Chapter II: The Early Days of William Rufus.4 (2)

The castle of Bristol then, though not perched, like so many of its fellows, on any lofty height, was placed on a strong and important site. That site, commanding the lower course of the Avon and the great borough upon it, and guarding the meeting-place, still of two shires, as once of two kingdoms, supplied an admirable centre for the work of those whose object was, not to guard those shires, but to lay them waste.[97] To that end Bristol was occupied and garrisoned by the warrior Bishop of Coutances, Geoffrey of Mowbray. It is not unlikely that he was already in command of the castle. He was not only a land-owner in the two neighbouring shires, a very great land-owner in that of Somerset;[98] but the meagre notice of Bristol in the Great Survey also shows that he stood in some special relation to the borough as the receiver of the King’s dues within it.[99] He doubtless added anything that the castle needed in the way of further defences, and conjecture has attributed to him one of the several lines which the city walls have taken, that which brought the line of defence most closely to the banks of the Frome.[100] But whatever were his works, we have no record of them; we know only that the fierce prelate, at the head of his partisans, turned Bristol Castle into a den of robbers. His chief confederates were William of Eu, of whom we have already spoken[101], and his own nephew Robert of Mowbray. Among them they harried the land, and brought in the fruits of their harrying to the castle.[102] The central position of Bristol made a division of labour easy. Of Bishop Geoffrey’s two younger confederates, Robert undertook the work in Somerset and William in Gloucestershire. Robert marched up the valley of the Avon to the Roman town of Bath, emphatically the “old borough.”[103] At the foot of the hills on either side, lying, as wicked wits put it, amid sulphureous vapours, at the gates of hell,[104] the square, small indeed, of the Roman walls sheltered the abbey of Offa’s rearing, now widowed by the death of its English abbot Ælfsige.[105] The city had been overthrown by the arms of Ceawlin; it had lain waste like the City of the Legions;[106] it had risen again as an English town to share with the City of the Legions in the two chief glories of the days of the peaceful Eadgar. If Chester saw his triumph,[107] Bath had seen his crowning. And now the hand of the Norman, not the Norman Conqueror but the Norman rebel, fell as heavily on the English borough as the hand of the West-Saxon invader had fallen five hundred years before. Bath was a king’s town; as such it drew on itself the special wrath of the rebels; the whole town was destroyed by fire, to rise again presently in another character.[108] From Bath, the greatest town of Somerset, but which, as placed in a corner of the land, has never claimed to be one of its administrative centres, the destroyer passed on to another town of Roman origin, which once did aspire to be the head of the Sumorsætan, but from which all traces of greatness have passed away. From Bath Robert first marched into Wiltshire, most likely following the line of the Avon; he there wrought much slaughter and took great spoil. He then turned to the south-west along the high ground of Wiltshire; he made his way into the mid parts of Somerset, and laid siege to the King’s town of Givelceaster, Ivelchester, Ilchester, the Ischalis of a by-gone day.[109] The town lay at the foot of the most central range of the hills of Somerset, on the edge of one of the inlets of the great marshland of Sedgemoor. The site was marked by the junction of the great line of the Fossway with a number of roads in all directions. The spot was defended by the river, the Ivel, which gives the town its English name. Here, at the foot of the high ground, the stream widens to surround an island, a convenient outpost in the defences of the town which arose on its southern bank. Ilchester, like Bath, drew on itself the special enmity of the rebels as being a king’s town, an enmity likely to be the sharper because Ilchester stands within sight of Count Robert’s castle of Montacute, and is divided only by the river from lands which were held by his fellow-rebel William of Eu.[110] The Ilchester of our day seems a strange place for a siege; but in the days of the Red King the town was still surrounded by strong walls, and those walls were defended by valiant burghers. The walls and gates have perished; the ditches have been filled up; yet the lasting impress of the four-sided shape of the Roman _chester_ may still be traced in the direction of the roads and buildings of the modern town.[111] The importance of Ilchester had passed away even in the sixteenth century, when of its five or six churches all but one were in ruins; but, in the times with which we are dealing, its hundred and seven burgesses, with their market held in the old forum at the meeting-place of the roads, held no inconsiderable place among the smaller boroughs of Western England.[112] What the men of Ilchester had they knew how to defend; the attack and the defence were vigorously carried on on either side. Our one historian of the leaguer――he becomes almost its minstrel――tells us how the besiegers fought for greed of booty and love of victory, while the besieged fought with a good heart for their own safety and that of their friends and kinsfolk. The stronger and worthier motive had the better luck. The dark and gloomy Robert of Mowbray, darker and gloomier than ever, turned away, a defeated man, from the unconquered walls of Ilchester.[113]

[Sidenote: William of Eu plunders in Gloucestershire.]

[Sidenote: He harries Berkeley.]

[Sidenote: Position of Berkeley.]

[Sidenote: The castle.]

This utter failure of a man who stands forth in a marked way as one of the skilful captains of the age was a good omen for success at points which were still more important in the struggle. Meanwhile the work of destruction was going steadily on in the lands on the other side of Bristol, among the flock of the holy Wulfstan. Gloucestershire was assigned as the province of William of Eu, and he did his work with a will along the rich valley of the Severn, still the land of pasture, then also the land of vines.[114] The district called Berkeley Harness was laid waste with fire and sword, and the town of Berkeley itself was plundered.[115] Berkeley, once the abode of Earl Godwine and the scene of the pious scruples of Gytha,[116] is now simply marked as a king’s town;[117] the abbey had vanished in a past generation; the famous castle belongs to a later generation; but the place was not defenceless. Berkeley is indeed one of those places which have become strongholds almost by accident. It looks up at a crowd of points on the bold outlying promontories of the Cotswolds, points some of them marked by the earthworks of unrecorded times, which in Normandy or Maine could hardly fail to have been seized on for the site of fortresses far sooner than itself. Nor is it near enough to the wide estuary of the Severn to have been of any military importance in the way of commanding the stream. It is rather one of those places where the English lord fixed his dwelling on a spot which was chosen more as a convenient centre for his lands than with any regard to purposes of warfare. The mound, the church, the town, rose side by side on ground but slightly higher than the rich meadows around them. But the mound on which the great Earl of the West-Saxons had once dwelled had been, as usual, turned to Norman military uses. Earl William of Hereford, whose watchful care stretched on both sides of the river, had crowned it with what Domesday marks as “a little castle.”[118] One would be well pleased to know in what such a defence was an advance on the palisades or other defences which may have surrounded the hall of Godwine. In after days the “little castle” was to grow into the historic home of that historic house in whom, whether they themselves acknowledge it or not, history must see the lineal offspring, not of a Danish king, but of an English staller.[119] At present however the savage William of Eu had not to assault the stronghold of Robert, son of Harding and grandson of Eadnoth, but merely to overcome whatever resistance could be offered by the _castellulum_ of William Fitz-Osbern. Its defences were most likely much less strong than the Roman walls of Ilchester. Berkeley and the coasts thereof were thoroughly ravaged. On the whole, notwithstanding the defeat of Robert of Mowbray, the Bishop of Coutances and his lieutenants had done their work to their own good liking. No small spoil from each of the three nearest shires had been brought in to the robbers’ hold at Bristol.

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[Sidenote: Rebel centre at Hereford.]

[Sidenote: Action of Earl Roger.]

Meanwhile the same work was going on busily to the north and north-west of Bishop Geoffrey’s field of action. Of the movements in Herefordshire and Worcestershire we have fuller accounts, accounts which, before we have done, land us from the region of military history into that of hagiography. The centre of mischief in this region was at Hereford. The city which Harold had called back into being, and where William Fitz-Osbern had ruled so sternly, had now no longer an earl; the rebel Roger was paying the penalty of his treason at some point far away alike from Hereford, from Flanders, and from Breteuil.[120] The city had now the King for its immediate lord. It was presently seized by Roger of Lacy,[121] and was turned into a meeting-place for the disaffected. The host that came together is marked as made up of “the men that eldest were of Hereford, and the whole shire forthwith, and the men of Shropshire with mickle folk of Bretland.”[122] Some of their names, besides that of Roger of Lacy, we have heard already.[123] And we are significantly told that the men of Earl Roger――the men of Shropshire――were with them, a formula which seems specially meant to shut out the presence of the Earl himself.[124] And though the leaders were “all Frenchmen,”[125] yet among their followers were men of all the races of the land. Not only Normans and Britons, but Englishmen also, were seen in the rebel ranks. So it seemed, if not in the general prospect as it was looked at from distant Peterborough, yet at least in the clearer view which men took from the watch-towers of more nearly threatened Worcester.[126]

[Sidenote: The rebels march on Worcester.]

[Sidenote: 1055.]

[Sidenote: 1041.]

[Sidenote: Deliverance of Worcester.]

[Sidenote: Action of Wulfstan.]

[Sidenote: Position of Worcester.]

[Sidenote: Wulfstan called to the command.]

[Sidenote: Wulfstan enters the castle.]

[Sidenote: Advance of the rebels.]

[Sidenote: Sally of the royal forces.]

[Sidenote: Wulfstan curses the rebels.]

[Sidenote: Victory of the king’s men.]

For it was the “faithful city” of after days on which the full storm of the Western revolt was meant to burst. The Norman lords of the border, with their British allies, now marched on Worcester, as, thirty-three years before, an English earl of the border, with his British allies, had marched on Hereford.[127] They came of their own will to deal by Worcester, shire and city, as, forty-seven years before, English earls had been driven against their will to deal with them at the bidding of a Danish king.[128] “They harried and burned on Worcestershire forth, and they came to the port itself, and would then the port burn and the minster reave, and the King’s castle win to their hands.”[129] But Worcester was not doomed to see in the days of the second William such a day as Hereford had seen in the days of Eadward, as Worcester itself had seen in the days of Harthacnut. The port was not burned, the minster was not reaved, nor was the King’s castle won into the hands of his enemies. And the deliverance of Worcester is, with one accord, assigned by the writers of the time to the presence within its walls of its bishop, the one remaining bishop of English blood, whose unshaken loyalty had most likely brought the special wrath of the rebels upon his city and flock. The holy Wulfstan was grieved at heart for the woes which seemed coming upon his people; but he bade them be of good courage and trust in the Lord who saveth not by sword or spear.[130] The man who had won the heart of Northumberland for Harold,[131] who had saved his own city for the first William,[132] was now to save it again for the second. At Worcester, castle, minster, and episcopal palace rose side by side immediately above the Severn. But Worcester is no hill city like Durham or Le Mans. The height above the stream is slight; the subordinate buildings of the monastery went down almost to its banks. The mound, traditionally connected with the name of Eadgar the Giver-of-peace, has now utterly vanished; it then stood to the south of the monastery, and had become, as elsewhere, the kernel of the Norman castle. It will be remembered that it was the sacrilegious extension of its precincts at the hands of Urse of Abetot which had brought down on him the curse of Ealdred.[133] But by this time the new minster of Wulfstan’s own building, whose site, we may suppose, was further from the castle, that is, more to the north, than that of the church of Oswald,[134] was, if not yet finished, at least in making. It may be that at this moment the two minsters――the elder one which has wholly passed away, the newer, where Wulfstan’s crypt and some other portions of his work still remain among the recastings of later times,――both stood between the mound of Eadgar and its Norman surroundings, and the bishop’s dwelling, whatever may have been its form in Wulfstan’s day. Still along the line of the river, lay the buildings of the city further to the north, with the bridge leading to the meadows and low hills beyond the stream, backed by the varied outline of the heights of Malvern, the home of the newly-founded brotherhood of Ealdwine.[135] At the moment when the rebels drew near to Worcester, all the inhabitants of the city, of whatever race or order, were of one heart and of one soul under the inspiration of their holy Bishop. Like the prophets and judges of old, Wulfstan suddenly stands forth as first, if not in military action, at least in military command. We know not whether the fierce Sheriff or some captain of a milder spirit formally bore rule in the castle. But we read that the Norman garrison, by whom the mild virtues of the English bishop were known and loved, practically put him at their head. They prayed him to leave his episcopal home beyond the church, and to take up his abode with them in the fortress. If danger should be pressing, they would feel themselves all the safer, if such an one as he were among them.[136] Wulfstan agreed to their proposal, and set out on the short journey which he was asked to make, a journey which the encroachments of the Sheriff had made shorter than it should have been.[137] On his way he was surrounded by the inhabitants of Worcester of all classes, all alike ready for battle. He himself had, after the new fashion of Norman prelates, a military following,[138] and the soldiers of the King and of the Bishop, with all the citizens of Worcester, now came together in arms. From the height of the castle mound, Wulfstan and his people looked forth beyond the river. The foes were now advancing; they could be seen marching towards the city, and burning and laying waste the lands of the bishopric.[139] Soldiers and citizens now craved the Bishop’s leave to cross the river and meet the enemy. Wulfstan gave them leave, encouraging them by his blessing, and by the assurance that God would allow no harm to befall those who went forth to fight for their King and for the deliverance of their city and people.[140] Grieved further by the sight of the harrying of the church-lands, and pressed by the urgent prayer of all around him, Wulfstan pronounced a solemn anathema against the rebellious and sacrilegious invaders.[141] The loyal troops, strengthened by the exhortations and promises of their Bishop, set forth. The bridge was made firm; the defenders of Worcester marched across it;[142] and the working of Wulfstan’s curse, so the tradition of Worcester ran, smote down their enemies before them with a more than human power. The invaders, scattered over the fields for plunder, were at once overtaken and overthrown. Their limbs became weak and their eyes dim; they could hardly lift their weapons or know friend from foe.[143] The footmen were slaughtered; the horsemen, Norman, English, and Welsh, were taken prisoners; of the whole host only a few escaped by flight. The men of the King and of the Bishop marched back to Worcester――so Worcester dutifully believed――without the loss of a single man from their ranks. They came back rejoicing in the great salvation which had been wrought by their hands, and giving all thanks to God and his servant Wulfstan.[144]

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[Sidenote: Movements of Odo in Kent.]

[Sidenote: Tunbridge and Pevensey.]

Among the sorrows which rent the breast of the holy Bishop of Worcester, one may have been to see a man of his own order, one whom he had, somewhat strangely perhaps, honoured with his friendship, acting as a temporal leader in the rebellion against which he had to wield his spiritual arms. It was, it may be remembered, Geoffrey of Mowbray, the lord of the robbers’ hold at Bristol, who had rebuked the lamb-like simplicity of Wulfstan’s garb.[145] The lamb of Severnside had now overthrown alike the wolves of Normandy and the wild cats of the British hills. But, if Wulfstan mourned over the evil deeds of the warlike Bishop of Coutances, he had no such personal cause for grief over either the sins or the sorrows of another bishop who was meanwhile, like himself, besieged in an episcopal city. That bishop however was not, like Wulfstan, defending his own flock with either spiritual or temporal arms; he was doing all the wrong in his power to the flock of another. The source and leader of the whole mischief,[146] Odo, Bishop and Earl, chose his own earldom of Kent for the scene of his ravages. Our notes of time are very imperfect, and we have seen that there were movements in Kent, movements in which Odo seems to have had a share, much earlier in the year.[147] But it would seem that the great outbreak of rebellion in south-eastern England happened about the same time as the great outbreaks more to the west and north. As the Bishop of Coutances had fixed his head-quarters in the castle of Bristol, so the Bishop of Bayeux now fixed his head-quarters in the castle of Rochester, and thence ravaged the lands of the King and the Archbishop.[148] Another great Kentish fortress, that of Tunbridge, was also in rebellion. So in Sussex was Pevensey, the very firstfruits of the Conquest, where Odo’s brother Count Robert also held out against the King. These three fortresses now become the busy scene of our immediate story; but the centre of all is the post occupied by the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This part of the war is emphatically the war of Rochester.

[Sidenote: Early history of Rochester.]

[Sidenote: Importance of its position.]

[Sidenote: The later castle.]

[Sidenote: The cathedral church.]

[Sidenote: The castle site fortified by the Conqueror.]

[Sidenote: The city.]

[Sidenote: Nature of the site.]

[Sidenote: The castle occupied by Odo.]

[Sidenote: Odo asks Robert to come.]

The city by the Medway had been a fortress from the earliest times. We have seen that it had already played a part both in foreign and in civil wars. In the days of Æthelred it still kept the Roman walls parts of which still remain, walls which were then able to withstand two sieges, one at the hands of the King himself, and one at those of the Danish invaders.[149] In truth the position of Rochester, lying on the road from London to Canterbury, near to the sea on a navigable river, made it at all times a great military post.[150] The chief ornament of the city did not yet exist in the days of Odo. The noble tower raised in the next age by Archbishop Walter of Corbeuil, the tower which in one struggle held out against John[151] and in the next held out for his son,[152] and still remains one of the glories of Norman military architecture, had perhaps not even a forerunner of its own class.[153] And the minster of Saint Andrew, which the enlargements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have still left one of the least among the episcopal churches of England, had then only the lowly forerunner which had risen, which perhaps was still only rising, under the hands of Gundulf.[154] But the steep scarped cliff rising above the broad tidal stream was a stronghold in the Conqueror’s days, as it had doubtless been in days long before his. Whether a stone castle had yet been built is uncertain; the fact that such an one was built for William Rufus by Gundulf later in his reign might almost lead us to think that as yet the site, strong in itself, was defended only by earthworks and defences of timber.[155] Below the castle to the south-east lay the city, doubtless fenced by the Roman wall; and a large part of its space had now begun to form the monastic precinct of Saint Andrew. The town is said to have been parted from the castle by a ditch which, as at Le Mans and at Lincoln, was overleaped by the enlarged church of the twelfth century;[156] in any case the castle, in all its stages, formed a sheltering citadel to the town at its feet. Neither town nor castle by itself occupies a peninsular site; but a great bend of the river to the south makes the whole ground on which they stand peninsular, with an extent of marshy ground between the town and the river to the north and east. The stronghold of Rochester, no lofty natural peak, no mound of ancient English kings, perhaps as yet gathering round no square keep of the new Norman fashion, but in any case a well-defended circuit with its scarped sides strengthened by all the art of the time, was the chief fortress of the ancient kingdom over which the Bishop of Bayeux now ruled as Earl. It now became, under him, the great centre of the rebellion. Gundulf, renowned as he was for his skill in military architecture, must have been sore let and hindered in the peaceful work of building his church and settling the discipline of his monks,[157] when his brother bishop filled the castle with his men of war, five hundred of his own knights among them.[158] But Odo was not satisfied with his garrison. He sent beyond sea to Duke Robert for further help. The prince in whose name Rochester was now held was earnestly prayed to come at once at the head of the full power of his duchy, to take possession of the crown and kingdom which were waiting for his coming.[159]

[Sidenote: The news brought to Robert.]

[Sidenote: He sends over Eustace of Boulogne and Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Three sons of Earl Roger at Rochester.]

[Sidenote: Hugh of Montgomery.]

[Sidenote: Roger of Poitou.]

[Sidenote: Action of Earl Roger.]

[Sidenote: He stays at Arundel.]

[Sidenote: Position of Arundel.]

[Sidenote: A castle at Arundel T. R. E.]

[Sidenote: Description of the castle.]

[Sidenote: William of Warren at Lewes.]

[Sidenote: His earldom of Surrey.]

[Sidenote: His loyalty.]

According to the narrative which we are now following, it would seem that Robert now heard for the first time of the movement which was going on in his behalf in England. His heart is lifted up at the unlooked for news; he tells the tidings to his friends; certain of victory, he sends some of them over to share in the spoil; he promises to come himself with all speed, as soon as he should have gathered a greater force.[160] At the head of the party which was actually sent were two men whose names are familiar to us.[161] One of them, Count Eustace of Boulogne, united the characters of a land-owner in England and of a sovereign prince in Gaul. This was the younger Eustace, the son of the old enemy of England, the brother of the hero who was within a few years to win back the Holy City for Christendom.[162] With him came Robert of Bellême; his share in the rebellion is his first act on English ground that we have to record. Himself the eldest son of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, he had either brought with him two of his brothers, or else they had already embraced the cause of Odo in England. Three sons of Roger and Mabel were now within the walls of Rochester.[163] The second was Hugh, who was for a moment to represent the line of Montgomery while Robert represented the line of Bellême, and who was to be as fierce a scourge to the Britons of the Northern border as Robert was to be to the valiant defenders of the land of Maine.[164] And with them was the third brother, Roger of Poitou, the lord of the debateable land between Mersey and Ribble,[165] carrying as it were to the furthest point of the earldom of Leofric the claim of his father to the proud title which the elder Roger bears at this stage of our story. It is as Earl of the Mercians that one teller of our tale bids us look for a moment on the lord of Montgomery and Shrewsbury.[166] But the Earl of the Mercians was not with his sons at Rochester any more than he had been with his men before Worcester. He was in another seat of his scattered power. His presence was less needed at Shrewsbury, less needed at the continental or the insular Montgomery, than it was in the South-Saxon land where the lord of Arundel and Chichester held so high a place. While his men were overthrown before Worcester, while his sons were strengthening themselves at Rochester, Earl Roger himself was watching events in his castle of Arundel.[167] The spot was well fitted for the purpose. Arundel lies in the same general region of England as the three great rebel strongholds of Rochester, Tunbridge, and Pevensey; it lies in the same shire and near the same coast as the last named of the three. But it lies apart from the immediate field of action of a campaign which should gather round those three centres. A gap in the Sussex downs, where the Arun makes its way to the sea through the flat land at its base, had been marked out, most likely from the earliest times, as a fitting spot for a stronghold. The last slope of this part of the downs towards the east was strengthened in days before King William came with a mound and a ditch, and Arundel is marked in the Great Survey as one of the castles few and far between which England contained before his coming.[168] The shell-keep which crowns the mound, and the gateway which flanks it, have been recast at various later times from the twelfth century onward, but it would be rash to assert that the mere wall of the keep may not contain portions either of the days of King William or of the days of King Eadward. The traces of a vast hall, more immediately overlooking the river, reared as usual on a vaulted substructure, almost constrain us to see in them the work of no age earlier or later than that of Roger or his successor of his own house.[169] The site is a natural watchtower, whence the eye ranges far away to various points of the compass, over the flat land and over the more distant hills, and over the many windings of the tidal river which then made Arundel a place of trade as well as of defence.[170] Less threatening than his vulture’s nest at _Tre Baldwin_,[171] less tempting to an enemy than his fortresses on the peninsula of Shrewsbury and within the walls of Chichester,[172] the stronghold of Arundel seems exactly the place for an experienced observer of men and things like Earl Roger to look out from and bide his time. He had to watch the course of things in the three rebel fortresses; he had further to watch what might come from a nearer spot, another break in the hill ground, where, between his doubtful Arundel and rebellious Pevensey, the twin mounds of loyal Lewes,[173] the home of William and Gundrada, looked up to what was one day to be the battle-ground of English freedom. Its lord, long familiar to us as William of Warren, stood firm in his allegiance, and it was now, according to some accounts, that he received his earldom of Surrey, an earldom to be borne in after times along with that which took its name from Roger’s own Arundel.[174] William became the King’s chief counsellor, and his position at Lewes must have thrown difficulties in the way of any communication between Arundel and Pevensey. And in truth, when Earl Roger found it safest to watch and be prudent, we are not surprised to find events presently shaping themselves in such a way as to make it his wisest course to play the part of the Curio of the tale.[175]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Action of the King.]

[Sidenote: He wins over Earl Roger.]

[Sidenote: Count Robert at Pevensey.]

But meanwhile where was King William? Where was the king who had taken his place on his father’s seat with so much ease, but whose place upon it had been so soon and so rudely shaken? We have been called on more than once in earlier studies to mark how the two characters of fox and lion were mingled in the tempers of the Conqueror and his countrymen, and assuredly the Conqueror’s second surviving son was fully able to don either garb when need called for it.[176] At this moment we are told in a marked way that William Rufus showed himself in the character of that which is conventionally looked on as the nobler beast. He had no mind to seek for murky holes, like the timid fox, but, like the bold and fearless lion, he gave himself mightily to put down the devices of his enemies.[177] Yet the first time when we distinctly get a personal sight of him, the Red King is seen playing the part of the fox with no small effect. Earl Roger was assuredly no mean master of Norman craft; but King William, in his first essay, showed himself fully his equal. By a personal appeal he won the Earl over from at least taking any further personal share in the rebellion. At some place not mentioned, perhaps at Arundel itself, the Earl, disguising, we are told, his treason, was riding in the King’s company.[178] The King took him aside, and argued the case with him. He would, he said, give up the kingdom, if such was really the wish of the old companions of his father. He knew not wherefore they were so bitter against him; he was ready, if they wished it, to make them further grants of lands or money. Only let them remember one thing; his cause and theirs were really the same; it was safer not to dispute the will of the man who had made both him and them what they were. “You may,” wound up Rufus, “despise and overthrow me; but take care lest such an example should prove dangerous to yourselves. My father has made me a king, and it was he alone who made you an earl.”[179] Roger felt or affected conviction, and followed the King, in his bodily presence at least, during the rest of the campaign.[180] But Robert, Count of Mortain and lord of Cornwall, still made Pevensey one of the strongholds of the revolt. Of the third great neighbour of these two lords, Count Robert of Eu, father of the ravager of Berkeley, we hear nothing on this side of the water.

[Sidenote: Loyal Normans.]

[Sidenote: Earl Hugh.]

[Sidenote: William of Warren.]

[Sidenote: Robert Fitz-hamon.]

[Sidenote: Forces on the side of Rufus,]

[Sidenote: the Church, and the people.]

[Sidenote: Loyalty of the Bishops.]

[Sidenote: The King appeals to the English.]

[Sidenote: His proclamation.]

[Sidenote: His promises.]

[Sidenote: The English take up the King’s cause.]

[Sidenote: Motives for supporting William.]

But, amid the general falling away, the throne of William Rufus was still defended by some men of Norman birth on whom he could better rely than on the doubtful loyalty of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Earl Hugh of Chester remained faithful; so, as we have seen, did Earl Roger’s neighbour, now or afterwards Earl William.[181] And to these already famous names we must add one which was now only beginning to be heard of, but which was presently to equal, if not to surpass, the renown of either. This was Robert Fitz-hamon, the son or grandson of Hamon _Dentatus_, the rebel of Val-ès-dunes.[182] But it was not on the swords of the Norman followers of his father that the son of the Conqueror rested his hopes of keeping the crown which the Conqueror had left him. William Rufus had at his side two forces, either of which, when it could put forth its full power, was stronger by far than the Norman nobles. All that in any way represented the higher feelings and instincts of man was along with him. All that in any shape was an embodiment of law or right was arrayed against the men whose one avowed principle was the desire to shake off the restraints of law in any shape. Against the openly proclaimed reign of lawlessness the King could rely on the strength of the Church and the strength of the people. With the single exception of him of Durham, the marauding bishops of Bayeux and Coutances found no followers among the men of their order in England. Lanfranc stood firmly by the King to whom he had given the crown; and the other bishops, of whatever origin, sought, we are told, with all faithfulness of purpose, the things which were for peace.[183] Either by their advice or by his own discernment, the King saw that his only course was to throw himself on the true folk of the land, to declare himself King of the English in fact as well as in name. A written proclamation went forth in the name of King William, addressed, doubtless in their own ancient tongue, to the sons of the soil, the men of English kin. The King of the English called on the people of the English, on the valiant men who were left of the old stock; he set forth his need to them and craved for their loyal help.[184] At such a moment he was lavish of promises. All the wrongs of the days of William the Elder were to be put an end to in the days of William the Younger. The English folk should have again the best laws that ever before were in this land. King William would reign over his people like Eadward or Cnut or Ælfred. The two great grievances of his father’s days were to cease; the King’s coffers were no longer to be filled by money wrung from his people; the King’s hunting-grounds were no longer to be fenced in by the savage code which had guarded the Conqueror’s pleasures. All unrighteous geld he forbade, and he granted to them their woods and right of hunting.[185] At the sound of such promises men’s hearts were stirred. At such moments, men commonly listen to their hopes rather than to their reason; the prospects and promises of a new reign are always made the best of; and there was no special reason as yet why the word of William the Red should be distrusted. He had not conquered England; he had not as yet had the means of oppressing England; he had shown at least one virtue in dutiful attachment to his father; his counsellor was the venerated Primate; chief in loyalty to him was one yet more venerated, the one native chief left to the English Church, the holy Bishop of Worcester. If the English dealt with William as an English king, he might deal with them as an English king should deal with his people. In fighting for William against the men who had risen up against him, they would be fighting for one who had not himself wronged them against the men who had done them the bitterest of wrongs. If the Bishop of Bayeux and the Bishop of Coutances, if Robert of Mortain and Robert of Mowbray, if Eustace of Boulogne and the fierce lord of Bellême, could all be smitten down by English axes or driven into banishment from the English shores, if their estates on English soil could be again parted out as the reward of English valour, the work of the Norman Conquest would indeed seem to be undone. And it would be undone none the less, although the king whose crown was made sure by English hands was himself the son of the Conqueror of England.

[Sidenote: Loyalty of the English.]

[Sidenote: They meet in London.]

[Sidenote: William’s English army.]

[Sidenote: Their zeal in his cause.]

[Sidenote: William accepted as the English king.]

With such feelings as these the sons of the soil gathered with glee around the standard of King William. Not a name is handed down to us. We know not from what shires they came or under what leaders they marched. We see only that, as was natural when the stress of the war lay in Kent and Sussex, the trysting-place was London.[186] How did that great city stand at this moment with regard to the rebellion? It will be remembered by what vigorous means Bishop William of Durham claimed to have secured the allegiance of the citizens some time earlier.[187] At all events, whether by the help of William of Saint-Calais or not, London was now in the King’s hands. There the royal host met, a motley host, a host of horse and foot, of Normans and English, but a host in which the English element was by far the greatest, and in which English feeling gave its character to the whole movement. Thirty thousand of the true natives of the land came together of their own free will to the defence of their lord the King.[188] The figures are of much the same value as other figures; it is enough if we take them as marking a general and zealous movement. The men who were thus brought together promised the King their most zealous service; they exhorted him to press on valiantly, to smite the rebels, and to win for himself the Empire of the whole island.[189] This last phrase is worth noting, even if it be a mere flourish of the historian. It marks that the change of dynasty was fully accepted, that the son of the Conqueror was fully acknowledged as the heir of all the rights of Æthelstan the Glorious and of Eadmund the Doer-of-great-deeds. A daughter of their race still sat on the Scottish throne; but for Malcolm, the savage devastator of Northern England, Englishmen could not be expected to feel any love. William was now their king, their king crowned and anointed, the lord to whom their duty was owing as his men.[190] Him they would make fast on the throne of England; for him they were ready to win the Empire of all Britain. The English followers of Rufus loudly proclaimed their hatred of rebellion. They even, we are told, called on their leader to study the history of past times, where he would see how faithful Englishmen had ever been to their kings.[191]

[Sidenote: William’s march.]

[Sidenote: English hatred of Odo.]

At the head of this great and zealous host William the Red set forth from London. He set forth at the head of an English host, to fight against Norman enemies in the Kentish and South-Saxon lands. And in that host there may well have been men who had marched forth from London on the like errand only two-and-twenty years before. Great as were the changes which had swept over the land, men must have been still living, still able to bear arms, who had dealt their blows in the _Malfosse_ of Senlac amidst the last glimmerings of light on the day of Saint Calixtus. The enemy was nationally and even personally the same. The work before all others at the present moment was to seize the man whose spiritual exhortations had stirred up Norman valour on that unforgotten day, and whose temporal arm had wielded, if not the sword, at least the war-club, in the first rank of the invaders. Odo, the invader of old, the oppressor of later days, the head and front of the evil rede of the present moment, was the foremost object of the loyal and patriotic hatred of every Englishman in the Red King’s army. Could he be seized, it would be easier to seize his accomplices.[192] The great object of the campaign was therefore to recover the castle of Rochester, the stronghold where the rebel Bishop, with his allies from Boulogne and from Bellême, bade their defiance to the King and people of England.

[Sidenote: Tunbridge castle.]

[Sidenote: Attack on the castle.]

[Sidenote: Position of Tunbridge.]

[Sidenote: The castle stormed.]

It was not however deemed good to march at once upon the immediate centre of the rebellion. A glance at the map will show that it was better policy not to make the attack on Rochester while both the other rebel strongholds, Tunbridge and Pevensey, remained unsubdued. The former of these, a border-post of Kent and Sussex, guarding the upper course of the stream that flows by Rochester, would, if won for the King, put a strong barrier between Rochester and Pevensey. The march on Rochester therefore took a roundabout course, and this part of the war opened by an attack on Tunbridge which was the first exploit of the Red King’s English army. At a point on the Medway about four miles within the Kentish border, at the foot of the high ground reaching northward from the actual frontier of the two ancient kingdoms, the winding river receives the waters of several smaller streams, and forms a group of low islands and peninsulas. On the slightly rising ground to the north, commanding the stream and its bridge, a mound had risen, fenced by a ditch on the exposed side to the north. This ancient fortress had grown into the castle of Gilbert the son of Richard, called of Clare and of Tunbridge, the son of the famous Count Gilbert of the early days of the Conqueror.[193] As Tunbridge now stands, the outer defences of the castle stand between the mound and the river, and the mound, bearing the shell-keep, is yoked together in a striking way with one of the noblest gateways of the later form of mediæval military art.[194] The general arrangements of the latter days of the eleventh century cannot have been widely different. The mound, doubtless a work of English hands turned to the uses of the stranger, was the main stronghold to be won. It was held by a body of Bishop Odo’s knights, under the command of its own lord Gilbert; to win it for the King and his people was an object only second to that of seizing the traitor prelate himself. The rebel band bade defiance to the King and his army. The castle held out for two days; but the zeal of the English was not to be withstood; no work could be more to their liking than that of attacking a Norman castle on their own soil, even with a Norman King as their leader. The castle was stormed; the native Chronicler, specially recording the act of his countrymen, speaks of it, like the castles of York in the days of Waltheof, as “tobroken.”[195] Most likely the buildings on the mound were thus “tobroken;” but some part of the castle enclosure must have been left habitable and defensible. For the garrison, with their chief Gilbert, were admitted to terms; and Gilbert, who had been wounded in the struggle, was left there under the care of a loyal guard.

[Sidenote: They march towards Rochester.]

[Sidenote: Odo at Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: Odo exhorts Robert of Mortain to hold out.]

The first blow had thus gone well to the mark. Such an exploit as this, the capture by English valour of one of the hated strongholds of the stranger, was enough to raise the spirit of William’s English followers to the highest pitch. And presently they were summoned to a work which would call forth a yet fiercer glow of national feeling. After Tunbridge had fallen, they set forth on their march towards Rochester, believing that the arch-enemy Odo was there. Their course would be to the north-east, keeping some way from the left side of the Medway; Bishop Gundulf’s tower at Malling,[196] if it was already built, would be the most marked point on the road. But they were not to reach Rochester by so easy a path. While they were on their way, news came to the King that his uncle was no longer at Rochester. While the King was before Tunbridge, the Bishop with a few followers had struck to the south-east, and had reached his brother’s castle of Pevensey.[197] The Count of Mortain and lord of Cornwall was perhaps wavering, like his neighbour at Arundel. The Bishop exhorted him to hold out. While the King besieged Rochester, they would be safe at Pevensey, and meanwhile Duke Robert and his host would cross the sea. The Duke would then win the crown, and would reward all their services.[198]

[Sidenote: Interest of Duke Robert in the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: His coming looked for.]

[Sidenote: He fails to help the rebels.]

[Sidenote: His childish boasting.]

[Sidenote: His promises.]

It is well to be reminded by words like these what the professed object of the insurgents was. It would be easy to forget that all the plundering that had been done from Rochester to Ilchester had been done in the name of the lawful rights of Duke Robert. The men who harried Berkeley and who were overthrown at Worcester were but the forerunners of the Duke of the Normans, who was to come, as spring went on, with the full force of his duchy.[199] It was not for nothing that King William had gathered his English army, when a new Norman Conquest was looked for. But as yet the blow was put off; Duke Robert came not; he seemed to think that the crown of England could be won with ease at any moment. When the first news of William’s accession came, when those around him urged him to active measures to support his rights, he had spoken of the matter with childish scorn. Were he at the ends of the earth――the city of Alexandria is taken as the standard of distance――the English would not dare to make William king, William would not dare to accept the crown at their hands, without waiting for the coming of his elder brother.[200] Both the impossible things had happened, and Robert and his partisans had now before them the harder task of driving William from a throne which was already his, instead of merely hindering him from mounting it. Up to this time Robert had done nothing; but now, in answer to the urgent prayers of his uncles, he did get together a force for their help, and promised that he would himself follow it before long.[201]

[Sidenote: William marches on Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: The English besiege Odo in Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Pevensey.]

The news of Odo’s presence at Pevensey at once changed the course of William’s march. Wherever the Bishop of Bayeux was, there was the point to be aimed at.[202] Instead of going on to Rochester, the King turned and marched straight upon Pevensey. The exact line of his march is not told us, but it could not fail to cross, perhaps it might for a while even coincide with, the line of march by which Harold had pressed to the South-Saxon coast on the eve of the great battle. Things might seem to have strangely turned about, when an English army, led by a son of the Conqueror, marched to lay siege to the two brothers and chief fellow-workers of the Conqueror within the stronghold which was the very firstfruits of the Conquest. The Roman walls of Anderida were still there; but their whole circuit was no longer desolate, as it had been when the Conqueror landed, and as we see it now again. One part of the ancient city had again become a dwelling-place of man. As Pevensey now stands, the south-eastern corner of the Roman enclosure, now again as forsaken as the rest, is fenced in by the moat, the walls, the towers, of a castle of the later type, the type of the Edwards, but whose towers are built in evident imitation of the solid Roman bastions. Then, or at some earlier time, the Roman wall itself received a new line of parapet, and one at least of its bastions was raised to form a tower in the restored line of defence. When the house of Mortain passed away in the second generation, the honour of Pevensey became the possession of the house of Laigle, and from them, perhaps in popular speech, certainly in the dialect of local antiquaries, Anderida became the Honour of the Eagle.[203] Within the circuit of the later castle, close on the ancient wall, rises, covered with shapeless ruins, a small mound which doubtless marks the site of the elder keep of Count Robert. Within that keep the two sons of Herleva, Bishop and Count, looked down on the shore close at their feet where they had landed with their mightier brother two-and-twenty years before. Within that stern memorial of their victory, they had now to defend themselves against the sons and brothers of men who had fallen by their hands, and whose lands they had parted out among them for a prey.

[Sidenote: The siege of Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: Duke Robert at last sends help.]

[Sidenote: Robert stays behind.]

[Sidenote: The English hinder the Normans from landing.]

[Sidenote: Utter failure of the invasion.]