The tale of the early days of Bec is one of the most captivating in the whole range of monastic history or monastic legend. It has a character of its own. The origin of Bec differs from that of those earlier monasteries which gradually grew up around the dwelling-place or the burial-place of some revered Bishop or saintly hermit. It differs again from the origin of those monasteries of its own age which were the creation of some one external founder. Or rather it united the two characters in one. It gradually rose to greatness from very small beginnings; but, gradual as the process was, it took place within the lifetime of one man. And that man was at once its founder and its first ruler. The part of Cuthberht at Lindisfarne, the parts of William and of Lanfranc at Caen, |Herlwin, founder of Bec, born 994.| were all united in Herlwin, Knight, Founder, and Abbot. This famous man passed thirty-seven years of his life as a man of the world, a Norman gentleman and soldier. His father Ansgod boasted of a descent from the first |His descent| Danes who occupied Neustria,[636] that is to say, from the original companions of Rolf as distinguished from the later settlers under Harold Blaatand.[637] And this descent agrees with the geographical position of his estates, which lay, though on the left bank of the Seine, yet on the right bank of the Dive, within the limits of the original grant of Charles the Simple.[638] On the spindle side he boasted of a still higher ancestry; his mother Heloise is said, on what authority it is not very clear, to have been a near |and early life.| kinswoman of the reigning house of Flanders.[639] He was a vassal of Count Gilbert of Brionne, the faithful guardian of William, in the neighbourhood of whose castle his own estates lay. He had proved his faithfulness to his immediate lord by many services of various kinds, and he had won the favour, not only of Count Gilbert but of their common sovereign Duke Robert. On one occasion, an injury received from the Count had caused him to forsake |His virtues.| his service. But presently the Count was engaged in a more dangerous warfare with Ingelram, Count of Ponthieu. Herlwin with his followers came at a critical moment to Gilbert’s help, and the Count restored all, and more than all, that he had taken away from one who so well knew how to return good for evil.[640] At another time Gilbert sent Herlwin to the ducal court on an errand of which his conscience disapproved;[641] he failed to execute the unjust commission; in revenge the Count ravaged the lands of Herlwin and did great damage to their poor occupiers.[642] Herlwin went to the Count, and made light of his own injury, but prayed that in any case the losses of the poor might be made good to them. Such a man was already a saint in practice, if not in profession; and we have no right to assume that, in this carrying out of Christian principles into daily life, Herlwin stood alone among the gallant gentlemen of Normandy. But the misfortune always was that men like Herlwin, who were designed to leaven the world by their virtues, were in that age open to so many temptations to forsake the world |He contemplates monastic retirement.| altogether. Herlwin began to feel himself out of place in the secular world of Normandy, full, as it was in those days, of strife and bloodshed, where every man sought to win justice for himself by his own sword. But he was hardly more out of place in the Norman ecclesiastical world, where priests not only married freely, but bore arms and lived the life of heathen Danes,[643] and where even monks used their fists in a way which would hardly have been becoming in laymen.[644] The faith of Herlwin nearly failed him when he saw the disorder of one famous monastery; but he was comforted by accidentally beholding the devotions of one godly brother, who spent the whole night in secret prayer. He was thus convinced that the salt of the earth had not as yet wholly lost its savour.[645]
Herlwin now, at the age of forty, retired from the world, and received the habit of religion from Herbert, Bishop of Lisieux.[646] Count Gilbert released him from his service, and seemingly released his lands from all feudal dependence on himself.[647] Herlwin then began the foundation of a monastery on his own estate of Burneville near Brionne.[648] A few devotees soon gathered round him. They lived a hard life, Herlwin himself joining them in tilling the ground, and in raising with his own hands the church and the other buildings needed by the infant brotherhood.[649] The |He becomes Priest and Abbot. 1037.| church, when finished, was consecrated by Bishop Herbert, who at the same time ordained Herlwin a priest, and gave him the usual benediction as Abbot of the new society.[650] About the same time he for the first time learned to read, and that to such good purpose that he gradually became mighty in the Scriptures, and that without ever neglecting the daily toil which his austere discipline imposed upon himself.[651] His mother Heloise also, struck by the example of her son, gave up her dower-lands, and became a sort of serving sister to the brotherhood, washing their clothes, and doing for them other menial services.[652] But after a while it was found that the site of Burneville was unsuited for a religious establishment; it seems not to have been well supplied with the two great monastic necessities of wood |He removes the monastery to Bec.| and water.[653] Herlwin therefore determined to remove his infant colony to a spot better suited to his purpose, a spot to which his own name has ever since been inseparably attached. A wooded hill divides the valley of the Risle, with the town and castle of Brionne, from another valley watered by a small stream, or, in the old Teutonic speech of the Normans, a beck.[654] That stream gave its name to the most famous of Norman religious houses, and to this day the name of Bec is never uttered to denote that spot without the distinguishing addition of the name of Herlwin. |Present condition of the spot.| The hills are still thickly wooded; the beck still flows, through rich meadows and under trees planted by the water-side, by the walls of what once was the renowned monastery to which it gave its name. But of the days of Herlwin no trace remains besides these imperishable works of nature. A tall tower, of rich and fanciful design, one of the latest works of mediæval skill, still attracts the traveller from a distance; but of the mighty minster itself all traces, save a few small fragments, have perished.[655] The monastic buildings, like those of so many other monasteries in Normandy and elsewhere in Gaul, had been rebuilt in the worst days of art, and they are now applied to the degrading purposes of a receptacle of French cavalry. The gateway also remains, but it is, like the rest of the buildings, of a date far later than the days of Herlwin. The truest memorial of that illustrious Abbey is now to be found in the parish church of the neighbouring village. In that lowly shelter is still preserved the effigy with which after times had marked the resting-place of the Founder. Such are all the traces which now remain of the house which once owned Lanfranc and Anselm as its inmates.
In this valley it was that Herlwin finally fixed his infant settlement, devoting to it his own small possessions in the valley itself, and obtaining from Count Gilbert a grant of the adjoining wood, one of the most precious possessions of the lordship of Brionne.[656] There Herlwin built his first church, and added a wooden cloister, which he afterwards exchanged for one of stone.[657] There he ruled his house in peace and wisdom, his knowledge of the outer world, and especially his familiarity with the laws of Normandy, standing him, we are told, in good stead.[658] Bec seemed destined to the ordinary lot of a monastic house—to a short succession of men of primitive zeal and primitive virtue, followed by a period of worldly prosperity, leading to its usual results of coldness and laxity. And such doubtless would have been its fate, the glory of Bec would have been as transitory as that of other monastic houses, but for the appearance of |Effects of the admission of Lanfranc.| one illustrious man, who came to be enrolled as a private member of the brotherhood, and who gave Bec for a while a special and honourable character with which hardly any other monastery in Christendom could compare. Abbot |Herlwin’s death. 1078.| Herlwin survived his first conversion forty-four years;[659] his first humble church was pulled down and rebuilt, and |The church consecrated by Lanfranc. 1077.| the new fabric was hallowed in his presence by one whom he had himself received to the monastic order, one who had made Bec the light of the world, and who then returned to his old home in all the greatness of the Patriarch of the nations beyond the sea.[660] If the first origin of the house was owing to the simple devotion of its founder and Abbot Herlwin, its lasting fame and splendour were no less owing to the varied learning and soaring genius of its renowned Prior Lanfranc.
The future Primate of England was one of the most illustrious witnesses to that feature in the Norman character which made the men of that race welcome strangers from every quarter, and which led to the settlement of so many eminent men of various nations, both in Normandy itself and in the conquered lands of Britain and Sicily.[661] In the days of Richard the Good, monks and priests had flocked into Normandy, even from such distant lands as Greece and Armenia, and the Norman Duke had kept up a close intercourse even with the monks of Mount Sinai.[662] The first great teacher of Bec came from a nearer, though |His birth at Pavia. 1005.| still a distant, region. Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, Abbot of Saint Stephen’s, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a native of the Lombard city of Pavia, and was born of a family which, though perhaps not technically noble, was at any rate |His learning;| eminent and honourable.[663] He was full of all the secular learning of the time, and his range of study seems to have taken in the unusual accomplishment of a knowledge of Greek.[664] A knowledge of that tongue was then probably less rare than it became somewhat later, and it is an accomplishment which might be looked for in Italy, even in the northern part of the peninsula, more naturally than |his knowledge of Greek,| in any country north of the Alps. At the time of Lanfranc’s birth and youth, a large part of Southern Italy was still subject to the Eastern Emperors, and the use of the Greek language survived, both in Sicily and on the main land, long after the establishment of the Norman dynasty. A knowledge of that tongue must therefore have been highly expedient for those who were likely to have any intercourse, diplomatic or commercial, with the parts of Italy where it was spoken; still we cannot suppose that its acquirement formed any part of the ordinary course of study |and of Civil Law.| of a Lombard scholar. But the great object of Lanfranc’s study was one specially adapted to the Imperialist city where he was born, the study of the Civil Law. It was an hereditary calling in his family; his father Hanbald had been a lawyer of distinction,[665] and his son more than maintained the credit of his house. As a pleader, he was eminently successful; the veterans of the courts could not resist the eloquence and the learning with which he spoke, and his legal opinions were accepted as decisive by the magistrates of his native city.[666] His father died while Lanfranc was still young, and his honours and offices were offered to his son.[667] Why a man who had such fair prospects at home should have forsaken that home for the distant and barbarous Normandy, it is not easy to guess.[668] We are told only that he heard that Normandy was a land which |He opens a school at Avranches. 1039.| lacked learning, and that its young Duke was disposed to give encouragement to learned men.[669] At all events, early in the period of anarchy which formed the early years of the reign of William, Lanfranc came into Normandy with a following of scholars, and opened a school in the episcopal city of Avranches.[670] The cathedral church of that |1172.| city beheld in after times the penance by which the greatest successor of William atoned for his share in the death of the most renowned among the successors of Lanfranc. But the glory of Avranches has passed away. From it, alone among the seven episcopal towns of Normandy, minster and Bishoprick have wholly vanished.[671] But, for those few years of the life of Lanfranc, Avranches must have been an intellectual centre without a rival on this side of the Alps. The fame of the great teacher was spread abroad, and scholars flocked to him from all quarters. But as yet his learning was wholly secular; his pursuits were peaceful, but he thought perhaps less of divine things than Herlwin had thought when he rode after Count Gilbert to battle. At last divine grace touched his heart; a sudden conversion made him resolve to embrace the monastic |He becomes a monk at Bec. 1042.| profession. He left Avranches suddenly, without giving any notice to his friends and scholars, and set forth to seek for the poorest and most lowly monastery that could be found, for one which his own fame had never reached.[672] A happy accident led him to Bec, which then fully answered his ideal.[673] Received as a monk by Abbot Herlwin, he strove to hide himself from the world; he even at one time thought of leaving the monastery, and leading a life of utter solitude in the wilderness.[674] But the |He becomes Prior. 1045.| Abbot required him on his obedience to remain, and he was advanced to the dignity of Prior.[675] He had already proved his fitness to command by his readiness to obey. His predecessor in the Priorship, an unlearned man, had bidden him, when reading in the refectory, to shorten the second syllable of docere. The great scholar did as he was bid, deeming holy obedience to be something higher than the rules of Donatus.[676] But such necessity was not long laid upon him; such a light as his could not long be hid under a bushel; his fame was again spread abroad, and, with it, the fame of the house in which he sojourned. Clerks and scholars, men of noble birth, even sons of princes, flocked to profit by the instruction of the learned Prior, and enriched the Abbey with costly gifts for his sake.[677] The society increased so fast that the buildings were found to be too small, and the site not healthy enough for so great a multitude.[678] By the persuasion of Lanfranc, Herlwin was induced to change his abode once more, and to raise a third house, larger and more stately than either of its predecessors,[679] but still within the same valley and |His favour with William.| upon the banks of the same beck. At last the name of the Prior of Bec reached the ears of Duke William himself. Lanfranc became his trusted counsellor,[680] and we shall presently find him acting zealously and successfully on his sovereign’s behalf, in pursuit of the object which, next to the Crown of England, was nearest to William’s heart. |He appears at the Synods of Rome and Vercelli. 1049, 1050.| The fame of Lanfranc soon spread beyond the bounds of Normandy; he appeared, as we have already seen, at a succession of synods, as the champion of the received doctrine of the Church.[681] The theological position of Lanfranc I leave to be discussed by others;[682] it is enough to say that, summoned before Pope and Council as a suspected heretic, he came away from Rome and Vercelli with the reputation of the most profound and most orthodox doctor of his time.[683]
The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul had, as far as the eleventh century was concerned, an origin of a different kind from that of Bec; but its story is really little more than that of Bec carried back into an earlier age. That is to say, while Bec was altogether a new foundation, Saint Evroul was, like many other religious houses both in England and Normandy, a restoration of an earlier one. In both countries the Scandinavian invaders had destroyed or pillaged countless churches and monasteries. Many of these last, sometimes after complete destruction, sometimes after dragging on a feeble existence during the intermediate time, rose again, like Crowland and Jumièges, in more than their former greatness. But the case of Saint Evroul was a peculiar one. Its temporary fall was owing, not to the devastations of heathen Northmen, but to the wars between Christian |Story of Ebrulf or Evroul. 575.| Normandy and Christian France. The history of its founder, Ebrulf or Evroul, a saint of the sixth century, is, in many respects, a forestalling of the history of Herlwin of Bec.[684] Of noble birth in the city of Bayeux,—perhaps therefore of Saxon, rather than of either Frankish or Gaulish, blood,—high in favour at the court of Hlothar the son of Hlodwig, he lived, even as a layman, the life of a saint.[685] At last he forsook the world; his wife and himself both took monastic vows; but Ebrulf, as Lanfranc had wished to do, presently forsook his monastery for a deeper seclusion. With three companions only, he sought out a lonely spot by the river Charenton, close by the forest of Ouche, on the borders of the dioceses of Lisieux, Evreux, and Seez. There he lived a hermit’s life, adorned, as we are told, by many miracles,[686] and his cell, like the cell of Guthlac at Crowland, became the small beginning of a |Monastery of Saint Evroul; it escapes the Danish ravages;| famous monastery. The secluded site of the house saved it from the ravages of the Northmen, and the votaries of Saint Evroul, with almost unique good luck, remained undisturbed, while Hasting and Rolf were overthrowing so many holy places of their brethren elsewhere.[687] But, during the troubled minority of Richard the Fearless, when King Lewis of Laôn and Duke Hugh of Paris were invading the defenceless Duchy,[688] the monks of Saint Evroul received two seemingly honourable, but, as it |but is pillaged by Hugh the Great. 943.| turned out, highly dangerous, guests. These were Herlwin, Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Orleans, the Chancellor of Hugh the Great, and Ralph of Drangy his Chamberlain.[689] Both, we are told, were men of great piety, but they showed their piety in a strange fashion. Soon after their visit, Duke Hugh gave orders for the ravage of that part of Normandy. His devout officers either despised or scrupled at plunder of a more vulgar kind;[690] they remembered the hospitality of the monks of Saint Evroul, and requited it by carrying off all the ornaments of their church, including, what they most valued, the relics of their founder and other saints. The holy spoil was duly shared among various churches of the Duchy of France,[691] and a large |The monastery forsaken.| body of the monks of Saint Evroul followed the objects of their veneration. A few however remained behind, and the brotherhood still dragged on a feeble existence for some time. At last the house of Saint Evroul was utterly forsaken and forgotten, and miracles were needed to point |The church restored by Restold.| out the spot where it had stood. A pious priest[692] from Beauvais, Restold by name, moved by a divine vision, came and dwelt on the spot, and found benefactors willing to repair the ruined church.[693] At last one special benefactor |Geroy and his family.| arose. Geroy, a man of great valour and piety, was lord of Escalfoy by the forest of Ouche, and of Montreuil near the Dive.[694] Of mingled French and Breton extraction, he had been attached to the fortunes of the elder William of Belesme, probably as a vassal of some of the estates held by him under the Crown of France. In a |c. 1015.| fight against Count Herbert of Maine, when William and all the rest of his followers had fled, Geroy regained the day by his single valour.[695] In return for this exploit, William introduced him at the court of Richard the Good, by whom he was allowed to succeed to the lordships already spoken of.[696] They had been the property of Helgo, a Norman noble, to whose daughter Geroy had been betrothed, but the marriage was hindered by the premature death of the bride.[697] By another wife he had a numerous family, many of whom were distinguished in Norman |William son of Geroy.| history.[698] He was himself succeeded by his second son William who, like his father, was attached to the house of Belesme, and also distinguished himself in the war with Maine.[699] He had however to contend for the possession of his estates against the violence of Count Gilbert of Brionne, a man who, on this as on some other occasions,[700] seems to have failed to carry into his private relations those principles of honourable conduct which in so marked a way distinguished his administration of public affairs. William was a brave soldier and a faithful vassal, ready to undergo any personal loss on behalf of his lord or of his friend.[701] He was also bountiful to the Church, though he strictly maintained the ecclesiastical privileges of his own lordships.[702] Twice he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, once during the height of his prosperity, and once after the great misfortune which clouded his later days. For |Blinded by William Talvas.| he it was whom the fierce Talvas, in defiance of every tie of gratitude, of hospitality, and of feudal honour, blinded and mutilated when he came as a guest to his bridal.[703] The daughter of Talvas too, the cruel Mabel, pursued the house of Geroy throughout life with unrelenting hatred.[704] |He grants Saint Evroul to Bec.| In his old age he became a monk at Bec, a house to which he had already been a benefactor.[705] He had given to Herlwin and his monks the lands of Saint Evroul and the church lately restored by Restold. It now became a cell to the Abbey, inhabited by a small body of monks with Lanfranc at their head.[706] But presently William’s nephews, Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil,[707] were designing the foundation of a monastery near the lordship on the Oudon from which they took their name. Of these two brothers, Robert became a monk of Saint Evroul; of Hugh we shall hear again in the history both |Restoration of Saint Evroul. 1050.| of Normandy and of England. Their pious uncle approved of the design, but pointed out that the site which they had chosen was lacking in the two great monastic necessaries of wood and water.[708] Let them rather join with him in restoring to its ancient splendour the fallen house of Saint Evroul, placed on a spot suited for every monastic want.[709] Uncle and nephews joined their energies and their purses; the rights of Bec over the church and lands were exchanged for another estate, and the new Saint Evroul arose with the full licence of Duke William, of Archbishop Malger, and of the other Prelates of Normandy. Monks were brought from Jumièges, and a brother of |1050.| that house, Theodoric by name, became the first Abbot of the new foundation.[710] But the house seems to have been |1058.| far less fortunate than Bec in its rulers. Theodoric after a while laid aside his office, driven to resignation, it is said, by the cabals of the co-founder Robert of Grantmesnil, who, having made his profession in the house, had obtained |1059.| the rank of Prior.[711] Robert was chosen to the |1063.| Abbotship, but, a few years after, he was himself deposed, or driven to resignation, by Duke William,[712] and long controversies followed between him and his successor Osbern.[713]
I have given a sketch of the origin of these two famous monasteries, partly because their stories bring before us so many members of the leading Norman families, but mainly |Connexion of the religious movement in Normandy with the Conquest of England.| as illustrating the great religious movement which was then at work in Normandy, and which was not without its share in bringing about the Conquest of England. When we come to a later stage in our history, we shall see with what art William, and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc, contrived to appeal to the religious feelings of the Normans, to represent the English King as a sinner against the local saints of Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a holy war undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a great religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is shown in the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which men gave of their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with which men, often the same men, pressed to become members of the holy brotherhoods. But a still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of Normandy, one however which Normandy only shared with many other parts of Europe, is to be found in the acceptance during this period of the famous Truce of God.
This extraordinary institution is the most speaking witness, at once to the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep counter feeling which underlaid men’s minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that the state of things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin against God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the precepts of the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided, governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe, every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which was right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of Britain where the authority of the English Kings was really established, the evil was smaller than it was in any part of Gaul.[714] Neither can we doubt that in Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was even greater than it was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme disorder of that minority was simply an exaggerated form of what might be called the normal state of things throughout the greater part of Western |Private war.| Europe. Every man claimed the right of private war against every other man who was not bound to him by any special tie as his lord or his vassal. And the distinction between private war and mere robbery and murder was not always very sharply drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an utterly unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere trifle, had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few such men as William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder; and men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were necessarily driven to constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor and the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman harried the lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must have suffered far more severely than their master. It was the tenants of Herlwin, rather than Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain |Undercurrent against the violence of the time.| of the ravages of Count Gilbert.[715] The lower classes then had especial reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we can well believe that there were many men of higher rank, who were dragged into these wretched contests against their own will, and who would have been well pleased to keep their swords sheathed, save when the lawful command of their sovereign required them to be drawn. These two contending feelings can always be traced side by side. Every attempt to put any kind of check on the violence of the times was always received with general good will; and yet the practical result of so many praiseworthy attempts was, after all, something extremely small. The men who were ready to keep the peace, and to observe the rules made to preserve it, were left in a manner at the mercy of those who refused to obey any rule whatsoever. Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace, the peaceable man was still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence. Still the movement in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a very general one. The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was a call, quite as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage war against the |Comparison between the Truce of God and the Crusades.| Infidels in other lands. But the call to the Crusade fell in with every side of the temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War. The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.
A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards |The form taken by the movement necessarily ecclesiastical.| men could not fail in those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As of old the Amphiktyonic Council, the great religious synod of Greece, strove to put some bounds to the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,[716] so now, in the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds to the horrors of war as |Moderation of the reform attempted.| waged between Christian and Christian. And at both times the spiritual power showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly forbidden in either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be avoided, certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy seasons were to be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was the form in which the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But Normandy was one of the last countries to receive the Truce, and it seems not to have appeared there in its earliest shape. It would rather seem as if the first attempts at its establishment had tried to compass too much, and as if later preachers of peace had been driven to content themselves with a much less close approach to |The Truce first preached in Aquitaine. 1034.| universal brotherhood. The movement began in Aquitaine, and the vague and rhetorical language of our authority would seem to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was forbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures.[717] It must not be forgotten that, in that age, it |Difficulty of defining public and private war.| must have been exceedingly difficult to draw the distinction between public and private war. In England indeed, where an efficient constitutional system existed, the distinction was plain. Except when sudden invasion required the immediate action of the local power, no war could be lawful which was not decreed by the King and his Witan. There might be rebellions and civil wars, but there was no recognized private warfare in the continental sense. But in Gaul it would have been impossible to deny the right of war and peace to the great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns of Normandy and Aquitaine. And, if the vassals of the Crown might make war on each other, on what principle could the same right be refused to their vassals, to the Lords of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of the feudal chain, it was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty ended and where simple property began. A preacher therefore who denounced private war must have had some difficulty in |Enthusiastic reception of the Truce.| so doing without denouncing war altogether. But the doctrine, hard as it might be to carry out in practice, was rapturously received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the Crusade was met with one universal cry of “God wills it,” so the Bishops, Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like universal cry of Peace, Peace, Peace.[718] Men bound themselves to God and to one another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they engaged solemnly to renew the obligation every five years.[719] From Aquitaine the movement spread through Burgundy, royal and ducal.[720] But it seems to have been gradually found that the establishment |Relaxation about 1041.| of perfect peace on earth was hopeless. After seven years from the first preaching of peace, we find the requirements of its apostles greatly relaxed. It was found vain to forbid all war, even all private war. All that was now attempted was to forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the morning of Monday.[721] It |Reception of the Truce in Burgundy and Lotharingia.| was in this shape that the Truce was first preached in northern and eastern Gaul. The days of Christ’s supper, of His passion, of His rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be kept free from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the cause; so especially was Richard, Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia.[722] But Bishop Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other |Opposition of Gerard of Cambray.| hand, that the whole affair was no concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was, he argued, the business of temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray; the pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out, and the attempt to enforce it could lead only to an increase of false-swearing.[723] This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have looked deeper into the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful and enthusiastic brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The luxury of mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time any restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.[724] Miracles were needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the apostolic labours of Hagano, the successor of Richard, |The Truce received at the Councils of Caen [1042],| brought even Normandy to a better mind.[725] The young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity of Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.[726] We are told that it was most carefully observed;[727] but, nearly forty years after, when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end, it had to be |and Lillebonne [1080].| again ordained in another Council at Lillebonne, and all the powers of the State, ecclesiastical and temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its observance.[728]
The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of the times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the institution of the Truce of God really did something for a while to lessen the frightful anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can hardly doubt that a far more effectual check was supplied by the increasing strength of William’s government, as he drew nearer to manhood, and more and more fully displayed the stern and vigorous determination of his character. But neither the one nor the other could avail wholly to preserve Normandy for some years to come |Wide spread conspiracy against William. 1047.| either from civil war or from foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread conspiracy than any that we have as yet heard of was now formed against the Duke. We have now reached one of the great epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall soon have to tell of his first battle and his first victory. Within a few years after the proclamation of the Truce of God, not this or that isolated Baron, but the whole of the most Norman part of Normandy |Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy.| rose in open revolt against its sovereign. The prime mover in the rebellion was Guy of Burgundy.[729] He |His friendship with the Duke, and his large possessions.| had been brought up with the Duke as his friend and kinsman,[730] and he had received large possessions from his bounty. Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border fortress on the Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France and Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the home of William’s faithful guardian Count Gilbert.[731] But the old jealousy was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insupportable, and, the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more insupportable was it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached manhood. After such a discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen years of life had given him all the caution and experience of a far more advanced age. He was as ready and as able to show himself a born leader of men as Cnut had been at the same time of life.[732] The turbulent spirits of Normandy began to feel that they had found a master; unless a blow were struck in time, the days of anarchy and licence, the days of castle-building and oppression, would |He plots with the lords of the Bessin and Côtentin.| soon be over. Guy of Brionne therefore found many ready listeners, especially among the great lords of the true Norman land west of the Dive. He, the lawful heir of their Dukes, no bastard, no tanner’s grandson, but sprung of a lawful marriage between the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, claimed the Duchy as his right by birth.[733] But, if the lords of the Bessin and the |Scheme for a division of the Duchy.| Côtentin would aid him in dispossessing the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with them.[734] This most probably means that he would content himself with the more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf, and would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems puzzling, why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it is hard to see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, and, above all, the chiefs of this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a prince who was at any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose connexion with Normandy was only by the spindle side, and who must have seemed |Geographical division of Parties;| in their eyes little better than a Frenchman. We can thus also understand the geographical division of parties during the war which followed. William is faithfully supported by the French districts to the East; by Rouen and the |Rouen and the French lands loyal to William.| whole land to the right of the Dive. These are the districts which the division between Guy and the confederate Lords would have given to the Burgundian prince, and which no doubt armed zealously against any such arrangement. To them the overthrow of William’s authority meant their own handing over to a foreign ruler. But to |Bayeux and the Danish lands join the rebellion.| the inhabitants, at any rate to the great lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian land, it would seem that the struggle against the ducal power was simply a struggle for renewed independence. We are told that the sympathies of the mass of the people, even in the Bessin and the Côtentin, lay with William.[735] This is quite possible. The peasant revolt may well have left behind it some root of abiding bitterness, bitterness which would show itself far more strongly against the immediate lords of the soil than against the distant sovereign, who is, in such cases, always looked to as a possible protector. But the great lords of the western districts joined eagerly in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or unwillingly, followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony of Rolf,[736] of the colonies of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand, drew the sword against the domination of the districts which, even a hundred years before, had become French.[737] Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not whether the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in some out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling between the two districts was still living and working, just as the outward difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants. |Rebel leaders;| The foremost men of western Normandy at once attached themselves to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in the revolt was Nigel or Neal of Saint Saviour, Viscount[738] of Coutances, the son of the chief who had, forty-six |Neal of Saint Saviour.| years before, beaten back the host of Æthelred.[739] The elder Neal had died, full of years, during the days of anarchy,[740] and his son was destined to an equally long possession of his honours. In the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle by the Ouve, already consecrated by a small college of Canons, the foundation of his grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous Abbey of Saint Saviour.[741] This point formed the natural centre of the whole conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin, commanded the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and valleys, its rocks and marshes, the dreary landes by the great minster of Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which had stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the rescue.[742] The Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader of the rebellion, won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not scruple to rob his mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his ally.[743] With Neal |Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux.| stood Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his castle of Brichessart, held the same sway over the Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the Danes of the Côtentin.[744] |Hamon Dentatus.| In the same company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, lord too of the steep of Creuilly, where a vast fabric of later times has displaced his ancient donjon, and where the adjoining church bears witness to the splendour and bounty of the generation immediately following his own.[745] Some personal peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of our Latin chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and Hamon Dentatus became the forefather of men famous in British as well as in Norman history.[746] One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the rebel by the strange name of Antichrist;[747] but, as in the case of Thurstan of Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His son, Robert Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa and of Harold, to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the southern Cymry, and to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with the lowlier castles of his twelve homagers of |Grimbald of Plessis.| the land of Morganwg. Hardly less famous was a third Baron from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis, whose ancestors and whose descendants have won no renown, but whose own name still remains impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister’s son became the forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came William of Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a widowed Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the fortresses of Arundel and Castle Rising.[748] By the help of these men the claims of the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to support his rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had invaded, whether by force of arms or by the baser acts |Preparations for the revolt.| of treachery. They put their castles into a state of thorough defence; they stored them for a campaign or a siege,[749] and made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld.
The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,[750] with a treacherous attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems to have been the immediate agent.[751] |Attempt to seize William at Valonges.| The opportunity was tempting, as William was now at a point in Neal’s own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own castle. He was at Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and the rich and fanciful outline of whose Gothic cupola is one of the most striking objects in the architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent of the coming danger had reached him, and he had ventured into the enemy’s country in order to search out matters for himself. But, in any case, he did not neglect the chosen amusement to which he and his race were given up, even beyond other men of their time. Several days had been spent in the employment of William’s favourite weapon the bow[752] against either savage or harmless victims. At |William warned by his fool.| last, one night, when all his party, except his immediate household, had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life,[753] burst into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The Duke arose, |His escape.| half dressed in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke’s Way. William crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He entered the building, and prayed for God’s help on his way. His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of Rye,[754] the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord of Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on which his castle was raised.[755] William was still urging on |His reception by Hubert of Rye.| his foaming horse past the gate; but Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till he was safely lodged |He reaches Falaise.| in his own castle of Falaise.[756] The command of their father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose high in William’s favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in the lands of England, when we find that Eudes the son of Hubert, the King’s Dapifer and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the founder of the great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame as one of the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the love and confidence of the conquered English.[757]