The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, Volume 1 (of 2)

THE EARLY DAYS OF WILLIAM RUFUS.[4]
1087–1090.

THE Character of the accession of Rufus.way by which the second William became fully established on the throne of his father has some peculiarities of its own, which distinguish it from the accessions of most English kings, earlier and later. The only claim of William Rufus to the crown was a nomination by his father which we are told that his father hardly ventured to make.No formal election. Of election by any assembly, great or small, we see no trace. Yet the new king is crowned, and he receives the nationalHis general acceptance. submission at his crowning, with the fullest outward national consent, with no visible opposition from any quarter, and, as events proved, with the hearty good will of the native English part of his subjects. Yet the King is hardly established in his kingdom before he has to fight for his crown. William Rufus had, like his father, to win the kingdom of England by war after he was already its crowned king. But, as regards those against whom he fought and those at whose head he fought, his position was the exact reverse of that of his father. Nominated by his father, elected, one might say, by Lanfranc, crowned with no man gainsaying him, William Rufus was at last really established in the royal power by the act of the conquered English. It was they who won the crown for the son of their Conqueror in fight against his father’s nearest kinsmen and most cherished comrades.

One prominent aspect of the reign of William Rufus sets him before us as the enemy, almost the persecutor, of the Church in his realm, as the special adversary of the ecclesiastical power when the ecclesiastical power was represented by one of the truest of saints. And yet there have been few kings whose accession to the throne was in so special a way the act of the ecclesiastical power. William Rufus was made king by Lanfranc in a somewhat fuller sense than that in which every king of those times might be said to be made king by the prelate who poured the consecrating oil upon his head. Nomination by the last king, in the form of recommendation to the electors, had always been taken into account when the people of England came together to set a new king over them. The nomination of Eadward had formed a part, though the smallest part, of the right of Harold to become the chief of his own people.[5] An alleged nomination by Eadward formed the only plausible part of the claim by which William asserted his right to thrust himself upon a people of strangers. And now a nomination by William himself was the only right by which his second surviving son claimed to succeed to the crown which he had won. Modern notions of hereditary right would have handed over England as well as Normandy to the eldest son of the last king. English feeling at the time would doubtless, if a formal choice had to be made among the sons of the Conqueror of England, have spoken for his youngest son. Of all the three Henry alone was a true Ætheling; he alone had any right to the name of Englishman; he alone was the son of a crowned king and a man born in the land.[6] But the last wish of William the Great was that his island crown should pass to William the Red. He had not, as our fullest narrative tells us, dared to make any formal nomination to a kingdom which he had in his last days found out to be his only by wrong. He had not dared to name William as his successor; he left the kingdom in the hands of God; he only hoped that the will of God might be that William should reign, and should reign well and happily.[7] And as the best means of finding out whether the will of God were so, he left the actual decision to the highest and wisest of God’s ministers in his kingdom. He gave no orders for the coronation of Rufus; he simply prayed Lanfranc to crown him, if the Primate deemed such an act a rightful one.[8] As far as the will of the dying king went, one alone of the Witan of England, the first certainly among them alike in rank and in renown, was bidden to make the choice of the next sovereign on behalf of the whole kingdom.

The special agency of Lanfranc in the promotion of William Rufus is noticed by all the writers who give any detailed account of his accession.[9] Nor was it likely that, when the Archbishop was to be the one elector, the claims of the candidate should be refused. It would seem indeed as if Lanfranc doubted for a moment whether he ought to take upon himself the responsibility of the choice.[10] But everything must have helped to make him ready to carry out the wishes of his late master. That they were the Conqueror’s last wishes was no small matter, and Lanfranc had every personal reason to incline him the same way. To make William Rufus king was to promote the man who stood in a special relation to himself, who had been in some sort his pupil, and whom he had himself girded with the belt of knighthood.[11] And it really seems as if there was no other elector besides Lanfranc himself. For once in our history we read of a king succeeding without any formal election, without any meeting of the Witan before the coronation. Within three weeks of the death of the first William, the second William was full king over the land. As soon as he had heard the last wishes of his father, as soon as the dying king had dictated the all-important letter which was to express those wishes to the Primate, William Rufus left the bedside of his father while the breath was still in him. He started for the haven of Touques, a spot of which we shall get a vivid picture later in our story. With him set forth the bearer of the letter, one of the great King’s chaplains, and, as some say, his Chancellor. This was Robert Bloet, he who was presently to succeed Remigius of Fécamp in his newly-placed throne on the hill of Lincoln.[12] Before they had left Norman ground, the news came that all was over, that England had no longer a king.[13] William crossed with all speed, seemingly to Southampton, and found in England no rival, English or Norman. He indeed brought with him two men, either of whom, if Englishmen had still heart enough to dream of a king of their own blood, might have been his rival. Among the captives whom the Conqueror set free on his death-bed were two men who represented the mightiest of the fallen houses of conquered England. These were Morkere the son of Ælfgar, once the chosen Earl of the Northumbrians, and Wulfnoth, the youngest son of Godwine and brother[14] of Harold.Wulf and Duncan set free by Robert. Two other captives of royal blood, Duncan the son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg, so long a hostage for his father’s doubtful faith to his over-lord,[15] and Wulf the son of Harold and Ealdgyth, the babe who had been taken when Chester fell,[16] were set free at the same time. Duncan and Wulf were in the power of Robert. They in no way threatened his possession of Normandy, and Robert, with all his faults, did not lack generous feeling. They were knighted and set free.[17] Of Wulf we hear no more; Duncan lived to sit for a moment on the throne of his father. The fate of their fellow-sufferers was harsher. Morkere and Wulfnoth had come, by what means we know not, into the power of William. As Morkere had once crossed the sea with the father,[18] he now came back with the son. But their day of freedom was short. The son of Godwine and the grandson of Leofric might either of them be dangerous to the son of William. They therefore tasted the air of freedom only for a few days. William, acting as already king, went to his capital at Winchester, and there thrust the delivered captives once more into the house of bondage.[19] Of Morkere we hear no more; we must suppose that the rest of his days, few or many, were spent in this renewed imprisonment. Wulfnoth seems to have been released at some later time, to enter religion, and to be made the subject of the praises of a Norman poet.[20]

Such was the first act of authority done by the new ruler. Having thus disposed of the men whom he seems to have dreaded, William found no opposition made to his succession. But it was important for him to take possession without delay. The time, September, was not one of the usual seasons for a general assembly of the kingdom, and William could not afford to wait for the next great festival of Christmas. No native English competitor was likely to appear; but he must at least make himself safe against any possible attempts on the part of his brothers beyond the sea. From Winchester he hastened to the presence of Lanfranc—​seemingly at Canterbury; as the story is told us, it seems to be taken for granted that it rested with the Primate to give or to refuse the crown.[21] Whether the younger William himself brought the news of the death of the elder is not quite clear; but we are not surprised to hear from an eye-witness that the first feeling of Lanfranc was one of overwhelming grief at the loss of the king who was dead, a king who, if he had been to him a master, had also been in so many things a friend and a fellow-worker.[22] Rufus is crowned at Westminster, September 26, 1087. The formal consecration of his successor was not long delayed; the new king was solemnly crowned and anointed by the hands of Lanfranc in the minster of Saint Peter, on Sunday the feast of the saints Cosmas and Damian. So the day is marked by a scholar who had specially explored the antiquities of Rome; Englishmen, who knew less of saints whose holy place was by the Roman forum, were content to mark it by its relation to the great festival three days later, or even by the mere day of the month.[23] On that day, before the altar of King Eadward’s rearing, the second Norman lord of England took the oaths which bound an English king to the English people. And, besides the prescribed oaths to do justice and mercy and to defend the rights of the Church, Lanfranc is said to have bound the new king by a special engagement to follow his own counsel in all things.[24] William Rufus was thus king, and, if anything had been lacking in the way of regular election before his crowning, it was fully made up by the universal and seemingly zealous acceptance of him at his crowning. “All the men on England to him bowed and to him oaths swore.”[25] The crown which had passed to Eadward from a long line of kingly forefathers, the crown which Harold had worn by the free gift of the English people, the crown which the first William had won by his sword and had kept by his wisdom, now passed to the second of his name and house. And it passed, to all appearance, with the perfect good will of all the dwellers in the land, conquerors and conquered alike. William the Second, William the Younger, William the Red, took his place on the seat of the great Conqueror without a blow being struck or a dog moving his tongue against him.

The first act of the uncrowned candidate for the kingly office had been one of harshness—​harshness which was perhaps politic in the son, but which trod under foot the last wishes of a repentant father. The first act of the crowned King was one which might give good hopes for the reign which was beginning, and which certainly carried out his father’s wishes to the letter. From Westminster William Rufus went again to Winchester, this time not to make fast the bars of his father’s prison-house, but to throw open the stores of his father’s treasury.Wealth of the treasury at Winchester. Our native Chronicler waxes eloquent on the boundless wealth of all kinds, far beyond the powers of any man to tell of, which had been gathered together in the Conqueror’s hoard during his one and twenty years of kingship. The Chronicler had, as we must remember, himself lived in William’s court, and we may believe that his own eyes had looked on the store of gold and silver, of vessels and robes and gems and other costly things, which it was beyond the skill of man to set forth.[26] These were the spoils of England, and from them were made the gifts which, in the belief of those days, were to win repose in the other world for the soul of her despoiler.Gifts to churches. Every minster in England received, some six marks of gold, some ten, besides gifts of every kind of ecclesiastical ornament and utensil, rich with precious metals and precious stones, among which books for the use of divine service was not forgotten.[27] Gifts to Battle Abbey. And, above all, the special foundation of his father, the Abbey of the Battle, received choicer gifts than any, the royal mantle of the departed King among them.[28] Every upland church, every one at all events on the royal lordships, received sixty pennies.[29] Gifts to the poor. Moreover a hundred pounds in money was sent into each shire to be given away in alms to the poor for William’s soul.[30] Such a gift might be bountiful in a small shire like Bedford, where many Englishmen still kept their own; but it would go but a little way, even after eighteen years, to undo the work of the great harrying of Yorkshire. Meanwhile Robert, already received as Duke of the Normans, was doing the same pious work among the poor and the churches of his duchy.[31] The dutiful son and the rebel were both doing their best for the welfare of their father in the other world.

The Christmas Assembly. 1087–1088. From Winchester the new King went back to Westminster, and there he held the Christmas feast and assembly. It was attended by the two archbishops and by several other bishops, among whom the saint of Worcester is specially mentioned. Odo restored to his earldom. At this meeting too appeared Odo of Bayeux, who received again from his nephew his earldom of Kent.[32] Released from his bonds by the pardon which had been so hardly wrung from the dying Conqueror,[33] he already filled the first place in the councils of the new Duke of the Normans,[34] and he hoped to win the like power over the mind of his other nephew in England. But before long events came about which showed how true had been the foresight of William the Great, when he had said that mighty evils would follow if his brother should be set free from his prison.

Unusual character of William’s accession. It is certainly something unusual in those times for a king thus to make his way to his crown by virtue, as it were, of an agreement between a dead king and a living bishop, without either the nobles or the nation at large either actively supporting or actively opposing his claim. It is clear that men of both races had very decided views about the matter; but they gave no open expression to them at the time. The discussion of the succession came after the coronation, among men who had already acknowledged the new King. It may be that all parties were taken by surprise. The accession of William Rufus had not indeed followed the death of his father with anything like the same speed with which the accession of Harold had followed the death of his brother-in-law. But then the death of Eadward had long been looked for; the succession of Harold had long been practically agreed on; above all, the Witan were actually in session when the vacancy took place. Everything therefore could be done at a moment’s notice with perfect formal regularity. Now everything, if much less sudden, was much more unlooked for. The kingdom found itself called on to acknowledge a king whom no party had chosen, but whom no party had at the moment the means, perhaps not the will, to oppose. The Normans, we may believe, would, if they had been formally asked, have preferred Robert. The English, we may be sure, would, if they had been formally asked, have, at least among Norman candidates, preferred Henry. William the only available king at the moment. And practically the choice lay among Norman candidates only, and among them Henry was the one who was practically shut out. All hopes, we may be sure, had passed away of seeking for a king either in the house of Cerdic, in the house of Godwine, or in the house which, if not the house of Cnut, was, at least by female succession, the house of his father Swegen. Of the sons of the Conqueror, Henry, the one who was at once Norman and Englishman, was young and beyond the sea. William was in England, with at least his father’s recommendation to support him. The practical question lay between William and Robert. Was William to be withstood on behalf of Robert? Comparison between William and Robert. Between William and Robert there could at the moment be little doubt in the minds of Englishmen. Their father’s policy had kept both back from any great opportunity of doing either good or evil to the conquered kingdom. But, as far as their personal characters went, Robert had as yet shown his worst side and William his best. There could be little room for doubt between the man who had fought against his father and the man who had risked his life to save his father.Political bearing of William’s accession. And, besides this, the accession of William would separate England and Normandy. England would again have, if not a king of her own blood, yet at least a king of her own. The island world would again be the island world, no longer dependent on, or mixed up with, the affairs of the world beyond the sea. The harshness which had again thrust back Morkere and Wulfnoth into prison might be passed by, as an act of necessary precaution. Morkere too might by this time be well nigh forgotten, and Wulfnoth had never been known. If a native king was not to be had, William Rufus was at the moment by no means the most unpromising among possible foreign kings.

No real choice. But in truth neither Normans nor Englishmen were in this case called on to make any real choice. Both were called on, somewhat after the manner of the sham plebiscita of modern France, to acknowledge a sovereign who was already in possession. Whatever might have been the abstract preference of the Normans for Robert or of the English for Henry, neither party felt at the moment that degree of zeal which would lead them to brave the dangers of opposition. At any rate, William Rufus was a new king, and a new king is commonly welcome. Men of both races might reasonably expect that the rule of one who had come peacefully to his crown would be less harsh than that of one who had made his entry by the sword. Employment of the treasure. It is further hinted that William partly owed his recognicitaition to his early possession of his father’s hoard, perhaps to his careful discharge of his father’s will, perhaps, even thus early in his reign, to some other discreet application of his father’s treasures.[35] Certain it is that, from whatever cause, all men accepted Rufus with all outward cheerfulness, though perhaps without any very fervent loyalty towards him on any side. It needed the events of the next few months, it needed strong influences and strong opposing influences, to turn the Normans in England into the fierce opponents of the new King, and the native English into his zealous supporters. It needed the further course of his own actions to teach both sides how much they had lost when they passed from the rule of William the Great to that of William the Red.

§ 2. The Rebellion against William Rufus.
March-November, 1088.

The winter of the year which beheld the Conqueror’s death passed without any disturbance in the realm of his son.[36] Beginning of the rebellion. But in the spring of the next year it became plain that the general acceptance which Rufus had met with in England was sincere on the part of his English subjects only. As the native Chronicler puts it, “the land was mightily stirred and was filled with mickle treason, for all the richest Frenchmen that were in this land would betray their lord the King, and would have his brother to King, Robert that was Earl in Normandy.”[37] The leaders in this revolt were the bishops whom the Conqueror had clothed with temporal power. Discontent of Odo. And foremost among them was his brother, the new King’s uncle, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, now again Earl of Kent; and, according to one account, already Justiciar and chief ruler in England.[38] But whatever might be his formal position, Odo soon began to be dissatisfied with the amount of authority which he practically enjoyed. He seems to have hoped to be able to rule both his nephews and all their dominions, and, in England at least, to keep the whole administration in his own hands at least as fully as he had held it before his imprisonment. In this hope he was disappointed. The Earl of Kent was not so great a man under the younger William as he had been under the elder. The chief place in the confidence of the new King was held by another man of his own order. Influence of William of Saint-Calais. This was William of Saint Carilef or Saint Calais, once Prior of the house from which he took his name, and afterwards Abbot of Saint Vincent’s without the walls of Le Mans.[39] He had succeeded the murdered Walcher in the see of Durham, and he had reformed his church according to the fashion of the time, by putting in monks instead of secular canons.[40] His place in the King’s counsel was now high indeed. “So well did the King to the Bishop that all England went after his rede and so as he would.”[41] Besides this newly born jealousy of the Kings newly chosen counsellor, Odo had a long standing hatred against the other prelate who had so long watched over the King, and whose advice the King was bound by oath to follow.[42] He bore the bitterest grudge against the Primate Lanfranc, as the inventor of that subtle distinction between the Bishop of Bayeux and the Earl of Kent which had cost the Earl five years of imprisonment.[43]

Action of Odo. Of the two personages who might thus be joined or separated at pleasure, it is the temporal chief with whom we have now to deal. March 1, 1088. Lent was now come. Of the spiritual exercises of the Bishop of Bayeux during the holy season we have no record; the Earl of Kent spent the time plotting with the chief Normans in England how the King might be killed or handed over alive to his brother.[44] Gatherings of the rebels.We have more than one vigorous report of the oratory used in these seditious gatherings. According to some accounts, they went on on both sides of the sea, and we are admitted to hear the arguments which were used both in Normandy and in England.[45] Arguments on behalf of Robert. Both agree in maintaining the claims of Robert, as at once the true successor, and the prince best fitted for their purpose. But it is on Norman ground that the necessity for an union between Normandy and England is set forth most clearly. The main object is to hinder a separation between the two kingdoms, as they are somewhat daringly called.[46] It is clear that to men who held lands in both countries it would be a gain to have only one lord instead of two; but, if we rightly understand the arguments which are put into the mouths of the speakers, it was held that, if England had again a king of her own, though it were a king of the Conqueror’s house, the work of the Conquest would be undone. The men who had won England with their blood would be brought down from their dominion in the conquered island.[47] If they have two lords, there will be no hope of pleasing both; faithfulness to the one will only lead to vengeance on the part of the other.[48] William was young and insolent, and they owed him no duty. Robert was the eldest son; his ways were more tractable, and they had sworn to him during the life-time of his father. Let them then make a firm agreement to stand by one another, to kill or dethrone William, and to make Robert ruler of both lands.[49] Robert, we are told, approved of the scheme, and promised that he would give them vigorous help to carry it out.[50]

These arguments of Norman speakers are given us without the names of any ringleaders. We may suspect that the real speaker, in the idea of the reporter, was no other than the Bishop of Bayeux.[51] Speech of Odo. We hear of him more distinctly on English ground, haranguing his accomplices somewhat to the same effect; only the union of the two states is not so distinctly spoken of. It may be that such a way of putting the case would not sound well in the ears of men who, if not Englishmen, were at least the chief men of England, and who might not be specially attracted by the prospect of another conquest of England, now that England was theirs. Reasons for preferring Robert to William. The chief business of the Bishop’s speech is to compare the characters of the two brothers between whom they had to choose, and further to compare the new King with the King who was gone. The speaker seems to start from the assumption that, in the interests of those to whom he spoke, it was to be wished that the ruler whom they were formally to acknowledge should be practically no ruler at all. William the Great had not been a prince to their minds; William the Red was not likely to be a prince to their minds either. Robert was just the man for their purpose. Under Robert, mild and careless, they would be able to do as they pleased; under the stern and active William they would soon find that they had a master. Comparison of the elder and younger William. The argument that follows is really the noblest tribute that could be paid to the memory of the Conqueror. It sets him before us, in a portrait drawn by one who, if a brother, was also an enemy, as a king who did justice and made peace, and who did his work without shedding of blood. It is taken for granted that the death of the great king, at whose death we are told that peaceable men wept and that robbers and fiends rejoiced,[52] was something from which Odo and men like Odo might expect to gain. But nothing would be gained, if the rod of the elder William were to pass into the hands of the younger. The little finger of the son would be found to be thicker than the loins of the father. Their release from the rule of the King who was gone would profit them nothing, if they remained subjects of one who was likely to slay where his father had merely put in bonds.[53] In this last contrast, though we may doubt whether there could have been any ground for drawing it so early in the reign of Rufus, we see that the men of the time were struck by the difference between the King whose laws forbade the judicial taking of human life and the King under whom the hangman began his work again. To pleadings like these we are told that the great mass of the Norman nobility in England hearkened; a small number only remained faithful to the King to whom they had so lately sworn their oaths. Thus, as the national Chronicler puts it, “the unrede was read.”[54]

Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances joins the rebels. As the chief devisers of the unrede we have the names of two bishops besides Odo. One name we do not wonder to find along with his. Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances was a prelate of Odo’s own stamp, one of whose doings as a wielder of the temporal sword we have heard in northern, in western, and in eastern England.[55] But we should not have expected to find as partner of their doings the very man whose high promotion had filled the heart of Odo with envy. Treason of the Bishop of Durham. It was indeed the most unkindest cut of all when the Bishop of Durham, the man in whose counsel the King most trusted, turned against the benefactor who had raised him so that all England went at his rede. What higher greatness he could have hoped to gain by treason it is hard to see. Different statements of his conduct. And it is only fair to add that in the records of his own bishopric he appears as a persecuted victim,[56] while all the writers of southern England join in special reprobation of his faithlessness. The one who speaks in our own tongue scruples not to make use of the most emphatic of all comparisons. “He would do by him”—​that is, Bishop William would do by King William—​“as Judas Iscariot did by our Lord.”[57] We should certainly not learn from these writers that, after all, it was the King, and not the Bishop, who struck, or tried to strike, the first blow.

It is certainly far from easy to reconcile the different accounts of this affair. At a time a little later the southern account sets Bishop William before us as one who “did all harm that he might all over the North.”[58] But at Durham it was believed that at all events a good deal of harm had been already done by the King to the Bishop; and the Bishop claims to have at an earlier time done the best of good service to the King.[59] That service must have been rendered while the Lenten conspiracy was still going on; for at no later time does the Bishop of Durham seem to have been anywhere in the south of England. His alleged services to the King. Lent, 1088. Then, according to his own story, the Bishop secured to the King the possession of Hastings, of Dover, and of London itself. We have only William of Saint-Calais’ own statement for this display of loyal vigour on his part; but, as it is a statement made in the hearing of the King and of the barons and prelates of England, though exaggeration is likely enough, the whole story can hardly be sheer invention. Bishop William claims to have kept the two southern havens in their allegiance when the King had almost lost them. His action towards London. He claims further to have quieted disturbances in London, after the city had actually revolted, by taking twelve of the chief citizens to the King’s presence.[60] Our notes of time show that the events of which the Bishop thus speaks must have happened at the latest in the very first days of March. Early movements in Kent and Sussex. March, 1088. It follows that there must have been at the least seditious movements in south-eastern England, before the time of the open revolt in the west. In short, the rebellion in Kent and Sussex must have begun very early indeed in the penitential season.

We gather from the Durham narrative that, even at this early stage, both Bishop Odo and Earl Roger were already known to the King as traitors. Bishop William’s advice to the King. We gather further that it was by the advice of the Bishop of Durham that the King was making ready for military operations against them, and that, when the Bishop was himself summoned to the array, he made answer that he would at once join with the seven knights whom he had with him—​seven chief barons of the bishopric, as it would seem—​and would send to Durham for more. He forsakes the King. But, instead of so doing, he left the King’s court without his leave; he took with him some of the King’s men, and so forsook the King in his need.[61] Such was afterwards the statement on the King’s side. Certain it is that, whatever the Bishop’s fault was, the royal vengeance followed speedily on it. His temporalities seized. March, 1088. Early in March, whether with or without the advice of any assembly,[62] Rufus ordered the temporalities of the bishopric to be seized, and the Bishop himself to be arrested. The Bishop escaped to his castle at Durham, whence it would not be easy to dislodge him without a siege. Meanwhile the King’s men in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, though they failed to seize the Bishop’s own person, took possession in the King’s name of his lands, his money, and his men. He writes to the King. From Durham the Bishop wrote to the King, setting forth his wrongs, protesting his innocence, and demanding restitution of all that had been taken from him. He goes on to use words which remind us in a strange way at once of Godwine negotiating with his royal son-in-law and of Odo in the grasp of his royal brother. He offers the services of himself and his men. He offers to make answer to any charge in the King’s court. But, like Godwine, he asks for a safe-conduct before he will come;[63] like Odo, he declares that it is not for every one to judge a bishop, and that he will make answer only according to his order.[64] On the receipt of this letter, the King at once, in the sight of the Bishop’s messenger, made grants of the episcopal lands to certain of his barons;[65] those lands were therefore looked on as property which had undergone at least a temporary forfeiture. He is summoned to the King’s Court. He however sent an answer to the Bishop, bidding him come to his presence, and adding the condition that, if he would not stay with the King as the King wished, he should be allowed to go back safe to Durham. It must however be supposed that this promise was not accompanied by any formal safe-conduct; otherwise, though it is not uncommon to find the officers of a king or other lord acting far more harshly than the lord himself, it is hard to understand the treatment which Bishop William met with at the hands of the zealous Sheriff of Yorkshire. Action of Ralph Paganel. That office was now held by Ralph Paganel, a man who appears in Domesday as holder of lands in various parts, from Devonshire to the lands of his present sheriffdom,[66] and who next year became the founder of the priory of the Holy Trinity at York.[67] The Bishop, on receiving the King’s answer, sent to York to ask for peace of the Sheriff. But all peace was refused to the Bishop, to his messengers, and to all his men. A monk who was coming back from the King’s presence to the Bishop was stopped; his horse was killed, though he was allowed to go on on foot. The lands of the bishopric laid waste. March-May, 1088. Lastly, the Sheriff ordered all men in the King’s name to do all the harm that they could to the Bishop everywhere and in every way. The Bishop was thus cut off from telling his grievances; and for seven weeks, we are told, the lands of the bishopric were laid waste.[68] This date brings us into the month of May, by which time important events had happened in other parts of England.

We have seen that, in south-eastern England at least, the unrede of this year’s Lent must have gone beyond mere words, and must have already taken the form of action. General rebellion. But it seems not to have been till after Easter that the general revolt of the disaffected nobles broke forth throughout the whole land. By this time they had all thoroughly made up their minds to act. And we may add that it is quite possible that the King’s treatment of the Bishop of Durham may have had some share in helping them to make up their minds. They may have been led to think that open rebellion was the safest course. The Easter Gemót. April 16, 1088. The first general sign was given at the Easter Gemót of the year, which, according to rule, would be held at Winchester. The rebel nobles, instead of appearing to do their duty when the King wore his crown, kept aloof from his court.The rebels refuse to come. They gat them each man to his castle, and made them ready for war.[69] Soon after the festival the flame burst forth. The great body of the Norman lords of England were in open revolt against the son of the man who had made England theirs.

The rebel nobles. The list of the rebel nobles reads like a roll of the Norman leaders at Senlac or a choice of the names which fill the foremost places in Domesday. With a few marked exceptions, all the great men of the land are there. Robert of Mortain Along with Odo, Bishop and Earl, the other brother of the Conqueror, Robert of Mortain and of Cornwall, the lord of Pevensey and of Montacute, joined in the revolt against his nephew.[70] and William of Eu. So did another kinsman, a member of the ducal house of Normandy and gorged with the spoils of England, William son of Robert Count of Eu, grandson of the elder William and his famous wife Lescelina.[71] Earl Roger and the border lords. Of greater personal fame, and of higher formal rank on English soil, was the father of one of the men who had crossed the sea to trouble England, Roger of Montgomery, whose earldom of Shrewsbury swells, in the statelier language of one of our authorities, into an earldom of the Mercians.[72] He brought with him a great following from his own border-land. Among these was Roger of Lacy, great in the shires from Berkshire to Shropshire;[73] Osbern. and with him came the old enemy Osbern of Richard’s Castle, whose name carries us back to times that now seem far away.[74] With Osbern came his son-in-law Bernard of Neufmarché or Newmarch, sister’s son to the noble Gulbert of Hugleville, the man who was soon to stamp his memory on the mountain land of Brecheiniog.[75] From the same border too came the lord of Wigmore, Ralph of Mortemer.[76] But the treason of the great Earl of the central march was not followed by his northern neighbour. Loyalty of Earl Hugh. Hugh of Chester clave to the King, while the mightiest of his tenants joined the rebels. For the old Hugh of Grantmesnil raised the standard of revolt in Northhamptonshire, and in Leicestershire, the land of his sheriffdom.[77] Rebellion of Robert of Rhuddlan; And his rebellion seems to have carried with it that of his nephew the Marquess Robert of Rhuddlan, the terror of the northern Cymry.[78] Robert thus found himself in arms, not only against his king, but against his immediate and powerful neighbour and lord Earl Hugh. But the tie which bound a man to his mother’s brother was perhaps felt to be stronger than duty towards either king or earl. of Roger the Bigod; Along with the lords of the British marches stood the guardian of the eastern coast of England against the Dane, Roger the Bigod, father of earls, whose name, fated to be so renowned in later times, appears in the records of these days with a special brand of evil.[79] of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances; And with Odo and William of Durham a third prelate joined in the unrede, a prelate the worthy compeer of Odo, the warrior Geoffrey of Coutances, the bishop who knew better how to marshal mailed knights for the battle than to teach surpliced clerks to chant their psalms in the choir.[80] He brought with him the last of the elder succession of Northumbrian earls, his nephew Robert of Mowbray, of Robert of Mowbray. tall of stature, swarthy of countenance, fierce, bold, and proud, who looked down on his peers and scorned to obey his betters, who loved better to think than to speak, and who, when he opened his lips, seldom let a smile soften his stern words.[81] With these leaders were joined a crowd of others, “mickle folk, all Frenchmen,” as the Chronicler significantly marks.[82] The sons of the soil, we are to believe, had no part in the counsels of that traitorous Lent, in the deeds of that wasting Easter.

Ravages of the rebels. The war now began, a war in which, after the example of the chief combatants, fathers fought against sons, brothers against brothers, friends against their former friends.[83] The rebel leaders, each from the point where his main strength lay, began to lay waste the land, specially the lordships of the King and the Archbishop. Evidence against the Bishop of Durham. And among these evil-doers the loyal monk of Peterborough distinctly sets down William of Saint-Calais, meek victim as he seems in the records of his own house. The Bishop may have argued that he was only returning what the King had done to him; but the witness is such as cannot be got over; “The Bishop of Durham did to harm all that he might over all the north” Some others of the confederates and their doings are sketched in a few words by the same sarcastic pen; Ravages of Roger Bigod; “Roger hight one of them that leapt into the castle at Norwich, and did yet the worst of all over all the land.”[84] So does the English writer speak of the first Bigod who held the fortress which had arisen on the mound of the East-Anglian kings.[85] Roger had succeeded to the place, though not to the rank, of Ralph of Wader, and, as Ralph had made Norwich a centre of rebellion against the father, so Roger now made it a centre of rebellion against the son. of Hugh of Grantmesnil. Then we read how “Hugo eke did nothing better neither within Leicestershire nor within Northampton.”[86] This was the way in which the lord of Grantmesnil, so honoured at Saint Evroul, was looked on in the scriptorium of the house which had once been the Golden Borough. In some other parts of the country we get fuller accounts than these of the doers and of what was done. Three districts in the west and in the south-east of England became the scene of events which are set down by the writers of the age in considerable detail.

Bristol and its castle. Of Bristol, the great merchant-haven on the West-Saxon and Mercian border, we last heard when the sons of Harold failed to make their way within its walls,[87] and when its greedy slave-traders cast aside, for a while at least, their darling sin at the preaching of Saint Wulfstan.[88] The borough was now beginning to put on a new character, one which, in the disturbances half a century later, won for it the name of the stepmother of all England.[89] Bristol in the eleventh century.A fortress, the forerunner of the great work of Robert Earl of Gloucester,[90] had now arisen, and its presence made Bristol one of the chief military centres of England down to the warfare of the seventeenth century. The Bristol of those days had not yet occupied the ground which is now covered by its two chief ecclesiastical ornaments. The abbey of Saint The chief churches not yet built. Augustine, the creation of Robert Fitz-Harding, had not yet arisen on the lowest slope of the hills to the west, nor the priory of Saint James, the creation of Earl Robert, on the ground to the north of the borough. These foundations arose in the next age on the Mercian ground without the walls. And any forerunner which may then have been of the church of Saint Mary on the Red cliff, for ages past the stateliest among the parish churches of England, stood beyond the walls, beyond the river, on undisputed West-Saxon ground. Peninsular site of the borough. The older Bristol lay wholly on the Mercian side of the Avon, at the point where the Frome of Gloucestershire still poured its waters into the greater stream in the sight of the sun.[91] But nowhere, unless at Palermo, have the relations of land and water been more strangely turned about than they have been at Bristol. The two rivers. The course of the greater river, though not actually turned aside, is disguised by cuts and artificial harbours which puzzle the visitor till the key is found. The lesser stream of the Changes in later times. Frome has had its course changed and shortened, and the remnant is, like the Fleet of London, condemned by art to the fate which nature has laid on so many of the rivers of Greece and Dalmatia;[92] it runs, as in a katabothra, under modern streets and houses. The marshy ground lying at the meeting of the streams has been reclaimed and covered with the modern buildings of the city. In the twelfth century, still more therefore in the eleventh, this space was covered at every high tide, when the waters rushing up the channels of both rivers made Bristol seem to float on their bosom like Venice or Ravenna.[93] The castle. Of the castle again the more part of its site is covered by modern buildings; a great part of its moat is filled up; the donjon has vanished; the green is no longer a green; it is only by searching that we can find out some parts of the outer walls of the fortress, and some still smaller parts of the buildings which they fenced in.[94] But, when the key is once found, it is not hard to follow the line both of the borough and of the fortress. Bristol belongs to the same general class of peninsular towns as Châlons, Shrewsbury, Bern, and Besançon; but, as at Châlons, the height above the rivers is not great; and it is at Bristol made quite insignificant by comparison with the hills to the west and north. Yet on the narrow neck of the isthmus itself, the actual slope towards the streams on either side is not to be despised. To the west of that isthmus, within the peninsula, stood the original town, girded to the north by the original course of the Frome, to the south-west by the marshy ground at the junction of the rivers.[95] To the west of the isthmus, outside the peninsula, stood the castle. Standing on the exposed side, open to an attack from the east, it was fenced in on three sides by a moat joining the two rivers at either end. Works of Earl Robert. A writer of the next age gives us a picture of Bristol Castle as it then stood, strengthened by all the more advanced art of that time.[96] But the great keep of Earl Robert, slighted in the days of the Commonwealth, was not yet. We can only guess at the state of borough and fortress, as they had stood when the sons of Harold were driven back from the walls of Bristol, or as they stood now at the opening of the civil war which we have now reached. But there are few towns whose general look must have been more thoroughly unlike what it is now. The central and busy streets which occupy the area of the older Bristol must, allowing for the difference between the eleventh century and the nineteenth, still keep the general character of the old merchant-borough. Growth of the town. But few changes can be greater than those which have affected Bristol both in earlier and in later times. One period of change first surrounded the elder town with a fringe of ecclesiastical buildings, and then took them within a more extended line of wall. Another in later days has swept away well nigh every trace of the fortress which was so famous both in the twelfth century and in the seventeenth, and has covered the whole range of the neighbouring hills with a new and airy city of modern days.