William

King and Conqueror

Mark Hagger

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857732835
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Europe médiévale

1066 is the most famous date in English history. On 14 October, on Senlac Hill near Hastings, a battle was fought that would change the face of England forever. Over the next twenty years, Norman culture was imposed on England, and English politics and society were radically reshaped. But how much is really known about William 'the Conqueror', the Norman duke who led his men to victory on that autumn Saturday in what was to be the last successful invasion of England? Mark Hagger here takes a fresh look at William - his life and leadership. As king, he spent much of his reign threatened by rebellion and invasion. In response, he ordered castles and strongholds to be built across the land - a symbol of the force with which he defended his realm and which, along with Domesday Book, England's first public record, attest to a powerful legacy. This book provides a rounded portrait of one of England's greatest rulers.

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CHAPTER 1

FIRE AND SWORD EVERYWHERE, C. 1027–47

In 1026 Duke Richard II of Normandy (d. 1026) gave the county of the Hiémois (see Map 1) to his second son, Robert. One of the castles within the district was constructed on the rock that gives the town of Falaise its name, and it was during one of his stays here that Robert spied an undertaker’s daughter by the name of Herleva.¹ According to William of Malmesbury, another Benedictine monk who was, like Orderic Vitalis, writing about a century after events,

her beauty had once caught his eye as she was dancing, and he could not refrain from sleeping with her; and henceforward he loved her above all others, and for some time kept her in the position of a lawful wife. The son she bore him was called William after his great-great-grandfather.

William of Malmesbury’s words suggest that he was aware that Robert and Herleva’s union would have been recognized as a lawful marriage by many living in Normandy at the time, and they would probably have seen William as Robert’s legitimate son. But to others, especially ecclesiastics living outside the duchy, he was illegitimate, and he was thus known by his non-Norman contemporaries as William the Bastard.

When was William born? Robert succeeded his brother as duke of the Normans in 1027 in suspicious circumstances: it was rumoured that Robert had poisoned his brother to bring this about. As it is unlikely that Robert resided at remote Falaise for any length of time after his succession, William was probably born either in 1027 or 1028 – dates which fit in with Malmesbury’s assertion that William was seven in 1035.² It is also the case that Robert’s succession brought to an end his (unblessed) marriage with Herleva. Now that Robert was duke, the daughter of an undertaker would no longer suffice as a bride. Herleva was thus put aside, but was looked after, being married to a knight called Herluin of Conteville. The couple subsequently had two sons, Robert and Odo, who were both to be elevated to positions of the highest honour by their half-brother. As to Duke Robert, he might afterwards have married a sister of King Cnut of the Danes and the English before his premature death.³

There is almost no record of William’s early childhood years, although we do know that he was sometimes at court and that he was treated as his father’s heir, despite his birth out of wedlock. Otherwise he is almost invisible until 1035, when his father suddenly announced that he intended to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The reasons for this decision are unknown, although later writers speculated that it was due to remorse for murdering his brother. Duke Robert consequently summoned Archbishop Robert of Rouen, his uncle, and the other great men of his duchy to his court and made his scheme known to them. According to William of Jumièges, a Benedictine monk at the monastery of Jumièges on the River Seine, who was writing only a few years after events:

All were greatly astonished by his words for they feared that his absence would lead to the country being disturbed in various ways. He presented them with his only son, William, and earnestly besought them to choose him as their lord in his place and to accept him as military leader. In spite of the boy’s tender years everyone in the town rejoiced in his encouragement and in accordance with the duke’s decree readily and unanimously acclaimed him their prince and lord and pledged him their fealty with inviolable oaths. When he had accomplished this as he wished, the duke entrusted him to tutors and guardians.

Robert left a Normandy braced for disturbances during his absence. But no one could have anticipated that he would never return. He succeeded in reaching Jerusalem, and prayed at the Holy Sepulchre for eight days, but on the journey home he fell sick and died at Nicaea (now Iznik) in present-day Turkey, and was buried in the church of St Mary there.

And so William, aged seven or eight, was now duke of the Normans, a people who had a reputation for fickleness and a penchant for rebellion. Orderic Vitalis has King William speak these words on his deathbed:

If the Normans are disciplined under a just and firm rule they are men of great valour, who press invincibly to the fore in arduous undertakings and, proving their strength, fight resolutely to overcome all enemies. But without such rule they tear each other to pieces and destroy themselves, for they hanker after rebellion, cherish sedition, and are ready for any treachery.

2. The castle at Falaise, where William was probably born.

If these are really William’s words, he was speaking from bitter experience. It must certainly have been clear to everyone that his first years would be difficult. As a child, he had little authority of his own. He was entirely reliant on the loyalty of his subjects, and on the ability of his guardians to maintain order in his name until he should come of age. At first, Archbishop Robert of Rouen was able to hold Normandy together. Justice was done. Some of the wrongs of the turbulent reign of Robert the Magnificent were put right. Bishop Hugh of Bayeux, for example, was able to recover some of the lands that his cathedral had lost by the judgement of the archbishop and other of the ‘best men’ of Normandy. But it was not to last. The death of Archbishop Robert in 1037 may have been a turning point; it has certainly been seen as such by modern historians. In the view of William of Malmesbury, however, the key event was the murder of Duke William’s guardian, Gilbert of Brionne, in c. 1041. Malmesbury wrote: ‘When … Gilbert was killed by his cousin Ralph, it was fire and sword everywhere.’

Even before Gilbert’s death, however, it is clear that law, order and justice were under siege. William of Jumièges noted that as soon as Duke Robert’s death became known,

many Normans built earthworks in many places and erected fortified strongholds for their own purposes. Having dared to establish themselves securely in their fortifications, they immediately hatched plots and rebellions and fierce fires were lit all over the country.

Indeed Gilbert himself took the opportunity offered by the duke’s minority to reopen a dispute that Duke Robert had settled. Orderic Vitalis, who lived close to the places concerned, tells us that during the reign of Duke Robert, Gilbert had attempted, without success, to wrest the village of Montreuil from the Giroie family. The tables were turned on him, however, because not only did he fail to secure Montreuil, he also lost another village, Le Sap, to the same family in the feud. When he became Duke William’s guardian, and there was no one to gainsay him, he decided that the time was right to regain Le Sap. But he had again misjudged his adversaries. Not only did the Giroie family unite once more against him, but they were joined by Ralph of Gacé, the son of Archbishop Robert of Rouen and a man who might well have felt that he should have become guardian of the young duke instead of Gilbert. And so this time, instead of merely losing his property, Count Gilbert lost his life. The Giroie family, on the other hand, kept Le Sap and Montreuil, and Ralph of Gacé was chosen by Duke William to be his guardian and the leader of his military forces.

Some historians have portrayed William’s minority as a time of real danger for the young duke.⁴ Orderic claims that, for fear of his kinsmen and to save him from discovery by traitors who sought his death, he would be smuggled secretly out of his chamber in the castle at night by his uncle Walter (one of Herleva’s brothers) and taken to the cottages and hiding places of the poor. It is a dramatic image, but it is not clear that it has any basis in reality. Indeed it might have been intended to echo the uncertain youth of Julius Caesar, as told by the Roman writer Suetonius.⁵ Such allusions to classical models are quite common in eleventh- and twelfth-century narratives, and were intended to associate their subjects with great figures from Antiquity. In any case, William of Jumièges, who was much closer to events, does not mention that the young duke was personally in danger at any point. Indeed there is just one occasion when William is placed at the scene of an outrage, and again only by Orderic:

Osbern too, steward of the ducal household, son of Herfast, brother of Countess Gunnor, unexpectedly had his throat cut in his bed one night by William, son of Roger of Montgommery, while he and the duke were sound asleep in the duke’s chamber at Vaudreuil. At that time, Roger was in exile in Paris because of his perfidy, and his five sons Hugh, Robert, Roger, William and Gilbert were in Normandy deeply engaged in the commission of horrible crimes. But not long afterwards William, because of this crime, repaid his debt to God and was justly punished. For Barnon of Glos, Osbern’s prévôt, who wished to avenge the unjust murder of his lord, one night gathered a band of ready warriors, entered the house where William and his accomplices were sleeping, and instantly killed all of them at the same time.

Orderic’s account is dramatic, but its accuracy is open to some doubt. We have here a stealthy night-time attack on the sleeping Osbern, but although we do know from other sources that Osbern was indeed murdered, we also learn that at least one of his men was seriously injured at the same time. This might suggest a brawl or a skirmish; it certainly makes much less probable the murder-in-the-dark of Orderic’s account. Montgommery’s failure to seize such an opportunity and kill William also makes it unlikely that the young duke’s life was really threatened, and in all fairness it should be noted that Orderic does not say that it was – this is something that later historians have simply assumed was the case. Instead Orderic relates the story of Osbern’s murder simply as an example of the disturbances that afflicted Normandy during William’s minority, and his words make clear what William of Montgommery’s intention was. William was not after the duke; he was acting out a personal vendetta. Osbern had helped to bring down his father, who had usurped ducal lands and was subsequently driven from Normandy as a result. William killed Osbern as an act of revenge for his part in his father’s downfall.⁶ But this just started another feud, which apparently ended only when Barnon of Glos avenged his lord in a tit-for-tat killing spree.

Other feuds, although disruptive, did not directly involve men so close to the duke. There was, for example, a conflict along the River Risle in which members of the long-established Tosny family unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the rival house of Beaumont from eroding their power and influence in the region. Hugh of Montfort and Walkelin of Ferrières indulged in a private war against each other, too, and both were killed for their trouble. But, unfortunately for the young William, it was not only his subjects who attempted to take advantage of his youth and weakness. King Henry of the French took the opportunity offered by the duke’s vulnerability to demand the destruction of the border castle at Tillières, on the River Avre, which had been constructed at the very southern limit of the duchy by Duke Richard II around the year 1000. William and his counsellors agreed to the king’s demand, but Gilbert Crispin, who had been appointed custodian by Duke Robert, refused to surrender and fortified it against the French. It was only when William appeared at Tillières and commanded Crispin to surrender the fortress in person that he capitulated. King Henry then set fire to the castle and left. But, not content with the concessions afforded him, or perhaps smelling blood, he attacked and burned the settlement at Argentan, which he pillaged. He then returned to Tillières and rebuilt and garrisoned the castle, in flagrant breach of the terms of surrender agreed with William.⁷

It would be easy to think that these various episodes revealed that the young William was weak and vulnerable. But some of the turmoil might actually have been caused by a growth in ducal power, rather than resulting from weakness at the centre. Osbern was killed because he had taken action on Duke William’s behalf to recover estates that had been lost to Roger I of Montgommery. Equally William’s supporters could successfully drive into exile the vicomte of the Hiémois, Thurstan Goz, when he rebelled against the duke, and fortified the castle at Falaise against him, in c. 1043. William, then, was able to exercise effective control even in parts of the duchy that were remote from the centre (at Rouen). His power is also reflected in the frequent presence at William’s court of two men from the west of Normandy, Ralph Taisson and Nigel of the Cotentin. As such, perhaps we should trust William of Poitiers, the duke’s biographer, when he notes that during the 1040s many men wished to follow the duke, and that he, growing older, developing his skills and listening to wise counsel, was restoring peace to Normandy.

Poitier’s words also suggest that William was by now ruling in his own right, and it seems likely that he had done so from shortly after King Henry’s invasion of his territories. David Bates has recently suggested that William’s personal rule began in around 1042.⁸ About this time William began to gather around him the men who were to remain his closest advisers and stalwart adherents for the rest of their lives, and who formed something of a ruling clique. These included William fitz Osbern, the son of William’s murdered steward, and Roger II of Montgommery, whose brother was responsible for the murder but whose father had later succeeded in restoring himself to his lands and to the duke’s confidence. Roger of Beaumont was also frequently at the duke’s court in the 1040s, and he, too, was to remain important in the duke’s counsels.⁹

The formation of this close-knit clique at the centre of government could be nothing other than exclusive, and some of those who were excluded did not like it. One such was Count Guy of Burgundy. He was William’s cousin, the son of William’s aunt, Adeliza, and Count Reginald of Bourgogne-outre-Sâone. To ensure that he could rely on Guy’s loyalty, William had given him the fortresses at Vernon, on the Seine, and Brionne, on the Risle. But this was not enough. As a scion of the ducal house, Guy no doubt felt that he should have been at the very centre of government. But the witness lists of the acts issued in William’s name suggest that the duke took a different view and ruled without his advice. Guy thus determined on rebellion.

Another disaffected lord was Nigel II of the Cotentin. His father, who had died in c. 1042, had been the main instrument by which the dukes from Richard II onwards had made their authority known in the Cotentin peninsula. Even before his death, however, the dukes had been creating new avenues through which to express their power over the region. Important pieces in the jigsaw of political control were put in place when the bishop of Coutances, Robert, returned to his episcopal city in around 1026 (his predecessors had ruled in absentia, living for the most part in Rouen, for the previous 75 years), and when the dukes constructed three castles in the Cotentin, at Cherbourg, Brix and Le Homme (now the Isle Marie). It is also possible that Duke William continued to build up ducal power in the region in the years immediately before 1046, forging relationships with other lords of the Cotentin, such as Thurstan Haldup (his surname means ‘the deaf’), lord of le Plessis and Créances, whose son, Eudo, married Muriel, William’s half-sister. The result was that Nigel II was marginalized, like Count Guy, and thus he decided to rebel – although Guy still had to purchase his support first by giving him the castle of Le Homme.

The threat of a powerful duke of the Normans making his authority in the west of the duchy a reality might have caused a groundswell of discontent that led others to join Guy in rebellion in 1046–47, just as King John’s interference in the north o...