William the Conqueror
by E.A. Freeman
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by

E.A. Freeman

1913 Macmillan and Co. edition

Contents

Introduction
The Early Years of William
William's First Visit to England
The Reign of William in Normandy
Harold's Oat to William
The Negotiations of Duke William
William's Invasion of England
The Conquest of England
The Settlement of England
The Revolts against William
The Last Years of William

CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION

The history of England, like the land and its people, has been
specially insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influences
from without. No land has owed more than England to the personal
action of men not of native birth. Britain was truly called another
world, in opposition to the world of the European mainland, the
world of Rome. In every age the history of Britain is the history
of an island, of an island great enough to form a world of itself.
In speaking of Celts or Teutons in Britain, we are speaking, not
simply of Celts and Teutons, but of Celts and Teutons parted from
their kinsfolk on the mainland, and brought under the common
influences of an island world. The land has seen several
settlements from outside, but the settlers have always been brought
under the spell of their insular position. Whenever settlement has
not meant displacement, the new comers have been assimilated by the
existing people of the land. When it has meant displacement, they
have still become islanders, marked off from those whom they left
behind by characteristics which were the direct result of settlement
in an island world.

The history of Britain then, and specially the history of England,
has been largely a history of elements absorbed and assimilated from
without. But each of those elements has done somewhat to modify the
mass into which it was absorbed. The English land and nation are
not as they might have been if they had never in later times
absorbed the Fleming, the French Huguenot, the German Palatine.
Still less are they as they might have been, if they had not in
earlier times absorbed the greater elements of the Dane and the
Norman. Both were assimilated; but both modified the character and
destiny of the people into whose substance they were absorbed. The
conquerors from Normandy were silently and peacefully lost in the
greater mass of the English people; still we can never be as if the
Norman had never come among us. We ever bear about us the signs of
his presence. Our colonists have carried those signs with them into
distant lands, to remind men that settlers in America and Australia
came from a land which the Norman once entered as a conqueror. But
that those signs of his presence hold the place which they do hold
in our mixed political being, that, badges of conquest as they are,
no one feels them to be badges of conquest--all this comes of the
fact that, if the Norman came as a conqueror, he came as a conqueror
of a special, perhaps almost of an unique kind. The Norman Conquest
of England has, in its nature and in its results, no exact parallel
in history. And that it has no exact parallel in history is largely
owing to the character and position of the man who wrought it. That
the history of England for the last eight hundred years has been
what it has been has largely come of the personal character of a
single man. That we are what we are to this day largely comes of
the fact that there was a moment when our national destiny might be
said to hang on the will of a single man, and that that man was
William, surnamed at different stages of his life and memory, the
Bastard, the Conqueror, and the Great.

With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William the
Norman Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of English
statesmen. That so it should be is characteristic of English
history. Our history has been largely wrought for us by men who
have come in from without, sometimes as conquerors, sometimes as the
opposite of conquerors; but in whatever character they came, they
had to put on the character of Englishmen, and to make their work an
English work. From whatever land they came, on whatever mission
they came, as statesmen they were English. William, the greatest of
his class, is still but a member of a class. Along with him we must
reckon a crowd of kings, bishops, and high officials in many ages of
our history. Theodore of Tarsus and Cnut of Denmark, Lanfranc of
Pavia and Anselm of Aosta, Randolf Flambard and Roger of Salisbury,
Henry of Anjou and Simon of Montfort, are all written on a list of
which William is but the foremost. The largest number come in
William's own generation and in the generations just before and
after it. But the breed of England's adopted children and rulers
never died out. The name of William the Deliverer stands, if not
beside that of his namesake the Conqueror, yet surely alongside of
the lawgiver from Anjou. And we count among the later worthies of
England not a few men sprung from other lands, who did and are doing
their work among us, and who, as statesmen at least, must count as
English. As we look along the whole line, even among the conquering
kings and their immediate instruments, their work never takes the
shape of the rooting up of the earlier institutions of the land.
Those institutions are modified, sometimes silently by the mere
growth of events, sometimes formally and of set purpose. Old
institutions get new names; new institutions are set up alongside of
them. But the old ones are never swept away; they sometimes die
out; they are never abolished. This comes largely of the absorbing
and assimilating power of the island world. But it comes no less of
personal character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of
the personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the
circumstances in which he found himself.

Our special business now is with the personal acts and character of
William, and above all with his acts and character as an English
statesman. But the English reign of William followed on his earlier
Norman reign, and its character was largely the result of his
earlier Norman reign. A man of the highest natural gifts, he had
gone through such a schooling from his childhood upwards as falls to
the lot of few princes. Before he undertook the conquest of
England, he had in some sort to work the conquest of Normandy. Of
the ordinary work of a sovereign in a warlike age, the defence of
his own land, the annexation of other lands, William had his full
share. With the land of his overlord he had dealings of the most
opposite kinds. He had to call in the help of the French king to
put down rebellion in the Norman duchy, and he had to drive back
more than one invasion of the French king at the head of an united
Norman people. He added Domfront and Maine to his dominions, and
the conquest of Maine, the work as much of statesmanship as of
warfare, was the rehearsal of the conquest of England. There, under
circumstances strangely like those of England, he learned his trade
as conqueror, he learned to practise on a narrower field the same
arts which he afterwards practised on a wider. But after all,
William's own duchy was his special school; it was his life in his
own duchy which specially helped to make him what he was.
Surrounded by trials and difficulties almost from his cradle, he
early learned the art of enduring trials and overcoming
difficulties; he learned how to deal with men; he learned when to
smite and when to spare; and it is not a little to his honour that,
in the long course of such a reign as his, he almost always showed
himself far more ready to spare than to smite.

Before then we can look at William as an English statesman, we must
first look on him in the land in which he learned the art of
statesmanship. We must see how one who started with all the
disadvantages which are implied in his earlier surname of the
Bastard came to win and to deserve his later surnames of the
Conqueror and the Great.

CHAPTER II--THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM--A.D. 1028-1051

If William's early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling for
his later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and his
schooling began early. His nominal reign began at the age of seven
years, and his personal influence on events began long before he had
reached the usual years of discretion. And the events of his
minority might well harden him, while they could not corrupt him in
the way in which so many princes have been corrupted. His whole
position, political and personal, could not fail to have its effect
in forming the man. He was Duke of the Normans, sixth in succession
from Rolf, the founder of the Norman state. At the time of his
accession, rather more than a hundred and ten years had passed since
plunderers, occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia, had changed
into acknowledged members of the Western or Karolingian kingdom.
The Northmen, changed, name and thing, into NORMANS, were now in all
things members of the Christian and French-speaking world. But
French as the Normans of William's day had become, their relation to
the kings and people of France was not a friendly one. At the time
of the settlement of Rolf, the western kingdom of the Franks had not
yet finally passed to the DUCES FRANCORUM at Paris; Rolf became the
man of the Karolingian king at Laon. France and Normandy were two
great duchies, each owning a precarious supremacy in the king of the
West-Franks. On the one hand, Normandy had been called into being
by a frightful dismemberment of the French duchy, from which the
original Norman settlement had been cut off. France had lost in
Rouen one of her greatest cities, and she was cut off from the sea
and from the lower course of her own river. On the other hand, the
French and the Norman dukes had found their interest in a close
alliance; Norman support had done much to transfer the crown from
Laon to Paris, and to make the DUX FRANCORUM and the REX FRANCORUM
the same person. It was the adoption of the French speech and
manners by the Normans, and their steady alliance with the French
dukes, which finally determined that the ruling element in Gaul
should be Romance and not Teutonic, and that, of its Romance
elements, it should be French and not Aquitanian. If the creation
of Normandy had done much to weaken France as a duchy, it had done
not a little towards the making of France as a kingdom. Laon and
its crown, the undefined influence that went with the crown, the
prospect of future advance to the south, had been bought by the loss
of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine.

There was much therefore at the time of William's accession to keep
the French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms. The old
alliance had been strengthened by recent good offices. The reigning
king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help of William's
father Robert. On the other hand, the original ground of the
alliance, mutual support against the Karolingian king, had passed
away. A King of the French reigning at Paris was more likely to
remember what the Normans had cost him as duke than what they had
done for him as king. And the alliance was only an alliance of
princes. The mutual dislike between the people of the two countries
was strong. The Normans had learned French ways, but French and
Normans had not become countrymen. And, as the fame of Normandy
grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike. William, in
short, inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state of relations
towards the king who was at once his chief neighbour and his
overlord.

More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which the young
duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and the kinsfolk
of his own house. William was not as yet the Great or the
Conqueror, but he was the Bastard from the beginning. There was
then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms
and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied,
as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere, even where
the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was always likely
to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notions too had greatly
strengthened the hereditary principle. Still no rule had anywhere
been laid down for cases where the late prince had not left a full-
grown son. The question as to legitimate birth was equally
unsettled. Irregular unions of all kinds, though condemned by the
Church, were tolerated in practice, and were nowhere more common
than among the Norman dukes. In truth the feeling of the kingliness
of the stock, the doctrine that the king should be the son of a
king, is better satisfied by the succession of the late king's
bastard son than by sending for some distant kinsman, claiming
perhaps only through females. Still bastardy, if it was often
convenient to forget it, could always be turned against a man. The
succession of a bastard was never likely to be quite undisputed or
his reign to be quite undisturbed.

Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of
being at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or
1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count
of Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of
Fulbert the tanner. There was no pretence of marriage between his
parents; yet his father, when he designed William to succeed him,
might have made him legitimate, as some of his predecessors had been
made, by a marriage with his mother. In 1028 Robert succeeded his
brother Richard in the duchy. In 1034 or 1035 he determined to go
on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He called on his barons to swear
allegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his successor in
case he never came back. Their wise counsel to stay at home, to
look after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, was unheeded.
Robert carried his point. The succession of young William was
accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by the overlord
Henry King of the French. The arrangement soon took effect. Robert
died on his way back before the year 1035 was out, and his son
began, in name at least, his reign of fifty-two years over the
Norman duchy.

The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could happen
only when no one else had a distinctly better claim William could
never have held his ground for a moment against a brother of his
father of full age and undoubted legitimacy. But among the living
descendants of former dukes some were themselves of doubtful
legitimacy, some were shut out by their profession as churchmen,
some claimed only through females. Robert had indeed two half-
brothers, but they were young and their legitimacy was disputed; he
had an uncle, Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been legitimated
by the later marriage of his parents. The rival who in the end gave
William most trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of a
daughter of his grandfather Richard the Good. Though William's
succession was not liked, no one of these candidates was generally
preferred to him. He therefore succeeded; but the first twelve
years of his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies of
unruly nobles, who hated the young duke as the one representative of
law and order, and who were not eager to set any one in his place
who might be better able to enforce them.

Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took
in two classes of men. All were noble who had any kindred or
affinity, legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house. The
natural children of Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his
marriage with their mother Gunnor, and many of the great houses of
Normandy sprang from her brothers and sisters. The mother of
William received no such exaltation as this. Besides her son, she
had borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide, and, after Robert's death,
she married a Norman knight named Herlwin of Conteville. To him,
besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and Robert. They rose to
high posts in Church and State, and played an important part in
their half-brother's history. Besides men whose nobility was of
this kind, there were also Norman houses whose privileges were older
than the amours or marriages of any duke, houses whose greatness was
as old as the settlement of Rolf, as old that is as the ducal power
itself. The great men of both these classes were alike hard to
control. A Norman baron of this age was well employed when he was
merely rebelling against his prince or waging private war against a
fellow baron. What specially marks the time is the frequency of
treacherous murders wrought by men of the highest rank, often on
harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests. But victims were also
found among those guardians of the young duke whose faithful
discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility was not
wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the
Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter. Two
others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular
kinsmen of the duke. All these were murdered, the Breton count by
poison. Such a childhood as this made William play the man while he
was still a child. The helpless boy had to seek for support of some
kind. He got together the chief men of his duchy, and took a new
guardian by their advice. But it marks the state of things that the
new guardian was one of the murderers of those whom he succeeded.
This was Ralph of Wacey, son of William's great-uncle, Archbishop
Robert. Murderer as he was, he seems to have discharged his duty
faithfully. There are men who are careless of general moral
obligations, but who will strictly carry out any charge which
appeals to personal honour. Anyhow Ralph's guardianship brought
with it a certain amount of calm. But men, high in the young duke's
favour, were still plotting against him, and they presently began to
plot, not only against their prince but against their country. The
disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against young
William in his lord King Henry of Paris.

The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since much
earlier times. The king who owed his crown to William's father, and
who could have no ground of offence against William himself, easily
found good pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs. It was not
unnatural in the King of the French to wish to win back a sea-board
which had been given up more than a hundred years before to an alien
power, even though that power had, for much more than half of that
time, acted more than a friendly part towards France. It was not
unnatural that the French people should cherish a strong national
dislike to the Normans and a strong wish that Rouen should again be
a French city. But such motives were not openly avowed then any
more than now. The alleged ground was quite different. The counts
of Chartres were troublesome neighbours to the duchy, and the castle
of Tillieres had been built as a defence against them. An advance
of the King's dominions had made Tillieres a neighbour of France,
and, as a neighbour, it was said to be a standing menace. The King
of the French, acting in concert with the disaffected party in
Normandy, was a dangerous enemy, and the young Duke and his
counsellors determined to give up Tillieres. Now comes the first
distinct exercise of William's personal will. We are without exact
dates, but the time can be hardly later than 1040, when William was
from twelve to thirteen years old. At his special request, the
defender of Tillieres, Gilbert Crispin, who at first held out
against French and Normans alike, gave up the castle to Henry. The
castle was burned; the King promised not to repair it for four
years. Yet he is said to have entered Normandy, to have laid waste
William's native district of Hiesmois, to have supplied a French
garrison to a Norman rebel named Thurstan, who held the castle of
Falaise against the Duke, and to have ended by restoring Tillieres
as a menace against Normandy. And now the boy whose destiny had
made him so early a leader of men had to bear his first arms against
the fortress which looked down on his birth-place. Thurstan
surrendered and went into banishment. William could set down his
own Falaise as the first of a long list of towns and castles which
he knew how to win without shedding of blood.

When we next see William's distinct personal action, he is still
young, but no longer a child or even a boy. At nineteen or
thereabouts he is a wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdom
are tried to the uttermost. A few years of comparative quiet were
chiefly occupied, as a quiet time in those days commonly was, with
ecclesiastical affairs. One of these specially illustrates the
state of things with which William had to deal. In 1042, when the
Duke was about fourteen, Normandy adopted the Truce of God in its
later shape. It no longer attempted to establish universal peace;
it satisfied itself with forbidding, under the strongest
ecclesiastical censures, all private war and violence of any kind on
certain days of the week. Legislation of this kind has two sides.
It was an immediate gain if peace was really enforced for four days
in the week; but that which was not forbidden on the other three
could no longer be denounced as in itself evil. We are told that in
no land was the Truce more strictly observed than in Normandy. But
we may be sure that, when William was in the fulness of his power,
the stern weight of the ducal arm was exerted to enforce peace on
Mondays and Tuesdays as well as on Thursdays and Fridays.

It was in the year 1047 that William's authority was most
dangerously threatened and that he was first called on to show in
all their fulness the powers that were in him. He who was to be
conqueror of Maine and conqueror of England was first to be
conqueror of his own duchy. The revolt of a large part of the
country, contrasted with the firm loyalty of another part, throws a
most instructive light on the internal state of the duchy. There
was, as there still is, a line of severance between the districts
which formed the first grant to Rolf and those which were afterwards
added. In these last a lingering remnant of old Teutonic life had
been called into fresh strength by new settlements from Scandinavia.
At the beginning of the reign of Richard the Fearless, Rouen, the
French-speaking city, is emphatically contrasted with Bayeux, the
once Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the Danish speech.
At that stage the Danish party was distinctly a heathen party. We
are not told whether Danish was still spoken so late as the time of
William's youth. We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian gods
still kept any avowed worshippers. But the geographical limits of
the revolt exactly fall in with the boundary which had once divided
French and Danish speech, Christian and heathen worship. There was
a wide difference in feeling on the two sides of the Dive. The
older Norman settlements, now thoroughly French in tongue and
manners, stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to the west rose
against him. Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to William; Saxon
Bayeux and Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his enemies.

When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised at
the candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels.
William was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a
Frenchman. This was William's cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose
connexion with the ducal house was only by the spindle-side. But
his descent was of uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excuse
for claiming the duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of the
tanner. By William he had been enriched with great possessions,
among which was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle. The
real object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy. William
was to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of
Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be left
independent. To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Cotentin
revolted, their leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in the
Cotentin. We are told that the mass of the people everywhere wished
well to their duke; in the common sovereign lay their only chance of
protection against their immediate lords. But the lords had armed
force of the land at their bidding. They first tried to slay or
seize the Duke himself, who chanced to be in the midst of them at
Valognes. He escaped; we hear a stirring tale of his headlong ride
from Valognes to Falaise. Safe among his own people, he planned his
course of action. He first sought help of the man who could give
him most help, but who had most wronged him. He went into France;
he saw King Henry at Poissy, and the King engaged to bring a French
force to William's help under his own command.

This time Henry kept his promise. The dismemberment of Normandy
might have been profitable to France by weakening the power which
had become so special an object of French jealousy; but with a king
the common interest of princes against rebellious barons came first.
Henry came with a French army, and fought well for his ally on the
field of Val-es-dunes. Now came the Conqueror's first battle, a
tourney of horsemen on an open table-land just within the land of
the rebels between Caen and Mezidon. The young duke fought well and
manfully; but the Norman writers allow that it was French help that
gained him the victory. Yet one of the many anecdotes of the battle
points to a source of strength which was always ready to tell for
any lord against rebellious vassals. One of the leaders of the
revolt, Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred by the
prayers of his knights, joined the Duke just before the battle. He
had sworn to smite William wherever he found him, and he fulfilled
his oath by giving the Duke a harmless blow with his glove. How far
an oath to do an unlawful act is binding is a question which came up
again at another stage of William's life.

The victory at Val-es-dunes was decisive, and the French King, whose
help had done so much to win it, left William to follow it up. He
met with but little resistance except at the stronghold of Brionne.
Guy himself vanishes from Norman history. William had now conquered
his own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help. For the rest of
his Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies at home, but he
had never to put down such a rebellion again as that of the lords of
western Normandy. That western Normandy, the truest Normandy, had
to yield to the more thoroughly Romanized lands to the east. The
difference between them never again takes a political shape.
William was now lord of all Normandy, and able to put down all later
disturbers of the peace. His real reign now begins; from the age of
nineteen or twenty, his acts are his own. According to his abiding
practice, he showed himself a merciful conqueror. Through his whole
reign he shows a distinct unwillingness to take human life except in
fair fighting on the battle-field. No blood was shed after the
victory of Val-es-dunes; one rebel died in bonds; the others
underwent no harder punishment than payment of fines, giving of
hostages, and destruction of their castles. These castles were not
as yet the vast and elaborate structures which arose in after days.
A single strong square tower, or even a defence of wood on a steep
mound surrounded by a ditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous.
The possession of these strongholds made every baron able at once to
defy his prince and to make himself a scourge to his neighbours.
Every season of anarchy is marked by the building of castles; every
return of order brings with it their overthrow as a necessary
condition of peace.

Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had been
schooled for the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smaller
dominion, in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to be schooled
for the conquest and the rule of a greater dominion. William had
the gifts of a born ruler, and he was in no way disposed to abuse
them. We know his rule in Normandy only through the language of
panegyric; but the facts speak for themselves. He made Normandy
peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful and flourishing perhaps than
any other state of the European mainland. He is set before us as in
everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector of the poor
and helpless, the patron of commerce and of all that might profit
his dominions. For defensive wars, for wars waged as the faithful
man of his overlord, we cannot blame him. But his main duty lay at
home. He still had revolts to put down, and he put them down. But
to put them down was the first of good works. He had to keep the
peace of the land, to put some cheek on the unruly wills of those
turbulent barons on whom only an arm like his could put any cheek.
He had, in the language of his day, to do justice, to visit wrong
with sure and speedy punishment, whoever was the wrong-doer. If a
ruler did this first of duties well, much was easily forgiven him in
other ways. But William had as yet little to be forgiven.
Throughout life he steadily practised some unusual virtues. His
strict attention to religion was always marked. And his religion
was not that mere lavish bounty to the Church which was consistent
with any amount of cruelty or license. William's religion really
influenced his life, public and private. He set an unusual example
of a princely household governed according to the rules of morality,
and he dealt with ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true
reformer. He did not, like so many princes of his age, make
ecclesiastical preferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted
good men from all quarters. His own education is not likely to have
received much attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the
rarer art of writing or the more usual one of reading; but both his
promotion of learned churchmen and the care given to the education
of some of his children show that he at least valued the best
attainments of his time. Had William's whole life been spent in the
duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely, defending it
manfully, the world might never have known him for one of its
foremost men, but his life on that narrower field would have been
useful and honourable almost without a drawback. It was the fatal
temptation of princes, the temptation to territorial aggrandizement,
which enabled him fully to show the powers that were in him, but
which at the same time led to his moral degradation. The defender
of his own land became the invader of other lands, and the invader
could not fail often to sink into the oppressor. Each step in his
career as Conqueror was a step downwards. Maine was a neighbouring
land, a land of the same speech, a land which, if the feelings of
the time could have allowed a willing union, would certainly have
lost nothing by an union with Normandy. England, a land apart, a
land of speech, laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part
of Gaul, was in another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be
the oppressor. Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further
wrong.

With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider, on
which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing to
do. It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the English
succession may have entered his mind or that of his advisers. When
William began his real reign after Val-es-dunes, Norman influence
was high in England. Edward the Confessor had spent his youth among
his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways and the company of Normans
and other men of French speech. Strangers from the favoured lands
held endless posts in Church and State; above all, Robert of
Jumieges, first Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury,
was the King's special favourite and adviser. These men may have
suggested the thought of William's succession very early. On the
other hand, at this time it was by no means clear that Edward might
not leave a son of his own. He had been only a few years married,
and his alleged vow of chastity is very doubtful. William's claim
was of the flimsiest kind. By English custom the king was chosen
out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended from
kings in the male line were counted as members of that house.
William was not descended, even in the female line, from any English
king; his whole kindred with Edward was that Edward's mother Emma, a
daughter of Richard the Fearless, was William's great-aunt. Such a
kindred, to say nothing of William's bastardy, could give no right
to the crown according to any doctrine of succession that ever was
heard of. It could at most point him out as a candidate for
adoption, in case the reigning king should be disposed and allowed
to choose his successor. William or his advisers may have begun to
weigh this chance very early; but all that is really certain is that
William was a friend and favourite of his elder kinsman, and that
events finally brought his succession to the English crown within
the range of things that might be.

But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond
the bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his
great continental conquest. William's first war out of Normandy was
waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of
Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine. William undoubtedly owed a
debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-es-
dunes, and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjou
and Normandy. Both powers asserted rights over the intermediate
land of Maine. In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in a
war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague tales of his
exploits. The really instructive part of the story deals with two
border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alencon lay
on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy.
Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy. The town was a
lordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power and
wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of
Normandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than with
ordinary nobles. The story went that William Talvas, lord of
Belleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in his
cradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame. Such
a tale set forth the noblest side of William's character, as the man
who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he who
cursed him. The possessions of William Talvas passed through his
daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great part
in William's history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, not
of their lord, of which we hear just now. They willingly admitted
an Angevin garrison. William in return laid siege to Domfront on
the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maine
against Normandy. A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won
for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the
autumn and winter (1048-49). One tale specially illustrates more
than one point in the feelings of the time. The two princes,
William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the other
notice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not be
mistaken. The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we see
that William himself in his younger days was touched by it. But we
see also that coat-armour was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and his
host, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp in
the night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon.
The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth.
They hung out skins, and shouted, "Hides for the Tanner."  Personal
insult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of William
was stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from his
usual moderation towards conquered enemies. He swore that the men
who had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whose
branches are cut off with the pollarding-knife. The town was taken
by assault, and William kept his oath. The castle held out; the
hands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alencon were
thrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison to
surrender on promise of safety for life and limb. The defenders of
Domfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their arms as
well as their lives and limbs. William had thus won back his own
rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his first conquest.
He went farther south, and fortified another castle at Ambrieres;
but Ambrieres was only a temporary conquest. Domfront has ever
since been counted as part of Normandy. But, as ecclesiastical
divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions of an earlier
time, Domfront remained down to the great French Revolution in the
spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans.

William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he was
before long to show himself in England, though not yet as conqueror.
If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still in this interval to
complete his conquest of his own duchy by securing the surrender of
Brionne; and two other events, both characteristic, one of them
memorable, fill up the same time. William now banished a kinsman of
his own name, who held the great county of Mortain, MORETOLIAM or
MORETONIUM, in the diocese of Avranches, which must be carefully
distinguished from Mortagne-en-Perche, MAURITANIA or MORETONIA in
the diocese of Seez. This act, of somewhat doubtful justice, is
noteworthy on two grounds. First, the accuser of the banished count
was one who was then a poor serving-knight of his own, but who
became the forefather of a house which plays a great part in English
history, Robert surnamed the Bigod. Secondly, the vacant county was
granted by William to his own half-brother Robert. He had already
in 1048 bestowed the bishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother
Odo, who cannot at that time have been more than twelve years old.
He must therefore have held the see for a good while without
consecration, and at no time of his fifty years' holding of it did
he show any very episcopal merits. This was the last case in
William's reign of an old abuse by which the chief church
preferments in Normandy had been turned into means of providing for
members, often unworthy members, of the ducal family; and it is the
only one for which William can have been personally responsible.
Both his brothers were thus placed very early in life among the
chief men of Normandy, as they were in later years to be placed
among the chief men of England. But William's affection for his
brothers, amiable as it may have been personally, was assuredly not
among the brighter parts of his character as a sovereign.

The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side
of William's life. The long story of his marriage now begins. The
date is fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held in
1049 by Pope Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders is
forbidden to give his daughter to William the Norman. This implies
that the marriage was already thought of, and further that it was
looked on as uncanonical. The bride whom William sought, Matilda
daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was connected with him by some tie of
kindred or affinity which made a marriage between them unlawful by
the rules of the Church. But no genealogist has yet been able to
find out exactly what the canonical hindrance was. It is hard to
trace the descent of William and Matilda up to any common
forefather. But the light which the story throws on William's
character is the same in any case. Whether he was seeking a wife or
a kingdom, he would have his will, but he could wait for it. In
William's doubtful position, a marriage with the daughter of the
Count of Flanders would be useful to him in many ways; and Matilda
won her husband's abiding love and trust. Strange tales are told of
William's wooing. Tales are told also of Matilda's earlier love for
the Englishman Brihtric, who is said to have found favour in her
eyes when he came as envoy from England to her father's court. All
that is certain is that the marriage had been thought of and had
been forbidden before the next important event in William's life
that we have to record.

Was William's Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopes
of succession to the English crown? Had there been any available
bride for him in England, it might have been for his interest to
seek for her there. But it should be noticed, though no ancient
writer points out the fact, that Matilda was actually descended from
Alfred in the female line; so that William's children, though not
William himself, had some few drops of English blood in their veins.
William or his advisers, in weighing every chance which might help
his interests in the direction of England, may have reckoned this
piece of rather ancient genealogy among the advantages of a Flemish
alliance. But it is far more certain that, between the forbidding
of the marriage and the marriage itself, a direct hope of succession
to the English crown had been opened to the Norman duke.

CHAPTER III--WILLIAM'S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND--A.D. 1051-1052

While William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Norman
influence in England had risen to its full height. The king was
surrounded by foreign favourites. The only foreign earl was his
nephew Ralph of Mentes, the son of his sister Godgifu. But three
chief bishoprics were held by Normans, Robert of Canterbury, William
of London, and Ulf of Dorchester. William bears a good character,
and won the esteem of Englishmen; but the unlearned Ulf is
emphatically said to have done "nought bishoplike."  Smaller
preferments in Church and State, estates in all parts of the
kingdom, were lavishly granted to strangers. They built castles,
and otherwise gave offence to English feeling. Archbishop Robert,
above all, was ever plotting against Godwine, Earl of the West-
Saxons, the head of the national party. At last, in the autumn of
1051, the national indignation burst forth. The immediate occasion
was a visit paid to the King by Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had
just married the widowed Countess Godgifu. The violent dealings of
his followers towards the burghers of Dover led to resistance on
their part, and to a long series of marches and negotiations, which
ended in the banishment of Godwine and his son, and the parting of
his daughter Edith, the King's wife, from her husband. From October
1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own way in England.
And during that time King Edward received a visitor of greater fame
than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person of his cousin
from Rouen.

Of his visit we only read that "William Earl came from beyond sea
with mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and as
many of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again."
Another account adds that William received great gifts from the
King. But William himself in several documents speaks of Edward as
his lord; he must therefore at some time have done to Edward an act
of homage, and there is no time but this at which we can conceive
such an act being done. Now for what was the homage paid? Homage
was often paid on very trifling occasions, and strange conflicts of
allegiance often followed. No such conflict was likely to arise if
the Duke of the Normans, already the man of the King of the French
for his duchy, became the man of the King of the English on any
other ground. Betwixt England and France there was as yet no enmity
or rivalry. England and France became enemies afterwards because
the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans were one person.
And this visit, this homage, was the first step towards making the
King of the English and the Duke of the Normans the same person.
The claim William had to the English crown rested mainly on an
alleged promise of the succession made by Edward. This claim is not
likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood. That Edward did
make some promise to William--as that Harold, at a later stage, did
take some oath to William--seems fully proved by the fact that,
while such Norman statements as could be denied were emphatically
denied by the English writers, on these two points the most
patriotic Englishmen, the strongest partisans of Harold, keep a
marked silence. We may be sure therefore that some promise was
made; for that promise a time must be found, and no time seems
possible except this time of William's visit to Edward. The date
rests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement.
Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when William
and Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward was
many years older than William. The only possible moment earlier
than the visit was when Edward was elected king in 1042. Before
that time he could hardly have thought of disposing of a kingdom
which was not his, and at that time he might have looked forward to
leaving sons to succeed him. Still less could the promise have been
made later than the visit. From 1053 to the end of his life Edward
was under English influences, which led him first to send for his
nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in the end to make
a recommendation in favour of Harold. But in 1051-52 Edward,
whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hope of
children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only
time in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and
William met face to face. The only difficulty is one to which no
contemporary writer makes any reference. If Edward wished to
dispose of his crown in favour of one of his French-speaking
kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he might more naturally
have thought. His own nephew Ralph was living in England and
holding an English earldom. He had the advantage over both William
and his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a reigning
prince elsewhere. We can only say that there is evidence that
Edward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he ever
thought of Ralph. And, except the tie of nearer kindred, everything
would suggest William rather than Ralph. The personal comparison is
almost grotesque; and Edward's early associations and the strongest
influences around him, were not vaguely French but specially Norman.
Archbishop Robert would plead for his own native sovereign only. In
short, we may be as nearly sure as we can be of any fact for which
there is no direct authority, that Edward's promise to William was
made at the time of William's visit to England, and that William's
homage to Edward was done in the character of a destined successor
to the English crown.

William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandy a
king expectant. But the value of his hopes, to the value of the
promise made to him, are quite another matter. Most likely they
were rated on both sides far above their real value. King and duke
may both have believed that they were making a settlement which the
English nation was bound to respect. If so, Edward at least was
undeceived within a few months.

The notion of a king disposing of his crown by his own act belongs
to the same range of ideas as the law of strict hereditary
succession. It implies that kingship is a possession and not an
office. Neither the heathen nor the Christian English had ever
admitted that doctrine; but it was fast growing on the continent.
Our forefathers had always combined respect for the kingly house
with some measure of choice among the members of that house. Edward
himself was not the lawful heir according to the notions of a modern
lawyer; for he was chosen while the son of his elder brother was
living. Every English king held his crown by the gift of the great
assembly of the nation, though the choice of the nation was usually
limited to the descendants of former kings, and though the full-
grown son of the late king was seldom opposed. Christianity had
strengthened the election principle. The king lost his old sanctity
as the son of Woden; he gained a new sanctity as the Lord's
anointed. But kingship thereby became more distinctly an office, a
great post, like a bishopric, to which its holder had to be lawfully
chosen and admitted by solemn rites. But of that office he could be
lawfully deprived, nor could he hand it on to a successor either
according to his own will or according to any strict law of
succession. The wishes of the late king, like the wishes of the
late bishop, went for something with the electors. But that was
all. All that Edward could really do for his kinsmen was to promise
to make, when the time came, a recommendation to the Witan in his
favour. The Witan might then deal as they thought good with a
recommendation so unusual as to choose to the kingship of England a
man who was neither a native nor a conqueror of England nor the
descendant of any English king.

When the time came, Edward did make a recommendation to the Witan,
but it was not in favour of William. The English influences under
which he was brought during his last fourteen years taught him
better what the law of England was and what was the duty of an
English king. But at the time of William's visit Edward may well
have believed that he could by his own act settle his crown on his
Norman kinsman as his undoubted successor in case he died without a
son. And it may be that Edward was bound by a vow not to leave a
son. And if Edward so thought, William naturally thought so yet
more; he would sincerely believe himself to be the lawful heir of
the crown of England, the sole lawful successor, except in one
contingency which was perhaps impossible and certainly unlikely.

The memorials of these times, so full on some points, are meagre on
others. Of those writers who mention the bequest or promise none
mention it at any time when it is supposed to have happened; they
mention it at some later time when it began to be of practical
importance. No English writer speaks of William's claim till the
time when he was about practically to assert it; no Norman writer
speaks of it till he tells the tale of Harold's visit and oath to
William. We therefore cannot say how far the promise was known
either in England or on the continent. But it could not be kept
altogether hid, even if either party wished it to be hid. English
statesmen must have known of it, and must have guided their policy
accordingly, whether it was generally known in the country or not.
William's position, both in his own duchy and among neighbouring
princes, would be greatly improved if he could be looked upon as a
future king. As heir to the crown of England, he may have more
earnestly wooed the descendant of former wearers of the crown; and
Matilda and her father may have looked more favourably on a suitor
to whom the crown of England was promised. On the other hand, the
existence of such a foreign claimant made it more needful than ever
for Englishmen to be ready with an English successor, in the royal
house or out of it, the moment the reigning king should pass away.

It was only for a short time that William could have had any
reasonable hope of a peaceful succession. The time of Norman
influence in England was short. The revolution of September 1052
brought Godwine back, and placed the rule of England again in
English hands. Many Normans were banished, above all Archbishop
Robert and Bishop Ulf. The death of Godwine the next year placed
the chief power in the hands of his son Harold. This change
undoubtedly made Edward more disposed to the national cause. Of
Godwine, the man to whom he owed his crown, he was clearly in awe;
to Godwine's sons he was personally attached. We know not how
Edward was led to look on his promise to William as void. That he
was so led is quite plain. He sent for his nephew the AEtheling
Edward from Hungary, clearly as his intended successor. When the
AEtheling died in 1057, leaving a son under age, men seem to have
gradually come to look to Harold as the probable successor. He
clearly held a special position above that of an ordinary earl; but
there is no need to suppose any formal act in his favour till the
time of the King's death, January 5, 1066. On his deathbed Edward
did all that he legally could do on behalf of Harold by recommending
him to the Witan for election as the next king. That he then either
made a new or renewed an old nomination in favour of William is a
fable which is set aside by the witness of the contemporary English
writers. William's claim rested wholly on that earlier nomination
which could hardly have been made at any other time than his visit
to England.

We have now to follow William back to Normandy, for the remaining
years of his purely ducal reign. The expectant king had doubtless
thoughts and hopes which he had not had before. But we can guess at
them only: they are not recorded.

CHAPTER IV--THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY--A.D. 1052-1063

If William came back from England looking forward to a future crown,
the thought might even then flash across his mind that he was not
likely to win that crown without fighting for it. As yet his
business was still to fight for the duchy of Normandy. But he had
now to fight, not to win his duchy, but only to keep it. For five
years he had to strive both against rebellious subjects and against
invading enemies, among whom King Henry of Paris is again the
foremost. Whatever motives had led the French king to help William
at Val-es-dunes had now passed away. He had fallen back on his
former state of abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke. But
this short period definitely fixed the position of Normandy and her
duke in Gaul and in Europe. At its beginning William is still the
Bastard of Falaise, who may or may not be able to keep himself in
the ducal chair, his right to which is still disputed. At the end
of it, if he is not yet the Conqueror and the Great, he has shown
all the gifts that were needed to win him either name. He is the
greatest vassal of the French crown, a vassal more powerful than the
overlord whose invasions of his duchy he has had to drive back.

These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and his allies
fall into two periods. At first Henry appears in Normandy as the
supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke. But revolts
are personal and local; there is no rebellion like that which was
crushed at Val-es-dunes, spreading over a large part of the duchy.
In the second period, the invaders have no such starting-point.
There are still traitors; there are still rebels; but all that they
can do is to join the invaders after they have entered the land.
William is still only making his way to the universal good will of
his duchy: but he is fast making it.

There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed
date, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053. The
rebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended
the castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishment
in France. But the year that followed William's visit to England
saw the far more memorable revolt of William Count of Arques. He
had drawn the Duke's suspicions on him, and he had to receive a
ducal garrison in his great fortress by Dieppe. But the garrison
betrayed the castle to its own master. Open revolt and havoc
followed, in which Count William was supported by the king and by
several other princes. Among them was Ingelram Count of Ponthieu,
husband of the duke's sister Adelaide. Another enemy was Guy Count
of Gascony, afterwards Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine. What
quarrel a prince in the furthest corner of Gaul could have with the
Duke of the Normans does not appear; but neither Count William nor
his allies could withstand the loyal Normans and their prince.
Count Ingelram was killed; the other princes withdrew to devise
greater efforts against Normandy. Count William lost his castle and
part of his estates, and left the duchy of his free will. The
Duke's politic forbearance at last won him the general good will of
his subjects. We hear of no more open revolts till that of
William's own son many years after. But the assaults of foreign
enemies, helped sometimes by Norman traitors, begin again the next
year on a greater scale.

William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space. He
had doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his
marriage with Matilda of Flanders. Notwithstanding the decree of a
Pope and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage was
celebrated, not very long after William's return to Normandy, in the
year of the revolt of William of Arques. In the course of the year
1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontier at
Eu, and there she became the bride of William. We know not what
emboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particular time,
or what led Baldwin to consent to it. If it was suggested by the
imprisonment of Pope Leo by William's countrymen in Italy, in the
hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the
captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed. The marriage raised
much opposition in Normandy. It was denounced by Archbishop Malger
of Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques. His
character certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same
act in a saint would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness.
Presently, whether for his faults or for his merits, Malger was
deposed in a synod of the Norman Church, and William found him a
worthier successor in the learned and holy Maurilius. But a greater
man than Malger also opposed the marriage, and the controversy thus
introduces us to one who fills a place second only to that of
William himself in the Norman and English history of the time.

This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the model monk,
the ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newly founded
abbey of Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellors of the
Duke. As duke and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop, William
and Lanfranc ruled side by side, each helping the work of the other
till the end of their joint lives. Once only, at this time, was
their friendship broken for a moment. Lanfranc spoke against the
marriage, and ventured to rebuke the Duke himself. William's wrath
was kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into banishment and took a baser
revenge by laying waste part of the lands of the abbey. But the
quarrel was soon made up. Lanfranc presently left Normandy, not as
a banished man, but as the envoy of its sovereign, commissioned to
work for the confirmation of the marriage at the papal court. He
worked, and his work was crowned with success, but not with speedy
success. It was not till six years after the marriage, not till the
year 1059, that Lanfranc obtained the wished for confirmation, not
from Leo, but from his remote successor Nicolas the Second. The sin
of those who had contracted the unlawful union was purged by various
good works, among which the foundation of the two stately abbeys of
Caen was conspicuous.

This story illustrates many points in the character of William and
of his time. His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matter of
marriage or of any other. But he does not hurry matters; he waits
for a favourable opportunity. Something, we know not what, must
have made the year 1053 more favourable than the year 1049. We mark
also William's relations to the Church. He is at no time disposed
to submit quietly to the bidding of the spiritual power, when it
interferes with his rights or even when it crosses his will. Yet he
is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; he promotes men like
Maurilius and Lanfranc; perhaps he is not displeased when the
exercise of ecclesiastical discipline, in the case of Malger, frees
him from a troublesome censor. But the worse side of him also comes
out. William could forgive rebels, but he could not bear the
personal rebuke even of his friend. Under this feeling he punishes
a whole body of men for the offence of one. To lay waste the lands
of Bec for the rebuke of Lanfranc was like an ordinary prince of the
time; it was unlike William, if he had not been stirred up by a
censure which touched his wife as well as himself. But above all,
the bargain between William and Lanfranc is characteristic of the
man and the age. Lanfranc goes to Rome to support a marriage which
he had censured in Normandy. But there is no formal inconsistency,
no forsaking of any principle. Lanfranc holds an uncanonical
marriage to be a sin, and he denounces it. He does not withdraw his
judgement as to its sinfulness. He simply uses his influence with a
power that can forgive the sin to get it forgiven.

While William's marriage was debated at Rome, he had to fight hard
in Normandy. His warfare and his negotiations ended about the same
time, and the two things may have had their bearing on one another.
William had now to undergo a new form of trial. The King of the
French had never put forth his full strength when he was simply
backing Norman rebels. William had now, in two successive
invasions, to withstand the whole power of the King, and of as many
of his vassals as the King could bring to his standard. In the
first invasion, in 1054, the Norman writers speak rhetorically of
warriors from Burgundy, Auvergne, and Gascony; but it is hard to see
any troops from a greater distance than Bourges. The princes who
followed Henry seem to have been only the nearer vassals of the
Crown. Chief among them are Theobald Count of Chartres, of a house
of old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, to be
often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, his
subjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded on
two sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his allies
sought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, the older
and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to have been
designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to be allowed
to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had to fight when
the King was his ally at Val-es-dunes.

The two armies entered Normandy; that which was to act on the left
of the Seine was led by the King, the other by his brother Odo.
Against the King William made ready to act himself; eastern Normandy
was left to its own loyal nobles. But all Normandy was now loyal;
the men of the Saxon and Danish lands were as ready to fight for
their duke against the King as they had been to fight against King
and Duke together. But William avoided pitched battles; indeed
pitched battles are rare in the continental warfare of the time.
War consists largely in surprises, and still more in the attack and
defence of fortified places. The plan of William's present campaign
was wholly defensive; provisions and cattle were to be carried out
of the French line of march; the Duke on his side, the other Norman
leaders on the other side, were to watch the enemy and attack them
at any favourable moment. The commanders east of the Seine, Count
Robert of Eu, Hugh of Gournay, William Crispin, and Walter Giffard,
found their opportunity when the French had entered the unfortified
town of Mortemer and had given themselves up to revelry. Fire and
sword did the work. The whole French army was slain, scattered, or
taken prisoners. Ode escaped; Guy of Ponthieu was taken. The
Duke's success was still easier. The tale runs that the news from
Mortemer, suddenly announced to the King's army in the dead of the
night, struck them with panic, and led to a hasty retreat out of the
land.

This campaign is truly Norman; it is wholly unlike the simple
warfare of England. A traitorous Englishman did nothing or helped
the enemy; a patriotic Englishman gave battle to the enemy the first
time he had a chance. But no English commander of the eleventh
century was likely to lay so subtle a plan as this, and, if he had
laid such a plan, he would hardly have found an English army able to
carry it out. Harold, who refused to lay waste a rood of English
ground, would hardly have looked quietly on while many roods of
English ground were wasted by the enemy. With all the valour of the
Normans, what before all things distinguished them from other
nations was their craft. William could indeed fight a pitched
battle when a pitched battle served his purpose; but he could
control himself, he could control his followers, even to the point
of enduring to look quietly on the havoc of their own land till the
right moment. He who could do this was indeed practising for his
calling as Conqueror. And if the details of the story, details
specially characteristic, are to be believed, William showed
something also of that grim pleasantry which was another marked
feature in the Norman character. The startling message which struck
the French army with panic was deliberately sent with that end. The
messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, and, with a voice as from
another world, bids the French awake; they are sleeping too long;
let them go and bury their friends who are lying dead at Mortemer.
These touches bring home to us the character of the man and the
people with whom our forefathers had presently to deal. William was
the greatest of his race, but he was essentially of his race; he was
Norman to the backbone.

Of the French army one division had been surprised and cut to
pieces, the other had left Normandy without striking a blow. The
war was not yet quite over; the French still kept Tillieres; William
accordingly fortified the stronghold of Breteuil as a cheek upon it.
And he entrusted the command to a man who will soon be memorable,
his personal friend William, son of his old guardian Osbern. King
Henry was now glad to conclude a peace on somewhat remarkable terms.
William had the king's leave to take what he could from Count
Geoffrey of Anjou. He now annexed Cenomannian--that is just now
Angevin--territory at more points than one, but chiefly on the line
of his earlier advances to Domfront and Ambrieres. Ambrieres had
perhaps been lost; for William now sent Geoffrey a challenge to come
on the fortieth day. He came on the fortieth day, and found
Ambrieres strongly fortified and occupied by a Norman garrison.
With Geoffrey came the Breton prince Ode, and William or Peter Duke
of Aquitaine. They besieged the castle; but Norman accounts add
that they all fled on William's approach to relieve it.

Three years of peace now followed, but in 1058 King Henry, this time
in partnership with Geoffrey of Anjou, ventured another invasion of
Normandy. He might say that he had never been fairly beaten in his
former campaign, but that he had been simply cheated out of the land
by Norman wiles. This time he had a second experience of Norman
wiles and of Norman strength too. King and Count entered the land
and ravaged far and wide. William, as before, allowed the enemy to
waste the land. He watched and followed them till he found a
favourable moment for attack. The people in general zealously
helped the Duke's schemes, but some traitors of rank were still
leagued with the Count of Anjou. While William bided his time, the
invaders burned Caen. This place, so famous in Norman history, was
not one of the ancient cities of the land. It was now merely
growing into importance, and it was as yet undefended by walls or
castle. But when the ravagers turned eastward, William found the
opportunity that he had waited for. As the French were crossing the
ford of Varaville on the Dive, near the mouth of that river, he came
suddenly on them, and slaughtered a large part of the army under the
eyes of the king who had already crossed. The remnant marched out
of Normandy.

Henry now made peace, and restored Tillieres. Not long after, in
1060, the King died, leaving his young son Philip, who had been
already crowned, as his successor, under the guardianship of
William's father-in-law Baldwin. Geoffrey of Anjou and William of
Aquitaine also died, and the Angevin power was weakened by the
division of Geoffrey's dominions between his nephews. William's
position was greatly strengthened, now that France, under the new
regent, had become friendly, while Anjou was no longer able to do
mischief. William had now nothing to fear from his neighbours, and
the way was soon opened for his great continental conquest. But
what effect had these events on William's views on England? About
the time of the second French invasion of Normandy Earl Harold
became beyond doubt the first man in England, and for the first time
a chance of the royal succession was opened to him. In 1057, the
year before Varaville, the AEtheling Edward, the King's selected
successor, died soon after his coming to England; in the same year
died the King's nephew Earl Ralph and Leofric Earl of the Mercians,
the only Englishmen whose influence could at all compare with that
of Harold. Harold's succession now became possible; it became even
likely, if Edward should die while Edgar the son of the AEtheling
was still under age. William had no shadow of excuse for
interfering, but he doubtless was watching the internal affairs of
England. Harold was certainly watching the affairs of Gaul. About
this time, most likely in the year 1058, he made a pilgrimage to
Rome, and on his way back he looked diligently into the state of
things among the various vassals of the French crown. His exact
purpose is veiled in ambiguous language; but we can hardly doubt
that his object was to contract alliances with the continental
enemies of Normandy. Such views looked to the distant future, as
William had as yet been guilty of no unfriendly act towards England.
But it was well to come to an understanding with King Henry, Count
Geoffrey, and Duke William of Aquitaine, in case a time should come
when their interests and those of England would be the same. But
the deaths of all those princes must have put an end to all hopes of
common action between England and any Gaulish power. The Emperor
Henry also, the firm ally of England, was dead. It was now clear
that, if England should ever have to withstand a Norman attack, she
would have to withstand it wholly by her own strength, or with such
help as she might find among the kindred powers of the North.

William's great continental conquest is drawing nigh; but between
the campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came the tardy
papal confirmation of William's marriage. The Duke and Duchess, now
at last man and wife in the eye of the Church, began to carry out
the works of penance which were allotted to them. The abbeys of
Caen, William's Saint Stephen's, Matilda's Holy Trinity, now began
to arise. Yet, at this moment of reparation, one or two facts seem
to place William's government of his duchy in a less favourable
light than usual. The last French invasion was followed by
confiscations and banishments among the chief men of Normandy.
Roger of Montgomery and his wife Mabel, who certainly was capable of
any deed of blood or treachery, are charged with acting as false
accusers. We see also that, as late as the day of Varaville, there
were Norman traitors. Robert of Escalfoy had taken the Angevin
side, and had defended his castle against the Duke. He died in a
strange way, after snatching an apple from the hand of his own wife.
His nephew Arnold remained in rebellion three years, and was simply
required to go to the wars in Apulia. It is hard to believe that
the Duke had poisoned the apple, if poisoned it was; but finding
treason still at work among his nobles, he may have too hastily
listened to charges against men who had done him good service, and
who were to do him good service again.

Five years after the combat at Varaville, William really began to
deserve, though not as yet to receive, the name of Conqueror. For
he now did a work second only to the conquest of England. He won
the city of Le Mans and the whole land of Maine. Between the tale
of Maine and the tale of England there is much of direct likeness.
Both lands were won against the will of their inhabitants; but both
conquests were made with an elaborate show of legal right.
William's earlier conquests in Maine had been won, not from any
count of Maine, but from Geoffrey of Anjou, who had occupied the
country to the prejudice of two successive counts, Hugh and Herbert.
He had further imprisoned the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervase of the
house of Belleme, though the King of the French had at his request
granted to the Count of Anjou for life royal rights over the
bishopric of Le Mans. The bishops of Le Mans, who thus, unlike the
bishops of Normandy, held their temporalities of the distant king
and not of the local count, held a very independent position. The
citizens of Le Mans too had large privileges and a high spirit to
defend them; the city was in a marked way the head of the district.
Thus it commonly carried with it the action of the whole country.
In Maine there were three rival powers, the prince, the Church, and
the people. The position of the counts was further weakened by the
claims to their homage made by the princes on either side of them in
Normandy and Anjou; the position of the Bishop, vassal, till
Gervase's late act, of the King only, was really a higher one.
Geoffrey had been received at Le Mans with the good will of the
citizens, and both Bishop and Count sought shelter with William.
Gervase was removed from the strife by promotion to the highest
place in the French kingdom, the archbishopric of Rheims. The young
Count Herbert, driven from his county, commended himself to William.
He became his man; he agreed to hold his dominions of him, and to
marry one of his daughters. If he died childless, his father-in-law
was to take the fief into his own hands. But to unite the old and
new dynasties, Herbert's youngest sister Margaret was to marry
William's eldest son Robert. If female descent went for anything,
it is not clear why Herbert passed by the rights of his two elder
sisters, Gersendis, wife of Azo Marquess of Liguria, and Paula, wife
of John of La Fleche on the borders of Maine and Anjou. And sons
both of Gersendis and of Paula did actually reign at Le Mans, while
no child either of Herbert or of Margaret ever came into being.

If Herbert ever actually got possession of his country, his
possession of it was short. He died in 1063 before either of the
contemplated marriages had been carried out. William therefore
stood towards Maine as he expected to stand with regard to England.
The sovereign of each country had made a formal settlement of his
dominions in his favour. It was to be seen whether those who were
most immediately concerned would accept that settlement. Was the
rule either of Maine or of England to be handed over in this way,
like a mere property, without the people who were to be ruled
speaking their minds on the matter? What the people of England said
to this question in 1066 we shall hear presently; what the people of
Maine said in 1063 we hear now. We know not why they had submitted
to the Angevin count; they had now no mind to merge their country in
the dominions of the Norman duke. The Bishop was neutral; but the
nobles and the citizens of Le Mans were of one mind in refusing
William's demand to be received as count by virtue of the agreement
with Herbert. They chose rulers for themselves. Passing by
Gersendis and Paula and their sons, they sent for Herbert's aunt
Biota and her husband Walter Count of Mantes. Strangely enough,
Walter, son of Godgifu daughter of AEthelred, was a possible, though
not a likely, candidate for the rule of England as well as of Maine.
The people of Maine are not likely to have thought of this bit of
genealogy. But it was doubtless present to the minds alike of
William and of Harold.

William thus, for the first but not for the last time, claimed the
rule of a people who had no mind to have him as their ruler. Yet,
morally worthless as were his claims over Maine, in the merely
technical way of looking at things, he had more to say than most
princes have who annex the lands of their neighbours. He had a
perfectly good right by the terms of the agreement with Herbert.
And it might be argued by any who admitted the Norman claim to the
homage of Maine, that on the failure of male heirs the country
reverted to the overlord. Yet female succession was now coming in.
Anjou had passed to the sons of Geoffrey's sister; it had not fallen
back to the French king. There was thus a twofold answer to
William's claim, that Herbert could not grant away even the rights
of his sisters, still less the rights of his people. Still it was
characteristic of William that he had a case that might be plausibly
argued. The people of Maine had fallen back on the old Teutonic
right. They had chosen a prince connected with the old stock, but
who was not the next heir according to any rule of succession.
Walter was hardly worthy of such an exceptional honour; he showed no
more energy in Maine than his brother Ralph had shown in England.
The city was defended by Geoffrey, lord of Mayenne, a valiant man
who fills a large place in the local history. But no valour or
skill could withstand William's plan of warfare. He invaded Maine
in much the same sort in which he had defended Normandy. He gave
out that he wished to win Maine without shedding man's blood. He
fought no battles; he did not attack the city, which he left to be
the last spot that should be devoured. He harried the open country,
he occupied the smaller posts, till the citizens were driven,
against Geoffrey's will, to surrender. William entered Le Mans; he
was received, we are told, with joy. When men make the best of a
bad bargain, they sometimes persuade themselves that they are really
pleased. William, as ever, shed no blood; he harmed none of the men
who had become his subjects; but Le Mans was to be bridled; its
citizens needed a castle and a Norman garrison to keep them in their
new allegiance. Walter and Biota surrendered their claims on Maine
and became William's guests at Falaise. Meanwhile Geoffrey of
Mayenne refused to submit, and withstood the new Count of Maine in
his stronghold. William laid siege to Mayenne, and took it by the
favoured Norman argument of fire. All Maine was now in the hands of
the Conqueror.

William had now made a greater conquest than any Norman duke had
made before him. He had won a county and a noble city, and he had
won them, in the ideas of his own age, with honour. Are we to
believe that he sullied his conquest by putting his late
competitors, his present guests, to death by poison? They died
conveniently for him, and they died in his own house. Such a death
was strange; but strange things do happen. William gradually came
to shrink from no crime for which he could find a technical defence;
but no advocate could have said anything on behalf of the poisoning
of Walter and Biota. Another member of the house of Maine, Margaret
the betrothed of his son Robert, died about the same time; and her
at least William had every motive to keep alive. One who was more
dangerous than Walter, if he suffered anything, only suffered
banishment. Of Geoffrey of Mayenne we hear no more till William had
again to fight for the possession of Maine.

William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his power
and fame as a continental prince. In a conquest on Gaulish soil he
had rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to make
beyond sea. Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventful
in Normandy, still part us from William's second visit to our
shores. But in the course of these three years one event must have
happened, which, without a blow being struck or a treaty being
signed, did more for his hopes than any battle or any treaty. At
some unrecorded time, but at a time which must come within these
years, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the guest and the man
of William Duke of the Normans.

CHAPTER V--HAROLD'S OATH TO WILLIAM--A.D. 1064?

The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his chances
of becoming lord of England also. While our authorities enable us
to put together a fairly full account of both Norman and English
events, they throw no light on the way in which men in either land
looked at events in the other. Yet we might give much to know what
William and Harold at this time thought of one another. Nothing had
as yet happened to make the two great rivals either national or
personal enemies. England and Normandy were at peace, and the great
duke and the great earl had most likely had no personal dealings
with one another. They were rivals in the sense that each looked
forward to succeed to the English crown whenever the reigning king
should die. But neither had as yet put forward his claim in any
shape that the other could look on as any formal wrong to himself.
If William and Harold had ever met, it could have been only during
Harold's journey in Gaul. Whatever negotiations Harold made during
that journey were negotiations unfriendly to William; still he may,
in the course of that journey, have visited Normandy as well as
France or Anjou. It is hard to avoid the thought that the tale of
Harold's visit to William, of his oath to William, arose out of
something that happened on Harold's way back from his Roman
pilgrimage. To that journey we can give an approximate date. Of
any other journey we have no date and no certain detail. We can say
only that the fact that no English writer makes any mention of any
such visit, of any such oath, is, under the circumstances, the
strongest proof that the story of the visit and the oath has some
kind of foundation. Yet if we grant thus much, the story reads on
the whole as if it happened a few years later than the English
earl's return from Rome.

It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit to
Gaul, whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some time
nearer to Edward's death than the year 1058. The English writers
are silent; the Norman writers give no date or impossible dates;
they connect the visit with a war in Britanny; but that war is
without a date. We are driven to choose the year which is least
rich in events in the English annals. Harold could not have paid a
visit of several months to Normandy either in 1063 or in 1065. Of
those years the first was the year of Harold's great war in Wales,
when he found how the Britons might be overcome by their own arms,
when he broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the Welsh kingdom
to princes who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of King
Edward. Harold's visit to Normandy is said to have taken place in
the summer and autumn mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065 were
taken up by the building and destruction of Harold's hunting-seat in
Wales and by the greater events of the revolt and pacification of
Northumberland. But the year 1064 is a blank in the English annals
till the last days of December, and no action of Harold's in that
year is recorded. It is therefore the only possible year among
those just before Edward's death. Harold's visit and oath to
William may very well have taken place in that year; but that is
all.

We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visit
or the nature of the oath. We can say only that Harold did
something which enabled William to charge him with perjury and
breach of the duty of a vassal. It is inconceivable in itself, and
unlike the formal scrupulousness of William's character, to fancy
that he made his appeal to all Christendom without any ground at
all. The Norman writers contradict one another so thoroughly in
every detail of the story that we can look on no part of it as
trustworthy. Yet such a story can hardly have grown up so near to
the alleged time without some kernel of truth in it. And herein
comes the strong corroborative witness that the English writers,
denying every other charge against Harold, pass this one by without
notice. We can hardly doubt that Harold swore some oath to William
which he did not keep. More than this it would be rash to say
except as an avowed guess.

As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that year
which is not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, we
can only take that one among the Norman versions which is also not
impossible. All the main versions represent Harold as wrecked on
the coast of Ponthieu, as imprisoned, according to the barbarous law
of wreck, by Count Guy, and as delivered by the intervention of
William. If any part of the story is true, this is. But as to the
circumstances which led to the shipwreck there is no agreement.
Harold assuredly was not sent to announce to William a devise of the
crown in his favour made with the consent of the Witan of England
and confirmed by the oaths of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, and Leofric.
Stigand became Archbishop in September 1052: Godwine died at Easter
1053. The devise must therefore have taken place, and Harold's
journey must have taken place, within those few most unlikely
months, the very time when Norman influence was overthrown. Another
version makes Harold go, against the King's warnings, to bring back
his brother Wulfnoth and his nephew Hakon, who had been given as
hostages on the return of Godwine, and had been entrusted by the
King to the keeping of Duke William. This version is one degree
less absurd; but no such hostages are known to have been given, and
if they were, the patriotic party, in the full swing of triumph,
would hardly have allowed them to be sent to Normandy. A third
version makes Harold's presence the result of mere accident. He is
sailing to Wales or Flanders, or simply taking his pleasure in the
Channel, when he is cast by a storm on the coast of Ponthieu. Of
these three accounts we may choose the third as the only one that is
possible. It is also one out of which the others may have grown,
while it is hard to see how the third could have arisen out of
either of the others. Harold then, we may suppose, fell
accidentally into the clutches of Guy, and was rescued from them, at
some cost in ransom and in grants of land, by Guy's overlord Duke
William.

The whole story is eminently characteristic of William. He would be
honestly indignant at Guy's base treatment of Harold, and he would
feel it his part as Guy's overlord to redress the wrong. But he
would also be alive to the advantage of getting his rival into his
power on so honourable a pretext. Simply to establish a claim to
gratitude on the part of Harold would be something. But he might
easily do more, and, according to all accounts, he did more.
Harold, we are told, as the Duke's friend and guest, returns the
obligation under which the Duke has laid him by joining him in one
or more expeditions against the Bretons. The man who had just
smitten the Bret-Welsh of the island might well be asked to fight,
and might well be ready to fight, against the Bret-Welsh of the
mainland. The services of Harold won him high honour; he was
admitted into the ranks of Norman knighthood, and engaged to marry
one of William's daughters. Now, at any time to which we can fix
Harold's visit, all William's daughters must have been mere
children. Harold, on the other hand, seems to have been a little
older than William. Yet there is nothing unlikely in the
engagement, and it is the one point in which all the different
versions, contradicting each other on every other point, agree
without exception. Whatever else Harold promises, he promises this,
and in some versions he does not promise anything else.

Here then we surely have the kernel of truth round which a mass of
fable, varying in different reports, has gathered. On no other
point is there any agreement. The place is unfixed; half a dozen
Norman towns and castles are made the scene of the oath. The form
of the oath is unfixed; in some accounts it is the ordinary oath of
homage; in others it is an oath of fearful solemnity, taken on the
holiest relics. In one well-known account, Harold is even made to
swear on hidden relics, not knowing on what he is swearing. Here is
matter for much thought. To hold that one form of oath or promise
is more binding than another upsets all true confidence between man
and man. The notion of the specially binding nature of the oath by
relies assumes that, in case of breach of the oath, every holy
person to whose relies despite has been done will become the
personal enemy of the perjurer. But the last story of all is the
most instructive. William's formal, and more than formal, religion
abhorred a false oath, in himself or in another man. But, so long
as he keeps himself personally clear from the guilt, he does not
scruple to put another man under special temptation, and, while
believing in the power of the holy relics, he does not scruple to
abuse them to a purpose of fraud. Surely, if Harold did break his
oath, the wrath of the saints would fall more justly on William.
Whether the tale be true or false, it equally illustrates the
feelings of the time, and assuredly its truth or falsehood concerns
the character of William far more than that of Harold.

What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemn
fashion or in any other, is left equally uncertain. In any case he
engages to marry a daughter of William--as to which daughter the
statements are endless--and in most versions he engages to do
something more. He becomes the man of William, much as William had
become the man of Edward. He promises to give his sister in
marriage to an unnamed Norman baron. Moreover he promises to secure
the kingdom of England for William at Edward's death. Perhaps he is
himself to hold the kingdom or part of it under William; in any case
William is to be the overlord; in the more usual story, William is
to be himself the immediate king, with Harold as his highest and
most favoured subject. Meanwhile Harold is to act in William's
interest, to receive a Norman garrison in Dover castle, and to build
other castles at other points. But no two stories agree, and not a
few know nothing of anything beyond the promise of marriage.

Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things,
it must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him.
If Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simply
because he felt that he was practically in William's power, without
any serious intention of keeping the oath. If Harold took any such
oath, he undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilt
on his part lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it. For
he swore to do what he could not do, and what it would have been a
crime to do, if he could. If the King himself could not dispose of
the crown, still less could the most powerful subject. Harold could
at most promise William his "vote and interest," whenever the
election came. But no one can believe that even Harold's influence
could have obtained the crown for William. His influence lay in his
being the embodiment of the national feeling; for him to appear as
the supporter of William would have been to lose the crown for
himself without gaining it for William. Others in England and in
Scandinavia would have been glad of it. And the engagements to
surrender Dover castle and the like were simply engagements on the
part of an English earl to play the traitor against England. If
William really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did so, not
with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to put his
competitor as far as possible in the wrong. But most likely Harold
swore only to something much simpler. Next to the universal
agreement about the marriage comes the very general agreement that
Harold became William's man. In these two statements we have
probably the whole truth. In those days men took the obligation of
homage upon themselves very easily. Homage was no degradation, even
in the highest; a man often did homage to any one from whom he had
received any great benefit, and Harold had received a very great
benefit from William. Nor did homage to a new lord imply treason to
the old one. Harold, delivered by William from Guy's dungeon, would
be eager to do for William any act of friendship. The homage would
be little more than binding himself in the strongest form so to do.
The relation of homage could be made to mean anything or nothing, as
might be convenient. The man might often understand it in one sense
and the lord in another. If Harold became the man of William, he
would look on the act as little more than an expression of good will
and gratitude towards his benefactor, his future father-in-law, his
commander in the Breton war. He would not look on it as forbidding
him to accept the English crown if it were offered to him. Harold,
the man of Duke William, might become a king, if he could, just as
William, the man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could.
As things went in those days, both the homage and the promise of
marriage were capable of being looked on very lightly.

But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William to
put any such easy meaning on either promise. The oath might, if
needful, be construed very strictly, and William was disposed to
construe it very strictly. Harold had not promised William a crown,
which was not his to promise; but he had promised to do that which
might be held to forbid him to take a crown which William held to be
his own. If the man owed his lord any duty at all, it was surely
his duty not to thwart his lord's wishes in such a matter. If
therefore, when the vacancy of the throne came, Harold took the
crown himself, or even failed to promote William's claim to it,
William might argue that he had not rightly discharged the duty of a
man to his lord. He could make an appeal to the world against the
new king, as a perjured man, who had failed to help his lord in the
matter where his lord most needed his help. And, if the oath really
had been taken on relics of special holiness, he could further
appeal to the religious feelings of the time against the man who had
done despite to the saints. If he should be driven to claim the
crown by arms, he could give the war the character of a crusade.
All this in the end William did, and all this, we may be sure, he
looked forward to doing, when he caused Harold to become his man.
The mere obligation of homage would, in the skilful hands of William
and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work on men's minds, as William
wished to work on them. To Harold meanwhile and to those in England
who heard the story, the engagement would not seem to carry any of
these consequences. The mere homage then, which Harold could hardly
refuse, would answer William's purpose nearly as well as any of
these fuller obligations which Harold would surely have refused.
And when a man older than William engaged to marry William's child-
daughter, we must bear in mind the lightness with which such
promises were made. William could not seriously expect that this
engagement would be kept, if anything should lead Harold to another
marriage. The promise was meant simply to add another count to the
charges against Harold when the time should come. Yet on this point
it is not clear that the oath was broken. Harold undoubtedly
married Ealdgyth, daughter of AElfgar and widow of Gruffydd, and not
any daughter of William. But in one version Harold is made to say
that the daughter of William whom he had engaged to marry was dead.
And that one of William's daughters did die very early there seems
little doubt.

Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan. The
Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtler still.
In this long series of schemes and negotiations which led to the
conquest of England, we are dealing with two of the greatest
recorded masters of statecraft. We may call their policy dishonest
and immoral, and so it was. But it was hardly more dishonest and
immoral than most of the diplomacy of later times. William's o