This fact that the Under-kings, or princes of whatever rank, within the kingdom of Scotland, did homage to Cnut is worthy of special notice. It seems to be a step beyond the terms of the original commendation to Eadward the Elder. It seems to be a step towards the more complete submission made by William the Lion to Henry the Second and to the homage done by all Scotland to the Lord Paramount Edward. The choice of the English King as Father and Lord over the King and people of the Scots did not make this or that Scot his “man.”[973] But now, not only King Malcolm, but Jehmarc and Macbeth became the “men” of the King of all England. Yet the fact may perhaps be explained another way. When we remember the later history, we shall perhaps be inclined to look for the cause of this change in the slight authority possessed by Malcolm over the lesser Scottish princes. His legendary character paints him as a King who granted away all his domains, and left himself nothing but the hill of Scone, the holy place of the Scottish monarchy.[974] And more authentic history shows that Jehmarc and Macbeth, princes ruling on the western and eastern shores of the island, were so far independent of the King of Scots that the homage of Malcolm alone would have been no sufficient guaranty for the retention of the Scottish kingdom in its proper submission to the Imperial crown. Macbeth indeed was the representative of a line which had claims on the Scottish crown itself. Cnut therefore prudently exacted the homage of Malcolm’s dangerous vassals as well as that of Malcolm himself. |Death of Malcolm. 1034.| Malcolm, already an old man, survived the ceremony only three years, and died in the year before the death of his far younger over-lord.[975] He was succeeded by his grandson Duncan, whose son Malcolm, surnamed Canmore, afterwards so famous, received, as usual, the apanage of Cumberland.[976]
Cnut’s wars in the North of Europe have but little connexion with English history, and there are few events for |Authorities for their history.| which our historical materials are more unsatisfactory. Our own Chronicles help us to the dates of some of the more prominent events; the Norwegian sagas[977] and the rhetorical Latin of the Danish historian help us to abundance of details, if we could only accept them as authentic; the Danish chronicles are meagre beyond words. Happily, to unravel the difficulties and contradictions of their various statements is no part of the business of an English historian. It may be enough for our purpose to keep ourselves to those events which the contemporary chroniclers of England thought worthy of a place in our own |Revolutions of Norway.| national annals. The most important among them is the loss and reconquest of Norway by Cnut, and his wars with its renowned King Olaf the Saint.[978] Norway had, after |1000.| the death of Olaf Tryggvesson,[979] formed part of the dominions of Swegen, and it was entrusted to the government of his son-in-law Eric, who afterwards held the |1015.| earldom of Northumberland.[980] When Eric went to England with Cnut, Hakon the son of Eric remained as Earl in Norway, but was soon driven out by Olaf Haraldsson. Of this prince, afterwards canonized as a saint and martyr, we have heard somewhat already;[981] but the part assigned to him in English affairs evidently belongs to romance and not to history. His career in his own country is more |Reign of Saint Olaf. 1015–1028.| authentic and more important. The rule of Olaf was at first acceptable to the country; but both his virtues and his faults gradually raised up enemies against him. He was preeminently a reformer. His strictness in the administration of justice, the first of virtues in a prince of those times, is highly praised.[982] He was moreover a zealous Christian; his whole soul was devoted to spreading throughout his kingdom the blessings of religion and civilization, and to reforming the manners and morals of his people in every way. He brought bishops and other churchmen from England, and, not satisfied with the evangelization of his own kingdom, he employed them as missionaries in Sweden, Gothland, and the neighbouring islands.[983] But, just like the elder Olaf, his choice of means was often less praiseworthy than the excellence of his objects. The reformer tried by harshness and violence to force on a rude people manners and institutions for which they were not ready, and the Christian missionary sank into a persecutor of those who clave to the creed of their fathers. In his lofty ideas of kingly power, Olaf set little store by the rights either of the ancient chiefs or of the free peasantry of the land, and, in dealing with these enemies, he did not shrink from acts of merciless cruelty.[984] Meanwhile Cnut was keeping as careful an eye on Norway as his father had kept on England; but, like his father, he knew how to bide his time. A summons to Olaf to hold the crown of Norway as his vassal was rejected;[985] war followed, |Cnut’s defeat at the Helga. 1025.| and Cnut’s first expedition was unsuccessful. Olaf allied himself with the Swedish King Omund, and their joint forces inflicted a defeat on Cnut’s combined Danish |Cnut’s intrigues in Norway. 1027.| and English army at the river Helga in Scania.[986] Two years later, by dint of bribes and promises and by studiously taking advantage of Olaf’s growing unpopularity, Cnut contrived to raise up a powerful party in Norway which was prepared to accept his own pretensions.[987] In the next year, when Cnut sailed to Norway with fifty ships, Olaf was completely forsaken by his people, and |Cnut expels Olaf, and is chosen King of all Norway. 1028.| had to take refuge in Russia. Cnut was everywhere welcomed, and he was chosen King of all Norway by the Thing at Trondhjem, just as he had been, eleven years before, chosen King of all England by the Gemót at London.[988] A later attempt of Olaf to recover his kingdom |Olaf killed at Stikkelstad. 1030.| was resisted by the Norwegians themselves; he fell in the fight of Stikkelstad, and the Church looked on him as a martyr.[989]
Cnut, King of five or, as some reckon, six kingdoms, seems to have looked upon himself as Emperor of the North, and to have held himself in all respects as the peer of his Roman brother.[990] Earlier and later Danish Kings were fain to own themselves the vassals of Cæsar; but before the power of Cnut the Roman Terminus himself had to give way. With the Frankish Emperor Conrad the mighty ruler of Northern Europe was on the best terms. Cnut, as we have seen, made his acquaintance and friendship in his Imperial capital, and bore a part in the splendours of his Imperial consecration. The alliance was cemented by a treaty of marriage between their children, and by a cession of territory on the part of the potentate |Marriage of Gunhild to King Henry of Germany. 1036.| higher in formal rank. Gunhild, the daughter of Cnut and Emma, was betrothed to Conrad’s son King Henry, afterwards the renowned Emperor Henry the Third. The marriage however did not take place till after the death of the bride’s father, and Gunhild, like her predecessor Eadgyth, was destined to be neither the wife nor the mother of an Emperor. Gunhild, like Eadgyth, died before her husband succeeded to the Empire, and his successor was the offspring of his second and better known marriage with Agnes of Poitiers.[991]
The more strictly political result of the friendship between Cnut and Conrad was the restoration of the ancient frontier between Denmark and Germany. After the victorious expedition of Otto the Second into Denmark, a German mark had been established beyond the Eider, extending from that river to the Dannewirk, the great bulwark which Gorm and Thyra had reared against the Southern invader. This was the first step in that process which has gradually Germanized a part of Southern Jutland, |1864–6.| and which has at last handed over an unwilling Scandinavian population as the victims of Prussian greed of territorial aggrandizement. Cnut, by treaty with the Emperor, and seemingly as the price of his daughter, recovered the ancient frontier with which Charles the Great had been content, and which remained the boundary of the two realms till that general removing of ancient landmarks which belongs only to the more refined diplomacy of modern times.
We have now, last of all, to look to the position of Cnut with reference to the Duchy of Normandy. I have already, in speaking of Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy, had occasion to mention the close connexion which he kept up with more than one part of Gaul. He was the special friend of Duke William of Aquitaine, surnamed the Great, a prince whose tastes were in many respects congenial with his own. He sent him embassies and gifts, among them a splendid book of devotions in golden letters.[992] But Cnut’s most important relations among the states of Gaul were with the great duchy which lay opposite to his southern shores, and where his banished stepsons were being brought up as his possible rivals. The last event in the internal history of Normandy which I recorded was the |[997.]| great revolt of the Norman peasantry at the beginning of the reign of Richard the Good. The new Duke was, in the full sense of the word, a Frenchman. Whatever had become of the original homage of Rolf, the commendation of Richard the Fearless to Hugh the Great[993] was still in |Friendly relations with France. 996–1031.| full force. Richard was the loyal vassal and faithful ally of the Parisian King; his friendship with Robert, the second King of that house, seems to have always remained unbroken, and the two princes acted together in various expeditions. The Normans were by this time thoroughly naturalized in their Gaulish possessions. In the records of the time they appear as recognized and honoured members of the French monarchy. The memory of their foreign and heathen descent is forgotten; their prince is no longer the mere Duke of Pirates,[994] whom a loyal Frenchman spoke of as seldom as he could; the cherished ally of the Parisian King is now spoken of with every respect as the Duke of Rouen.[995] The chief French historian of the time is as ready to exaggerate the external power and influence of the second Richard as ever his own Dudo was to exaggerate those of his father.[996] Richard, on the other hand, did not hesitate to have his gifts to his own Fécamp confirmed by his over-lord,[997] and he dated his public acts by the regnal years of the King.[998] And no wonder; for it is plain that the Norman Duke |Strict alliance between King Robert and Duke Richard.| was the mainstay of the French kingdom. Robert, though the most pious of men, could not avoid either temporal warfare, ecclesiastical censures, or domestic oppression.[999] In the last two classes of afflictions Norman help could hardly avail him, but in all Robert’s wars Richard proved a steady and valuable ally. The help of the Norman |1003.| Duke enabled his over-lord to maintain his claims over the ducal Burgundy,[1000] and Norman troops served along with those both of the French King and of the German Cæsar in a war against their common vassal of Flanders. The |1006.| Imperial and royal saints united their forces against the city of Valenciennes, and the more purely temporal help of |Friendly relations with Britanny.| the Norman Duke was arrayed on the same side.[1001] With his Breton neighbours or vassals Richard was on good terms. The friendship between him and the Breton Count Geoffrey was cemented by an exchange of sisters between |1008.| the two princes. Richard married Judith of Britanny,[1002] and Hadwisa of Normandy became the wife of Geoffrey, on whose death her sons, Alan and Odo, were placed under the guardianship of their uncle and lord.[1003] With another neighbour and brother-in-law Richard found it less easy to remain on friendly terms. His sister Matilda had married Odo the Second, Count of Chartres, the grandson of the old enemy Theobald. The town and part of the district of Dreux had been given to Odo as her marriage |War with Odo of Chartres.| portion,[1004] and this, on her death, he refused to give back. A war followed, which was made conspicuous by the foundation of the famous castle of Tillières,[1005] which long remained a border fortress of Normandy. Of course every effort of Odo to take or surprise the Norman outpost was rendered hopeless by Norman valour, and yet we are told that Richard found it expedient to resort to help of a very questionable kind to support him against his enemy. The Normans were now Frenchmen; Duke Richard and his court of gentlemen[1006] had doubtless quite forgotten their Scandinavian mother-tongue; some traces of the old nationality may still have lingered at Bayeux, but, as a whole, Normandy was now French in language, feeling, and religion. But the old connexion with the North was still cherished. We have already seen how the friendly reception which the Danish invaders of England met with in the Norman ports had led to hostile relations between Normandy and England.[1007] So now we have the old story of Harold Blaatand over again.[1008] Richard, like his father, does not scruple to bring heathen invaders into Gaul to help him against his Christian enemies. And, just as in the second appearance of Harold Blaatand, this shameful help is called in at a time when there seems to be no need for if, at a time when the Norman arms are completely victorious. Odo could surely have been crushed by the combined forces of Normandy and Britanny,[1009] even if King Robert was not disposed to repay |Brittany ravaged by two heathen Kings, Lacman and Olaf. 1013?| in kind the services of his loyal vassal. The tale however, as we find it, represents the Norman Duke as entering into a league with two heathen Kings, who were engaged in inflicting the most cruel ravages on his own vassals and allies of Britanny, having just taken and burned the frontier city of Dol.[1010] These Kings are described as Lacman of Sweden and Olaf of Norway. With regard to the former there must be a mistake of some kind, as no King bearing any such name occurs in Swedish |Identity of this Olaf with Saint Olaf Haraldsson.| history. But we are given to understand that the Olaf spoken of was no other than the famous Olaf Haraldsson the Saint.[1011] One story of the early life of Olaf seems to be about as mythical as another; but something is proved when two independent narratives agree. Of the busy career in England which the Northern legend assigns to Olaf not a trace is to be found in any English writer. But the presence of Olaf in Normandy is asserted alike |Richard allies himself with them.| by Norman and by Norwegian tradition. According to the Norman tale, the ravagers of Britanny left their prey, sailed to Rouen in answer to the Duke’s summons, |Mediation of King Robert.| and were there honourably received by him. But if Duke Richard did not shrink from such guests at Rouen, King Robert was naturally afraid of their appearance at Paris. After the treatment which the Bretons had received, all Gaul was endangered by their presence.[1012] The King then held, what is so rare in the history of France, so common in that of England and Germany, an assembly of the Princes of his realm.[1013] The royal summons was obeyed both by the Duke of the Normans and by the Count of Chartres. Peace was made by the mediation of the King; Count Odo kept his town of Dreux, and Duke Richard kept his new fortress of Tillières. The heathen Kings were to be got rid of as they might. Duke Richard persuaded them by rich gifts to go away then, and to promise to come again if they were wanted. One of them, Olaf, was converted to Christianity with many of his comrades. He was baptized by Archbishop Robert, and his career of sanctity begins forthwith.[1014]
Stories of this kind can hardly be admitted into history without a certain amount of dread lest the historian may prove to have opened his text for the reception of a mere piece of romance. They are stories which we cannot venture unhesitatingly to accept, but which we are not at all in a position unhesitatingly to deny. They are stories of which it is safest to say that the details are sure to be mythical, but that there is likely to be some groundwork of truth at the bottom. It is impossible to read this tale of the alliance of Richard the Good with Olaf and Lacman, without a lurking feeling that it may be the tale of Richard the Fearless and Harold Blaatand moved from its old place and fitted with a new set of names. If we get thus far, it is hardly possible to avoid going a step further, and asking whether the mythical element is not strong in the tale of Harold Blaatand himself. And it is hardly less difficult to read the story of the two heathen Kings, of whom one is converted, while the other seemingly goes away stiffnecked in his old errors, without asking whether the tale is not merely a repetition of the history of the dealings of Æthelred with Swegen and Olaf Tryggvesson twenty years before.[1015] Still we are hardly justified in altogether rejecting stories which we cannot disprove, and which rest on authority, certainly not first-rate, but still such as we are generally content to accept for statements which have no inherent |Their witness to the abiding connexion between Normandy and the North.| unlikelihood about them. And after all, in this particular case, the mere existence of the stories proves something of more importance than the particular facts which they profess to relate. Whether the tales either of Harold or of Olaf be historically true or not, the fact that such tales could obtain belief, and could find a place in recognized Norman history, shows that a strong feeling of connexion between Normandy and the Scandinavian mother-land must have lived on, even after all outward traces of Scandinavian descent had passed away.
Another feature in Norman history, which has its beginning in the reign of Richard the Good, is still more closely connected with our immediate subject. It was in the days of this prince that the Normans of the Norman duchy began to play an independent part beyond their own borders, and to enter on that series of foreign expeditions and foreign conquests of which the Norman Conquest of England was the last and greatest example.[1016] The earlier Dukes had founded the duchy; they had enlarged its borders; they had defended it against aggression from without, and had developed its resources within. The alliance between Richard the Good and King Robert had caused the Norman arms to be felt and dreaded throughout the length and breadth of Gaul. But now the limits both of the Norman duchy and of the French kingdom became too narrow for the energies both of the sovereigns of Normandy and of their subjects. The part played by the Normans in Europe had hitherto been partly defensive and partly secondary. They had withstood French, English, and German invasions, and they had aided their lords, ducal and royal, at Paris in a variety of military adventures. But now that no invader was to be feared, now that the Norman state held a fully established position in France and in Europe, the old Scandinavian spirit of distant enterprise and distant conquest awoke again. The Christian and French-speaking Norman was now as ready to jeopard his life and fortune in distant lands as ever his heathen and Scandinavian forefathers had been. The days of the actual crusades had not yet come, but already, while warfare of all kinds had charms, warfare against misbelievers was beginning to be clothed with a special charm in the eyes of the Christian chivalry of Normandy. As yet no distant conquest had been undertaken by any Norman Duke. Yet even under Richard the Good we find the power of Normandy employed beyond the bounds of the French kingdom, and in a cause which was not that of any immediate interest |Burgundian War. 1024.| of the Norman duchy. Besides the campaign in which Duke Richard vindicated the claim of his over-lord over the ducal Burgundy, he carried his arms beyond the frontier of the Western Kingdom into that further Burgundy which still kept its own line of Kings, and which was soon to return to its allegiance to Cæsar. Reginald, Count of the Burgundian Palatinate, had married Richard’s daughter Adeliza. Towards the end of Richard’s reign, this prince fell into the hands of his turbulent neighbour, Hugh, Count of Challon[1017] and Bishop of Auxerre. Hugh was a vassal of France, while Reginald’s dominions were held in fief of the last Burgundian King, the feeble Rudolf, himself little better than a vassal of the Emperor. But neither King nor Cæsar stepped forward to chastise the wrong-doer or to set free the captive. It was a Norman army, under the young Richard, son of the Duke, which presently taught the Count-prelate that a son-in-law of the Duke of the Normans could not be wronged with impunity.[1018]
But far greater and more enduring exploits than these were wrought during the reign of Richard, not by the public force of the Norman duchy, but by the restless energy of private Norman adventurers. An attempt to establish a Norman settlement in Spain came to nought; but in this period were laid the foundations of that great Norman settlement in Southern Italy which had such an |Exploits of Roger of Toesny in Spain. 1018.| important effect on the future history of Europe. Roger of Toesny was the first to carry the Norman arms into the Spanish peninsula. Spain had long before attracted the attention of a Norman sovereign; it was to Spain, as a heathen land, to which Richard the Fearless had persuaded the unbelieving portion of his Scandinavian allies to depart.[1019] It was in Spain, as the battle-ground of Christian and Saracen, that Roger now sought at once to wage warfare against the misbeliever and to carve out a dominion for himself. Roger was of the noblest blood of Normandy, boasting a descent from Malahulc, uncle of Rolf,[1020] and he may well have looked down upon the upstart gentlemen whose nobility had no higher source than the tardy bridal of their kinswoman Gunnor.[1021] Roger fought manfully against the infidels, and marvellous tales are told of his daring, his hard-won victories, his deeds of cannibal ferocity.[1022] He married the daughter of the widowed Countess of Barcelona, a princess whose dominions were practically Spanish, though her formal allegiance was due to the Parisian King. This marriage was doubtless designed as the beginning of a Norman principality in Spain; but the scheme failed to take any lasting root.
The exploits of the Normans in Italy, which began in the reign of Richard, form a theme of the highest interest, but one on which it is dangerous to enter, lest I should be drawn too far away both from my central subject and from those which directly bear upon it. On English, and even on Norman, affairs the influence of these great events was |The Conquest of England perhaps partly suggested by it.| merely indirect. One can hardly doubt that the wonderful successes of their countrymen in the South of Europe did much to suggest to the minds of those Normans who stayed at home that a still greater conquest nearer home was not wholly hopeless. The unsuccessful attempt of Duke Robert, which we shall presently have to mention, and the successful attempt of his greater son, may well have been partly suggested by the exploits of the sons of Tancred in Apulia. When private adventurers thus grew into sovereigns, what might not be done by the sovereign of Normandy himself, wielding the whole force of the land which gave birth to men like them? For it must be remembered that the Norman conquest of Apulia was no national enterprise, no conquest made in regular warfare waged by the Duke of the Normans against any other potentate. Private Norman adventurers, pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, Norman subjects under the displeasure of their own Duke,[1023] gentlemen of small estate whom the paternal acres could no longer maintain, gradually deprived the Roman Empire of the East[1024] of the remnant of its Western possessions, and won back the greatest of Mediterranean islands from the dominion of Mahomet to that of Christ. The sons of Tancred of Hauteville began as wikings who had changed their element; they gradually grew into Counts, Dukes, Kings, and Emperors. And, when the first horrors of conquest were over, no conquerors, not even Cnut himself, ever deserved better of the conquered. The noble island of Sicily, so long the battle-field of Europe and Africa, the land which Greece, Rome, Byzantium, had so long striven to guard or to recover from the incursions of the Carthaginian and the Arab, became, under her Norman Kings, the one example of really equal and tolerant government which the world could then show. Under the Norman sceptre the two most civilized races of the world,[1025] the Greek and the Saracen, could live together in peace, and could enrich their common country with the results of skill |Conquest of Sicily by Henry the Sixth. 1194–5.| and industry such as no Northern realm could rival. For once we are driven to blush for our common Teutonic blood, when we see how this favoured portion of the world, the one spot where contending creeds and races could display their best qualities under the sway of a common and impartial ruler, was enslaved and devastated and trodden under foot by the selfish ambition of a Teutonic invader.
The relations of Richard with England, his war with Æthelred,[1026] his dealings with Swegen,[1027] his reception of his fugitive brother-in-law and his children,[1028] have been already |Unbroken peace between Richard and Cnut.| spoken of. With Cnut he seems to have maintained perfect peace. His nephews, the sons of Æthelred and Emma, found shelter at his court, but only shelter. Of any attempt on their behalf, of any interference in the internal affairs of England, the wary Duke seems never to have thought. We must hasten on to the reign of another Norman prince, whose relations to our island were widely different.
Richard died after a reign of thirty years. Before his death he assembled the chief men of his duchy, and by their advice he settled the duchy itself on his eldest son Richard, and the county of Hiesmes on his second son |Reign of Richard the Third.| Robert as his brother’s vassal.[1029] Disputes arose between the brothers; Robert was besieged in his castle of Falaise, and when peace was made by the submission of Robert, the Duke did not long survive his success. After a reign of two years he died by poison,[1030] as was generally believed, |Robert succeeds. 1028.| and was succeeded by his brother.[1031] Robert, known as the Magnificent,[1032] is most familiar to us in English history as the father of the Conqueror. But he has no small claims on our notice on his own account. What the son carried out, the father had already attempted. Robert was in will, though not in deed, the first Norman conqueror of England.[1033] In the early part of his reign he had to struggle against several revolts in his own dominions. |He suppresses revolts at home.| We are not directly told what were the grounds of opposition to his government; but we are at least not surprised to hear of revolts against a prince who had attained to his sovereignty under circumstances so suspicious. But Robert overthrew all his domestic enemies,[1034] and he is at least not charged with any special cruelty in the reestablishment |He reduces Britanny to submission.| of his authority. With Britanny he did not remain on the same friendly terms as his father. His cousin Alan refused his homage, but he was brought to submission.[1035] In this warfare Neal of Saint-Saviour, who had so valiantly beaten off the English in their invasion of the Côtentin, appears side by side with a warrior whose name of Ælfred raises the strongest presumption of his English birth. The banishments of the earlier days of Cnut will easily account for so rare an event as that of an Englishman taking service under a foreign prince.[1036] But it was as the protector of unfortunate princes that Robert seems to have been most anxious to appear before the |He restores Baldwin of Flanders.| world. Baldwin of Flanders, driven from his dominions by his rebellious son, was restored by the power of the Norman Duke.[1037] A still more exalted suppliant presently implored his help. His liege lord, Henry, King of the French, was driven to claim the support of the mightiest of his vassals against foes who were of his own household. |King Robert and his sons.| King Robert had at first designed the royal succession for his eldest son Hugh, whom, according to a custom common in France, though unusual in England, he caused |Hugh is crowned and dies before him.| to be crowned in his lifetime.[1038] Hugh, a prince whose merits, we are told, were such that a party in Italy looked to him as a candidate for the Imperial crown,[1039] was, after some disputes with his father, reconciled to him, and died before him. Robert then chose as his successor his second son Henry, who was already invested with the |Henry crowned in his father’s lifetime.| duchy of Burgundy. Henry was accordingly accepted and crowned at Rheims.[1040] But the arrangement displeased Queen Constance, who was bent on the promotion of her |Death of King Robert.| third son Richard. On King Robert’s death, Constance and Richard expelled Henry, who took refuge with his |Henry expelled, and restored| Norman vassal, and was restored by his help, Richard being allowed to receive his brother’s duchy of Burgundy.[1041] |by Duke Robert. 1031.| The policy of Hugh the Great had indeed won for his house a mighty protector in the descendant of the pirates.
But there were other banished princes who had a nearer claim upon Duke Robert than his Flemish neighbour, a nearer personal claim than even his lord at Paris. The English Æthelings, his cousins Eadward and Ælfred, were still at his court, banished from the land of their fathers, while the Danish invader filled the throne of their fathers. Their mother had wholly forgotten them; their uncle had made no effort on their behalf; Robert, their cousin, was the first kinsman who deemed it any part of his business to assert their right to a crown which seemed to |Contradictory evidence as to the relations between Cnut and Robert.| have hopelessly passed away from their house. That Robert did make an attempt to restore them, that the relations between him and Cnut were unfriendly on other grounds, there seems no reason to doubt. But when we ask for dates and details, we are at once plunged into every kind of confusion and contradiction. The English writers are silent; from the German writers we learn next to nothing; the Scandinavian history of this age is still at least half mythical; the Norman writers never held truth to be of any moment when the relations of Normandy and England were concerned. That Robert provoked Cnut by threats or attempts to restore the Æthelings, and also by ill-treating and repudiating Cnut’s sister, seem to be facts which we may accept in the bare outline, whatever we say as to their minuter details. That Cnut retaliated by an invasion of Normandy, or that the threat of such an invasion had an effect on the conduct of the sovereigns of Normandy, are positions which are strongly asserted by various authorities. But their stories are accompanied by circumstances which directly contradict the witness of authorities which are far more trustworthy. In fact, the moment we get beyond the range of the sober contemporary Chronicles of our own land, we find ourselves in a region in which the mythical and romantic elements outweigh the historical, and moreover, in whatever comes from Norman sources, we have to be on our guard against interested invention as well as against honest error.
We have seen that Estrith, a sister of Cnut, was married to the Danish Earl Ulf, the brother-in-law of Godwine, to whom she bore the famous Swegen Estrithson, afterwards King of the Danes, one of the most renowned princes in Danish history. We are told by a crowd of authorities that, besides her marriage with Ulf, Estrith was married to the Duke of the Normans, that she was ill-treated by him in various ways, and was finally sent back with ignominy to her brother. Most of the writers who tell this story place this marriage before her marriage with Ulf, and make the Danish Earl take the divorced |Supposed wars between Cnut and Robert.| wife of the Norman Duke. With this story several writers connect another story of an invasion, or threatened invasion, of Normandy undertaken by Cnut in order to redress his sister’s wrongs. The most popular Danish writer even makes Cnut die, in contradiction to all authentic history, while besieging Rouen. We read also how the Norman Duke fled to Jerusalem or elsewhere for fear of the anger of the lord of six Northern kingdoms. Details of this kind are plainly mythical; but they point to some real quarrel, to some war, threatened if not actually waged, between Cnut and Robert. And chronology, as well as the tone of the legends, shows that the whole of these events must be placed quite late in Cnut’s reign. |Robert probably married Estrith.| The natural inference is that the marriage between Robert and Estrith took place, not before Estrith’s marriage with Ulf, but after Ulf’s death. The widow was richly |after Ulf’s death. c. 1026.| endowed; her brother had atoned for the slaughter of her husband by territorial grants which might well have moved the greed of the Norman. A superior attraction nearer his own castle may easily account for Robert’s neglect of his Scandinavian bride, a bride no doubt many years older than the young Count of Hièsmes. Within three years after Estrith’s widowhood, Robert became the father of him who was preeminently the Bastard.[1042]
It seems impossible to doubt that Robert’s intervention on behalf of his English cousins was connected with these events. The reign of Robert coincides with the last seven years of the reign of Cnut, so that any intervention of Robert in English affairs must have been in Cnut’s later days. Each prince would doubtless seize every opportunity of annoying the other; the tale clearly sets Robert before us as the aggressor; but as to the order of events we are left to guess. It would be perfectly natural, in a man of Robert’s character, if the repudiation of Estrith was accompanied, or presently followed, by the assertion of the claims of the Æthelings to her brother’s crown. The date then of the first contemplated Norman invasion of England can be fixed only within a few years; but the story, as we read it in the Norman accounts, seems credible enough in its general outline.[1043] The Duke sends an embassy to Cnut, demanding, it would seem, the cession of the whole kingdom of England to the rightful heir. That Cnut refused to surrender his crown is nothing wonderful, though the Norman writer seems shocked that the exhortation of the Norman ambassadors did not at once bring conviction to |Robert’s unsuccessful attempt| the mind of the usurper.[1044] The Duke then, in great wrath, determines to assert the claims of his kinsmen by force of |to invade England.| arms. An assembly of the Normans is held, a forerunner of the more famous assembly at Lillebonne, in which the invasion of England is determined on. A fleet is made ready with all haste, and Duke Robert and the Ætheling Eadward embark at Fécamp. But the wind was contrary; instead of being carried safely to Pevensey, the fleet was carried round the Côtentin and found itself on the coast of Jersey.[1045] All attempts were vain; the historian piously adds that they were frustrated by a special Providence, because God had determined that his servant Eadward should make his way to the English crown without the shedding of blood.[1046] The Duke accordingly gave up his enterprise on behalf of his cousin of England, and employed his fleet in a further harrying of the dominions of his cousin of Britanny.[1047] At last Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, the common uncle of Robert and Alan,[1048] reconciled the two princes, and the fleet seems now to have sailed to Rouen.[1049] Thus far we have a story, somewhat heightened in its details, but which may be taken as evidence that Robert, who had restored the fugitive sovereigns of France and Flanders, really thought of carrying on his calling of King-maker beyond the sea. Robert, a thorough knight-errant, doubtless designed the restoration of his cousin in perfect good faith, and with no more intention of any gain to himself than he had shown in the |Probable results of the success of such an invasion.| restorations of Baldwin and Henry. But if a Norman army had once landed in England, it would not have been so easy to bring it home again as it was to bring home an army which had simply marched into France or Flanders. Cnut, with no Tostig, no Harold Hardrada, to divert him from the main danger, and with the force of his other kingdoms ready to back him, would most likely have speedily crushed the invader. But had it been otherwise, one can hardly fancy that the results of the English expedition would have been of as little moment as the results of the French and the Flemish expedition. In France and Flanders Robert had simply turned the scale between two princes of the same house. But if a Norman army had set one of the sons of Æthelred on the English throne, the result would have been something more than a mere personal change of sovereign. Had Eadward held his crown by virtue of a victory won by Norman troops over Cnut’s Danes and Englishmen, the practical aspect of such a revolution could have hardly differed at all from the revolution which did take place under William. The prince thus established in his kingdom would have been, according to formal pedigrees, the cyne-hlaford, the descendant of Ælfred, Cerdic, and Woden. But half-Norman by birth, wholly Norman in feeling, raised to his throne by Norman swords, Eadward would have reigned still more thoroughly as a Frenchman than he did reign when, a few years later, he came to the crown in a more peaceable way. The storm, or whatever it was, which kept back Duke Robert from his invasion of England, put off the chances of a Norman Conquest for nearly forty years.