Chapter VII (5)

King Henry managed matters better in his island. The rebel Earl put all his castles in a state of defence. Arundel, Shrewsbury, and Tickhill, were all garrisoned, all supplied with provisions. So too was the Castle by the Bridge, where, as well as at Careghova, the works, still, it would seem, not wholly finished, were pressed on by day and night.[1099] The King had to choose which fortress he would attack first. His plan seems to have been first to cut off Robert’s outlying possessions, before he made any attack on the strongholds of his power on the Welsh border. And, first of all, he led his force――the host of England it is emphatically called――to the siege of the Earl’s great South-Saxon castle, that which lay open to the chance of help from the supporters of the rebel cause in Normandy.[1100] The King marched to Arundel; he set up, after the usual fashion, two evil neighbours to keep the fortress in check.[1101] He then gave part of his army leave of absence while the work of blockade went on.[1102] The zeal of the defenders of Arundel in the cause of their rebel lord does not seem to have been strong; but they had a keen sense either of the honour of soldiers or of the duty of vassals. This last, to be sure, was a mistaken sense, according to the laws of England, above all according to the great law of Salisbury. They craved a truce, during which they might ask Earl Robert either to send them help or to give them leave to surrender. Robert was far away in his Mercian earldom, busy on two works. The defences of Bridgenorth were strengthening day by day, and Robert and Arnulf, at the head of their _Gal-Welsh_ and _Bret-Welsh_ forces――it is significantly hinted that Englishmen had no share in the evil work――were harrying the neighbouring parts of Staffordshire. A great booty of cattle, and some human captives, were carried off into Wales, the price of the help given by Cadwgan and his brother.[1103] The messengers from Arundel found their lord at some stage of these employments, and set forth to him the danger in which they stood from the King’s leaguer. Mournful, but feeling himself unable to send help to so distant a post, Robert of Bellême gave his garrison of Arundel full leave to make what terms they could with the King.[1104] They surrendered at once and with great joy; but they honourably stipulated that their lord Earl Robert should be allowed to go safe into Normandy. The King received them graciously and rewarded them with rich gifts.[1105] Arundel passed into the royal hands, to become in the next reign the seat of a more abiding earldom in the hands of the famous houses of Aubigny and Fitzalan, and to pass through them to the more modern, but perhaps more English, line of Howard.[1106]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Tickhill.]

[Sidenote: Question of the King’s presence.]

[Sidenote: Action of Robert Bloet.]

[Sidenote: Later history of Tickhill.]

The surrender of Arundel took away all fear lest any help should come to Robert of Bellême from his Norman partisans. But before the King made any movement towards the lands on the Severn, he marched far to the north-east, to the lands watered by the tributaries of the northern Ouse, on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Here the mound of Tickhill was still held for the rebel Earl, and the new gate-house of his predecessor’s building still frowned defiance in the teeth of any advancing enemy.[1107] But Tickhill proved yet an easier conquest than Arundel. It needed no _Malvoisin_, no messages sent to Shrewsbury or Bridgenorth, to persuade its garrison to surrender. According to one version, the siege was not even deemed worthy of the royal presence. While Henry himself marched to the greater enterprise at Bridgenorth, a spiritual lord was deemed to be captain enough for the siege of Tickhill. The work to be done there was entrusted to the hands of Bishop Robert of Lincoln.[1108] According to another version, which is perhaps not quite inconsistent with the other, the King himself appeared before Tickhill, and the garrison at once marched forth with all readiness to meet their natural lord――_cynehlaford_ to Normans and Englishmen alike, _cynehlaford_ above all to Yorkshiremen, if he was really born in their shire――and received him with all fitting joy.[1109] The castle of Tickhill or Blyth passed back again for a while to the kinsfolk of its former owner, and afterwards became a possession of the Crown.[1110] A collegiate chapel was founded within its walls by the first Queen Eleanor, and in the reign of her son Richard the ground between Tickhill and Blyth became the special scene of fantastic displays of chivalrous rashness.[1111] There was no licensed tournament-ground at Tickhill or elsewhere in the days of the King who made peace for man and deer.[1112]

[Sidenote: Henry’s Shropshire campaign. Autumn, 1102.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême at Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Defence of Bridgenorth.]

[Sidenote: The three captains.]

[Sidenote: Robert son of Corbet.]

[Sidenote: Robert Neville?]

[Sidenote: Wulfgar the huntsman.]

[Sidenote: Action of the Welsh princes.]

The more distant possessions of the rebel Earl were thus brought under the King’s obedience. The peace of King Henry reigned in Sussex, in Yorkshire, and in Nottinghamshire. Now came the time for attacking the special strongholds of Robert’s own earldom; the stage of attacking himself was to come last of all. After the surrender of Arundel and Tickhill, the King allowed his men a breathing-time;[1113] then, in the course of the autumn, he gathered together the forces of all England for the final overthrow of the rebellion. Robert of Bellême had chosen his capital of Shrewsbury as the post which he would defend himself. His new fortress of Bridgenorth he placed in the hands of three chosen captains, at the head of eighty mercenary knights, attended doubtless by a fitting following of lower degree.[1114] Of the three leaders, Robert son of Corbet――a name which was to become abiding in those parts――was a hereditary follower of the house of Montgomery; he appears in Domesday as the holder of a large estate under Earl Roger.[1115] To another captain, Robert _de Nova Villa_, we have no certain clue; Neuvevilles and Newtons abound in Normandy and England; he may or he may not have been a forefather of the historic Nevilles. The third awakens more interest; his name seems to be English; he is Wulfgar the huntsman.[1116] Nor is there the slightest reason to think that Robert of Bellême would reject the services of a born Englishman in any post, if the man himself seemed likely to suit his purpose. These three, with the regular force at their command, had to defend the Castle by the Bridge; the Welsh princes, Cadwgan and Jorwerth, with their less disciplined bands, were planted in the neighbourhood, to annoy the King’s troops, as they might find occasion.[1117]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême seizes the land of William Pantulf.]

[Sidenote: He rejects his services.]

[Sidenote: William Pantulf joins the King.]

[Sidenote: He commands at Stafford;]

[Sidenote: his services.]

But, while Earl Robert knew how to make use of the services of Robert the son of Corbet, he had the folly to make an enemy of another old follower of his father. He had already, for what cause we are not told, seized the lands of William Pantulf, who appears in Domesday as holding under Earl Roger a great estate in Shropshire, a small one in Staffordshire, and an empty house in the town of Stafford.[1118] He was a tried and valiant warrior, and he now, forgetting his late wrongs, offered his services to the son of his old benefactor in his time of need. Earl Robert thrust him aside with scorn, on which William betook himself to the King, by whom his merits were better valued. Henry had known him of old, and now gladly received him. William Pantulf was sent at the head of two hundred knights, to command the castle of Stafford, a castle which had risen and fallen in the days of the Conqueror, and which must have by this time risen again.[1119] The local knowledge and interest of William Pantulf in the two neighbouring shires seems to have stood him in good stead. He acted vigorously against the lord who had scorned him, and no one, we are told, did more towards bringing about the final overthrow of the proud Earl.[1120]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Relation of Normans and English.]

[Sidenote: Division of feeling in the army.]

[Sidenote: Siege of Bridgenorth.]

[Sidenote: The King builds a _Malvoisin_.]

[Sidenote: The great men lean to Robert of Bellême.]

And now we get one of our most instructive pictures of the time, and of the difference of feeling among men of the time. We distinctly see the difference of feeling between Normans and English. But they are no longer labelled as Normans and English, as they were only a year before. They are spoken of simply as different classes in one army. Six-and-thirty years after the day of Senlac, we are but seldom dealing with the men who fought for Harold or for William; we have come to their sons or even their grandsons. But the great men of the army and the small men, of whom the former class would be all but wholly Norman, while the latter would be Normans and English intermingled in various proportions, had quite different views as to the proper policy for King Henry to follow. And King Henry’s own views agreed with the views of the small men, and not with the views of the great. The army was gathered before Bridgenorth, and a regular siege was opened. The King brought up his engines of war; he built a fort to check the approach of any relief to the castle[1121]――was it on Oldbury, was it on the northern side, beyond the surviving gate of the town, or did it guard the river from the opposite side of the bridge? The siege lasted three weeks;[1122] and the course of events shows that it cannot have been at any very late stage of it that King Henry found that he had in his camp two widely different classes of men. There were in it men who were working honestly in his service, men who strove heartily for his success, knowing that the interests of King and people were the same. There were also men there to whom the interests of their own order were dearer than those of either King or people, and who feared that the overthrow of the power of the Earl of Shropshire might tend to the lessening of their own power, perhaps of their own possessions. We have seen the same division of feeling before the walls of Rochester;[1123] we now see it beneath the cliff of Bridgenorth. The earls and great men of the kingdom who were in the army came together in separate consultations. They argued that it was not for their interest that the power of Robert of Bellême should be utterly broken. If the King dealt so with the greatest of his nobles, he might deal in the like sort with the rest, and might tread them under his feet like servants and handmaidens.[1124] It would suit them far better to bring about a peace between the King and the Earl. It would have been, one may guess, a peace by which Robert of Bellême should keep his earldom and the castles within his earldom, but should leave to the King the castles and lands which the King had already won. In this way they would put an end to disputes, and would make both the King and the Earl their debtors.[1125]

[Sidenote: The smaller men, Normans and English, faithful to the King.]

[Sidenote: Meeting of the nobles.]

[Sidenote: Gathering of the mass of the army.]

[Sidenote: Appeal of the army to the King.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s faith pledged for Robert’s life.]

So reasoned the great men, the Norman nobles, the men to most of whom Robert of Bellême was a countryman and a comrade, and none of whom were likely to have felt the grip of his iron claws[1126] in their own persons. So reasoned not the sons of the soil; so reasoned not men of any race who were lowly enough to feel that in the power of the King――that is in Henry’s days, the power of law――lay their only hope of shelter against smaller oppressors. The great men came together in a field――perhaps in the meadows beside the Severn――and there held a _parliament_ with the King――a meeting, one might say, of the Witan from which the land-sitting men were shut out――and earnestly pressed peace upon the King.[1127] Henry’s own feelings were clearly the other way; and those who were shut out from the counsels of the great ones now came to his help. Three thousand men of the mass of the army, men seemingly of the shire most nearly concerned, who were stationed on one of the neighbouring hills, knew, by whatever means, the counsel of the leaders, and were minded to have their voice in the matter too.[1128] If the King chose to hold a military Gemót, an assembly of the armed nation,[1129] they had a right to be heard as well as men of higher degree. At Rochester too the English soldiers had spoken their minds; but to the Red King they must have spoken them through an interpreter. But Henry knew the tongue of his people, and we may fancy him not unwilling to listen to counsels which he could hear and weigh, while the mass of those of whom he had reason to be jealous understood not what was said. A vigorous speech, which doubtless fairly represents the feelings of the moment, is put into the mouths of the three thousand or their leaders; “Lord King Henry, trust not those traitors. They do but strive to deceive you, and to take away from you the strength of kingly justice. Why do you listen to them who would have you spare the traitor and leave unpunished the conspiracy of those who seek your death? Behold we all stand by you faithfully; we are ready to serve and help you in all things. Attack the castle vigorously; shut in the traitor on all sides, and make no peace with him till you have him alive or dead in your hands.”[1130] The speakers do not call, as the English before Rochester called in the case of Odo, for the judicial death of the traitor. The faith of Henry was pledged to the garrison of Arundel that Robert of Bellême should be allowed to go safe into Normandy.[1131] But the three thousand clearly cherished a hope, perhaps that Robert’s own men might turn against him, certainly that, when Bridgenorth should fall and Shrewsbury should be beleagued, then some lucky bolt from an arrow or a mangonel might light on him before the time of surrender came, or, best of all for those who had felt his iron claws, that he might fall beneath one of their own axes in a sally or a storm.

[Sidenote: Henry seeks to detach the Welsh from Robert.]

[Sidenote: Dealings of William Pantulf with Jorwerth.]

[Sidenote: Henry’s great promises to Jorwerth.]

[Sidenote: Jorwerth makes the Welsh change sides.]

The King listened to the counsels of his advisers of lower degree, but of more honest hearts. King and people were one, and the designs of the traitors in the camp were brought to naught.[1132] First of all, Henry determined to weaken the strength of Robert, and no doubt to relieve his own army from a never-ending annoyance, by detaching the Welsh force from the cause of the rebels. William Pantulf, who was doubtless well known to the Britons, acted as the King’s agent with Jorwerth son of Bleddyn. We are not told why he was thought more easy to win over than his brothers; but it seems plain that the negotiation was carried on with him only, unknown to Cadwgan and Meredydd.[1133] The King invited Jorwerth to his presence, with the assurance that he would do more for him than Earl Robert and his brothers could do.[1134] Jorwerth came; the gifts of King Henry were acceptable; his promises were magnificent indeed. As long as Henry lived――it was wise not to bind his successor――the British prince should have, free of all homage and all tribute, Powys, Ceredigion, half Dyfed with the castle of Pembroke, the vale of Teifi, Kidwelly, and Gower.[1135] Such a dominion would give its holder a seaboard on two seas; it would leave under English rule little beyond the central and southern lands of Brecheiniog, Gwent, and Morganwg, and the outlying land of Pembroke, which would thus be most distinctly “Little England beyond Wales.” We are not told what was to be the fate of Cadwgan when Jorwerth received this great inheritance; but Jorwerth himself naturally caught at such a prospect. And it seems that his power over his countrymen was so great that, while his brothers knew nothing of what was going on, Jorwerth was able to turn the whole British force which had come to the Earl’s help to the side of the King. The Welshmen now harried the lands of the Earl and his friends instead of those of his enemies, and carried off a vast booty.[1136] In any case the lands of some one were harried, and for the Britons that was doubtless enough.

[Sidenote: Henry’s dealings with the captains at Bridgenorth.]

[Sidenote: Mediation of William Pantulf.]

[Sidenote: The captains promise to surrender.]

Having thus relieved himself of the enemy who hung upon his flanks, Henry began to deal directly with the defenders of Bridgenorth. Three of the leaders――we may safely guess that Roger son of Corbet, Robert of Neville, and Wulfgar, are the three meant――were invited to the King’s presence. They doubtless had a safe-conduct for that once; but they had to take back an ugly message to their comrades. The King swore in the hearing of all men that, unless they surrendered the castle within three days, he would hang every man of the garrison that he could catch.[1137] The three captains, whose necks were in as much danger as those of their followers, began to consult for their own safety. They asked William Pantulf, as their neighbour, to act as a mediator between them and the King.[1138] At their request, he came to them, and made them a set speech on the duty of surrendering the castle to the lawful king. And his eloquence was backed by one special argument which shows that, in one point at least, Henry had made some progress in the school of Rufus. William was commissioned to swear in the King’s name that submission should be rewarded by an addition to the estates of each of the captains of lands of a hundred pounds’ worth.[1139] Moved, we are told, by a sense of the common good, the captains agreed, and, to avoid all further danger, submitted to the King’s will.[1140] They were allowed to send a message to Earl Robert to say that they could hold out no longer against the invincible power of King Henry.[1141]

[Sidenote: Position of Robert.]

[Sidenote: His dealings with Ireland and Norway.]

[Sidenote: Arnulf goes to Ireland.]

[Sidenote: Magnus in Anglesey.]

[Sidenote: His castle-building in Man.]

[Sidenote: Robert vainly asks help of Magnus.]

[Sidenote: Failure of the Irish scheme.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême left alone.]

Robert of Bellême was now nearly at the end of his hopes and of his wits. His distant castles were lost; Bridgenorth, his own work, his newest work, was as good as lost; William Pantulf, able and active, had turned against him; his Welsh allies had failed him; Cadwgan and Meredydd were still at his side;[1142] but they were useless guests now that Jorwerth had turned the whole power of the Britons to the other side. He still held Shrewsbury; but it was hard to defy the strength of the whole kingdom from within the walls of a single fortress. In his despair, he caught at the hope of making his peace with the King;[1143] he caught also at the most distant chances of stirring up enemies against the King. The Britons had proved a broken reed; he would try the Irish and the Northmen. The Irish fleet was said to be actually coming; Arnulf was sent, or went of his own accord, to hasten the pace of these new allies, who, beside such help as they might give to Robert, were to bring Arnulf himself a wife who might one day give him a crown. But as Arnulf took his own men with him, Robert was yet further weakened by his going.[1144] At this moment one more chance seemed to offer itself. The Norwegian King was once more afloat, and that for the last time. His course was much the same as on his former voyage. He sailed by the Orkneys and the Sudereys to Man, and thence once more to Anglesey.[1145] Here, we are told, he busied himself in cutting down timber for the repair of certain castles in Man which he had formerly destroyed. It must have been at this stage of the voyage of Magnus that Earl Robert sent a message craving help at his hands. It must have cost Robert somewhat of an effort to ask help of the slayer of his brother, and, unless we attribute to the Norwegian King a general interest in confusion everywhere, it is hard to see on what ground Magnus could be expected to help Robert of Bellême against King Henry. The Northman refused all help. It would seem too that the Irish alliance came to nothing; one version at least makes this the moment when the daughter of Murtagh was given to Sigurd the son of Magnus, and not to Arnulf of Montgomery.[1146] Every chance of help far and near had failed the once mighty lord of so many lands and castles; his old friends had turned against him; his strivings to win new friends had failed. As far as England was concerned, Earl Robert seemed to be left alone on the mound of Shrewsbury.

[Sidenote: Divisions in Bridgenorth;]

[Sidenote: the captains and the townsmen for surrender;]

[Sidenote: the mercenaries wish to hold out.]

[Sidenote: They are overpowered.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Bridgenorth.]

[Sidenote: The mercenaries march out with the honours of war.]

And yet for a moment one hope seemed left to him. The message of the three captains which announced the speedy surrender of Bridgenorth was premature. Roger, Robert, and Wulfgar, had promised more than they could do at the moment. There was a wide difference of interest between two classes of men who stood side by side on the height of Bridgenorth. The captains and the burgesses of the town――for such a class had already in the space of four years sprung up at the gate of Earl Robert’s castle[1147]――were of one mind, the mercenary soldiers were of another. The three captains, the townsmen, and doubtless any of the Earl’s soldiers of whatever rank who were English by birth or settlement, any who had any stake on English soil, were eager to come to terms with the King. So to do was their manifold interest and manifest duty; it was a special interest and duty of the captains who had promised so to do, and who looked for such rich rewards for so doing. But to the mercenary soldiers of Earl Robert, professional fighting men picked out from many lands, things had another look. They had no stake in England; they cared nothing for King Henry and for the peace of his kingdom. The more the peace of England was likely to be disturbed, the better it would be for them. Any glimmering of duty which found a place in their minds would be a feeling of rude faithfulness to the master whom they served, the rebel Earl whose bread they had eaten. The mercenaries therefore cried out loudly against the submission to which, without taking them into their counsels, the captains and the townsmen had agreed. They seized their arms, and strove to hinder the carrying out of the surrender which had been promised.[1148] But the captains, with the townsmen and the loyal party in the garrison, were too strong for them; they were themselves made prisoners and shut up within some one part of the castle.[1149] The surrender was now carried out; the gates were opened; the royal troops marched up the path which led to the castle, and the banner of England again floated over the height crowned by the stronghold of Æthelflæd.[1150] The joy of the men of Bridgenorth was great, and on that day of deliverance no man was inclined to harshness. King Henry could honour the faithfulness of the Earl’s mercenaries to their own lord, even though that faithfulness was, in the eye of the law, treason to himself and his kingdom. They were allowed to go forth with the honours of war, with their arms and their horses. Whither they went we are not told. They may even have entered the King’s service. The prudence of Henry might be trusted not to let them go anywhither where they were likely to be dangerous. And, as they came forth between the ranks of the besiegers, they were allowed to tell their tale in the hearing of all men. It was not, they said, to be turned to the shame of their calling that the Castle by the Bridge had been given up without a blow. They were guiltless; the deed was done by the guile of faithless captains and of unwarlike townsmen.[1151] King and people might admire, in truth there is something to admire, in the mistaken faithfulness of these men, even to an evil cause. But King and people had still work on their hands; the arch-enemy had still to be found, alive or dead, in the last stronghold which held out for him.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Robert still holds Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Shrewsbury castle.]

[Sidenote: Despair of Robert.]

[Sidenote: The King’s march to Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Gathering of the English army.]

[Sidenote: Zeal of the troops.]

[Sidenote: Nature of the road.]

[Sidenote: The road is cleared.]

And now came the last act of the drama, the last stage of the struggle which was to make Henry truly king, and to give England three-and-thirty years of peace under his rule. With the news of the fall of Bridgenorth all hope passed away from the heart of Robert of Bellême. One strong fortress indeed was still his. Earl of the Mercians, Earl of Shropshire, he could call himself no longer; lord of Shrewsbury he still was, while he still kept the castle of his capital as the last abiding seat of rebellion. All the distinctive features of Shrewsbury in later times, town, churches, castle, abbey, were all there. On the neck of the peninsula girded by the Severn, on ground high in itself though lower than some points of the hill town behind it, the mound of Old-English days which had supplanted the old seat of British kingship, and which was now crowned by the fortress of his father, still was his.[1152] Its towers rose as high as the loftiest buildings of the town which they kept in awe; from their height he might look forth on the mountain land which had been won for his earldom by his father’s power; he might look down on the broad and rushing river, and on his father’s minster beyond its stream.[1153] But the mountain land, so lately his ally, had now turned against him; the stream of Severn brought no help to the beleaguered fortress; no prayers, we may be sure, went up for the son of Mabel from the altars whose guardians had seen the virtues and tasted the bounty of Adeliza. The stern earl, thus utterly forsaken, lost his fierce and defiant spirit; he groaned for sorrow; he knew not which way to turn for help or counsel.[1154] And soon he felt that his hour indeed was come, when he saw the royal banners draw near to his last stronghold. As soon as Bridgenorth had fallen, the march on Shrewsbury began. A mighty host it was which set forth on the errand of deliverance. We take the figures as merely the conventional expression of a vast number, when we read that sixty thousand Englishmen gathered around the standard of King Henry of England.[1155] They marched with a will, eager to meet the great oppressor face to face, to bring the last stronghold of wrong under the dominion of law, to join in their king’s work of rooting out the ungodly that were in the land. Englishmen had gone forth with a will to the siege of Rochester, perhaps to the siege of Bamburgh; but then they had gone forth at the bidding of a king who was wholly a stranger. Now they gathered around a king, born indeed of the foreign stock, but a king of their own choice, born on their own soil, cheering them on in their own tongue, a king whom they might well deem a truer Ætheling than the grandson of Ironside born in distant Hungary or than the son of Harold brought up among the wikings of the North. The road by which they had to march was one which had dangers of its own. It was a road among hills, sometimes rough with stones; in one part it was for a mile’s space a mere hollow way, overhung by a thick wood, a path so narrow that two horses could hardly pass, a path which men called the _Evil Hedge_. Among the trees on either side archers might easily lurk, to the no small loss of the host which had to march between two fires.[1156] The King accordingly first sent forward his pioneers to clear the way for his army and for all travellers along that road for ever. The wood was cut down on both sides, the path was widened, and the evil hedge became a broad road along which the great host of England could march in safety.[1157]

[Sidenote: Robert sends to ask for peace.]

[Sidenote: The King refuses terms.]

[Sidenote: Robert submits at discretion.]

[Sidenote: He is sent out of England.]

Along the new-made road King Henry marched to a bloodless conquest. He had no need to throw up a bank or to shoot an arrow against the mound and the towers of Shrewsbury. On his way he was met by an embassy from Earl Robert, asking for peace. The terms are not told us, but the answer implied that Robert still asked for terms. He may have hoped, shut out as he was from everything else, still to keep the capital of his earldom, perhaps as a means for one day winning back all that he had lost. But the King and his host were in no mood to listen to terms; they longed for the last attack on the arch-enemy. The answer, the decree, as we read it, of the armed Gemót, was that Robert of Bellême must hope for no mercy, unless he came and freely threw himself into the King’s hands.[1158] In that case, it will be remembered, the King’s word was pledged for his life and his safe passage to Normandy. Robert consulted the few friends whom he had left, and their advice at last bent his proud heart to an unconditional submission. Nine days had passed since the surrender of Bridgenorth[1159] when the royal force drew near to Shrewsbury. Robert of Bellême came forth in person to meet them; he knelt, we may suppose, before the King; he confessed his treason, and placed in the King’s hands the keys of Shrewsbury, city and castle. He thus gave up for ever his last English possession, the head of that great earldom which his father had received from the hands of the King’s father.[1160] As far as England was concerned, the lord of Bellême, a moment before lord of Shrewsbury, was a landless man. The King strictly kept his word to the suppliant; but he would not grant him the slightest favour beyond what his word bound him to. Robert was untouched in life and limb, he received a safe-conduct to the sea-shore, and he was allowed to keep his arms and horses, a needful defence in case of irregular attack.[1161] And so the land was free from its worst enemy; the devil of Bellême was cast out of the realm of England. Evil men no doubt were left behind; but none, we may believe, who would refuse to ransom his prisoners, for the mere pleasure of seeing them die of hunger or of torture.

[Sidenote: Joy at Robert’s overthrow.]

[Sidenote: The song of deliverance.]

[Sidenote: Banishment of Arnulf and Roger.]

[Sidenote: The King’s hatred towards the whole family.]

[Sidenote: Later history of Robert of Bellême.]

The work was done; the host of victorious Englishmen marched back to their homes.[1162] The joy of the land at the great deliverance was beyond words. The tyrant was overthrown, the King was now king indeed. The national joy is set before us as bursting forth in a kind of rhythmical song, which reminds us of those fragments of primæval poetry which remain imbedded in the history of the Hebrews. We hear the same strain as that which denounced woe to Moab and rejoiced in the undoing of the people of Chemosh,[1163] when Englishmen are described as gathering round their King, and shouting the hymn of victory. “Rejoice, King Henry, and give thanks to the Lord God, now that thou hast overthrown Robert of Bellême and hast driven him from the borders of thy kingdom.”[1164] Nor was he driven forth alone. The King had good grounds for the banishment of his chief accomplices, his two brothers Arnulf and Roger, and for the seizure of their lands.[1165] His hatred towards the whole house of Montgomery, or rather towards the whole house of Talvas, had become so great that he would not endure that any member of it should hold lands or honours in his kingdom. Robert of Bellême himself went over to Normandy, to raise new disturbances there. At a later time he was again twice to visit England, once as an ambassador, and again as a prisoner, a prisoner in a prison so strait that no man knew whether he lived or died.[1166] But his part, a part only of four years, as an English earl and perhaps the greatest of English land-owners, was played out for ever.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Death of Magnus. 1103.]

[Sidenote: A Giffard in his fleet.]

[Sidenote: Later history of Jorwerth.]

[Sidenote: War between Jorwerth and his brothers.]

[Sidenote: Meredydd imprisoned.]

[Sidenote: Jorwerth cedes Ceredigion to Cadwgan.]

[Sidenote: The King does not fulfil his promises to Jorwerth.]

[Sidenote: Grant of Gower and other lands to Howel.]

[Sidenote: Jorwerth tried at Shrewsbury and imprisoned. 1103.]

[Sidenote: Gemóts held in various places under Henry.]

[Sidenote: Shrewsbury a former place of meeting.]

[Sidenote: The earldom of Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Trial of Jorwerth.]

[Sidenote: His conviction and imprisonment.]

[Sidenote: His later history.]

Of the other chief actors in the events of those four years, King Magnus died the year after the fall of Robert of Bellême, in his last and greatest attack on Ireland.[1167] It awakens some interest when we read that he had in his host a stranger who bore the great Norman name of Giffard.[1168] Was he an accomplice, was he a messenger, of Earl Robert of Shropshire? Towards the Welsh prince Jorwerth, who had done so much on both sides in the course of the rebellion, Henry was, according to the Welsh writers, far from keeping his word. It is not wonderful that enmity arose between Jorwerth and his brothers after his conduct during the siege of Bridgenorth. He seems to have waged open war with them in the King’s name. For we are told that he seized his brother Meredydd and handed him over to the King or imprisoned him in a royal prison.[1169] But with Cadwgan he made peace, giving up to him a large share of his promised dominions, namely the lands which Cadwgan had before held of Robert of Bellême, Ceredigion and part of Powys. It was perhaps this agreement with an enemy which offended Henry. When Jorwerth came, seemingly to receive his grant from the King’s hands, he received nothing. Dyfed and the castle of Pembroke, far too precious a stronghold to be left in the hands of any Briton, was entrusted to a knight named Saer, from whom it afterwards passed to Gerald of Windsor, a man who had already bravely defended it, and whom the King had his own reasons for promoting.[1170] But the remainder of the promised possessions of Jorwerth, the vale of Teifi, Gower, and Kidwelly, were, by a breach of promise which must have been yet more galling, granted to another Welsh lord, Howel son of Goronwy.[1171] The next year Jorwerth was summoned before an assembly at Shrewsbury, the place renowned for the trial of a more famous Welsh prince of later days. The choice of the place is characteristic of the reign of Henry, under whom national assemblies were held in various parts of the kingdom, and were no longer confined to the three places to which custom had confined them under Eadward, Harold, and the two Williams.[1172] It was but a return to older custom; Shrewsbury had been the seat of more than one memorable assembly in earlier times;[1173] but this was the first time that Shrewsbury in its new form had seen a great national gathering; it was the first assembly that had been held since the English mound had become the kernel of Earl Roger’s castle, and since Earl Roger’s abbey had arisen beyond the river. Earls had now passed away from Shrewsbury; no such title was heard again till the days of the famous Talbot, when it was in French and not in English ears that the name was terrible. After the four years’ rule of Robert of Bellême, there was doubtless much to settle in his former earldom and along the whole Welsh border. In the assembly held for that end Jorwerth appeared and was put upon his trial. We should be well pleased to have as full an account of the proceedings against the British prince as we have of the proceedings against Bishop William of Durham. But the story was not deemed worth recording by any English writer; the Welsh, who bitterly complain of the injustice of the court, tell us how, after a day’s pleading, Jorwerth was declared guilty and committed to prison.[1174] He was afterwards set free, and again played a part among his own people; but a patriotic Welsh chronicler laments that the hope, the fortitude, the strength, and the happiness of all the Britons failed them when Jorwerth was put in bonds.[1175]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Establishment of Henry’s power.]

[Sidenote: Banishment of William of Mortain, 1104.]

[Sidenote: His imprisonment after Tinchebrai. 1106.]

[Sidenote: His alleged blinding.]

[Sidenote: Peace of Henry’s reign. 1102-1135.]

[Sidenote: Henry and Roger of Sicily.]

[Sidenote: Character of Henry’s reign.]

[Sidenote: Its promises how far fulfilled.]

[Sidenote: The reign of law.]

[Sidenote: Effects of Henry’s reign.]

[Sidenote: Henry the Second.]

[Sidenote: Fusion of Normans and English under Henry.]

[Sidenote: Henry the refounder of the English nation.]

[Sidenote: He embodies the process of fusion.]

King Henry had at last done his work. When Robert of Bellême was cast out, his throne remained safe and his kingdom peaceful. Two years later indeed there was another enemy to cast out; but the ease with which the work was now done showed how thoroughly the harder work had been done before Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury. When the King’s near kinsman and bitter enemy, Count William of Mortain, would fain have had the earldom of Kent and have been another Odo in it, there was no need of a siege of Pevensey or of Montacute. A simple legal process was enough to send him out of the land without slash or blow.[1176] He lived to try the chance of slash and blow at Tinchebrai, and to meet with a heavy doom, live-long bonds, perhaps borne in blindness, at the hands of his offended cousin and sovereign.[1177] His ambition could not disturb the peace of the land for a single day; the might of armed unlaw had been broken when the gates of Shrewsbury opened to receive King Henry. From that day for three-and-thirty years, a wonder in those days, a whole kingdom saw neither civil war nor foreign invasion. As Italy rested of old under Theodoric, as Sicily rested under his contemporary Roger, so England rested under Henry. The two Norman and insular kings, lords of the great island of the Mediterranean and of the great island of the Ocean, had each his wars to wage. But each kept his battle-ground on the mainland, while his island realm abode in peace. The bright promises with which the reign of Henry opened, the dreams of an English king reigning over an English people, were not wholly fulfilled. The fair dawn was in some measure clouded over; the winning promises were not in everything carried out. Still things were not under Henry as they had been under his brother. The dawn was never changed into the blackness of darkness; the promises of righteous and national rule were never utterly trampled under foot. Under the strong hand of the Lion of Justice such deeds as those of Robert of Bellême became impossible. The complaints of exactions in money go on throughout his reign. The more grievous complaints of the wrongs done by his immediate followers are not heard of after the stern statute by which Henry and Anselm joined together to check their misdoings. Under Henry law did not always put on a winning shape; but it was felt that the reign of law in any shape was better than the reign of unlaw. It may be that the very restraint under which the powers of evil were kept down during the reign of Henry led to a fiercer outbreak when they were set free at his death. But the same process had given the nation life and strength to bear up through the frightful years of anarchy, and to be ready at their close to welcome another Henry again to do justice and make peace. But above all, the rule of Henry wiped out the distinction which, at his accession, had divided the conquerors and the conquered. Under him Normans born on English ground grew up as Englishmen. They felt as Englishmen, when the second restoration of the reign of law brought with it, as its dark side, the preference of men from beyond the sea to the sons of the soil of either race. With all his faults, his vices, his occasional crimes, Henry the Clerk, the first of the new line who was truly an English Ætheling, must rank before all other kings as the refounder of the English nation. He is himself the embodiment of the process by which the Norman on English soil washed off the varnish of his two centuries’ sojourn by the Seine, and came back to his true place in the older Teutonic fellowship of Angle, Saxon, and Dane. When Henry gave back to his people the laws of King Eadward with the amendments of King William, he wrote in advance the whole later history of England. The old stock was neither cut down nor withered away; but a new stock was grafted upon it. And it was no unworthy fruit that it bore in the person of the King in whose days none durst misdo with other.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The compromise with Anselm. 1107.]

[Sidenote: The war with Robert.]

[Sidenote: 1106.]

[Sidenote: The reign of Rufus how far an episode.]

[Sidenote: Problem of reconciling England to the Conquest.]

[Sidenote: Not solved under Rufus,]

[Sidenote: but solved by Henry.]

[Sidenote: England no longer a conquered land.]

[Sidenote: The Conquest at once confirmed and undone.]

[Sidenote: Import of the surrender of Shrewsbury.]

With the firm establishment of Henry’s rule by the fall of Robert of Bellême my immediate story ends. Of the memorable time which followed, a time memorable for many things, but memorable above all as being, within the English kingdom, a perfect blank in military history, I have sketched the outline in another volume. I there traced out the leading features of the reign and discussed its leading results. I there traced the later stages of the career of Anselm, his dispute with Henry, his second departure and second restoration, the final compromise which to the wisdom of Henry and the single-mindedness of Anselm was not impossible. I traced out also the various matters in dispute between Henry and Robert till the time when, as men fondly deemed, England, after forty years, paid back the day of Senlac on the day of Tinchebrai. I could have been well pleased to carry on in detail to their end two stories of which I have had to tell so large a part. But my immediate subject ends when King Henry is made fast on his throne by the overthrow of the rebel Earl of Shrewsbury. Earlier than that point the tale could not stop. Deep as is the importance of the reign of William Rufus in so many ways, there is a certain way of looking at things in which the reign of William Rufus is a kind of episode. Or rather it is an attempt at a certain object which, when tried in the person of Rufus, failed, and which had to be again tried, with better luck, in the person of Henry. The problem was to reconcile the English nation to the Norman Conquest, to nationalize, so to speak, the Conquest and the dynasty which the Conquest had brought in. The means thereto was to find a prince of the foreign stock who should reign as an English king, with the good will of the English people, in the interest of the English people. William Rufus might have held that place, if he had been morally capable of it. His crown was won for him from Norman rebels by the valour and loyalty of Englishmen, when for the last time they met Normans on their own soil as enemies. But Rufus forsook his trust; he belied his promises; if he did not strictly become an oppressor of Englishmen as Englishmen, it was only because he became the common oppressor and enemy of mankind. Thirteen years later the same drama was acted over again. Henry, who reigned by a more direct choice of the English people than William, owed his crown also to the loyalty of Englishmen whose valour against Norman enemies it was found needless to test in the open field. This time the problem was solved; if Henry did not bring back the days of Ælfred or even the days of Cnut, he at least brought in a very different state of things from what men had seen in the days of his brother. After the election at Winchester, the conference at Alton, the fight at Tinchebrai, England could no longer be called a conquered land. The work of the Norman Conquest was from one side confirmed for ever, from another side it was undone for ever. The last act of the struggle, an afterpiece more stirring than the main drama, was when Robert of Bellême came forth, shorn of his power to do evil, to surrender the stronghold of Shrewsbury to his sovereign. The surrender of Chester to the elder William marked that the first struggle was over, and that the Norman was to rule in England. The surrender of Shrewsbury to his youngest son marked that the second struggle was over, the struggle which ruled that, though the Norman was to reign in England, he was to reign only by putting on the character of an English king, called to his throne by the voice of Englishmen, and guarded there by their loyalty against the plots and assaults of Norman rebels.