Chapter 25

The inhabitants of Europe were struck dumb with amazement when they witnessed this exercise of papal prerogative. They thought that the powerful arm of Henry would have been raised to smite down the audacious Hildebrand. The Pope, however, well knew that Henry had by his excesses alienated from himself the affections of his subjects. The sentence gave a pretext to many of his nobility to withdraw from their allegiance. Awed by spiritual terrors, his attendants fell away from him as if he had been smitten by a leprosy. An assembly was now summoned at Trebur, in obedience to a requisition from the Pope, at which it was decreed that, if the Emperor continued excommunicate on the 23d of February, 1077, his crown should be given to another. The theory of the Holy Roman Empire had thus become a practical reality. The vassal of Otho had reduced the successor of Otho to vassalage. A great pope had wrung from the superstition and reverence of mankind a spiritual empire, which, it was hoped, would extend its sway to earth's remotest boundaries.

ARTAUD DE MONTOR

Gregory made it an invariable rule to act at the outset with gentleness. "No one," says he, "reaches the highest rank at a single spring; great edifices rise gradually." Certain of his strength, he chose to employ conciliation. He especially sought to convince Henry, but the excesses in which that prince wallowed were so abominable that his subjects in all parts, and especially the great, revolted against him. In 1076, Gregory assembled a council, which pronounced the excommunication of the King, with all the terrible consequences attendant upon it.

History shows several emperors of the East excommunicated by preceding popes: Arcadius, by Innocent I; Anastasius, by Saint Symmachus; and Leo the Isaurian, by Gregory II and Gregory III.

The decree of the same council set forth that the throne vacated by Henry was adjudged to Rudolph, duke of Swabia, already created king of Germany by the electors of the empire.

Before the election of Rudolph, Gregory had declared that he would repair to Germany. King Henry, on his part, promised to come into Italy. The Pope left Rome with an escort furnished by the countess of Tuscany, daughter of Boniface, marquis of Tuscany. The march of Gregory was a triumph. Amidst that escort he reached Vercelli. It was feared by some that Henry would make his appearance at the head of an army, but he had not that intention. The Pope, nevertheless, deemed it best to retire into the fortress of Canossa, belonging to the Countess Matilda, in order that he might be secure from all violence.

Henry had spent nearly two months at Spires in a profound and melancholy solitude. The weight of the excommunication oppressed him with a thousand griefs. Weary of that state of uncertainty, and still, as ever, tricky and hypocritical, he conceived the idea of winning over the Pope by an apparent piety, and of satisfying his requirements by a brief humiliation; moreover, the decree of excommunication declared that it should be withdrawn if the King appeared before the Pope within a year from the date of the decree. The winter was severe. After running a thousand dangers, the King and his queen arrived at Turin, and proceeded to Placentia. Thence the prince announced that he would proceed to Canossa, by way of Reggio.

The Countess Matilda met him with Hugo, Bishop of Cluny. She wished to restore harmony between the Pope and the King. Gregory seemed to desire that Henry should return to Augsburg, to be judged by the Diet. The envoys of the King at Canossa replied: "Henry does not fear being judged; he knows that the Pope will protect innocence and justice; but the anniversary of the excommunication is at hand, and if the excommunication be not removed, the King, _according to the laws of the land_, will lose his right to the crown. The prince humbly requests the Holy Father to raise the interdict, and to restore him to the communion of the Church. He is ready to give every satisfaction that the Pope shall require; to present himself at such place and at such time as the Pope shall order; to meet his accusers, and to commit himself entirely to the decision of the head of the Church."

Henry, says Voigt, having received permission to advance, was not long on the way. The fortress had triple inclosures; Henry was conducted into the second; his retinue remained outside the first. He had laid aside the insignia of royalty; nothing announced his rank. All day long, Henry, bareheaded, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He thus waited during a second and a third day. During the intervening time he had not ceased to negotiate. On the morrow, Matilda interceded with the Pope on behalf of Henry, and the conditions of the treaty were settled. The prince promised to give satisfaction to the complaints made against him by his subjects, and he took an oath, in which his sureties joined. When those oaths were taken, the pontiff gave the King the benediction and the apostolic peace, and celebrated Mass.

After the consecration of the host, the Pope called Henry and all present, and still holding the host in his hand, said to the King: "We have received letters from you and those of your party, in which we are accused of having usurped the Holy See by simony, and of having, both before and since our episcopacy, committed crimes which, according to the canons, excluded us from holy orders.

"Although we could justify ourselves by the testimony of those who have known our manner of life from our childhood, and who were the authors of our promotion to the episcopacy, nevertheless, to do away with all kind of scandal, we will appeal to the judgment, not of men, but of God. Let the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we are about to take, be this day a proof of our innocence. We pray the Almighty to dispel all suspicion, if we are innocent, and to cause us suddenly to die, if we are guilty."

Then turning towards the King, Gregory again spoke: "Dear son, do also as you have seen us do. The German princes have daily accused you to us of a great number of crimes, for which those nobles maintain that you ought to be interdicted, during your whole life, not only from royalty and all public function, but also from all ecclesiastical communion, and from all commerce of civil life. They urgently demand that you be judged, and you know how uncertain are all human judgments. Do, then, as we advise, and if you feel that you are innocent, deliver the Church from this scandal, and yourself from this embarrassment. Take this other portion of the host, that this proof of your innocence may close the lips of your enemies, and engage us to be your most ardent defender, to reconcile you with the nobles, and forever to terminate the civil war."

This address astonished the King. Going apart with his confidants, he tremblingly consulted as to what he could do to avoid so terrible a test. At length, having somewhat recovered his calmness, he said to the Pope, that as those nobles who remained faithful were, for the most part, absent, as well as those who accused him, the latter would give little faith to what he might do in his own justification, unless it were done in their presence. For that reason, he asked that the test should be postponed to the day of the sitting of the general diet, and the Pope consented.

When the Pope had finished Mass, he invited the King to dinner, treated him with much attention, and dismissed him in peace to his own people, who had remained outside the castle. Henry, on his return to his nobles, was not well received. Henry, as Voigt shows, soon became alarmed at their disapprobation, which originated only in a feeling of wounded complicity and ambitious views, which could not hope for success after the victory gained by Gregory.

Henry, hearing himself accused of weakness, thought to deliver himself from so much annoyance by a bold perjury; and he endeavored to draw Gregory and Matilda into a snare. Warned by faithful friends, they did not visit the King as had been agreed; and that new wrong determined Gregory to suspend his departure for the Diet of Augsburg. No one, not even the pious Matilda, now dared to speak of a reconciliation.

Henry held at Brescia, in 1080, a pseudo council of the bishops devoted to him; and there he caused Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, an avowed enemy of Gregory, to be elected as Pope; and he deposed Gregory, although he was recognized as the legitimate pope by the whole Catholic world, with the exception of the bishops in revolt, under the direction of Henry. On learning this, Gregory celebrated at Rome, in the year 1080, a regular council, in which he again excommunicated Henry, and especially the antipope, whom he would never absolve.

ARTHUR PENNINGTON

The war continued. Henry's rival for the empire, Rudolph of Swabia, was supported by many German partisans, especially by the Saxons. He was defeated with great loss at Fladenheim. The skill and courage of the Saxon commander, however, turned a defeat into a victory. Emboldened by this victory, Gregory excommunicated Henry, and "gave, granted, and conceded" that Rudolph might rule the Italian and German empires. With the sanction of thirty bishops, an antipope, Guibert, was elected at Brixen. The war raged with undiminished violence. The Saxons, the only power in alliance with the Romans, gained a victory over Henry in Germany at the very same time when Matilda's forces fled before his army in the Mantuan territory. Matilda had lately granted all her hereditary states to Gregory and his successors forever. Before the summer of the year 1080 the citizens of Rome saw the forces of Henry in the Campagna. The siege of Rome continued for three years. The capture of the city was imminent, when the forces of Robert Guiscard, the Norman, came to the rescue of the Pope.

Nicholas II had bestowed on Robert Guiscard the investiture of the duchies of Apulia and Calabria; Sicily also, the conquest of which his brother Richard was meditating, being prospectively added to Robert's dominions. The oath taken by Robert Guiscard on this occasion bound him to be the devoted defender of the pontificate. He now became a friend indeed. A hasty retreat saved the forces of Henry from the impending danger. The Pope returned in triumph to the Lateran. But within a few hours he heard from the streets the clash of arms and the loud shouts of the combatants. A fierce contest was raging between the soldiers of Robert and the citizens who espoused the cause of Henry. A conflagration was kindled, which at length destroyed three-fourths of the city. Gregory, perhaps conscience-stricken when he thought of the wars he had kindled, sought, in the castle of Salerno, from the Normans the security which he could no longer expect among his own subjects. He soon found that the hand of death was upon him. He summoned round his bed the bishops and cardinals who had accompanied him in his flight from Rome. He maintained the truth of the principles for which he had always contended. He forgave and blessed his enemies, with the exception of the antipope and the Emperor. He had received the transubstantiated elements. The final unction had been given to him. He then prepared himself to die. Anxious to catch the last words from that tongue, to the utterances of which they had always listened with intense delight, his followers were bending over him, when, collecting his powers for one last effort, he said, in an indignant tone, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and, therefore, I die in exile."

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

A.D. 1086

CHARLES KNIGHT

(When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where many of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jealous of the royal power and eager for military and judicial independence within their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the skill of political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so widely scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and hereditary attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords impossible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his position as king by means of a new military organization and by his control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By the abolition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final blow at the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By this stroke he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By his control of the national revenues he secured a great financial power in his own hands.

A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the crown, and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William sent into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries were recorded in the _Domesday Book_, so called because its decision was regarded as final. This book, in Norman-French, contains the results of his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes in vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a fac-simile edition of it, in two folio volumes, printed from types specially made for the purpose. It is one of the principal sources for the political and social history of the time.

The _Domesday Book_ contains a record of the ownership, extent, and value of the lands of England at the time of the survey, at the time of their bestowal when granted by the King, and at the time of a previous survey under Edward the Confessor. Of the detailed registrations of tenants, defendants, live stock, etc., as well, as of contemporary social features of the English people, the following account presents interesting pictures.)

The survey contained in the _Domesday Book_ extended to all England, with the exception of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham. All the country between the Tees and the Tyne was held by the Bishop of Durham; and he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate government. The other three northern counties were probably so devastated that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the information of _Domesday Book_, by "what men" the land was occupied.

First, we have barons and we have thanes. The barons were the Norman nobles; the thanes, the Saxon. These were included under the general designation of _liberi homines_, free men; which term included all the freeholders of a manor. Many of these were tenants of the King "_in capite_"--that is, they held their possessions direct from the Crown. Others of these had placed themselves under the protection of some lord, as the defender of their persons and estates, they paying some stipend or performing some service. In the _Register_ there are also _liberae feminae_, free women. Next to the free class were the _sochemanni_ or "socmen," a class of inferior land-owners, who held lands under a lord, and owed suit and service in the lord's court, but whose tenure was permanent. They sometimes performed services in husbandry; but those services, as well as their payments, were defined.

Descending in the scale, we come to the _villani_. These were allowed to occupy land at the will of the lord, upon the condition of performing services, uncertain in their amount and often of the meanest nature. But they could acquire no property in lands or goods; and they were subject to many exactions and oppressions. There are entries in _Domesday Book_ which show that the villani were not altogether bondmen, but represented the Saxon "churl." The lowest class were _servi_, slaves; the class corresponding with the Saxon _theow_. By a degradation in the condition of the villani, and the elevation of that of the servi, the two classes were brought gradually nearer together; till at last the military oppression of the Normans, thrusting down all degrees of tenants and servants into one common slavery, or at least into strict dependence, one name was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of _villeins regardant_.

Of the subdivisions of these great classes, the _Register_ of 1085 affords us some particulars. We find that some of the nobles are described as _milites_, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed with the inferior orders of tenantry. Many of the chief tenants are distinguished by their offices. We have among these the great regal officers, such as they existed in the Saxon times--the _camerarius_ and _cubicularius_, from whom we have our lord chamberlain; the _dapifer_, or lord steward; the _pincerna_, or chief butler; the constable, and the treasurer. We have the hawkkeepers, and the bowkeepers; the providers of the king's carriages, and his standard-bearers. We have lawmen, and legates, and mediciners. We have foresters and hunters.

Coming to the inferior officers and artificers, we have carpenters, smiths, goldsmiths, farriers, potters, ditchers, launders, armorers, fishermen, millers, bakers, salters, tailors, and barbers. We have mariners, moneyers, minstrels, and watchmen. Of rural occupations we have the beekeepers, ploughmen, shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, and swineherds. Here is a population in which there is a large division of labor. The freemen, tenants, villeins, slaves, are laboring and deriving sustenance from arable land, meadow, common pasture, wood, and water. The grain-growing land is, of course, carefully registered as to its extent and value, and so the meadow and pasture. An equal exactness is bestowed upon the woods. It was not that the timber was of great commercial value, in a country which possessed such insufficient means of transport; but that the acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds of swine subsisted, were of essential importance to keep up the supply of food. We constantly find such entries as "a wood for pannage of fifty hogs." There are woods described which will feed a hundred, two hundred, three hundred hogs; and on the Bishop of London's demesne at Fulham a thousand hogs could fatten. The value of a tree was determined by the number of hogs that could lie under it, in the Saxon time; and in this survey of the Norman period, we find entries of useless woods, and woods without pannage, which to some extent were considered identical. In some of the woods there were patches of cultivated ground, as the entries show, where the tenant had cleared the dense undergrowth and had his corn land and his meadows. Even the fen lands were of value, for their rents were paid in eels.

There is only mention of five forests in this record, Windsor, Gravelings (Wiltshire), Winburn, Whichwood, and the New Forest. Undoubtedly there were many more, but being no objects of assessment they are passed over. It would be difficult not to associate the memory of the Conqueror with the New Forest, and not to believe that his unbridled will was here the cause of great misery and devastation. Ordericus Vitalis says, speaking of the death of William's second son, Richard: "Learn now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince was slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the country was extremely populous from early times, and full of well-inhabited hamlets and farms. A numerous population cultivated Hampshire with unceasing industry, so that the southern part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with the products of the land. When William I ascended the throne of Albion, being a great lover of forests, he laid waste more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabitants to emigrate to other places, and substituted beasts of the chase for human beings, that he might satisfy his ardor for hunting." There is probably some exaggeration in the statement of the country being "extremely populous from early times." This was an old woody district, called Ytene. No forest was artificially planted, as Voltaire has imagined; but the chases were opened through the ancient thickets, and hamlets and solitary cottages were demolished.

It is a curious fact that some woodland spots in the New Forest have still names with the terminations of _ham_ and _ton_. There are many evidences of the former existence of human abodes in places now solitary; yet we doubt whether this part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with food, as Ordericus relates; for it is a sterile district, in most places, fitted for little else than the growth of timber. The lower lands are marsh, and the upper are sand. The Conqueror, says the _Saxon Chronicle_, "so much loved the high deer as if he had been their father." The first of the Norman kings, and his immediate successors, would not be very scrupulous about the depopulation of a district if the presence of men interfered with their pleasures. But Thierry thinks that the extreme severity of the Forest Laws was chiefly enforced to prevent the assemblage of Saxons in those vast wooded spaces which were now included in the royal demesnes.

All these extensive tracts were, more or less, retreats for the dispossessed and the discontented. The Normans, under pretence of preserving the stag and the hare, could tyrannize with a pretended legality over the dwellers in these secluded places; and thus William might have driven the Saxon people of Ytene to emigrate, and have destroyed their cottages, as much from a possible fear of their association as from his own love of "the high deer." Whatever was the motive, there were devastation and misery. _Domesday_ shows that in the district of the New Forest certain manors were afforested after the Conquest; cultivated portions, in which the Sabbath bell was heard. William of Jumièges, the Conqueror's own chaplain, says, speaking of the deaths of Richard and Rufus: "There were many who held that the two sons of William the King perished by the judgment of God in these woods, since for the _extension_ of the forest he had destroyed many inhabited _places (villas) and churches within its circuit_." It appears that in the time of Edward the Confessor about seventeen thousand acres of this district had been afforested; but that the cultivated parts remaining had then an estimated value of three hundred and sixty-three pounds. After the afforestation by the Conqueror, the cultivated parts yielded only one hundred and twenty-nine pounds.

The grants of land to huntsmen (_venatores_) are common in Hampshire, as in other parts of England; and it appears to have been the duty of an especial officer to stall the deer--that is, to drive them with his troop of followers from all parts to the centre of a circle, gradually contracting, where they were to stand for the onslaught of the hunters. In the survey many parks are enumerated. The word hay (_haia_), which is still found in some of our counties, meant an enclosed part of a wood to which the deer were driven.