promise, it is hard to see how William could have subsequently
made the Normans and the world believe in the sacredness of
his claim. ... William returned to Normandy; but next year
Edward was forced to change his policy." Godwine and his sons
returned to England, with a fleet at their backs; London
declared for them, and the king submitted himself to a
reconciliation.
{791}
"The party of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no mention
was made of the gift of the crown to William. Godwine, indeed,
did not long survive his restoration, but dying the year
after, 1053, left his son Harold Earl of the West-Saxons and
the most important man in England." King Edward the Confessor
lived yet thirteen years after this time, during which period
Earl Harold grew continually in influence and conspicuous
headship of the English party. In 1062 it was Harold's
misfortune to be shipwrecked on the coast of France, and he
was made captive. Duke William of Normandy intervened in his
behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as the price of
his assistance, extorted an oath from Harold, soon to be used
against him. Harold, it is said, became his man, promised to
marry 'William's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in
William's hands, and support his claim to the English throne
on Edward's death. By a stratagem of William's the oath was
unwittingly taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under the
table on which Harold laid hands to swear, whereby, according
to the notions of those days, the oath was rendered more
binding." But two years later, when Edward the Confessor died,
the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be king, disregarding
Edward's promise and Harold's oath to the Duke of Normandy.
A. H. Johnson,
The Normans in Europe,
chapters 10 and 12.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapters 7-10.
J. R. Green,
The Conquest of England,
chapter 10.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066.
Election and coronation of Harold.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (spring and summer).
Preparations of Duke William to enforce his claim to the
English crown.
On receiving news of Edward's death and of Harold's acceptance
of the crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time in
demanding from Harold the performance of the engagements to
which he had pledged himself by his oath. Harold answered that
the oath had no binding effect, by reason of the compulsion
under which it was given; that the crown of England was not
his to bestow, and that, being the chosen king, he could not
marry without consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke had
this reply he proceeded with vigor to secure from his own
knights and barons the support he would need for the enforcing
of his rights, as he deemed them, to the sovereignty of the
English realm. A great parliament of the Norman barons was
held at Lillebonne, for the consideration of the matter. "In
this memorable meeting there was much diversity of opinion.
The Duke could not command his vassals to cross the sea; their
tenures did not compel them to such service. William could
only request their aid to fight his battles in England: many
refused to engage in this dangerous expedition, and great
debates arose. ...William, who could not restore order,
withdrew into another apartment: and, calling the barons to
him one by one, he argued and reasoned with each of these
sturdy vassals separately, and apart from the others. He
exhausted all the arts of persuasion;--their present courtesy,
he engaged, should not be tamed into a precedent, ... and the
fertile fields of England should be the recompense of their
fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuneration, the barons
assented. ... William did not confine himself to his own
subjects. All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the
neighbouring states were invited to join his standard. ... To
all, such promises were made as should best incite them to the
enterprise--lands,--liveries,--money,--according to their
rank and degree; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was
appointed as the place where all the forces should assemble.
William had discovered four most valid reasons for the
prosecution of his offensive warfare against a neighbouring
people:--the bequest made by his cousin;--the perjury of
Harold;--the expulsion of the Normans, at the instigation, as
he alleged, of Godwin;--and, lastly, the massacre of the Danes
by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold
enabled William to obtain the sanction of the Papal See.
Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, allowed, nay, even urged him to
punish the crime, provided England, when conquered, should be
held as the fief of St. Peter. ... Hildebrand, Archdeacon of
the Church of Rome, afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory
VII., greatly assisted by the support which he gave to the
decree. As a visible token of protection, the Pope transmitted
to William the consecrated banner, the Gonfanon of St. Peter,
and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the
Apostles was enclosed."
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
volume 3, pages 300-303.
"William convinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of
England and Scandinavia that his claim to the English crown
was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him to
assert it in arms. ... William himself doubtless thought his
own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded others.
But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if
it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends
may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe the worse
cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher
statesmanship than William showed in his great pleading before
all Western Christendom. ... Others had claimed crowns; none
had taken such pains to convince all mankind that the claim
was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one
side a great advance."
E. A. Freeman,
William the Conqueror,
chapter 6.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (September).
The invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their
overthrow at Stamford Bridge.
"Harold [the English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to
face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the kingdom,
almost at the same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and
preparations of the Duke of Normandy soon reached England.
During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the head of
a large naval and military force, had been on the watch along
the English coast. But months passed away and no enemy became
visible. William, it was said, had been apprised of the
measures which had been taken to meet him. ... Many supposed
that, on various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned.
Provisions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men
began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding the remainder,
returned to London. But the news now came that Harold
Hardrada, king of Norway, had landed in the north, and was
ravaging the country in conjunction with Tostig, Harold's
elder brother. This event came from one of those domestic
feuds which did so much at this juncture to weaken the power
of the English.
{792}
Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria [as earl] in
the most arbitrary manner, and had perpetrated atrocious
crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an amount
of disaffection which seems to have put it out of the power of
his friends to sustain him. He had married a daughter of
Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to
the duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he affirmed, had
not done a brother's part towards him, and he was more
disposed, in consequence, to side with the Norman than with
the Saxon in the approaching struggle. The army with which he
now appeared consisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and
their avowed object was to divide not less than half the
kingdom between them. ... [The young Mercian earls Edwin and
Morcar] summoned their forces ... to repel the invasion under
Tostig. Before Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an
engagement at a place named Fulford, on the Ouse, not far from
Bishopstoke. Their measures, however, were not wisely taken.
They were defeated with great loss. The invaders seem to have
regarded this victory as deciding the fate of that part of the
kingdom. They obtained hostages at York, and then moved to
Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of dividing the
northern parts of England between them. But in the midst of
these proceedings clouds of dust were seen in the distance.
The first thought was, that the multitude which seemed to be
approaching must be friends. But the illusion was soon at an
end. The dust raised was by the march of an army of West
Saxons under the command of Harold."
R. Vaughan,
Revolutions of English History,
book 3, chapter 1.
"Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no
authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in
the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the
highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a
description which, when critically examined, proves to be
hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad.
... At least we know that the long struggle of that day was
crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The
leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that
England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground.
There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings,
yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many
forms and in so many lands. ... There Tostig, the son of
Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a
life which had begun with promises not less bright than that
of his royal brother. ... The whole strength of the Northern
army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means
to reach the ships at Riccall."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 14, section. 4.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October).
The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings.
The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September
25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September
28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of
invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The
news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the
following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn
and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches,
over the route it had traversed no longer than the week
before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join
him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and
arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the
camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime
the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by
way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the
devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without
waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast
to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill
of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a
position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to
concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate
is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a
decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads
from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an
October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this
point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered
thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of
Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. ... A general
charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the
minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching
it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first
of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall.
The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the
English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out,
Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by
the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke
rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. ... His Breton
troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in
disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the
army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he
tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.'
Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard;
unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's
brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons,
beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to
the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his
steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the
flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as
the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of
the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when
William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force
from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly
pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the
abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while
French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At
three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around
the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay
on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle
Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to
the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense
masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft
pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns,
and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse."
J. R. Green,
A Short History of the English People,
chapter 2, section 4.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 15, section 4.
E. S. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,
chapter 8.
Wace,
Roman de Rou,
translated by Sir A. Malet.
{793}
England: A. D. 1066-1071.
The Finishing of the Norman Conquest.
"It must be well understood that this great victory [of
Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in
possession of the whole land. He still held only part of
Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as
yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left
like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many
battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning
in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on
Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all,
except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself
King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later,
and even then he had real possession only of about a third of
the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full
possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the
less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William
never met with any general resistance. ... During the year 1067
William made no further conquests; all western and northern
England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and
Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land
which had really submitted. The next two years were the time
in which all England was really conquered. The former part of
1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him
central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme
north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win
Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York.
Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms,
and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the
English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by
one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the
still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester.
Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in
Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was
able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his
schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by
the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070
began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which
lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full
King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national
resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the
country. ... The conquest of the land, as far as fighting
goes, was now finished."
E. A. Freeman,
Short History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087.
The spoils of the Conquest.
"The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in
the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts
nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded
territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went
over the whole extent of country in which the army had left
garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every
kind, public and private, carefully registering every
particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all
the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in
battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had
been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the
property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues,
furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first
class were declared forever disinherited; the second class,
were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates
and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman
writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain
their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also
despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention
of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to
entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and
devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their
sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion
of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest,
according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly
contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard
Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The
immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of
those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the
banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in
money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon
wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in
marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had
fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had
accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor
wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered.
His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had
accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but
that stolen goods had no attraction for him."
A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4.
"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the
Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of
its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed
upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might
have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through
the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals,
partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious
of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon
became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled,
were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation
of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the
great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the
close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of
the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior
freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the
higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in
presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book,
afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the
time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative
numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the
immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now
affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English]
form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are
summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ...
{794}
This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation
must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the
nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth,
there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers
who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury
and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just.
Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of
them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of
contemporary authorities."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages.
chapter 8, part 2.
"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to
take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition
in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course
to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's
theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had
been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had
helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then
were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully
deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general
redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power
advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ...
Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one
so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing
new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the
every-day punishment for various public and private crimes.
... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and
bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly
little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."
E. A. Freeman,
William the Conqueror,
pages 102-104, 126.
"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more
heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the
change of owners the title changed. The complicated and
unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were
exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was
not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from
confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no
doubt greatest in the higher ranks."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 9, section. 95.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.
The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.
"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent
of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by
rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not
flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these
marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the
land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this
damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of
Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of
Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable
for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once
served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish
conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the
rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters,
assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now
dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with
their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of
the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and
wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took
the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first
hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and
thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction,
at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become
powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea,
or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."
A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4.
"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of
Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been
little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still
less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and
without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy
who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and
feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one
compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And
theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large:
from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood,
across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five
burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and
Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman
town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land
of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England
slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings
of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible,
because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a
natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down
instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against
the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in
the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake,
Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms
of whom appear on the cover of this book."
C. Kingsley,
Hereward the Wake,
Prelude.
The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until
October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been
betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the
disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He
made his escape and various accounts are given of his
subsequent career and his fate.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 20, section 1.
ALSO IN:
C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
first series, chapter 8.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086.
The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.
"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of
England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative
system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the
highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great
registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken
of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the
census of the entire population. The respective registers were
preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman
were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de
Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the
Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"
E. Fischel,
The English Constitution,
chapter 1.
For a different statement see the following: "The recently
attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the
king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his
resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon
the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short
space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the
commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the
sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish
priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township.
{795}
The result of their labours was a minute description of all
the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four
northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland
and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates
the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins,
and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the
tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the
conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the
key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance
in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were
transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two
volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of
Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus
Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at
Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."
T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
chapter 2.
"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to
undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information,
and much that has been written on the subject savours more of
a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the
immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of
St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners
by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the
heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give,
and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of
inquiry, which sets forth as follows:
I. What is the manor called?
II. Who held it in the time of King Edward?
III. Who now holds it?
IV. How many hides?
V. What teams are there in demesne?
VI. What teams of the men?
VII. What villans?
VIII. What cottagers?
IX. What bondmen?
X. What freemen and what sokemen?
XI. What woods?
XII. What meadow?
XIII. What pastures?
XIV. What mills?
XV. What fisheries?
XVI. What is added or taken away?
XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now?
XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?
All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King
Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and
if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is,
I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry,
and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns
as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are
driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the
Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully
studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it
was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long
before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred
and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly
declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The
defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and
keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's
revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first
to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the
defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied
unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous
remissions of its liability, and its possessions were
constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further
remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected
and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor
tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a
small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be
collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had
probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately
remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion
appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror
was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides
by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects.
Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of
the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the
difficulties before him and to count the resources of his
kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at
hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman
mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken
(as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most
public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with
the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and
fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was
prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider
the liability of his subjects from every possible point of
view."
Stuart Moore,
On the Study of Domesday Book
(Domesday Studies, volume 1).
"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and
economical history of our country, a mine almost
inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among
national documents it is unique. There is nothing that
approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók,
which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland
and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they
settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and
apportioned among them. Such a document for England,
describing the way in which our forefathers divided the
territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after
their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday
Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the
English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not
only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman
host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names
of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before
the great battle which changed all the future history of
England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of
the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the
earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration
of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans,
cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of
the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of
England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were
almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts
first subdued the British population was exterminated or
driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."
I. Taylor,
Domesday Survivals
(Domesday Studies, volume 1).
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest,
chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5.
W. de Gray Birch,
Domesday Book.
F. W. Maitland,
Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.).
{796}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.
The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.
William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine
to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger
son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of
£5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The
Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to
persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William
Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of
Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the
respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown
had always been elective. ... Primogeniture ... gave at that
time no right to the crown of England, independent of the
election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this
title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most
congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation,
and from their partiality received a popular support, which
was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled
the king to court his people by promises to diminish their
grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his
banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated
Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English
people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. ...
The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some
time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's
activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in
its most vicious form. ... Odo's politics only facilitated the
Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not
completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of
Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both
countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and
combined their interest to persuade their respective
sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important
article of their reconciliation provided, that if either
should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his
dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies
ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The
mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It
had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric
character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring,
original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh,
tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in
its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. ... While
Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected,
and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. ... The
death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and
influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but
undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to
choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an
unprincipled man. ... The minister advised the king, on the
death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions.
... The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation,
tempted both the king and his minister to increase its
productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new
prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many
bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for
some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he
suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; ... His disagreement
with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the
battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions
of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc--a fair
request--but also the lands which had before that time
belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration
of property, could not be complied with without great
disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king
that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels
should be taken in preference to every other. ... Though
Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his
age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from
having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature,
that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild
management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to
have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind
of his sovereign. ... Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys
oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to
visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most
adapted to overawe the king. ... William threatened, that if
he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the
archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel
naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he
went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was
searched before his departure, that he might carry away no
money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king
immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands
and property. This was about three years before the end of the
reign. ... Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The
possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's
ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His
first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were
increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to
join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to
William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the
usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives
were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in
their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of
Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the
Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his
counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on
his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of
Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious
cruelty of the action. ... The government of William appears
to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the
church it was oppressive. ... He had scarcely reigned twelve
years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a
few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends
dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some
authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom
he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and
to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a
stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it.
... At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel
discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft
struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell,
without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. ...
It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel
actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most
prevalent at the time, both here and in France. ...
{797}
None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed
assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to
impute it to anyone. ... Henry was hunting in a different part
of the New Forest when Rufus fell. ... He left the body to the
casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately
to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. ... He obtained
the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the
following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected
king, and crowned. ... He began his reign by removing the
unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled
Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation,
by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign.
He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter,
signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people
their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his
father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his
brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the
nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect
very early; had given him the best education which the age
could supply. ... He became the most learned monarch of his
day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or
fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards
deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt
the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual
taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation
by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of
Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been
waylaid and killed."
S. Turner,
History of England during the Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapters 5-6.
The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were
soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who
had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went
on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was
defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The
duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy
led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused
Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119,
where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all
south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held
out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in
1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and
died.
E. A. Freeman,
The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I.
ALSO IN:
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
volume 4.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154.
The miserable reign of Stephen.
Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England.
The transition to hereditary monarchy.
After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne
was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or
William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk
(1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and
bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda,
widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very
unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party
refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly
called. This party maintained the superior claims of the
family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had
married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have
fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but
his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him.
Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens
of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a
council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war
ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which
long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in
England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles
with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their
extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by
Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of
churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of
building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their
donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the
happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles,
or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures
were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer
them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron
collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out
spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what
houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently
seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the
blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the
peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led
from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without
any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the
very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the
ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the
land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly
that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than
we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S.
Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural
war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler
battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards
Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained
strength and his party made head against the weak and
incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about
under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till
his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns
of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and
Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.
C. H. Pearson,
History of England During the Early and Middle Ages,
chapter 28.
"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot,
however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his
failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms
had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in
the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have
heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers,
not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think,
somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. ... His
weakness throughout his reign ... was due to two causes, each
supplementing the other.
{798}
These were--(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of
his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he
should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those
who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival
claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of
Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could
compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to
submit to further demands. ... The position of his opponents
throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two
assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the
'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second,
that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal
relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by
performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of
continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the
Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his
position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his
Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as
their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that
was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious
principle into England. ... Passing now to the other point,
the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great
interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at
what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle
of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary
right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this
subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual
sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:--'The crown
then continued to be elective. ... But whilst the elective
principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary
or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right
of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was
recognized as coordinate. ... The measures taken by Henry I.
for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove
the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the
importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the
elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong
bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in
his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the
sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges,
apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the
eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn
oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly
suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened
the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir
to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the
pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the
case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the
Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as
implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a
single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's
daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further
because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi
juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in
question can in no way be regarded in the light of an
election. ... The Empress and her partisans must have largely,
to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne
as her father's heir, and ... she and they appealed to the
oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather
than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a
free election. ... The sex of the Empress was the drawback to
her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question
that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his
father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough
to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have
done so. ... Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here
collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the
right of election to the English crown presents considerable
analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English
bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a
mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of
change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to
extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his
daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of
this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight
of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown,
not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's
heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when
Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by
Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that
election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his
succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether
the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere
ratification of a choice already made. ... In comparing
Stephen with his successor the difference between their
circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At
Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial
oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and
had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened
the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on
the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of
feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a
strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction
of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the
position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the
Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II.
derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered
from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance,
whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or
concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a
rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all
the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as
Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at
length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that
which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time
to break his power as effectually as the followers of the
Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have
owed his escape to that efficient administration which years
of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It