William the Conqueror - The Early Years.

 

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 I, had experienced difficulties with Robert, Archbishop of Rouen and Count of Evreux, who was his uncle, and also with his cousin Alan III, 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 I of France (Richard I had accepted that he was a vassal of the French King, Hugh Capet).

 

Just before or after he came to the throne, Duke Robert I 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 1034, 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 I 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 of Maine, which lay to the south of Brittany and western Normandy. So masterful was 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 frontier 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: I 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 of Val-es-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 he 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 II 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 I 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 underestimated. 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 decisive 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 I, 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 II'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 II, refused to acknowledge William as his overlord. It was on that expedition that William was accompanied, as has already been noted, by the future Harold II 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 of Foggia.

 

Roger, after the death of his brother, not only completed the conquest ot Sicily but captured the island of 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 administrative 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 undertaking 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 nobility (they were rarely called barons) exerted enormous influence. 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 of Cluny 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 II for their uncanonical marriage. Lanfranc of Pavia, 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 example, he made his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux: 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 invasions to that of Edward the Confessor, its culture and civilisation had been maintained at a high level.

 

King Alfred the Great, who ruled in England in the ninth century, was an infinitely more 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 for 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 of Wessex .

 

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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