Chapter VI: The Last Wars of William Rufus.429 (4)

It is not at first easy to understand why so very little came of such great preparations as those which William Rufus made for the French war. The strength of two great states, during the later stages of the war the strength of three great states, was broken by efforts which, even allowing as much as we can for the energy of young Lewis, were mainly those of the nobles and people of a single district. England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, were baffled by the men of the French Vexin. It is true indeed that the war of Maine was far from being really ended, but Rufus seems at this stage to have thought little of the efforts of the man whom he had bidden to do his worst against him. Nor was there anything this year in England, as there was the year before, to draw off the King’s attention from continental affairs. Scotland was quiet under a king of his own naming; Magnus did not really threaten England; the Welsh border might be left to Robert of Bellême or those whom he had left in charge. All that we can do is to record this singular break-down of a great force, without being able fully to explain it. One remark may be made. Men of the temper of Rufus often get simply weary of undertakings which bring little success, and in which there is nothing to call forth any special point of personal vengeance or personal honour. Rufus claimed the Vexin; but his heart does not seem to have been set on its possession, as it clearly was set on the possession of Le Mans. There was no one on the French border who had stung him personally to the quick as Helias had done. The want of success in the joint undertaking of the two Williams is certainly hard to understand; but we can quite understand how William of England and Normandy might, in sheer disgust, throw up an undertaking in which he did not at once succeed. When he was once more wounded in the most sensitive part, he was, as we shall presently see, all himself again.

§ 4. _The Gemót of 1099._

[Sidenote: William keeps Christmas in Normandy. 1098-1099.]

[Sidenote: Easter Gemót. April 10, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót in the new hall at Westminster. May 10, 1099.]

William, master of Le Mans, but hardly to be called master of Maine, and assuredly not master of the Vexin, stayed in Normandy during the winter which followed the double war in those regions. The time of his absence is spoken of as a time of special oppression in England, a time when the exactions of Flambard and his fellows grew worse and worse, on account of the great sums which had to be sent over the sea for the King’s wars.[622] The Christmas feast was again kept in Normandy, in what city or castle we are not told, but such incidental notices as we have seem to point to Rouen as his usual head-quarters when he was in the duchy. He came back to England in time for the Easter feast; the feast implies the assembly; but we have no account of its doings; there was no longer in England either an Anselm to afford subjects for discussion or an Eadmer to report the debates. The next festival was of greater importance, if only on account of the place where it was held, a place ever-memorable in the history of England from that day to this. “At Pentecost the King William held his court for the first time in the new building at Westminster.”[623]

[Sidenote: Buildings of William Rufus.]

[Sidenote: They are reckoned among national grievances.]

[Sidenote: Various grievances.]

[Sidenote: Complaints in 1096,]

[Sidenote: in 1097.]

[Sidenote: Signs and wonders in 1098.]

[Sidenote: Bad weather of 1098.]

[Sidenote: The great buildings in London. 1097.]

The architectural works of William Rufus form a marked feature in his reign; but the place which they hold in the national annals is singular. They are set down among the grievances of that unhappy time. Besides the bad weather, which was not the Red King’s fault, and the bad harvests which were deemed to be in some measure his fault, there were the unrighteous taxes and the other forms of unlaw which were directly his fault; lastly there were the great buildings which are set down as not the least among his ways of oppressing the people. We have heard some of the wails which the Chronicler sends up year by year. The year of the purchase of Normandy was a year when the land was pressed down by manifold gelds and by a heavy time of hunger.[624] The next year, the year of Anselm’s going, was a year of signs in the heavens, and of _ungelds_ and _unweather_ below.[625] The next year, the year of Maine, the year of the Vexin, the year of Anglesey, had also its physical wonders. In the summer a pool at Finchampstead in Berkshire was said to have welled up blood.[626] At Michaelmas the heaven seemed well-nigh all night as if it were burning.[627] That was a very grievous year, through manifold _ungeld_ and through mickle rains that all the year never stopped; and――what came home to those who could look back to the bright days of the Golden Borough――well-nigh all tilth in the marsh-land died out.[628] Such are the mournful voices to which we listen year by year; but in the central year of the three another grievance is added. “Eke many shires that with work to London belonged were sorely harassed through the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge that well nigh all flooded away was, and through the King’s hall-work that man in Westminster wrought, and many men therewith harassed.”[629]

[Sidenote: Earlier parallels.]

[Sidenote: Abuse of the old law.]

[Sidenote: The bridge and the Tower.]

[Sidenote: Question as to the hall.]

This was the light in which three great works of building on which Englishmen of later days learned to look with national pride were looked on by the men of the time when they were wrought. We hear the cry of the Hebrew in the brick-field toiling to rear up the treasure-cities of the Pharaohs. We hear the cry of the Roman plebeian, as the proud Tarquin constrained him to give the sweat of his brow to fence in the seven hills with walls or to burrow beneath the ground to lay the foundations and turn the arches of the great sewer.[630] So it was in the days of the Red King with the Tower of London, the bridge of London, the hall of Westminster. We may believe that, as so often happened, the old law of England was turned to purposes of oppression. The repair of bridges and fortresses was the universal burthen on the Englishman’s _eðel_, the duty which he owed, not to a personal lord, but to the commonwealth of which he was a member.[631] In one case at least we know that the defences of the local capital were laid by local law upon the people of the whole shire.[632] What was law at Chester would seem from the words of the Chronicler to have been law in London also. There were certain “shires that with work to London belonged.” William Rufus may therefore have been quite within the letter of the ancient law in calling on the people of certain shires to contribute in money or labour to any works which were needed for either the Tower or the bridge of London. But it is clear that this is the kind of law which opens the way to a great amount of oppression in detail, and that the law itself supplies temptations to extort more than the law gives. The bridge at least was an useful work, and if the men of London thought that the Tower stood by their walls rather to overawe them than to defend them, that was an argument which could not be openly brought forward. But it is by no means clear whether the ancient law about bridges and fortresses could be stretched so as to take in works at the King’s palace. Anyhow the burthen laid on the people was frightfully oppressive, and those who felt the burthen bitterly complained. And, if we rightly understand the Chronicler, the grievance of building the bridge was doubled by a flood which swept away the unfinished work, and made it needful to build it over again.[633]

[Sidenote: Growth of the greatness of London.]

[Sidenote: Relations of London and Winchester.]

Thus, amid the toils and groans of the people, three mighty works arose, to hand down the name of William Rufus to after ages as a great builder. While Rufus was harrying the land of Maine, a land which but for him might have remained peaceful and happy under a righteous ruler, while he was striving in vain to bring the heights of Chaumont and Montfort under his power, the people of a large part of England were giving their strength and their money to make London put on a new face, to make all things ready for the time when the King should again come to his island kingdom to wear his crown in or hard by its greatest city. All these works point, among other things, to the steady growth of the greatness of London. The city had grown fast in importance during the whole century which was now drawing to an end, and at no time faster than during Harold’s nine months of little stillness.[634] London had become the city of the King; Winchester was left to be the city of the Old Lady.[635] The attractions of the New Forest drew the Conqueror, specially after the death of Eadgyth, back again to the old West-Saxon capital; but this preference of Winchester as the head-quarters of sport in no way checked the advance of London as the real head of the kingdom. Harsh as may have been the means by which the Red King raised his great buildings, richly as he and they may have earned the curses of his subjects at the time, we can say nothing against either the taste or the policy which led him to the defence and the adornment of the great city and of the palace which lay under its shadow.

[Sidenote: The wall round the Tower.]

[Sidenote: London Bridge.]

[Sidenote: Westminster Hall.]

[Sidenote: Its two founders.]

[Sidenote: Its architecture.]

[Sidenote: Recasting by Richard the Second.]

[Sidenote: Legal position of the reign of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: History of the hall.]

Notwithstanding any momentary checks, the works went on and prospered. The great tower of Gundulf――strange work for the meek follower of Anselm――was fenced in with a surrounding wall. The river was spanned by its first stone bridge, that long range of narrow arches, itself a thickly-peopled city over the stream, of which the last traces vanished in our own early days. But above all there now arose that famous hall of Westminster whose name has come to be another name for the law of England. Strange founder for such a pile might seem the prince whose reign was before all others the reign of unlaw. And yet it was not wholly unfitting that the Prytaneion of England should first arise at the bidding of William the Red, and should take a new form at the bidding of a later king in whose days unlaw was again mighty. The great hall arose at the bidding of Rufus, in the stern and solemn form of the art of his day――the day, be it remembered, of William of Saint-Calais and the choir of Durham――with its low massive walls, its two ranges of pillars and arches, far removed, we may be sure, from the graceful forms which had been at Spalato and which were to be again at Oakham, but standing firm in their strength, bearing the full impress of the style whose leading feature is that of simple, changeless, abiding, rest.[636] At the bidding of Richard of Bourdeaux the walls were cased, and pierced with windows of forms unknown in the days of the Red King; his pillars and arches were swept away; the central space and its aisles were thrown into a single body; the timber roof of wondrous span and wondrous workmanship leaped boldly from wall to wall, with a daring which might have pleased the swelling pride of Rufus himself. Thus, at the word of two despotic kings, arose the pile which may claim, no less than its neighbours, Saint Peter’s chapter-house and Saint Stephen’s chapel, to be the chosen home of English freedom. For in England law has ever grown out of unlaw. The despotism of Normans and of Tudors only paved the way for the outbursts of freedom in the thirteenth century and in the seventeenth; a reforming Henry dogged the steps alike of Rufus and of Richard. And if from one side the reign of Rufus was a reign of unlaw, from another side it was a reign of overmuch law. It saw the beginning of those legal subtleties, that web woven by the wicked skill of Flambard, which makes the Red King’s day a marked epoch in legal history. His reign bridges the space between the days when we had laws but when we had no lawyers, and the days when lawyers had grown so many and so subtle that the true ends of law were sometimes forgotten among them. If from one side the hall of Westminster has been one of the cradles of English freedom, from another side it has been the special home of that form of unlaw by which men have been sent to a wrongful doom under the outward forms of justice. Of all that is good and bad in the history of the law of England the hall of Rufus is the material embodying. Within no other building reared by the hand of man has so great a share of English history been wrought.

[Sidenote: Object of the hall.]

[Sidenote: Personal pride of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Legends of the hall.]

[Sidenote: Alleged sayings of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: The Whitsun feast.]

[Sidenote: The sword borne by the King of Scots.]

But it was not directly as the dwelling-place either of law or of its opposite that Rufus first reared his hall. It was built rather as a trophy of his own swelling pride. The home of the Confessor, the home of the Conqueror, was not stately enough for the Red King. He would be lodged, at least in that special home of kingship, as better became the idea which he had formed of his own greatness. It was the hall of the king, rather than the hall of the kingdom, the centre and crown of his own house, the place for the display of his own splendour, which Rufus sought to call into being. When the work was done, other men deemed that it was as great, perhaps greater, than even so great a king could need. But its founder was not satisfied. Nero, when he had finished his Golden House, allowed that he was at last lodged like a man. Rufus, when he had outdone the works of all that had gone before him, hardly deemed that he was lodged like a man in his palace of Westminster. The new hall, when it was done, was not half so great as he had meant it to be.[637] Some add a wilder saying, that he would build a house on such a scale that the great hall should be but one of its bed-chambers.[638] But the hall, such as it was, vast in the eyes of other men, small in the eyes of its master, was ready for use by the day of the Pentecostal feast. Then the assembly came together; then the accustomed rites were gone through in the West Minster; then the banquet and the council were held, as was wont, under its shadow, in the accustomed place, but within new walls and under a new roof. Within those walls, beneath that roof, men for the first time saw King William of England, lord, as he deemed, of Scotland, Normandy, and Maine, in all his own greatness and glory, in all the greatness and glory of his new work. One feature in that great gathering might indeed have helped to swell his heart even higher than it had ever before been swollen. The crown was, as usual, placed on his head in the minster and worn in the hall. And on that day at least he must have felt that the crown which was placed on his head was in truth an imperial diadem. William the Red was not indeed rowed on the Thames by vassal kings, like Eadgar the Giver-of-peace. But in the pomps of that day he saw a king march before him as his vassal, a king who had received his crown at his own bidding. When King William of England wore his _cynehelm_ in church and hall, King Eadgar of Scotland, first of his men in rank and honour, bore the sword of state before his lord.[639] Was that day of pride and pomp merely a day of pride and pomp, or were any of the great affairs of William’s kingdom and empire dealt with in the joint presence of the Monarch of Britain and his kingly vassal? One thing only we know; one act alone of that gathering is recorded. But that act is one which has no small fitness as the one act which we know that the Red King did in his new building.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Deaths of bishops and abbots.]

[Sidenote: Walkelin of Winchester. January 3, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Character and acts of Walkelin.]

[Sidenote: The monks take possession of Walkelin’s church. April 8, 1093.]

[Sidenote: Walkelin joint-regent with Flambard. 1097.]

[Sidenote: The King’s demand for money. Christmas, 1097-1098.]

The hands of Randolf Flambard must have been just then full of work, and the coffers of King William must have been just then well filled with wealth flowing in from the usual sources. Bishops and abbots had for some time been dying most conveniently for the King and his minister. Within the first few days of the year of Le Mans and Chaumont died the friend, some said the kinsman, of the Conqueror, the Norman Walkelin, the successor of English Stigand in the see of Winchester.[640] Though he had appeared as an adversary of Anselm,[641] though he had once designed to supplant the monks of the Old Minster by secular canons,[642] though he was said to have lessened the revenues of the monks to increase those of the bishopric,[643] he still left behind him a good name in the monastic annals of his church, both for the austerity of his own life and for the affection which he afterwards learned to show to the brethren.[644] Winchester tradition loved to tell of the pious fraud by which he had cajoled the Conqueror out of the whole timber of a great wood towards the rebuilding of his church.[645] It told how, in the year of the King’s temporary penitence, the monks had, in the presence of well-nigh all the prelacy of England, taken possession of the church of Walkelin’s building, and how they had presently gone on to rase to the ground the church of Æthelwald which had been deemed so stately a pile not much more than a hundred years before.[646] It told how, when the King set forth for the French war, the Bishop of Winchester was left as joint-ruler of the realm with the mighty chaplain and Justiciar.[647] And it told the last tale, how, when he had barely entered on his new office, on the very Christmas morning, while the holiest rite of Christian worship was going on, the King’s messenger came to demand two hundred pounds without delay. The Bishop, like Anselm, knew that he could raise no such sum without robbery of the Church and oppression of the poor. He prayed that he might be set free from a world of which he was weary. Two days later his prayer was answered; while the Red King warred at Chaumont and Mayet, Randolf Flambard remained sole ruler of England.[648]

[Sidenote: Death of Turold of Peterborough,]

[Sidenote: and of Robert of New Minster.]

[Sidenote: Death of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s. December 29, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Acts of Baldwin.]

[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Church.]

[Sidenote: Miracles of Saint Eadmund.]

[Sidenote: Osgod Clapa.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Herfast.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Curzon.]

[Sidenote: Completion of the Church. 1094.]

[Sidenote: The King forbids the dedication.]

[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Eadmund. April 30, 1095.]

[Sidenote: Baldwin’s relation to the English.]

On the death of Bishop Walkelin presently followed the deaths of two other heads of great monastic bodies. One was Turold, the martial abbot of Peterborough, of whom we heard in the days of Hereward;[649] the other was Robert of New Minster, he whose staff had been bought for him by his too dutiful son the Bishop of Norwich.[650] And, a few days before the death of Walkelin, another great abbot passed away who was, in a way in which none of those three was, a link with earlier days. Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s, the skilful leech of King Eadward, if not himself of English birth, had at least received his staff from an English King. His house had been growing in wealth and fame ever since the penitent devotion of Cnut had changed the secular canons of Beadricsworth into the monks of Saint Eadmund’s. We have already heard of Baldwin’s medical skill and of his strivings for the privileges of his church against the East-Anglian bishopric.[651] He won fame also, like other abbots of his day, as the rebuilder of his church, the church which, besides his royal patron, sheltered the relics of the holy abbot Botolf and the valiant ætheling Jurwine.[652] The latest research has added largely to our knowledge of Baldwin and his house, and has brought to light several details which illustrate the reign of the Red King and the characters of some of the chief actors in it. Saint Eadmund had long ago begun to work signs and wonders. In King Eadward’s day he had avenged himself on our old friend Osgod Clapa, reverenced at Waltham but not reverenced at Saint Eadmund’s, because he had thrust himself into the holy place with his Danish axe in warlike guise on his shoulder.[653] In the days of the elder William, when the dispute was going on between the abbey and the bishopric, the saint had directly interfered to bring Bishop Herfast to a better mind by a bodily chastisement.[654] He had even appeared, as he had done to the tyrant Swegen,[655] mounted and lance in hand, to smite, and in smiting to reform, a courtier of the Conqueror’s, Randolf by name.[656] But we are more concerned with stories which directly bear on our own history. When Roger Bigod did so much evil in eastern England in the days of the general rebellion, Saint Eadmund did not fail to defend his own lands, and to smite with madness a certain Robert of Curzon to whom the rebel had presumed to grant a manor belonging to the abbey.[657] We read too how, when the new church was finished, King William, seemingly in the assembly at Hastings, by what caprice is not explained, gave permission for the translation of the martyr, but forbade the dedication of the church.[658] Meanwhile, a rumour, of which we have heard the like more than once, is spread abroad that the body of Saint Eadmund is not really there, and that the precious things which adorned the empty shrine might well be applied to the objects of the King’s warfare. The danger passed away, and, notwithstanding some opposition from Bishop Herbert, a solemn translation, in the presence of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester and of Randolf the chaplain, removed all doubts.[659] Abbot Baldwin survived this triumph two years and a half. His career had been a long and a busy one. In the course of his warfare with the East-Anglian bishops, he had found it needful to visit Rome, and he too, like others, found how great was the strength of gold and silver at the threshold of the Apostles.[660] He had gone on that journey with English companions, and when he died, during the Christmas feast which followed the departure of Anselm, he was mourned by men of both races.[661]

[Sidenote: Vacancy of Durham.]

[Sidenote: The bishopric granted to Flambard.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of Flambard. June 5, 1099.]

We cannot, as these stories alone show, go very far in the reign of Rufus without coming across the name of Randolf Flambard, chaplain and Justiciar. We are now about to hear of him in a new character. The churches of the prelates who so opportunely died, remained unfilled; their temporalities passed into the King’s hands; their revenues were to be gathered in, their tenants were to be squeezed as might be needful, by the zealous care of the faithful Randolf. But one church, of higher dignity than all these, which had stood vacant longer than all these, was at last to have a shepherd. The careful guardian of them all was at last to have his reward. The reward was a great one, but in the course of his long service he had doubtless gathered enough into his private hoard to pay the price even for such a gift. The hall was built; the Witan were assembled in it; and, as the one recorded act of the assembly, the King gave the bishopric of Durham to Randolf his chaplain, that ere drave all his gemóts over all England.[662] In the new hall of Westminster, the hall of justice, often the hall of injustice, the man who had wrought so much of real injustice, but who had raised the name of justice, in its official meaning, to the high place which it has ever after kept――the Justiciar Randolf Flambard, the founder of the greatness of his office, the creator of the feudal law of England――received one of the greatest of the prizes to which men of his class could look forward. The driver of gemóts, the _exactor_ of the moneys of rich and poor, became, not only lord of strong castles and of barons and knights not a few, but also shepherd of souls in a great diocese, abbot of monks in a monastery too young as yet to have wholly lost its first love. The new successor of Saint Cuthberht, Randolf Bishop of Durham, was presently consecrated in Saint Paul’s minster by his metropolitan Archbishop Thomas. But the local patriotism of Durham takes care to put on record that, as his predecessor William of Saint-Calais had made no profession, so neither did he.[663]

[Sidenote: Character of the appointment.]

[Sidenote: Flambard’s episcopate. 1099-1128.]

[Sidenote: His works at Durham.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Norham. 1121.]

[Sidenote: His personal character.]

[Sidenote: 1106?-1128.]

The appointment of Randolf Flambard to a great bishopric, as it is the last recorded kingly act of Rufus in England, was the crowning act of that abuse of the royal power in ecclesiastical matters, that bringing low of the Church and her ministers, which is so marked a feature of his reign.[664] To place the bishop’s staff in the hands of Randolf Flambard was going a step further than to place it in the hands of Robert Bloet. Yet Flambard showed himself in some ways, in all temporal ways, as a great prelate. A mighty builder, he joined his efforts with those of his monks to carry on Saint Cuthberht’s abbey on a plan as noble as that on which William of Saint-Calais had begun it, and with greater richness of detail.[665] He strengthened the fortifications of his castle and city; he laid out the green between the castle and the abbey. At the extreme border of what was now the English kingdom, not on the extreme border of his own diocese, he founded the famous castle of Norham. It was built, we are told, as a defence alike against border thieves and against attacks of invading Scots.[666] But this last motive was hardly needed in the days of Eadgar, Alexander, and David. Every temporal right of his church he defended to the uttermost.[667] Still eager to be first, pretending with voice and gesture more of wrath than he really felt, we see in the mighty Bishop of Durham essentially the same man as the royal officer who made sad the enthronization day of Anselm.[668] As to his life and conversation strange tales are told. The Bishop is said to have wantonly exposed his monks to temptations most contrary to monastic rule, to have entertained them in the episcopal hall along with guests most unbecoming for an episcopal castle, and to have marked as hypocrites all who refused to join in his unseemly revelries.[669] But the mass of Flambard’s doings as bishop, good or bad, belong to the reign of Henry, to his own second episcopate. Our own story will show him, after a short occupation of his see, an exile, an exile after the type of William of Saint-Calais rather than after the type of Anselm. From that exile he came back, as his predecessor came back, to go on with his great work, to rule, with unabated strength of mind and body, to extreme old age, and to die with every sign of penitence.[670]

[Sidenote: Later events of the year. 1099.]

The appointment of Flambard is the last recorded act of the Red King on English ground. We take leave of him, as far as the affairs of our own country are concerned, in the new hall of Westminster, placing the bishop’s staff in a hand which doubtless grasped it more readily than the hand of Anselm. But we have still to see somewhat of him in two other characters, in either of which he was more at home than in that of the civil ruler. We have to look at him as the hunter and as the warrior. From the great ceremony at Westminster he seems to have straightway taken himself to enjoy the sports of the woods in Wiltshire. The prince who ruled on both sides of the channel had come back to his island realm to busy himself both with English affairs and with English pleasures. While thus engaged, his thoughts were once more suddenly called to matters beyond the sea.

§ 5. _The Second War of Maine._

_April-September 1099._

[Sidenote: Action of Helias. August, 1098-April 1099.]

[Sidenote: August, 1098.]

[Sidenote: Helias withdraws to La Flèche.]

[Sidenote: He strengthens the castles on the Loir.]

[Sidenote: La Chartre.]

[Sidenote: La Flèche.]

[Sidenote: Château-du-Loir.]

[Sidenote: Preparations of Helias. August 1098-April 1099.]

[Sidenote: April 10, 1099.]

In the August of the last year William had given Helias of Maine his full leave to do what he could against him, reserving doubtless to himself the like power to do what he could against Helias. In the months which had since passed the Count of Maine had shown that he could do a good deal; but it seemingly was not till he had shown the full range of his powers of doing that the King felt himself called on once more to try his own powers against him. William did not stir himself till the news came that Helias was again in Le Mans, and then he stirred himself indeed. Helias, when he was set free in August, went at once to his own immediate possessions on the border of Maine and Anjou. If he was no longer Count of Maine, he was still lord of La Flèche. If he could no longer reign on the Cenomannian height, in the palace on the Roman wall or in the tower before whose rising strength the Roman wall itself had given way, he could at least keep his own native town and castle. At La Flèche, and in the whole southern part of the county, Helias still reigned, undisputed and unthreatened. He was still lord of the whole line of fortresses which guarded the course of the Loir, the tributary of the greater stream with which its name is so easily confounded. The castles along that river, reared doubtless to guard the Cenomannian border against attacks from the south, served, now that things had so strangely turned about, to protect the southern districts of Maine against attacks from its own capital. In front of the land to be guarded stood the castles of Mayet and Outillé. Along the Loir itself stood a formidable line of defences; La Chartre guarded one end, La Flèche the other; between them lay La Lude and the fortress which is still specially known as the Castle of the Loir. The stream flows below the hill-fort of La Chartre, once held by Geoffrey of Mayenne,[671] but the name of this castle is not mentioned in our present story. The omission is singular, as La Chartre must always have been a post of special importance, guarding Maine towards the land of Chartres as well as towards the now Angevin land of Tours. It rises, like Bellême and Saint Cenery, on the bluff of a promontory where two mounds with their fosses mark the site of the fortress, and where the rocky sides of the hill are pierced, like the hill of Nottingham, like so many hills along the greater Loire, with the dwelling-places of man. Much lower down the Loir is Helias’ own special home of La Flèche, where all traces of his day have vanished, but where the castle of John and Paula must have stood, on a site most unlike that of La Chartre, on one of the rich and grassy islands which are there formed by the branching of the stream. Château-du-Loir lies between the two, and the river from which it takes its name is a far less prominent feature there than at either La Flèche or La Chartre. The fortress which is specially called the Castle of the Loir stands at a greater distance from its waters than either of the other two. But of the stronghold itself it has more to show than either. The castle stands half-hidden in the midst of the small modern town, and the approaches to it have been carefully defaced and levelled. But the stump of a tower of irregular shape still remains, which may well be a fragment of the stronghold of Helias; the neighbouring church too still keeps under its choir a crypt which must be far older than his day. Still in possession of a considerable part of his dominions, master of a district so strongly guarded, the undisputed lord of La Flèche began to make everything ready for a campaign which might make him once more Count of Le Mans. From August till April, Helias kept within his own lands――like a bull in the hiding-places of the woods, says the local writer[672]――strengthening his own fortresses and making alliances wherever he could. The whole line of castles, together with the fortified villages in the neighbourhood, had by Easter-tide been made ready for defence against the attacks of any enemy.[673]

[Sidenote: Helias begins operations.]

[Sidenote: He marches against Le Mans. June, 1099.]

[Sidenote: Junction of Sarthe and Huisne.]

[Sidenote: Battle at Pontlieue.]

[Sidenote: Victory of Helias; he recovers Le Mans.]

Helias now deemed that the time was come for offensive operations against the invaders of Maine. He began to attack the posts which were occupied by the King’s forces, and to lay waste the lands in their possession. In this work he was secretly favoured by the people of the country,[674] and before long a large body of his friends and neighbours had openly joined his banner. In June he set forth at the head of a great force for an enterprise against the city itself.[675] We should like to know what, in such a case, was deemed a great force; but we may suspect that the following of Helias would largely consist of irregular levies, not well fitted, unless with the advantage of very superior numbers, to measure themselves with the picked and tried mercenaries of Rufus. The army marched northwards towards Le Mans. A little to the south-west of the city the Sarthe is joined by the Huisne, the stream which, with its tributaries, waters the whole north-eastern part of Maine. The river is at this point shallow and weedy, with woody banks and small islands in its bed. Two old lines of road lead from the south towards the lower course of the Huisne. One leads towards the bridge of Pontlieue, a bridge which has a history in modern times.[676] The other leads to a ford less than a mile lower down the stream, now known as the ford of Mauny. One of our accounts distinctly makes Helias cross by a ford; the other seems less distinctly to imply that he crossed by a bridge.[677] At any rate he crossed in this quarter, immediately south of Le Mans. He challenged the King’s troops in the city to come forth. The challenge was accepted, and a battle followed on the ground between the Huisne and the city. Pontlieue may now pass as a suburb of Le Mans, and not its least busy suburb. In those days the flat ground was doubtless all open; the hospital reared by Henry the Second in the neighbourhood of his native city must have been placed there as in a rural retreat. The fight was stout; the King’s troops fought valiantly; but they were put to flight by the greater numbers of the liberating host. The beaten garrison sought shelter in the city; fliers and pursuers streamed in together; the gates could not be shut; Count Helias was again in Le Mans at the head of a conquering army.[678]

[Sidenote: Joy of the citizens.]

[Sidenote: The castles still held for Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with the deliverance of York in 1069.]

[Sidenote: The Normans set fire to the city.]

[Sidenote: Discouragement of the citizens.]

The joy of the citizens of Le Mans was indeed great at his coming.[679] Their own lord, their native count, the happiness of whose former reign they remembered in its fair contrast with the Norman dominion, was again amongst his faithful people. The formal welcome which had greeted the coming of Rufus was exchanged for heartfelt delight at the coming of Helias. But there was still work to be done. Helias was in Le Mans; but the garrison of Rufus was in Le Mans also. The garrison had not been able to hinder the Count’s followers from entering the city; but the Count’s followers had not been able to hinder the garrison from securing themselves in the fortresses of the city, in the King’s tower and in Mont-Barbet.[680] And now the story reads almost word for word like a famous scene in our own history just thirty years before.[681] Helias entered Le Mans as Eadgar and Waltheof entered York. And at Le Mans, as at York, the native deliverers occupied the city while the foreign garrison still held the castles. The Normans at Le Mans betook themselves to the same means of defence as the Normans at York, the familiar means of defence of their nation. Whether he would or not, the joyous entry of Helias was to be celebrated with the same kind of offerings as the crowning and the churching of the Conqueror. Westminster, York, Mantes, had felt the Norman power of destruction; the turn of Le Mans was now come. Walter the son of Ansgar set his engineers to work, and, when the evening came, flaming brands and hot cinders were hurled from their engines upon the houses of the city. It was summer; all things were dry; a strong east wind was blowing, and all Le Mans was presently in a blaze.[682] How the great minster, so near to the King’s tower, escaped without damage does not appear. But, as the church stands between the castle and the main part of the city, we may conceive that the fiery bolts launched by the engines from the tower might fly over the roof of its nave without doing harm. In any case, before the end of the day on which Helias entered, a large part of the city and suburbs was burned. The true prince was again in his own city; but he had nothing there to reign over, except smoking ruins commanded by a hostile fortress. And we are told that the love of the citizens for their count was somewhat lessened by this mischance of warfare, which was surely no fault of his. We are significantly told that they were less eager to fight for him in the evening than they had been in the morning.[683] Wooden houses indeed could easily be rebuilt; it may even be that that day’s fire cleared the space for those noble domestic buildings of a little later date, some of which the official barbarism of our own day has deigned to spare, and of which those that still remain count among the choicest treasures of Le Mans.[684] But at the moment the effect must have been disheartening, and the change in the feelings of the people is in no way wonderful.

[Sidenote: Operation against the castles.]

[Sidenote: The castles besieged in vain.]

[Sidenote: Question of the church towers.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême strengthens Ballon.]

At Le Mans, as at York in the like case, the business of the moment was the assault of the castles; but at Le Mans the enterprise of the deliverers was less fortunate than it had been at York. The citizens of Le Mans were not, like the citizens of York, to have the pleasure of breaking down the stronghold of the stranger. Helias himself, after all, was a French prince of the eleventh century, and he would hardly have been so ready as Waltheof was to encourage such a work. He had never, during his earlier reign, thought of playing Timoleôn in that special fashion. But in any case the fortresses were first to be taken. Walter the son of Ansgar seems to have been a more wary captain than William Malet and Gilbert of Ghent. He did not risk a sally, and Helias had not the same opportunity as Waltheof of showing his personal prowess by cutting off Norman heads in the gate.[685] He was driven to a formal siege of the castle. Amid the ashes of the burned city he planted his engines to play upon the royal tower. We may almost suspect, from a story which we shall come to presently, that the new towers of Saint Julian’s were profaned to warlike uses, and were made, as they well might be, to play a part in the attack. But in any case the attack was in vain. The strength of the fortresses, the skill with which their defenders brought engines to answer engines, were too great for all the battering-works of Helias.[686] The King’s tower and Mont Barbet both held out, and Robert of Bellême took the further precaution of strengthening the defences of Ballon.[687]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The news sent to the King.]

[Sidenote: The news brought to him in the New Forest.]

But it was not enough for the garrisons to hold out. They served a master beyond the sea; and that master had yet to learn either that they were holding out or that there was any enemy for them to hold out against. We are in this story doubtless dealing with the work of a very few days. The fight by the ford, the entry of Helias, and the fire, all took place on the same day. The siege of the castles would begin at the first moment that any engines could be brought up. Whether Helias had brought them with him, or whether he had to send for them, we are not told. We may be sure that there was no great delay in sending the news to the King; but the messenger did not start till he had something more to tell than that Le Mans, or what was left of it, was in the hands of its own count. A Norman Pheidippidês, Amalchis by name, the special courier of Robert of Bellême, was sent with the news.[688] He crossed the sea; he hastened to the King’s hunting-seat of Clarendon, and met William and a party of his favourite companions going forth to hunt in the New Forest. The King asked the messenger what the news was. The news was speedily told; Le Mans was taken by treason. But Amalchis could add some words of comfort, how his own lord held Ballon, how the King’s troops in the city, though besieged and attacked by the enemy, still held out in the fortresses, how they were longing for the King to come in person to their help.[689] We can hardly believe that Rufus had heard nothing of the general movements of Helias in southern Maine; but all that had happened since the Count set forth for Pontlieue came to his ears in a single message.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William rides to the coast.]

[Sidenote: He crosses to Touques.]

At the hearing of such a tale as this William the Red did not tarry. He waited for no counsellors. His words were only, “Let us go beyond the sea and help our friends.” When those around him bade him wait till a force could be made ready, he answered, “I will see who will follow me. Do you think that I shall be left without men? I know well the youth of my lands, they will hasten to come to me, even at the risk of shipwreck.” So saying, without following, without preparation, he loosened his bridle, he put spurs to his horse, he rode straight to the sea-shore at Southampton, and at once trusted himself all alone to an old crazy ship which he found there. The sky was cloudy; the wind was contrary; the blasts tossed up huge waves; the sailors prayed him to wait till the winds and the waves should be more inclined to peace and mercy. “I never heard of a king being drowned,” cried Rufus; “make haste, loose your cables; you will see the elements join to obey me.” He set sail, and the next morning he reached the haven of Touques, God, we are told by the monk of Saint Evroul, being his guide.[690]

[Sidenote: Touques in Rufus’ time.]

[Sidenote: Landing of the King.]

[Sidenote: His ride to Bonneville.]

The spot where William landed must, especially at the moment of William’s landing, have had a widely different look from that which it bears in our own day. The river from which the town of Touques takes its name, flowing down from Lisieux to its mouth by the modern pleasure-town of Trouville, has had its course shifted by modern improvements; but it has perhaps not greatly changed in width or bulk of stream since the time of our story. Touques lies a few miles inland; but a high tide would easily bring up the small vessels of that day to the point which was once a busy haven, but which now affords at the most a landing-place for barges. The single long street, full of picturesque wooden buildings of later times, and containing a striking disused church of the days of Rufus or his father, now turns away from the stream, as if to show that the days of Touques as a haven have passed away. In those days the inland port, placed in the rich vale of the stream, under the shadow of the hills, those to the right forming the forest-land of Touques, was a frequented spot; and at the moment when the ship came which bore Rufus and his fortunes, it presented a busy scene. As was usual in the summer-tide, a crowd of persons, both clerical and lay, was gathered at the riverside.[691] When they saw a ship coming from England, they pressed to ask what the news might be. Specially they asked how the King fared. And lo, the King was there as his own messenger to answer them.[692] He returned their greetings in merry mood, and all wondered and were glad.[693] We must remember that Normandy had better reason to be glad at the presence of Rufus than either England or Maine. The King landed; he sprang on the first beast that he could find, a mare belonging to a priest, and so took the road which led towards the south-east to the castle of Bonneville, on the slope of the hills which overlook and guard the haven. The distance is short, and most of it is uphill, and the speed of the priest’s mare was most likely not equal to the speed of the King’s own horse which had borne him from Clarendon to Southampton. A loyal crowd, clerks and peasants, were thus able to follow him on foot, cheering their sovereign as he rode up the hill-side to the castle.[694]

[Sidenote: The castle of Bonneville.]

[Sidenote: Early history and legends of Bonneville.]

The headlong rush by land and sea was now over, and the Red King again found himself in one of the chief strongholds of Normandy. The castle of Bonneville, placed, not on the top of the hill, but on a small spur projecting from its side, was in fact the citadel of Touques. It specially guarded the inland haven; otherwise one might rather have looked for the site of such a fortress on the hills which overlook the sea and guard the actual mouth of the stream. Yet from the towers of Bonneville we look out on a wide and a goodly prospect. Almost at the foot of the hill lies Touques itself. The river stretches away to its mouth at Deauville; on the right the valley is fenced in by the high ground of the forest, on the left by the hill crowned by the castle of Lassay, famous in later times, with the small priory of Saint Arnold, still keeping work of the Conqueror’s day, nestling on the hill-side. But at Bonneville itself no strictly architectural work remains which can have served the Red King as a resting-place after his fierce journey. The existing castle, a shell-keep strengthened by round towers, seems to be in all parts later than the days of Rufus, later than the days of Norman independence. A single gateway only could possibly be placed even within the latter years of the twelfth century. But the site is an ancient one; the castle is girded by a ditch, and the ditch is in some parts further strengthened by an embankment, which seem more likely to have been taken advantage of by the Norman dukes than to be their original work. Bonneville had been one of the dwelling-places of William the Great, and it is one of the many towns and castles which claim to have been the scene of the oath of Harold.[695] Though the existing buildings are later, the hill itself and its earthworks are there, as when Rufus drew breath among them. He there rested for a moment, after being borne with the swiftest speed of his own age from the sports of the West-Saxon forest to the serious business which pressed on a ruler of Normandy when Le Mans was again held by a hostile power.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: William at Bonneville.]

[Sidenote: His levy.]

[Sidenote: He marches towards Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: Helias flees to Château-du-Loir.]

The castle which Rufus had now reached, the nearest fortress in Normandy to the spot in England from which he had so wildly rushed, now became the starting-point of a campaign which, in its beginning, was not unskilfully planned. At Bonneville the King began to make his preparations for the recovery of Le Mans. He sent his messengers to and fro, and soon gathered a large force. He then began his march southward; he crossed the frontier, and pressed on towards Le Mans, harrying the land as he went.[696] The effect of his coming was immediate. When the news came that the King was on his way, the forces of Helias began to fail him; he no longer dared to go on with the siege of the castles; he no longer dared even to hold the city.[697] He fled from Le Mans, and hastened to the defence of his immediate possessions in the southern part of the county. Here he took up his head-quarters in his own fortress specially known as the Castle of the Loir. Within its walls the Count of Maine again waited for better days, while the hosts of Normandy drew near to his capital.[698]

[Sidenote: Flight of the citizens.]

[Sidenote: William passes through Le Mans.]

[Sidenote: His camp beyond the Huisne.]