Part 264

William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of £5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown had always been elective. … Primogeniture … gave at that time no right to the crown of England, independent of the election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation, and from their partiality received a popular support, which was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled the king to court his people by promises to diminish their grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. … The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in its most vicious form. … Odo's politics only facilitated the Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and combined their interest to persuade their respective sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important article of their reconciliation provided, that if either should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring, original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh, tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. … While Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected, and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. … The death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an unprincipled man. … The minister advised the king, on the death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions. … The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation, tempted both the king and his minister to increase its productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; … His disagreement with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc—a fair request—but also the lands which had before that time belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration of property, could not be complied with without great disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels should be taken in preference to every other. … Though Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature, that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind of his sovereign. … Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most adapted to overawe the king. … William threatened, that if he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was searched before his departure, that he might carry away no money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands and property. This was about three years before the end of the reign. … Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious cruelty of the action. … The government of William appears to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the church it was oppressive. … He had scarcely reigned twelve years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it. … At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell, without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. … It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most prevalent at the time, both here and in France. … {797} None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to impute it to anyone. … Henry was hunting in a different part of the New Forest when Rufus fell. … He left the body to the casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. … He obtained the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected king, and crowned. … He began his reign by removing the unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation, by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign. He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter, signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect very early; had given him the best education which the age could supply. … He became the most learned monarch of his day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been waylaid and killed."

_S. Turner, History of England during the Middle Ages, volume 1, chapters 5-6._

The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119, where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in 1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and died.

_E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I._

ALSO IN: _Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volume 4._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154. The miserable reign of Stephen. Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England. The transition to hereditary monarchy.

After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk (1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly called. This party maintained the superior claims of the family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him. Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles, or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the blackmail demanded from them were burned. … Sometimes the peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S. Chronicle). … Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry—afterwards Henry II.—grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained strength and his party made head against the weak and incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.

_C. H. Pearson, History of England During the Early and Middle Ages, chapter 28._

"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot, however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers, not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think, somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. … His weakness throughout his reign … was due to two causes, each supplementing the other. {798} These were—(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to submit to further demands. … The position of his opponents throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the 'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second, that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious principle into England. … Passing now to the other point, the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:—'The crown then continued to be elective. … But whilst the elective principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was recognized as coordinate. … The measures taken by Henry I. for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges, apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in question can in no way be regarded in the light of an election. … The Empress and her partisans must have largely, to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne as her father's heir, and … she and they appealed to the oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a free election. … The sex of the Empress was the drawback to her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have done so. … Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the right of election to the English crown presents considerable analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown, not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere ratification of a choice already made. … In comparing Stephen with his successor the difference between their circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II. derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance, whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time to break his power as effectually as the followers of the Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his escape to that efficient administration which years of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects."

_J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, chapter. 1._

ALSO IN: _Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapter 1._

See, also, STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137).

{799}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189. Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets) and his empire.