Part 18

It is impossible not to suspect that Guy of [Pg264] Ponthieu and William were in league with each other, and when the ransom was paid, the wrecker-count became very amiable, and even insisted upon riding with a gay company of knights to the place where the Norman duke came with a splendid retinue to meet his distinguished guest. William laid aside the cumbrous forms of court etiquette and hurried to the gates of the Chateau d'Eu to help Harold to dismount, and greeted him with cordial affection, as friend with friend. Harold may well have been dazzled by his reception at the most powerful court in that part of the world. To have a welcome that befitted a king may well have pleased him into at least a temporary acknowledgment of his entertainer's majestic power and rights. No doubt, during that unlucky visit it seemed dignity enough to be paraded everywhere as the great duke's chosen companion and honored friend and guest. At any rate, Harold's visit seems to have given occupation to the court, and we catch many interesting glimpses of the stately Norman life, as well as the humble, almost brutal, condition of the lower classes, awed into quietness and acquiescence by the sternness and exactness of William's rule. It must be acknowledged that if the laws were severe they prevented much disorder that had smouldered in other times in the lower strata of society; men had less power and opportunity to harm each other or to enfeeble the state.

No greater piece of good luck could have befallen the duke than to win the post of Harold's benefactor, and he played the part gallantly. Not only the duke but the duchess treated their guest with [Pg265] uncommon courtesy, and he was admitted to the closest intimacy with the household. If Harold had been wise he would have gone back to England as fast as sails could carry him, but instead of that he lingered on, equally ready to applaud the Norman exploits in camp and court, and to show his entertainers what English valor could achieve. He went with the duke on some petty expedition against the rebellious Britons, but it is hard to make out a straight story of that enterprise. But there is a characteristic story of Harold's strength in the form of a tradition that when the Norman army was crossing the deep river Coesnon, which pours into the sea under the wall of Mount St. Michel, some of the troops were being swept away by the waves, when [Pg266] Harold rescued them, taking them with great ease, at arm's length, out of the water.

There is a sober announcement in one of the old chronicles, that the lands of Brittany were included in Charles the Simple's grant to Rolf, because Rolf had so devastated Normandy that there was little there to live upon. At the time of William's expedition, Brittany itself was evidently taking its turn at such vigorous shearing and pruning of the life of its fertile hills and valleys. The Bretons liked nothing so well as warfare, and when they did not unite against a foreign enemy, they spent their time in plundering and slaughtering one another. Count Conan, the present aggressor, was the son of Alan of Brittany, William's guardian. Some of the Bretons were loyal to the Norman authority, and Dôl, an ancient city renowned for its ill luck, and Dinan were successively vacated by the rebels. Dinan was besieged by fire, a favorite weapon in the hands of the Normans; but later we find that both the cities remained Breton, and the Norman allies go back to their own country. There is a hint somewhere of the appearance of an army from Anjou, to take the Bretons' part, but the Norman chroniclers ignore it as far as they can.

It is impossible to fix the date of this campaign; indeed there may have been more than one expedition against Brittany. Still more difficult is it to learn any thing that is undisputed about the famous oath that Harold gave to William, and was afterward so completely punished for breaking. Yet, while we do not know exactly what the oath was, [Pg267] Harold's most steadfast upholders have never been able to deny that there was an oath, and there is no contradiction, on the English side, of the whole affair. His best friends have been silent about it. The most familiar account is this, if we listen to the Norman stories: Harold entered into an engagement to marry one of William's daughters, who must have been very young at the time of the visit or visits to Normandy, and some writers claim that the whole cause of the quarrel lay in his refusal to keep his promise. There is a list beside of what appears to us unlikely concessions on the part of the English earl. Harold did homage to the duke, and formally became his man, and even promised to acknowledge his claim to the throne of England at the death of the Confessor. More than this, he promised to look after William's interest in England, and to put him at once into possession of the Castle of Dover, with the right of establishing a Norman garrison there. William, in return, agreed to hold his new vassal in highest honor, giving him by and by even the half of his prospective kingdom. When this surprising oath was taken, Harold was entrapped into swearing upon the holiest relic of Norman saints which had been concealed in a chest for the express purpose. With the superstitious awe that men of his time felt toward such emblems, this not very respectable act on William's part is made to reflect darkly upon Harold. Master Wace says that "his hand trembled and his flesh quivered when he touched the chest, though he did not know what was in it, and how much more distressed he was when he [Pg268] found by what an awful vow he had unwittingly bound his soul."

So Harold returned to England the duke's vassal and future son-in-law, according to the chronicles, but who can help being suspicious, after knowing how Harold was indebted to the duke and bound with cunningly contrived chains until he found himself a prisoner? William of Poitiers, a chronicler who wrote in the Conqueror's day, says that Harold was a man to whom imprisonment was more odious than shipwreck. It would be no wonder if he had made use of a piece of strategy, and was willing to make any sort of promise simply to gain his liberty.

The plot of the relic-business put a different face upon the whole matter, and yet, even if Harold was dazzled for the time being by William's power and splendor, one must doubt whether he would have given up all his ambition of reigning in England. He was already too great a man at home to play the subject and flatterer with much sincerity, even though his master were the high and mighty Duke of the Normans, and he had come from a ruder country to the fascination and elegance of the Norman court. Whatever the oath may have been that Harold gave at Bayeux, it is certain that he broke it afterward, and that his enemies made his failure not only an affair of state, but of church, and waged a bitter war that brought him to his sad end.

Now, the Norman knights might well look to it that their armor was strong and the Norman soldiers provide themselves with arrows and well-seasoned bows. It was likely that Harold's promise was no [Pg269] secret, and that some echo of it reached from one end of the dukedom to the other. There were great enterprises on foot, and at night in the firelight there was eager discussion of possible campaigns, for though the great Duke William, their soldier of soldiers, had bent the strength of his resistless force upon a new kingdom across the Channel and had won himself such a valuable ally, it was not likely that England would be ready to fall into his hand like a ripe apple from the bough. There was sure to be fighting, but there was something worth fighting for; the petty sorties against the provincial neighbors of Normandy were hardly worth the notice of her army. Men like the duke's soldiers were fit for something better than such police duty. Besides, a deep provocation had not been forgiven by those gentlemen who were hustled out of England by Godwine and his party, and many an old score would now stand a chance of repayment.

Not many months were passed before the news came from London that the holy king Eadward was soon to leave this world for a better. He was already renowned as a worker of miracles and a seer of visions, and the story was whispered reverently that he had given his ring to a beggar who appeared before him to ask alms in the middle of a crowd assembled at the dedication of a church. The beggar disappeared, but that very night some English pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem are shelterless and in danger near the holy city. Suddenly a company of shining acolytes approach through the wilderness, carrying two tapers before an old man, as if he were [Pg270] out on some errand of the church. He stops to ask the wondering pilgrims whence they come and whither they are going, and guides them to a city and a comfortable lodging, and next morning tells them that he is Saint John the Evangelist. More than this, he gives them the Confessor's ring, with a message to carry back to England. Within six months Eadward will be admitted to paradise as a reward for his pure and pious life. The message is carried to the king by miraculous agency that same night, and ever since he prays and fasts more than ever, and is hurrying the builders of his great Westminster, so that he may see that holy monument of his piety dedicated to the service of God before he dies.

The Norman lords and gentlemen who listened to this tale must have crossed themselves, one fancies, and craved a blessing on the saintly king, but the next minute we fancy also that they gave one another a glance that betokened a lively expectation of what might follow the news of Eadward's translation.

Twice in the year, at Easter and Christmas, the English king wore his crown in the great Witanagemôt and held court among his noblemen. In this year the midwinter Gemôt was held at the king's court at Westminster, instead of at Gloucester, to hallow the Church of St. Peter, the new shrine to which so much more of the Confessor's thought had gone than to the ruling of his kingdom.

But in the triumphant days to which he had long looked forward, his strength failed faster and faster, and his queen, Edith, the daughter of Godwine, had [Pg271] to take his place at the ceremonies. The histories of that day are filled with accounts of the grand building that Eadward's piety had reared. He had given a tenth part of all his income to it for many years, and with a proud remembrance of the Norman churches with which he was familiar in his early days, had made Westminster a noble rival of them and the finest church in England. The new year was hardly begun, the Witan had not scattered to their homes, before Eadward the Confessor was carried to his tomb—the last of the sons of Woden. He had reigned for three and twenty years, and was already a worn old man.

"Now, in the falling autumn, while the winds Of winter blew across his scanty days He gathered up life's embers——"

But as he lay dying in the royal palace at Westminster everybody was less anxious about the king, than about the country's uncertain future. Harold had been a sort of under-king for several years, and had taken upon himself many of the practical duties of government. He had done great deeds against the Welsh, and was a better general and war-man than Eadward had ever been. Nobody had any hope of the Confessor's recovery, and any hour might find the nation kingless. The Atheling's young son was a feeble, incompetent person, and wholly a foreigner; only the most romantic and senseless citizen could dream of making him Lord of England in such a time as that. There were a thousand rumors afloat; every man had his theory and his prejudice, and at last there must have been a general feeling of relief [Pg272] when the news was told that the saint-king was dead in his palace and had named Harold as his successor. The people clung eagerly to such a nomination; now that Eadward was dead he was saint indeed, and there was a funeral and a coronation that same day in the minster on the Isle of Thorney; his last word to the people was made law.

No more whispering that Harold was the Duke of the Normans' man, and might betray England again into the hands of those greedy favorites whom the holy king had cherished in his bosom like serpents. No more fears of Harold's jealous enemies among the earls; there was a short-sighted joy that the great step of the succession had been made and settled fast in the consent of the Witan, who still lingered; to be dispersed, when these famous days were at an end, by another king of England than he who had called them together.

The king had prophesied in his last hours; he had seen visions and dreamed dreams; he had said that great sorrows were to fall upon England for her sins, and that her earls and bishops and abbots were but ministers of the fiend in the eye of God; that within a year and a day the whole land would be harried from one end to another with fire and slaughter. Yet, almost with the same breath, he recommends his Norman friends, "those whom in his simplicity he spoke of as men who had left their native land for love of him," to Harold's care, and does not seem to suspect their remotest agency in the future harrying. True enough some of the Norman officers were loyal to him and to England. This death-bed scene [Pg273] is sad and solemn. Norman Robert the Staller was there, and Stigand, the illegal archbishop; Harold, the hope of England, and his sister, the queen, who mourns now and is very tender to her [Pg274] royal husband, who has given her a sorry lot with his cold-heartedness toward her and the dismal exile and estrangement he has made her suffer. He loves her and trusts her now in this last day of life, and her woman's heart forgets the days that were dark between them. He even commends her to Harold's care, and directs that she must not lose the honors which have been hers as queen.

There is a tradition that when Eadward lay dying he said that he was passing from the land of the dead to the land of the living, and the chronicle adds: "Saint Peter, his friend, opened to him the gates of Paradise, and Saint John, his own dear one, led him before the Divine Majesty." The walls that Eadward built are replaced by others; there is not much of his abbey left now but some of the foundation and an archway or two. But his tomb stands in a sacred spot, and the prayers and hymns he loved so devoutly are said and sung yet in his own Westminster, the burying-place of many another king since the Confessor's time.

[Pg275]

XIV.

NEWS FROM ENGLAND.

"Great men have reaching hands." —SHAKESPEARE.

So Harold was crowned king of England. Our business is chiefly with what the Normans thought about that event, and while London is divided between praises of the old king and hopes of the new one, and there are fears of what may follow from Earl Tostig's enmity; while the Witan are dispersing to their homes, and the exciting news travels faster than they do the length and breadth of the country, we must leave it all and imagine ourselves in Normandy.

Duke William was at his park of Quevilly, near Rouen, and was on his way to the chase. He had been bending his bow—the famous bow that was too strong for other men's hands—and just as he gave it to the page who waited to carry it after him, a man-at-arms came straight to his side; they went apart together to speak secretly, while the bystanders watched them curiously and whispered that the eager messenger was an Englishman.

"Eadward the king is dead," the duke was told, [Pg276] but that not unexpected news was only half the message. "Earl Harold is raised to the kingdom."

There came an angry look into the duke's eyes, and the herald left him. William forgot his plans for the hunt; he strode by his retainers; he tied and untied his mantle absent-mindedly, and presently went down to the bank of the Seine again and crossed over in a boat to his castle hall. He entered silently, and nobody dared ask what misfortune had befallen him. His companions followed him and found him sitting on a bench, moving restlessly to and fro. Then he became quieter; he leaned his head against the great stone pillar and covered his face with his mantle. Long before, in the old Norse halls, where all the vikings lived together, if a man were sick or sorry or wished for any reason to be undisturbed, he sat on his own bench and covered his head with his cloak; there was no room where he could be alone; and after the old custom, in these later days, the knights of William's court left him to his thoughts. Then William Fitz-Osbern, the "bold-hearted," came into the quiet hall humming a tune. The awe-struck people who were clustered there asked him what was the matter; then the duke looked up.

"It is in vain for you to try to hide the news," said the Seneschal. "It is blazing through the streets of Rouen. The Confessor is dead, and Harold holds the English kingdom."

The duke answered gravely that he sorrowed both for the death of Eadward and for the faithlessness of Harold. [Pg277]

"Arise and be doing," urges Fitz-Osbern. "There is no need for mourning. Cross the sea and snatch the kingdom out of the usurper's hand," and in this way stern thought and dire purpose were thrown into the duke's holiday. The messenger had brought a lighted torch in his hand that was equal to kindling great plans that winter day in Normandy. [Pg278]

William and all his men, from the least soldier to the greatest, knew that if they wished for England the only way to get it was to fight for it. There had never been such a proof of their mettle as this would be. The Normans who went to Italy had no such opponents as Harold and the rest of the Englishmen fighting on their own ground for their homes and their honor; but Norman courage shone brightest in these days. This is one of the places where we must least of all follow the duke's personal fortunes too closely, or forget that the best of the Normans were looking eagerly forward to the possession of new territory. Many of their cleverest men, too, were more than ready to punish the English for ejecting them from comfortable positions under Godwine's rule, and were anxious to reinstate themselves securely. There was no such perilous journey before the army as the followers of the Hautevilles had known, while their amazing stories of gain and glory incited the Normans at home to win themselves new fortunes. It is a proof that civilization and the arts of diplomacy were advancing, when we listen (and the adventurers listened too) while excuse after excuse was tendered for the great expedition. The news of Harold's accession was simply a welcome signal for action, but the heir of Rolf the Ganger was a politician, an astute wielder of public opinion, and his state-craft was now directed toward giving his desire to conquer England and reign over it a proper aspect in the eyes of other nations.

The right of heritage was fast displacing [Pg279] everywhere the people's right to choose their kings. The feudal system was close and strong in its links, but while Harold had broken his oath of homage to William, that alone was not sufficient crime. Such obligations were not always unbreakable, and were too much a matter of formality and temporary expediency to warrant such an appeal to the common law of nations as William meant to make. As nearly as we can get at the truth of the matter, the chief argument against Harold the Usurper was on religious grounds—on William's real or assumed promise of the succession from Eadward, and Harold's vow upon the holy relics of the saints at Rouen. This at least was most criminal blasphemy. The Normans gloried in their own allegiance to the church. Their duke was blameless in private life and a sworn defender and upholder of the faith, and by this means a most formidable ally was easily won, in the character of Lanfranc the great archbishop.

Lanfranc and William governed Normandy hand in hand. In tracing the history of this time the priest seems as familiar with secular affairs, with the course of the state and the army and foreign relations, as the duke was diligent in attending ecclesiastical synods and church services. It was a time of great rivalry and uncertainty for the papal crown; there was a pope and an anti-pope just then who were violent antagonists, but Archdeacon Hildebrand was already the guide and authority of the Holy See. Later he became the Pope famous in history as Gregory VII. We are startled to find that the expedition against England was made to [Pg280] take the shape of a crusade, even though England was building her own churches, and sending pilgrims to the Holy Land, and pouring wealth most generously into the church's coffers. "Priests and prelates were subject to the law like other men," that was the trouble; and "a land where the king and his Witan gave and took away the staff of the bishop was a land which, in the eyes of Rome, was more dangerous than a land of Jews or Saracens." "It was a policy worthy of William to send to the threshold of the apostles to crave their blessing on his intended work of reducing the rebellious land, and it was a policy worthy of one greater than William himself, to make even William, for once in his life, the instrument of purposes yet more daring, yet more far-sighted, than his own. On the steps of the papal chair, and there alone, had William and Lanfranc to cope with an intellect loftier and more subtle than even theirs."[9]

[9] Freeman: "The Norman Conquest."

William sent an embassy to Harold probably very soon after the receipt of the news of his coronation. The full account of both the demand and its reply have been forgotten, but it is certain that whatever the duke's commands were they were promptly disobeyed, and certain too that this was the result that William expected and even desired. He could add another grievance to his list of Harold's wrongdoings, and now, beside the original disloyalty, William could complain that his vassal had formally refused to keep his formal promise and obligation. Then he called a council of Norman nobles at Lillebonne and laid his plans before them.

[Pg281]

[Pg282]

It was a famous company of counsellors and made up of the duke's oldest friends. There were William Fitz-Osbern, and the duke's brother Odo of Bayeux, whose priesthood was no hindrance to his good soldiery; Richard of Evreux, the grandson of Richard the Fearless; Roger of Beaumont and the three heroes of Mortemer; Walter Giffard; Hugh de Montfort and William of Warren; the Count of Mortain and Roger Montgomery and Count Robert of Eu. All these names we know, and familiar as they were in Normandy, they were, most of them, to strike deeper root in their new domain of England. We do not find that they objected now to William's plans, but urged only that they had no right to speak for the whole country, and that all the Norman barons ought to be called together to speak for themselves.