William I - A Brief History
William had not begun his reign as Duke of Normandy under auspicious circumstances.
It is true that his ancestors had been firmly established there for over a hundred
years when he was born, probably in the autumn of 1028. Charles lll, King of
the Franks, known as 'the Simple', had allowed Rolf the Viking to colonise a
stretch of northern France with his Norwegians. Here they mixed with the local
inhabitants, and Rolf had become a Christian. By the end of the tenth century,
most Normans spoke French, and the Scandinavian influences were not overwhelming.
Rolf and his first two successors as rulers had seemingly been known as Counts;
William's great- grandfather, Richard I, was the first to assume the title of
duke. The dynasty had extended its territories, which were efficiently governed
by comtes (counts) and vicomtes (viscounts). But as William himself was illegitimate
and succeeded to the throne when he was only seven years old, it was obvious
that political chaos was likely to arise, as it invariably did during a medieval
minority.
The rulers of Normandy were prolific and bastardy had never been a bar to
inheritance. Nevertheless, it engendered obloquy and William was usually known
to his contemporaries as William the Bastard rather than William the Conqueror.
His father, Duke Robert l, had experienced difficulties with Robert, Archbishop
of Rouen and Count ofEvreux, who was his uncle, and also with his cousin Alan
lll, the Count of neighbouring Brittany. But, in due course, everybody was reconciled
and Robert i of Normandy was on friendly terms with his overlord, King Henry
l of France (Richard l had accepted that he was a vassal of the French King,
Hugh Capet).
Just before or after he came to the throne, Duke Robert l formed a liaison
with Herleve - sometimes called Arlette - the daughter of a tanner in Falaise;
they were both about seventeen at the time. Arlette gave birth to William the
Bastard and to a daughter, Adelaide. Sexual relations in reality were rarely
as they have been romantically pictured by Christian writers about the Middle
Ages - that is to say maritally pure.
Archbishop Robert had three children by his mistress, and most Norman dukes
had concubines and illegitimate children. Robert was apparently betrothed to
a sister of King Canute of Denmark and in due course he found a husband for
Arlette in one of his vassals, a viscount by whom she had two sons, one of whom
was the future Bishop ofBayeux. Thus there could be no doubt at all about William's
bastardy. It is presumed that during his early childhood he was looked after
by his mother in Falaise. But in 10341 Duke Robert made two surprising resolutions:
first, he announced that he was going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; secondly,
before he left, he summoned the Norman magnates, headed by Archbishop Robert
of Rouen, and persuaded them to recognise William as his son and heir.
When in July 1035 Robert l died suddenly on his way back from Jerusalem, William
became Duke. At first, the accession of a child was accepted without mishap.
His great-uncle looked after him and the government, instead of claiming the
succession, as he might reasonably have done, for himself or his own children,
while King Henry i of France, as the overlord of the Dukes of Normandy, had
given his consent to William's claim to the throne and in due course the boy
was sent to the King to perform homage.
But in March 1037, Archbishop Robert died and chaos supervened. Two of William's
uncles stirred up trouble for him. Professor Douglas writes that 'William's
household was in fact becoming a shambles.' Fortunately for him, most of the
protagonists in this period of anarchy, which lasted for about ten years, were
killed or conveniently died. In fact King Henry i of France, although he was
not above prising pickings out of the anarchy, such as a castle or two and some
addition to his royal revenues, kept his eyes on the interests of his young
vassal who was also given assistance by Count Baldwin v of Flanders, a brother-in-law
of the French King. In the autumn of 1046, when William was about eighteen,
a full-scale rebellion began in western and middle Normandy headed by Guy of
Burgundy who thought that he himself had a legitimate claim to the ducal throne.
There is a story that an attempt was made to murder William, from which he
escaped only by riding hell-for-leather to his birthplace of Falaise. He certainly
sought for the protection and help,of his overlord. At the beginning of 1047
King Henry i of France led an army into Normandy to the aid of his vassal. William
raised some troops in eastern Normandy and joined Henry i; the western rebels
were defeated in a confused battle at Val-es-Dunes and in October of the same
year Duke William presided over an ecclesiastical council which agreed to impose
the Truce of God on Normandy. Private wars were not per- mitted between Wednesday
evening and Monday morning and were entirely prohibited during Advent, Lent,
Easter and Pentecost. The King of France and the Duke of Normandy were exempted
from the Truce of God, but anyone who violated it might incur the displeasure
of the Church and be excommunicated.
As a result of the battle and the truce the Norman rebels were temporarily
abashed. According to William of Poitiers, the battle 'broke by iron the too
arrogant heads, dismantled the ramparts of crime by victoriously recapturing
many castles and thus stopped for a long time the intestinal wars in our region'.
It was,' he added, 'a battle ... worthy of memory for many centuries to come.'
But in fact, the battle settled little. King Henry i, having done his bit for
his vassal, departed from Normandy: Guy of Burgundy, though wounded, escaped
from the field and fortified himself strongly in his castle at Brionne in central
Normandy; and William, still only about twenty years old, had to contend with
enemies outside as well as inside his duchy. He was obliged to subject Brionne
to a close and elaborate siege; it was three years before Guy of Burgundy surrendered
it upon terms and William was able to return to his capital of Rouen. Meanwhile,
another soldier, as ambitious and ruthless as William himself proved to be,
Geoffrey Martel, Count ofAnjou, was occupied inexpanding his territories. He
advanced north and attacked the county ofMainc, which lay to the south of Brittany
and western Normandy. So masterful \nras he that when Count Hugh iv of Maine
died, Geoffrey Martel was offered and accepted the succession. Once he had secured
himself in Le Mans, the capital of Maine, he seized by force two castles, Domfront
and AlenCon, which stood just south of the Norman tronticr and had long been
in the hands of the lords of Belleme, who held them directly from the French
King.
So partly for his own safety and partly to support the French King to whom
he was under obligations, Duke William was practically compelled to make war
upon the victorious Count of Anjou and Maine. He besieged Domfront, which he
was unable to take by storm, but he managed to capture AlenCon which was set
on fire and those who mocked William as 'the tanner' had their limbs amputated.
This so frightened the garrison at Domfront that they promptly surrendered under
promise of mercy. William of Poitiers says that Duke William then declared,
imitating the example of Julius Caesar: 1 came, I saw, I conquered.' Though
he was able to strengthen the southern Norman frontier, he was aided in his
victory by the fact that King Henry i of France had at the same time been threatening
the position of Geoffrey Martel from the rear. But William's victories earned
him a martial reputation far more impressive than he had gained from the secondary
part he had played at the Battle ofVal-cs-Dunes.
William's enhanced reputation enabled him to negotiate a marriage with Matilda,
the daughter of Count Baldwin v of Flanders. Although Pope Leo ix for some reason
or another forbade the proposed match, the wedding, took place, probably in
1051. Not only did William thus provoke the Pope but be- also managed to alienate
his overlord, King Henry i. Possibly the French King thought that the young
Duke was growing too big for his boots or was becorning ungrateful for his protection.
At any rate Henry made a robe-face and allied himself with his former enemy,
Geoffrey Martel. As William's two uncles - one of whom, Mauger, had succeeded
Robert as Archbishop of Rouen and the other of whom, William, was Count of Talou
- were both on bad terms with their nephew and ready to stir up trouble for
him, William's position after his marriage was perilous in the extreme.
William was threatened by attack from both inside and outside Normandy. Moreover
he was reluctant to make open war on his overlord, to whom he had strong reasons
for gratitude, unless he was compelled to do so. His principal enemy in his
own duchy was his uncle, William of Talou, the son of Duke Richard ll by his
second wife; the Count of Talou despised William the Bastard as an illegitimate
heir to a throne which he thought should have been given to himself. He had
deserted his nephew at the siege of Domfront, built himself a formidable castle
at Arques on the borders of Nor- mandy and France and evidently hoped to make
himself supreme in eastern Normandy.
The castle of Arques was a masterpiece of military architecture and William
was compelled to assemble a substantial army and subject it to a regular siege.
He handed over the actual investment of the castle to one of his officers, while
he himself took charge of a covering army which was ready to deal with any attempts
at relief. William of Talou and Arques vainly appealed to King Henry l to come
to his rescue. Henry certainly made an effort to do so, but whether because
he was unwilling directly to fight his own vassal or whether he was dismayed
by Duke William's effective isolation of the stronghold, he was unable to send
either reinforcements or supplies to its aid. It took Duke William a long time
to subdue this rebellion against his authority, but eventually at the end of
1053 he starved the garrison of Arques into surrender, promising only that the
lives of the defenders would be spared, though his uncle was obliged to leave
the duchy for ever.
It was not until the spring of 1054 that King Henry i of France openly attacked
his Norman vassal. Had he done so earlier while the Count of Talou and Arques
was still in arms, William might have succumbed to defeat. But after the fall
of Arques he was able to gather together a large army with which to confront
an invasion from the east by a considerable group of allies under the leadership
of the French King. After devastating the countryside of eastern Normandy, a
French force, demoralised by plunder and rape, reached the town of Mortemer,
east of Neufchatel in the modern arrondissement of the Lower Seine. Here the
French were overwhelmed and cut to pieces by the Normans. Duke William himself
took no part in the battle (for he had been engaged in warding off another threat
to his capital of Rouen) but the victory was an organisational triumph for him.
The King of France hastily quitted Normandy. William wisely returned such prisoners
as had survived the battle. This victory, Professor Douglas has told us, has
often been under- estimated. It was, like the Battle of Hastings, a turning
point in the career of William the Bastard. Moreover all the internal disturbances
were at last at an end. For after his uncle William had been forced into exile,
his other uncle, the Archbishop of Rouen, was deposed by a council over which
William presided and which met at Lisieux in 1055.
The story of these years when William was under thirty were in a way a dress
rehearsal for what was to happen in England over a decade later. The Battle
of Mortemer was almost as de- cisive in William's career as that of Hastings;
the overpowering of Count William of Talou and Arques by starving out the countryside
was to be a precedent for King William's subduing of northern England.
Two years afterwards, Duke William frustrated another attempt by King Henry
l, in alliance with Count Geoffrey Martel, to invade Normandy. By 1060 both
these allies and enemies of William were dead and were succeeded by weaker men.
In France, Philip i, who was still a child, became King and in Anjou, Geoffrey
the Bearded, a nephew of Geoffrey Martel, succeeded. William was thus able to
turn the tables and himself engaged in aggression against his neighbours. He
arranged that his eldest son and heir, who was to be known as Robert 'Curthose'
and was then about eleven, should be betrothed to Margaret, the sister of the
young Count of Maine, Herbert ii, who had by then replaced Geoffrey Martel.
(In fact, Margaret died before the marriage could take place.) Herbert not only
accepted William as his overlord but is said to have promised that if he died
without issue, William should succeed him as Count. This story reads suspiciously
like the story that Edward the Confessor had bequeathed his throne to William,
and depends upon much the same authority.
Just as in 1066 William invaded England to lay claim to his alleged bequest
from Edward the Confessor, so, after Herbert ll's death in 1062, William invaded
and devastated Maine and proclaimed himself Count. In 1064, William made a punitive
raid into Brittany because the young Count there, Conan ll, refused to acknow-
ledge William as his overlord. It was on that expedition that William was accompanied,
as has already been noted, by the future Harold ll of England. Professor Barlow
has written that 'It was hardly a glorious campaign. Harold.... may easily have
been contemptuous since he himself had just campaigned in similar circumstances
and with more success, against Wales.' If so, Harold underestimated Duke William
both as a soldier and as a politician.
The second half of the eleventh century was a tremendous period of Norman
expansion in Europe. Robert Guiscard, one of the twelve sons of a minor Norman
landowner, arrived with a handful of followers in Italy during 1047) and nine
years later was joined by his younger brother Roger. Together they overran much
of southern Italy and Sicily, and a detcat was inflicted on Pope Leo ix (the
Pope who had banned Duke William's marriage) at Civitate, thirty miles north
ofFoggia. Roger, after the death of his brother, not only completed the conquest
ot Sicily but captured the island ot Malta; and an illegitimate son of Robert
Guiscard, Bohemund by name, proved himself an outstanding general, took part
in the First Crusade, captured Antioch in Asia Minor, of which he became the
prince, and menaced the eastern empire at Constantinople.
But Duke William's successes in conquering Maine and England and in repelling
the enemies on his frontiers in Anjou and Brittany, Scotland and Wales were
the finest examples of the expansion of Norman power. What was the character
of Normandy from the admin- istrative and cultural point of view when William,
twenty-five years after he had been acknowledged as Duke, had beaten off all
his enemies and given his government a firm and virtually unchallenged position?
It used to be argued that a definite 'feudal system' had been created in Normandy
in which the magnates of the realm were granted lands in return for under- taking
to provide the services of armed knights whenever the Duke required them. But
that was hardly the case. 'Feudalism', a word not invented until the seventeenth
century, was, if it existed at all, in a state of flux in Normandy.
William as Duke was served by counts and viscounts. The first Norman rulers
were, it seems, called counts, but when their status was raised to that of duke,
counts, usually members of the ducal family, became in effect responsible for
the administration of specific areas of the duchy and were stationed in border
areas in which they could not only ensure local security but be ready to defend
their country if it were attacked from the outside. The viscounts were not,
as might be supposed, the deputies of the counts. They were, on the contrary,
accountable to the Duke in administrative districts throughout the whole of
Normandy for the execution ofjustice and the collection of taxes. Viscounts,
like counts, also had duties to perform in time of war. Although both counts
and viscounts lived in castles, few Norman castles were not under direct ducal
authority.
The private castles that were later to be found in England scarcely existed
in Normandy. William saw to it that 'illicit castles' were suppressed. Though
naturally he took into consideration the advice of his nobility, William was
the effective ruler of Normandy. A full council of the ducal court might meet
from time to time, but not with the regularity of the English Witanegernot.
The Norman council would be attended by the leading lay and ecclesiastical lords
and by the Duchess and her sons. The Duke's staff included stewards (the most
important officials), chamberlains, butlers and a chancellor, but there was
no organised chancery as in England. Nor did the ducal court have a monopoly
ofjustice since in a few instances jurisdiction had passed into private hands.
The maintenance of the Duke's authority therefore depended largely upon his
own character, strength and wisdom. Vassalage was not of great significance
at that time. For example, although William himself was the vassal of the French
King, he was entirely independent in his own duchy. Nor had the Duke been able
to impose upon his own vassals specific and recognisable obligations to him.
Lower down the scale there were fideles or liegemen. But the elaborate dues
and reliefs that were defined later in feudal England (for example in Magna
Carta) are scarcely referred to in contemporary Norman charters.
William relied upon a group of secular and ecclesiastical lords on whom he
conferred gifts (such as lands confiscated from his enemies) to serve him loyally
and with whom he had friendly personal relations. But, as Professor David Douglas,
one of the greatest authorities on and admirers of early Normandy, has stated,
'there seems little warranty for believing that anything re- sembling tenure
by knight-service, in the later sense of the term, was uniformly established,
or carefully defined, in pre- Conquest Normandy'. Nevertheless the idea was
growing. If no specific servitium debitum - service owed to the Duke by his
secular nobility is to be seen, towards the middle of his reign, contractual
military service was required from some Norman monasteries and some Norman bishoprics.
Also, William was in the process of creating a new lay aristocracy, personally
loyal to him. When, on his conquest of England, he had at his disposal a huge
fund of confiscated lands, it was natural for him to reward his followers -
'the companions of the Conqueror' - but to expect from them in return specified
military services. In Normandy, neither the secular nor the ecclesiastical nob-
ility (they were rarely called barons) exerted enormous influ- ence. The archbishops
of Rouen, as has been observed, were administrators who performed many services
for the Duke. But most of the bishops were neither particularly pious nor chaste.
The religious life of the country was chiefly influenced by the monks. The revived
form of Benedictine monasticism, which spread from the model monastery ofCluny
in Burgundy, reached Normandy via Fecamp and became dominant. Some earlier monasteries,
not under Cluniac influence, already existed in Normandy, notably those of Mont
St Michel and Jumieges, but during the reign of Duke William over twenty new
monasteries were founded in which both William and his wife took an active interest.
Two new houses (for monks and nuns) were established on ducal demesne land
at Caen. The men's monastery, St Stephen's, was endowed by the Duke and the
nunnery, Holy Trinity, by the Duchess. These however were established as a penance
imposed upon them by Pope Nicholas il for their uncanonical marriage. Lanfranc
ofPavia, a man of impressive learning, was appointed abbot of the monastery
as a reward because it was he who persuaded the Pope to change his mind and
grant a dispensation for William's marriage, which had incurred the disapproval
of Rome for so long. Not only did the Duke thus sponsor and care for Norman
monasteries but he attended all ecclesiastical councils such as the one at which
his uncle Mauger, Archbishop of Rouen, was condemned, and sanctioned their decrees.
The dukes of Normandy had always enjoyed the right of nominating bishops and
abbots. After the deposition of Mauger, William appointed Mauritius, who was
not a Norman but had been born in Rheims and was a saintly man, to be Archbishop
of Rouen. Mauritius was a keen practitioner of -monastic reform. As head of
the abbey of Bee, which Lanfranc had earlier transformed into a centre of serious
study, William appointed Anselm ofAosta, another saintly character, who was
to become Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of William Rufus. But Maurilius,
Lanfranc and Anselm were scarcely typical of the bishops and abbots appointed
by Duke William. Most of them were his friends and relations. For ex- ample,
he made his half-brother Odo, Bishop ofBayeux: Odo was more of a soldier than
a churchman and his appointment has been described as a piece of flagrant nepotism.
Moreover, bishops and abbots were expected to pay for their favours.
Some of the secular aristocracy who founded monasteries regarded them as a
valuable form of investment: they allotted estates in return for annual payments
by the monasteries, thus arranging a compromise between God and Mammon. Still,
the intellectual life of Normandy undoubtedly owed almost everything to the
monasteries, where history (however unreliable) was written, medicine studied
and practised, music and poetry cultivated and architecture revolutionised.
New cathedrals and monastic churches were built with Romanesque towers and Byzantine
mosaics, apsidal choirs and chapels.
William of Poitiers, who was the Duke's deepest admirer, wrote that even though
he had to suppress wars at home and abroad as well as preventing brigandage
and pillage, he never forgot his duty to God or his country. He never 'undertook
an unjust war', and by his repressive laws he was able to deliver Normandy from
thieves, murderers and other criminals. This was in fact fair comment upon William's
strict government, for, as in England, he showed himself capable of imposing
internal peace and security. 'The countryside, the castles and the towns found
in him a guarantor of stability and safety for their possessions,' William of
Poitiers added. The Duke enforced the Truce of God, he checked all outbursts
of violence and he protected the poor, the widows and the orphans. It is an
impressive, if somewhat exaggerated tribute.
In considering the character of Normandy during the first twenty years in
which William reigned over it, one has to appreciate that the duchy was smaller,
poorer and less fertile than England: it was roughly equal in size to the earldom
of Wessex and its population must have been comparably lower. Moreover, in spite
of the vicissitudes which England had experienced from the time of the original
Anglo-Saxon in- vasions to that of Edward the Conk'ssor, its ciilturc and civilisation
had been maintained at a high level. King Alfred the Great, who ruled in England
in the ninth century, was an infinitely niorc cultured and versatile character
than Rolf the Viking, founder of Normandy. If Rolf was converted to Christianity
at the beginning of the tenth century, England had been largely Christianised
since the seventh century. Alfred not only united the English kingdom and codified
its laws but promoted religion, learning and education : unlike William, he
was no great believer in monasticism. He thought it 'important to translate
the books which are most needful tor all men into the language which we can
all understand'.
Alfred, like William, was a considerable general (he also built a navy) and
it was his defeat of the Danish onslaught that helped to preserve- Christian
civilisation in early Europe. The late Sir Frank Stenton once wrote that 'in
comparison with England, Normandy in the mid-eleventh century was a state in
the making'. It is therefore difficult to argue that the duchy of Normandy was
more advanced politically or culturally than the England of Edward the Confessor
and Earl Harold ofWessex (this point will be developed later). Professor Douglas
wrote: During the decades preceding the Norman conquest of England, the aristocratic
and ecclesiastical development of Normandy had been merged under the rule of
Duke William ii into a single political achievement. It might perhaps be summarised
by saying that in 1065 a man could go from end to end of the duchy without ever
passing outside the jurisdiction, secular or ecclesiastical, of a small group
of interrelated great families with the Duke at their head. To that extent it
is true that William had unified his kingdom by promoting his relations and
friends to key posts. As the late Sir Winston Churchill remarked, there is a
great deal to be said for favouritism.
But what undoubtedly emerged was that Duke William had become an energetic,
experienced and effective ruler and leader. Like Robert and Roger Guiscard,
he found himself vigorous enough and forcible enough to invade and subdue a
country bigger and more cultured than his own. There was nothing in either the
economic resources or the military experience of the duchy to make his victory
certain.
It was the quality of the Duke himself - his own energy and control of his
men and resources - that explains the Norman conquest of England.
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