have startled and perplexed even the stout hearts with whom [Sidenote: the name of the Assembly.] he had to deal. The Barons prayed him to be their spokesman with the Duke. He knew their minds and could speak for them all, and they would be bound by what he said.[851] But they gave him no direct commission to bind them to any consent to the Duke’s demand. Their words indeed tended ominously the other way; they feared the sea—so changed was the race which had once manned the ships of Rolf and Harold Blaatand—and they were not bound to serve beyond it.[852]

[Sidenote: His speech to the Duke;]

A point seemed to have been gained by the seeming licence given by the Assembly to the Duke’s most intimate friend to speak as he would in the name of the whole baronage. William Fitz-Osbern now spoke to the Duke. He began with an exordium of almost cringing loyalty, setting forth how great was the zeal and affection of the Normans for their prince, and how there was no danger which they would not willingly undergo in his service.[853] [Sidenote: his large offers] But the orator soon overshot his mark. He promised, in the name of the whole Assembly, that every man would not only cross the sea with the Duke, but would bring with him double the contingent to which his holding bound him. The lord of twenty knights’ fees would serve with forty knights, and the lord of a hundred with two hundred.[854] He himself, of his love and zeal, would furnish sixty ships, well equipped, and filled with fighting men.[855]

[Sidenote: disowned by the Barons.]

The Barons now felt themselves taken in a snare. They were in nearly the same case as the King against whom they were called on to march. They had indeed promised; they had commissioned William Fitz-Osbern to speak in their names. But their commission had been stretched beyond all reasonable construction; their spokesman had pledged them to engagements which had never entered into their minds.[856] Loud shouts of dissent rose through the hall. The mention of serving with double the regular [Sidenote: Fears and confusion of the Assembly.] contingent awakened special indignation. With a true parliamentary instinct, the Norman Barons feared lest a consent to this demand should be drawn into a precedent, and lest their fiefs should be for ever burthened with this double service.[857] The shouts grew louder; the whole hall was in confusion; no speaker could be heard; no man would hearken to reason or render a reason for himself.[858]

[Sidenote: No common vote passed, but the Barons severally]

The rash speech of William Fitz-Osbern had thus destroyed all hope of a regular parliamentary consent on the part of the Assembly. But it is possible that the Duke gained in the end by the hazardous experiment of [Sidenote: won over by the Duke.] his Seneschal. It is even possible that the manœuvre may have been concerted beforehand between him and his master. It was not likely that any persuasion could have brought the Assembly as a body to agree to the lavish offer of volunteer service which was put into its mouth by William Fitz-Osbern. There was no hope of carrying any such vote on a formal division. But the confusion which followed the speech of the Seneschal hindered any formal division from being taken. The Assembly, in short, as an assembly, was broken up. The fagot was unloosed, and the sticks could now be broken one by one. The baronage of Normandy had lost all the strength of union; they were brought, one by one, within the reach of the personal fascinations of their sovereign. William conferred with each man apart;[859] he employed all his arts on minds which, when no longer strengthened by the sympathy of a crowd, could not refuse anything that he asked. He pledged himself that the doubling of their services should not become a precedent; no man’s fief should be burthened with any charge beyond what it had borne from time immemorial.[860] Men thus personally appealed to, brought in this way within the magic sphere of princely influence, were no longer slack to promise, and having once promised, they were not slack to fulfil. William had more than gained his point. If he had not gained the formal sanction of the Norman baronage to his expedition, he had won over each individual Norman Baron to serve him as a volunteer. And, wary as ever, William took heed that no man who had promised should draw back from his promise. His scribes and clerks were at hand, and the number of ships and soldiers promised by each Baron was at once set down in a book.[861] A Domesday of the conquerors was in short drawn up in the ducal hall at Lillebonne, a forerunner of the greater Domesday of the conquered, which, twenty years later, was brought to King William of England in his royal palace at Winchester.

§ 4. _William’s Alliance with Tostig._

[Sidenote: William’s chances of support in England]

William had thus, by a characteristic effort of his craft, won over his own Duchy to support him in his enterprise. He had now to seek for allies beyond his own borders. And, first and foremost, it concerned him to know whether he could look for any support in the land to whose dominion he aspired. There is not a shadow of evidence to show that William had a single native partizan within the four [Sidenote: confined to the Normans settled there.] seas of Britain.[862]He may have carried on intrigues with the Normans whom Harold had allowed to remain in England. But even on this head we have no distinct evidence. A single notice some months later seems to show that, even at the time of William’s landing, the Normans in England, however eagerly they may have wished for his success, looked on his enterprise as hopeless.[863] But it is certain that one, perhaps two,[864] native Englishmen [Sidenote: William’s cause embraced by the banished Tostig.] were zealous on William’s behalf. At what stage of his negotiations we know not, but seemingly early in the year, one Englishman at least came to William’s court, to excite him to war against England and to offer his own services for the cause. But that Englishman was no discontented noble at Harold’s court, no leader of a powerful faction within his realm. He was an exile, buoyed up by an exile’s proverbially desperate hopes. The first foreign volunteer who answered to William’s summons was Tostig the son of Godwine.[865]

[Sidenote: Position and schemes of Tostig.]

In the banished brother of the English King, William found an ally willing to help him in all his schemes, an ally far more impetuous than himself, far more eager to strike a blow at once and at all hazards. The fallen Earl of the Northumbrians had sunk from bad to worse. He had now thrown off every feeling of an Englishman and a brother of the English King. He had once perhaps dreamed of the Kingdom for himself; he now found himself shut out from all hopes of his Earldom, or indeed of restoration in any shape. Harold, as Earl, at the Northampton conference, had done all that he could do for his brother; but he had agreed to the sentence of outlawry which the national voice had called for, and he had not as King done anything to recall Tostig to his country. In fact the restoration of Tostig was in every way impossible. [Sidenote: His hopelessness of restoration.] He had shown his thorough unfitness to rule, and it is absurd to suppose that he would have been satisfied to sit down and live peaceably in England as a private man. Harold could have had neither the will nor the power to break the Oxford compact, to dispossess Morkere of the Earldom which had been so solemnly confirmed to him, and to set his brother to rule once more over the unwilling people of Northumberland. Nor could he be asked to depose in favour of a pardoned outlaw either of his two loyal brothers who ruled in Kent and in East-Anglia. Nor could Tostig reasonably hope that Harold would put him in a still closer relation to himself by restoring the West-Saxon Earldom in his favour. In short, no banished man ever seemed doomed to a more hopeless banishment. It is not wonderful then that the heart of Tostig was turned to an exceeding bitterness against the country which had cast him out, and against the brother who had refused to sacrifice the public weal to his interests. If he still retained the consciousness of originally right intentions, such a consciousness would only add fuel to the fire. It is quite possible that the murderer of Gamel and Ulf may have looked on himself as a martyr to the cause of good order among the barbarous Northumbrians. At all events, he looked on himself as absolved from all ties either to his [Sidenote: He determines on a restoration by force.] brother or to his country. An attempt at an armed return on the part of Tostig was no more than was to be expected. It was what any banished man of that age was sure to attempt, if he could only collect the needful force in any quarter. Osgod Clapa, Godwine, Ælfgar, Harold himself, had all set him the example. The practice was so common that it could hardly be looked upon as specially blameworthy. If we blame Harold severely for the slaughter at Porlock, it is really because he pays the penalty of his greatness, because we cannot help judging him by a severer standard than that by which we judge smaller [Sidenote: Difference between the case of Tostig and the cases of other returning exiles.] men.[866] But there are very marked degrees in a course which, however usual at the time, must be set down as being in every case contrary to ideal loyalty and patriotism. The case of Godwine needs no defence; it is covered by the general right of insurrection against mis-government. If Godwine came to restore himself, he came also to deliver England. Harold, like Osgod Clapa, tried to effect his return by the help of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he did not ally himself with any enemies of the King or Kingdom. Ælfgar, on his first banishment, went a step further by leaguing himself with a rebellious vassal, if not within the Kingdom of England, at least within the Empire of Britain.[867] On the occasion of his second banishment, he did not scruple to employ the help of a fleet of Wikings, who must have been cruising on the shores of England with no friendly intent.[868] All these are steps in a descending scale. But neither Osgod nor Harold nor Ælfgar sank to the wickedness of roaming over the world in search of any foreign potentate who would restore him by force, even at the expense of the utter subjugation of England. Tostig alone did not scruple at this depth of treason. He stands before us as acting more distinctly as the enemy of his country than any Englishman whom we have come across since the days of Ælfric and Eadric.

[Sidenote: Tostig goes from Flanders to Normandy.]

Tostig, we have seen, on his banishment from England, took refuge with his brother-in-law Count Baldwin, and spent the winter at his court.[869] But, early in the next year, perhaps not very long after the election of Harold, most likely as soon as the news of the messages which passed between William and Harold had found its way to Bruges, Tostig was at the Court of William, urging him to the invasion of England. He eagerly asked the Duke how he could suffer the perjurer to reign,[870] and promised his own [Sidenote: Relations between William and Tostig.] vigorous help in promoting all his plans.[871] It would seem that he reached Normandy before the Assembly at Lillebonne, and it is even implied that the exhortations of Tostig were among the inducements which led William to summon that Assembly.[872] But Tostig’s exhortations could have been only a very secondary inducement, serving at most to strengthen and hasten a resolution which William had already formed. It would be an insult to William to suppose that he really needed Tostig as a counsellor. The relations between the two men are perfectly easy to understand; the small man was likely to be useful as a momentary tool in the hands of the great man. Though Tostig left his wife at the court of her brother, the family connexion between Judith and Matilda would secure him a brotherly reception at the Court of Rouen; indeed we are told that, on the strength of that connexion, Tostig and William had long been intimate friends.[873] And now each of the two friends was in a position to be useful to the other. Tostig, driven from England, was in search of foreign help, and the Court of Normandy was the natural place for him to seek for it in the first instance. As soon as he knew of William’s designs on the English Crown, he would hail in him the very man for his purpose. And the prince who already contemplated the invasion of England would rejoice at an alliance with the banished and hostile brother of the English King. Tostig had doubtless, after the manner of exiles, persuaded himself that all England was ready to welcome, not only himself, but any stranger who might appear under the pretext of restoring him. William was too wise to believe tales of this kind, but he might well look on Tostig as likely to prove an useful tool, as one whose incursions might serve to harass the King of the English, and to distract his attention from the main danger. Tostig’s impetuous temper would naturally call for earlier and more effective support than the prudence of William would be inclined to give, or indeed than, at that early stage of his preparations, he was able to give. It was undesirable utterly to thwart Tostig, or to make an enemy of him; it was perhaps becoming [Sidenote: Tostig attacks England with William’s sanction. May, 1066.] desirable to get rid of him. He was therefore allowed to make an incursion on the English coasts. At his own risk, but with the Duke’s sanction, he set sail from the Côtentin at the head of such a naval force as he could get together. This force would doubtless consist of Flemish and Norman mercenaries and volunteers. The Norman account tells us that King Harold’s fleet was so vigorously on the alert that Tostig was unable to land in England, while contrary winds hindered his return to Normandy.[874] We know however that he did land in England, and that he committed considerable ravages. [875] But, from this point, the career of Tostig and that of William become altogether distinct, and the story of Tostig’s later doings will join itself to another thread of my narrative. Tostig probably chafed under the restraints of William’s prudence; perhaps he thought himself forsaken, or even betrayed, by an ally whose support was so slowly and grudgingly given. It is certain that he soon threw up his alliance with the Norman Duke, and sought for more ready aid elsewhere.

§ 5. _William’s Negotiations with Foreign Powers._

[Sidenote: William invites volunteers from all parts.]

The alliance with Tostig was a mere episode. The banished Earl could only be useful so far as he was likely to make a diversion of which William might take advantage. The Duke’s serious business lay on the continent. He invited soldiers from every quarter; the spoils of England were promised as their reward, and that promise brought abundance of volunteers from all parts of Gaul, from the royal domains, from Britanny, from Poitou and Aquitaine, and from the more distant land of Burgundy.[876] Some accounts even bring men to William’s muster from the Norman colonies in Southern Italy.[877] The presence of large bodies of these mercenaries or volunteers from all parts of Romance-speaking Europe is an undoubted fact, and it is [Sidenote: The Conquest not a national Norman enterprise.] one which it is most important to bear in mind. There can be no greater mistake than to look on William’s invasion as a national Norman undertaking, or on his army as consisting wholly of native Normans. We have just seen that it was only as volunteers that William’s own subjects followed him, and as volunteers men of any nation who chose to join him followed him equally. But it is a speaking witness, alike to William’s personal capacity for rule and to the inherent superiority of the Norman national character, that all this mixed multitude should have received a thoroughly Norman impress. The [Sidenote: Norman character impressed on the whole.] spoils of England were offered to all who would come, and from a large part of Europe men flocked eagerly to share them. But the head and the heart of the whole enterprise was Norman. The leaders of the enterprise, the Duke himself and most of the chief commanders, [Sidenote: Few foreign princes served; the mass of the foreign troops mere adventurers.] were Norman. A few princes or men of princely houses, like Eustace of Boulogne and Alan of Britanny, commanded their contingents in person. But the mass of the foreigners were mere adventurers, and we shall find that, when the day of battle came, they served under a Norman commander. We are indeed told that men came from all lands, not only for the sake of plunder, but to maintain the righteous cause of William.[878] It is likely enough that, when the Papal approval was once given to the enterprise, men pressed, as they did in after years to the Crusade, to atone for past acts of robbery and slaughter by renewing them with the Church’s blessing. But all that redeemed William’s enterprise from being an enterprise of mere brigandage came from the presence of his own subjects. The instinct of mankind is right, after all, in looking on the Conquest as a Norman Conquest. It was the native Normans who were really foremost in the strife, and it was the native Normans who took the firmest root in the conquered land. William’s true strength lay, after all, in the gallant men who could at least boast of the comparatively ennobling motive that they were supporting their native sovereign in the pursuit of his fancied rights.

[Sidenote: William’s embassies to foreign powers.]

The share then, numerically a very important share, taken in the expedition by foreign adventurers is beyond all doubt. But the negotiations between William and the neighbouring potentates are involved in no small obscurity and contradiction.[879] It was William’s manifest interest to obtain, if not the active alliance, at any rate the neutrality of all his neighbours. It was necessary for his purpose to feel as secure as he could make himself that no French or Angevin or Breton invasion of Normandy would take place during his absence. It was also an important subsidiary object to obtain from the neighbouring princes full licence for their subjects to take a share in the enterprise. For these [Sidenote: His embassy to King Henry. Condition of Germany and the Empire. 1056–1066.] objects he sent embassies as far as Germany and Denmark. The great Emperor Henry the Third had been, as I need hardly repeat, the constant ally of England. But he had now been dead ten years, and the childhood and youth of his son, the young King Henry, was a time of distress and confusion for the Teutonic Kingdom. The minority [Sidenote: Comparison between the minorities of William and of Henry the Fourth.] of Henry had been, in many points, a repetition of the minority of William. But there was one marked difference between the German and the Norman period of chaos. William had been constantly exposed to the attacks of traitors, and of foreign enemies who sought to deprive him of his coronet and his life. Henry had not as yet had to fear either foreign invaders or home-bred rebels; he was simply passed to and fro between the hands of several ambitious men who sought to reign in his name. And it is an instructive mark of the difference between the political systems of Germany and Normandy that the men who sought to rule in Henry’s name were almost wholly the great spiritual Princes of the Empire. While still a child, he had been, by [Sidenote: 1062.] a mixture of craft and violence, transferred from the care of his mother to that of Hanno Archbishop of Köln,[880] and [Sidenote: 1063.] from the hands of Hanno he had passed into those of another princely churchman, the famous Adalbert of Bremen.[881] The young King was now perhaps just beginning in some degree to exercise a will of his own. [Sidenote: 1065.] He had, in the course of the last year, been girded with [Sidenote: 1066.] the sword of knighthood;[882] and this very year had witnessed the fall of Adalbert and the partial restoration of the power [Sidenote: No mention of the Norman embassy in German writers.] of Hanno.[883] But, full as the German writers are as to the reign of Henry the Third and the minority of Henry the Fourth, they tell us absolutely nothing as to any relations between the Empire and Normandy.[884] William is not spoken of by them till after he had obtained the Crown of England.[885] From Norman sources we seem to hear both of an alliance with the great Emperor himself and of a later alliance entered into during his son’s minority.[886] Such an alliance in the Emperor’s life-time, ten years or more back, need not have been in any way directed against England. [Sidenote: Possible influence of the Empress Agnes in favour of Normandy.] And an alliance with Normandy during the earliest years of King Henry, while he was still under his mother’s guardianship, might seem no unlikely object of his mother’s policy. The Empress Agnes, it must be remembered, was a member of that house of Poitiers which had suffered so deeply at the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou,[887] and she might very naturally seek to maintain or to renew a connexion with a power which was the strongest enemy of the enemy of her own family. But, at the time which we have now reached, the power of Agnes had wholly passed away; alliance with Normandy moreover now meant hostility to England; and it is utterly impossible to see what interest either the young King or his successive archiepiscopal advisers could have in supporting the claims of William against the claims of [Sidenote: German help said to be promised to William.] Harold. Our Norman informant however describes Henry as, in high-sounding but somewhat vague terms, committing his Kingdom to an active support to the Norman side.[888] This again, strange as it sounds, can hardly be sheer invention, though we instinctively suspect exaggeration [Sidenote: Probable state of the case.] in no small degree. It may be enough if we suppose that Henry or his counsellors agreed to put no hindrance in the way of such subjects of the Empire as might choose to join the Norman standard as volunteers.

[Sidenote: Negotiations with Swend of Denmark; his alleged promises and
faithlessness.]

The negotiations with Swend of Denmark again rest wholly on Norman authority. We are told that the Danish King promised help to William, which promise he was so far from keeping that he sent a large body of troops to the support of Harold.[889] With this latter statement I shall deal in its proper place. As for negotiations between William and Swend, they are perfectly possible. [Sidenote: Position and interests of Swend.] But it is hard to see what interest Swend could have had in supporting William. Swend was the cousin of Harold, and, though Godwine had resisted his claims on the English Crown, alliance with him as King of the Danes had always formed part of the Earl’s policy.[890] If Swend at this time cherished any hopes of the English Crown, the succession of William stood far more directly in the way of those hopes than the succession of Harold. Nothing could be a more complete hindrance to any schemes of the kind than the transfer of the Crown to a wholly alien invader. On the other hand, Swend’s chances were distinctly bettered by the transfer of the Crown to a dynasty of which he might almost count as a member. If then Swend had really determined to interfere in English affairs, we may be sure that his intervention would have been on the side of Harold and not on the side of William. But it is far more probable that the wariest prince in Europe promised neutrality and kept it.

[Sidenote: Negotiations with King Philip. Difficulty as to the
relations between Philip and Baldwin.]

Even the negotiations of William with princes much nearer home are wrapped up in no small obscurity. One manifest object was to insure the safety of his frontier in the direction of Paris. William’s close connexion with Baldwin of Flanders, and the guardianship exercised by Baldwin over the young King Philip, might seem enough to make matters tolerably safe on that side. If Baldwin’s affinity with William did not absolutely secure the co-operation both of France and Flanders, it would at any rate, it might be thought, secure Normandy against all fear of attack from either quarter while her sovereign was engaged in his great enterprise. But, in the only account that we have, Baldwin is not introduced as acting at all in his character of guardian. William goes as [Sidenote: Interview between Philip and William.] his own ambassador to King Philip. The two princes meet at the great Abbey of Saint Germer in the district of Beauvais, a spot within the royal dominions, but only a few miles from the border Norman town of Gournay.[891] [Sidenote: William offers to hold England as a fief of the French Crown.] William asks for his overlord’s help in his enterprise, and offers, in return for such help, to hold England, no less than Normandy, as a fief of the French Crown.[892] Philip consults his nobles, who argue, naturally enough, that nothing can be more dangerous to the French Kingdom than any increase of the strength of the Norman Duchy. The offer to hold England in fief does not blind them; William’s vassalage for England will be still more nominal than his [Sidenote: Philip hostile to the enterprise.] vassalage for Normandy.[893] The answer given is therefore unfavourable; and William leaves the presence of his suzerain with very high words on his lips. Whether this story be literally true or not, it shows how familiar to men’s minds the notion of _Commendation_, even on the greatest scale,[894] still was. It shows how little of indignity attached to the vassal’s position, and of how little practical value was the oath of homage. We are presently told that Philip in no way promoted William’s object, but that he rather did all that he [Sidenote: Negotiations with Baldwin of Flanders.] could to hinder it.[895] Instead of any distinct account of William’s negotiations with his father-in-law, we get only an unintelligible romance.[896] But the practical issue of both the French and the Flemish negotiations seems plain. Neither Philip nor Baldwin, in their character as sovereigns, gave William any help. It is even probable that Philip, so far as he either had a will of his own or was guided by French counsellors, discouraged William’s enterprise rather than [Sidenote: French and Flemish volunteers in William’s army.] promoted it. But abundance of volunteers from both France and Flanders took service in William’s army. The Flemings, above all, the countrymen of Matilda, pressed eagerly to his standard, and they formed an important element in the Conquest and in the settlement which followed it. Matilda’s son Gerbod,[897] Gilbert of Ghent,[898] and Walter of Flanders,[899] are all names which occur among the conquerors of England, and those of Gerbod and Gilbert will again appear in our history.

[Sidenote: Eustace of Boulogne a zealous ally of William.]

In the region intermediate between Normandy and Flanders, the cause of William was eagerly taken up by Count Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of King Eadward. He had, of all men, wrongs, as he would deem them, to avenge on Harold and on England. The chastisement which Godwine had refused to work on the insolent burghers of Dover[900] might now at last be wrought on them and on their whole race, with the usurping son of the old traitor at their head. Eustace probably needed no invitation to take his share in the enterprise. He came himself, and he induced others to follow the same course. An incidental notice of one of his followers throws some light on the class of men who flocked to William’s banners, and on [Sidenote: Story of Arnold of Ardres.] the rewards which they received. One Geoffrey, an officer of the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, who had the charge of its possessions in the County of Guisnes, sent his sons Arnold and Geoffrey to the war. A daily pay and various gifts from the Duke were their immediate reward, and in the end they received an establishment of lands both in Essex and in the border shires of Mercia and East-Anglia, under the superiority of their patron Count Eustace.[901]

[Sidenote: Great number of auxiliaries from Britanny.]