England under the Angevin Kings, Volume I
Date: 2022-06-19T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: England -- Civilization -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Angevin period; 1154-1216; Anjou; House of

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Title: England under the Angevin Kings, Volume I

Author: Kate Norgate

Release date: June 19, 2022 [eBook #68346]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Macmillan and Co, 1887

Credits: MWS, Fay Dunn and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS, VOLUME I ***

ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

VOLUME I

Transcriber’s Note

The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is placed in the public domain.

Please see the note at the end of the book, which is preceded by the Index to Volumes I and II, copied from Volume II.

ENGLAND

UNDER

THE ANGEVIN KINGS

ENGLAND

UNDER

THE ANGEVIN KINGS

BY

KATE NORGATE

IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I.

WITH MAPS AND PLANS

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1887

All rights reserved

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY DEAR AND HONOURED MASTER
JOHN RICHARD GREEN

PREFACE

This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion; its progress through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms, encouraged by his sympathy; and every step in my work during the past eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more highly the constant help of his teaching and his example. Of the book in its finished state he never saw a page. For its faults no one is answerable but myself. I can only hope that, however great may be its errors and its defects, it may yet shew at least some traces of that influence which is so abidingly precious to me.

I desire respectfully to express my gratitude to the Lord Bishop of Chester and to Mr. Freeman, who, for the sake of the friend who had commended me to their kindness, have been good enough to help me with information and advice on many occasions during my work.

A word of acknowledgement is due for some of the maps and plans. The map of Gaul in the tenth century is founded upon one in Mr. Freeman’s Norman Conquest. The plans of Bristol and Lincoln are adapted from those in the Proceedings of the Archæological Institute; for Lincoln I was further assisted by the local knowledge kindly placed at my disposal by the Rev. Precentor Venables. For Oxford I have followed the guidance of the Rev. Father F. Goldie, S.J. (A Bygone Oxford), and of Mr. J. Parker (Early History of Oxford); and for London, that of its historian the Rev. W. J. Loftie, whom I have especially to thank for his help on some points of London topography.

My greatest help of all has been the constant personal kindness and ever-ready sympathy of Mrs. Green. To her, as to my dear master himself, I owe and feel a gratitude which cannot be put into words.

KATE NORGATE.

January 1887.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
| PAGE
The England of Henry I., 1100–1135 | 1
CHAPTER II
The Beginnings of Anjou, 843–987 | 97
Note A.—The Sources of Angevin History | 126
Note B.—The Palace of the Counts at Angers | 132
Note C.—The Marriages of Geoffrey Greygown | 134
Note D.—The Breton and Poitevin Wars of Geoffrey Greygown | 136
Note E.—The Grant of Maine to Geoffrey Greygown | 140
CHAPTER III
Anjou and Blois, 987–1044 | 143
Note A.—The Siege of Melun | 189
Note B.—The Parents of Queen Constance | 190
Note C.—The Pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra | 192
Note D.—Geoffrey Martel and Poitou | 197
CHAPTER IV
Anjou and Normandy, 1044–1128 | 200
Note A.—The Houses of Anjou and Gâtinais | 249
Note B.—The Heir of Geoffrey Martel | 251
Note C.—The War of Saintonge | 252
Note D.—The Descendants of Herbert Wake-dog | 253
Note E.—The Siege of La Flèche and Treaty of Blanchelande | 256
Note F.—The Marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda | 258
CHAPTER V
Geoffrey Plantagenet and Stephen of Blois, 1128–1139 | 261
CHAPTER VI
England and the Barons, 1139–1147 | 308
Note.—The Topography of the Battle of Lincoln | 344
CHAPTER VII
The English Church, 1136–1149 | 347
CHAPTER VIII
Henry Duke of the Normans, 1149–1154 | 372
CHAPTER IX
Henry and England, 1154–1157 | 407
CHAPTER X
Henry and France, 1156–1161 | 440
CHAPTER XI
The Last Years of Archbishop Theobald, 1156–1161 | 474

LIST OF MAPS

I. | Gaul c. 909–941 | To face page | 107
II. | Gaul c. 1027 | ” | 143

PLANS

I. | Winchester. II. Bristol | To face page | 31
III. | Lincoln. IV. Oxford | ” | 40
V. | London | ” | 44
VI. | Angers | ” | 165

CHAPTER I.
THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I.
1100–1135.

“When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth flowers and fruit,—then at last may England hope to see the end of her sorrows.”[1]

- [1] Vita Edwardi (Luard), p. 431.

So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all, found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree of the West-Saxon monarchy had fallen beneath Duke William’s battle-axe; three alien reigns had parted its surviving branch from the stem; the marriage of Henry I. with a princess of the old English blood-royal had grafted it in again.[2] One flower sprung from that union had indeed bloomed only to die ere it reached its prime,[3] but another had brought forth the promised fruit; and the dim ideal of national prosperity and union which English and Normans alike associated with the revered name of the Confessor was growing at last into a real and living thing beneath the sceptre of Henry Fitz-Empress.

- [2] Æthelred of Rievaux, Vita S. Edw. Regis (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 401.

- [3] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652), notes that the fulfilment of the prophecy was looked for in William the Ætheling.

There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the revival thus prefigured:—a national revival growing up, as it seems, in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over with the Conqueror: at a time when, in a merely political point of view, England seemed to be not only conquered but altogether swallowed up in the vast and varied dominions of the house of Anjou. It was indeed not the first time that the island had become an appendage to a foreign empire compared with which she was but a speck in the ocean. Cnut the Dane was, like Henry of Anjou, not only king of England but also ruler of a great continental monarchy far exceeding England in extent, and forming together with her a dominion only to be equalled, if equalled at all, by that of the Emperor. But the parallel goes no farther. Cnut’s first kingdom, the prize of his youthful valour, was his centre and his home, of which his Scandinavian realms, even his native Denmark, were mere dependencies. Whatever he might be when he revisited them, in his island-kingdom he was an Englishman among Englishmen. The heir of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda of Normandy, on the other hand, was virtually of no nationality, no country; but if he could be said to have a home at all, it was certainly not on this side of the sea—it was the little marchland of his fathers. In the case of his sons, the southern blood of their mother Eleanor added a yet more un-English element; and of Richard, indeed, it might almost be said that the home of his choice was not in Europe at all, but in Holy Land. Alike to him and to his father, England was simply the possession which gave them their highest title, furnished them with resources for prosecuting their schemes of continental policy, and secured to them a safe refuge on which to fall back in moments of difficulty or danger. It was not till the work of revival was completed, till it had resulted in the creation of the new England which comes to light with Edward I., that it could find a representative and a leader in the king himself. The sovereign in whose reign the chief part of the work was done stood utterly aloof from it in sympathy; yet he is in fact its central figure and its most important actor. The story of England’s developement from the break-down of the Norman system under Stephen to the consolidation of a national monarchy under Edward I. is the story of Henry of Anjou, of his work and of its results. But as the story does not end with Henry, so neither does it begin with him. It is impossible to understand Henry himself without knowing something of the race from which he sprang; of those wonderful Angevin counts who, beginning as rulers of a tiny under-fief of the duchy of France, grew into a sovereign house extending its sway from one end of Christendom to the other. It is impossible to understand his work without knowing something of what England was, and how she came to be what she was, when the young count of Anjou was called to wear her crown.

The project of an empire such as that which Henry II. actually wielded had been the last dream of William Rufus. In the summer of 1100 the duke of Aquitaine, about to join the Crusaders in Holy Land, offered his dominions in pledge to the king of England. Rufus clutched at the offer “like a lion at his prey.”[4] Five years before he had received the Norman duchy on the same terms from his brother Robert; he had bridled its restless people and brought them under control; he had won back its southern dependency, his father’s first conquest, the county of Maine. Had this new scheme been realized, nothing but the little Angevin march would have broken the continuity of a Norman dominion stretching from the Forth to the Pyrenees, and in all likelihood the story of the Angevin kings would never have had to be told. Jesting after his wont with his hunting-companions, William—so the story goes—declared that he would keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers, if he should live so long.[5] But that same evening the Red King lay dead in the New Forest, and his territories fell asunder at once. Robert of Normandy came back from Palestine in triumph to resume possession of his duchy; while the barons of England, without waiting for his return, chose his English-born brother Henry for their king.

- [4] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 780.

- [5] Geoff. Gaimar, vv. 6296–6298 (Wright, p. 219).

Thirteen years before, at his father’s death, Henry, the only child of William and Matilda who was actually born in the purple—the child of a crowned king and queen, born on English soil, and thus by birth, though not by descent, entitled to rank as an English Ætheling—had been launched into the world at the age of nineteen without a foot of land that he could call his own. The story went that he had complained bitterly to the dying Conqueror of his exclusion from all share in the family heritage. “Have patience, boy,” was William’s answer, “let thine elder brothers go before thee; the day will come when thou shalt be greater than either of them.” Henry was, however, not left a penniless adventurer dependent on the bounty of his brothers; the Conqueror gave him a legacy of ten thousand pounds as a solid provision wherewith to begin his career. A year had scarcely passed before Duke Robert, overwhelmed with troubles in Normandy, found himself at his wits’ end with an empty treasury, and besought Henry to lend him some money. The Ætheling, as cool and calculating as his brothers were impetuous, refused; the duke in desperation offered to sell him any territory he chose, and a bargain was struck whereby Henry received, for the sum of three thousand pounds, the investiture of the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the Mont-St.-Michel—in a word, the whole western end of the Norman duchy.[6] Next summer, while the duke was planning an attempt on the English crown and vainly awaiting a fair wind to enable him to cross the Channel, the count of the Cotentin managed to get across without one, to claim the estates in Gloucestershire formerly held by his mother and destined for him by his father’s will. He was received by William Rufus only too graciously, for the consequence was that some mischief-makers, always specially plentiful at the Norman court, persuaded Duke Robert that his youngest brother was plotting against him with the second, and when Henry returned in the autumn he had no sooner landed than he was seized and cast into prison.[7] Within a year he was free again, reinstated, if not in the Cotentin, at least in the Avranchin and the Mont-St.-Michel, and entrusted with the keeping of Rouen itself against the traitors stirred up by the Red King. William, while his young brother was safe in prison, had resumed the Gloucestershire estates and made them over to his favourite Robert Fitz-Hamon. Henry in his natural resentment threw himself with all his energies into the cause of the duke of Normandy, acted as his trustiest and bravest supporter throughout the war with Rufus which followed, and at the close of the year crowned his services by the promptitude and valour with which he defeated a conspiracy for betraying the Norman capital to the king of England.[8] The struggle ended in a treaty between the elder brothers, in which neither of them forgot the youngest. Their remembrance of him took the shape of an agreement to drive him out of all his territories and divide the spoil between themselves. Their joint attack soon brought him to bay in his mightiest stronghold, the rock crowned by the abbey of S. Michael-in-Peril-of-the-Sea, commonly called Mont-Saint-Michel. Henry threw himself into the place with as many knights as were willing to share the adventure; the brethren of the abbey did their utmost to help, and for fifteen days the little garrison, perched on their inaccessible rock, held out against their besiegers.[9] Then hunger began to thin their ranks; nothing but the inconsistent generosity of Robert saved them from the worse agonies of thirst;[10] one by one they dropped away, till Henry saw that he must yield to fate, abide by his father’s counsel, and wait patiently for better days. He surrendered; he came down from the Mount, once again a landless and homeless man; and save for one strange momentary appearance in England as a guest at the Red King’s court,[11] he spent the greater part of the next two years in France and the Vexin, wandering from one refuge to another with a lowly train of one knight, three squires, and one chaplain.[12] He was at length recalled by the townsmen of Domfront, who, goaded to desperation by the oppressions of their lord Robert of Bellême, threw off his yoke and besought Henry to come and take upon himself the duty of defending them, their town and castle, against their former tyrant. “By the help of God and the suffrages of his friends,” as his admiring historian says,[13] Henry was thus placed in command of his father’s earliest conquest, the key of Normandy and Maine, a fortress scarcely less mighty and of far greater political importance than that from which he had been driven. He naturally used his opportunity for reprisals, not only upon Robert of Bellême, but also upon his own brothers;[14] and by the end of two years he had made himself of so much consequence in the duchy that William Rufus, again at war with the duke, thought it time to secure his alliance. The two younger brothers met in England, and when Henry returned in the spring of 1095 he came as the liegeman of the English king, sworn to fight his battles and further his interests in Normandy by every means in his power.[15]

- [6] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 665.

- [7] Ib. p. 672. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 392 (Hardy, pp. 616, 617).

- [8] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 690. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 392 (Hardy, pp. 617, 618).

- [9] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 697.

- [10] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 310 (Hardy, pp. 491, 492).

- [11] See Freeman, William Rufus, vol. i. pp. 293, 295, 305; vol. ii. pp. 535, 536.

- [12] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 697.

- [13] Ib. p. 698.

- [14] Ib. pp. 698, 706, 722.

- [15] Eng. Chron. a. 1095.

William and Henry had both learned by experience that to work with Robert for any political purpose was hopeless, and that their true interest was to support each other—William’s, to enlist for his own service Henry’s clear cool head and steady hand; Henry’s, to secure for himself some kind of footing in the land where his ultimate ambitions could not fail to be centred. He had learned in his wanderings to adapt himself to all circumstances and all kinds of society; personally, he and Rufus can have had little in common except their passion for the chase. Lanfranc’s teaching, moral and intellectual, had been all alike thrown away upon his pupil William the Red. Henry, carefully educated according to his father’s special desire, had early shown a remarkable aptitude for study, was a scholar of very fair attainments as scholarship went among laymen in his day, and retained his literary tastes not only through all his youthful trials but also through the crowd of political and domestic cares which pressed upon his later life. Yet such tastes seem almost as strange in Henry as they would in William Rufus. The one prosaic element in the story of Henry’s youth is the personality of its hero. No man had ever less of the romantic or poetic temperament; if he had none of the follies or the faults of chivalry, he had just as little of its nobler idealism. From his first bargain with Robert for the purchase of the Cotentin to his last bargain with Fulk of Anjou for the marriage of his heir, life was to him simply a matter of business. The strongest points in his character were precisely the two qualities which both his brothers utterly lacked—self-control, and that “capacity for taking trouble” which is sometimes said to be the chief element of genius. But of the higher kind of genius, of the fire which kindles in the soul rather than merely in the brain, Henry had not a spark. He was essentially a man of business, in the widest and loftiest sense of the words. His self-control was not, like his father’s, the curb forcibly put by a noble mind upon its own natural impetuosity; it was the more easily-practised calmness of a perfectly cold nature which could always be reasonable because it had to fight with no impulse of passion, which was never tempted to “follow wandering fires” because they lit in it no responsive flame; a nature in which the head had complete mastery over the heart, and that head was one which no misfortunes could disturb, no successes turn, and no perplexities confuse.

The sudden vacancy of the English throne found every one else quite unprepared for such an emergency. Henry was never unprepared. His quickness and decision secured him the keys of the treasury and the formal election of those barons and prelates who had been members of the fatal hunting-party, or who hurried to Winchester at the tidings of its tragic issue; and before opposition had time to come to a head, it was checked by the coronation and unction which turned the king-elect into full king.[16] Henry knew well, however, that opposition there was certain to be. Robert of Normandy, just returned from the Crusade and covered with glory, was sure to assert his claim, and as sure to be upheld by a strong party among the barons, to whom a fresh severance of England and Normandy was clearly not desirable. In anticipation of the coming struggle, Henry threw himself at once on the support of his subjects. In addition to the pledges of his coronation-oath—taken almost in the words of Æthelred to Dunstan[17]—he issued on the same day a charter in which he solemnly and specifically promised the abolition of his brother’s evil customs in Church and state, and a return to just government according to the law of the land. The details were drawn up so as to touch all classes. The Church, as including them all, of course stood first; its freedom was restored and all sale or farming of benefices renounced by the king. The next clause appealed specially to the feudal vassals: those who held their lands “by the hauberk”—the tenants by knight-service—were exempted from all other imposts on their demesne lands, that they might be the better able to fulfil their own particular obligation. The tenants-in-chief were exempted from all the unjust exactions with regard to wardships, marriages, reliefs and forfeitures, which had been practised in the last reign; but the redress was not confined to them; they were distinctly required to exercise the same justice towards their own under-tenants. The last clause covered all the rest: by it Henry gave back to his people “the laws of King Eadward as amended by King William.”[18] Like Cnut’s renewal of the law of Eadgar—like Eadward’s own renewal of the law of Cnut—the charter was a proclamation of general reunion and goodwill. As a pledge of its sincerity, the Red King’s minister, Ralf Flambard, in popular estimation the author of all the late misdoings, was at once cast into the Tower;[19] the exiled primate was fetched home as speedily as possible; and in November the king identified himself still more closely with the land of his birth by taking to wife a maiden of the old English blood-royal, Eadgyth of Scotland, great-granddaughter of Eadmund Ironside.[20]

- [16] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

- [17] Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 99 (3d ed.).

- [18] Charter of Henry I., ib. pp. 100–102.

- [19] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

- [20] Eng. Chron. a. 1100.

His precautions were soon justified. Robert had refused the thorny crown of Jerusalem, but the crown of England had far other charms; and his movements were quickened by Ralf Flambard, who early in the spring made his escape to Normandy.[21] It was probably through Ralf’s management that the duke won over some of the sailors who guarded the English coast and thus got ashore unexpectedly at Portsmouth while the king was keeping watch for him at the old landing-place, Pevensey.[22] At the first tidings of the intended invasion Henry, like Rufus in the same case thirteen years before, had appealed to Witan and people, and by a renewal of his charter gained a renewal of their fealty. No sooner, however, was Robert actually in England than the great majority of the barons prepared to go over to him in a body. But the king born on English soil, married to a lady of the old kingly house, had a stronger hold than ever Rufus could have had upon the English people; and they, headed by their natural leader and representative, the restored archbishop of Canterbury, clave to him with unswerving loyalty.[23] The two armies met near Alton;[24] at the last moment, the wisdom either of Anselm, of the few loyal barons, or of Henry himself, turned the meeting into a peaceful one. The brothers came to terms: Robert renounced his claim to the crown in consideration of a yearly pension from England; Henry gave up all his Norman possessions except Domfront, whose people he refused to forsake;[25] and, as in the treaty made at Caen ten years before between Robert and William, it was arranged that whichever brother lived longest should inherit the other’s dominions, if the deceased left no lawful heirs.[26]

- [21] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 786, 787.

- [22] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

- [23] Eadmer, Hist. Novorum (Rule), p. 127.

- [24] See Freeman, William Rufus, vol. ii. p. 408.

- [25] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 788.

- [26] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

The treaty was ratified at Winchester in the first days of August;[27] and thus, almost on the anniversary of the Red King’s death, ended the last Norman invasion of England. But the treaty of Winchester, like that of Caen, failed to settle the real difficulty. That difficulty was, how to control the barons. According to one version of the treaty, it was stipulated that those who had incurred forfeiture in England by their adherence to Robert and those who had done the same in Normandy in Henry’s behalf should alike go unpunished;[28] according to another, perhaps a more probable account, the brothers agreed to co-operate in punishing traitors on both sides.[29] Henry set to work to do his part methodically. One after another, at different times, in various ways, by regular process of law, the offenders were brought to justice in England: some heavily fined, some deprived of their honours and exiled. It was treason not so much against himself as against the peace and order of the realm that Henry was bent upon avenging; Ivo of Grantmesnil was fined to the verge of ruin for the crime of making war not upon the king in behalf of the duke, but upon his own neighbours for his own personal gratification—a crime which was part of the daily life of every baron in Normandy, but which had never been seen in England before,[30] and never was seen there again as long as King Henry lived. The most formidable of all the troublers of the land was Henry’s old enemy at Domfront—Robert, lord of Bellême in the border-land of Perche, earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel in England, count of Alençon and lord of Montgomery in Normandy, and now by his marriage count of Ponthieu. Robert was actually fortifying his castles of Bridgenorth and Arundel in preparation for open revolt when he was summoned to take his trial on forty-five charges of treason against the king of England and the duke of Normandy. As he failed to answer, Henry led his troops to the siege of Bridgenorth. In three weeks it surrendered; Shrewsbury and Arundel did the same, and Robert of Bellême was glad to purchase safety for life and limb at the cost of all his English possessions.[31]

- [27] Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. 1101.

- [28] Eng. Chron. a. 1101.

- [29] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 788.

- [30] Ib. p. 805.

- [31] Ib. pp. 807, 808. Eng. Chron. a. 1102.

From that moment Henry’s position in England was secured; but all his remonstrances failed to make his indolent elder brother fulfil his part of their compact. The traitors whom Henry expelled from England only carried their treason over sea to a more congenial climate, and the helpless, heedless duke looked passively on while Robert of Bellême, William of Mortain the banished earl of Cornwall, and their fellows slaked their thirst for vengeance upon King Henry by ravaging the Norman lands of those who were faithful to him in England.[32] Their victims, as well as Henry himself, began to see that his personal intervention alone could re-establish order in the duchy. On his appearance there in 1104 he was joined by all the more reasonable among the barons. For the moment he was pacified by fresh promises of amendment on Robert’s part, and by the cession of the county of Evreux; but he knew that all compromise had become vain; and in the last week of Lent 1105 he landed again at Barfleur in the full determination of making himself master of Normandy. His Norman partisans rallied round him at once,[33] and he was soon joined by two valuable allies, Elias count of Maine and his intended son-in-law, the young count Geoffrey of Anjou.[34] It was they who won for Henry his first success, the capture of Bayeux.[35] Warned by the fate of this unhappy city, which was burnt down, churches and all, Caen surrendered at once, and Henry thus came into possession of the Norman treasury. A siege of Falaise failed through the unexplained departure of Count Elias,[36] and the war dragged slowly on till Henry, now busy in another quarter with negotiations for the return of S. Anselm, went back at Michaelmas to England. Thither he was followed first by Robert of Bellême, then by Robert of Normandy,[37] both seeking for peace; but peace had become impossible now. Next summer Henry was again in Normandy, reconciled to S. Anselm, released from anxieties at home, free to concentrate all his energies upon the final struggle. It was decided with one blow. As he was besieging the castle of Tinchebray on Michaelmas Eve Duke Robert at the head of all his forces approached and summoned him to raise the siege. He refused, “preferring,” as he said, “to take the blame of a more than civil war for the sake of future peace.” But when the two hosts were drawn up face to face, the prospect of a battle seemed too horrible to be endured, composed as they were of kinsmen and brothers, fathers and sons, arrayed against each other. The clergy besought Henry to stay his hand; he listened, pondered, and at length sent a final message to his brother. He came, he said, not wishing to deprive Robert of his duchy or to win territories for himself, but to answer the cry of the distressed and deliver Normandy from the misrule of one who was duke only in name. Here then was his last proposition: “Give up to me half the land of Normandy, the castles and the administration of justice and government throughout the whole, and receive the value of the other half annually from my treasury in England. Thus you may enjoy pleasure and feasting to your heart’s content, while I will take upon me the labours of government, and guarantee the fulfilment of my pledge, if you will but keep quiet.” Foolish to the last, Robert declined the offer; and the two armies made themselves ready for battle.[38] In point of numbers they seem to have been not unequally matched, but they differed greatly in character. Robert was stronger in footsoldiers, Henry in knights; the flower of the Norman nobility was on his side now, besides his Angevin, Cenomannian and Breton allies;[39] while of those who followed Robert some, as the issue proved, were only half-hearted. Of Henry’s genuine English troops there is no account, but the men of his own day looked upon his whole host as English in contradistinction to Robert’s Normans, and the tactics adopted in the battle were thoroughly English. The king of England fought on foot with his whole army, and it seems that the duke of Normandy followed his example.[40]

- [32] Eng. Chron. a. 1104. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 397 (Hardy, p. 623).

- [33] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 814.

- [34] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1105 (Marchegay, Eglises d’Anjou, p. 30).

- [35] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1105 (Marchegay, Eglises d’Anjou, p. 30).

- [36] “Helias a Normannis rogatus discessit,” says Orderic (as above). What can this mean?

- [37] Eng. Chron. a. 1106.

- [38] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 820.

- [39] Ib. p. 820. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235).

- [40] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235).

The first line of the Norman or ducal host under William of Mortain charged the English front under Ralf of Bayeux, and by the fury of their onset compelled them to fall back, though without breaking their ranks. The issue was still doubtful, when the only mounted division of Henry’s troops, the Bretons and Cenomannians under Count Elias, came up to the rescue, took the duke’s army in flank, and cut down two hundred men in a single charge. Those Cenomannian swords which William the Conqueror was so proud to have overcome now carried the day for his youngest son. Robert of Bellême, as soon as he saw how matters were going, fled with all his followers, and the duke’s army at once dissolved.[41] In Henry’s own words, “the Divine Mercy gave into my hands, without much slaughter on our side, the duke of Normandy, the count of Mortain, William Crispin, William Ferrers, Robert of Estouteville, some four hundred knights, ten thousand foot—and the duchy of Normandy.”[42]

- [41] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 821. Eng. Chron. a. 1106. Hen. Hunt., as above·/·l. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235).

- [42] Letter of Henry to S. Anselm in Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 184.

Forty years before, on the very same day, William the Conqueror had landed at Pevensey to bring the English kingdom under the Norman yoke. The work of Michaelmas Eve, 1066, was reversed on Michaelmas Eve, 1106; the victory of Tinchebray made Normandy a dependency of England.[43] Such was the view taken by one of the most clear-sighted and unprejudiced historians of the time, a man of mingled Norman and English blood. Such was evidently the view instinctively taken by all parties, and the instinct was a true one, although at first glance it seems somewhat hard to account for. The reign of Henry I., if judged merely by the facts which strike the eye in the chronicles of the time, looks like one continued course of foreign policy and foreign warfare pursued by the king for his own personal ends at the expense of his English subjects. But the real meaning of the facts lies deeper. The comment of the archbishop of Rouen upon Henry’s death—“Peace be to his soul, for he ever loved peace”[44]—was neither sarcasm nor flattery. Henry did love peace, so well that he spent his life in fighting for it. His early Norman campaigns are enough to prove that without being a master of the art of war like his father, he was yet a brave soldier and a skilful commander; and the complicated wars of his later years, when over and over again he had to struggle almost single-handed against France, Flanders and Anjou, amid the endless treasons of his own barons, show still more clearly his superiority to nearly all the other generals of his time. But his ambitions were not those of the warrior. Some gleam of the old northman’s joy of battle may have flashed across the wandering knight as he defied his besiegers from the summit of his rock “in Peril of the Sea,” or swooped down upon the turbulent lords of the Cenomannian border, like an eagle upon lesser birds of prey, from his eyrie on the crest of Domfront; but the victor of Tinchebray looked at his campaigns in another light. To him they were simply a part of his general business as a king; they were means to an end, and that end was not glory, nor even gain, but the establishment of peace and order. In his thirteen years of wandering to and fro between England, Normandy and France he had probably studied all the phases of tyranny and anarchy which the three countries amply displayed, and matured his own theory of government, which he practised steadily to the end of his reign. That theory was not a very lofty or noble one; the principle from which it started and the end at which it aimed was the interest of the ruler rather than of the ruled; but the form in which Henry conceived that end and the means whereby he sought to compass it were at any rate more enlightened than those of his predecessor. The Red King had reigned wholly by terror; Henry did not aspire to rule by love; but he saw that, in a merely selfish point of view, a sovereign gains nothing by making himself a terror to any except evil-doers, that the surest basis for his authority is the preservation of order, justice and peace, and that so far at least the interests of king and people must be one. It is difficult to get rid of a feeling that Henry enforced justice and order from motives of expediency rather than of abstract righteousness. But, as a matter of fact, he did enforce them all round, on earl and churl, clerk and layman, Norman and Englishman, without distinction. And this steady, equal government was rendered possible only by the determined struggle which he waged with the Norman barons and their French allies. His home policy and his foreign policy were inseparably connected; and the lifelong battle which he fought with his continental foes was really the battle of England’s freedom.

- [43] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 625).

- [44] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 9 (Hardy, p. 702).

From the year 1103 onward the battle was fought wholly on the other side of the Channel. In England Henry, as his English subjects joyfully told him, became a free king on the day when he drove out Robert of Bellême.[45] One great hindrance indeed still remained, hanging upon him like a dead weight throughout his early struggles in Normandy; the controversy concerning ecclesiastical investitures, with which the rest of Europe had been aflame for a quarter of a century before it touched England at all. The decree of the Lateran Council of 1075 forbidding lay sovereigns to grant the investiture of any spiritual office with ring and staff was completely ignored in practice by William the Conqueror and Lanfranc. Their position on this and all other matters of Church policy was summed up in their reply to Pope Gregory’s demand of fealty: William would do what the English kings who went before him had done, neither more nor less.[46] But the king and the primate were not without perceiving that, as a necessary consequence of their own acts, the English Church had entered upon a new and more complicated relation both to the state and to the Apostolic see, and that the day must shortly come when she would be dragged from her quiet anchorage into the whirlpool of European controversies and strifes. Their forebodings found expression in the three famous rules of ecclesiastical policy which William laid down for the guidance of his successors rather than himself:—that no Pope should be acknowledged in England and no letter from him received there by any one without the king’s consent;—that no Church council should put forth decrees without his permission and approval;—and that no baron or servant of the crown should be laid under ecclesiastical censure save at the king’s own command.[47] These rules, famous in the two succeeding reigns under the name of “paternal customs,” were never put to the test of practice as long as William and Lanfranc lived. The Red King’s abuse of the two first, by precipitating the crisis and driving S. Anselm to throw himself into the arms of Rome, showed not so much their inadequacy as the justice of the misgivings from which they had sprung. Henry at his accession took his stand upon them in the true spirit of their author; but the time was gone by; Anselm too had taken his stand upon ground whence in honour and conscience he could not recede, and the very first interview between king and primate threw open the whole question of the investitures. But in England and in the Empire the question wore two very different aspects. In England it never became a matter of active interest or violent partisanship in the Church and the nation at large. Only a few deep thinkers on either side—men such as Count Robert of Meulan among the advisers of the king, perhaps such as the devoted English secretary Eadmer among the intimate associates of Anselm—ever understood or considered the principles involved in the case, or its bearing upon the general system of Church and state. Anselm himself stood throughout not upon the abstract wrongfulness of lay investiture, but upon his own duty of obedience to the decree of the Lateran Council; he strove not for the privileges of his order, but for the duties of his conscience. The bishops who refused investiture at Henry’s hands clearly acted in the same spirit; what held them back was not so much loyalty to the Pope as loyalty to their own metropolitan. The great mass of both clergy and laity cared nothing at all how the investitures were given, and very little for papal decrees; all they cared about was that they should not be again deprived of their archbishop, and left, as they had already been left too long, like sheep without a shepherd. In their eyes the dispute was a personal one between king and primate, stirred up by Satan to keep the English Church in misery.

- [45] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 808.

- [46] Lanfranc. Ep. x. (Giles, vol. i. p. 32).

- [47] Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 10.

In the manner in which it was conducted on both sides, the case compares no less favourably with its continental parallel and with the later contest in England of which it was the forerunner, and for which, in some respects, it unquestionably furnished a model, though that model was very ill followed. For two years the dispute made absolutely no difference in the general working of the Church; Anselm was in full enjoyment of his canonical and constitutional rights as primate of all Britain; he ruled his suffragans, held his councils, superintended the restoration of his cathedral church, and laboured at the reform of discipline, with Henry’s full concurrence; and the clergy, with the archbishop at their head, were the life and soul of the party whose loyalty saved the king in his struggle with the barons. Even when Anselm’s position in England had become untenable, he went over sea in full possession of his property, as the king’s honoured friend and spiritual father. Not till Henry was provoked by a papal excommunication of all the upholders of the obnoxious “paternal customs” except himself, did he seize the temporalities of the archbishopric; and even then Anselm, from his Burgundian retreat, continued in active and unrestrained correspondence with his chapter and suffragans, and in friendly communication not only with Queen Matilda, but even with the king himself. And when at last the archbishop who had gone down on his knees to the Pope to save William Rufus from excommunication threatened to put forth that very sentence against William’s far less guilty brother, he was only, like Henry himself in Normandy at the same moment, preparing his most terrible weapon of war as the surest means of obtaining peace. Henry’s tact warned him, too, that the time for a settlement was come, and the sincerity of his motives enabled him to strike out a line of compromise which both parties could accept without sacrificing their own dignity or the principles for which they were contending. The English king and primate managed to attain in seven years of quiet decorous negotiation, without disturbing the peace or tarnishing the honour of either Church or crown, the end to which Pope and Emperor only came after half a century of tumult, bloodshed and disgrace; the island-pontiff who “loved righteousness and hated iniquity,” instead of “dying in exile” like his Roman brother, came home to end his days in triumph on the chair of S. Augustine. The settlement made little or no practical difference as far as its immediate object was concerned. Henry ceased to confer the spiritual insignia; but the elections, held as of old in the royal court, were as much under his control as before. He yielded the form and kept the substance; the definite concession of the bishops’ homage for their temporalities fully compensated for the renunciation of the ceremonial investiture. But the other side, too, had gained something more than a mere form. It had won a great victory for freedom by bringing Henry to admit that there were departments of national life which lay beyond the sphere of his kingly despotism. It had, moreover, gained a distinct practical acknowledgement of the right of the Apostolic Curia to act as the supreme court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes, like the Curia Regis in secular matters. In a word, the settlement indicated plainly that the system of William and Lanfranc was doomed to break down before long. It broke down utterly when Anselm and Henry were gone; the complications of legatine intervention, avoided only by careful management in Henry’s later years, led to the most important results in the next reign; and when the slumbering feud of sceptre and crozier broke out again, the difference between the cool Norman temper and the fiery blood of Anjou, between the saintly self-effacement of Anselm and the lofty self-assertion of Thomas, was only one of the causes which gave it such an increase of virulence as brought to nought the endeavours of king and primate to tread in the steps of those whom they professed to have taken for their examples.

Of more direct and wide-reaching importance, but less easy to trace, is the working of Henry’s policy in the temporal government of England. Like his Church policy, with which it was in strict accord, it was grounded upon definite and consistent principles. At the outset of his reign circumstances had at once compelled the king to throw himself upon the support of his English subjects and enabled him to find in them his surest source of strength. Personally, his sympathies were not a whit more English or less despotic than those of his predecessor; but, unlike Rufus, he fairly accepted his position with all its consequences so far as he understood them, and throughout his reign he never altogether forsook the standpoint which he had taken at its beginning. That standpoint, as expressed in his coronation-charter, was “the law of King Eadward as amended by King William.” In other words, Henry pledged himself to carry out his father’s system of compromise and amalgamation, to take up and continue his father’s work; and as soon as his hands were free he set himself to fulfil the pledge. But the scheme whose first outlines had been sketched by the Conqueror’s master-hand had to be wrought out under conditions which had changed considerably since his death and were changing yet farther every day. The great ecclesiastical question was only the first and most prominent among a crowd of social and political problems whose shadows William had at the utmost only seen dimly looming in the future, but which confronted Henry as present facts that he must grapple with as best he could. At their theoretical, systematic solution he made little or no attempt; the time was not yet ripe, nor was he the man for such work. He was neither a great legislator nor an original political thinker, but a clear-headed, sagacious, practical man of business. Such a man was precisely the ruler needed at the moment. His reign is not one of the marked eras of English history; compared with the age which had gone before and that which came after it, the age of Henry I. looks almost like a “day of small things.” That very phrase, which seems so aptly to describe its outward aspect, warns us not to despise or pass it over lightly. It is just one of those periods of transition without which the marked eras would never be. Henry’s mission was to prepare the way for the work of his grandson by completing that of his father.

The work was no longer where his father had left it. When the secular side of the Norman government in England, somewhat obscured for a while by the ecclesiastical conflict, comes into distinct view again after the settlement of 1107, one is almost startled at the amount of developement which has taken place in the twenty years since the Conqueror’s death—a developement whose steps lie hidden beneath the shadows of the Red King’s tyranny and of Henry’s early struggles. The power of the crown had outgrown even the nominal restraints preserved from the older system: the king’s authority was almost unlimited, even in theory; the Great Council, the successor and representative of the Witenagemot, had lost all share in the real work of legislation and government; of the old formula—“counsel and consent”—the first half had become an empty phrase and the second a mere matter of course. The assembly was a court rather than a council, the qualification of its members, whether earls, barons, or knights, being all alike dependent on their position as tenants-in-chief of the crown; the bishops alone kept their unaltered dignity as lineal successors of the older spiritual Witan; but even the bishops had been compelled by the compromise of 1107 to hold their temporalities on the baronial tenure of homage and fealty to the king, a step which involved the strict application of the same rule to the lay members of the assembly. Moreover, the Witenagemot was being gradually supplanted in all its more important functions by an inner circle of counsellors, forming a permanent ministerial body which gathered into its own hands the entire management of the financial and judicial administration of the state. In one aspect it was the “Curia Regis” or King’s Court, the supreme court of judicature which appropriated alike the judicial powers of the Witenagemot, of the old court of the king’s thegns or theningmanna-gemot, and of the feudal court of the Norman tenants-in-chief. In another aspect it was the Exchequer, the court which received the royal revenues from the sheriffs of the counties, arranged and reviewed the taxation, transacted the whole fiscal business of the crown, and in short had the supreme control and management of the “ways and means” of the realm. The judicial, military and social organization under the Norman kings rests so completely on a fiscal basis that the working of the Exchequer furnishes the principal means of studying that of the whole system; while the connexion between the functions of the Exchequer and those of the Curia Regis is so close that it is often difficult to draw a line accurately between them, and all the more so, that they were made up of nearly the same constituent elements. These were the great officers of the royal household:—the justiciar, the treasurer, the chancellor, the constable, the marshal, and their subordinates:—titles of various origin, some, as for example the chancellor, being of comparatively recent origin, while others seem to have existed almost from time immemorial;—but all titles whose holders, from being mere personal attendants upon the sovereign, had now become important officials of the state. Like a crowd of other matters which first come distinctly to light under Henry, the system seems to have grown up as it were in the dark during the reign of William Rufus, no doubt under the hands of Ralf Flambard. At its head stood the justiciar;—second in authority to the king in his presence, his representative and vicegerent in his absence, officially as well as actually his chief minister and the unquestioned executor of his will. This office, of which the germs may perhaps be traced as far back as the time of Ælfred, who acted as “secundarius” under his brother Æthelred I., was directly derived from that which Æthelred II. had instituted under the title of high-thegn or high-reeve, and which grew into a permanent vice-royalty in the persons of Godwine and Harold under Cnut and Eadward, and of Ralf Flambard under William Rufus. Ralf himself, a clerk from Bayeux, who from the position of an obscure dependent in the Conqueror’s household had made his way by the intriguing, pushing, unscrupulous temper which had earned him his nickname of the “Firebrand,” was an upstart whom the barons of the Conquest may well have despised as much as the native English feared and hated him. After an interval during which his office was held by Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln—a former chancellor of the Red King—it passed to a man who from beginnings almost as lowly as those of Ralf rose to yet loftier and, it is but fair to add, purer fame. Henry in his wandering youth, as he rode out from Caen one morning with a few young companions, stopped to hear mass at a little wayside chapel. The poor priest who served it, guessing by their looks the temper of his unexpected congregation, rattled through the office with a speed which delighted them; they all pronounced him just the man for a soldier’s chaplain; Henry enlisted him as such, and soon found that he had picked up a treasure. Roger became his steward, and discharged his functions with such care, fidelity and good management as earned him the entire confidence of his master.[48] Soon after Henry’s accession he was appointed chancellor, a post whose duties involved, besides the official custody of the royal seal, the superintendence of the clerks of the king’s chapel or chancery, who were charged with the keeping of the royal accounts, the conducting of the royal correspondence, the drawing up of writs and other legal documents and records, and who were now formed into a trained and organized body serving as secretaries for all departments of state business. From 1101 to 1106 this office seems to have been held successively by Roger, William Giffard, and Waldric; Roger probably resumed it in 1106 on Waldric’s elevation to the bishopric of Laon, but if so he resigned it again next year, to become bishop of Salisbury and justiciar.[49]

- [48] Will. Newburgh, l. i. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 36).

- [49] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 56.

Henry’s justiciar-bishop was the type of a class. The impossibility of governing England securely by means of feudal machinery, even with all the checks and safeguards which could be drawn from the old English administrative system, had by this time become self-evident. The conduct of the barons had at once proved to Henry the necessity and given him the justification for superseding them in all the more important functions of government, by carrying out, with a free and strong hand, the scheme which Æthelred II. had originated under less favourable circumstances—the organization of a distinct ministerial body, directly dependent upon the crown. Of this body the model, as well as the head, was the bishop of Salisbury. Under his direction there grew up a trained body of administrators, most of them clerks like himself, several being his own near relatives, and almost all upstarts—novi homines, “new men” in the phrase of the time—compared with the nobles whose fathers had come over with the Conqueror; forming a sort of official caste, separate alike from the feudal nobility and from the mass of the people, and no doubt equally obnoxious to both, but very much better fitted than any instruments which either could have furnished for managing the business of the state at that particular crisis. Over and above the obloquy which naturally fell upon them as the instruments of royal justice or royal extortion, there was, however, another cause for the jealousy with which they were generally regarded. Henry is charged with showing, more especially in his later years, a preference for foreigners which was equally galling to all his native subjects, whatever their descent might be.[50] It was not that he set Normans over Englishmen, but that he set men of continental birth over both alike. The words “Norman” and “English” had in fact acquired a new meaning since the days of the Conquest. The sons and grandsons of the men who had come over with Duke William never lost one spark of their Norman pride of race; but the land of their fathers was no longer their home; most of them were born in England, some had English wives, and even English mothers; to nearly all, the chief territorial, political and personal interests of their lives were centred in the island. The constant wars between the Conqueror’s successors tended still further to sever the Normans of the duchy from those of the kingdom, and to drive the latter to unite themselves, at least politically, with their English fellow-subjects. Already in the wars of Rufus and Robert the change of feeling shows itself in the altered use of names; the appellations “Norman” and “French” are reserved exclusively for the duke and his allies, and the supporters of the king of England are all counted together indiscriminately as English. Tinchebray is distinctly reckoned as an English victory. From that moment Normandy was regarded, both by its conquerors and by its French neighbours, as a foreign dependency of the English crown. Historians on both sides of the sea, as they narrate the wars between Henry and Louis of France which arose out of that conquest, unconsciously shadow forth the truth that the reunion of England and Normandy really tended to widen the gulf between them. The greatest French statesman of the day, Suger, abbot of S. Denis, sets the relation between the two nationalities in the most striking light when he justifies the efforts of his own sovereign Louis to drive Henry out of the duchy on the express ground that “Englishmen ought not to rule over Frenchmen, nor French over English.”[51] One of our best authorities on the other side, the son of a Frenchman from Orléans who had come in the train of Roger of Montgomery and married an English wife—though he spent his whole life, from the age of ten years, in the Norman monastery of Saint-Evroul, never ceased to regard his mother’s country as his own, showed his love for it in the most touching expressions of remembrance, and took care to send forth his history to the world under the name of Orderic the Englishman. This last was no doubt a somewhat extreme case. Still the fusion between the two races had clearly begun; it was helped on directly by Henry’s whole policy, by the impartial character of his internal administration, by the nature and circumstances of his relations with his chief continental neighbours, France and Anjou; indirectly it was helped on by the sense of a common grievance in the promotion of “strangers”—men born beyond sea—over the heads of both alike. Slight as were the bonds between them at present, they were the first links of a chain which grew stronger year by year; and the king’s last and grandest stroke of policy, the marriage of his daughter and destined successor with the count of Anjou, did more than anything else to quicken the fusion of the two races by driving them to unite against sovereigns who were equally aliens from both.

- [50] Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 224.

- [51] Suger, Vita Ludovici Grossi, c. 1 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 12).

Roger’s great work as justiciar was the organization of the Exchequer. Twice every year the barons of the Exchequer met under his presidency around the chequered table whence they derived their name, and settled accounts with the sheriffs of the counties. As the sheriffs were answerable for the entire revenue due to the crown from their respective shires, the settlement amounted to a thorough review of the financial condition of the realm. The profits of the demesne lands and of the judicial proceedings in the shire-court, now commuted at a fixed sum under the title of “ferm of the shire”; the land-tax, or as it was still called, the Danegeld, also compounded for at a definite rate; the so-called “aids” which in the case of the towns seem to have corresponded to the Danegeld in the rural districts; the feudal sources of income, reliefs, wardships, marriage-dues, escheats; the profits arising out of the strict and cruel forest-law, the one grievance of his predecessor’s rule which Henry had from the beginning refused to redress; all these and many other items found their places in the exhaustive proceedings of King Henry’s court of Exchequer. Hand in hand with its financial work went the judicial work of the Curia Regis: a court in theory comprehending the whole body of tenants-in-chief, but in practice limited to the great officers of the household and others specially appointed by the king, and acting under him, or under the chief justiciar as his representative, as a supreme tribunal of appeal, and also of first resort in suits between tenants-in-chief and in a variety of other cases called up by special writ for its immediate cognisance. It had moreover the power of acting directly upon the lower courts in another way. The assessment of taxes was still based upon the Domesday survey; but transfers of land, changes in cultivation, the reclaiming of wastes on the one hand and the creation of new forests on the other, necessarily raised questions which called for an occasional revision and readjustment of taxation. This was effected by sending the judges of the King’s Court—who were only the barons of the Exchequer in another capacity—on judicial circuits throughout the country, to hold the pleas of the crown and settle disputed points of assessment and tenure in the several shires. As the justices thus employed held their sittings in the shire-moot, the local and the central judicature were thus brought into immediate connexion with each other, and the first stepping-stone was laid towards bridging over the gap which severed the lower from the higher organization.

By the establishment of a careful and elaborate administrative routine Henry and Roger thus succeeded in binding together all branches of public business and all classes of society in intimate connexion with and entire dependence on the crown, through the medium of the Curia Regis and the Exchequer. The system stands portrayed at full length in the Dialogue in which Bishop Roger’s great-nephew expounded the constitution and functions of the fully developed Court of Exchequer; its working in Roger’s own day is vividly illustrated in the one surviving record which has come down to us from that time, the earliest extant of the “Pipe Rolls” (so called from their shape) in which the annual statement of accounts was embodied by the treasurer. The value of this solitary roll of Henry I.—that of the year 1130—lies less in the dry bones of the actual financial statement than in the mass of personal detail with which they are clothed, and through which we get such an insight as nothing else can afford into the social condition of the time. The first impression likely to be produced by the document is that under Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury—“the Lion of Justice” and “the Sword of Righteousness”—every possible contingency of human life was somehow turned into a matter of money for the benefit of the royal treasury. It must, however, be remembered that except the Danegeld, there was no direct taxation; the only means, therefore, of making up a budget at all was by the feudal levies and miscellaneous incidents; and these were no longer, as in the Red King’s days, instruments of unlimited extortion, but were calculated according to a regular and fairly equitable scale, subject to frequent modification under special circumstances. Still the items look strange enough. We see men paying to get into office and paying to get out of it; heirs paying for the right to enter upon their inheritance; would-be guardians paying that they may administer the estates of minors; suitors paying for leave to marry heiresses or dowered widows; heiresses and widows paying for freedom to wed the man of their own choice. The remittances are not always in money; several of the king’s debtors sent coursing-dogs or destriers; one has promised a number of falcons, and there are some amusingly minute stipulations as to their colour.[52] There is an endless string of land-owners, great and small, paying for all sorts of privileges connected with their property; some for leave to make an exchange of land with a neighbour, some to cancel an exchange already made; some to procure the speedy determination of a suit with a rival claimant of their estates, some on the contrary to delay or avoid answering such a claim, and some for having themselves put forth claims which they were unable to prove; the winner pays for his success, the loser for failing to make good his case; the treasury gains both ways. Jewish usurers pay for the king’s help in recovering their debts from his Christian subjects.[53] The citizens of Gloucester promise thirty marks of silver if the king’s justice can get back for them a sum of money “which was taken away from them in Ireland.”[54] This last-quoted entry brings us at once to another class of items, perhaps the most interesting of all; those which relate to the growing liberties of the towns.

- [52] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 111.

- [53] Ib. pp. 147, 148, 149.

- [54] Ib. p. 77.

The English towns differed completely in their origin and history from those of the states which had arisen out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. The great cities of Italy and Gaul were daughters of Rome; they were the abiding depositaries of her social, municipal and political traditions; as such, they had a vitality and a character which, like their great mistress and model, they were able to preserve through all the changes of barbarian conquest and feudal reorganization. The English towns had no such imperial past; in their origin and earliest constitution they were absolutely undistinguishable from the general crowd of little rural settlements throughout the country. Here and there, for one reason or another, some particular spot attracted an unusually large concourse of inhabitants; but whether sheltered within the walls of a Roman military encampment like Winchester and York, or planted on the top of an almost immemorial hill-fort like Old Sarum, or gathered in later days round some fortress raised for defence against the Welsh or the Danes like Taunton or Warwick, or round some venerated shrine like Beverley or Malmesbury or Oxford, still the settlement differed in nothing but its size from the most insignificant little group of rustic homesteads which sent its reeve and four men to the court of the hundred and the shire. The borough was nothing more than an unusually large township, generally provided with a dyke and palisade, or sometimes even a wall, instead of the ordinary quickset hedge; or it was a cluster of townships which had somehow coalesced, but without in any way forming an organic whole. Each unit of the group had its own parish church and parochial machinery for both spiritual and temporal purposes, its own assembly for transacting its own internal affairs; while the general borough-moot, in a town of this kind, answered roughly to the hundred-court of the rural districts, and the character of the borough-constitution itself resembled that of the hundred rather than that of the single township. The earlier and greater towns must have been originally free; a few still retain in their common lands a vestige of their early freedom. But the later towns which grew up around the hall of a powerful noble, or a great and wealthy monastery, were dependent from the first upon the lord of the soil on which they stood; their inhabitants owed suit and service to the earl, the bishop, or the abbot, whichever he might chance to be, and their reeve was appointed by him. On the other hand, when it became a recognized principle that everybody must have a lord, and that all folkland belonged to the king, it followed as a natural inference that all towns which had no other lord were counted as royal demesnes, and their chief magistrate was an officer of the crown. In the great cities he usually bore the title of port-reeve, a word whose first syllable, though here used to represent the town in general, refers in strict etymology to the porta, or place where the market was held, and thus at once points to the element in the life of the towns which gave them their chief consequence and their most distinctive character. The Norman conquest had led to a great increase of their trading importance; a sense of corporate life and unity grew up within them; their political position became more clearly defined; they began to recognize themselves, and to win their recognition at the hands of the ruling powers, as a separate element in the state. The distinction was definitely marked by the severance of their financial interests from those of the shires in which they stood; a fixed “aid,” varying according to their size and wealth, was substituted in their case for the theoretically even, but practically very unfair pressure of the Danegeld; and to avoid all risk of extortion on the part of the sheriff, their contribution to the ferm of the shire was settled at a fixed round sum deducted from the total and accounted for as a separate item, under the name of firma burgi, either by the sheriff or, in some cases where the privilege had been specially conferred, by the towns themselves. At the same time the voluntary institution of the gilds, which had long acted as a supplement to the loose territorial and legal constitution of the boroughs, forced its way into greater prominence; the merchant-gilds made their appearance no longer as mere private associations, but as legally organized bodies endowed with authority over all matters connected with trade in the great mercantile cities; the recognition of their legal status—generally expressed by the confirmation of the right to possess a “gild-hall” (or, as it was called in the north, a “hans-house”)—became a main point in the struggles of the towns for privileges and charters. The handicraftsmen, fired with the same spirit of association, banded themselves together in like manner; the weavers of London, Huntingdon and Lincoln, the leather-sellers and weavers of Oxford, bought of the crown in 1130 a formal confirmation of the customs of their respective gilds.[55] The lesser towns followed, as well as they could, the example of the great cities; they too won from their lords a formal assurance of their privileges; Archbishop Thurstan’s charter to Beverley was expressly modelled on that granted by King Henry to York.[56]

- [55] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), Oxford, pp. 2 and 5; Huntingdon, p. 48; Lincoln, pp. 109, 114; London, p. 144.

- [56] Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 109, 110 (3d ed.).

Plan I.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

We may glance at some of the towns of southern England in company with some travellers from Gaul who visited them in the later years of Henry’s reign. The cathedral church of Laon had been burnt down and its bishop Waldric slain in a civic tumult in 1112. Waldric had once been chancellor to King Henry,[57] and the reports which he and others had brought to Laon of the wealth and prosperity of the island[58] led some of the canons, after perambulating northern Gaul to collect donations for the restoration of their church, to venture beyond sea for the same object. They set sail from Wissant—seemingly in an English ship, for its captain bore the English-sounding name of Coldistan—in company with some Flemish merchants who were going to buy wool in England, and they landed at Dover after a narrow escape from some pirates who chased their vessel in the hope of seizing the money which it was known to contain.[59] They naturally made their way to Canterbury first, to enlist the sympathies of the archbishop and his chapter, as well as those of the scarcely less wealthy and powerful abbey of S. Augustine.[60] Thence they apparently proceeded to Winchester.[61] The old West-Saxon capital had lost its ancient rank; London, which had long surpassed it in commercial and political importance, had now superseded it as the crowning-place and abode of kings. But its connexion with the crown was far from being broken. Its proximity to the New Forest made it a favourite residence of the Conqueror and his sons; William himself had built not only a castle on the high ground at the western end of the city, just below the west gate of the Roman enclosure, but also a palace in its south-eastern quarter, hard by the cathedral and the New Minster; it was here that he usually held his Easter court, and his successors continued the practice. One very important department of the royal administration, moreover, was still permanently centred at Winchester—the Treasury, which under its English title of the “Hoard” had been settled there by Eadward the Confessor, and which seems not to have been finally transferred to Westminster till late in the reign of Henry II.[62] Of the two great religious foundations, one, the “Old Minster,” or cathedral church of S. Swithun, the crowning-place and burial-place of our native kings, assumed under the hands of its first Norman bishop the aspect which, outwardly at least, it still retains. The other, the “New Minster,” so strangely placed by Ælfred close beside the old one, had incurred William’s wrath by the deeds of its abbot and some of its monks who fought and fell at Senlac; to punish the brotherhood, he planted his palace close against the west front of their church; and they found their position so intolerable that in 1111, by Henry’s leave, they migrated outside the northern boundary of Winchester to a new abode which grew into a wealthy and flourishing house under the name of Hyde Abbey, leaving their old home to fall into decay and to be represented in modern days by a quiet graveyard.[63] As a trading centre Winchester ranked in Henry’s day, and long after, second to London alone; the yearly fair which within living memory was held on S. Giles’s day upon the great hill to the east of the city[64] preserved a faint reminiscence of the vast crowds of buyers and sellers who flocked thither from all parts of the country throughout the middle ages.

- [57] On Waldric (or Gualdric) and Laon see Guibert of Nogent, De Vitâ suâ, l. iii. c. 4, et seq. (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 498, et seq.). Cf. above, p. 22.

- [58] “Quæ [sc. Anglia] tunc temporis magnâ divitiarum florebat opulentiâ pro pace et justitiâ quam rex ejus Henricus ... in eâ faciebat.” Herman. Mon. De Mirac. S. Mariæ, l. ii. c. 1 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 534).

- [59] Ib. c. 4 (pp. 535, 536).

- [60] Ib. c. 6 (p. 536).

- [61] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 7 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 536).

- [62] At the date of the Dialogus de Scaccario (A.D. 1178) its headquarters seem to have fluctuated between London and Winchester, and to have been quite recently, if they were not even yet, most frequently at the latter place. See the payments to the accountants: “Quisque iii denarios si Londoniæ fuerint; si Wintoniæ, quia inde solent assumi, duos quisque habet.”— Dial. de Scacc., l. i. c. 3 (Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 175, 3d ed.).

- [63] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe) vol. ii. p. 64. Ann. Waverl. a. 1111. The king’s charter confirming the removal is dated 1114; Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. ii. p. 444.

- [64] It is mentioned in Henry’s charter to Hyde; Dugdale, as above.

At the opposite end of the New Forest the little town of Twinham, or Christchurch as it was beginning to be called from its great ecclesiastical establishment, whose church had been rebuilt on a grand scale by Ralf Flambard, had, on the octave of Pentecost, a fair which the travellers took care to attend, much to the disgust of the dean, who was anxious to secure all the offerings of the assembled crowd for the improvement of his own church, and had no mind to share them with our Lady of Laon.[65] They met with a warmer welcome at Exeter at the hands of its archdeacon and future bishop Robert.[66] In the next reign Exeter was counted as the fourth city in the kingdom.[67] Natural wealth of its own it had none; the bare rocky soil of the south coast of Devon produced nothing but a few oats, and those of the poorest quality;[68] but the mouth of the Exe furnished a safe and convenient anchorage for small merchant vessels either from Gaul or from Ireland, and though Bristol was fast drawing away this latter branch of her trade, Exeter could still boast of “such an abundance of merchandise that nothing required for the use of man could ever be asked for there in vain.”[69] It was far otherwise with Salisbury, to which the travellers were probably drawn chiefly by the fame of its bishop;[70] the Salisbury of those days was not the city in the plain which now spreads itself around the most perfect of English Gothic minsters, but the city whose traces, in a very dry summer, may still now and then be seen in the fields which cover the hill of Old Sarum. Crowded as it was into that narrow circle—narrow, and without possibility of enlargement—Bishop Roger’s Salisbury was an excellent post for military security, but it had no chance of attaining industrial or commercial importance, although he did not disdain to accept the grant of its market tolls, which till 1130 formed part of the ferm of Wilton.[71] Wilton was apparently still the chief town of the shire to which it had originally given its name; like Christchurch it had its fair, but, like Christchurch too, its importance was mainly derived from its abbey, where the memory of S. Eadgyth or Edith, a daughter of Eadgar, was venerated by English and Normans alike, by none more than the queen who shared Eadgyth’s royal blood and had once borne her name.[72] The visitors from Laon, however, seem to have been more impressed by another name which one is somewhat startled to meet in this southern region—that of Bæda, whose tomb was shown them in the abbey church of Wilton, and was believed to be the scene of miraculous cures.[73] They retraced their steps into Devonshire, where they found the legends of Arthur as rife among the people as they were among the Bretons of Gaul; they were shown the chair and oven of the “blameless king,” and a tumult nearly arose at Bodmin out of a dispute between one of their party and a man who persisted in asserting that Arthur was still alive.[74] After visiting Barnstaple and Totnes[75] they turned northward towards the greatest seaport of the west, and indeed, with one exception, of all England: Bristol.

- [65] Herman. Mon., l. ii. cc. 10, 11 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., pp. 537, 538).

- [66] Ib. l. ii. c. 12 (p. 539).

- [67] Gesta Stephani (Sewell), p. 21.

- [68] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 94 (Hamilton, p. 201).

- [69] Ibid.

- [70] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 13 (p. 539).

- [71] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 13.

- [72] Ibid.

- [73] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 14 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 539).

- [74] Ib. l. ii. cc. 15, 16 (pp. 539, 540).

- [75] Ib. l. ii. cc. 17–19 (p. 540).

Plan II.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

To trace out the Bristol of the twelfth century in the Bristol of to-day is a matter of difficulty not only from the enormous growth of the town, but from the changes which have taken place in the physical conformation of its site. Nominally, it still stands on the peninsula formed by the junction of the Frome and the Avon; but the courses of both rivers have been so altered and disguised that the earlier aspect of the place is very hard to realize. The original Bristol stood wholly upon the high ground which now forms the neck of the peninsula, then a small tongue of land surrounded on the south-east by the Avon, on the north, west and south by the Frome, which flowed round it almost in the form of a horse-shoe and fell into the Avon on the southern side of the town, just below the present Bristol Bridge.[76] Before the Norman conquest, it seems, the lower course of the Frome had already been diverted from its natural bed;[77] its present channel was not dug till the middle of the thirteenth century, across a wide expanse of marsh stretching all along the right bank of both rivers, and flooded every day by the tide which came rushing up the estuary of Severn almost to the walls of the town, and made it seem like an island in the sea.[78] Within its comparatively narrow limits Bristol must have been in general character and aspect not unlike what it is to-day—a busy, bustling, closely-packed city, full of the eager, active, surging life of commercial enterprise. Ostmen from Waterford and Dublin, Northmen from the Western Isles and the more distant Orkneys, and even from Norway itself, had long ago learnt to avoid the shock of the “Higra,” the mighty current which still kept its heathen name derived from the sea-god of their forefathers,[79] and make it serve to float them into the safe and commodious harbour of Bristol, where a thousand ships could ride at anchor.[80] As the great trading centre of the west Bristol ranked as the third city in the kingdom,[81] surpassed in importance only by Winchester and London. The most lucrative branch of its trade, however, reflects no credit on its burghers. All the eloquence of S. Wulfstan and all the sternness of the Conqueror had barely availed to check for a while their practice of kidnapping men for the Irish slave-market; and that the traffic was again in full career in the latter years of Henry I. we learn from the experiences of the canons of Laon. They eagerly went on board some of the vessels in the harbour to buy some clothes, and to inspect the strange wares brought from lands which can have had little or no intercourse with the inland cities of Gaul. On their return they were solemnly implored by their friends in the city not to run such a risk again, as they would most likely find the ships suddenly put to sea and themselves sold into bondage in a foreign land.[82]

- [76] See the description of Bristol in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37.

- [77] Seyer, Memoirs of Bristol, vol. ii. pp. 18–27.

- [78] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37.

- [79] See the description of the “Higra,” and of Bristol, in Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. cc. 153, 154 (Hamilton, p. 292).

- [80] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37.

- [81] In Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 21, Exeter is called the fourth city in the realm. As London and Winchester are always counted first and second, the third can only be Bristol.

- [82] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 21 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 541).

No such dangers awaited them at Bath. With their reception there by the bishop[83]—whom the healing virtues of its waters had induced first to remove his bishopstool thither from its lowlier seat at Wells, and then to buy the whole city of King Henry for the sum of five hundred pounds[84]—their itinerary comes to an abrupt end. If they penetrated no further up the Severn valley than Bristol they turned back from the gates of a region which was then reckoned the fairest and wealthiest in England. The vale of Gloucester is described as a sort of earthly paradise, where the soil brought forth of its own accord the most abundant and choicest fruits, where from one year’s end to another the trees were never bare, where the apples hung within reach of the traveller’s hand as he walked along the roads;—above all, where the fruit of the vine, which in other parts of England was mostly sour, yielded a juice scarcely inferior to the wines of Gaul. Another source of wealth was supplied by the fisheries of the great river, the fertilizer as well as the highway of this favoured district. Religion and industry, abbeys and towns, grew and flourished by Severn-side.[85] Worcester was still the head of the diocese; but in political rank it had had to give way to Gloucester. Standing lower down the river, Gloucester was more accessible for trade, while its special importance as the key of the South-Welsh border had made it one of the recognized places for assemblies of the court from the time of the Danish kings. The chief town of the neighbouring valley of the Wye, Hereford, had once been a border-post of yet greater importance; but despite its castle and its bishop’s see, it was now a city “of no great size,” whose broken-down ramparts told the story of a greatness which had passed away.[86]

- [83] Ib.·/·Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 22 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 541).

- [84] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff., l. ii. c. 90 (Hamilton, p. 194). The grant of the city is in Rymer, Fœdera, vol. i. pt. i. p. 8; date, August 1111.

- [85] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff., l. iv. c. 153 (Hamilton, pp. 291, 292).

- [86] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff., l. iv. c. 163 (Hamilton, p. 298).

Far different was the case of Chester. What the estuary of the Severn was to the southern part of western England, that of the Dee was to its northern part; Chester was at once the Bristol and the Gloucester of the north-west coast—the centre of its trade and its bulwark against the Welsh. Beyond the Dee there was as yet little sign of industrial life. Cultivation had made little or no progress among the moorland and forest-tracts of western Yorkshire, and its eastern half had not yet recovered from the harrying with which the Conqueror had avenged its revolt in 1068. For more than sixty miles around York the ground still lay perfectly bare. “Cities whose walls once rose up to heaven—tracts that were once well watered, smiling meadows—if a stranger sees them now, he groans; if a former inhabitant could see them, he would not recognize his home.” The one thing which had survived this ruin was, as ever, the work of the Roman.[87] York still kept its unbroken life, its ecclesiastical primacy, its commercial greatness; the privileges of its merchants were secured by a charter from the king; they had their gild with its “alderman” at its head,[88] their “hans-house” for the making of bye-laws and the transaction of all gild business; and they were freed from all tolls throughout the shire.[89] Far to the north-west, on the Scottish border, Carlisle, after more than two centuries of ruin, had been restored and repeopled by William Rufus. The city had been destroyed by the Danes in 875, and its site remained utterly desolate till in 1092 the Red King drove out an English thegn who occupied it under the protection of Malcolm of Scotland, and reunited it to the English realm.[90] The place still kept some material relics of its earlier past; fragments of its Roman walls were still there, to be used up again in the new fortifications with which the Red King encircled his conquest; and some years later the triclinium of one of its Roman houses called forth the admiring wonder of a southern visitor, William of Malmesbury.[91] But the city and the surrounding country lay almost void of inhabitants, and only the expedient of a colony sent by Rufus from southern England, “to dwell in the land and till it,”[92] brought the beginnings of a new life. Yet before the end of Henry’s reign, that life had grown so vigorous that the archbishop of York found himself unable to make adequate provision for its spiritual needs, and was glad to sanction the formation of Carlisle and its district into a separate diocese.

- [87] Ib.·/·Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff., l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, pp. 208, 209).

- [88] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 34.

- [89] Charter of Beverley, Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 109, 110 (3d ed.).

- [90] Eng. Chron. a. 1092.

- [91] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, p. 208).

- [92] Eng. Chron. a. 1092.

The chief importance of Carlisle was in its military character, as an outpost of defence against the Scots. On the opposite coast we see springing up, around a fortress originally built for the same purpose, the beginning of an industrial community at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The “customs” of the town contain provisions for the regulation of both inland and outland trade; if a merchant vessel put in at the mouth of the Tyne, the burghers may buy what they will; if a dispute arise between one of them and a foreign merchant, it must be settled before the tide has ebbed thrice; the foreign trader may carry his wares ashore for sale, except salt and herrings, which must be sold on board the ship. No merchant, save a burgher, may buy wool, hides, or any other merchandise outside the town, nor within it, except from burghers; and no one but a burgher may buy, make, or cut cloth for dyeing.[93] Round the minster of S. John of Beverley, on the marshy flats of Holderness, there had grown up a town of sufficient consequence to win from the lord of the soil, Archbishop Thurstan of York, a charter whose privileges were copied from those of the metropolitan city itself. As a whole, however, the north was still a wild region, speaking a tongue of which, as William of Malmesbury complained, “we southrons could make nothing,” and living a life so unconnected with that of southern England that even King Henry still thought it needful to reinforce his ordinary body-guard with a troop of auxiliaries whenever he crossed the Humber.[94]

- [93] Customs of Newcastle, Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 111, 112.

- [94] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, p. 209).

This isolation was in great part due to physical causes. What is now the busy West Riding was then mainly a vast tract of moor and woodland, stretching from Wakefield to the Peak and from the Westmoreland hills to the sources of the Don; while further east, the district between the lower course of the Don and that of the Trent was one wide morass. Such obstacles were still strong enough to hinder, though not to bar, the intercourse of Yorkshire with mid-England. The only safe line of communication was the Foss Way, which struck across the central plain and along the eastern side of the Trent valley to Lincoln, and thence turned north-westward to cross the Trent and wind round between forest and fen to York. Lincoln was thus the chief station on the highway between York and the south. Under the Norman rule the city had risen to a new importance. Two of its quarters had been entirely transformed; the south-western was now covered by a castle, and the south-eastern by a cathedral church. Neither building was the first of its kind which had occupied the spot. Few sites in England could have been more attractive to a soldier’s eye than the crest of the limestone ridge descending abruptly to the south into a shallow sort of basin, watered by the little river Witham, and on the west sloping gradually down to a broad alluvial swamp extending as far as the bank of the Trent. The hundred and sixty-six houses which the Conqueror swept away to make room for his castle[95] were but encroachments on an earlier fortification, a “work” of mounds and earthen ramparts of the usual old English type, which now served as a foundation for his walls of stone.[96] To the ardent imagination of the medieval Church, on the other hand, the rocky brow of Lincoln might well seem to cry out for a holier crown, and a church of S. Mary was already in existence[97] on the site where Bishop Remigius of Dorchester, forsaking his lowly home in the valley of the Thames, reared his bishopstool amid the foundations of that great minster of our Lady whose noble group of towers now rises on the crest of the hill as a beacon to all the country round.[98] But there were other reasons for the translation of the bishopric than those of sentiment or of personal taste. Of the vast Mid-Anglian diocese, which stretched from the Thames to the Humber, Lincoln was beyond all comparison the most important town. Even in Roman times the original quadrangular enclosure of Lindum Colonia had been found too small, and a fortified suburb had spread down to the left bank of the Witham. During the years of peace which lasted from the accession of Cnut to that of William, the needs of an increasing population, as we have seen, covered the site of the older fortress with dwellings: when these were cleared away at William’s bidding, their exiled inhabitants found a new home on a plot of hitherto waste ground beyond the river; and a new town, untrammelled by the physical obstacles which had cramped the growth of the city on the hill, sprang up around the two churches of S. Mary-le-Wigford and S. Peter-at-Gowts.[99] Some fifty years later Lincoln was counted one of the most populous and flourishing cities in England.[100] The roads which met on the crest of its hill to branch off again in all directions formed only one of the ways by which trade poured into its market. Not only had the now dirty little stream of Witham a tide strong enough to bring the small merchant vessels of the day quite up to the bridge: it was connected with the Trent at Torksey by a canal, probably of Roman origin, known as the Foss Dyke; this after centuries of neglect was cleared out and again made navigable by order of Henry I.,[101] and through it there flowed into Lincoln a still more extensive trade from the lower Trent Valley and the Humber. The “men of the city and the merchants of the shire” were already banded together in a merchant-gild;[102] and it is doubtless this gild which is represented by the “citizens of Lincoln” who in 1130 paid two hundred marks of silver and four marks of gold for the privilege of holding their city in chief of the king.[103]

- [95] Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b.

- [96] G. T. Clark, Lincoln Castle (Archæol. Journal, vol. xxxiii. pp. 215–217).

- [97] “Sancta Maria de Lincoliâ in quâ nunc est episcopatus,” Domesday, vol. i. p. 336. The patron saint of this older church, however, was the Magdalene, not the Virgin. See John de Schalby’s Life of Remigius, in Appendix E. to Gir. Cambr. (Dimock), vol. vii. p. 194, and Mr. Freeman’s remarks in preface, ib. pp. lxxx., lxxxii.

- [98] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 177 (Hamilton, p. 312). Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 30.

- [99] See Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b, and Mr. Freeman’s remarks in Norm. Conq., vol. iv. pp. 218, 219.

- [100] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 177 (Hamilton, p. 312).

- [101] Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. 1121.

- [102] Said to date from the time of Eadward; Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 166.

- [103] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 114.

Plan III.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

The removal of Bishop Remigius from Dorchester to Lincoln was in accordance with a new practice, which had come in since the Norman conquest, of placing the episcopal see in the chief town of the diocese. The same motive had prompted a translation of the old Mercian bishopric from Lichfield, now described as “a little town in the woodland, with a rivulet flowing by it, far away from the throng of cities,”[104] to Chester, whence, however, it was soon removed again to the great abbey of Coventry.[105] The same reason, too, caused Norwich to succeed Thetford as the seat of the bishopric of East-Anglia. It was but very recently that Lincoln had outstripped Norwich as the chief city of eastern England. The mouth of the Yare, which had a tideway navigation quite up to the point where the Wensum falls into it, was no less conveniently placed than that of the Witham for intercourse with northern Europe; and the Scandinavian traders and settlers in the first half of the eleventh century had raised Norwich to such a pitch of prosperity that at the coming of the Norman it contained twenty-four churches, and its burghers seem to have been more numerous than those of any town in the realm except London and York.[106] Twenty years later their number was indeed greatly diminished; the consequences of Earl Ralf’s rebellion had wrought havoc in the city. But if its native population had decreased, a colony of Norman burghers was growing up and flourishing in a “new borough,” now represented by the parishes of S. Peter Mancroft and S. Giles; the number of churches and chapels had risen to forty-four,[107] and in the Red King’s last years the foundations of the cathedral were laid by Bishop Herbert Lozinga, whose grave may still be seen before its high altar.[108] Once in the next reign Norwich supplanted Gloucester as the scene of the Midwinter Council; King Henry kept Christmas there in 1121.[109] It may have been on this occasion that the citizens won from him their first charter; but the charter itself is lost, and we only learn the bare fact of its existence from the words of Henry II., confirming to the burghers of Norwich “all the customs, liberties and acquittances which they had in the time of my grandfather.”[110]

- [104] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 172 (Hamilton, p. 307).

- [105] Ib. cc. 172–175 (pp. 307–311).

- [106] Domesday, vol. ii. pp. 116, 117.

- [107] Ib. pp. 116–118.

- [108] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, p. 151).

- [109] Eng. Chron. a. 1122.

- [110] Charter printed in Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 34.

Plan IV.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

It was, however, in the valley of the Thames that English town-life was growing up most vigorously. Tried by the test of statistics, indeed, Oxford was still but a small place; in the time of the Confessor it had only contained about a thousand dwellings, and before the Domesday survey was made the town had, through some unexplained cause, suffered such decay that more than half of these were waste.[111] But the “waste” was quickly repaired under the wise government of Robert of Oilly, to whom the chief command at Oxford was entrusted by the Conqueror, and of his nephew and namesake who succeeded to his office. Before the close of Henry’s reign every side of that marvellously varied life of Oxford which makes its history seem like an epitome of the history of all England was already in existence, though only in germ. The military capabilities of the site, recognized long ago by Eadward the Elder, had been carefully strengthened; within the natural protection of its encircling rivers, the town was “closely girt about with rampart and ditch,”[112] and the mound, raised probably by Eadward himself, at its western end had been made the nucleus of a mighty fortress which was soon to become famous in the struggle of Stephen and Matilda.[113] Nor was fortification the sole care of the D’Oillys; within and without the city, works of piety and of public utility sprang up under their direction. The ancient ford which had given the town a name was no longer the sole means of crossing the network of streams which fenced it in on every side save one; the High Bridge of our own day represents one built by the first Robert of Oilly.[114] Of the sixteen churches and chapels which Oxford now contained,[115] S. George’s-in-the-Castle was certainly and S. Peter’s-in-the-East probably founded by him;[116] several of the older parish churches which had fallen into decay were restored at his expense;[117] and those of S. Michael and S. Mary the Virgin, as well as that of S. Mary Magdalene without the walls, were all founded in his time or in that of his nephew, if not actually by their munificence.[118] One of these, S. Mary the Virgin, was to become famous in after-days as the University church. As yet, the centre of intellectual life at Oxford was the ancient monastery of S. Fritheswith or Frideswide, which after many vicissitudes had finally passed into the hands of the Austin canons,[119] and entered upon a new career of prosperity under its learned prior Guimund, the builder of the beautiful church which now stands hidden away beneath the later splendours of Christ Church, like a buried and yet living relic of an earlier and simpler age. Even S. Frideswide’s, however, had a formidable rival in the priory of Oseney which the younger Robert of Oilly founded, also for Austin canons, in the island-meadow overlooked by his castle-tower.[120] The Augustinians were a new order whose rise was closely associated with the revival of intellectual and social culture; their houses were the best schools of the time—schools in which the scholars were trained for secular no less than for clerical careers—and their presence at Oseney and S. Frideswide’s was already preparing the intellectual soil of Oxford to receive, at the close of Henry’s reign, the seeds of the first English University in the divinity lectures of Robert Pulein.[121] The burgher-life of the city had long gathered round the church of S. Martin; in its churchyard was held the portmannimot or general assembly of the citizens; they had their merchant-gild and their gild-hall;[122] they had their common pasture-land,[123] the wide green “Port-meadow” beyond the Isis; and we see the growth of a local industry in the appearance of the leather-sellers’ and weavers’ gilds. Shortly before Henry’s death, there were indications that Oxford was soon to regain the political position which it had held under the old English and Danish kings, but had entirely lost since their time. A strange legacy of awe had been left to the city by its virgin patroness. The story went that Fritheswith, flying from the pursuit of her royal lover, sank down exhausted at the gate, and, despairing of further escape, called upon Heaven itself to check him; as he entered the town he was struck blind, and though her prayers afterwards restored his sight, no king after him dared set foot within the boundaries of Oxford for fear of incurring some similar punishment.[124] It must be supposed that the councils held at Oxford under Æthelred and Cnut met outside the walls; we cannot tell whether any countenance was given to the legend by the circumstances of Harald Harefoot’s death; but from that time forth we hear of no more royal visits to Oxford till 1133—the very year of Robert Pulein’s lectures. Then we find that Henry I., whose favourite country residence was at Woodstock, had been so drawn to the neighbouring town as to build himself a “new hall” there,[125] just outside the northern wall, on the ground afterwards known as Beaumont-fields. He held but one festival there, the last Easter which he ever spent in England; but each in turn of the rival candidates for the throne left vacant by his death found Oxford ready to become a political as well as a military centre of scarcely less importance than London itself.

[111] Domesday, vol. i. p. 154. Mr. Parker, in his Early Hist. of Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), pp. 200, 201, suggests that the damage was done by the army of Eadwine and Morkere on their southward march in 1065.

[112] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 88.

[113] The chief stronghold of the new fortress, however, was not on the mound; it was a lofty tower—still standing—on the western side of the enclosure. It was built by the first Robert of Oilly, in 1071; Ann. Osen. ad ann. See Parker, Early Hist. Oxf., pp. 202–204.

[114] Hist. Monast. de Abingdon (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 15, 284. See also Parker, Early Hist. Oxf., p. 219.

[115] See lists in Parker as above, pp. 284–286.

[116] He founded S. George’s in 1074; Ann. Osen. ad ann. On S. Peter’s see Parker as above, pp. 250–254.

[117] Hist. Abingdon (Stevenson), vol. ii. p. 15.

[118] See the evidence in Parker’s Early Hist. of Oxford, pp. 209, 223, 258–261.

[119] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton, pp. 315, 316). Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. ii. pp. 143, 144. The Augustinians came there in 1111, according to the chronicle of Tynemouth, quoted in Monast. (as above), p. 143; but the local record in p. 144 gives 1121.

[120] Ann. Osen. a. 1129.

[121] Ib. a. 1133.

[122] Charter of Henry II., Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 167.

[123] Domesday, vol. i. p. 154.

[124] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton p. 315).

[125] “Ad Pascha fuit rex apud Oxineford in novâ aulâ.” Rob. of Torigni, a. 1133.

Plan V.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

Our great picture of medieval London belongs in all its completeness to a somewhat later date; it was painted in the closing years of the twelfth century. But, as in the case of so many other things which only come out into full light under Henry II., although the colouring and the details may belong more especially to his time, the main features were already there in the time of his grandfather. The outline of the city was a sort of irregular half-ellipse, fenced in upon the northern or land side by a girdle of massive walls pierced with gates and fortified with lofty towers; the wall on the south side, being built close upon the river bank, was gradually washed away by the ebb and flow of the tide constantly beating upon its foundations. On this side the river itself was an all-sufficient protection. The eastern extremity of the city, where the wall came down towards the water’s edge, was guarded by a mighty fortress, founded by King William in the earliest days of his conquest to hold his newly-won capital in check, and always known by the emphatic name of “the Tower.” The western end was protected by two lesser fortresses,[126]—Castle Baynard and Montfichet, whose sokes filled up the space between the cathedral precincts and the city wall. Another, which must have stood in the same neighbourhood, seems to have been partly destroyed by the fire which ravaged London a few months before the Conqueror’s death, and in which the cathedral of S. Paul entirely perished.[127] Part of the ditch of this fortress was surrendered by King Henry to make room for a wall with which Bishop Richard was now enclosing his precincts;[128] while within this enclosure a new church, gorgeous with all the latest developements of Norman architectural skill, was now fast approaching completion.[129] S. Paul’s was the rallying-point, as it had been the nucleus, of municipal life in London. In time of peace the folkmoot assembled at the eastern end of its churchyard at the summons of its great bell; in time of war the armed burghers gathered at its west door and beneath its banner, with the lord of Baynard’s castle as their standard-bearer.[130] The internal constitution of London, however, was scarcely a town-constitution of any kind; it was more like an epitome of the organization of all England. The ordinary system of the parish and the township, the special franchises and jurisdictions of the great individual landowners, of the churches, of the gilds—all these were loosely bundled together under the general headship of the bishop and the port-reeve, to whom King William addressed his one surviving English writ, just as he would have addressed the bishop and sheriff of a county. The writ itself merely confirmed to the citizens “all the law whereof they had been worthy in King Eadward’s day”;[131] but by the end of Henry I.’s reign the Londoners had got far beyond this. By virtue of a royal charter, they had exchanged their regally-appointed port-reeve for a sheriff of their own choice, and this officer served at once for the city and for the shire of Middlesex, which was granted in ferm to the citizens for ever, as the other shires were granted year by year to their respective sheriffs; they were exempted from all tolls and mercantile dues throughout the realm, and from suit and service to all courts outside their own walls, even the pleas of the crown being intrusted to a special justiciar elected by themselves. Yet there was no complete civic organization; the charter confirmed all the old separate jurisdictions and franchises, the various “sokens” and “customs” of churches, barons and burghers, the wardmoots or assemblies of the different parishes or townships, as well as the husting or folkmoot in which all were gathered together,[132]—and left London as it found it, not a compact, symmetrical municipality, but, as it has been truly called, simply “a shire covered with houses.”

- [126] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Memorials of Becket, vol. iii.), p. 3.

- [127] Eng. Chron. a. 1087.

- [128] Dugdale, Hist. of S. Paul’s, app. xxiv. (Ellis), p. 305. Stow (London, ed. Thoms, p. 26) says that this fortress “stood, as it may seem, where now standeth the house called Bridewell.” But this is impossible; for the later palace of Bridewell stood on the right bank of the Fleet, separated from S. Paul’s by the course of that river and the whole width of the soke of Castle Baynard, so that the gift of the ditch of a castle on its site would have been perfectly useless for the enlargement of the precincts.

- [129] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 73 (Hamilton, p. 146).

- [130] Stow, London (Thoms, p. 121). For the rights and duties of the lord of Castle Baynard, see ib. p. 24.

- [131] Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 82, 83.

- [132] Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 108.

This mass of growing life lay chiefly north-east of S. Paul’s, where a crowd of lesser churches, conventual and parochial, rose out of a network of close-packed streets and alleys thronged with busy craftsmen and noisy, chaffering traders. Through the heart of it flowed the “Wall-brook,” on whose bank there lingered, long after the stream itself was buried and built over, a tradition of the barges laden with merchandise which were towed up from the Thames to a landing-place at the eastern end of the Cheap.[133] Beyond the Walbrook lay the East-Cheap, almost busier and more crowded still; while to the north, along the upper course of the Walbrook, was a thriving Jewish quarter.[134] Population was spreading, too, beyond the walls. Many of the wealthier citizens dwelt in pleasant suburban houses, surrounded with bright gardens and shady trees.[135] Some two miles higher up the river, the populous suburb of Westminster clustered round the famous abbey built in honour of S. Peter by the last Old-English king, and the palace of William Rufus, a splendid edifice with a breast-work and bastion stretching down to the water’s edge.[136] North-west of the city, just outside the wall, lay the plain of Smithfield, where a great horse-fair was held every Friday.[137] Beyond was an expanse of fruitful tillage-lands and rich pastures, watered by running streams and made merry with the rush of countless watermills;[138] and this tract was sheltered by a wide belt of woodland stretching away across the northern part of Middlesex to the foot of the Chiltern Hills. Here the stag and the fallow-deer, the boar and the wild bull, had their coverts, beside a multitude of lesser game; all of which the citizens were by a special privilege entitled to hunt at their pleasure.[139] Such quasi-regal sport was doubtless only enjoyed by the greater and wealthier among them; the mass of the young burghers were content, in the summer evenings when their day’s work was done, with a saunter among the shady gardens and fresh springs which enlivened the northern suburbs; while in winter their favourite resort was a tract of low-lying moor or marsh—the Moorfields of later times—on whose frozen surface they could enjoy to their heart’s content the exercises of sliding, sledging and skating.[140] Business, pleasure, piety, intellectual culture, all had their places in the vigorous life of the great city. Each of the two great minsters, S. Paul’s and S. Peter’s, had a school attached to it, and so had the abbey of our Lady at Bermondsey, just over the water.[141] Money-getting did not absorb all the energies of the burghers; “they were respected and noted above all other citizens for their manners, dress, table and discourse.”[142] “Moreover, almost all the bishops, abbots and great men of England are, in a manner, citizens and freemen of London; as they have magnificent houses there, to which they resort, spending large sums of money, whenever they are summoned thither to councils and assemblies by the king or their metropolitan, or are compelled to go there by their own business.”[143] And between these visitors and the resident citizens there was no hard and fast line of demarcation. Neither the knight-errant’s blind contempt for practical industry nor the still blinder contempt of the merely practical man for everything which has not its value in hard cash had as yet come into existence. Under the old English system the merchant who had made three long voyages over sea on his own account was entitled to rank as a thegn, and to take his place among the nobles of the land. Under the Norman system a link between the two classes was supplied by the citizens of Norman origin, to whom London in no small measure owed the marked importance which it attained under Henry I. The Norman knights had no monopoly of the enterprizing spirit of their race; the victorious host had scarcely settled down upon the conquered soil when it was followed by a second invasion of a very different character. Merchants, traders, craftsmen of all sorts, came flocking to seek their fortunes in their sovereign’s newly-acquired dominions, not by forcible spoliation of the native people, but by fair traffic and honest labour in their midst. The fusion of races in this class, the class of which the town population chiefly consisted, began almost from the first years of the conquest. The process was very likely more helped than hindered by the grinding tyranny which united all the Red King’s victims in a community of suffering; but its great working-out was in the reign of Henry I. His restoration of law and order, his administrative and judicial reforms, gave scope for a great outburst of industrial and commercial energy. England under him had her heavy burthens and her cruel grievances; they stand out plainly enough in the complaints of her native chronicler. But to men who lived amidst the endless strife of the French kingdom or the Flemish border-land, or of the Norman duchy under the nominal government of Robert Curthose, a country where “no man durst misdo with other,” and where the sovereign “made peace for man and deer,”[144] may well have looked like a sort of earthly paradise. It is no wonder that peaceable citizens who only wanted to be quiet and get an honest living came across the sea to find shelter and security in the rich and prosperous island. For settlers of this kind it was easy enough to make a home. No gulf of hatred and suspicion, no ever-present sense of wrong suffered and wrong done, stood fixed between them and their English fellow-burghers. Even before the Conqueror’s reign had closed, English and Normans were living contentedly side by side in all the chief cities of England: sometimes, as we have noticed in the case of Norwich, the new-comers dwelt apart in a suburb or quarter of their own, but the distinction was one of locality only; the intercourse was perfectly free and perfectly amicable; Norman refinement, Norman taste, Norman fashions, especially in dress, made their way rapidly among the English burghers; and intermarriages soon became frequent.[145] In the great cities, where the sight of foreign traders was nothing new or strange, and the barriers of prejudice and ignorance of each other’s languages had been worn away by years of commercial intercourse, the fusion was naturally more easy; in London, whither the “men of Rouen” had come in their “great ships,” with their cargoes of wine or sturgeons,[146] long before their countrymen came with bow and spear and sword, it was easiest of all. The great commercial centre to which the Norman merchants had long been attracted as visitors attracted them as settlers now that it had become the capital of their own sovereign; and the attraction grew still stronger during the unquiet times in Normandy which followed the Conqueror’s death. “Many natives of the chief Norman cities, Rouen and Caen, removed to London, and chose them out a dwelling there, because it was a fitter place for their trade, and better stored with the goods in which they were wont to deal.”[147]

- [133] Stow, London (Thoms), p. 97.

- [134] The only body of Jews who appear in the Pipe Roll of 31 Hen. I are those of London.

- [135] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.) p. 3.

- [136] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.) p. 3.

- [137] Ib. p. 6.

- [138] Ib. p. 3.

- [139] Ib. p. 12.

- [140] Ib. p. 11.

- [141] Ib. p. 4.

- [142] Ibid.

- [143] Ib. p. 8.

- [144] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

- [145] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 520.

- [146] De Institutis Lundoniæ, Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 127 (folio ed.).

- [147] Vita S. Thomæ, Anon. II. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.) p. 81.

That the influence of these Norman burghers was dominant in the city there can be little doubt; but they seem to have won their predominance by fair means and to have used it fairly. If they, as individuals, prospered in the English capital, they contributed their full share to its corporate prosperity, and indirectly to that of the nation at large. They brought a great deal more than mere wealth; they brought enterprize, vigour, refinement, culture, social as well as political progress. In their pleasant, cheerful, well-ordered dwellings many a noble knight or baron may have been glad to accept a hospitality such as his own stately but comfortless and desolate castle could never afford; many a learned and dignified ecclesiastic may have enjoyed a refinement of society such as he could rarely hope to meet among the rough and reckless swordsmen with whom the ranks of the high-born laity were filled. We are not dependent on mere general statements; we can do as did these barons and prelates themselves; we can go with them to visit the home of a typical London citizen of the early twelfth century. In the heart of the busiest trading quarter, on the spot where Mercer’s Hall now stands in Cheapside, under the shadow of S. Mary Colechurch, and well within sound of the bells of the more famous S. Mary-at-Bow, was the house of Gilbert Becket and Rohesia his wife. When their son, grown to manhood and high in office, was asked of his origin and extraction, he answered simply that his parents were citizens of London, dwelling blameless and respected among their fellow-burghers.[148] Had not the inquisitive zeal of his biographers led them to search more closely into his pedigree, we might never have known that his father and mother were foreigners—Gilbert, born at Rouen, of a respectable burgher family; Rohesia, sprung from the same rank of life at Caen.[149] Gilbert once filled the office of port-reeve of London,[150] and bore a high character for intelligence, industry and upright dealing. Rohesia was the pattern of wives and mothers. Her domestic affections and her wider Christian sympathies, her motherly love and her charity to the needy, are seen exquisitely blended together in her habit of weighing her little son at stated intervals against money, clothes and food which she gave to the poor, trusting thereby to bring a blessing on the child.[151] As soon as he was old enough, he was sent to school at Merton Priory in Surrey,[152] where his father seems to have been treated as a friend by the prior; and when the boy came home for his holidays, it was to spend them in riding and hawking with Richer de L’Aigle, a young knight sprung from one of the noblest families of Normandy, and a constant visitor and intimate friend of the little household in Cheapside.[153] It is plain from the simple, matter-of-fact way in which that household is described that it in nowise differed from the generality of burgher-households around it. Its head was wealthy, but not to such a degree as to excite special notice or envy; he and his wife lived in comfort and affluence, but only such as befitted their station; they seem to have been in no way distinguished from the bulk of respectable, well-to-do, middle-class citizens of their day. The one peculiarity of their home was the circumstance to which we owe our knowledge of its character and its history:—that in it had been born a child who was to begin his career as Thomas of London the burgher’s son, and to end it as Thomas of Canterbury, archbishop, saint and martyr.

- [148] S. Thomæ Ep. cxxiv. (Robertson, Becket, vol. v. p. 515).

- [149] Anon. II. Vita S. Thomæ (ib.vol. iv.), p. 81.

- [150] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii. p. 14) calls him vicecomes, which in relation to London at this period can only mean port-reeve; and a constant tradition of later days pointed to the father of S. Thomas as the most venerated predecessor of the mayor.

- [151] Anon. I. Vita S. Thomæ (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 7.

- [152] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 14.

- [153] E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 359. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 6. Garnier, Vie de S. Thomas (Hippeau), p. 3.

The Norman settlers were not the only new element in the population of the English towns. Flanders, the border-land of Normandy, France and the Empire, the immediate neighbour of the Norman dukes, the ally of the English kings, had been for ages associated with the destinies of England. The relation between the two countries was primarily a political one; but kindred blood, kindred speech and kindred temper drew Fleming and Englishman together in the bonds of a natural sympathy which grew with the growth of both nations. The merchants of Bruges were even more familiar visitors in London than those of Rouen and Caen. The trade with Flanders was the most important part of the trade of eastern England. Not only was the estuary of the Scheld a high-way of communication with the more distant regions of central Europe, but Flanders herself was the head-quarters of a flourishing industry for which the raw material was in great part furnished by England. The cloth which all Europe flocked to buy at the great yearly fairs of Bruges and Ghent was made chiefly from the wool of English sheep. Dover was the chief mart for this export; in the itinerary of the canons of Laon we see Flemish merchants dispersing to buy wool all over the country and bringing it up to Dover in great bales, which were deposited in a warehouse built for that special purpose till they could be shipped over sea.[154] As yet the Flemings had almost a monopoly of this weaving trade, although the appearance of weavers’ gilds at Huntingdon, Lincoln, Oxford and London may show that Englishmen were already beginning to emulate their example; it may, on the other hand, point to a Flemish element in the population of these towns. In the time of William the Conqueror some fellow-countrymen of his Flemish queen had come not merely to traffic but to dwell in England; in the time of Henry I. they seem to have become numerous and prosperous enough to excite the jealousy of both Normans and English. It may have been partly to allay this jealousy, but it was surely, nevertheless, a marked testimony to their character as active and trustworthy members of the state, that in 1111 Henry, casting about for a means of holding in check the turbulent Welsh whose restlessness was the one remaining element of disturbance in his realm, planted a colony of these Flemings in the extremity of South Wales, the southern part of our Pembrokeshire.[155] The experiment was a daring one; cut off as they were from all direct communication with England, there must have seemed little chance that these colonists could hold their own against the Welsh. The success of the experiment is matter not of history but of present fact; South Pembrokeshire remains to this day a Teutonic land, a “little England beyond Wales.” But the true significance of the Flemish settlements under Henry I. is for England rather than for Wales. They are the first links of a social and industrial, as distinguished from a merely political, connexion between England and the Low Countries, which in later days was to exercise an important influence on the life of both peoples. They are the forerunners of two greater settlements—one under Edward III. and one under Elizabeth—which were to work a revolution in English industry.

- [154] Herman. Mon., l. ii. c. 5 (D’Achéry, Guib. Noviog. Opp., p. 536).

- [155] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 401 (Hardy, p. 628). Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 64; Ann. Camb. a. 1107; Brut y Tywysogion, a. 1105.

A third class of foreign settlers stood in a totally different position from both the Fleming and the Norman. These were the Jews. Their first appearance in England is said to have been due to the Conqueror, who brought over a Jewish colony from Rouen to London.[156] They were special favourites of William Rufus; under Henry they play a less conspicuous part; but in the next reign we find them at Lincoln, Oxford, and elsewhere, and there can be no doubt that they were already established in most of the chief English towns. They formed, however, no part of the townsfolk. The Jew was not a member of the state; he was the king’s chattel, not to be meddled with, for good or for evil, save at the king’s own bidding. Exempt from toll and tax and from the fines of justice, he had the means of accumulating a hoard of wealth which might indeed be seized at any moment by an arbitrary act of the king, but which the king’s protection guarded with jealous care against all other interference. The capacity in which the Jew usually appears is that of a money-lender—an occupation in which the scruples of the Church forbade Christians to engage, lest they should be contaminated with the sin of usury. Fettered by no such scruples, the Hebrew money-lenders drove a thriving trade; and their loans doubtless contributed to the material benefit of the country, by furnishing means for a greater extension of commercial enterprize than would have been possible without such aid. But, except in this indirect way, their presence contributed nothing to the political developement of the towns; and in their social developement the Jewry, a distinct quarter exempt from the jurisdiction of merchant-gild or port-reeve as well as from that of sheriff or bishop, shut off by impassable barriers from the Christian community around it, had no part at all.

- [156] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 317 (Hardy, p. 500, note).

Outside this little separate world of the Jewry the general manner of life was much the same in all ranks of society. The domestic arrangements of the castle or manor-house differed little from those of the citizen’s dwelling. In both the accommodation usually consisted merely of a hall, a “solar” or upper chamber raised on a substructure of cellars, and a kitchen with its appendant offices.[157] The hall was the general living, eating, and sleeping-apartment for the whole household. Its floor was of wood, strewn with hay or rushes;[158] a fire blazed upon a great stone hearth in its centre, or in a wide recess at one end; and round the fire were ranged in due order the tables and benches at which the family, guests and servants all assembled for meals. In the higher ranks of society the king’s friend Count Robert of Meulan had set a fashion of taking but one daily repast—the mid-day dinner—and those who wished to ape courtly manners followed his example; the practice, however, found little favour with the mass of the people, who attributed it to aristocratic stinginess, and preferred their four meals a day according to ancient English custom.[159] It was in the hall that noble or merchant transacted his business or conversed with his friends; and it was in the hall too that at nightfall, when the tables were cleared and the wooden shutters which closed the unglazed windows safely barred,[160] guests and servants, divided at most by a curtain drawn across the room, lay down to sleep in the glow of the dying fire.[161] The solar was used at once as bedroom and private sitting-room by the master and mistress of the house;[162] a curtainless bed and an oaken chest,[163] serving as a wardrobe and fastened with lock and hinges often of elaborate ironwork,[164] made up its ordinary furniture; in the story of S. Thomas we catch a glimpse, too, of the cradle in which a burgher-mother rocked her baby to sleep, wrapped in a dainty silken coverlet.[165] The whole house, whether in town or country, was commonly of wood.[166] With open hearths and chimneys ill-constructed, or more probably altogether lacking, the natural consequence was that fires in towns were of constant occurrence and disastrous extent; Gilbert Becket’s house was burnt over his head several times, and in each case a large part of London shared in the destruction.[167] But the buildings thus easily destroyed were as easily replaced; while the cost of a stone house was beyond the means of any but the great nobles, unless it were here and there some exceptionally wealthy Jew; and there was no other building material to be had except wood or rubble, for the nearest approach to a brick which had yet come into general use was a tile;[168] and although these were sometimes used for roofing, the majority of houses, even in great cities like London, were covered with thatch.[169] All the architectural energy of the time spent itself in two channels—military and ecclesiastical; and even the castle was as yet a very simple edifice. The various buildings which occupied its outer ward were mere huts of wood or rubble; and the stone wall of the keep itself, though of enormous thickness and solidity, was often nothing more than a shell, the space inside it being divided by wooden partitions into rooms covered with lean-to roofs of thatch. Even where the keep was entirely of stone, all thought of accommodation or elegance was completely subordinated to the one simple, all-important purpose of defence. It is this stern simplicity which gives to the remains of our early castles a grandeur of their own, and strikes the imagination far more impressively than the elaborate fortifications of later times. But it left no scope to the finer fancies of the architect. His feeling for artistic decoration, his love of beauty, of harmonious light and shade, had free play only in his work for the Church; while the more general taste for personal luxury and elegance had to find expression chiefly in minor matters, and especially in dress. During the last reign the extravagance of attire among the nobles had been carried to a pitch which called forth the energetic remonstrances of serious men; prelate after prelate thundered against the unseemly fashions—the long hair curled and scented like a woman’s, the feminine ornaments, the long pointed shoes and loose flowing garments which rendered all manly exercises impossible.[170] After the Red King’s death a reforming party, headed by the new sovereign and his friend Robert of Meulan,[171] succeeded in effecting a return to the more rational attire of the ordinary Norman knighthood; a close-fitting tunic with a long cloak, reaching almost to the feet, thrown over it for riding or walking.[172] The English townsfolk, then as now, endeavoured to copy the dress of their neighbours from beyond the Channel. Among the rural population, however, foreign fashions were slow to penetrate; and the English countryman went on tilling his fields clad in the linen smock-frock which had once been the ordinary costume of all classes of men among his forefathers, and which has scarcely yet gone out of use among his descendants.

[157] Turner, Domestic Architecture, vol. i. pp. 2, 5.

[158] Ib. p. 16.

[159] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 407 (Hardy, p. 636).

[160] Turner, Domestic Architecture, vol. i. p. 13.

[161] Ib. pp. 2, 15.

[162] Ib. p. 5.

[163] Ib. p. 16.

[164] Ib. p. 10.

[165] Ed. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 357. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 4.

[166] Turner, Domestic Architecture, pp. 8, 17, 18.

[167] According to Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii. p. 8), fires and drunkenness were the two plagues of London.

[168] Turner, Domestic Architecture, p. xxvii. (introduction).

[169] Ib. p. 18.

[170] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 816. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 314 (Hardy, p. 498).

[171] Will. Malm. as above, and l. v. c. 407 (p. 636).

[172] We see this long cloak in a story of Robert of Bellême (Hen. Hunt. De Contemptu Mundi, ed. Arnold, p. 310), and in that of Henry “Curt-Mantel” (Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. c. 28., ed. Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 157).

The life of the English country folk had changed since the first days of the Norman settlement almost as little as their dress. The final transformation, now everywhere complete, of the ancient township into the feudal manor was but the last step in a process which had begun at least as far back as the time of Eadgar. The castle or manor-house of the baron or lord, into which the thegn’s hall had now developed, was the centre of rural life. Around it lay the home-farm, the lord’s demesne land, cultivated partly by free tenants, partly by the customary labour due from the villeins whose cottages clustered on its border, and whose holdings, with a tract of common pasture and common woodland, made up the remainder of the estate. In the portion thus held in villenage, the arable land was distributed in large open fields in strips of an acre or half an acre in extent, each man holding a certain number of strips scattered one in one field and one in another; while in proportion to the total amount of land which he thus held he contributed one ox or more to the team that drew the heavy plough wherewith each whole field was ploughed in common. On the estates of the great abbey of Peterborough the holdings were mostly of virgates or half-virgates—that is, land to the extent of some thirty or fifteen acres, and furnishing in the former case two oxen, in the latter one ox, to the common plough team, which usually consisted of four; those belonging to the demesne were usually of six or eight. Each tenant had, besides his land, a right to his share of the common pasture and the common hay-meadow, as well as of the common woodland where he fed his pigs on the oak-mast, and cut turf and brushwood for fuel and other household uses. Some of the lesser tenants had no land, but were merely “cottiers,” occupying their little cottage with or without a garden. Whatever the extent and character of their holding, they held it in consideration of certain services due to the lord, discharged partly by labour upon his demesne land, partly by customary payments in money or in kind, partly in work for specified purposes on particular occasions, known as “boon” or “bene-work.”[173] The superintendence of all these matters was in the hands of the reeve or bailiff of the manor, who was charged with the regulation of its labour, the maintenance of its farming-stock, the ingathering of its dues, the letting of its unoccupied land, and the general account of its revenues. Under his orders every villein was bound to do a certain amount of “week-work”—to plough, sow, or reap, or otherwise labour on the demesne land a certain number of days every week; generally the obligation, on every virgate held in villenage, was for two or three days a week throughout the year, sometimes with an extra day at harvest-tide. The customary dues and services varied with the special custom of each manor; they consisted partly of payments either in kind or money, or both, and partly of services such as hewing, carting, and drying wood, cutting turf, making thatch, making malt, mowing and carrying hay, putting up fences, providing ploughs and labour for a specified length of time at particular seasons, ploughing, sowing, harrowing and reaping a given extent of the demesne land. Some of the rents were paid by the discharge of a special duty; the cowherds, oxherds, shepherds, swineherds, usually held a piece of land “by their service,” that is, in consideration of their charge over the flocks and herds of the lord; sometimes we find a further labour-rent paid by their wives, who winnow and reap so much corn on the demesne.[174] Many of the cotters doubtless held their little dwellings on a similar tenure, by virtue of their offices as the indispensable craftsmen of the village community, such as the blacksmith, the carpenter, or the wheelwright. The mill, too, an important institution on every large manor, paid a fixed money rent, and sometimes a tribute of fish from the mill-stream.[175]

- [173] “Præcaria” or “præcationes.”

- [174] Liber Niger (App. to Chron. Petroburgense, ed. Stapleton, Camden Soc.), pp. 158, 163, 164, 165.

- [175] Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), p. 158, “i molendinus cum i virgâ terræ reddit xl solidos et cc anguillas.”

We may draw some illustrations of the life of these rural communities from the “Black Book” of Peterborough, in which the manors belonging to the abbey were described about the year 1125. On the manor of Thorp there were twelve “full villeins” holding eleven acres each, and working on the demesne three days a week; there were also six half villeins who did the like in proportion to their holdings. All these paid of custom ten shillings annually, besides five sheep for eating, ten ells of linen cloth, ten porringers, and two hundred loaves for the love-feast of S. Peter; moreover they all ploughed sixteen acres and a half for their lord. Six bordarii paid seven shillings a year; and they all rendered twenty-two bushels of oats for their share of the dead wood, twenty-two loaves, sixty-four hens, and one hundred and sixty eggs.[176] At Colingham twenty villeins worked each one day a week, and three boon-days in August; they brought sixty waggon-loads of wood to the manor-house, dug and carried twenty loads of turf and twenty of thatch, harrowed all the winter-ploughing, and paid annually four pounds in money. There were also fifty sokemen who paid twelve pounds a year, ploughed, harrowed and reaped eighteen acres, besides ploughing with their own ploughs three times in Lent; each of them worked three days in August, and served of custom six times a year in driving the deer for the abbot’s hunting.[177] At Easton twenty-one villeins holding a virgate each worked twice a week throughout the year and three boon-days in August; they had twelve ploughs with which they worked once in winter and once in spring, and then harrowed; they ploughed fifteen acres and three roods, whereof five acres and one rood were to be sown with their own seed; in spring they had to plough ten acres and a half and sow twenty and a half with their own seed; in summer, for fifteen days, they had to do whatsoever the lord commanded. They also made seventy-three bushels of malt from the lord’s barley; and they paid seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. A man named Toli held one virgate at a rent of five shillings a year; and eleven sokemen held thirteen virgates and a half by a payment of twelve shillings, two days’ work in summer and winter, and fifteen days in summer at the lord’s bidding. The miller, with a holding of six acres of arable land and two of meadow, rendered one mark of silver to the lord.[178]

- [176] Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), pp. 158, 159.

- [177] Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), p. 159.

- [178] Ib. pp. 159, 160.

Fisherton, again, supplies illustrations of a great variety of services. On this manor there were twenty-six “full villeins,” twelve “half villeins,” one “cotsetus” and three “bordarii.” The full villeins worked two days a week, the half villeins one day, throughout the year; the four cottagers worked one day a week in August, their food being supplied by the lord. The villeins had among them nine ploughs, which were all brought into requisition once in winter and three times in spring. The full villeins carted a load of wood, the half villeins in proportion; the full villeins moreover ploughed and harrowed of custom an acre in spring, and half an acre in winter; they also lent their ploughs once in summer for fallowing. At Pentecost the lord received one penny for every villein plough-ox. Each full villein paid twopence at Martinmas and thirty-two pence on the four quarter-days; the half villeins paid half the sum. Every one of them gave a hen at Christmas. The mill brought three shillings a year, the fishing five shillings. Land enough for twelve full villeins lay unoccupied; the reeve had to discharge its dues out of his own purse, and hire it out at the best rent he could get. There were twenty sokemen, holding three ploughlands, and lending their ploughs once in winter, twice in spring, and once for fallowing; each of them reaped one acre, and did two days bene-work in August; at hay-harvest they gave of custom three days’ work, one for mowing, one for turning the hay, and one for carrying it; each gave a hen at Christmas, and they all paid four pounds a quarter. On the demesne were three ploughs, each with a team of eight oxen; these were under the care of five ox-herds, who held five acres each, and whose wives reaped one day a week in August, the lord supplying their food.[179] At Oundle we get a glimpse not only of the rural township, but of the little dependent town growing up on it. “In Oundle are four hides paying geld to the king. Of these hides, twenty-five men hold twenty virgates, and pay of custom twenty shillings a year, forty hens, and two hundred eggs. The men of the township have nine ploughs; from Michaelmas to Martinmas they find ploughs for the lord’s use once a week, and from Martinmas to Easter once a fortnight, and ten acres fallow. Each virgate owes three days’ work a week. There are ten bordarii, who work one day a week; and fifteen burghers, who pay thirty shillings. The market of the township renders four pounds and three shillings. A mill with one virgate renders forty shillings and two hundred eels. The abbot holds the wood in his own hand. The men of the township, with six herdsmen, pay five shillings a year poll-tax. The church of this township belongs to the altar of the abbey of Borough.”[180]

- [179] Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), p. 164.

- [180] Ib. p. 158.

Services such as these were doubtless an irksome and a heavy burthen; to modern ideas of independence, the life of the rural population was the degraded life of serfdom. But there was another side to the system. The lord had his duties as well as the villein; the villein had his rights as well as the lord. When their work for the lord was done and their customary dues were paid, the villagers were free to make their own arrangements one with another for the yoking of their oxen to the common ploughs and the tillage of the common fields; and the rest of their time and produce of their labour was theirs to do with as they would, subject merely to such restrictions as to grinding at the lord’s mill, or obtaining his license for the sale of cattle, as were necessary for maintaining the integrity of the estate. While they owed suit and service to their lord, he was bound by his own interest as well as by law and duty to guard them against external interference, oppression, or injury; the extent of his rights over them, no less than of their duties to him, was defined by a strict and minute code of custom to which long prescription gave all and more than all the force of law, and law itself could occasionally step in to avenge the wronged villein even upon his lord; Alfred of Cheaffword is recorded in the Pipe Roll as having paid a fine of forty shillings for scourging a rustic of his own.[181] The villein’s life was not harder than that of the poor free man; it was quite as secure from wrong, and far more secure from want. The majority of the cultivators were indeed tied to their land; but their land was equally tied to them; the lord was bound to furnish each little bundle of acre-strips with its proper outfit of plough-oxen, to provide each tenant with his little cottage, and to see that the heritage passed on to the next generation, just as the manor itself, and with it the tenants and their services, passed from father to son in the case of a lay proprietor, or from one generation of monks to another in a case like that of Peterborough. Even if a villein failed in his dues, the worst punishment that could befall him was the seizure of his little household goods; eviction was out of the question. The serfdom of the villein was after all only the lowest link in a chain of feudal interdependence which ended only with the king himself. If the “rustics” possessed their homesteads only on condition of work done at the lord’s bidding and for his benefit, the knight held his “fee” and the baron his “honour” only on condition of a service to the king, less laborious indeed, but more dangerous, and in reality not a whit more morally elevating. If they had to ask their lord’s leave for giving a daughter in marriage, the first baron of the realm had to ask a like permission of the king, and to pay for it too. If their persons and their services could be transferred by the lord to another owner together with the soil which they tilled, the same principle really applied to every grade of feudal society; Count William of Evreux only stated a simple fact in grotesque language when he complained that his homage and his services had been made over together with the overlordship of his county by Robert Curthose to Henry I., with no more regard to his own will than if he had been a horse or an ox.[182] The mere gift of personal freedom, when it meant the uprooting of all local and social ties and the withdrawal of all accustomed means of sustenance, would have been in itself but a doubtful boon. There were, however, at least three ways in which freedom might be attained. Sometimes the lord on his death-bed, or in penance for some great sin, would be moved by the Church’s influence to enfranchise some of his serfs. Sometimes a rustic might flee to one of the chartered towns, and if for the space of a year and a day he could find shelter under its protecting customs from the pursuit of his lord’s justice, he was thenceforth a free burgher. And there was a greater city of refuge whose protection was readier and surer still. The Church had but to lay her consecrating hands upon a man, and he was free at once. To ordain a villein or admit him as a monk without his lord’s consent was indeed forbidden; but the consecration once bestowed was valid nevertheless; and the storm of indignation which met the endeavour of Henry II. to enforce the prohibition shows that it had long been almost a dead letter.

- [181] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 55.

- [182] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 814.

If the spiritual life of the English Church in the time of Henry I. were to be judged solely from her highest official representatives, it would certainly appear to have been at a low ebb. S. Anselm had lived just long enough to accomplish the settlement of the investitures, but not to direct its working or experience its results. On his death early in 1109 Henry so far fell back into his brother’s evil ways as to keep the metropolitan see vacant for five years. The supreme direction of affairs in the Church as well as in the state was thus left in the hands of the party represented by Roger of Salisbury. Roger’s policy and that of his master was indeed less flagrantly insulting to religion than that of Rufus and Flambard; but it was hardly less injurious in a moral and spiritual point of view. The most important sees were no longer farmed by Jewish usurers for the king’s benefit; the most sacred offices of the Church were no longer openly sold to the highest bidder; but they were made appendages to the great offices of the state; the Church herself was practically turned into a mere handmaid of the state, and her ministers into tools for the purposes of secular government. The system had undoubted advantages in a worldly point of view. A great deal of the most important political and administrative work was of a nature which, in the condition of society then existing, required the services of a clerk rather than of a layman; moreover, a man in holy orders, incapable of founding a family, and standing, so to say, alone in the world, was less exposed to the temptations and corruptions of place and power than a layman surrounded with personal and social ties and open to all sorts of personal and social ambitions, and could thus be safely intrusted with a freedom of action and authority such as in the hands of a lay baron with territorial and family influence might have led to the most dangerous results. On these and similar grounds Henry made a practice of choosing his chief ministers from the ranks of the clergy, and bestowing vacant bishoprics upon them, by way either of rewarding their past labours or of insuring a continuance of their zeal and devotion in the discharge of their temporal functions. Thereby he undoubtedly secured to the state the services of a more able, vigorous and honest set of administrators than could have been obtained by any other means; but from another side the system lay open to grave objection. The men whom it set over the dioceses of England were, beyond all question, men of very superior intelligence and energy, and, on the whole, of fair moral character, men whom it would be most unjust to compare for a moment with the hirelings who bought their sees of William Rufus. But they were essentially of the world, worldly; their minds and their hearts were both alike fixed on their thoroughly well fulfilled duties as treasurer or justiciar, not on their too often neglected duties as bishop of Ely or Salisbury. And as were the bishops, so were the priests. When once it became clear that the main road to ecclesiastical preferment lay through the temporal service of the crown, the whole body of secular clergy turned into a nursery of statesmen, and while they rose to their highest point of worldly importance the little spiritual influence which they still retained passed altogether away. But the Church’s life was not in her bishops and her priests; it was in her humble, faithful laity. Down below the dull utilitarianism, the “faithless coldness of the times,” the finer sympathies and higher instincts of the soul lay buried but not dead; ready to spring to the surface with a burst of enthusiasm at the touch first of the Austin canons, and then of the monks of Citeaux.

Of the two religious movements which at this time stirred the depths of English society, the earlier, that of the Austin canons, was in its origin not monastic but secular. It arose, in fact, out of a protest against monasticism. About the middle of the eleventh century an attempt had been made to redress the balance between the regular and secular clergy, and restore to the latter the influence and consideration in spiritual matters which they had, partly by their own fault, already to a great extent lost. Some earnest and thoughtful spirits, distressed at once by the abuse of monastic privileges and by the general decay of ecclesiastical order, sought to effect a reform by the establishment of a stricter and better organized discipline in those cathedral and other churches which were served by colleges of secular priests. For this end a rule composed in the eighth century by Archbishop Chrodegang of Metz for the members of his own chapter, and generally followed in the collegiate churches of Gaul, was the model adopted by cathedral reformers in England in the reigns of Eadward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. Bishops Gisa of Wells and Leofric of Exeter under the former king, Archbishop Thomas of York under the latter, severally attempted to enforce it upon their canons, but without success. The English clergy were accustomed to the full enjoyment not only of their separate property but of their separate houses; many were even yet, in spite of Pope Gregory, married men and fathers of families; and the new rule, which required them to break up their homes and submit to community of table and dwelling, was naturally resented as an attempt to curtail their liberty and bring them under monastic restraint. Lanfranc soon found that the only way to get rid of the old lax system was to get rid of the canons altogether; accordingly, from some few cathedrals the secular clerks were once again, as in Eadgar’s days, driven out and replaced by monks, this time to return no more till the great secularization in the sixteenth century. But in the greater number of churches the canons were influential enough to resist expulsion as well as reform, and to maintain the old fashion with its merits and its abuses, its good and evil sides, all alike undisturbed and unrestrained. On the Continent, too, the rule of Chrodegang proved unequal to the needs of the time. Those who had the attainment of its object really at heart ended by taking a lesson from their rivals and challenging the monks with their own weapons. Towards the beginning of the twelfth century the attempts at canonical reform issued in the foundation of what was virtually a new religious order, that of the Augustinians or Canons Regular of the order of S. Augustine. Like the monks and unlike the secular canons, from whom they were carefully distinguished, they had not only their table and dwelling but all things in common, and were bound by a vow to the observance of their rule, grounded upon a passage in one of the letters of that great father of the Latin Church from whom they took their name.[183] Their scheme was a compromise between the old-fashioned system of canons and that of the monastic confraternities; but a compromise leaning strongly towards the monastic side, tending more and more towards it with every fresh developement, and distinguished from it chiefly by a certain simplicity and elasticity of organization which gave scope for an almost unlimited variety in the adjustment of the relations between the active and the contemplative life of the members of the order, thus enabling it to adapt itself to the most dissimilar temperaments and to the most diverse spheres of religious activity.

- [183] On Austin canons see Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. (Eng. trans. ed. Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 47; on canons in general, ib. vol. i. pp. 494, 495, 538; Stubbs, pref. to Tract. de Inv. S. Crucis; and Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. ii. pp. 84, 85, 452, 453, and vol. iv. p. 374.

The Austin canons, as they were commonly called, made their way across the Channel at the beginning of Henry’s reign. The circumstances of their earliest settlement illustrate the intimate connexion between the religious and the national revival in England. Their first priory was founded in 1108 by the English queen Matilda—“Maude the good queen,” as they gratefully called her—in the soke of Aldgate, just within the eastern wall of London. Part of its endowment was furnished by the estates of an old English cnihtengild whose members surrendered their property for the benefit of the new community. The house was dedicated to the Holy Trinity; its first prior, Norman by name, was a native of Kent who had studied in Gaul under S. Anselm; through Anselm he was enabled to bring the Augustinian order under the notice of Matilda, whose confessor he afterwards became. How he lavished all his funds on the furnishing of his church and the stocking of his library; how the starving brotherhood set out a row of empty plates in the refectory to attract the sympathy of the citizens who were taking their Sunday stroll round the suburb and peeping curiously in at the windows of the new building; how the pitying burgher-wives vowed each to bring a loaf every Sunday; and how the plates in the refectory were never empty again[184]—is a story which need not be repeated in detail. Some fifteen years later Rahere the king’s minstrel threw up his post at court to become the head of an Austin priory which he built on a plot of waste marshy ground along the eastern border of Smithfield. He dedicated his establishment to S. Bartholomew and attached to it an hospital for the relief of the sick and needy. Every day—so tradition told—Alfhun, the master of the hospital, went about the city as the Little Sisters of the Poor do to this day, begging in the shops and markets for help towards the support of the sick folk under his care. Most likely he was himself a London citizen; his name is enough to prove him of genuine English birth.[185] Another famous Augustinian house was that of Merton in Surrey. There the brotherhood devoted themselves to educational work. Their most illustrious scholar—born in the very year in which their house was founded, 1117—is known to us already as Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket. At the other end of England, Walter Lespec, the noblest character among the lay barons of the time, found comfort for the loss of an only son in “making Christ his heir”—devoting to God’s service the heritage which had been destined for his boy, and founding the priory of Kirkham in Yorkshire on the spot where the lad had expired.[186] Before the close of Henry’s reign the Austin canons had acquired such importance that two of their order were raised to the episcopate, one even to the primacy of all Britain. After five years of vacancy the metropolitan chair of Canterbury was still too vividly haunted by memories of S. Anselm for Henry and Roger to venture on trying to fill it from the ranks of the latter’s party; they gave it to Anselm’s old friend and suffragan, Ralf, bishop of Rochester.[187] But when Ralf, who at the time of his election was already an aged man, died in 1122, the seculars, headed by Roger of Salisbury, made a successful effort to secure a non-monastic primate. Not daring, however, to go the full length of appointing one of themselves, they took a middle course and chose a canon regular, William of Corbeil, prior of S. Osyth’s at Chiche in Essex.[188] The strict monastic party counted the new sort of canons very little better than the old ones. William himself, however, was a perfectly blameless churchman, whose worst fault was a constitutional timidity and shrinking from political responsibilities which made him powerless to stem the tide of worldliness among his suffragans, though he at least kept the metropolitan chair itself safe from contaminating influences. The case of the other Augustinian prelate is a specially interesting one. Henry, who so irritated both his English and Norman subjects by his general preference for foreign churchmen, had nevertheless chosen for his own spiritual adviser a priest whose name, Eadwulf, shows him to have been of English origin, and who was prior of an Augustinian house at Nostell in Yorkshire. The king’s last act before he left England in 1133, never to return, was to promote his confessor to a bishopric. Twenty-three years before, following out a cherished plan of S. Anselm’s, he had caused the overworked bishop of Lincoln to be relieved of part of his enormous diocese by the establishment of a new see with the great abbey of Ely for its cathedral and the monks for its chapter.[189] He now lightened the cares of the archbishop of York in like manner by giving him a new suffragan whose see was fixed at Carlisle. Eadwulf was appointed bishop; naturally enough he constituted his chapter on the principles of his own order; and Carlisle, the last English bishopric founded before the Reformation, was also the only one whose cathedral church was served by canons regular of the order of S. Augustine.[190]

[184] The history of H. Trinity, Aldgate, is printed in the appendix to Hearne’s edition of William of Newburgh, vol. iii. pp. 688–709.

[185] The story of S. Bartholomew’s and its founder comes from “Liber fundacionis ecclesiæ S. Bartholomæi Londoniarum,” a MS. of Henry II.’s time, part of which is printed in Dugdale’s Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 292–295. The remainder is as yet unprinted; but Dr. Norman Moore has published in the S. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports, vol. xxi. pp. xxxix.–cix., a translation made about A.D. 1400; the 22d chapter of this (pp. lxix., lxx.) contains the account of Alfhun.

[186] The stories of all these Austin priories are in Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pts. i. and ii. Merton is in pt. i. pp. 245–247; Kirkham, ib. pp. 207–209.

[187] Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 221–223; Will. Malm., Gesta Pontif., l. i. c. 67 (Hamilton, p. 126). The king wanted to appoint Faricius, abbot of Abingdon; his choice was opposed by the seculars, who wanted one of their own party. This the monks of Christ Church resisted, but, as Faricius was obnoxious because he was an Italian, they finally all agreed upon Ralf, and the king confirmed their choice.

[188] Eng. Chron. a. 1123; Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 7; Gerv. Cant., Actus Pontif. (Stubbs, vol. ii.), p. 380. On S. Osyth’s see Will. Malm., Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 731 (Hamilton, p. 146).

[189] Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 195, 211; Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 60; Will. Malm., Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 445 (Hardy, p. 680); Gesta Pontif., l. iv. c. 185 (Hamilton, p. 325).

[190] On Carlisle and Eadwulf (or Æthelwulf) see Joh. Hexham, a. 1133 (Raine, vol. i. pp. 109, 110); and Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 141–145.

Meanwhile a mightier influence than theirs was regenerating all the Churches of the West—our own among the number. Its root was in a Burgundian wilderness; but the seed from which it sprang was of English birth. Harding was an Englishman who spent his boyhood in the monastery of Sherborne in Dorset, till he was seized with a passion for wandering and for study which led him first to Scotland, then to Gaul, and at last to Rome. It chanced that on his return thence, passing through the duchy of Burgundy, he stopped at the abbey of Molêmes. As he saw the ways and habits familiar to his childhood reproduced in those of the monks, the wanderer’s heart yearned for the peaceful life which he had forsaken; he took the vows, and became a brother of the house. But when, with the zeal of a convert, he began to look more closely into his monastic obligations, he perceived that the practice of Molêmes, and indeed of most other monasteries, fell very far short of the strict rule of S. Benedict. He remonstrated with his brethren till they had no rest in their minds. At last, after long and anxious debates in the chapter, the abbot determined to go to the root of the matter, and appointed two brethren, whose learning was equalled by their piety, to examine diligently the original rule and declare what they found in it. The result of their investigations justified Harding’s reproaches and caused a schism in the convent. The majority refused to alter their accustomed ways; finding they were not to be reformed, the zealous minority, consisting of Robert the abbot, Harding himself (or Stephen, as he was called in religion), and sixteen others equally “stiff-necked in their holy obstinacy,” left Molêmes, and sought a new abode in the wilderness. The site which they chose—in the diocese of Chalon-sur-Saône, not far from Dijon—was no happy valley, no “green retreat” such as the earlier Benedictine founders had been wont to select. It was a dismal swamp overgrown with brushwood, a forlorn, dreary, unhealthy spot, from whose marshy character the new house took its name of “the Cistern”—Cistellum, commonly called Citeaux. There the little band set to work in 1098 to carry into practice their views of monastic duty. The brotherhood of Molêmes, left without a head by their abbot’s desertion, presently appealed to the archbishop of Lyons and the Pope, and after some negotiation Robert, willingly or unwillingly, returned to his former post. His departure gave a shock to the foundations of the new community; zeal was already growing cold, and of those who had followed him out from Molêmes all save eight followed him back again. Those eight—“few in number, but a host in merit”—at once chose their prior Alberic to be abbot in Robert’s stead, while the true founder, Stephen Harding, undertook the duties of prior. Upon Alberic’s death in 1110 Stephen became abbot in his turn, and under him the little cistern in the wilderness became a fountain whose waters flowed out far and wide through the land. Three-and-twenty daughter-houses were brought to completion during his life-time. One of the earliest was Pontigny, founded in 1114, and destined in after-days to become inseparably associated with the name of another English saint. Next year there went forth another Cistercian colony, whose glory was soon to eclipse that of the mother-house itself. Its leader was a young monk called Bernard, and the place of its settlement was named Clairvaux.[191]

- [191] For the Life of S. Stephen Harding, and the early history of Citeaux and its order, see Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. cc. 334–337 (Hardy, pp. 511–517); Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 711–714; and Gallia Christiana, vol. iv. pp. 980–984.

From Burgundy and Champagne the “White Monks,” as the Cistercians were called from the colour of their habit, soon spread over France and Normandy. In 1128 they crossed the sea and made an entrance into their founder’s native land; William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, founded the abbey of Waverley in Surrey for twelve monks from the Cistercian house of Aumône in Normandy.[192] The movement spread rapidly in all directions. In 1131 Walter Lespec the founder of Kirkham, zealous in every good work, established in the heart of the Yorkshire wolds a “daughter of S. Bernard,” the abbey of Rievaux;[193] far away on the Welsh border, in the valley of the Wye, Tintern was founded in the same year by Walter de Clare.[194] The story of another famous Yorkshire house, Fountains, is a curious repetition of that of Citeaux itself. Thirteen monks of the Benedictine convent of S. Mary at York, fired by the example of the newly-established brotherhood at Rievaux, determined, like Stephen Harding and his friends at Molêmes, to go forth into the wilderness where they might follow the Cistercian rule in freedom. But when they asked their abbot’s leave to depart it was sternly refused. Archbishop Thurstan, to whom they appealed for support, came in person to plead their cause with the abbot, and was so insolently received that after a stormy scene in the chapter-house he laid the convent under interdict, and walked out followed by the zealous thirteen “with nothing but the clothes on their backs.” The warmly-sympathizing primate gave them a temporary shelter in his own home; at Christmas he bestowed upon them for their dwelling a lonely valley called Skeldale, near Ripon, “full of thorns and enclosed by rocks,” and for their maintenance the little township of Sutton. They at once chose one of their number, Richard by name, as abbot, and went forth under his guidance to settle in their new abode, although the cold of a Yorkshire winter was at its bitterest, and they had not where to lay their heads. In the middle of the valley stood a great elm—“thick and leafy as elms are wont to be.”[195] That tree was the original abbey of our Lady of Fountains. Its spreading branches formed a roof to shelter the little band of monks; “their bread was supplied to them by the archbishop, their drink by the streamlet which ran through the valley,” and which, as in the case of Citeaux, suggested a name for the future house. In this primitive dwelling they fulfilled their religious exercises in peace and contentment till the winter was past, when they began to think of constructing a more substantial abode. They had no mind to follow their own inspirations and set up an independent rule of their own; in all humility they wrote to S. Bernard (who since the death of S. Stephen Harding was universally looked up to as the head of the Cistercian order), telling him all their story, and beseeching him to receive them as his children. Bernard answered by sending to them, with a letter full of joyous welcome and hearty sympathy, his friend and confidant, Godfrey, to instruct them in the Cistercian rule. They had now been joined by ten more brethren. But the elm-tree was still their only shelter, and their means of subsistence were as slender as at the first. Presently there came a famine in the land; they were reduced to eke out their scanty store of bread with leaves and stewed herbs. When they had just given away their two last loaves—one to the workmen engaged on the building, the other to a passing pilgrim—this supreme act of charity and faith was rewarded with a supply sent them by the lord of Knaresborough, Eustace Fitz-John. At last, after struggling on bravely for two years, they found it impossible to continue where they were, with numbers constantly increasing and means at a standstill; so the abbot went to Clairvaux and begged that some place might be assigned to them there. S. Bernard granted the request; but when Abbot Richard came back to fetch the rest of the brotherhood he found that all was changed. Hugh, dean of York, had just made over himself and all his property to Fountains. It was the turn of the tide; other donations began to flow in; soon they poured. Five years after its own rise the “Fountain” sent out a rivulet to Newminster; after that her descendants speedily covered the land. Justly did the brotherhood cherish their beloved elm-tree as a witness to the lowly beginnings whence had sprung the mightiest Cistercian house in England. It bore a yet more touching witness four centuries later, when it still stood in its green old age, the one remnant of the glory of Fountains which the sacrilegious spoiler had not thought it worth his while to touch.[196]

- [192] Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 237, 241.

- [193] Ib. pp. 274, 280, 281.

- [194] Ib. pp. 265, 267, 270.

- [195] So says the historian of Fountains. How this can have been, in Yorkshire and at Christmas-time, I cannot pretend to explain.

- [196] The story of Fountains is in the Narratio of Hugh of Kirkstall, in Memorials of Fountains (Walbran, Surtees Soc.), and Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 292 et seq. See also Will. Newb., l. i. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 50). The elm was standing in Leland’s day.

The influence of the Cistercians was different in kind from that of the earlier monasticism. The life of the Benedictines was, so to say, in the world though not of it. They sought tranquillity and retirement, but not solitude; the site of an abbey was chosen with a careful eye to the natural resources of the place, its accessibility, and the advantages which it offered for cultivation and production of all kinds. A Benedictine house almost invariably became, and indeed was intended to become, the nucleus of a flourishing lay population, either a cluster of rural settlements, or, not unfrequently, a busy, thriving town. But by the close of the tenth century, although the palmy days of the Benedictine fathers as the guardians of art and literature were in part still to come, the work in which they had been unrivalled for five hundred years, as the missionaries, cultivators and civilizers of Europe, was well-nigh accomplished; and the position into which they had unavoidably drifted as owners of vast landed property protected by special privileges was beginning to show its dangerous side. On the one hand, the secularizing spirit which had made such inroads upon the Church in general was creeping even into the cloister. On the other, the monasteries were growing rich and powerful at the expense of the parochial and diocesan organization. The laity were too apt, while showering their pious gifts upon the altars of the religious houses, to leave those of their own parish churches naked and uncared-for; and the growing habit of diverting the tithes of various estates and districts to the endowment of some abbey with which they were quite unconnected was already becoming a distinct abuse. Against all this the scheme of the Cistercians was a direct protest. They refused to have anything to do with tithes in any shape, saying that monks had no right to them; their houses were of the plainest possible construction: even in their churches scarcely an ornament was admitted to soften the stern grandeur of the architecture; there were no broidered hangings, no delicate paintings, no gold and silver vessels, no crucifixes glittering with enamel and precious gems; they hardly allowed, even for the most solemn rite, the use of any vestment more ornate than the simple white surplice or alb; and their ordinary habit, made from the wool of their flocks, was not black like that of the Benedictines, but the natural white or gray, for they looked upon dyeing as a refinement useless to men who had renounced the cares and pleasures of this life as well as the deceitfulness of riches.[197] Their aim was to be simply voices crying in the wilderness—a wilderness wherein they were resolved to dwell, as much as possible, alone. Their rule absolutely forbade the erection of a house even of their own order within a certain distance of another. But the cry that came forth from the depth of their solitude thrilled through the very hearts of men, and their influence spread far beyond the number of those who actually joined the order. It was the leaven of that influence, more than all others, which worked on and on through the nineteen years of anarchy that followed Henry’s death till it had leavened the whole lump, regenerated the Church, and made her ready to become in her turn the regenerator of the state and the nation. Already, before the order of Citeaux had been half a century in existence, William of Malmesbury, himself a member of one of the most ancient and famous of English Benedictine abbeys, could describe it as the unanimously acknowledged type of the monastic profession, the ideal which served as a mirror to the diligent, a goad to the negligent, and a model to all.[198]

- [197] See abstract of rule in Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 224, 225.

- [198] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 337 (Hardy, p. 517).

How deeply the spirit of religious enthusiasm had penetrated among the people we see in the story of S. Godric. Godric was born in the last years of the Conqueror or the earliest years of the Red King at Walpole, a village in the north-western marshlands of Norfolk; thence his parents, Ælward and Ædwen, seem to have removed to a place on the river Welland, near Spalding in Lincolnshire. They were apparently free rustics of the poorest class, simple, unlearned, upright folk, who taught their three children to say the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and brought them up in the fear of God; other education they could give them none, and of worldly goods just as little. In the dreary fenland round the shores of the Wash agriculture and industry were almost unknown, and the population subsisted chiefly on whatever they found left behind by the waves on the long reaches of shining sand that lay exposed whenever the tide was out. As a boy Godric once wandered thus nearly three miles out to sea in search of food for himself and his parents; as he was retracing his steps, laden with part of a large fish which he had at length found dead upon the sand, he was overtaken by the returning tide; press onward as he might, the waves came surging higher and higher, first to his knees, then to his waist, then to his shoulders, till to the boy’s excited fancy their gurgling rose even above his head, and when at last he struggled to land with his burthen, it seemed to him that only a miracle had brought him through the waters in safety. Presently he began an independent life as a wandering chapman, trudging from village to village and selling small wares to country-folk as poor as himself. The lad was gifted with a wisdom and seriousness beyond his age; after some four years of this life he became associated with some merchants in the neighbouring towns; with them he visited the castles of the local nobles, the markets and fairs of the local trading centres, and at length made his way as far as S. Andrews in Scotland, and after that to Rome. He next, entering into partnership with some other young men, acquired a fourth share in the profits of one trading-vessel and half the ownership of another. Very soon his partners made him captain of the ship. In the long, blank days of his boyhood by the shore of the Wash he had learned to discern the face of both sea and sky; and his sturdy frame, steady hand, and keen observant eye, as well as his stedfast thoughtful temper, fitted him for a skilful seaman no less than for a successful merchant. The young sailor’s heart, however, was not wholly set upon money-getting. As he tramped over the fens with his pack upon his back he had been wont to soothe his weariness with the holy words of prayer and creed learnt at his mother’s knee; as he guided his bark through the storm, or outran the pirates who were ever on the look-out for such prey, he did not miss the lesson specially addressed to those who “go down to the sea in ships.” Wherever his business took him—Scotland, Britanny, Flanders, Denmark—he sought out the holy places of the land and made his offerings there. One of the places he visited most frequently was S. Andrews; and on his way back from thence he rarely failed to turn aside to S. Cuthbert’s old home at Holy Isle and his yet more lonely retreat at Farne, there to spend hours in ecstatic meditation upon the hermit-life which he was already longing to imitate. At last he took the cross and went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return, weary of independence, he became steward to a rich man who intrusted him with the whole management of his household; soon, however, he grew so disgusted with the thievery among the servants, which he saw but could not prevent, and with the master’s indifference to it, that he threw up his situation and went off on another pilgrimage, first to S. Gilles in Provence and then to Rome. He came home to his parents, but he could not stay; he must go back yet a third time, he told them, to the threshold of the Apostles; and this time his mother accompanied him. At a period when religious men of greater experience in this world’s affairs were pouring out heart-rending lamentations over the corruptions of Rome, it is touching to see that she still cast over this simple English rustic the spell which she had cast of old over Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop. It was in the land of Wilfrid and Benedict, in the wild Northumbria, with its long reaches of trackless moor and its mighty forests, scarcely penetrated save by the wild beasts, that Godric at last found refuge from the world. He sought it first at Carlisle, then a lonely outpost on the western borders of the moors, just beginning a new life after its conquest by William Rufus. His hopes of remaining there in obscurity were, however, defeated by the recognition of a kinsman, doubtless one of the Red King’s colonists, and he fled yet further into the wilderness. Weeks and months of lonely wandering through the forest brought him unexpectedly to an aged hermit at Wolsingham; there he remained nearly three years, tending the old man until his death; then a vision of S. Cuthbert sent Godric off again, first on another journey to Holy Land, and then to a hermitage in Eskdale near Whitby. Thence the persecution of the lord of the soil drove him to a surer refuge in the territory of S. Cuthbert. He settled for a while in Durham and there gave himself up to practical works of piety, frequenting the offices of devotion, giving alms out of his penury to those who were yet poorer than himself, and constantly sitting as a scholar among the children in the church of S. Mary. His kinsman at Carlisle had given him a Psalm-book; whether he ever learned actually to read it is not clear; but he already knew by heart a considerable part of the Psalter; at Durham he learned the whole; and the little book, which he had carried in all his wanderings, was to the end of his life his most cherished possession. When asked in later years how one of his fingers had grown crooked, he answered with a smile that it had become cramped with constantly grasping this book. Meanwhile he was seeking a place of retirement within easy distance of the chief object of his devotion—S. Cuthbert’s shrine. His choice was decided by the chance words of a shepherd to his comrade: “Let us go water our flocks at Finchale!” Godric offered the man his sole remaining coin—a farthing—to lead him to the spot, and saw at once that he had reached the end of his wanderings.

Even to-day the scene is wild and solemn enough, to the traveller who, making his way from Durham over the lonely country-side, suddenly dips down into a secluded hollow where the ruins of Finchale Priory stand on a low grassy ledge pressed close between the rushing stream of Wear and the dark wooded hills which, owing to the sharp bend made by the river, seem to close round it on every side. But in Godric’s day the place was wilder still. The road which now leads through the wood was a mere sheep-track worn by the feet of the flocks as they made their way down to the river; the site of the priory was a thicket of briars, thorns and nettles, and it was only on a narrow strip of rocky soil hanging over the water’s edge and thinly covered with scant herbage that the sheep could find a foothold and the hermit a place for his dwelling. His first abode was a cave scooped in the rock; later on he seems to have built himself a little hut with an oratory attached. A large stone served him at once for table and pillow; but only when utterly worn out with a long day’s toil in clearing away the thickets and preparing the soil for cultivation would he lie down for a few hours of quiet vigil rather than of sleep; and on moonlight nights the rustics of the country-side woke with a start at the ring of the hermit’s axe, echoing for miles through the woodland. The spirit of the earlier Northumbrian saints seems to breathe again in Godric’s ceaseless labour, his stern self-mortification, his rigid fasts, his nightly plunges into the Wear, where he would stand in the hollow of the rocks, up to his neck in the stream, singing Psalms all through the winter nights, while the snow fell thick on his head or the waters froze around him. With the fervour of the older asceticism he had caught too its poetic tenderness. As he wandered through forest after forest from Carlisle to the Tees he had found like S. Guthlac of old that “he who denies himself the converse of men wins the converse of birds and beasts and the company of angels.” Noxious reptiles lay passive beneath his feet as he walked along and crawled harmlessly about him as he lay on the bare ground at night; “the hissing of a viper scared him no more than the crowing of a cock.” The woods of Finchale were thronged with wild beasts of every kind; on his first arrival he was confronted by a wolf of such enormous size that he took it for a fiend in wolf’s shape, and the impression was confirmed when at the sign of the Cross the animal lay down for a moment at his feet and then slunk quietly away. The toads and vipers which swarmed along the river-side played harmlessly about the floor of his hut, and basked in the glow of his fire or nestled between his feet, till finding that they disturbed his devotions he gently bade them depart, and was at once obeyed. A stag browsing upon the young shoots of the trees in his little orchard suffered him to put a halter about its neck and lead it away into the forest. In the long hard frosts of the northern winter he would roam about seeking for frozen or starving animals, carry them home in his arms and restore them to warmth and animation at his fire. Bird and beast sought shelter from the huntsman in the hermit’s cell; one stag which he had hidden from the followers of Bishop Ralf came back day after day to be petted and caressed. Amid the silence of the valley, broken only by the rustling of the wind through the trees, the ripple of the stream over its rocky bed, and the chirping of the birds who had probably given their name to the “Finches-haugh,” strains of angel-harps and angel-voices sounded in the hermit’s ears; and the Virgin-Mother came down to teach him how to sing to her in his own English tongue. As the years went on Godric ceased to shrink from his fellow-men; his mother, his sister, came to dwell near him in religious retirement; a little nephew was admitted to tend his cow. Some of the younger monks of Durham, among them the one to whom we owe the record of Godric’s life, were the devoted attendants of his extreme age; while from the most distant quarters men of all ranks flocked to seek counsel and guidance in every variety of circumstances, temporal and spiritual, from one whom not only all Durham but almost all England looked upon as a saint and a prophet.[199]

- [199] The story of S. Godric is in Libellus de Vitâ S. Godrici, by Reginald of Durham (Surtees Society).

It was in 1122—two years after the wreck of the White Ship—that Godric settled at Finchale, and he dwelt there sixty years. He is the last of the old English saints; his long life, beginning probably before the Conqueror’s death and ending only seven years before that of Henry II., is a link between the religious life of the earlier England which had passed away and that of the newer England which was arising in its place. The spiritual side of the revival was in truth closely connected with its national side. All the foreign influences which the Norman conquest had brought to bear upon the English Church had failed to stamp out her intensely national character; nay, rather, she was already beginning to lead captive her conquerors. One of the most striking signs of the times was the renewal of reverence for those older English saints whose latest successor was striving to bury himself in the woodlands of S. Cuthbert’s patrimony. Normans and English hushed their differences before the grave of the Confessor; Lanfranc was forced to acknowledge the sanctity of Ælfheah. At Canterbury itself the memory not only of Lanfranc but even of Anselm was still eclipsed by that of Dunstan. The very changes introduced by Norman prelates or Norman patrons, their zeal for discipline or their passion for architectural display, worked in the same direction. It was in the old minster of S. Werburg that Earl Hugh of Chester had placed the Benedictine colony whose settlement helped to bring about the appointment of Anselm as primate; it was in honour of another early Mercian saint, Milburg, that Roger of Shrewsbury reared his abbey at Wenlock. Bishop Richard of London planted the Austin canons at Chiche over the shrine of S. Osyth; Bishop Roger of Salisbury planted them at Oxford over that of S. Frideswide. The foundation of a bishop’s see at Ely brought a fresh lustre to the glory of S. Etheldreda; and the matchless church at Durham on which two of the very worldliest and worst of Norman prelates, William of S. Calais and Ralf Flambard, lavished all the splendour that art could devise or wealth procure, was one vast monument to the honour of S. Cuthbert. Literary activity was re-awakened by a like impulse. Two successive precentors of Canterbury, Osbern and Eadmer, had already worked up into more elaborate biographies the early memorials of S. Dunstan. Eadmer’s best inspiration came to him indeed from a nearer source; his most valuable work is the history of his own time, which he grouped, as in a picture, around the central figure of his own master, Anselm. It was doubtless from that master that he had learnt a breadth of sympathy which extended far beyond his local associations at Canterbury. The saints of the rival archbishopric, Wilfrid and Oswald, found in him a new biographer. In the northern province, Simeon and his fellow-monks were busy at Durham with the story of their own church and its patron, Cuthbert. In the south, again, Faricius, the Italian abbot of Abingdon, was writing a life of S. Ealdhelm; while almost every church of importance in central and southern England was throwing open its archives to the eager researches, and contributing its memorials of early Mercian and West-Saxon saints to swell the hagiological collections of a young monk at Ealdhelm’s own Malmesbury.

There was one cathedral monastery in the west of England where the traditions of a larger historical sentiment had never died out. The scriptorium at Worcester had been for more than a century the depository of the sole contemporary edition of the English Chronicle;[200] and there alone the national history continued to be recorded in the national tongue down to the early years of Henry I. In the middle of his reign the monks of Peterborough, probably in consequence of the loss of their own records in a fire which destroyed their abbey in 1116, borrowed a copy of the Chronicle from Worcester, and wrote it out afresh for their own use, with additions from local history and other sources. It is only in their version that the earliest Chronicle of Worcester has been preserved to us. But they did more than transcribe the story of the past. When the copyist had brought his work down to the latest event of his own day—the sinking of the White Ship in 1120—another scribe carried on the annals of Peterborough and of England for ten more years, in the native speech of the land; and when he laid down his pen it was taken up by yet another English writer whose notices of contemporary history, irregular and fragmentary though they are, still cast a gleam of light across the darkness of the “nineteen winters” which lie between the death of the first King Henry and the coming of the second.[201]

- [200] In strictness, we must except the years 1043–1066, when the Abingdon Chronicle is also contemporary.

- [201] On the school of Worcester and its later influence, and the relations between the Chronicles of Worcester and Peterborough, see Green, Conquest of England, pp. 341, 342 and notes, and p. 370, note 2; and Earle, Parallel Chronicles, Introd.

Precious as it is to us, however, this English chronicle-work at Peterborough was a mere survival. Half its pathetic interest indeed springs from the fact that it stands utterly alone; save in that one abbey in the Fens, English had ceased to be a written tongue; the vernacular literature of England was dead. If the reviving national sentiment was to find a literary expression which could exercise any lasting and widespread influence, the vehicle must be not English but Latin. This was the work now taken up by the historical school of Worcester. Early in the twelfth century a Worcester monk named Florence made a Latin version of the Chronicle. Unhappily, he infused into his work a violent party spirit, and overlaid the plain brief statements of the annals with a mass of interpolations, additions and alterations, whose source it is impossible to trace, and which, adopted only too readily by later writers, have gone far to bring our early history into what until a very recent time seemed well-nigh hopeless confusion. But the very extent of his influence proves how true was the instinct which led him—patriot of the most narrow, insular, exaggerated type, as the whole tone of his work shows him to have been—to clothe the ancient vernacular annals in a Latin dress, in the hope of increasing their popularity. If English history has in one way suffered severely at his hands, it owes him a debt of gratitude nevertheless upon another ground. While the last English chronicle lay isolated and buried in the scriptorium at Peterborough, it was through the Latin version of Florence that the national and literary tradition of the school of Worcester made its way throughout the length and breadth of the land, and inspired a new generation of English historians. Simeon of Durham, copying out and piecing together the old Northumbrian annals which had gone on growing ever since Bæda’s death, no sooner met with the chronicle of Florence than he made it the foundation of his own work for the whole space of time between Ælfred’s birth in 848 and Florence’s own death in 1118; and from Simeon it was handed down, through the work of another local historian, to be incorporated in the great compilation of Roger of Howden.[202] Henry of Huntingdon, who soon after 1125, at the instigation of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, began to collect materials for a history of the English, may have learnt from the same source his method of dealing with the English Chronicle, though he seems, naturally enough, to have chiefly used the copy which lay nearest to his own hand at Peterborough. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of England, a finer and subtler intellect than that of either Florence or Simeon or Henry had caught the historical impulse in an old West-Saxon monastery.

- [202] On Simeon, see Bishop Stubbs’s preface to Roger of Howden, vol. i. (Rolls ed.); Mr. Arnold’s prefaces to Simeon, vol. i., and Henry of Huntingdon (ibid.); and Mr. Hodgson Hinde’s preface to Simeon (Surtees Soc.).

William of Malmesbury was born some three or four years before the Conqueror’s death,[203] in or near the little town in Wiltshire from which his surname was derived. One of his parents seems to have been Norman, the other English.[204] They early destined their son to a literary career; “My father,” he says, “impressed upon me that if I turned aside to other pursuits, I should but waste my life and imperil my good name. So, remembering the recommendation to make a virtue of necessity, I persuaded myself, young as I was, to acquire a willing taste for that to which I could not in honour show myself disinclined.” It is plain that submission to the father’s wishes cost no great effort to the boy. As he tells us himself, “Reading was the pleasure whose charms won me in my boyhood and grew with my growing years.”[205] His lot was cast in a pleasant place for one of such a disposition. Fallen though it was from its ancient greatness, some remnants of its earlier culture still hung about Malmesbury abbey. The place owed its rise to an Irish recluse, Maidulf, who, in the seventh century sought retirement from the world in the forest which at that time covered all the northern part of Wiltshire. Maidulf, however, was a scholar as well as a saint; and in those days, when Ireland was the light of the whole western world, no forest, were it never so gloomy and impenetrable, could long hide an Irish scholar from the eagerness of the disciples who flocked to profit by his teaching. The hermitage grew into a school, and the school into a religious community. Its second abbot, Ealdhelm, is one of the most brilliant figures in the history of early West-Saxon learning and culture. The architecture of Wessex owed its birth to the churches which he reared along the edge of the forest-tract of Dorset and Wiltshire, from the seat of his later bishopric at Sherborne to his early home at Malmesbury; its Latin literature was moulded by the learning which he brought back from Archbishop Theodore’s school at Canterbury; and the whole ballad literature of southern England sprang from his English songs. The West-Saxon kings, from Ine to Eadgar, showered their benefactions upon the house of one whom they were proud to call their kinsman. It escaped as by a miracle from the destruction of the Danish wars; and in the Confessor’s reign its wealth and fame were great enough to tempt the diocesan bishop, Herman of Ramsbury, into a project for making it the seat of his bishopric. Darker times began with the coming of the first Norman abbot, Turold, whose stern and warlike character, more befitting a soldier than a monk, soon induced the king to transfer him to Peterborough, as a check upon the English outlaws and their Danish allies in the camp of refuge at Ely. His successor at Malmesbury, Warin, alienated for his own profit the lands and the treasures which earlier benefactors had lavished upon the abbey, and showed his contempt for the old English abbots by turning the bones of every one of them, except Ealdhelm, out of their resting-places on either side the high altar, and thrusting them into a corner of one of the lesser churches of the town, with the mocking comment: “Whosoever is mightiest among them may help the rest!” William’s boyhood, however, fell in happier days. About the time of his birth Warin died, and the next abbot, Godfrey, set himself to a vigorous work of material, moral and intellectual reform which must have been in full career when William entered the abbey-school.[206] The bent of the lad’s mind showed itself in the subjects which he chose for special study out of the general course taught in the school. “Logic, which serves to give point to our discourse, I tasted only with my ears; to physic, which cures the diseases of our bodies, I paid somewhat closer heed. But I searched deeply into the various branches of moral philosophy, whose dignity I hold in reverence, because it is self-evident to those who study it, and disposes our minds to virtuous living;—and especially into history, which, preserving in a pleasing record the manners of times gone by, by example excites its readers to follow that which is good and shun that which is evil.”[207] Young as he was, his studious habits gained him the confidence of the abbot. Godfrey’s darling scheme was the formation of a library; and when at length he found time and means to attempt its execution, it was William who became his most energetic assistant. “Methinks I have a right to speak of this work,” he tells us with pardonable pride, “for herein I came behind none of my elders, nay, if it be not boastful to say so, I far outstripped them all. I rivalled the good abbot’s own diligence in collecting that pile of books; I did my utmost to help in his praiseworthy undertaking. May those who now enter into our labours duly cherish their fruits!”[208]

- [203] This conclusion, which seems the only one possible, as to the date of William’s birth is that of Mr. W. de Gray Birch, On the Life and Writings of Will. of Malmesbury, pp. 3, 4 (from Trans. R. Soc. of Lit., vol. x., new series).

- [204] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. l. iii. (Hardy, p. 389).

- [205] Ib. prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 143).

- [206] The history of Malmesbury is in Will. Malm.’s Vita S. Aldhelmi, i.e. Gesta Pontif., l. v. (Hamilton, pp. 332 et seq.)

- [207] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 143).

- [208] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 271 (Hamilton, p. 431).

It is not difficult to guess in what department of the library William took the deepest interest. Half Norman as he was by descent, the chosen literary assistant of a Norman abbot,[209] it was natural that his first endeavour should be to “collect, at his own expense, some histories of foreign nations.” As he pondered over them in the quiet cloisters of the old English monastery which by this time had become his home, the question arose—could nothing be found among our own people worthy of the remembrance of posterity?[210] He had but to look around him, and the question answered itself. To the antiquary and the scholar Malmesbury was already classic ground, where every step brought him face to face with some memory of the glories of Wessex under the old royal house from which Ealdhelm sprang. To Ealdhelm’s own fame indeed even the prejudices of Abbot Warin had been forced to yield, and a new translation of the saint’s relics in 1078 had been followed by a fresh outburst of popular devotion and a fresh influx of pilgrims to his shrine. Every year his festival brought together a crowd of devotees, of sick folk seeking the aid of his miraculous powers, and—as generally happened in such cases—of low jesters seeking only to make their profit out of the amusement which they afforded to the gaping multitude. The punishment of one of these, who was smitten with frenzy and only cured after three days’ intercession on the part of the monks, during which he lay chained before the shrine, was one of the most vivid recollections of William’s childhood.[211] In the vestiary of the abbey-church he beheld with wonder and awe the chasuble which, as a quaint legend told, the saint in his pious abstraction of mind had once hung upon a sunbeam, and whose unusual length helped to furnish a mental picture of his tall stately form.[212] Among the older literary treasures which served as a nucleus for the new library, he gazed with scarcely less reverence on a Bible which Ealdhelm had bought of some foreign merchants at Dover when he visited Kent for his consecration.[213] The muniment-chest was full of charters granted by famous kings of old, Ceadwalla and Ine, Ælfred and Eadward, Æthelstan and Eadgar. In the church itself a golden crucifix, a fragment of the wood of the Cross, and several reliquaries containing the bones of early Gaulish saints were shown as Æthelstan’s gifts, and the king himself lay buried beneath the tower.[214] On the left of the high altar, facing S. Ealdhelm’s shrine, stood a tomb which in William’s day was believed to cover the remains of a scholar of wider though less happy fame than Ealdhelm himself—John Scotus, who, flying from his persecutors in Gaul, was said to have established a school under Ælfred’s protection at Malmesbury, and to have been there pricked to death by his pupils with their styles in the little church of S. Laurence.[215] The scanty traces of a vineyard on the hill-side which sheltered the abbey to the north were associated with a visitor from a yet more distant land. In the time of the Danish kings there came seeking for admission at Malmesbury a stranger of whom the brotherhood knew no more than that he was a Greek and a monk, and that his name was Constantine. His gentle disposition, abstemious habits, and quiet retiring ways won him general esteem and love; his whole time was spent in prayer and in the cultivation of the vineyard which he planted with his own hands for the benefit of the community; and only when at the point of death he arrayed himself in a pallium drawn from the scrip which he always carried at his side, was it revealed to the astonished Englishmen that he had been an archbishop in his Eastern home.[216]

- [209] Godfrey was a monk of Jumièges; Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 271 (Hamilton, p. 431).

- [210] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, p. 142).

- [211] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 275 (Hamilton, pp. 438, 439).

- [212] Ib. c. 218 (p. 365).

- [213] Ib. c. 224 (pp. 376–378).

- [214] Ib. c. 246 (p. 397).

- [215] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 240 (Hamilton, p. 394), and Gesta Reg., l. ii. c. 122 (Hardy, p. 190). The story seems however to be false. It probably originated in a confusion, first between John Scotus and John the Old-Saxon, who was nearly murdered by the monks of Athelney; and secondly, between both these Johns and a third scholar bearing the same name, who is mentioned by Gotselin of Canterbury as buried at Malmesbury, but whose real history seems to be lost. See Lanigan, Eccles. Hist. of Ireland, vol. iii. pp. 300, 301, 315, 316, 318–320.

- [216] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 260 (Hamilton, p. 415).

Under the influence of surroundings such as these William began his studies in English history. But he was brought to a standstill at the very threshold for lack of a guide. From the death of Bæda to his own day, he could not by the most diligent researches discover a single English writer worthy of the name of historian. “There are indeed certain records of antiquity in the native tongue, arranged according to the years of our Lord after the manner of a chronicle, whereby the times which have gone by since that great man (Bæda) have been rescued from complete oblivion. For of Æthelweard, a noble and illustrious man who set himself to expound those chronicles in Latin, it is better to say nothing; his aim indeed would be quite to my mind, if his style were not unbearable to my taste.”[217] The work of Florence was probably as yet altogether unpublished; it was certainly not yet finished, nor does it appear to have been heard of at Malmesbury. That of Eadmer, whose first edition—ending at the death of Anselm—must have been the last new book of the day, received from William a just tribute of praise, both as to its subject-matter and its style; but it was essentially what its title imported, a History of Recent Events; the introductory sketch prefixed to it was a mere outline, and, starting as it did only from Eadgar’s accession, still left between its beginning and Bæda’s death a yawning chasm of more than two centuries which the young student at Malmesbury saw no means of bridging over save by his own labour.[218] “So, as I could not be satisfied with what I found written of old, I began to scribble myself.”[219]

- [217] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. l. i. (Hardy, pp. 1, 2).

- [218] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. l. i. (Hardy, p. 2).

- [219] Ib. prolog. l. ii. (Hardy, pp. 143, 144).

Such, as related by the author himself, was the origin of William’s first historical work, the Gesta Regum Anglorum or Acts of the English Kings, followed a few years later by a companion volume devoted to the acts of the bishops. He was stirred by the same impulse of revived national sentiment which stirred Florence of Worcester to undertake his version of the Chronicle. But the impulse acted very differently on two different minds. William’s Gesta Regum were first published in 1120, two years after the death of Florence. The work of Florence, although he never mentions it, had doubtless reached him by this time, and must certainly have been well known to him before he issued his revised edition in 1128. To William, indeed, the Chronicle had no need of a Latin interpreter; and he probably looked upon Florence in no other light. He set before himself a loftier aim. In his own acceptation of the word, he is the first English historian since Bæda; he is in truth the founder of a new school of historical composition. William’s temper, as displayed in his works, might form the subject of a curious psychological study. It is a temper which, in many respects, seems to belong rather to a man of the world in our own day than to a monk of the twelfth century. He has none of the narrowness of the cloister; he has little of the prejudices common to his profession or his age; he has still less prejudice of race. The Norman and the English blood in his veins seem completely to neutralize each other; while Florence colours the whole story not only of the Norman but even of the Danish conquest with his violent English sympathies, William calmly balances the one side against the other, and criticizes them both with the judicial impartiality of a spectator to whom the matter has a purely philosophical interest. The whole bent of his mind indeed is philosophical, literary, artistic, rather than political. With him the study of history is a scientific study, and its composition a work of art. His aim is to entertain his readers quite as much as to instruct them. He utterly discards the old arrangement of events “by the years of our Lord,” and groups his materials in defiance of chronology on whatever plan seems to him best adapted to set them in the most striking and effective light. He never loses sight of his reader; he is always in dread of wearying him with dry political details, always seizing an opportunity to break in upon their monotony with some curious illustration, some romantic episode, some quaint legend, or—when he reaches his own time—some personal scandal which he tells with all the zest of a modern newspaper-writer. His love of story-telling, his habit of flying off at a tangent in the midst of his narrative and dragging in a string of irrelevant tales, sometimes of the most frivolous kind, is positively irritating to a student bent only upon following the main thread of the history. But in William of Malmesbury the main thread is often of less real value than the mass of varied adornment and illustration with which it is overlaid. William is no Bæda; but, Bæda excepted, there are few of our medieval historians who can vie with him in the telling of a story. His long and frequent digressions into foreign affairs are often of great intrinsic value, and they show a depth of insight into the history of other nations and a cosmopolitan breadth of thought and feeling quite without parallel in his time. His penetration into individual characters, his power of seizing upon their main features and sketching them to the life in a few rapid skilful strokes—as in his pictures of the Norman kings or of the Angevin counts—has perhaps not many rivals at any time. Even when his stories are most utterly worthless in themselves, there is a value in the light which they throw upon the writer’s own temper or on that of the age in which he lived. Not a few of them have a further interest as fragments saved from the wreck of a popular literature whose very existence, but for William and his fellow-historians, we might never have known. The Norman conquest had doomed to gradual extinction a vast growth of unwritten popular verse which, making its way with the wandering gleeman into palace and minster, hall and cottage, had coloured the whole social life and thought of England for four hundred years. The gleeman’s days were numbered. He had managed to hold his ground against the growing hostility of the Church; but the coming of the stranger had fatally narrowed his sphere of influence. His very language was unintelligible to the nobles who sat in the seat of his former patrons; jongleur and ménestrel from over sea had taken in the king’s court and the baron’s castle the place which the gleeman had once filled in the halls of ealdorman and thegn, and only the common people still hailed his appearance as a welcome break in the monotonous drudgery of their daily life. Before his day was quite over, however, the new school of patriotic historians had arisen; and they plunged into the mass of traditional and romantic lore of which he was the depositary as into a treasure-house from whose stores they might fill up the gaps and deck the bare outlines of the structure which they were building up on the meagre foundations of the Chronicle. Florence was the first to enter upon this somewhat dangerous process. William drank more deeply of a stream whose source lay at his own door: a simple English ballad which the country-folk around Malmesbury in his day still chanted as they went about their work was the spell by which S. Ealdhelm had drawn their forefathers to listen, first to his singing and then to his preaching, four hundred years before.[220] The same spell of song, handed on from generation to generation, and passing from the gleeman’s lips into the pages of the twelfth century historians with William at their head, has transformed the story of the later royal house of Wessex into a romance that too often only serves to darken the true character of the period which it professes to illustrate. What it does illustrate is not the tenth century but the twelfth. It helps us to learn something of the attitude of the national revival towards the national past, by showing us the England of Æthelstan and Eadmund, of Eadgar and Dunstan, not as it actually was, but as it appeared to the England of Henry I. and Roger of Sarum,—to the England of Florence of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury.

- [220] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. v. c. 190 (Hamilton, p. 336).

We must not take William as an average specimen of the monastic culture and intelligence of his day. In any age and in any circumstances he would probably have been a man of exceptional genius. But his outward life and surroundings were those of the ordinary monk of his time; and those surroundings are set in a very striking light by the fact, abundantly evident from his writings, that such a man as William could feel himself thoroughly at home in them, and could find in them full scope for the developement of his powers. It was in truth precisely his monastic profession which gave him opportunities of acquiring by personal experience, even more than by wide reading, such a varied and extensive knowledge of the world as could hardly be obtained in any other circumstances. A very slight acquaintance with William is enough to dispel all notions of the medieval monk as a solitary student, a mere bookworm, knowing no more of the world and of mankind than he could learn from the beatings of his own heart and within the narrow circle of the brotherhood among whom he dwelt. A community like that of Malmesbury was in active and constant relations with every rank and class of society all over the kingdom. Its guest-hall stood open alike to king and bishop, to Norman baron or English yeoman, to the high-born pilgrim who came back from a distant shore laden with relics and with tales of the splendours of Byzantium or the marvels of Holy Land, to the merchant who came to sell his curious foreign wares at the local fair and to pay his devotions, like S. Godric, at the local shrine, as well as to the monk of another house who came, perhaps, to borrow a book from the library, to compare notes with the local history, or to submit some literary question to the judgement of the great local scholar, whoever he might happen to be. All the political news, all the latest intellectual speculations, all the social gossip of the day, found its way thither by one or other of these channels, and was discussed within the safe shelter of the inviolable convent-walls with a boldness and freedom impossible amid the society of the outside world, fettered by countless bonds of custom, interest, and mutual dependence. The abbot ranked as a great noble who sat among earls and bishops in the meetings of the Great Council, whom they treated almost as an equal, and whom they came, with a train of secular clerks and lay followers, to visit and consult on matters of Church or state or of their own personal interests. If the king himself chanced to pass that way, it was matter of course that he should lodge in the monastery. William’s vivid portraits of all the three Norman kings were doubtless drawn, if not from the observation of his own eyes, at any rate from that of his friend Abbot Godfrey; his portrait of Henry I. was in all likelihood painted from life as the king paid his devotions before S. Ealdhelm’s shrine or feasted at the abbot’s table in the refectory, or—quite as probably—as William, in his turn, sat in the royal hall discussing some literary question with his friend and patron, the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester, if not actually with the king himself. The hospitality of the abbey was repaid by that which greeted its brethren wherever they went, on business for their house or for themselves. The monk went in and out of castle or town, court or camp, as a privileged person. Such a man as William, indeed, might be sure of a welcome anywhere; and William, indefatigable as a student, was almost equally so as a traveller. The little sketches of town and country which illustrate his survey of the dioceses of England in the Gesta Pontificum must have been made on the spot. He had seen the marvels of Glastonbury;[221] he had probably taken down the legend of S. Eadmund of East-Anglia on the very site of the martyrdom;[222] he had seen with his own eyes the Roman walls of Carlisle, and heard with his own ears the rough Yorkshire speech, of which, puzzling as it was to a southerner, he yet learned enough to catch from some northern gleeman the echo of Northumbria’s last heroic lay, the lay of Waltheof at the gate of York;[223] he had, we cannot doubt, wandered with delight up that vale of Severn which he paints in such glowing colours, and been drawn to write the life of S. Wulfstan by a sight of his church and his tomb at Worcester. His own cell at Malmesbury was the garner in which treasures new and old, of every kind, gathered from one end of England to the other, were stored up to be sifted and set in order at leisure amid that perfect tranquillity, that absolute security from outward disturbance and worldly care, which to the modern student is but a hopeless dream.

- [221] Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 91 (Hamilton, pp. 196–198); Gesta Reg., l. i. c. 20 (Hardy, pp. 32–34); Antiq. Glaston., passim.

- [222] Gesta Pontif., l. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, pp. 152–155); Gesta Reg., l. ii. c. 213 (Hardy, p. 366).

- [223] Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 253 (Hardy, p. 427).

The new intellectual movement, however, was by no means confined to the cloister. Clerk and layman had their share in it; king and queen encouraged it warmly, and their sympathy with the patriotic revival which animated it was marked enough to excite the mockery of their Norman courtiers, who nicknamed them “Godric and Godgifu.”[224] Learning and culture of every kind found a ready welcome at the court; Henry never forgot the favourite maxim of his youth, that “an unlettered king is but a crowned ass.”[225] His tastes were shared by his good queen Maude, who had received in her aunt’s convent at Romsey such an education as was probably given to few women of her time; and in her later years, when the king’s manifold occupations beyond sea left her alone in her palace at Westminster, the crowd of poor and sick folk on whom she bestowed her boundless charities was almost equalled by that of the scholars and poets who vied with each other to gain her ear by some new feat of melody or of rime.[226] Her stepson Earl Robert of Gloucester was renowned as a scholar no less than as a warrior and a statesman; to him William of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works, as to a comrade and an equal in the world of letters; it may even be that the “Robert” of whom we once catch a glimpse, sitting in the library at Malmesbury, eagerly turning over its treasures, and suggesting plans of work to the willing friend at his side, is no other than the king’s son.[227] The secular clergy had no mind to be outstripped by the regulars in literary activity; Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, a nephew of the justiciar, urged his archdeacon Henry of Huntingdon to compose a History of the English in emulation of the Gesta Regum. Nor did history alone absorb the intellectual energy of the time. Natural science had its followers, among them the king himself, who studied it in characteristically practical fashion at Woodstock, where he kept a menagerie full of lions, leopards, camels, lynxes and other strange beasts collected from all parts of the world;[228] and the “Bestiary” of an Anglo-Norman poet, Philip de Thaun, found a patroness in his second queen, Adeliza of Louvain. A scholar of old English race, Adelard of Bath, carried his researches into a wider field. Towards the close of the eleventh century he had crossed the sea to study in the schools of Tours and Laon. At the latter place he set up a school of his own, but he soon quitted it to enter upon a long course of wandering in distant lands. He crossed the Alps, made his way to the great medical school at Salerno, thence into Greece and Asia Minor, and finally, it seems, to the great centre of Arab culture and learning at Bagdad, or what we now call Cairo. Thence, after seven years’ absence, he returned to England soon after the accession of Henry I., and published his first book, a philosophical allegory dedicated to Bishop William of Syracuse, whose acquaintance he had made in his travels. He next opened a school, apparently in Normandy, for the diffusion of the scientific lore which he had acquired in the East. He had picked up, among other things, an Arabic version of Euclid, and the Latin translation which he made of this became the text-book of all succeeding mathematicians for centuries after. But his teaching of the physical science of the East was vehemently opposed by western scholars; his own nephew, who had been one of his pupils at Laon, was among his opponents, and it was in the shape of a discussion with this nephew that Adelard put forth, under the title of Quæstiones Naturales, a plea for a more free inquiry into the principles of natural science, instead of the blind following of old authorities which had hitherto contented the scholars of the West.[229] In the last years of Henry’s reign he seems to have returned once more to settle in his native land.[230] His career shows how daring was the spirit of enterprize now stirring among Englishmen, and how vast was the range of study and experience now thrown open to English scholars. We see that England was already within reach of that wider world of which her Angevin kings were soon to make her a part.

- [224] Ib.·/·Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 394 (p. 620).

- [225] Ib. c. 390 (p. 616).

- [226] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 418 (Hardy, p. 650).

- [227] “In historicis nos narrationibus occupatos detorsit a proposito tua, Rodberte, voluntas. Nuper enim cum in bibliothecâ nostrâ sederemus, et quisque pro suo studio libros evolveret, impegisti in Amalarium de Ecclesiasticis Officiis. Cujus cum materiam ex primâ statim tituli fronte cognosceris, amplexus es occasionem quâ rudimenta novæ professionis animares. Sed quia confestim animi tui alacritatem turbavit testimoniorum perplexitas et sermonum asperitas, rogasti ut eum abbreviarem. Ego autem ... munus injunctum non aspernanter accepi.” ... (Will. Malm. Abbreviatio Amalarii, prolog.) Mr. Birch (Will. Malm., p. 43) takes this Robert to be the earl. But does not the phrase about “nova professio” rather suggest a new-made monk of the house?

- [228] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 409 (Hardy, p. 638).

- [229] On Adelard, see Wright, Biog. Britt. Litt., vol. ii. pp. 94–100.

- [230] “In Perdonis ... Adelardo de Bada, 4s. et 6d.” Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter) p. 22—among the “Nova placita et novæ conventiones” of Wiltshire. Mr. Hunter (ib., pref. p. xxi.) takes this to be the traveller, but Mr. Wright doubts it.

What gave scope for all this social, moral and intellectual developement was, to borrow a phrase from the Peterborough Chronicler, “the good peace” that Henry, like his father, “made in this land.”[231] The foundations of the political and administrative system by which that peace was preserved inviolate to the end of his reign were laid in the three years succeeding the battle of Tinchebray—the brightest period of Henry’s prosperity, and the only time in his life when he himself could enjoy, on both sides of the sea, the tranquillity which he fought to secure. In England, indeed, from the day when he drove out Robert of Bellême in 1103 to his own death in 1135, the peace was never broken save by an occasional disturbance on the Welsh border. Even in Wales, however, the settlement of the Flemings and the appointment of a “Saxon” bishop to the see of St. David’s[232] were doing their work; and though in Henry’s later years the restlessness of the Welsh princes and people twice provoked him to march into their country, the danger from them was never great enough to mar the general security of the realm. From Scotland there was still less to fear; its three successive kings, Eadgar, Alexander and David, were the brothers of the good queen Maude and the faithful allies of her husband. But in Henry’s dominions beyond the sea, the state of things was very different. In the duchy of Normandy the year 1110 saw the opening of a new phase of politics, the beginning of a train of complications in which England seemed at the moment less directly concerned than in the earlier struggles between the king and the barons, but which in the end exercised an important influence on the course of her after history by bringing her into contact with the power of Anjou. Before we can trace the steps whereby this came to pass, we must change our line of thought and study. We must turn aside from the well-worn track of English history to travel awhile in less familiar paths; we must leave our own land and make our way into the depths of Gaul; we must go back from the broad daylight of the twelfth century into the dim dawn of the ninth, there to seek out the beginnings and thence to follow the romantic story of the house of Anjou.

- [231] Eng. Chron. a. 1087.

- [232] Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 68.

CHAPTER II.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU.
843–987.

The cradle-land of our Angevin kings, the original county of Anjou, was a small territory in central Gaul, lying about the lower course of the river Loire and that of its affluent the Mayenne[233] or Maine. Its chief portion consisted of a wedge-shaped tract hemmed in between the right bank of the Loire, which bounded it on the south, and the streams of Loir, Sarthe and Mayenne, which flowed round it on the north and west; along its southern border stretched a belt of alluvial soil which in winter and in rainy seasons became a vast flood-drowned fen, swallowed up by the overflowing waters of the Loire; to the northward, the country consisted chiefly of level uplands broken here and there by patches of forest and tiny river-valleys, and rising in the west into a range of low hills, which again died down into a fringe of swampy meadow-land along the eastern bank of the Mayenne. A narrow strip of ground on the southern bank of the Loire, with a somewhat wider strip of hilly and wooded country beyond the Mayenne, completed the district to which its earliest known inhabitants, a Gallic tribe called Andes or Andegavi, have left their name. A few miles above the angle formed by the confluence of the two rivers, a lofty mass of black slate rock thrown out from the upland furnished a ready-made fortress important alike by its natural strength and by its geographical position, commanding the main lines of communication with central, northern and southern Gaul through the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. Under the Roman conquerors of Gaul the place was called Juliomagus; the hill was crowned by a lofty citadel, and strengthened by a circuit of rampart walls; while from its crest a road struck eastward along Loire-side into the heart of central Gaul, another followed the westward course of the river to its junction with the sea, and others struck southward and northward into Aquitania and across the upland into the basin of the Seine. In the middle of the fourth century a Christian bishop, probably one of a band of mission-preachers who shared with the famous S. Martin of Tours the work of evangelizing central Gaul, laid beside the citadel of Juliomagus the foundations of a church, which in after-time grew into the cathedral of S. Maurice; and it is from the extent of the diocese over which his successors ruled that we learn the extent of the civil jurisdiction of Juliomagus. A later bishop, Albinus, left his name to the great abbey of S. Aubin, founded in Merovingian days on the slope of the hill just outside the city wall; a monastery dedicated to S. Sergius grew up to the north, in a low-lying marshy meadow by the river-side; while the place of the Roman prefects was taken by a succession of Frankish counts, the delegates first of the Merovingian kings of Neustria and then of the Karolingian emperors; and the Roman name of Juliomagus itself gave way to a native appellation cognate with that of the district of which it was the head—“Andegavis,” Angers.[234]

- [233] From the point where the Sarthe joins it, this river is now called the Maine. In the middle ages it had but one name, Meduana, from its source to its junction with the Loire. The old nomenclature is far more convenient for historical purposes.

- [234] The ecclesiastical history of Angers is in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. col. 543 et seq.

City and county acquired a new importance through the political arrangements by which the Karolingian realms were divided between the three sons of the Emperor Louis the Gentle. By a treaty made at Verdun in 843, the original Frankish kingdom and its Saxon dependencies, answering roughly to what we call Germany now-a-days, fell to the second brother Louis; the Gallic conquests of the Franks, between the Moselle, the Rhone, the Pyrenees and the ocean, were the share of the youngest, Charles the Bald; while the necessity that the eldest brother Lothar, as Emperor, should hold the two capitals, Rome and Aachen, involved the creation in his favour of a middle kingdom consisting of a long narrow string of countries reaching from the Frisian to the Pontine marshes. Although the limits thus fixed were afterwards altered more than once, the main lines of this treaty left indelible traces, and from that day we may date the beginning of modern France and modern Germany. The tripartite division, however, was soon overthrown by the extinction of the elder or Lotharingian line; the incongruous middle kingdom fell asunder and became a bone of furious contention between its two neighbours, and the imperial crown itself was soon an object of rivalry no less fierce. On the other hand, the extent of territory actually subject to Charles the Bald fell far short of the limits assigned to him by the treaty. Even Charles the Great had scarcely been able to maintain more than a nominal sway over the vast region which stretched from the southern shores of the Loire to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea, and was known by the general name of Aquitania; its princes and its people, wrapped in the traditions of Roman culture and Roman greatness, held disdainfully aloof from the barbarian conquerors of the north, and remained utterly indifferent to claims of supremacy which each succeeding Karolingian found it more and more hopeless to enforce. To the west, again, in the peninsula of Britanny or Armorica, the ancient Celtic race preserved, as in the Welsh hills of our own island, its native tongue, its primitive laws and customs, and its separate political organization under a dynasty of native princes who owed, indeed, a nominal allegiance to the West-Frankish overlord at Laon, but whose subjection to him was scarcely more real than that of the princes of Aquitania, while their disaffection was far more active and far more threatening; for the pirate fleets of the northmen were now hovering about the coast of Gaul as about that of Britain; and the Celts of the Breton peninsula, like the West-Welsh of Cornwall, were ever ready to make common cause with these marauders against the Teutonic conquerors of the land.

The work of the northmen in West-Frankland was a work both of union and disunion. There, as in England, the need for organization and defence against their attacks produced a new upgrowth of national life; but while in England this life was moulded by the consolidation of the earlier Engle and Saxon realms into a single state under the leadership of the West-Saxon kings, in Frankland it was created through the forcible breaking-up of an outward unity already threatened with the doom which never fails sooner or later to overtake a kingdom divided against itself. The West-Frankish king was not, like the king of Wessex, the leader, the natural exponent, the impersonation almost, of the dawning national consciousness; it was not he who led and organized the struggle for existence against the northern foe; the nation had to fight for itself, with but little help from its sovereign. This difference was caused partly by the political circumstances of the Karolingian realms, partly by geographical conditions. The brunt of the battle necessarily fell, not upon the royal domains lying far from the sea around the inland fortress of Laon, but on the coast, and especially on the districts around the great river-inlets by which the pirates made their entrance into the country. Of these, the estuary of the Seine lay nearest to them, and was their first point of attack. Between it and the other great inlet, the mouth of the Loire, lay the Breton peninsula; once round that, and the broad lands of Aquitania, rich with the natural wealth of a southern soil and with the remains of a luxury and splendour in which its cities had almost outdone Rome herself, would tempt the northmen with a fairer harvest of spoil than they could find on the shores of the Channel. The desolate rocky coast and barren moorlands of the intervening peninsula offered little chance of booty; but if the pirates could secure the alliance or even the neutrality of the Bretons, they had but to force an entrance into the Loire, and not only Aquitaine, but the inmost heart of the West-Frankish realm would be laid open to their attacks. Two barriers, however, would have to be overcome before such an entrance could be gained. The first was the city of Nantes, which stood on the northern bank of the Loire, some thirty miles above its mouth. Politically, Nantes was the extreme western outpost of the Karolingian power, for its count held his fief directly of the king at Laon, not of the nearer Breton under-king at Rennes; but by its geographical position and the character of its people it was far more Breton than Frankish. The true corner-stone of the West-Frankish realm lay on the other side of the Mayenne. The county of Anjou or “Angevin march,” the border-land of Neustria and Aquitaine, was for all practical purposes the border-land also of Neustria and of Britanny. Angers, with its Roman citadel and its Roman walls, perched on the crest of its black slate-rock, at once guarding and guarded by the two rivers which flowed round its foot, was a far mightier fortress than Nantes; Angers, rather than Nantes, was the true key of the Loire valley, and the stronghold of the Neustrian border against all attacks from the west, whether by land or by sea.

In the first days of Charles the Bald, when the new king was struggling with his brothers, and the pirate ships were beginning again to strike terror into the coasts of Gaul, Lambert, a Breton-born count of the Angevin march, sought from Charles the investiture of the neighbouring and recently-vacated county of Nantes. On the refusal of his demand, he threw off his allegiance, offered his services to the Breton king Nomenoë, and on failing to obtain the coveted prize by his help, called in that of a pirate fleet which was cruising about the shores of Britanny. It was thus at the invitation and under the guidance of a man who had been specially intrusted with its defence that the northmen made their first entrance into the hitherto peaceful estuary of the Loire. Nantes was stormed and sacked;[235] the desolate city was left in the hands of Lambert and the Bretons, and the ravagers sailed away, probably to swell the forces and share the spoil of a fleet which in the following year made its way to the estuary of the Garonne, and pushed inland as far as Toulouse. Nearly ten years passed away before the northmen repeated their dash upon central Gaul. The valley of the Seine and the city of Paris were the victims of their next great expedition, in 845; and a series of plundering raids upon the Aquitanian coast were crowned in 848 by the conquest of Bordeaux. For a moment, in 851, the fury of the pirates’ attack seemed to be turning away from Gaul to spend itself on Britain; but a great victory of the West-Saxons under Æthelwulf at Aclea threw them back upon their old field of operations across the Channel, and in the terror of their threatened onset Charles sought to detach the Bretons from their alliance by a formal cession of the counties of Rennes and Nantes and the district west of the Mayenne, which had passed into Breton hands by the treason of Count Lambert.[236] His precautions failed to avert the blow which he dreaded. Next year the pirates made their way back again round the Armorican coast, up the mouth of the Loire, past Nantes, and through the Angevin march—now shrunk to a little corner of territory wedged in between the Mayenne and the Loire—as far inland as Tours, where they sacked and burned the abbey of S. Martin and drove its canons into exile with the hardly-rescued body of their patron saint.[237]

- [235] Chron. Namnet. in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. pp. 217, 218; Chronn. Rainald. Andeg., S. Serg., Vindoc., a. 843 (Marchegay, Eglises d’Anjou, pp. 5, 129–132, 158).

- [236] Ann. Bertin. a. 851 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 68) mention the cession of Nantes, etc. That the Mayenne was made the boundary of the two kingdoms appears from a charter of the Breton king Herispoë, dated August 23, 852; “Erispoë princeps Britanniæ provinciæ et usque ad Medanum fluvium.... Dominante Erispoë ... in totam Britanniam et usque ad Medanum fluvium.” Lobineau, Hist. de Bretagne, vol. ii. p. 55.

- [237] Ann. Bertin. a. 853 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 70).

In a breathing-space which followed upon this last attack, Charles received from Æthelwulf of Wessex a personal visit and an overture of mutual alliance against the common foe. The scheme was shattered by a political revolution in Wessex which followed Æthelwulf’s return; and meanwhile a new danger to the Karolingian power arose in the threatening attitude of Robert the Brave, a warrior of obscure birth who was now count of the Angevin march. Under pretext, as it seems, of securing their aid against the northmen, Robert leagued himself with the foes of the monarchy beyond his two frontier rivers, and made a triple alliance with the revolted Bretons and the king’s rebel nephew, Pepin of Aquitaine.[238] Charles, more and more hard pressed every year by domestic and political difficulties, and haunted by the perpetual horror of the pirate ships always in the background, felt that this second wavering lord of the marchland must be won back at any cost. Two years later, therefore, the count of the Angevin march was invested with a vast duchy comprising the whole territory between Seine and Loire as far as the sea and the Breton border; and with this grant the special work of keeping out both Bretons and northmen was distinctly laid upon his shoulders.[239]

- [238] Ann. Bertin. a. 859 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt. vol. vii. p. 75).

- [239] Regino a. 861 (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. i. p. 571). Ann. Mettens. a. 861 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 190).

Robert fulfilled his trust gallantly and successfully till he fell in a Scandinavian ambush at Brissarthe in 866.[240] His territories were given to a cousin of the king, Hugh of Burgundy, who was either so incapable or so careless of their defence that before six years had passed he suffered the very corner-stone of his duchy, the most important point in the whole scheme of operations against the northmen in central Gaul, to fall into the enemies’ hands. A band of pirates, sailing unopposed up the Loire and the Mayenne after Robert’s death, found Angers deserted and defenceless, and settling there with their families, used it as a centre from which they could securely harry all the country round. The bulk of the pirate forces, however, was now concentrated upon a great effort for the conquest of Britain, and while the invaders of Angers lay thus isolated from their brethren across the Channel, Charles the Bald seized his opportunity to attempt the recovery of the city. In concert with the Breton king, Solomon, he gathered his forces for a siege; the Franks encamped on the eastern side of the Mayenne, the Bretons on the opposite shore. Their joint blockade proved unavailing, till one of the Bretons conceived the bold idea of turning the course of the Mayenne, so as to leave the pirate ships stranded and useless. The whole Breton army at once set to work and dug such an enormous trench that the northmen saw their retreat would be hopelessly cut off. In dismay they offered to purchase, at a heavy price, a free withdrawal from Angers and its district; their offer was accepted, and Angers was evacuated accordingly.[241]

- [240] Ann. Bertin. a. 866 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 94).

- [241] Regino, a. 873 (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. i. pp. 585, 586). Ann. Bertin. and Mettens. and Chron. Namnet. a. 873 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. pp. 117, 200, 220, 221). Chron. Sigebert. a. 875 (ib. p. 252). Chron. S. Serg., a. 873. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 132, 133).

But the long keels sailed away only to return again. Amid the gathering troubles of the Karolingian house, as years passed on, the cry rose up ever louder and louder from the desolated banks of Seine, and at last even from the inland cities of Reims and Soissons, perilously near the royal abode at Laon itself: “From the fury of the northmen, good Lord, deliver us!” It was not from Laon that deliverance was to come. The success of Charles the Bald at Angers, the more brilliant victory of his grandson Louis III. over Guthrum at Saucourt, were but isolated triumphs which produced no lasting results. At the very moment when the Karolingian empire was reunited under the sceptre of Charles the Fat came the crisis of the struggle with the northmen in West-Frankland; and the true national leader shewed himself not in the heir of Charles the Great, but in Count Odo of Paris, the son of Robert the Brave. It was Odo who saved Paris from the northmen when they besieged it with all their forces throughout the winter of 885; and by saving Paris he saved the kingdom. Before the siege was raised the possessions which his father had held as duke of the French were restored to him by the death of Hugh of Burgundy. A few months later the common consent of all the Karolingian realms deposed their unworthy Emperor, and the acclamations of a grateful people raised their deliverer Odo to the West-Frankish throne.

The times, however, were not yet ripe for a change of dynasty, and the revolution was followed by a reaction which on Odo’s death in 898 again set a Karolingian, Charles the Simple, upon the throne; but though the monarchy of Laon lingered on till the race of Charles the Great became extinct, it was being gradually undermined and supplanted by the dukes of the French, the rulers of the great duchy between Seine and Loire. Paris was now, since the siege of 885, the chief seat of the ducal power; and in the new feudal organization which grew up around this centre, the cradle of the ducal house, the border-stronghold of Angers, sank to a secondary position. The fiefs which the dukes parcelled out among their followers fell to the share of men of the most diverse origin and condition. In some cases, as at Chartres and Tours, the Scandinavian settler was turned into a peaceful lieutenant of the Frankish chief against whom he had fought. In others the reward of valour was justly bestowed on men who had earned it by their prowess against the invaders. It may be that the old alliance of Count Robert the Brave with the Bretons had sowed the seeds of a mighty tree. In the depths of a gloomy forest-belt which ran along the Breton border at the foot of a range of hills that shelter the western side of the valley of the Mayenne, there dwelt in Robert’s day—so the story went—a valiant forester, Tortulf. He quitted the hardy, hazardous borderer’s life—half hunter, half bandit—to throw himself into the struggle of Charles the Bald and Robert the Brave against the northmen: Charles set him to keep the pirates out of Touraine, and gave him a congenial post as forester of a wooded district known as the “Nid-de-Merle”—the Blackbird’s Nest. In its wild fastnesses Tortulf lay in wait for the approach of the marauders, and sprang forth to meet them with a daring and a success which earned him his sovereign’s favour and the alliance of the duke of the French. His son, Ingelger, followed in his steps; marriage came to the help of arms, and with the hand of Ælendis, niece of the archbishop of Tours, Ingelger acquired her lands at Amboise. The dowry was a valuable one; Amboise stood in the midst of one of the most rich and fertile districts of central France, half way between Tours and Blois, on the south bank of the Loire, which was spanned at this point by a bridge said to have been built by Julius Cæsar; two centuries later tradition still pointed out the site of Cæsar’s palace on the banks of the little river Amasse, at the western end of the town; while opposite the bridge a rocky brow, crowned to-day by the shell of a magnificent castle of the Renascence, probably still kept in Ingelger’s days some traces of a fortress built there by a Roman governor in the reign of the Emperor Valens. A mightier stronghold than Amboise, however, was to be the home of Ingelger’s race. His son, a ruddy youth named Fulk, early entered the service of Count Odo of Paris and remained firmly attached to him and his house; and one of the earliest acts of Odo’s brother Robert, who succeeded him as duke of the French—if indeed it was not rather one of the last acts of King Odo himself—was to intrust the city of Angers to Fulk the Red as viscount.[242] The choice was a wise one; for Fulk was gifted with a sound political instinct which found and kept the clue to guide him through all the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the next forty years. He never swerved from his adherence to the dukes of the French; and by his quiet tenacity he, like them, laid the foundation of his house’s greatness. Preferments civil and ecclesiastical—the abbacies of S. Aubin and S. Licinius at Angers, the viscounty of Tours, though this was but a momentary honour—were all so many stepping-stones to his final investiture, shortly before the death of Charles the Simple, as count of the Angevin March.

- [242] On the whole story of Tortulf, Ingelger and Fulk, see note A at end of chapter.

Map I.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

This little county of Anjou, of which Fulk thus became the first hereditary count, ended by overshadowing in political importance all the other divisions which made up the duchy of France. In point of territorial extent Anjou, at its present stage, was one of the smallest of the under-fiefs of the duchy. The dominions of Theobald the Trickster, the first count of Blois and Chartres, were far larger than those of Fulk; and so was the county of Maine or Cenomannia, which lay to the north of Anjou on the right bank of the Loire. Yet in a few generations Blois and Maine were both alike outstripped by the little Angevin march. The proud independence of Maine proved her ruin as well as her glory. She too was a border-land; her western frontier marched with that of Britanny, her northern with that of a great Scandinavian settlement which was growing into the duchy of Normandy. But her political status was altogether undefined and insecure. France and Normandy alike claimed the overlordship of Maine; Maine herself acknowledged the claims of neither; and this uncertain condition placed her at the mercy of her neighbours to north and south, and made her a bone of contention between them and a battle-ground for their quarrels till the day when all three were united. Blois and Chartres, on the other hand, with their dependency Touraine, stood like Anjou on a perfectly definite footing as recognised under-fiefs of the duchy of France. In the extent of their territory, and in the natural resources derived from the fertility of its soil and the number and wealth of its towns, the counts of Blois had at starting a very considerable advantage over the Angevins. But this seeming advantage proved in a few years to be a disadvantage. The house of Blois grew too fast, and soon outgrew its strength; its dominions became straggling; and when they straggled out eastward into Champagne, what was gained at one end was lost at the other, and Touraine, the most precious possession of the counts of Blois, was absorbed in the gradual steady advance of the Angevins.

Anjou’s position as a marchland marked her out for a special career. Forming the extreme south-western corner of France properly so called, divided from Aquitania by the Loire, from Britanny by the Mayenne, she had the advantage of a strong and compact geographical situation to start with. Her political position was equally favourable; she was neither hindered and isolated like Maine by a desperate endeavour to reclaim a lost independence, nor led astray by a multiplicity of scattered interests like Blois. She had simply to take her choice between the two alternatives which lie before every marchland. Such a land must either submit to be swallowed up piecemeal by its neighbours, or it must in sheer self-defence swallow up some of them; to keep what it has got, it must get more. Anjou, as represented by Fulk the Red and his successors, strongly embraced this latter alternative. The growth of the Angevin power during the next two centuries was due chiefly to the character of its rulers, working in a sphere which gave exceptional scope for the exercise of their peculiar gifts. Whoever Fulk’s real ancestors may have been, there can be no question that his descendants were a very remarkable race. From first to last there is a strong family likeness among them all. The first thing that strikes one about them is their thoroughness; whatsoever their hands found to do, whether it were good or evil, they did it with all their might. Nearly all of them were men of great and varied natural powers, gifted with a lofty military capacity and a deep political insight, and with a taste and a talent for all kinds of pursuits, into which they threw themselves with the full ardour of their stirring, restless temper. Daring, but not rash; persevering, watchful, tenacious; sometimes seeming utterly unscrupulous, yet with an odd vein of irregular piety running through the characters of many of them, and coming to light in the strangest shapes and at the most unexpected moments; passionate almost as madmen, but with a method in their madness—the Angevin counts were patriots in their way; for their chief aim was aggrandizement, but it was the aggrandizement of Anjou as well as of themselves. They were not to be led away, like their rivals of Blois, by visionary schemes of merely personal promotion involving neglect of their own little home-county; they were proud and fond of their “black Angers” on its steep above the Mayenne, and never forgot that there was the centre whence their power was to spread to the ends of the earth. It is easy to see how exactly such a race as this was fitted for its post in Anjou. Given such men in such a place, we can scarcely wonder at what they made of it.

The Angers in which Fulk came to rule as count, about the time when Æthelstan succeeded Eadward the Elder as king of Wessex, was a town not of dark slate walls as it is chiefly now, but of red flintstone and redder brick, such as the medieval builders long copied from the works of their Roman masters, and such as may still be found embedded in the outer walls of the bishop’s palace and half hidden behind the mighty black bastions of the later castle. That castle covers, or rather encloses, the site of a hall which Count Odo, the successor of the traitor Lambert, had built about the year 851 on ground acquired by exchange with Bishop Dodo. For some time after Frankish counts had been substituted for Roman prefects, the spiritual and temporal rulers of Angers had continued to dwell side by side on the hill-top; Odo, however, instead of again occupying the palace which Lambert had deserted, made it over to the bishop in return for a plot of ground lying just outside the south-west corner of the city wall. There he built himself a house, with the river at its feet and a vine-clad hill at its back; and there from that time forth was the dwelling-place of the Angevin counts.[243] Fulk the Red took up his abode there in the early days of a great political transition which was to change the kingdom of the West-Franks into a kingdom of Parisian France. Half a century had yet to elapse before the transition was accomplished; at its present stage indeed few could foresee its ultimate issue. If the ducal house of Paris had many friends, it had also many foes. The old Karolingian nobility was slowly dying out or sinking into the background before the new nobility of the sword; the great house of Vermandois had thrown its weight into the scale with the advancing power; but there were still many who looked with contempt and disgust on the new order of things, on the house of Paris and all its connexions. The count of Anjou was wedged in between powers anything but favourably disposed towards him and his patrons. The princes of Aquitania looked scornfully across the Loire at the upstarts on its northern bank; little as they recked of any authority beyond their river-barrier, the only one which they acknowledged at all was that of the Karolingian king at Laon. The Bretons beyond the Mayenne were as far from being subdued as ever. Within the duchy of France itself, one little corner was equally scornful of the dukes and of their partisans; Maine, although from its geographical position necessarily reckoned part of the duchy “between Seine and Loire,” still refused to acknowledge any such reckoning; its ruling house, as well as the great nobles of the South, claimed to have inherited the traditions of the Roman Empire and the blood of its Frankish conquerors. In the eyes of the Cenomannian counts, who traced their pedigree from a nephew of Charles the Great, the heirs of Tortulf the Forester were nothing but upstart barbarians.

- [243] See note B at end of chapter.

Their disdain, however, mattered little to Fulk. In those critical times, he who had the keenest sword, the strongest arm, the clearest head and the boldest heart, had the best title to nobility—a title whose validity all were sooner or later compelled to acknowledge. Fulk held Anjou by the grace of God, the favour of his lord the duke, and the might of his own good sword. He was, however, no mere man of war; he was quite willing to strengthen his position by peaceful means. One method of so doing was suggested by his father’s example; it was one which in all ages finds favour with ambitious men of obscure origin, and which was to be specially characteristic of the Angevin house. As Ingelger had married Ælendis of Amboise, so Fulk sought and won the hand of another maiden of Touraine, Roscilla, the daughter of Warner, lord of Loches, Villentras and Haye. It can only have been as the dowry of his wife that Fulk came into possession of the most valuable portion of her father’s lands, the township of Loches.[244] It lay some twenty miles south of Amboise, on the left bank of the Indre, a little river which takes its rise in the plains of Berry and winds along a wooded valley, through some of the most romantic scenery of southern Touraine, to fall into the Loire about half way between Amboise and Angers. In a loop of the river, sheltered on the south and west by a belt of woodland which for centuries to come was a favourite hunting-ground of Roscilla’s descendants, rose a pyramidal height of rock on whose steep sides the houses of the little township clustered round a church said to have been built in the sixth century by a holy man from southern Gaul, named Ursus, the “S. Ours” whom Loches still venerates as its patron saint.[245] By the acquisition of Loches Fulk had gained in the heart of southern Touraine a foot-hold which, coupled with that which he already possessed at Amboise, might one day serve as a basis for the conquest of the whole district.

- [244] Gesta Cons. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes d’Anjou), pp. 65, 66. The pedigree there given to Roscilla is impossible.

- [245] The life of S. Ours is in Gregory of Tours, Vitæ Patrum, c. xviii.

A few years before Fulk’s investiture as count of Anjou, the relations between the West-Frankish kingdom and its northern foes had entered upon a new phase. In 912 King Charles the Simple and Duke Hugh of Paris, finding themselves unable to wrest back from a pirate leader called Hrolf the Ganger the lands which he had won around the mouth of the Seine, made a virtue of necessity, and by a treaty concluded at St.-Clair-sur-Epte granted to Hrolf a formal investiture of his conquest, on condition of homage to the king and conversion to the Christian faith. Tradition told how a rough Danish soldier, bidden to perform the homage in Hrolf’s stead, kissed indeed the foot of Charles the Simple, but upset him and his throne in doing so; and although to the declining Karolingian monarchy the new power thus established at the mouth of the Seine was useful as a counterpoise to that of the Parisian dukes, yet the story is not altogether an inapt parable of the relations between the duchy of Normandy and its royal overlord during several generations. The homage and the conversion of Hrolf and his comrades were alike little more than nominal. His son, William Longsword, strove hard to force upon his people the manners, the tongue, the outward civilization of their French neighbours; but to those neighbours even he was still only a “leader of the pirates.” The plundering, burning, slaughtering raids did indeed become less frequent and less horrible under him than they had been in his father’s heathen days; but they were far from having ceased. Politically indeed it was William’s support alone that enabled Charles the Simple to carry on to his life’s end a fairly successful struggle with a rival claimant of his crown, Rudolf of Burgundy, a brother-in-law of Hugh, duke of the French. No sooner was Charles dead and Rudolf seated on his throne than the hostility of the northmen to the new king broke out afresh in a pirate-raid which swept across the Norman border, past Orléans and through the Gâtinais, into the very heart of the kingdom, to the abbey of S. Benedict at Fleury on the Loire. It was not the first time the monastery had been ravaged by pirates; the abbot was now evidently expecting their attack, for he had called to his aid Count Gilbald of Auxerre and Ingelger of Anjou, Fulk’s eldest son, who, young as he was, had already made himself a name in battle with the northmen. The fight was a stubborn one; the defenders of Fleury had resolved to maintain it to their last gasp, and when at length all was over there was scarcely a man of them left to tell the tale. The young heir of Anjou, taken prisoner by the pirates, was slaughtered beneath the shadow of S. Benet’s abbey as Count Robert the Brave had been slaughtered long ago at the bridge of Sarthe.[246] Fortunately, however, the future of the Angevin house did not depend solely on the life thus cut off in its promise. Two sons yet remained to Fulk. The duty of stepping into Ingelger’s place fell upon the youngest, for the second, Guy, was already in holy orders. Eight years later, in 937, Duke Hugh of Paris, the great maker of kings and bishops, who had just restored Louis From-over-sea to the throne of his father Charles the Simple, procured Guy’s elevation to the see of Soissons.[247] The son’s promotion was doubtless owed to the long and steady service of the father; but the young bishop soon shewed himself worthy of consideration on his own account. He played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, both ecclesiastical and secular; he adhered firmly to the party of Duke Hugh and his brother-in-law Herbert of Vermandois, and even carried his devotion to them so far as to consecrate Herbert’s little son Hugh, a child six years old, to the archbishopric of Reims in 940;[248] and through all the scandals and censures which naturally resulted from this glaringly uncanonical appointment Guy stuck to his boy-archbishop with a courage worthy of a better cause. He could, however, shew zeal for the Karolingian king as well as for the Parisian duke. When in 945 Louis From-beyond-sea fell a prisoner into the hands of the Normans, they demanded as the condition of his release that his two sons should be given them as hostages. On Queen Gerberga’s refusal to trust them with her eldest boy, the bishop of Soissons offered himself in the child’s stead, and the Normans, well knowing his importance in the realm, willingly accepted the substitution.[249] The dauntless Angevin was possibly more at home in the custody of valiant enemies than amid the ecclesiastical censures which fell thick upon him for his proceedings in connexion with Hugh of Reims, and from which he was only absolved in 948 by the synod of Trier.[250] His father was then no longer count of Anjou. A year after Hugh’s consecration, in the winter of 941 or the early spring of 942, Fulk the Red died “in a good old age,” leaving the marchland which his sword had won and guarded so well to his youngest son, Fulk the Good.[251]

- [246] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 239. The true date is shewn by a charter of Fulk, in Mabille’s Introd. to Comtes d’Anjou, pièces justif. no. vi., p. ci.

- [247] Chron. Frodoard, a. 937 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 192).

- [248] Richer, l. ii. c. 82.

- [249] Richer, l. ii. c. 48; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 66, where the king is miscalled Charles the Simple.

- [250] Chron. Frodoard, a. 948 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 204). Richer, l. ii. c. 82.

- [251] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 67. The date is proved by two charters, one dated August 941, signed by “Fulco comes” and “Fulco filius ejus” (Mabille, ibid., introd., pièces justif., no. viii. p. cv); the other, dated May 942, and signed by one Fulk only (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 723).

The reign of the second Count Fulk is the traditional golden age of Anjou. Under him, she is the proverbially happy land which has no history. While the name of the bishop of Soissons is conspicuous in court and camp, that of his brother the count is never once heard; he waged no wars,[252] he took no share in politics; the annalists of the time find nothing to record of him. But if there is no history, there is plenty of tradition and legend to set before us a charming picture of the Good Count’s manner of life. The arts he cultivated were those of peace; his gentle disposition and refined taste led him to pursuits and habits which in those rough days were almost wholly associated with the clerical profession. His favourite place of retirement, the special object of his reverence and care, was the church of S. Martin at Châteauneuf by Tours. There were enshrined the relics of the “Apostle of the Gauls”; after many a journey to and fro, many a narrow escape from the sacrilegious hands of the northmen, they had been finally brought back to their home, so local tradition said, under the care of Fulk’s grandfather Ingelger. The church was now a collegiate foundation, served by a body of secular canons under the joint control of a dean and—according to an evil usage of the period—a lay-abbot who had only to enjoy his revenues on pretence of watching over the temporal interests of the church. Since the time of Hugh of Burgundy the abbacy of S. Martin’s had always been held by the head of the ducal house of France; and it was doubtless their influence which procured a canonry in their church for Fulk of Anjou. His greatest delight was to escape from the cares of government and go to keep the festival of S. Martin with the chapter of Châteauneuf; there he would lodge in the house of one or other of the clergy, living in every respect just as they did, and refusing to be called by his worldly title; not till after he was gone did the count take care to make up for whatever little expense his host might have incurred in receiving the honorary canon.[253] While there he diligently fulfilled the duties of his office, never failing to take his part in the sacred services. He was not only a scholar, he was a poet, and had himself composed anthems in honour of S. Martin.[254] One Martinmas eve King Louis From-beyond-sea came to pay his devotions at the shrine of the patron saint of Tours. As he and his suite entered the church at evensong, there they saw Fulk, in his canon’s robe, sitting in his usual place next the dean, and chanting the Psalms, book in hand. The courtiers pointed at him mockingly—“See, the count of Anjou has turned clerk!” and the king joined in their mockery. The letter which the “clerk” wrote to Louis, when their jesting came round to his ears, has passed into a proverb: “Know, my lord, that an unlettered king is but a crowned ass.”[255] Fulk was indeed a living proof that it is possible to make the contemplative life of the scholar a help and not a hindrance to the active life of the statesman. The poet-canon was no mere dreamer; he was a practical, energetic ruler, who worked hard at the improvement and cultivation, material as well as intellectual, of his little marchland, rebuilding the churches and the towns that had been laid waste by the northmen, and striving to make up for the losses sustained during the long years of war. The struggle was completely over now; a great victory of King Rudolf, in the year after Ingelger’s death,[256] had finally driven the pirates from the Loire; and there was nothing to hinder Fulk’s work of peace. The soil had grown rich during the years it had lain fallow, and now repaid with an abundant harvest the labours of the husbandman; the report of its fertility and the fame of Fulk’s wise government soon spread into the neighbouring districts; and settlers from all the country round came to help in re-peopling and cultivating the marchland.[257] This idyl of peace lasted for twenty years, and ended only with the life of Fulk. In his last years he became involved in the intricacies of Breton politics, and storm-clouds began to gather on his western border; but they never broke over Anjou itself till the Good Count was gone.

- [252] “Iste Fulco nulla bella gessit.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 69.

- [253] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 70.

- [254] Ib. pp. 71, 72.

- [255] “Scitote, domine, quod rex illitteratus est asinus coronatus.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 71. It is curious that John of Salisbury, writing at the court of Henry of Anjou some years before the compilation of the Gesta Consulum, quotes the saying as coming from “literis quas Regem Romanorum ad Francorum regem transmisisse recolo” (Polycraticus, l. iv. c. 6; Giles, vol. iii. p. 237). The proverb was well known in the time of Henry I.; see Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 390 (Hardy, p. 616).

- [256] Fragm. Hist. Franc. in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 298.

- [257] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 74, 75.

The old Breton kingdom had now sunk into a duchy which was constantly a prey to civil war. The ruling house of the counts of Nantes were at perpetual strife with their rivals of Rennes. Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes, had been compelled to flee the country and take shelter in England, at the general refuge of all exiles, the court of Æthelstan, till a treaty between Æthelstan’s successor Eadmund and Louis From-over-sea restored him to the dukedom of Britanny for the rest of his life. He died in 952, leaving his duchy and his infant son Drogo to the care of his wife’s brother, Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres, a wily, unscrupulous politician known by the well-deserved epithet of “the Trickster,” who at once resolved to turn his brother-in-law’s dying charge to account for purposes of his own. But between his own territories and the Breton duchy lay the Angevin march; his first step therefore must be to make a friend of its ruler. For this end a very simple means presented itself. Fulk’s wife had left him a widower with one son;[258] Theobald offered him the hand of his sister, the widow of Alan, and with it half the city and county of Nantes, to have and to hold during Drogo’s minority; while he gave the other half to the rival claimant of the duchy, Juhel Berenger of Rennes, under promise of obedience to himself as overlord.[259] Unhappily, the re-marriage of Alan’s widow was soon followed by the death of her child. In later days Breton suspicion laid the blame upon his step-father; but the story has come down to us in a shape so extremely improbable that it can leave no stain on the memory of the Good Count.[260] Two sons of Alan, both much older than Drogo, still remained. But they were not sons of Drogo’s mother; Fulk therefore might justly think himself entitled to dispute their claims to the succession, and hold that, in default of lawful heirs, the heritage of Duke Alan should pass, as the dowry of the widow, to her second husband—a practice very common in that age. And Fulk would naturally feel his case strengthened by the fact that part at least of the debateable land—that is, nearly half the territory between the Mayenne and Nantes itself—had once been Angevin ground.

- [258] Her name was Gerberga, as appears by a charter of her son, Geoffrey Greygown, quoted in Art de vérifier les Dates, vol. xiii. p. 47.

- [259] Chron. Brioc. in Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. cols. 29, 30. Chron. Namnet., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 277.

- [260] The Chron. Brioc. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 30) tells how “ille comes Fulco Andegavensis, vir diabolicus et maledictus,” bribed the child’s nurse to kill him by pouring boiling water on his head when she was giving him a bath. The fact that the Angevin count is further described as “Fulco Rufus” (ib. col. 29), would alone throw some doubt on the accuracy of the writer. Moreover, this Chronicle of S. Brieuc is a late compilation, and such a circumstantial account of a matter which, if it really happened, must have been carefully hushed up at the time, is open to grave suspicion when unconfirmed by any other testimony. The Angevin accounts of Fulk’s character may fairly be set against it: they rest on quite as good authority. But the sequel of the story furnishes a yet stronger argument, for it shows that the murder would have been what most of the Angevin counts looked upon as much worse than a crime—a great blunder for Fulk’s own interest.

Just at this crisis the Normans made a raid upon Britanny, of which their dukes claimed the overlordship. They captured the bishop of Nantes, and the citizens, thus left without a leader of any kind, and in hourly fear of being attacked by the “pirates,” sent an urgent appeal to Fulk for help. Fulk promised to send them succour, but some delay occurred; at the end of a week’s waiting the people of Nantes acted for themselves, and succeeded in putting the invaders to flight. Indignant at the Angevin count’s failure to help, they threw off all allegiance to him and chose for their ruler Hoel, one of the sons of Alan Barbetorte.[261]

- [261] Chron. Brioc., Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. cols. 30, 31. Chron. Namnet., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 277.

These clouds on the western horizon did not trouble the peace of Fulk’s last hour. As he knelt to receive the holy communion in S. Martin’s church on one of the feasts of the patron saint, a slight feeling of illness came over him; he returned to his place in the choir, and there, in the arms of his brother-canons, passed quietly away.[262] We cannot doubt that they laid him to rest in the church he had loved so well.[263] With him was buried the peace of the Marchland. Never again was it to have a ruler who “waged no wars”; never again, till the title of count of Anjou was on the eve of being merged in loftier appellations, was that title to be borne by one whose character might give him some claim to share the epithet of “the Good,” although circumstances caused him to lead a very different life. Fulk the Second stands all alone as the ideal Angevin count, and it is in this point of view that the legends of his life—for we cannot call them history—have a value of their own. The most famous of them all is, in its original shape, a charming bit of pure Christian poetry. One day—so the tradition ran—the count, on his way to Tours, was accosted by a leper desiring to be carried to S. Martin’s. All shrank in horror from the wretched being except Fulk, who at once took him on his shoulders and carried him to the church-door. There his burthen suddenly vanished; and at the midnight service, as the count-canon sat in his stall, he beheld in a trance S. Martin, who told him that in his charity he had, like another S. Christopher, unwittingly carried the Lord Himself.[264] Later generations added a sequel to the story. Fulk, they said, after his return to Angers, was further rewarded by a second vision; an angel came to him and foretold that his successors to the ninth generation should extend their power even to the ends of the earth.[265] At the time when this prophecy appears in history, it had already reached its fulfilment. In all likelihood it was then a recent invention; in the legend to which it was attached it has obviously no natural place. But its introduction into the story of Fulk the Good was prompted by a significant instinct. At the height of their power and their glory, the reckless, ruthless house of Anjou still did not scorn to believe that their greatness had been foretold not to the warrior-founder, not to the bravest of his descendants, but to the good count who sought after righteousness and peace. Even they were willing, in theory at least, to accept the dominion of the earth as the promised reward not of valour but of charity.

- [262] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 75. According to Gallia Christiana (vol. xiv. col. 808) the Norman attack on Nantes took place about 960. It is probable that Fulk died soon after; but no charters of his successor are forthcoming until 966.

- [263] The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 67, 75) say that Ingelger, Fulk the Red and Fulk the Good were all buried in S. Martin’s. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376) says the place of their burial is unknown to him. The statement of the later writers therefore is mere guess-work or invention; but in the case of Fulk the Good it is probably right.

- [264] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 73, 74.

- [265] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149.

Whatever may be the origin of the prophecy, however, it was in the reign of Fulk’s son and successor Geoffrey Greygown that the first steps were taken towards its realization. Legend has been as busy with the first Geoffrey of Anjou as with his father; but it is legend of a very different kind. The epic bards of the marchland singled out Geoffrey for their special favourite; in their hands he became the hero of marvellous combats, of impossible deeds of knightly prowess and strategical skill, of marvellous stories utterly unhistoric in form, but significant as indications of the character popularly attributed to him—a character quite borne out by those parts of his career which are attested by authentic history. Whatever share of Fulk’s more refined tastes may have been inherited by either of his sons seems to have fallen to the second, Guy, who early passed into the quiet life of the monk in the abbey of S. Paul at Corméri in Touraine.[266] The elder was little more than a rough, dashing soldier, whose careless temper shewed itself in his very dress. Clad in the coarse grey woollen tunic of the Angevin peasantry,[267] Geoffrey Greygown made himself alike by his simple attire and by his daring valour a conspicuous figure in the courts and camps of King Lothar and Duke Hugh.

- [266] Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 258.

- [267] “Indutus tunicâ illius panni quem Franci Grisetum vocant, nos Andegavi Buretum.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 81.

The receiver of Fulk’s famous letter had gone before him to the grave; Louis From-over-sea, the grandson of Eadward the Elder, the last Karolingian worthy of his race, had died in 954. His death brought the house of France a step nearer to the throne; but it was still only one step. Lothar, the son of Louis, was crowned in his father’s stead; two years later the king-maker followed the king; and thenceforth his son, the new duke of the French, Hugh Capet, steadily prepared to exchange his ducal cap for a crown which nevertheless he was too prudent to seize before the time. In the face of countless difficulties, Louis in his eighteen years’ reign had contrived to restore the monarchy of Laon to a very real kingship. His greatest support in this task had been his wife’s brother, the Emperor Otto the Great. The two brothers-in-law, who had come to their thrones in the same year, were fast friends in life and death; and Otto remained the faithful guardian of his widowed sister and her son. So long as he lived, Hugh’s best policy was peace; and while Hugh remained quiet, there was little scope for military or political action on the part of his adherent Geoffrey of Anjou. In 973, however, the great Emperor died; and soon after he was gone the alliance between the Eastern and Western Franks began to shew signs of breaking. Lothar and Otto II. were brothers-in-law as well as cousins, but they were not friends as their fathers had been. In an evil hour Lothar was seized with a wild longing to regain the land which bore his name,—that fragment of the old “Middle Kingdom,” known as the duchy of Lotharingia or Lorraine, which after long fluctuating between its attachment to the imperial crown and its loyalty to the Karolingian house had finally cast in its lot with the Empire, with the full assent of Louis From-over-sea. Lothar brooded over its loss till in 978, when Otto and his queen were holding their court at Aachen, his jealousy could no longer endure the sight of his rival so near the border, and he summoned the nobles of his realm to an expedition into Lorraine.[268] Nothing could better fall in with the plans of Hugh Capet than a breach between Lothar and Otto; the call to arms was readily answered by the duke and his followers, and the grey tunic of the Angevin count was conspicuous at the muster.[269] The suddenness of Lothar’s march compelled Otto to make a hasty retreat from Aachen; but all that the West-Franks gained was a mass of plunder, and the vain glory of turning the great bronze eagle on the palace of Charles the Great towards the east instead of the west.[270] While they were plundering Aachen Otto was preparing a counter-invasion.[271] Bursting upon the western realm, he drove the king to cross the Seine and seek help of the duke, and before Hugh could gather troops enough to stop him he had made his way to the gates of Paris. For a while the French and the Germans lay encamped on opposite banks of the river, the duke waiting till his troops came up, and beguiling the time with skirmishes and trials of individual valour.[272] But as soon as Otto perceived that his adversaries were becoming dangerous he struck his tents and marched rapidly homewards, satisfied with having inflicted on his rash cousin a far greater alarm and more serious damage than he had himself suffered from Lothar’s wild raid.[273]

- [268] Richer, l. iii. c. 68.

- [269] Chron. Vindoc. a. 954 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 163).

- [270] Richer, l. iii. c. 71.

- [271] The exact date of Lothar’s attack on Lotharingia seems to be nowhere stated. That of Otto’s invasion of Gaul, however, which clearly followed it immediately, is variously given as 977 (Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc., Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 21, 163) and 978 (Chronn. S. Flor. Salm. and S. Maxent., ib. pp. 186, 381). The later date is adopted by Mr. Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. i. p. 264.

- [272] Among these the Angevin writers (Gesta Cons., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 79, 80) introduce Geoffrey Greygown’s fight with a gigantic Dane, Æthelwulf. It seems to be only another version, adorned with reminiscences of David and Goliath, of Richer’s account (l. iii. c. 76) of a fight between a German champion and a man named Ivo; and the whole story of this war in the Gesta is full of hopeless confusions and anachronisms.

- [273] Richer, l. iii. cc. 72–77.

From that time forth, at least, Geoffrey Greygown’s life was a busy and a stirring one. It seems to have been in the year of the Lotharingian raid that he married his second wife, Adela, countess in her own right of Chalon-sur-Saône, and now the widow of Count Lambert of Autun.[274] By his first marriage, with another Adela, he seems to have had only a daughter, Hermengard, who had been married as early as 970[275] to Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes. There can be little doubt that this marriage was a stroke of policy on Geoffrey’s part, intended to pave the way for Angevin intervention in the affairs of Britanny. The claims of Fulk the Good to the overlordship of Nantes had of course expired with him; whatever rights the widow of Duke Alan might carry to her second husband, they could not pass to her stepson. Still Geoffrey could hardly fail to cherish designs upon, at least, the debateable ground which lay between the Mayenne and the original county of Nantes. Meanwhile the house of Rennes had managed to establish, by the right of the stronger, its claim to the dukedom of Britanny. Hoel, a son of Alan Barbetorte, remained count of Nantes for nearly twenty years after Fulk’s death; his career was ended at last by the hand of an assassin;[276] and as his only child was an infant, his brother Guerech, already bishop of Nantes, was called upon to succeed him, as the only surviving descendant of Alan who was capable of defending the state. Guerech was far better fitted for a secular than for an ecclesiastical ruler; as bishop, his chief care was to restore or rebuild his cathedral, and for this object he was so eager in collecting contributions that he made a journey to the court of Lothar to ask help of the king in person. His way home lay directly through Anjou. Geoffrey felt that his opportunity had come; and he set the first example of a mode of action which thenceforth became a settled practice of the Angevin counts. He laid traps in all directions to catch the unwary traveller, took him captive, and only let him go after extorting homage not merely for the debateable land, but also for Nantes itself; in a word, for all that part of Britanny which had been held or claimed by Fulk as Drogo’s guardian.[277]

- [274] See note C at end of chapter.

- [275] Morice, Hist. Bret., vol. i. p. 63. See note C at end of chapter.

- [276] Chron. Brioc., Morice, preuves, vol. i., p. 31. Chron. Namnet., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 278. “C. 980,” notes the editor in the margin.

- [277] Chron. Brioc., Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 32.

Geoffrey had gained his hold over Nantes; but in so doing he had brought upon himself the wrath of his son-in-law. Conan, as duke of Britanny, claimed for himself the overlordship of Nantes, and regarded Guerech’s enforced homage to Geoffrey as an infringement of his own rights. His elder sons set out to attack their step-mother’s father, made a raid upon Anjou, and were only turned back from the very gates of Angers by a vigorous sally of Geoffrey himself.[278] Conan next turned his vengeance upon the unlucky count-bishop of Nantes. The Angevin and his unwilling vassal made common cause against their common enemy, who marched against their united forces, bringing with him a contingent of the old ravagers of Nantes—the Normans.[279] The rivals met not far from Nantes, on the lande of Conquereux, one of those soft, boggy heaths so common in Britanny; and the issue of the fight was recorded in an Angevin proverb—“Like the battle of Conquereux, where the crooked overcame the straight.”[280] Conan was, however, severely wounded, and does not appear to have followed up his victory; and the Nantes question was left to be fought out ten years later, on the very same ground, by Geoffrey’s youthful successor.

- [278] See note D at end of chapter.

- [279] Chron. Brioc., as above·/·Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 32.

- [280] See note D at end of chapter.

The death of Lothar, early in March 986, brought Hugh Capet within one step of the throne. The king’s last years had been spent in endeavouring to secure the succession to his son by obtaining for him the homage of the princes of Aquitaine and the support of the duke of the French—two objects not very easy to combine, for the great duchies north and south of the Loire were divided by an irreconcileable antipathy. In 956 William “Tête-d’Etoupe,” or the “Shockhead,” strong in his triple power as count of Poitou, count of Auvergne and duke of Aquitaine—strong, too, in his alliance with Normandy, for he had married a sister of his namesake of the Long Sword—had bidden defiance not unsuccessfully to Lothar and Hugh the Great both at once.[281] In 961 Lothar granted the county of Poitiers to Hugh;[282] but all he could give was an empty title; when William Shockhead died in 963,[283] his son William Fierabras stepped into his place as count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine, and leader of the opposition to Hugh Capet.

- [281] Richer, l. iii. cc. 3–5.

- [282] Ib. c. 13.

- [283] Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 381).

It was now evident that the line of Charles the Great was about to expire in a worthless boy. While the young King Louis, as the chroniclers say, “did nothing,”[284] the duke of the French and his followers were almost openly preparing for the last step of all. The count of Anjou, following as ever closely in the wake of his overlord, now ventured on a bold aggression. Half by force, half by fraud, he had already carried his power beyond the Mayenne; he now crossed the Loire and attacked his southern neighbour the count of Poitou. Marching boldly down the road which led from Angers to Poitiers, he took Loudun, and was met at Les Roches by William Fierabras, whom he defeated in a pitched battle and pursued as far as a place which in the next generation was marked by the castle of Mirebeau. Of the subsequent details of the war we know nothing; it ended however in a compromise; Geoffrey kept the lands which he had won, but he kept them as the “man” of Duke William.[285] They seem to have consisted of a series of small fiefs scattered along the valleys of the little rivers Layon, Argenton, Thouet and Dive, which furrow the surface of northern Poitou.[286] The most important was Loudun, a little town some eighteen miles north-west of Poitiers. Even to-day its gloomy, crooked, rough-paved streets, its curious old houses, its quaintly-attired people, have a strangely old-world look; lines within lines of broken wall wind round the hill on whose slope the town is built, and in their midst stands a great square keep, the work of Geoffrey’s successors. He had won a footing in Poitou; they learned to use it for ends of which, perhaps, he could as yet scarcely dream. Loudun looked southward to Poitiers, but it looked northward and eastward too, up the valley of the Thouet which led straight up to Saumur, the border-fortress of Touraine and Anjou, and across the valley of the Vienne which led from the Angevin frontier into the heart of southern Touraine. Precious as it might be in itself, Loudun was soon to be far more precious as a point of vantage not so much against the lord of Poitiers as against the lord of Chinon, Saumur and Tours.

- [284] “Ludovicus qui nihil fecit” is the original form of the nickname usually rendered by “le Fainéant.”

- [285] See note D at end of chapter.

- [286] Fulk Nerra’s Poitevin castles, Maulévrier, Thouars, etc., must have been built on the ground won by Geoffrey.

The little marchland had thus openly begun her career of aggression on the west and on the south. It seems that a further promise of extension to the northward was now held by Hugh Capet before the eyes of his faithful Angevin friend. Geoffrey’s northern neighbour was as little disposed as the southern to welcome the coming king. The overlordship of Maine was claimed by the duke of the Normans on the strength of a grant made to Hrolf in 924 by King Rudolf; it was claimed by the duke of the French on the strength of another grant made earlier in the same year by Charles the Simple to Hugh the Great,[287] as well as in virtue of the original definition of their duchy “between Seine and Loire”; but the Cenomannian counts owned no allegiance save to the heirs of Charles the Great, and firmly refused all obedience to the house of France. Hugh Capet, now king in all but name, laid upon the lord of the Angevin march the task of reducing them to submission. He granted Maine to Geoffrey Greygown[288]—a merely nominal gift at the moment, for Hugh (or David) of Maine was in full and independent possession of his county; and generation after generation had to pass away before the remote consequences of that grant were fully worked out to their wonderful end. Geoffrey himself had no time to take any steps towards enforcing his claim. Events came thick and fast in the early summer of 987. King Louis V. was seized at Senlis with one of those sudden and violent sicknesses so common in that age, and died on May 22. The last Karolingian king was laid in his grave at Compiègne; the nobles of the realm came together in a hurried meeting; on the proposal of the archbishop of Reims they swore to the duke of the French a solemn oath that they would take no steps towards choosing a ruler till a second assembly should be held, for which a day was fixed.[289] Hugh knew now that he had only a few days more to wait. He spent the interval in besieging a certain Odo, called “Rufinus”—in all likelihood a rebellious vassal—who was holding out against him at Marson in Champagne; and with him went his constant adherent Geoffrey of Anjou. At the end of the month the appointed assembly was held at Senlis. Passing over the claims of Charles of Lorraine, the only surviving descendant of the great Emperor, the nobles with one consent offered the crown to the duke of the French. From his camp before Marson Hugh went to receive, at Noyon on the 1st of June,[290] the crown for which he had been waiting all his life. Geoffrey, whom he had left to finish the siege, fell sick and died before the place, seven weeks after his patron’s coronation;[291] and his body was carried back from distant Champagne to be laid by his father’s side in the church of S. Martin at Tours.[292]

- [287] Chron. Frodoard, a. 924 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 181).

- [288] See note E at end of chapter.

- [289] Richer, l. iv. cc. 5 and 8.

- [290] Richer, l. iv. c. 12. On this Kalckstein (Geschichte des französischen Königthums unter den ersten Capetingern, vol. i. p. 380, note 2), remarks: “Aus Rich. iv. 12 wäre zu schliessen, dass Hugo in Noyon gekrönt wurde ... aber eine gleichzeitige Urkunde von Fleury entscheidet für Reims. Richer gibt wohl in Folge eines Gedächtnissfehlers den 1 Juli (wie für Juni zu verbessern seine wird) als Krönungstag. Hist. Francica um 1108 verfasst, Aimoin Mirac. S. Bened. ii. 2 (Bouq., x. 210 u. 341).” The Hist. Franc. Fragm. here referred to places the crowning at Reims on July 3. Aimoin, however, places it at Noyon and gives no date. The question therefore lies really between Richer and the Fleury record referred to, but not quoted, by Kalckstein; for the two twelfth century writers are of no authority at all in comparison with contemporaries. We must suppose that the Fleury charter gives the same date as the Hist. Franc. Fragm. But is it not possible that Hugh was really crowned first at Noyon on 1st June, and afterwards recrowned with fuller state at Reims a month later?

- [291] Chronn. S. Albin., S. Serg., and Vindoc., a. 987; Rain. Andeg. a. 985; S. Maxent. a. 986 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 21, 134, 164, 9, 382). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 376.

- [292] Fulk Rechin, as above, and Gesta Cons. (ib.), p. 89, say he was buried in S. Martin’s. R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 165) buries him in S. Aubin’s at Angers.

The century of preparation and transition was over; the great change was accomplished, not to be undone again for eight hundred years. The first period of strictly French history and the first period of Angevin history close together. The rulers of the marchland had begun to shew that they were not to be confined within the limits which nature itself might seem to have fixed for them; they had stretched a hand beyond their two river-boundaries, and they had begun to cast their eyes northward and dream of a claim which was to have yet more momentous results. In the last years of Geoffrey Greygown we trace a foreshadowing of the wonderful career which his successor is to begin. From the shadow we pass to its realization; with the new king and the new count we enter upon a new era.

Note A.
ON THE SOURCES AND AUTHENTICITY OF EARLY ANGEVIN HISTORY.

Our only detailed account of the early Angevins, down to Geoffrey Greygown, is contained in two books: the Gesta Consulum Andegavensium, by John, monk of Marmoutier, and the Historia Comitum Andegavensium, which goes under the name of Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches. Both these works were written in the latter part of the twelfth century; and they may be practically regarded as one, for the latter is in reality only an abridgement of the former, with a few slight variations. The Gesta Consulum is avowedly a piece of patchwork. The author in his “Proœmium” tells us that it is founded on the work of a certain Abbot Odo which had been recast by Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches, and to which he himself, John of Marmoutier, had made further additions from sundry other sources which he enumerates (Marchegay, Comtes d’Anjou, p. 353. This “Proœmium” is there printed at the head of the Historia Abbreviata instead of the Gesta Consulum, to which, however, it really belongs; see M. Mabille’s introduction, ib. p. xxxi.). The Historia Comitum Andegavensium (ib. p. 320) bears the name of Thomas of Loches, and thus professes to be the earlier version on which John worked. But it is now known that the work of Thomas, which still exists in MS., is totally distinct from that published under his name (see M. Mabille’s introduction to Comtes d’Anjou, pp. xviii., xix.), and, moreover, that the printed Historia Comitum is really a copy of a series of extracts from Ralf de Diceto’s Abbreviationes Chronicorum—extracts which Ralf himself had taken from the Gesta Consulum (see Bishop Stubbs’ preface to R. Diceto, vol. ii. pp. xxiii.–xxix). There is, however, one other source of information about the early Angevins which, if its author was really what he professed to be, is of somewhat earlier date and far higher value, although of very small extent. This is the fragment of the Angevin History which goes under the name of Count Fulk Rechin. Its authorship has been questioned, but it has never been disproved; and one thing at least is certain—the writer, whoever he may have been, had some notion of historical and chronological possibilities, whereas John of Marmoutier had none. Fulk Rechin (as we must for the present call him, without stopping to decide whether he has a right to the name) gives a negative testimony against all John’s stories about the earlier members of the Angevin house. He pointedly states that he knows nothing about the first three counts (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376), and he makes no mention of anybody before Ingelger. Now, supposing he really was Count Fulk IV. of Anjou, it is fairly safe to assume that if anything had been known about his own forefathers he would have been more likely to know it than a monk who wrote nearly a hundred years later. On the other hand, if he was a twelfth-century forger, such a daring avowal of ignorance, put into the mouth of such a personage, shews the writer’s disregard of the tales told by the monk, and can only have been intended to give them the lie direct.

The two first members of the Angevin house, then—Tortulf of Rennes and his son Tertullus—rest solely on the evidence of these two late writers. Their accounts are not recommended by intrinsic probability. We are roused to suspicion by the very first sentence of the Gesta Consulum:—“Fuit vir quidam de Armoricâ Galliâ, nomine Torquatius. Iste a Britonibus, proprietatem vetusti ac Romani nominis ignorantibus, corrupto vocabulo Tortulfus dictus fuit” (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 35). When one finds that his son is called Tertullus, it is impossible not to suspect that “Torquatius” and “Tertullus” are only two different attempts to Latinize a genuine Teutonic “Tortulf.” For the lives of these personages John of Marmoutier gives no distinct dates; but he tells us that Torquatius was made Forester of Nid-de-Merle by Charles the Bald, “eo anno quo ab Andegavis et a toto suo regno Normannos expulit” (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 35). Now this is rather vague, but it looks as if the date intended were 873. We are next told that Tertullus went to seek his fortune in France “circa id temporis quo Karolus Calvus ... ex triarcho monarchus factus, non longo regnavit spatio” (ib. pp. 36, 37), whatever that may mean. The next chronological landmark is that of the “reversion” of S. Martin, which John copies from the Cluny treatise De Reversione B. Martini, and copies wrong. Then comes Fulk the Red, on whom he says the whole county of Anjou was conferred by Duke Hugh of Burgundy, guardian of Charles the Simple, the county having until then been divided in two parts; and he also says that Fulk was related to Hugh through his grandmother (ib. pp. 64, 65).

There are several unmanageable points in this story. 1. The pedigree cannot be right. It is clear that John took Hugh the Great (“Hugh of Burgundy,” as he calls him) to be a son of the earlier Hugh of Burgundy (one copy of the Gesta, that printed by D’Achéry in his Spicilegium, vol. iii. p. 243, actually adds “filius alterius Hugonis”), and this latter to have been the father of Petronilla, wife of Tertullus.

The chronology of the life of Fulk the Red, long a matter of mingled tradition and guess-work, has now been fairly established by the investigations of M. E. Mabille. This gentleman has examined the subject in his introduction to MM. Marchegay and Salmon’s edition of the Chroniques des Comtes d’Anjou, and in an article entitled “Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire,” in the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194; to each of these works is appended by way of pièces justificatives a series of charters of the highest importance for establishing the facts of the early history of Anjou and Touraine. The first appearance of Fulk is as witness to a charter given at Tours by Odo, as abbot of S. Martin’s, in April 886. (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. lxix. note). Now if Fulk the Red was old enough to be signing charters in 886, his parents must have been married long before the days of Louis the Stammerer—in 870 at the very latest, and more likely several years earlier still. His grandparents therefore (i.e. Tertullus and Petronilla) must have been married before 850. It is possible that Hugh the Abbot who died in 887 may have had a daughter married as early as this; but it does not seem very likely.

2. The story of Ingelger’s investiture with Orleans and the Gâtinais is suspicious. His championship of the slandered countess of Gâtinais (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 40–45) is one of those ubiquitous tales which are past confuting. Still the statement that he somehow acquired lands in the Gâtinais is in itself not impossible. But the coupling together of Gâtinais and Orléans is very suspicious. Not one of the historical descendants of Ingelger had, as far as is known, anything to do with either place for nearly two hundred years. There is documentary proof (see the signatures to a charter printed in Mabille’s introd. Comtes, p. lxiv, note 1; the reference there given to Salmon is wrong) that in 942, the year after the death of Fulk the Red, the viscount of Orléans was one Geoffrey; and he belonged to a totally different family—but a family which, it seems, did in time acquire the county of Gâtinais, and in the end became merged in the house of Anjou, when the son of Geoffrey of Gâtinais and Hermengard of Anjou succeeded his uncle Geoffrey Martel in 1061. It is impossible not to suspect that the late Angevin writers took up this story at the wrong end and moved it back two hundred years.

3. Comes the great question of Ingelger’s investiture with half the county of Anjou.

In not one of the known documents of the period does Ingelger’s name appear. The only persons who do appear as rulers of the Angevin march are Hugh the Abbot and his successor Odo, till we get to Fulk the Viscount. Fulk’s first appearance in this capacity is in September 898, when “Fulco vicecomes” signs a charter of Ardradus, brother of Atto, viscount of Tours (Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. xciii). He witnesses, by the same title, several charters of Robert the Abbot-Count during the next two years. In July 905 we have “signum Fulconis Turonorum et Andecavorum vicecomitis” (ib. p. xcv); in October 909 “signum domni Fulconis Andecavorum comitis” (ib. p. xcviii); and in October 912 he again signs among the counts (ib. p. lxi, note 4). But in May 914, and again as late as August 924, he resumes the title of viscount (ib. pp. c and lxii, note 2). Five years later, in the seventh year of King Rudolf, we find a charter granted by Fulk himself, “count of the Angevins and abbot of S. Aubin and S. Licinius” (ib. p. ci); and thenceforth this is his established title.

These dates at once dispose of R. Diceto’s statement (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 143) that Fulk succeeded his father Ingelger as second count in 912. They leave us in doubt as to the real date of his appointment as count; but whether we adopt the earlier date, in or before 909, or the later one, between 924 and 929, as that of his definite investiture, we cannot accept the Gesta’s story that it was granted by Hugh the Great on behalf of Charles the Simple. For in 909 the duke of the French was not Hugh, but his father Robert; and in 924–929 the king was not Charles, but Rudolf of Burgundy.

But the chronology is not the only difficulty in the tale of Count Ingelger. The Gesta-writers admit that “another count” (i.e. the former count, Duke Hugh) went on ruling beyond the Mayenne. This at once raises a question, very important yet very simple—Did the Angevin March, the March of Robert the Brave and his successors, extend on both sides of the Mayenne? For the assumption that it did is the ground of the whole argument for the “bipartite” county.

The old territory of the Andes certainly spread on both sides of the river. So also, it seems, did the march of Count Lambert. The commission of a lord marcher is of necessity indefinite; it implies holding the border-land and extending it into the enemy’s country if possible. It appears to me that when Lambert turned traitor he carried out this principle from the other side; when Nantes became Breton, the whole land up to the Mayenne became Breton too. This view is distinctly supported by a charter in which Herispoë, in August 852, styles himself ruler of Britanny and up to the river Mayenne (Lobineau, Hist. Bretagne, vol. ii. col. 55); and it gives the most rational explanation of the Breton wars of Fulk the Good, Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk Nerra, which ended in Anjou’s recovery of the debateable ground. If it is correct, there is an end at once of the “bipartite county” and of Count Ingelger; “the other count” cannot have ruled west of the Mayenne, therefore he must have ruled east of it, and there is no room for any one else.

The one writer whose testimony seems to lend some countenance to that of the Gesta need not trouble us much. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 374) does call Ingelger the first count; but his own confession that he knew nothing about his first five ancestors beyond their names gives us a right to think, in the absence of confirmatory evidence, that he may have been mistaken in using the title. He says nothing about the county having ever been bipartite, and his statement that his forefathers received their honours from Charles the Bald, not from the house of Paris (ib. p. 376), may be due to the same misconception, strengthened by a desire, which in Fulk Rechin would be extremely natural, to disclaim all connexion with the “genus impii Philippi,” or even by an indistinct idea of the investiture of Fulk I. For, if this is regarded as having taken place between 905 and 909, it must fall in the reign of Charles the Simple, and might be technically ascribed to him, though there can be no doubt that it was really owing to the duke of the French. Every step of Fulk’s life, as we can trace it in the charters, shows him following closely in the wake of Odo, Robert and Hugh; and the dependance of Anjou on the duchy of France is distinctly acknowledged by his grandson.

The latter part of the account of Ingelger in the Gesta (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 47–62) is copied bodily from the Tractatus de reversione B. Martini a Burgundiâ, which professes to have been written by S. Odo of Cluny at the request of his foster-brother, Count Fulk the Good. The wild anachronisms of this treatise have been thoroughly exposed by its latest editor, M. A. Salmon (Supplément au Recueil des Chroniques de Touraine, pp. xi–xxviii), and M. Mabille (“Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire et les pérégrinations du corps de S. Martin,” in Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes, ser. vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194). It is certain, from the statement of S. Odo’s own biographer John, that the saint was born in 879 and entered religion in 898; at which time it is evident that Fulk the Good, the Red Count’s youngest son, must have been quite a child, if even he was in existence at all. The letters in which he and the abbot address each other as foster-brothers are therefore forgeries; and the treatise which these letters introduce is no better. The only part of it which directly concerns our present subject is the end, recounting how the body of the Apostle of the Gauls, after a thirty years’ exile at Auxerre, whither it had been carried to keep it safe from the sacrilegious hands of Hrolf and his northmen when they were ravaging Touraine, was brought back in triumph to its home at Tours on December 13, 887, by Ingelger, count of Gâtinais and Anjou, and grandson of Hugh, duke of Burgundy. Now there is no doubt at all that the relics of S. Martin were carried into Burgundy and afterwards brought back again, and that the feast of the Reversion of S. Martin on December 13 was regularly celebrated at Tours in commemoration of the event; but the whole history of the adventures of the relics as given in this treatise is manifestly wrong in its details; e.g. the statements about Hrolf are ludicrous—the “reversion” is said to have taken place after his conversion. M. Salmon has gone carefully through the whole story: M. Mabille has sifted it still more thoroughly. These two writers have shewn that the body of S. Martin really went through a great many more “peregrinations” than those recounted in the Cluny treatise, that the real date of the reversion is 885, and in short that the treatise is wrong in every one of its dates and every one of the names of the bishops whom it mentions as concerned in the reversion, save those of Archbishop Adaland of Tours and his brother Raino, who, however, was bishop of Angers, not of Orléans as the treatise says. The passages in the Tours chronicle where Ingelger is described as count of Anjou are all derived from this source, and therefore prove nothing, except the writer’s ignorance about counts and bishops alike.

The mention of Archbishop Adaland brings us to another subject—Ingelger’s marriage. Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 139) says that he married Ælendis, niece of Archbishop Adaland and of Raino, bishop of Angers, and that these two prelates gave to the young couple their own hereditary estates at Amboise, in Touraine and in the Orléanais. The Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 45) say the same, but afterwards make Raino bishop of Orléans. This story seems to be a bit of truth which has found its way into a mass of fiction; at any rate it is neither impossible nor improbable. The author of the De Reversione is quite right in saying that Archbishop Adaland died shortly after the return of the relics; his statement, and those of the Tours Chronicle, that Adaland was consecrated in 870 and died in 887, are borne out by the same charters which enable us to track the career of Fulk the Red. As to Raino—there was a Raino ordained bishop of Angers in 881 (Chron. Vindoc. ad ann. in Marchegay, Eglises d’Anjou, p. 160). The version which makes Orléans his see is derived from the false Cluny treatise.

Fulk the Red was witnessing charters in 886 and died in 941 or 942. He must have been born somewhere between 865 and 870; as the traditional writers say he died “senex et plenus dierum, in bonâ senectute,” it may have been nearer the earlier date. There is thus no chronological reason why these two prelates should not have been his mother’s uncles; and as the house of Anjou certainly acquired Amboise somehow, it may just as well have been in this way as in any other.

Note B.
THE PALACE OF THE COUNTS AT ANGERS.

Not only ordinary English tourists, but English historical scholars have been led astray in the topography of early Angers by an obstinate local tradition which long persisted in asserting that the counts and the bishops of Angers had at some time or other made an exchange of dwellings; that the old ruined hall within the castle enclosure was a piece of Roman work, and had served, before this exchange, as the synodal hall of the bishops. The date adopted for this exchange, when I visited Angers in 1877 (I have no knowledge of the place since that time) was “the ninth century”; some years before it was the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the synodal hall of the present bishop’s palace, with its undercroft, was shown and accepted as the home of all the Angevin counts down to Geoffrey Plantagenet at least. The whole history of the two palaces—that of the counts and that of the bishops—has, however, been cleared up by two local archæologists, M. de Beauregard (“Le Palais épiscopal et l’Eglise cathédrale d’Angers,” in Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire, 1855, vol. i. pp. 246–256), and M. d’Espinay, president of the Archæological Commission of Maine-et-Loire (“Le Palais des Comtes d’Anjou,” Revue historique de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. pp. 153–170; “L’Evêché d’Angers,” ib. pp. 185–201). The foundation and result of their arguments may be briefly summed up. The first bit of evidence on the subject is a charter (printed by M. de Beauregard, Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire, as above, vol. i. pp. 248, 249; also in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. instr. cols. 145, 146) of Charles the Bald, dated July 2, 851, and ratifying an exchange of lands between “Dodo venerabilis Andegavorum Episcopus et Odo illustris comes.” The exchange is thus described:—“Dedit itaque præfatus Dodo episcopus antedicto Odoni comiti, ex rebus matris ecclesiæ S. Mauricii, æquis mensuris funibusque determinatam paginam terræ juxta murum civitatis Andegavensis, in quâ opportunitas jam dicti comitis mansuræ sedis suorumque successorum esse cognoscitur. Et, e contra, in compensatione hujus rei, dedit idem Odo comes ex comitatu suo terram S. Mauricio æquis mensuris similiter funibus determinatam prænominato Dodoni episcopo successoribusque suis habendam in quâ predecessorum suorum comitum sedes fuisse memoratur.” As M. de Beauregard points out, the traditionary version—whether placing the exchange in the ninth century or in the twelfth—is based on a misunderstanding of this charter. The charter says not a word of the bishop giving up his own actual abode to the count; it says he gave a plot of ground near the city wall, and suitable for the count to build himself a house upon. Moreover the words “sedes fuisse memoratur” seem to imply that what the count gave was not his own present dwelling either, but only that which had been occupied by his predecessors. There can be little doubt that the Merovingian counts dwelt on the site of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus; and this was unquestionably where the bishop’s palace now stands. That it already stood there in the closing years of the eleventh century is proved by a charter, quoted by M. d’Espinay (Revue historique de l’Anjou, vol. viii. p. 200, note 2) from the cartulary of S. Aubin’s Abbey, giving an account of a meeting held “in domibus episcopalibus juxta S. Mauricium Andegavorum matrem ecclesiam,” in A.D. 1098.

So much for the position of the bishop’s dwelling from 851 downwards. Of the position of the count’s palace—the abode of Odo and his successors, built on the piece of land near the city wall—the first indication is in an account of a great fire at Angers in 1132: “Flante Aquilone, accensus est in mediâ civitate ignis, videlicet apud S. Anianum; et tanto incendio grassatus est ut ecclesiam S. Laudi et omnes officinas, deinde comitis aulam et omnes cameras miserabiliter combureret et in cinerem redigeret. Sicque per Aquariam descendens,” etc. (Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 144). The church of S. Laud was the old chapel of S. Geneviève,—“capella B. Genovefæ virginis, infra muros civitatis Andegavæ, ante forum videlicet comitalis aulæ posita,” as it is described in a charter of Geoffrey Martel (Revue Hist. de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. p. 161)—the exact position of a ruined chapel which was still visible, some twenty years ago, within the castle enclosure, not far from the hall which still remains. A fire beginning in the middle of the city and carried by a north-east wind down to S. Laud and the Evière would not touch the present bishop’s palace, but could not fail to pass over the site of the castle. The last witness is Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 291, 292), who distinctly places the palace of the counts in his own day—the day of Count Henry Fitz-Empress—in the south-west corner of the city, with the river at its feet and the vine-clad hills at its back; and his description of the “thalami noviter constructi” just fits in with the account of the fire, the destruction thereby wrought having doubtless been followed by a rebuilding on a more regal scale. It seems impossible to doubt the conclusion of these Angevin archæologists, that the dwelling of the bishops and the palace of the counts have occupied their present sites ever since the ninth century. In that case the present synodal hall, an undoubted work of the early twelfth century, must have been originally built for none other than its present use; and to a student of the history of the Angevin counts and kings the most precious relic in all Angers is the ruined hall looking out upon the Mayenne from over the castle ramparts. M. d’Espinay denies its Roman origin; he considers it to be a work of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh—the one fragment, in fact, of the dwelling-place of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black which has survived, not only the fire of 1132, but also the later destruction in which the apartments built by Henry have perished.

Note C.
THE MARRIAGES OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

The marriages of Geoffrey Greygown form a subject at once of some importance and of considerable difficulty. It seems plain that Geoffrey was twice married, that both his wives bore the same name, Adela or Adelaide, and that the second was in her own right countess of Chalon-sur-Saône, and widow of Lambert, count of Autun. There is no doubt about this second marriage, for we have documentary evidence that a certain Count Maurice (about whom the Angevin writers make great blunders, and of whom we shall hear more later on) was brother at once to Hugh of Chalon, son of Lambert and Adela, and to Fulk, son of Geoffrey Greygown, and must therefore have been a son of Geoffrey and Adela. A charter, dated between 992 and 998 (see Mabille, Introd. Comtes, pp. lxx–lxxi), wherein Hugh, count of Chalon, describes himself as “son of Adelaide and Lambert who was count of Chalon in right of his wife,” is approved by “Adelaide his mother and Maurice his brother.” Now as R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27) declares that Hugh had no brother, Maurice must have been his half-brother, i.e. son of his mother and her second husband; and that that second husband was Geoffrey Greygown appears by several charters in which Maurice is named as brother of Fulk Nerra.

It is by no means clear who this Adela or Adelaide of Chalon was. Perry (Hist. de Chalon-sur-Saône, p. 86) and Arbois de Jubainville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 140) say she was daughter of Robert of Vermandois, count of Troyes, and Vera, daughter of Gilbert of Burgundy and heiress of Chalon, which at her death passed to Adela as her only child. But the only authority for this Vera, Odorannus the monk of S. Peter of Sens, says she was married in 956, and Lambert called himself count of Chalon in 960 (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 35. See also Arbois de Jubainville as above), so that if he married Vera’s daughter he must have married a child only three years old. And to add to the confusion, Robert of Troyes’s wife in 959 signs a charter by the name of “Adelais” (Duchesne, Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 36). What concerns us most, however, is not Adela’s parentage, but the date of her marriage with Geoffrey Greygown; or, which comes to much the same thing, the date of her first husband’s death. The cartulary of Paray-le-Monial (Lambert’s foundation) gives the date of his death as February 22, 988. If that were correct, Geoffrey, who died in July 987, could not have married Adela at all, unless she was divorced and remarried during Lambert’s life. This idea is excluded by a charter of her grandson Theobald, which distinctly says that Geoffrey married her after Lambert’s death (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 39); therefore the Art de vérifier les Dates (vol. xi. p. 129) proposes to omit an x and read 978. Adela and Geoffrey, then, cannot have married earlier than the end of 978. Geoffrey, however, must have been married long before this, if his daughter Hermengard was married in 970 to Conan of Britanny (Morice, Hist. Bret., vol. i. p. 63. His authority seems to be a passage in the Chron. S. Michael. a. 970, printed in Labbe’s Bibl. Nova MSS. Librorum, vol. i. p. 350, where, however, the bride is absurdly made a daughter of Fulk Nerra instead of Geoffrey Greygown). And in Duchesne’s Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 39, is the will, dated March 6, 974, of a Countess Adela, wife of a Count Geoffrey, whereby she bequeathes some lands to S. Aubin’s Abbey at Angers; and as the Chron. S. Albin. a. 974 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 20) also mentions these donations, there can be little doubt that she was the wife of Geoffrey of Anjou. M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. lxx) asserts that this Adela, Geoffrey Greygown’s first wife, was Adela of Vermandois, sister of Robert of Troyes, and appeals to the will above referred to in proof of his assertion; the will, however, says nothing of the sort. He also makes the second Adela sister-in-law instead of daughter to Robert (ib. p. lxxi). It seems indeed hopeless to decide on the parentage of either of these ladies; that of their children is, however, the only question really important for us. Hermengard, married in 970 to the duke of Britanny, was clearly a child of Geoffrey’s first wife; Maurice was as clearly a child of the second; but whose child was Fulk the Black? Not only is it a matter of some interest to know who was the mother of the greatest of the Angevins, but it is a question on whose solution may depend the solution of another difficulty:—the supposed, but as yet unascertained, kindred between Fulk’s son Geoffrey Martel and his wife Agnes of Burgundy. If Fulk was the son of Geoffrey Greygown and Adela of Chalon, the whole pedigree is clear, and stands thus:

1
Lambert

=

Adela

=

2
Geoffrey

| ｜ | | ｜ |
Adalbert of Lombardy | = | Gerberga | Fulk |
| ｜ | | ｜ |
Otto William | ｜ |
| ｜ | | ｜ |
| Agnes | = | Geoffrey.

The two last would thus be cousins in the third degree of kindred according to the canon law. The only apparent difficulty of this theory is that it makes Fulk so very young. The first child of Adela of Chalon and Geoffrey cannot have been born earlier than 979, even if Adela remarried before her first year of widowhood was out; and we find Fulk Nerra heading his troops in 992, if not before. But the thing is not impossible. Such precocity would not be much greater than that of Richard the Fearless, or of Fulk’s own rival Odo of Blois; and such a wonderful man as Fulk the Black may well have been a wonderful boy.

Note D.
THE BRETON AND POITEVIN WARS OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

The acts of Geoffrey Greygown in the Gesta Consulum are a mass of fable. The fight with the Dane Æthelwulf and that with the Saxon Æthelred are mythical on the face of them, and the writer’s habitual defiance of chronology is carried to its highest point in this chapter. From him we turn to the story of Fulk Rechin. “Ille igitur Gosfridus Grisa Gonella, pater avi mei Fulconis, cujus probitates enumerare non possumus, excussit Laudunum de manu Pictavensis comitis, et in prœlio superavit eum super Rupes, et persecutus est eum usque ad Mirebellum. Et fugavit Britones, qui venerant Andegavim cum prædatorio exercitu, quorum duces erant filii Isoani (Conani). Et postea fuit cum duce Hugone in obsidione apud Marsonum, ubi arripuit eum infirmitas quâ exspiravit; et corpus illius allatum est Turonum et sepultum in ecclesiâ B. Martini” (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376).

Whoever was the author of this account, he clearly knew or cared nothing about the stories of the monkish writers, but had a perfectly distinct source of information unknown to them. For their legends he substitutes two things: a war with the count of Poitou, and a war with the duke of Britanny. On each of these wars we get some information from one other authority; the question is how to make this other authority tally with Fulk.

1. As to the Breton war, which seems to be the earlier in date.

No one but Fulk mentions the raid of Conan’s sons upon Angers; and M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. xlviii) objects to it on the ground that Conan’s sons were not contemporaries of Geoffrey.

Conan of Rennes was killed in 992 in a battle with Geoffrey’s son. He had been married in 970 to Geoffrey’s daughter Hermengard (see above, pp. 121, 135). Now a daughter of Geoffrey in 970 must have been almost a child, but it by no means follows that her husband was equally young. On the contrary, he seems to have been sufficiently grown up to take a part in politics twenty years before (Morice, Hist. Bret. vol. i. p. 62). It is certain that he had several sons; it is certain that two at least of them were not Hermengard’s; it is likely that none of them were, except his successor Geoffrey. Supposing Conan was somewhat over fifty when killed (and he may have been older still) that would make him about thirty when he married Hermengard; he might have had sons ten years before that, and those sons might very easily head an attack upon their stepmother’s father in 980 or thereabouts. Surely M. Mabille here makes a needless stumbling-block of the chronology.

If no other writer confirms Fulk’s story, neither does any contradict it. But in the Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 91–93) an exactly similar tale is told, only in much more detail and with this one difference, that Fulk Nerra is substituted for Geoffrey Greygown, and the raid is made to take place just before that other battle of Conquereux, in 992, in which Conan perished. The only question now is, which date is the likeliest, Fulk’s or John’s? in other words, which of these two writers is the better to be trusted? Surely there can be no doubt about the choice, and we must conclude that, for once, the monk who credits Greygown with so many exploits that he never performed has denied him the honour of one to which he is really entitled.

Fulk Rechin’s account of Geoffrey’s Breton war ends here. The Breton chroniclers ignore this part of the affair altogether; they seem to take up the thread of the story where the Angevin drops it. It is they who tell us of the homage of Guerech, and of the battle of Conquereux; and their accounts of the latter are somewhat puzzling. The Chron. Britann. in Lobineau (Hist. Bret., vol. ii. col. 32) says: “982. Primum bellum Britannorum et Andegavorum in Concruz.” The Chron. S. Michael. (Labbe, Bibl. Nova, vol. i. p. 350; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 98) says: “981. Conanus Curvus contra Andegavenses in Concurrum optime pugnavit.” But in the other two Breton chronicles the Angevins do not appear. The Chron. Namnetense (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 278) describes the battle as one between Conan and Guerech; the Chron. Briocense (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 32) does the same, and moreover adds that Conan was severely wounded in the right arm and fled defeated. This last is the only distinct record of the issue of the battle; nevertheless there are some little indications which, taken together, give some ground for thinking its record is wrong. 1st. There is the negative evidence of the silence of the Angevin writers about the whole affair; they ignore the first battle of Conquereux as completely as the Bretons ignore the unsuccessful raid of Conan’s sons. This looks as if each party chronicled its own successes, and carefully avoided mentioning those of its adversaries. 2d. In the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 260) is a proverb “Bellum Conquerentium quo tortum superavit rectum”—an obvious pun on Conan’s nickname, “Tortus” or “Curvus.” It is there quoted as having arisen from the battle of Conquereux in 992—the only one which it suits the Angevin writers to admit. But this is nonsense, for the writer has himself just told us that in that battle Conan was defeated and slain. Therefore “the crooked overcame the straight,” i.e. Conan won the victory, in an earlier battle of Conquereux.

But how then are we to account for the Chronicle of St. Brieuc’s very circumstantial statement of Conan’s defeat?—This chronicle—a late compilation—is our only authority for all the details of the war; for Guerech’s capture and homage, and in short for all matters specially relating to Nantes. The tone of all this part of it shews plainly that its compiler, or more likely the earlier writer whom he was here copying, was a violently patriotic man of Nantes, who hated the Rennes party and the Angevins about equally, and whose chief aim was to depreciate them both and exalt the house of Nantes in the person of Guerech. So great is his spite against the Angevins that he will not even allow them the credit of having slain Conan at the second battle of Conquereux, but says Conan fell in a fight with some rebel subjects of his own! He therefore still more naturally ignores the Angevin share in the first battle of Conquereux, and makes his hero Guerech into a triumphant victor. The cause of his hatred to Anjou is of course the mean trick whereby Geoffrey obtained Guerech’s homage. There can be little doubt that the battle was after this homage—was in fact caused by it; but the facts are quite enough to account for the Nantes writer putting, as he does, the battle first, before he brings the Angevins in at all, and giving all the glory to Guerech.

2. As to the Poitevin war. “Excussit Laudunum,” etc. (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376. See above, p. 137).

The only other mention of this war is in the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 384), which says: “Eo tempore gravissimum bellum inter Willelmum ducem et Gofridum Andegavensem comitem peractum est. Sed Gaufridus, necessitatibus actus, Willelmo duci se subdidit seque in manibus præbuit, et ab eo Lausdunum castrum cum nonnullis aliis in Pictavensi pago beneficio accepit.” M. Mabille pronounces these two accounts incompatible; but are they? The Poitevin account, taken literally and alone, looks rather odd. William and Geoffrey fight; Geoffrey is “compelled by necessity” to make submission to William—but he is invested by his conqueror with Loudun and other fiefs. That is, the practical gain is on the side of the beaten party. On the other hand, Fulk Rechin, taken literally and alone, gives no hint of any submission on Geoffrey’s part. But why cannot the two accounts be made to supplement and correct each other, as in the case of the Breton war? The story would then stand thus: Geoffrey takes Loudun and defeats William at Les Roches, as Fulk says. Subsequent reverses compel him to agree to terms so far that he holds his conquests as fiefs of the count of Poitou.

The case is nearly parallel to that of the Breton war; again the Angevin count and the hostile chronicler tell the story between them, each telling the half most agreeable to himself, and the two halves fit into a whole.

M. Mabille’s last objection is that the real Fulk Rechin would have known better than to say that Geoffrey pursued William as far as Mirebeau, a place which had no existence till the castle was built by Fulk Nerra in 1000. Why should he not have meant simply “the place where Mirebeau now stands”? And even if he did think the name existed in Greygown’s day, what does that prove against his identity? Why should not Count Fulk make slips as well as other people?

The date of the war is matter of guess-work. The S. Maxentian chronicler’s “eo tempore” comes between 989 and 996, i.e. after Geoffrey’s death. One can only conjecture that it should have come just at the close of his life.

Note E.
THE GRANT OF MAINE TO GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

That a grant of the county of Maine was made by Hugh Capet to a count of Anjou is pretty clear from the later history; that the grant was made to Geoffrey Greygown is not so certain. The story comes only from the Angevin historians; and they seem to have systematically carried back to the time of Greygown all the claims afterwards put forth by the counts of Anjou to what did not belong to them. They evidently knew nothing of his real history, so they used him as a convenient lay figure on which to hang all pretensions that wanted a foundation and all stories that wanted a hero, in total defiance of facts and dates. They have transferred to him one exploit whose hero, if he was an Angevin count at all, could only have been Fulk Nerra—the capture of Melun in 999. An examination of this story will be more in place when we come to the next count; but it rouses a suspicion that after all Geoffrey may have had no more to do with Maine than with Melun.—The story of the grant of Maine in the Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 77, 78) stands thus: David, count of Maine, and Geoffrey, count of Corbon, refuse homage to king Robert. The king summons his barons to help him, among them the count of Anjou. The loyal Geoffrey takes his rebel namesake’s castle of Mortagne and compels him to submit to the king; David still holds out, whereupon Robert makes a formal grant of “him and his Cenomannia” to Greygown and his heirs for ever.

On this M. l’abbé Voisin (Les Cénomans anciens et modernes, p. 337) remarks: “Cette chronique renferme avec un fonds de vérité des détails évidemment érronés; le Geoffroy d’Anjou, dont il est ici question, n’est pas suffisamment connu. C’est à lui que Guillaume de Normandie fait rendre hommage par son fils Robert; c’est lui, sans doute, qui, suivant les historiens de Mayenne, fut seigneur de cette ville et commanda quelque temps dans le Maine et l’Anjou, sous Louis d’Outremer; au milieu d’une assemblée des comtes et des barons de son parti, Robert l’aurait investi de ce qu’il possédait alors dans ces deux provinces.”

The Abbé’s story is quite as puzzling as the monk’s. His mention of Robert of Normandy is inexplicable, for it can refer to nothing but the homage of Robert Curthose to Geoffrey the Bearded in 1063. His meaning, however, seems to be that the Geoffrey in question was not Greygown at all, but another Geoffrey of whom he says in p. 353 that he was son of Aubert of Lesser Maine, and “gouverneur d’Anjou et du Maine, sous Louis IV. roi de France; il avait épousé une dame de la maison de Bretagne, dont on ignore le nom; il eu eut trois fils; Juhel, Aubert et Guérin; il mourut l’an 890.” This passage M. Voisin gives as a quotation, but without a reference. He then goes on: “Nous avons cherché précédemment à expliquer de quelle manière ce Geoffroi se serait posé en rival de Hugues-David;” and he adds a note: “D’autres aimeront peut-être mieux supposer une erreur de nom et de date dans la Chronique” [what chronicle?] “et dire qu’il s’agit de Foulques-le-Bon.” There is no need to “suppose”; a man who died in 890 could not be count of anything under Louis IV. But where did M. Voisin find this other Geoffrey, and how does his appearance mend the matter? He seems to think the Gesta-writers have transferred this man’s doings to their own hero Greygown, by restoring them to what he considers their rightful owner he finds no difficulty in accepting the date, temp. King Robert. But the Abbé’s King Robert is not the Gesta-writers’ King Robert. He means Robert I., in 923; they mean Robert II., though no doubt they have confused the two. In default of evidence for M. Voisin’s story we must take that of the Gesta as it stands and see what can be made of it.

In 923, the time of Robert I., Geoffrey Greygown was not born, and Anjou was held by his grandfather Fulk the Red. In 996–1031, the time of Robert II., Geoffrey was dead, and Anjou was held by his son Fulk the Black. Moreover, according to M. Voisin, David of Maine died at latest in 970, and Geoffrey of Corbon lived 1026–1040.

From all this it results:

1. If Maine was granted to a count of Anjou by Robert I., it was not to Geoffrey Greygown.

2. If it was granted by Robert II., it was also not to Geoffrey.

3. If it was granted to Geoffrey, it can only have been by Hugh Capet.

There is one writer who does bring Hugh into the affair: “Electo autem a Francis communi consilio, post obitum Lotharii, Hugone Capet in regem ... cum regnum suum circuiret, Turonisque descendens Cenomannensibusque consulem imponeret,” etc. (Gesta Ambaz. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, p. 160). He does not say who this new count was, but there can be little doubt it was the reigning count of Anjou; and this, just after Hugh’s accession, would be Fulk Nerra. On the other hand, the writer ignores Louis V. and makes Hugh succeed Lothar. Did he mean to place these events in that year, 986–7, when Hugh was king de facto but not de jure? In that case the count would be Geoffrey Greygown.

The compilers of the Gesta, however, simplify all these old claims by stating that the king (i.e. the duke) gave Geoffrey a sort of carte-blanche to take and keep anything he could get: “dedit Gosfrido comiti quidquid Rex Lotarius in episcopatibus suis habuerat, Andegavensi scilicet et Cenomannensi. Si qua vero alia ipse vel successores sui adquirere poterant, eâ libertate quâ ipse tenebat sibi commendata concessit.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 76.

Map II.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

CHAPTER III.
ANJOU AND BLOIS.
987–1044.

One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave the church as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her mantle she shook it from her shoulders; two of her little children stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and, floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no more. “What wonder,” was the comment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion upon this story; “what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind—we who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil?”[293]

- [293] Girald. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 154).

One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the Black.[294] His contemporaries may well have reckoned him among the phenomena of the time; they may well have had recourse to a theory of supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid developement of talents and passions which both alike seemed almost more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years old.[295] Surrounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey’s aggressions had provoked rather than checked—without an ally or protector unless it were the new king—Fulk began life with everything against him. Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy; a rapid and unerring perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might involve; and then ever and anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant, blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed earnestness—all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character—the character, in a word, of the typical Angevin count.

- [294] “Fulco Nerra” or “Niger,” “Palmerius” and “Hierosolymitanus” are his historical surnames. I can find no hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case of the “Black Prince”); the origin of the two last will be seen later.

- [295] This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his mother; see note C to chap. ii. above.

For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet, the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to keep control over the action of the crown. The duke of the French had gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He was no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of southern independence issued from far Périgord to punish him, stormed Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant question, “Who made thee count?” and the sole reply vouchsafed by Adalbert of Périgord was the fair retort, “Who made thee king?” Tours fell into his hands, and was made over, perhaps in mockery, to the youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens, however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert’s dreams of conquest ended in failure and retreat.[296] Still, Aquitaine remained independent as of old; Hugh’s real kingdom took in little more than the old duchy of France “between Seine and Loire”; and even within these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power. The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle; Normandy had not yet entered upon it; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of the duchy of France. Foremost among them in power, wealth, and extent of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly depended. Was the house of Anjou or the house of Blois to win the pre-eminence in central Gaul? This was the problem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to whose solution he devoted his life. His whole course was governed by one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object—the consolidation of his marchland. To that object everything else was made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances, by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends—for he used the one as unscrupulously as the other—was caught up and pursued with relentless vigour. One thread of settled policy ran through the seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the occupation of the moment—whether it were the building or the besieging of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field—that work was in reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in the clear streams that water the “garden of France”—as the people of Touraine call their beautiful country—has its tale of the Black Count, the “great builder” beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses; but far above all his castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards its realization; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and greatness.

- [296] Ademar of Chabanais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 146. The date seems to be about 990; but Ademar has confused Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of Champagne.

Fulk’s first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years earlier. The death of Geoffrey Greygown was soon followed by that of Count Guerech of Nantes; he, too, left only a young son, Alan; and when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession of Nantes,[297] little dreaming of a possible rival in his young brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny, the Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the house of Rennes; with the craft of his race he won over some of the guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel, which was held by Conan’s men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tidings, marched upon Nantes with all his forces; as before, he brought with him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad river—for the “Pirates” had not yet forgotten the days when the water was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan’s troops beset the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when Fulk advanced to their rescue.[298] Conan at once sent the audacious boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the field of Conquereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been waged between Conan and Fulk’s father. This time the Bretons trusted to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against the English army at Bannockburn; they dug a series of trenches right across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the surface with ferns till it was indistinguishable from the surrounding moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host, making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the onset; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton pitfalls; men and horses became hopelessly entangled; two thousand went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed to death.[299] The rest fled in disorder; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour, perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again, wild with rage, burning to avenge his overthrow, calling furiously upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the courage of the Angevins; “as the storm-wind sweeps down upon the thick corn-rigs”[300]—so their historian tells—they rushed upon the foe; and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the almost total destruction of his host.[301] The blow overthrew the power of Rennes; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of victory Fulk marched into Nantes; the citizens received him with open arms; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicaël, a young son of Count Hoel, was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a kinsman of the Angevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk’s interest;[302] while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been reunited to the Angevin dominions.

- [297] Morice, Hist. de Bret., vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly lost bit of the Chron. Namnet.).

- [298] Richer, l. iv. c. 81.

- [299] Ib. cc. 82–85. Rudolf Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 15).

- [300] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 15).

- [301] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss of his right hand—a confusion with the first battle of Conquereux. Conan’s death appears in all the chief Breton chronicles, especially Chron. S. Michael. a. 992 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377. The Gesta Cons. copy R. Glaber.

- [302] Richer, l. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars, a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla, daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictaviæ in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 294, 295.

The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea—a most important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands of the count of Blois. But his sway was not unbroken. Midway between his two capitals, Blois and Tours, stood Amboise, the heritage of the Red Count’s mother; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature—certainly not in Angevin nature—that the owner of Amboise and Loches should not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his neighbour in Touraine; and no great provocation on the part of Odo of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts of Blois itself.[303] Raid and counter-raid went on almost without ceasing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his Angevin ally.[304] In 995 Odo died, and his widow, Bertha, shortly afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins; the Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an interdict on the realm; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk carried on a desultory warfare with Odo’s two elder sons, Thierry and Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even yet scarcely more than a boy;[305] but, like Fulk, he had begun his public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic as Fulk’s beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert’s most trusty counsellor, Count Burchard of Vendôme; and no might short of that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a “leader of the Pirates” into the king’s most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge the outrage.[306] The boy’s hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Burchard, his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self-confidence, ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typical of his whole after-career. Odo’s life was as busy and active as Fulk’s, but his activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk; but he never waited till they were matured; he never stopped to count their cost; and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse; always ready to throw himself into a new project, but generally lacking patience and perseverance enough to carry it through; harassed by numberless conflicting cares;[307] breaking every engagement as soon as made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to keep long to anything. “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,” might have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo’s whole race. The house of Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main strength of their rivals: thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters of the two houses have a bearing upon English history; for the quarrel that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable steadiness, determination and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers.

- [303] Richer, l. iv. c. 79.

- [304] Richer, l. iv. cc. 90–94. His account of the war, and indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely strange and confused; it has been examined by M. Léon Aubineau in a “Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I.” in the Mém. de la Soc. Archéol. de Touraine, vol. iii. (1845–1847), pp. 41–94, but the result is far from convincing.

- [305] He is called “puerulus” at the time of his mother’s second marriage, i.e. in 995–996. Hist. Franc. Fragm. in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally.

- [306] Vita Burchardi, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 354, 355. Will. Jumièges, l. v. c. 14 (ib. p. 189; Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 255). Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. See note A at the end of chapter.

- [307] See the character given of him by R. Glaber, l. iii. cc. 2, 9 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 27, 40).

In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping along the line of Geoffrey Greygown’s Poitevin conquests in a wide irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head-quarters in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour. The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulévrier, of Loudun and the more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon. Sᵗᵉ·-Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.[308] Farther east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of Loches; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Montrésor, whose lord, Roger, rejoiced in the surname of “the devil.”[309] To Roger Fulk also intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen from the metropolitan see of Tours.[310] At Amboise itself, the site of the Roman governor’s palace—now crowned by the modern castle—was occupied by a strong domicilium of the Angevin count,[311] and the place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S. Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon, which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon wrested from their daring builder;[312] but the whole course of the Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk’s hands, for either by force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its banks had been won over to his cause; he had gained a foothold on every one of the affluents of the Loire upon its southern side; while on the north, in the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Château-la-Vallière and St.-Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the count’s usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.[313]

- [308] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377.

- [309] Gesta Cons. (ibid.), p. 107; Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 167.

- [310] Gesta Cons., as above.

- [311] Gesta Amb. Domin. (as above), p. 175.

- [312] That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of King Robert (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo’s hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995; there is a charter of his dated “at the siege of Langeais” in that year. Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 96.

- [313] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 91. Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 164.

The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building; Fulk, however, had begun his line of fortifications before the century dawned, in those gloomy years of interdict when the royal power was at its lowest ebb, when the people, cut off from the helps and comforts of religion, lay in hopeless anarchy and misery, and half in terror, half in longing, men whispered to each other that the end of the world was near. The superstitious terrors which paralyzed gentler souls only goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper almost to madness. He had married the heiress of Vendôme, the daughter of Count Burchard;[314] but this union came to a terrible end while its only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded year 1000 Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a wife by death at the stake; and a conflagration which destroyed a large part of the city of Angers immediately after her execution may well have caused the horror-stricken subjects of her husband to deem that judgement was indeed at their gates.[315]

- [314] They were already married in 990; see a charter in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 59.

- [315] This, or something like it, must be the meaning of the not very intelligible accounts given in the Angevin chronicles of the death of Elizabeth and the fire which followed it. “Incensa est urbs Andegavensis post incensionem Comitissæ Elizabeth.” Chron. S. Michael. in Peric. Maris, a. 1000 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 175). “Prima incensio urbis Andegavæ, quæ evenit paucis diebus post combustionem comitissæ Helisabeth.” Chron. S. Albin., a. 1000 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 22). “Urbs Andecava incensa est post combustionem comitissæ Elisabeth.” Breve Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 999 (ib. p. 187). “Fulco ... cum Elysabeth conjugem suam Andegavis, post immane præcipitium salvatam, occidisset, ipsamque urbem paucis defendentibus flammarum incendiis concremâsset.” Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (ibid.), p. 273. Cf. ib. p. 260.

After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year had passed over and the world found itself still alive; when the king had at last consented to purchase relief from the interdict by parting from his beloved Bertha, and the nation was rousing itself to welcome the new queen who stepped into Bertha’s place; then the blood which he had shed at Conquereux and elsewhere—one may surely add, the ashes of his wife—began to weigh heavily on the Black Count’s soul; “the fear of Gehenna” took possession of him, and leaving the marchland to the care of his brother Maurice he set out for the Holy Sepulchre.[316] This journey was the first link in a chain which, through the later pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra himself and those of his great-grandson Fulk V., brought the counts of Anjou into a specially intimate relation with the Holy Land and led to the establishment of an Angevin dynasty upon its throne. Legend has not been slack to furnish Fulk the Palmer with characteristic adventures, to tell how his craft outwitted that of the Turks who tried to exclude him from the Sepulchre, and how he not only procured a piece of the true Cross, but while kissing the sacred stone in the fervour of his devotion, detected a loose fragment which he managed to bite off and bring home as the most precious trophy of his journey.[317] His first care on his return was to build an abbey for the reception of this relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre where the great “Square Tower”—as the natives emphatically call the keep of Loches—was rising in picturesque contrast to a church reared by Geoffrey Greygown in honour of our Lady,[318] the land which the wife of the first count of Anjou had transmitted to her descendants stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in a broad expanse of green meadow to a waste plot of ground full of broom, belonging to a man named Ingelger. From its original Latin name, Belli-locus, now corrupted into Beaulieu, it seems possible that the place was set apart for trials by ordeal of battle.[319]

- [316] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 3 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 15). On the regency of Maurice see note C at end of chapter, and Mabille, Introd. Comtes d’Anjou, p. lxxvi.

- [317] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 102, 103. There is a versified account of the pious theft in the Beaulieu office of the Holy Sepulchre, Salies, Hist. de Foulques-Nerra, p. 529.

- [318] In 963; Chron. Turon. Abbrev. ad ann. (Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 185). From the foundation-charter, cited by M. l’abbé Bardet (La Collégiale de Loches, p. 8), it seems that Geoffrey founded the church on his return from a pilgrimage to Rome. A fragment of his work possibly remains in the present church (now called S. Ours), which was built by the historian-prior, Thomas Pactius, in the time of Henry II.

- [319] This is a remark quoted by M. de Salies (Foulques-Nerra, pp. 115, 361) from Dufour, “Dict. hist. de l’arrond. de Loches,” and grounded on the fact that while the many other Beaulieus, in France and in England, all appear in Latin as “Bellus-locus,” this one is “Belli-locus” in its foundation charter. See a similar case of verbal corruption below, p. 187.

This field Fulk determined to purchase for the site of his abbey. A bargain was struck; the count paid down the stipulated sum, carried the former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot of the bridge, and there set him down, saying, “A man without wit his freehold must quit”—by which ceremony the contract was completed.[320] Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method,[321] and his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the most Holy Trinity Itself.[322] By the time it stood ready for consecration the son of Fulk and Hildegard was nearly three years old:[323] he had been nursed by a blacksmith’s wife at Loches;[324] and many a time, as the count and countess went to inspect the progress of architect and builder in the meadow beyond the river, they must have lingered beside the forge to mark the growth of their little Geoffrey, the future conqueror of Tours. The consecration of the church proved a difficulty; the archbishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore to his see the stolen land of Montrichard.[325] Fulk swore—doubtless his customary oath, “by God’s souls”[326]—that he would get the better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case before the Pope. After several years’ wrangling it was decided in his favour,[327] and one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp and solemnity by a Roman cardinal-legate. But though Rome had spoken, the case was not ended yet. That very afternoon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the south, whirled round the church, and swept the whole roof completely off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as an evident token of Heaven’s wrath against the insolence and presumption of Fulk;[328] not so the Black Count himself, who simply replaced the roof and pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had happened.[329] He had successfully defied the Church; he next ventured to defy the king and the count of Blois both at once. The divorced queen Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, still lived and was still loved by the king; Fulk, if he was not actually, as tradition relates, a kinsman of the new Queen Constance,[330] was at any rate fully alive to the policy of making common cause with her against their common rivals of Blois. He crushed King Robert’s last hope of reunion with Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate at a hunting-party, before his royal master’s eyes, the king’s seneschal or comes palatii Hugh of Beauvais who was the confidant of his cherished scheme.[331] It is a striking proof not only of the royal helplessness but also of the independence and security which Fulk had already attained that his crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save by one bishop,[332] and almost immediately after its commission he could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his brother Maurice, while he set off upon another long journey which the legendary writers of Anjou, by some strange confusion between their own hero and the Emperor Otto III., make into a mission of knight-errantry to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but which seems really to have been a second pilgrimage to Holy Land.[333] He came back to find the storm which had so long been gathering on his eastern border on the point of breaking at last.

[320] 11th lesson of the Beaulieu Office, Salies, Foulques-Nerra, p. 528. “Stultus a proprio expellitur alodo.”

[321] “Ut semper curiose agebat,” R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 15).

[322] Ibid. (pp. 15, 16).

[323] He was born October 14, 1006, according to Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 164, 187). The Chron. S. Serg. (ib. p. 134) gives the same day, but makes the year 1007; the Chron. S. Maxent. (ib. p. 387) places the event on April 12, 1005. The Chron. S. Albin. (ib. p. 22) gives no day, but confirms the two first-named authorities for the year, 1006.

[324] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 260.

[325] R. Glaber, as above (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 16). Cf. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 107).

[326] “Fulco Nerra, cui consuetudo fuit Animas Dei jurare,” begins his history in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 89.

[327] R. Glaber, l. ii. c. 4 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 17). See also a bull of Pope John XVIII. in Migne’s Patrologia, vol. cxxxix., cols. 1491, 1492; and two of Sergius IV., ib. cols. 1525–1527.

[328] R. Glaber, as above (p. 16).

[329] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 99. This writer copies the whole story of Beaulieu from R. Glaber.

[330] See note B at end of chapter.

[331] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27).

[332] Fulbert of Chartres; see his letter to Fulk, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 476, 477.

[333] See note C at end of chapter.

The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Châteaudun, had profited by Fulk’s absence to concert a scheme for the expulsion of the Angevins from Touraine. In spite of a vigorous resistance made by Fulk’s lieutenant at Amboise, Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s at Tours, they seemed in a fair way to succeed, when Fulk himself dropped like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed right through the county of Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Châteaudun and harrying the surrounding district, and marched home in triumph to Amboise.[334] A raid such as this was a distinct declaration of war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry’s lord. Fulk had intended it as such, and he went home to set in action every possible means that could gain him help and support in a fight to the uttermost with Odo for the possession of Touraine. At that very moment the county of Maine was thrown virtually into his hands by the death of its aged count Hugh; with the alliance of Hugh’s youthful successor he secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body of valiant fighting-men whose co-operation soon proved to be of the highest value and importance. The rapid insight which singled out at a glance the most fitting instruments for his purpose, the gifts of attraction and persuasion by which he knew how to attach men to his service, and seemed almost to inspire them with some faint reflex of his own spirit, while making them devoted creatures of his will, were all brought into play as he cast about in all directions for aid in the coming struggle, and were strikingly shown in his choice of a lieutenant. The instinct of genius told him that he had found the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of the castle of Bazogers, in Maine. As prudent in counsel as he was daring in fight, Lisoy was a man after Fulk’s own heart; they understood each other at once; Lisoy was appointed to share with the now aged Sulpice the supreme command of Loches and Amboise; and while Sulpice provided for the defence of Amboise by building on his own land there a lofty tower of stone,[335] the burned and plundered districts of St.-Aignan, Chaumont and Blois soon had cause to know that the “pride of Cenomannian knighthood” had thrown himself heart and soul into the service of the count of Anjou.[336]

- [334] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 88, 89–91.

- [335] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 169.

- [336] Ib. pp. 160–164.

The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered all his forces for an attack upon Montrichard. His rival was fully prepared to meet him. Before he set out from Blois, the allied hosts of Anjou and Maine had assembled at Amboise, and thence separated again to post themselves in such a manner as to render a battle unavoidable. Fulk turned eastward, and took up a position close to Pontlevoy, seemingly in a wood now known as the Bois-Royal, which in that day was skirted by the high road from Blois to Montrichard. Herbert of Maine rode down to the banks of the Cher, and pitched his camp just above Montrichard, at Bourré.[337] If Odo followed the high road he would be met by the Angevins; if he contrived to turn their position by taking a less direct route to the eastward, he must encounter the Cenomannians, with the garrison of Montrichard at their back; while whichever engaged him first, the distance between the two bodies of troops was so slight that either could easily come to the other’s assistance. It was well for Anjou and for her count that his strategical arrangements were so perfect, and so faithfully carried out by his young ally; for never in all his long life, save in the panic at Conquereux, was Fulk the Black so near to complete overthrow as on that Friday morning in July 1016, when he met Odo of Blois face to face in the battle-field.

- [337] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 107. The topography of the battle of Pontlevoy is cleared up by Salies, Foulques-Nerra, p. 175 et seq.

Odo, who always trusted to be saved by the multitude of an host,[338] was greatly astonished, on arriving with all his forces opposite Pontlevoy, to find the Angevins drawn up against him in battle array. With a few hurried words he urged his men to the onset. Fortune seemed for a while to favour the stronger side; Fulk and his troops were sore bested; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and severely stunned, and the fate of Anjou hung trembling in the balance, when the scale was turned by the sword of Herbert of Maine. A messenger hurried off to tell the Cenomannian count that his friend was defeated, nay, captured. Herbert and his knights flew to the rescue; they charged the left wing of the enemies with a vigour which changed the whole position of affairs, and snatched from the count of Blois the victory he had all but won; the chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, leaving the foot to be cut to pieces at will, and their camp to be plundered by the victorious allies, who returned in triumph to Amboise, laden with rich spoils and valuable prisoners.[339]

- [338] “More suo, nimiâ multitudine confisus.” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 107.

- [339] Ib. pp. 107, 108. The date—July 6—is given in Chronn. S. Serg., Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm., a. 1016 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 134, 164, 187). There is an account of the battle in Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (ib.), p. 274, but it has a very impossible look.

The victory of Pontlevoy was the turning-point of Fulk’s career. Nine years passed away before Odo recovered from the check enough to make any attempt to avenge it. It seems at first glance strange that Fulk did not employ the interval in pushing forward his conquest of Touraine. But in the eyes of both Fulk and Odo the possession of Touraine was in reality a means rather than an end; and a sort of armed truce, so long as Odo did not provoke him to break it, suited Fulk’s purpose better than a continued war. His western frontier had been secured by his first victory at Conquereux; his eastern frontier was now secured, at any rate for a time, by his victory at Pontlevoy; from the south there was nothing to fear, for the duke of Aquitaine, to whom he owed homage for Loudun, was his staunch friend, and presently gave proof of his friendship by bestowing on him the city of Saintes.[340] Fulk at once made use of the gift as a means of extorting something yet more valuable from a neighbour to whom he owed a far deeper obligation—Herbert of Maine. It may be that they had quarrelled since the days of Pontlevoy; it may be that Herbert had begun that career of nocturnal raids against the fortified towns of Anjou which scared men and beasts from their rest, and gained him his unclassical but expressive surname of “Wake-the-dog.”[341] If so, the wily Angevin took effectual measures to stop them. He enticed the count of Maine to pay him a visit at Saintes, proposing to grant him the investiture of that city. Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, Herbert was seized by Fulk’s servants and flung into prison, whence he was only released at the end of two years, and on submission to such conditions as Fulk chose to dictate.[342] What those conditions were history does not tell; but there can be little doubt that they included some acknowledgment of the suzerain rights of Anjou over Maine, with which Geoffrey Greygown had been invested by Hugh Capet, but which he had not had time to make good, and which Fulk had only enforced for a moment, at the sword’s point, when the aged count Hugh was dying.[343] Fulk’s dealings with Maine are only an episode in his life; but they led even more directly than his struggle with the house of Blois to consequences of the utmost importance. They paved the way for an Angevin conquest of Maine which extended the Angevin power to the Norman border, brought it into contact and collision with the Norman ducal house, and originated the long wars which were ended at last by the marriage of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda. The imprisonment of Herbert is really the first step in the path which leads from Anjou to England.

- [340] Ademar of Chabanais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 149.

- [341] “Vulgo, sed parum Latine, cognominari Evigilans-canem pro ingenti probitate promeruit. Nam ... in eundem [sc. Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebro agebat, et Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsâ urbe, vel in munitioribus oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare cogebat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.) p. 532. It is however only fair to add that in another place (ib. p. 487) Orderic says Herbert “vulgo Evigilans-canem cognominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes quas a perfidis affinibus suis Andegavensibus incessanter patiebatur”—as if he kept the Cenomannian dogs awake to give notice of the enemy’s approach, we must suppose.

- [342] Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x.), p. 161; Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 189; Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 401). Ademar says Herbert’s imprisonment lasted two years; and the Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 22, 167), give us the date of his release, by giving that of the Breton invasion which followed it.

- [343] “Hugonis ... quem Fulco senior sibi violentur subjugârat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 532. The terms of Herbert’s submission to Fulk are matter of inference from what followed his release. He at once began to quarrel with Avesgaud, the bishop of Le Mans, and being by him defied and excommunicated, called in the help of Duke Alan of Britanny (Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 30, in Mabillon, Vet. Analecta, p. 304). Alan, when he had helped to defeat the bishop, marched down to besiege Le Lude, one of the chief Angevin fortresses on the Cenomannian border, and only desisted when he had extorted from Fulk the hostages given him by Herbert on his release; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 166). It is not hard to see why the rival overlord of Nantes should be ready to make war, on any pretext, upon the count of Anjou; but, making due allowance for Fulk’s possible difficulties—Odo’s last attack occurred in this year—still it is very hard to see why Fulk, “the ingenious Fulk,” as the writer of the Gesta Amb. Domin. calls him (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 165), could find no better way of raising the siege of a petty border-fortress than by making restitution to Herbert at the bidding of Alan, unless he felt so sure of his hold over Herbert as not to think the hostages worth keeping. The striking resemblance between Fulk’s treatment of Herbert and his father’s treatment of Guerech also suggests that there was probably a like resemblance in the terms of release.

But the step could never have been followed up as it was by Fulk’s successor had not Fulk himself at once turned back to his special work of clearing away the obstacle to Angevin progress formed by the rivalry of Blois, which once again threatened to become a serious danger in the very year of Herbert’s capture. Odo had lately[344] succeeded to the inheritance of his cousin Stephen, count of Champagne, an acquisition which doubled his wealth and power, and gave him a position of such importance in the French kingdom as enabled him to overawe the crown and cause a complete change in its policy. In 1025 King Robert, “or rather his queen Constance,” as the chroniclers significantly add, made peace with Count Odo who had hitherto been their enemy, and left their old friend Fulk of Anjou to carry on alone the struggle which he had begun with their good will, and, ostensibly at least, partly in their interest.[345] Odo thought his hour was come; “with all his might he set upon” Fulk;[346] and his might now included all the forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres and Champagne, aided, it seems, by a contingent from the Royal Domain itself.[347] With this formidable host Odo laid siege to a great fortified camp known as the Montboyau, which Fulk had reared some ten years before on the northern bank of the Loire almost opposite Tours, as a standing menace to the city and a standing defiance to its ruler.[348] Fulk, to whom the besieged garrison appealed for succour, had advanced[349] as far as Brain-sur-Alonnes when he was met by tidings which induced him to change his course.[350] Nearly over against the spot where he stood, a ridge of white chalk-cliff rising sheer above the southern bank of the Loire was crowned by the fortress of Saumur, the south-western key of Touraine, close to the Angevin border. It had belonged to the counts of Tours since the days of Theobald the Trickster at least; but in an earlier time it had probably formed a part of the Angevin March, as it still formed a part of the diocese of Angers. Its lord, Gelduin, was the sole human being whom the Black Count feared; “Let us flee that devil of Saumur!” was his cry, “I seem always to see him before me.”[351] But now he learned that Gelduin had joined his count at the siege of the Montboyau. A hurried night-ride across Loire and Vienne brought Fulk at break of day to the gates of Saumur,[352] and before sunset he was master of the place, although its inhabitants, with a spirit worthy of their absent leader, fired the town before they surrendered, and only admitted the victors into a heap of ashes. Not the least valiant of its defenders had been the monks of S. Florence, a little community who dwelt within the castle-enclosure, keeping guard over the relics of a famous local saint. As they came forth with their patron’s body from the blazing ruins, the Black Count’s voice rose above the din: “Let the fire burn, holy Florence! I will build thee a better dwelling at Angers.” The relics were placed in a boat and rowed down the stream till they reached the limit of the lands of Saumur, at Trèves. Once the boundary had been further west, at Gennes; till Fulk, despite his terror of the “devil,” had taken courage to march against him, doubtless at a moment when Gelduin was unprepared for defence, for he at once asked a truce. It was granted, but not exactly as he desired; on the spot where Gelduin’s envoy met him Fulk planted a castle and called it mockingly “Treva,” truce. Opposite this alien fortress the boat which carried the relics of S. Florence now stuck fast in one of the sandbanks of treacherous Loire, and all the efforts of the rowers failed to move it. The saint—said the monks—was evidently determined not to be carried beyond his own territory. Fulk, who was superintending the voyage in person, began to rail at him as “an impious rustic who would not allow himself to be well treated”: but there was a grain of humour in the Black Count’s composition, and he was probably as much amused as angered at the saint’s obstinacy; at any rate he suffered the monks to push off in the opposite direction—which they did without difficulty—and deposit their charge in the church of S. Hilary, an old dependency of their house, till he should find them a suitable place for a new monastery.[353] Thus far Odo’s grand expedition had brought him nothing but the loss of the best stronghold he possessed on the Angevin border. There was apparently nothing to prevent Fulk from marching in triumph up the valley of the Vienne, where Chinon and Ile-Bouchard now held out alone for the count of Blois amid a ring of Angevin fortresses. His present object, however, was to relieve the Montboyau; and turning northward he laid siege to a castle of his own building which had somehow passed into the enemy’s hands, Montbazon[354] on the Indre, only three leagues distant from Tours. Odo, whose siege operations had proved a most disastrous failure,[355] at once broke up his camp and marched to the relief of Montbazon. To dislodge him from the siege of Montboyau was all that Fulk wanted; simulating flight, he retreated up the valley to Loches and thence retired gradually upon Amboise.[356] A month later Odo made an ineffectual attempt to regain Saumur. Some time afterwards he tried again, pitching his tents among the vineyards on the banks of the Thouet, hard by the rising walls of the new abbey of S. Florence; the monks acted as mediators between their former lord and their new patron, and peace was made, Odo definitely relinquishing Saumur, and Fulk agreeing to raze the Montboyau[357]—that is, to raze the keep on its summit; for the white chalky slopes of the mighty earthwork itself rise gleaming above the river to this day. The struggle between Fulk and Odo was virtually over. Once again, in the following year, the count of Blois attempted to surprise Amboise, in company with the young King Henry, Robert’s son and recently crowned colleague. The attack failed;[358] it was Odo’s last effort to stem the tide of Angevin progress. Fulk had done more than beat his rival in the battle-field; he had out-generalled him in every way, and won a triumph which made the final issue of their rivalry a foregone conclusion. That issue he never sought to hasten, for with all his fiery vehemence Fulk knew how to wait; unlike Odo, he could look beyond the immediate future, beyond the horizon of his own life, and having sown and watered his seed he could be content to leave others to gather its fruit, rather than risk the frustration of his labours by plucking at it before the time.

[344] Stephen seems to have died in 1019; Art de vérifier les dates, vol. xi. p. 347.

[345] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 10); Chron. Vindoc. a. 1025 (ib. p. 165). This last is probably the right date, as the Angevin capture of Saumur, which follows, is dated in 1026 by the Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. (ib. pp. 22, 134), and in 1025 by the Chronn. S. Flor. Salm. and S. Maxent. (ib. pp. 187, 388).

[346] “Totis nisibus adorsus est.” Chronn. Rain. Andeg. and Vindoc. as above.

[347] “Cum Francis,” says the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 276). This writer afterwards speaks of Odo’s whole host as “Franci.” He has already done the same at Pontlevoy (ib. p. 274); but surely there cannot have been any royal vassals fighting under Odo there. What can be the writer’s real meaning?

[348] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 108. Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 165. See, for dates, Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 10).

[349] The Gesta Amb. Domin. (as above), p. 165, say that Fulk was accompanied by Herbert of Maine. But, on calculating dates, it seems that Herbert must have been by this time in prison. It is however highly probable that Cenomannian troops would be supplied to Fulk by Bishop Avesgaud.

[350] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 276.

[351] Ib. p. 275.

[352] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 276.—“Ligerique ac Vigennâ transvadatis.” The writer, living close to the spot, can hardly have mistaken its topography; but unless he has done so, the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire must at that time have been considerably farther west than at present; it is now at Candes, some distance to the east of Saumur and Brain.

[353] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), pp. 276–278.

[354] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 109. Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 165.

[355] Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 10).

[356] Gesta Cons. and Gesta Amb. Domin. as above.

[357] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 280.

[358] Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (ib. p. 165). Cf. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1027 (ib. p. 22).

Plan VI.

Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic.

London, Macmillan & Co.

Fulk was now at the height of his prosperity. He had been count of Anjou for forty years, and his reign had been one of unbroken success. Each in turn of the greater neighbours who had stood, a threatening ring, around Geoffrey Greygown’s boy-heir had been successfully dealt with in some way or other, till the little Marchland had grown to be a power in the realm second only to Normandy and perhaps to Aquitaine; and before Fulk’s reign closed, even Aquitaine, the only one of Anjou’s immediate neighbours which had not had to bow before him, fell prostrate at the feet of his son. Fulk’s last years were to be years of peace. Only once again did he take part in the general affairs of the French kingdom; and then, as ever, his action was in strict accord with the policy which he had begun and which his descendants followed consistently down to the time of Henry Fitz-Empress: a policy of steady loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown, against which the counts of Blois lived in perpetual opposition. After Robert’s death, in 1031, Fulk appeared in the unexpected character of peace-maker between Queen Constance and her son, the young King Henry, whom she was trying to oust from his throne;[359] and he afterwards accompanied Henry on an expedition to dislodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, which however succeeded no better than the attempt once made by Odo and Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.[360] But peace or war, it mattered not to the Black Count; he was never at a loss for work. When there was no enemy to fight or to outwit, his versatile energies flung themselves just as readily into the encouragement of piety or the improvement and embellishment of his capital. Over the black bastions of the castle with which the French King Philip Augustus, when he had wrested Angers from a degenerate descendant of its ancient counts, found it needful to secure his hold on “this contemptuous city,” there still looks out upon the river a fragment of a ruined hall, chiefly of red flintstone; it is the sole remains of the dwelling-place of Fulk Nerra—in all likelihood, his own work.[361] A poetic legend shows him to us for once quietly at home, standing in that hall and gazing at the view from its windows. At his feet flowed the purple Mayenne between its flat but green meadows—for the great suburb beyond the river did not yet exist—winding down beneath a bridge of his own building to join the Loire beyond the rising hills to the south-west. His eyes, keen as those of the “Falcon” whose name he bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to be trying to fill. Struck by the bird’s action, he carefully marked the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from his second pilgrimage.[362] This abbey, with a nunnery founded near it eight years later—in 1128—by his countess Hildegard, on the site of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,[363] became the nucleus round which gathered in after-years a suburb known as Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil home-occupations, however, could not long satisfy the restless temper of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in 1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded: his meeting at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror.[364] The old and the young penitent completed their pilgrimage together; but only the former lived to see his home again; and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father’s feet. “Conquered art thou—conquered, conquered!” shouted the old count, kicking his prostrate son. “Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my father; but unconquered by all beside!” The spirited answer touched Fulk’s paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.[365] The power which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by right; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk’s conquests of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the acquisition of Montbazon and St.-Aignan.[366] When at the close of 1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais, and took it.[367] One more stronghold still remained to be won in the valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, “straight up to heaven”; range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up its rocky sides; acacias wave their bright foliage from every nook; and on the crest of the ridge a long line of white ruins, the remains of a stately castle, stand out against the sky. A dense woodland of oaks and larches and firs, stretching north-eastward almost to the valley of the Indre, and crowded with game of every kind, formed probably no small part of the attractions which were to make Chinon the favourite retreat of Fulk Nerra’s greatest descendant. In those ruined halls, where a rich growth of moss and creepers has replaced the tapestried hangings, earlier and later memories—memories of the Black Count or of the Maid of Orleans—seem to an English visitor only to flit like shadows around the death-bed of Henry Fitz-Empress. But it was Fulk who won Chinon for the Angevins. The persuasion of his tongue, as keen as his sword, sufficed now to gain its surrender.[368] The Great Builder’s work was all but finished; only the keystone remained to be dropped into its place. Tours itself stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine. One more blow, and the count of Anjou would be master of the whole valley of the Loire from Amboise to the sea.

- [359] R. Glaber, l. iii. c. 9 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 40). Fulk’s mediation was done in characteristic fashion; he asked Constance “cur bestialem vesaniam erga filios exerceret.” It took effect, however.

- [360] Chron. S. Petr. Senon. and Chronolog. S. Marian. Autissiod. a. 1032 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. pp. 196, 308).

- [361] See note B to chapter ii. above.

- [362] Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises) p. 275. The church was consecrated December 1, 1020; Chronn. S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 134.) The foundation-charter is in Le Pelletier’s Breviculum S. Nicolai, p. 4.

- [363] The foundation-charter, dated July 14, 1128, is in Hiret, Antiquitez d’Anjou, pp. 100, 101. The whole history of the church is fully discussed by M. d’Espinay, in the Revue Historique de l’Anjou, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 49–64, 143–155. A grotesque legend, which yet has a somewhat characteristic ring, was told of the origin of this nunnery. Fulk one day, watching a potter at his work, was seized with a desire to try his hand. He succeeded in producing a well-shaped pan, which he carried home in triumph and gave to his wife, telling her that it was made by the man whom she loved best. Hildegard, mistaking the jest for a serious charge, vowed to disprove it at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself out of the window and into the river, before her husband could stop her. The spot where she came to land was marked by the abbey of our Lady (Revue hist. de l’Anjou, as above, pp. 54, 55, and note 1; Marchegay, Eglises, p. 279 note.) Its later name of “Ronceray” was derived from a bramble-bush (ronce) which forced its way through the pavement of the choir, despite all attempts to uproot it. This however was in the sixteenth century.

- [364] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 101. See note C at end of chapter.

- [365] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, pp. 401, 402).

- [366] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 116.

- [367] Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 168.

- [368] Ibid.

Strangely, yet characteristically, that final blow Fulk left to be struck by his successor. As his life drew to its close the ghostly terrors of his youth came back to him with redoubled force; and the world which had marvelled at his exploits and his crimes marvelled no less at his last penance. For the fourth time he went out to Jerusalem, and there caused two servants, bound by an oath to do whatsoever he should bid them, to drag him round the Holy City in the sight of all the Turks, one holding him by a halter round his neck, the other scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for Heaven’s mercy on his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner.[369] He made his way homeward as far as Metz.[370] There, on June 21st, 1040, the Black Count’s soul passed away;[371] and his body was embalmed, carried home to Beaulieu, and buried in the chapter-house of the abbey which had been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage, the first-fruits of his youthful devotion and daring.[372]

- [369] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 402).

- [370] “Metensem urbem,” Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes) p. 117. From the last word one would imagine this could only mean Metz in Lorraine; but there is another Metz in the Gâtinais; and although it is, and clearly always has been, an insignificant little town, quite undeserving the title of “urbs,” it seems more likely than its greater namesake to be the place really meant. For Metz in Lorraine would be completely out of the way of a traveller from Palestine to Anjou, while Metz in the Gâtinais was not merely close to Fulk’s home, but was actually in the territory of his own son-in-law (of whom we shall hear again later). It would be as natural for him to stop there on his way as it would be unnatural for him to fetch a compass through the remote dominions of the duke of Lorraine; and, on the other hand, the place is so insignificant that a careless and ignorant writer, such as John of Marmoutier, even though dwelling at no great distance, might easily forget its existence.

- [371] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1040 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 24, 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377. Gesta Cons. (ibid.), p. 117.

- [372] Fulk Rechin and Gesta Cons., as above.

From Beaulieu, at least, he had deserved nothing but gratitude, and Beaulieu never forgot the debt. For seven centuries the anniversary of his death was solemnly observed in the abbey; so was that of his widow, who as a bride had helped to the dedication of the church, and who now, following her husband’s last steps, went out to die at Jerusalem.[373] For seven centuries, as the monks gathered in the church to keep their yearly festival in honour of his gift, the fragment of sacred stone, they read over in the office of the day the story of his pilgrimage, and chanted the praise of his pious theft.[374] Next to that trophy, his tomb was their pride; it vanished in the general wreck of 1793; but research within the last few years has happily succeeded in bringing the Black Count’s earthly resting-place to light once more.[375] But it was not Beaulieu alone that kept his memory green. His own little Angevin marchland, his fairer conquest Touraine, are sown thick with memorials of him. So strong was the impression made by his activity in one direction that after-generations have persisted in attributing to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions, and transferred the credit of several constructions even of Henry Fitz-Empress to the first “great builder” of Anjou, who was believed to have had command over more than mortal artificers. Popular imagination, with its unerring instinct, rightly seized upon the Black Count as the embodiment of Angevin glory and greatness. The credit of the astute politician, the valiant warrior, the consummate general, the strenuous ruler—all this is his due, and something more; the credit of having, by the initiative force of genius, launched Anjou upon her career with an impetus such as no opposing power could thenceforth avail to check. One is tempted to wonder how far into the future of his house those keen eyes of the Black Falcon really saw; whether he saw it or not, that future was in a great measure of his own making; for his fifty-three years of work and warfare had been spent in settling the question on which that future depended—the question whether Anjou or Blois was to be the chief power of central Gaul. When his place was taken by Geoffrey Martel, there could no longer be any doubt of the answer.

- [373] See extract from Martyrology of Ronceray in Marchegay, Eglises, p. 395, note 3.

- [374] See the office in Salies, Foulques-Nerra, pp. 499 et seq.

- [375] See Salies, Foulques-Nerra, pp. 456 et seq.

The new count of Anjou began his reign in circumstances very unlike those of his father half a century before. Not only had Fulk wholly changed the political position of Anjou, but Geoffrey’s own position as an individual was totally different. He was no untried boy, left to fight his own way with no weapons save the endowments which nature had given him; he was a full-grown man, trained in the school of Fulk Nerra, and already experienced in politics and war. In his own day Geoffrey Martel was looked up to with as much respect as his father, and with even more dread. His career is an illustration of the saying that nothing succeeds like success. Till he came into collision with the duke of Normandy, he carried all before him like chaff before the wind. He crushed Aquitaine; he won Tours; he won Le Mans. It was no wonder if he delighted to commemorate in the surname of Martel, “the Hammer,” the victorious blows which laid opponent after opponent at the feet of the blacksmith’s foster-son.[376] But Geoffrey was not the artificer of his own fortune. He owed his pre-eminence among the great vassals of the Crown to his extended possessions and his military reputation; he owed his extended possessions more to his father’s labours and to a series of favourable accidents than to his own qualities as a statesman; and he owed his military reputation—as one writer who understood the Angevins thoroughly has very plainly hinted—more to luck than to real generalship.[377] Geoffrey stands at a disadvantage thus far, that in contemplating him one cannot avoid two very trying comparisons. It was as unlucky for his after-fame as it was lucky for his material prosperity that he was the son of Fulk the Black; it was unlucky for him in every way that he was the rival of William the Conqueror. Neither as a statesman, a ruler, a strategist, or a man was Geoffrey equal to his father. As a statesman he showed no very lofty capacity; his designs on Aquitaine, sweeping but pointless, came to nothing in the end: and with regard to Touraine and Maine, politically, he had little to do but to reap the fruit of Fulk’s labours and use the advantages which the favour of the king in one case, the rashness of the bishop in the other, and the weakness of the rival count in both, threw absolutely into his hands. As a ruler he seems to have been looked up to with simple dread; there is little trace of the intense personal following which others of his race knew so well how to inspire;[378] the first time he was intrusted with the government of Anjou his harshness and oppression roused the indignation alike of his subjects and of his father; his neighbours looked on him to the last as a tyrant,[379] and his own people seem to have feared far more than they loved him. As a strategist there is really no proof that he possessed any such overwhelming superiority as he himself boasted, and as others were led to believe. His two great victories, at Montcontour and Montlouis, dazzled the world because the one was gained over a prince who by the tradition of ages counted as the first potentate in the realm after the duke of Normandy, and the other led to the acquisition of Tours; but the capture of William of Aquitaine was really nothing more than the fortune of war; while in the case of the victory over Theobald of Blois at Montlouis, a considerable part of the credit is due to Geoffrey’s lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise; and moreover, to have beaten the successor of Odo II. is after all no very wonderful achievement for the successor of Fulk the Black. Twice in his life Geoffrey met his master. The first time he owned it himself as he lay at his father’s feet. The second time he evaded the risk of open defeat by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the Conqueror. Had he, in honest consciousness of his inferiority, done his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to face the consequences like a man, it would have been small shame to him to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break a lance with William, when the opportunity was given him he silently declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this callousness to everything not visible and tangible to outward sense, which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father. There is in Fulk a living warmth, a quickness of susceptibility, which breaks out in all sorts of shapes, good and bad, in all the stories of the Black Count, but which seems wholly lacking in Geoffrey. Fulk “sinned bravely,” ardently, impulsively; Geoffrey sinned meanly, coldly, heartlessly. His was altogether a coarser, lower nature. Fulk was truly the falcon that wheels its swift and lofty flight ever closer and closer above the doomed quarry till it strikes it down irresistibly with one unerring swoop. Geoffrey rightly thought himself better represented by the crashing blows of the insensible sledge-hammer.

- [376] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes) p. 379; cf. Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 260, and Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).

- [377] “Gaufredus cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi usurpaverat, quia videbatur sibi felicitate quâdam omnes obsistentes contundere.” Will. Malm. as above.

- [378] Even the devotion of Lisoy of Amboise seems to have been given to Geoffrey chiefly because he was his father’s son. Fulk was its real object.

- [379] See the Norman writers, Orderic and William of Poitiers.

Geoffrey had been an independent ruler in a small sphere for nearly ten years before his father’s death. In 1030 or 1031 he became master of the little county of Vendôme by purchase from his half-sister Adela, the only child of Fulk’s ill-starred first marriage, and the heiress of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. After doing homage to King Henry for the fief, Geoffrey’s first act was to found in the capital of his new dominions an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity.[380] The appointment of an abbot proved the occasion for the first recorded outbreak of that latent discord between Fulk and his heir which, as we have seen, culminated at last in open war. A monk named Reginald had just been sent at Fulk’s request from the great abbey of Marmoutier near Tours, to take the place of Baldwin, abbot of S. Nicolas at Angers, who had fled to bury himself in a hermitage. Before the day came for Reginald’s ordination, however, he deserted to a younger patron, and accepted the abbotship of Geoffrey’s newly-founded abbey at Vendôme. Fulk, thus disappointed by two abbots in succession, “flew,” as he himself said, “into a mighty rage,” summarily ordered the whole colony of monks whom he had brought from Marmoutier to S. Nicolas back to their parent monastery, and replaced them with some of the brethren of S. Aubin’s at Angers, with Hilduin, prior of that convent, as their head.[381] Fulk’s wrath seems to have been directed against the monks rather than against his son; but the incident serves as an illustration of the tendency to opposition that was springing up in Geoffrey’s mind. The quiet, waiting policy of Fulk’s latter years was evidently irksome to the young man’s impatient spirit, and he chose to strike out a path for himself in a direction which, it is not surprising to learn, did not please the old count. The only one of his neighbours with whom Fulk seems to have been always on peaceable terms was the count of Poitou. William Fierabras, the count from whom Geoffrey Greygown had wrested Loudun, died about two years after the second battle of Conquereux.[382] His wife was a daughter of Theobald the Trickster,[383] and his son and successor was therefore first cousin to Odo II. of Blois; but William IV.—whom Aquitaine reckoned as her “William the Great”—seems to have had little in common with his erratic kinsman, and to have always, on the other hand, maintained a friendly understanding with Anjou. Like Odo, he once received an offer of the crown of Italy; Fulk appears in the negotiations as the friendly advocate of the duke’s interests with King Robert,[384] and though the project came to nothing, it may have been in return for Fulk’s good offices on this occasion that William bestowed on him the investiture of Saintes, a gift which was to form the pretext for more than one war between their descendants. On January 31st, 1029, William died,[385] leaving as his successor a son who bore the same name, and whose mother seems to have been a sister of Queen Constance.[386] It was this new duke of Aquitaine, known as William the Fat, whom Geoffrey Martel selected as the first victim of his heavy hand. An Angevin story attributes the origin of the war to a dispute about Saintes or Saintonge,[387] but it will not bear examination. Geoffrey Martel simply trod in the steps of Geoffrey Greygown, and with more marked success. In the autumn of 1033 he started on an expedition against the duke of Aquitaine; William encountered him on September 20th in a pitched battle near the abbey of S. Jouin-de-Marne, not far from Montcontour in Poitou; the Poitevins were defeated, partly, it seems, through treason in their own ranks, and their duke was taken prisoner.[388] For three years the duke of Aquitaine, the second great feudatary of the realm, was kept in a dungeon by the count of Vendôme;[389] not till the whole district of Saintonge[390] and several important towns were ceded to Geoffrey, and an annual tribute promised, would he release his captive. From the execution of the last humiliating condition William was delivered by death; the cruel treatment he had suffered in prison had done its work; Geoffrey had exacted the ransom for his prisoner just in time, and sent him home only to die three days after his liberation.[391]

[380] Origo Com. Vindoc., in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 31. See also Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. pp. 378, 379.

[381] The whole story is told only by Fulk himself, in a charter to the abbey of S. Nicolas; Breviculum S. Nicolai (Le Pelletier), quoted in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 379.

[382] See editor’s note to Peter of Maillezais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 183, note g.

[383] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 972 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 380).

[384] Adem. Chabanais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 161. Letters of William of Poitou, ib. pp. 483, 484; of Fulk to Robert, ib. pp. 500, 501.

[385] Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 390).

[386] She was Adelmodia, widow of Boso, count of La Marche, and daughter of William count of Arles and “Candida,” otherwise Adelaide the White; see Pet. Maillezais, l. i. c. 6 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 182), and note B at end of chapter.

[387] See note C at end of chapter iv. below.

[388] Chronn. S. Maxent. a. 1032, S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. a. 1033 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 391, 392, 23, 188); S. Serg. a. 1028 (ib. p. 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 378. Cf. Gesta Cons. (ibid.), pp. 128–130, and note C to chapter iv. below.

[389] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1036 (as above, p. 392).

[390] “Sanctonas cum toto pago.” Chron. Tur. Magn., Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 122. (The date, “anno Henrici Imperatoris iv et Henrici regis xiii,” is of course absurd, like most of the dates in the Tours chronicle at this period, except those which relate to local matters). Cf. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 126, and note C to chapter iv. below.

[391] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Cf. Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182.

Then Geoffrey threw off the mask. William had no children; his next heir was his half-brother Odo, the son of his father’s second marriage with Brisca, heiress of Gascony.[392] But after Brisca’s death, William the Great had married a third wife, whom he had left a still young widow with three little children. Before William the Fat had been many months dead, his stepmother the widowed Countess Agnes gave her hand to Geoffrey of Vendôme.[393] Geoffrey’s motive is plain; he sought to prevent the union of Poitou and Gascony and to get the former practically into his own hands as stepfather and guardian to the young sons of Agnes. But in Anjou the wedding gave great scandal; Geoffrey and Agnes were denounced in the harshest terms as too near akin to marry.[394] They seem in fact to have been, by the reckoning of the canon law, cousins in the third degree, as being, one a grandson, the other a great-granddaughter of Adela of Chalon, the second wife of Geoffrey Greygown.[395] At any rate they were looked upon as sinners, and by no one more than the bridegroom’s father. The whole scheme of Geoffrey’s meddlings in Aquitaine was repugnant to Fulk Nerra’s policy; he looked to his son to complete his own labours in Touraine and Maine, and it was no good omen for the fulfilment of his hopes when Geoffrey thus turned his back upon his appointed work for the love of Countess Agnes or of her late husband’s possessions. The capture of William the Fat had been the signal for the first outbreak of a “more than civil war” between father and son;[396] Geoffrey’s misconduct during his regency in Anjou brought matters to the crisis which ended in his first and last public defeat. Nevertheless he obstinately pursued his projects. The Poitevins, by the death of their count, were left, as their own chronicler says, “as sheep having no shepherd”; there was a party among them ready to support the claims of Agnes’s sons against their elder half-brother Odo of Gascony; and one of the leaders of this party, William of Parthenay, built with Angevin help a fortress at Germont in which he held out successfully against the besieging forces of Odo. The count of Gascony then proceeded to Mausé, another stronghold of his enemies, and in assaulting this place he was slain.[397] He left no children; the elder of Geoffrey Martel’s stepsons was now therefore heir to Poitou. The boys were twins; the third child of Agnes was a girl, who bore her mother’s name, and for whom her mother and stepfather contrived in 1043 to arrange a marriage with no less important a personage than the Emperor Henry III.,[398] whose first wife had been a daughter of Cnut. It was not till the year after this imperial wedding that the troubled affairs of Aquitaine were definitely settled. In 1044 Countess Agnes came to Poitiers accompanied by her two sons, Peter and Geoffrey, and her husband, their stepfather, Geoffrey Martel; there they held with the chief nobles of Poitou a council at which Peter, or William as he was thenceforth called, was solemnly ordained as duke of Aquitaine, and his brother sent into Gascony to become its count.[399] Agnes at least must now have attained her object; whether Geoffrey Martel was equally satisfied with the result of his schemes may be a question, for we do not clearly know how wide the range of those schemes really was. If, as seems likely, they included the hope of acquiring a lasting hold over Aquitaine, then their issue was a failure. By the victory of Montcontour Geoffrey had gained for himself at one blow a great military reputation; but for Anjou the only solid gain was the acquisition of Saintonge, and this, like some of the outlying possessions of the house of Blois, soon proved more trouble than profit. If Martel expected that his stepsons would hold themselves indebted to him for their coronets and remain his grateful and dutiful miscalculation. The marriage of a duchess-dowager of Aquitaine with Geoffrey Martel naturally suggests thoughts of the marriage of a duchess-regnant with a later count of Anjou; but the resemblance between the two cases is of the most superficial kind; the earlier connexion between Anjou and Aquitaine did little or nothing to pave the way for their later union. Geoffrey himself, indeed, had already discovered that although the count of Vendôme might go seeking adventures in the south, the duties and the interests of the count of Anjou still lay to the north, or at the utmost no farther away than the banks of the great frontier-river.

[392] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1010 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 387, 388).

[393] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (as above, pp. 392, 393); Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (ib. pp. 23, 135). On the date see note D at end of chapter.

[394] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 23, 135).

[395] See note D at end of chapter.

[396] Chronn. S. Albin. a. 1032, 1033 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 23); S. Serg. a. 1028 (ib. p. 135); Rain. Andeg. a. 1036, 1037 (ib. p. 11). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1033, says: “Gaufridus ... Willelmum comitem Pictavorum sumpsit in bello; quare orta est discordia inter patrem et filium.” Labbe in his Bibl. MSS. Librorum printed this “patrem et matrem,” and thereby originated a perfectly groundless story of a quarrel between Fulk and Hildegard.

[397] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 392, 393).

[398] Hermann. Contract., a. 1043 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 19). Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 24, 135, 136). The Chron. S. Maxent. (ib. p. 398) dates the marriage vaguely “per hæc tempora” under 1049.

[399] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1044 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 394, 395). It seems quite plain that the elder boy’s baptismal name was Peter, but he signs his charters “William” (see Besly, Comtes de Poitou, preuves, pp. 314, 317). The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (as above, p. 400) calls him “Willelmus qui et Petrus, cognomento Acer.” In recording the birth of the two boys (a. 1023, ib. p. 388) the same writer calls them “Petrum cognomine Acerrimum, et Gaufredum qui et Wido vocatus est”; and he afterwards speaks of the latter by both names indifferently. It seems however to have been an established rule that the reigning duke of Aquitaine must be officially called William; for Guy-Geoffrey also assumed the name when he succeeded his brother in 1058.

The visions of empire to which Odo of Champagne had sacrificed the latter years of his life had perished with him on the field of Bar. Not a foot of land outside the limits of the kingdom of France had he left to his heirs. He had two sons, Theobald and Stephen, whose very names seemed to mark out their destined shares in his dominions. Stephen, the younger, became count of Champagne; to Theobald, the elder, fell the original territories of his house—Blois, Chartres and Tours.[400] Theobald’s heritage however was shorn of its fairest portion. The county of Tours now comprised little more than the capital; all Touraine south of the Loire—by far the most fertile and valuable half—was in the power of the Angevin; Tours itself, once a secure central post, had become a closely threatened border-city. Theobald’s first duty was to protect it, but it seems to have been the last thing he thought of. Odo’s sons had inherited all his wrongheadedness without his quickness of thought and action. Shut in as they were on all sides by powerful foes, the two young men began their career by rebelling after the manner of their forefathers;[401] and the king’s youngest brother Odo was lured, by a promise of dethroning Henry in his favour, into joining in their rebellion. Odo, a youth of weak intellect, was in himself no very formidable person, but he might for the very same reason become a dangerous tool in the hands of his fellow-conspirators; and a rebellious coalition of Blois and Champagne threatened to be a serious difficulty for the king at a moment when there was scarcely one of the great feudataries on whom he could reckon for support. The death of Duke Robert of Normandy had plunged his duchy into confusion and deprived Henry of all chance of help in the quarter which had hitherto been his chief source of strength. The county of Burgundy was governed by the king’s brother Robert, who had with difficulty been induced to accept it as compensation for the failure of his hopes of the crown. Flanders and Britanny were always indifferent to the troubles and necessities of the king; the count of Vermandois was a kinsman and ally of Champagne; Aquitaine was as powerless as Normandy. The one vassal to whom Henry could look for aid was the count of Anjou. Had the rebels possessed sense and spirit they might have given Henry quite as much trouble as their father had given Robert; but they seem to have had no well-concerted plan; each acted independently, and each was crushed singly. Young Odo, their puppet pretender, was easily caught and imprisoned at Orléans; Stephen of Champagne was defeated in a pitched battle by the king himself;[402] Theobald of Blois was left to be dealt with by other hands. With a master-stroke of policy, Henry proclaimed the city of Tours forfeit by Theobald’s rebellion, and granted its investiture to the count of Anjou.[403]

- [400] Hugh of Fleury, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 159. Chron. Fr. Andreæ, ib. p. 364.

- [401] Hugh of Fleury and Chron. Fr. Andreæ, as above. Hist. Franc. Fragm. (ibid.), p. 160.

- [402] Hist. Franc. Fragm. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi.), p. 160. Hugh of Fleury (ibid.), p. 159.

- [403] Chron. Virdun. a. 1039 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 144). R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (ib. vol. x. p. 60), copied in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 122, 123. Fulk Rechin (ibid.), p. 378.

To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it appears under the name of Cæsarodunum.[404] The Roman castrum was built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the Loire, on the south by the Cher; it probably occupied the site of some village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars of Cæsar,[405] and whose name in the end superseded that which the place received from its conqueror. The “city of the Turones” became the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orléans, Le Mans and Angers;[406] and owing to the convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.[407] But its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions. It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian persecution.[408] S. Gatian’s episcopate of half a century fell in one of the most distracted periods of the Empire; after his death the Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years, and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.[409] But the fame of the two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own immediate flock; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria[410] in the Upper Pannonia, in the reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin rose to high military distinction under the Cæsar Julian, accompanied him into Gaul, and enjoyed his utmost esteem and regard till he forfeited them by renouncing the standard of the eagles for that of the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of his fellow-soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake his resolution; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and counsellor in the holy bishop Hilary, from whom he received the minor orders. After braving toil and peril by land and sea in a journey to his native country for the conversion of his family, he returned to a life of seclusion in Gaul, and acquired such a reputation for holiness that on the death of Lidorius in 371 the people of Tours, in spite of his strenuous resistance, actually forced him to become their bishop.[411] From that moment Tours became a mission-centre whence the light of the faith spread with marvellous rapidity over all the surrounding country. Anjou and all the neighbouring lands owed their conversion to S. Martin and the missionaries sent out by him; everywhere paganism gave way before his eloquent preaching, his dauntless courage, his almost apostolic endowments—above all, perhaps, his good example. He was looked upon as the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, and countless legends were told of his wonder-working powers; more famous than all of them is a story of the saint in his soldier-days, when, Christian already in feeling though not yet in profession, he stopped his horse one cold winter’s night, drew his sword and cut his military cloak in halves to share it with one whose necessity was greater than his own. That night he dreamed that the Lord whom, not knowing, he yet instinctively served, appeared to him wearing the half cloak which he had thus given away; and it was this vision which determined him to receive baptism.[412] Amid all his busy, active life he never lost the love of solitary contemplation so characteristic of the early Christian missionaries. His episcopal city lay on the south side of the Loire, but had on the north or right bank a large suburb afterwards known by the name of S. Symphorian; beyond this, farther to the eastward, the bishop found for himself a “green retreat,” which has scarcely yet lost its air of peaceful loneliness, and which, before the suburb had spread to its present extent, must have been an ideal spot for monastic retirement. A little wooden cell with its back against the white limestone rock which shelters the northern side of the basin of Tours—an expanse of green solitude in front, stretching down to the broad calm river—such was the nest which S. Martin built him in the wilderness; gathering round him a little band of men likeminded with himself, he snatched every spare moment from his episcopal cares to flee away thither and be at rest;[413] and the rock-hewn cells of the brotherhood became the nucleus of a famous abbey, the “Great Monastery,” as it was emphatically called—Majus Monasterium, Marmoutier. Another minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over the saint’s burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low-lying ground which, before it was reclaimed by the energetic dyke-makers of the ninth and tenth centuries, must have been not unfrequently under water. It is within the episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West-Frankish history begins. An English student feels a nearer interest in the abbey without the walls, remembering that the abbot under whom it reached its highest glory and became the very fount and source of all contemporary learning, human and divine, was Alcuin of York.

- [404] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 8.

- [405] Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, l. ii. c. 35; l. vii. c. 75; l. viii. c. 46.

- [406] Article by M. E. Mabille on “Topographie de la Touraine,” in Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes, series v. vol. iv. pp. 413, 414.

- [407] Notitia Provinciarum Galliæ, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. i. p. 122.

- [408] Greg. of Tours, Hist. Franc., l. i. c. 28.

- [409] Chron. Archiep. Turon., Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 201.

- [410] Now Stein-am-Angern.

- [411] Sulpitius Severus, Vita B. Martini, cc. 2–9. Greg. Tours., Hist. Franc., l. i. cc. 34, 36, 43.

- [412] Sulp. Severus, Vita B. Martini, c. 3.

- [413] Sulp. Severus, Vita B. Martini, c. 10.

When the great English scholar and the great Emperor who had brought him into Gaul were gone, Tours underwent her full share of suffering in the invasions of the northmen. City and abbey became to the valley of the Loire something like what Paris and S. Denis were to that of the Seine, the chief bulwark against the fresh tide of heathen force which threatened to sweep away the footsteps of saints and scholars. Once, indeed, Tours had been in danger from heathens of another sort, and a body of Saracens had been turned back from her gates and destroyed by Charles Martel.[414] There was no Martel to save her from the northmen; her only defence consisted in the valour of her citizens, and the fortifications left to her by her Roman governors and carefully strengthened by her Karolingian sovereigns.[415] Over and over again the pirates were driven back from the walls of Cæsarodunum; over and over again S. Martin’s Abbey was burnt to the ground. For years the canons, who in Alcuin’s days had taken the place of the original monks,[416] lived in constant fear of desecration befalling their patron’s body, and carried it from place to place, like the body of our own S. Cuthbert, sometimes depositing it within the city walls, sometimes removing it farther inland—once even to the far-off Burgundian duchy—bringing it home whenever they dared, or whenever they had a church fit to contain it. Two of these “reversions”—one on December 13, 885, the other on May 12, 919—were annually celebrated at Tours, in addition to two other feasts of S. Martin, his ordination on July 4 and his “deposition” on November 11.[417] In the first reversion Ingelger, the founder of the Angevin house, was said to have borne a prominent part. The story of the second was afterwards superseded by a famous legend known as that of the “subvention of S. Martin.” Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead saint; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence received the name of “S. Martin of the Battle.”[418] This story seems to belong to the siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircling it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own abbot—in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle of the eighth century always held in commendam the abbey of S. Martin at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.[419] Thus, side by side with the old city of the Turones, Cæsarodunum with its Roman walls, its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the “Castrum Novum,” Châteauneuf, “Castellum S. Martini,” Martinopolis as it is sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church and its abbot-duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours; from an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey of which their patron was the head. The first count of Anjou and his father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great “reversions”; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin’s, which he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. Good Canon Fulk prized it as a spiritual privilege; his successors probably looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself. Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily all his life long; and when he left his son to complete his labours, that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible; to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege, and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey seems to have delayed the task until by the king’s grant of the investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most pressing interest to make good the claim thus placed in his hands.

[414] Fredegar. Contin., l. ii. c. 108 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ii. p. 454); Chron. Fontanell. a. 732 (ib. p. 660), etc.

[415] See Ann. Bertin., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 107.

[416] Chron. Petr. Fil. Bechin., in Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 40. Chron. Tur. Magn. a. 991 (ib. p. 93). See Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 154.

[417] For the whole history of the wanderings and the festivals of S. Martin, and of the sieges of Tours by the northmen, see an article by M. Mabille, “Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire et les pérégrinations du corps de S. Martin,” in Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149–194.

[418] Tract. de Revers. B. Martini, in Salmon, Supplément aux Chron. de Touraine, pp. 14–34; copied in Gesta Cons. (see note A to chapter ii. above). On the date, see Mabille, “Inv. Norm.” (Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes, series vi. vol. v. p. 190). This device of the citizens of Tours was several times imitated elsewhere; e.g. by the monks of Saumur with the body of S. Docelinus, when Fulk Nerra besieged the place in 1025 (Hist. S. Flor. Salm., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 277); and by the monks of S. Peter at Sens, against the same opponent, in 1032 (Chron. S. Petr. Senon. ad ann., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 196). The former failed, the latter succeeded.

[419] Charter of Charles the Simple, a. 918, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 540. For the history of the “Castellum S. Martini,” and the topography of Tours and Châteauneuf, see “Topographie de la Touraine,” by M. E. Mabille, in Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes, series v. vol. v. pp. 321–366; and for the topography and history of the whole district from the earliest times see previous articles under the same title, series v. vol. iii. pp. 309–332, vol. iv. pp. 388–428, and vol. v. pp. 233–258.

He woke at once from his Aquitanian dreams, gathered his forces, and led them out, probably not by the old Roman road from Juliomagus to Cæsarodunum past the white steeps of his father’s Montboyau, but by a safer though longer route, passing along the southern bank of the Loire and across the valleys of the Vienne and the Indre, to lay siege to Tours. With the royal sanction to his enterprise he had the great advantage of being able to use Châteauneuf as a basis of operations. The monastery of S. Julian, at the north-east corner of the town, close against the city wall, was especially convenient for attacking the latter; Geoffrey took possession of it and used it accordingly.[420] The city, however, held out against him for a whole year, during which its inhabitants seem to have been left by their count to defend themselves as best they could. At last, in August 1044, Theobald collected an army for its relief, in union with the forces of Champagne under his brother Stephen.[421] Geoffrey, in expectation of this, had detached from his main force a body of two hundred knights and fifteen hundred foot, whom he posted at Amboise under Lisoy, to guard the road against Theobald.[422] The services of Lisoy were a special legacy from Fulk the Black to his son. Of all Fulk’s adherents, none had served him so intelligently and so devotedly as this Cenomannian knight whom he had chosen to be the colleague of the aged Sulpice in the defence of Amboise and Loches. Fulk, when he felt his end approaching, had striven hard to impress on his son the value of such a true and tried friend, and at the same time to bind Lisoy yet more closely to him by arranging his marriage with Hersendis, the niece and heiress of Sulpice, whereby Lisoy came into possession of all Sulpice’s estates at Loches and Amboise, including the famous tower of stone.[423] Lisoy proved as true to the new count as to the old one. Theobald, not daring to come within reach of Amboise, avoided the direct route from Blois to Tours along the Loire,[424] and took the road by Pontlevoy to Montrichard. The chief force of Montrichard, with its commander Roger, was no doubt with Geoffrey before Tours, so the count of Blois pursued his way unmolested, plundering as he went, down the valley of the Cher, till he pitched his tents in the meadows of St.-Quentin opposite Bléré, and there stayed a day and a night to rest.[425] All his movements were known to the watchful lord of Amboise; and as soon as Lisoy had fully ascertained the numbers and plans of the enemy, he hurried off to seek his count in the army before Tours, and offer him some sound military advice. He represented that it would be far better to raise the siege, join the whole Angevin force with that which was already at Amboise, and stake everything on a pitched battle. The enemy might beat either Geoffrey or his lieutenant singly, but united they would be irresistible; and whereas the siege must be long and tedious, and its result uncertain, one victory in the field would lay all Touraine at the victor’s feet. Only let the count be quick and not suffer his foe to catch him at unawares.[426]

- [420] See Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 243.

- [421] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 60).

- [422] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 118.

- [423] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 168, 169.

- [424] Ib. p. 170.

- [425] Gesta Cons. (ibid.), p. 119.

- [426] Ib. pp. 118, 119.

Geoffrey, as he listened to this bold counsel, must have been reminded of his father’s warning, that a true friend like Lisoy was a surer source of strength than either hosts or treasures.[427] He took the advice, and while Lisoy returned to Amboise to bring up his little force to the trysting-place agreed upon between them, his count, after diligent prayers and vows to S. Martin, took the consecrated banner of the abbey from its place above the shrine, affixed it to his own spear, and rode forth with it at the head of all his troops to do battle with Theobald.[428] On the same day when Theobald encamped opposite Bléré Geoffrey reached Montlouis, a hill on the south bank of the Loire, about half way between Tours and Amboise. Next morning the men of Blois resumed their march; turning in a north-westerly direction they were met at a place called Noit by the Angevins coming down from Montlouis. The Hammer of Anjou, ever foremost in fight, headed the attack on the enemy’s centre; his faithful Lisoy came up, as he had promised, at the head of his contingent, and threw himself on their right wing.[429] What followed scarcely deserved the name of a battle. The army of the brother-counts seemed spell-bound, and made no resistance at all; Stephen took to flight at once and escaped with a few knights;[430] the rest of the troops of Blois and Champagne were utterly defeated and taken prisoners almost in a body. The men of Amboise were hottest in pursuit of the fugitives, and they won the great prize of the day. They drove Theobald with some five or six hundred knights into a wood called Braye, whence it was impossible for horsemen to extricate themselves; and thus Lisoy had the honour of bringing the count of Blois a captive to the feet of Geoffrey Martel.[431] No one at the time doubted that the Angevins owed their easy victory to the saint whose standard they were following. The few soldiers of Theobald who escaped declared that they had seen Geoffrey’s troops all clad in shining white raiment, and fled in horror, believing themselves to be fighting against the hosts of Heaven.[432] The village near which the fight took place was called “burgum S. Martini Belli”[433]—S. Martin of the Battle, a name derived from the “subvention of S. Martin,” supposed to have occurred at the same place two hundred years before. Most curiously, neither the well-known legend of the saint’s triumph over the northmen nor the fame of Geoffrey’s triumph over the count of Blois availed to fix in popular memory the true meaning of the name. While the English “Place of Battle” at Senlac has long forgotten its dedication to S. Martin, its namesake in Touraine has forgotten both its battles and become “St.-Martin-le-Beau.”

- [427] Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.·/·Marchegay, Comtes), p. 168.

- [428] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 60); copied in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 122.

- [429] Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 120.

- [430] R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 61); copied in Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 122.

- [431] Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 121; Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 170.

- [432] R. Glaber, as above; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 123.

- [433] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 120.

With very little bloodshed, the Angevins had gained over a thousand prisoners.[434] The most valuable of them all was put in ward at Loches;[435] but he took care not to stay there long. Theobald took warning by the fate of William of Aquitaine;[436] he had no mind to run the risk of dying in prison, and held his person far dearer than his property.[437] Three days after his capture, finding that no amount of silver or gold would avail to purchase his release, he yielded the only ransom which Geoffrey would accept: the city of Tours and the whole county of Touraine.[438] A nominal overlordship over the ceded territory was reserved to Theobald, and Geoffrey had to go through the formality of doing homage for it to him.[439] When the substance was securely his own, the count of Anjou could well afford to leave to his vanquished rival the shadowy consolation of an empty ceremony. Moreover, the circumstances of the whole transaction and the account of King Henry’s grant to Geoffrey clearly imply that Theobald’s rights over the most important point of all, the capital itself, were considered as entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so that with regard to the city of Tours Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of its former counts, holding it directly of the king alone.

- [434] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 378; R. Glaber, l. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 61). For the date of the battle—August 21, 1044—see Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., and S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 11, 24, 136, 166, 188, 395). The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 121, and Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 170, make it 1042, but they cannot possibly be right.

- [435] Gesta Amb. Domin. as above.

- [436] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182.

- [437] Gesta Cons., as above. See the comment of Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

- [438] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276); Gesta Cons. (as above), pp. 121, 122; the details of the treaty are in pp. 123, 124.

- [439] Gesta Amb. Domin. as above.

The acquisition of Tours closes the second stage in the career of the house of Anjou. Looked at from a strictly Angevin point of view, the period just passed through, although in one sense only preliminary, is the most important of all, for it is that on which depended all the later growth, nay, almost the very existence of Anjou. Had the counts of Blois proved too strong for her in these her early years, she would have been swallowed up altogether; had they merely proved themselves her equals, the two states so closely bound together would have neutralized each other so that neither of them could have risen to any commanding eminence; till one or the other should sweep its rival out of its path, both must be impeded in their developement. At the opening of the struggle, in Fulk Nerra’s youth, Blois was distinctly in the ascendant, and the chances of independent existence for the little Marchland hung solely on the courage and statesmanship of its count. His dauntless genius, helped by Odo’s folly, saved Anjou and turned the tide completely in its favour. The treaty sworn, four years after Fulk’s death, in his great castle by the Indre, was the crowning of his life’s work, and left his son absolutely without a rival till he chose to seek one beyond the debateable ground of Maine. The long struggle of Fulk and Odo, completed by Geoffrey and Theobald, had made a clear field for the future struggles of Geoffrey and William, of Fulk V. and Henry I., and at last—by a strange turn of fate—for a renewal of the old feud with the house of Blois itself, in a new form and for a far higher stake, in the struggle of Stephen and Henry Fitz-Empress for the English crown.

Note A.
THE SIEGE OF MELUN.

The fullest account of this Melun affair is in Richer, l. iv. cc. 74–78. Briefly, it comes to this: Odo (described simply by his name, without title of any kind) “rerum suarum augmentum querebat,” and especially the castle of Melun, partly for the convenience of getting troops across the Seine, and partly because it had formerly belonged to his grandfather and was now in the hands, not of the king, but of “another” (not named). He managed to corrupt the officer in command and to obtain possession of the place. As soon as the kings (reges) heard of it, they gathered their forces to besiege him there: “et quia castrum circumfluente Sequanâ ambiebatur, ipsi in litore primo castra disponunt; in ulteriore, accitas piratarum acies ordinant.” These “pirates” furnished a fleet which blockaded the place, and finally discovered a secret entrance whereby they got into the town, surprised the castle, and compelled it to surrender to the king (regi).

2. William of Jumièges (l. v. c. 14, Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 255) tells the story more briefly, but to exactly the same effect. He mentions however only one king: he supplies the name of the “other man” who held Melun—viz. Burchard: he clearly implies that “Odo” is Odo II. of Blois (of whose doings with Normandy he has just given an account in c. 12, ib. p. 254); and, of course, he gives the “pirates” their proper name of Normans, and puts them under their proper leader, Duke Richard [the Good].

3. Hugh of Fleury tells the same tale very concisely, but with all the names, and gives a date, a. 999 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 220, 221). (He is copied by the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., ib. p. 222.)

4. The Abbreviato Gestorum Franciæ Regum tells the same, but gives no date beyond “eo tempore,” coming just after Hugh Capet’s death (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 227).

5. The Vita Burchardi Comitis gives no dates, does not identify Odo, and does not mention the Normans, but makes Burchard himself the chief actor in the regaining of the place (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 354, 355. In p. 350, note a, the editor makes Burchard a son of Fulk the Good; but he gives no authority, and I can find none).

6. The Angevins have a version of their own. In the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 76, 77) the captor of Melun is “Herbert count of Troyes”; in Hugh of Clères (ib. p. 388) he has the same title but no name, and neither has the king, who in the Gesta is called Robert. The victim is not named at all; but the hero who plays a part equivalent to that of the Normans in the other versions is Geoffrey Greygown.

The main question is the date. One authority—Hugh of Fleury—gives it distinctly as 999. Will. Jumièges clearly identifies the Odo in question as Odo II. Now Odo II. was not count till 1004; but his father died in 995, so William may have given him the title by anticipation at any time after that date. The Abbr. Gest. Franc. Reg. would seem to place it thereabouts, as its note of time is “eo tempore” in reference to Hugh Capet’s death (which occurred in October 996). On the other hand, Richer speaks of “the kings” in the plural; from which Kalckstein, Waitz and Luchaire (Hist. des Institutions monarchiques de la France, vol. ii. p. 7, note 1) conclude that it is Odo I. who is concerned, and they date the affair 991. Why they fix upon this year, in defiance of both William of Jumièges and Hugh of Fleury, I cannot see. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 196) adopts Hugh’s date, 999. Is it not possible, however, from a comparison of the other authorities, that the right year is 996, just before Hugh’s death, or even that he died while the siege was in progress? for it is to be noticed that Richer mentions only one king at the surrender. Richer has made such a confusion about these Odos and their doings that it is hardly fair to set him up as an infallible authority on the subject against such writers as Hugh of Fleury and William of Jumièges. Anyhow, the Angevin story cannot stand against any of them.

Note B.
THE PARENTS OF QUEEN CONSTANCE.

The parentage of Constance requires some notice here, as she is usually called either a niece or a cousin of Fulk Nerra. The one point on which all authorities are agreed is that her father’s name was William. It was long disputed whether he was William III. (Taillefer) count of Toulouse or William I. count of Arles and Provence. M. Mabille, in a note to the latest edition of Vic and Vaissète’s Hist. du Languedoc (Toulouse, 1872), vol. iv. pp. 157–161, has made it clear that he was William of Arles; this conclusion is adopted by M. Luchaire (Hist. des Instit. Monarch., vol. ii. p. 211, note 1).

M. Mabille however does not attempt to decide who was Constance’s mother, through whom her kindred with the Angevins is said to have come; and this is the question which we now have to investigate. The evidence at present known is as follows:—

1. An unprinted MS. of R. Glaber’s history, l. iii. c. 2 (quoted by Mabille, note to Vic and Vaissète, as above, p. 158; Marchegay, Comtes d’Anjou, Introd., p. lxxiii. note 2), describes Constance as “neptem prædicti Fulconis ... natam de Blancâ sorore ejus.” This is the version adopted in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 110).

2. A letter of Bishop Ivo of Chartres (Ep. ccxi., Migne, Patrologia, vol. 162, cols. 215, 216), written about A.D. 1110, makes Constance’s mother sister, not of Fulk, but of his father Geoffrey Greygown. So does an anonymous chronicle ending in 1109, printed in Duchesne’s Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 96.

3. The Chron. S. Albin. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 21) has under date 987: “Hlotharius rex obiit.... In isto reges Francorum defecerunt. Hic accepit uxorem Blanchiam filiam Fulconis Boni comitis Andegavensium, patris Gaufredi Grisegonellæ, et habuit ex eâ filiam, Constantiam nomine, quæ fuit data cum regno Roberti regis filio, scilicet Hugonis Magni.” Wildly confused as this passage is, I believe that it really contains a clue to the identity of Constance’s mother. Whoever she was, she certainly must, at the time of Constance’s birth, have been wife not of Louis the Lazy (who is evidently meant, instead of Lothar), but of Count William I. of Arles. Now it is plain (see Vic and Vaissète as above, pp. 62, 63) that William was twice married; first to Arsindis, who was living 968–979; and secondly, to Adelaide, who appears in 986, was mother of his successor William II., and apparently still living in 1026. Of Arsindis nothing further is known; but with Adelaide the case is otherwise. King Louis the Lazy, at some time between 978 and 981, married a lady “ab Aquitanis partibus” (R. Glaber, l. i. c. 3, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 5), whose name was Adelaide according to Richer (l. iii. c. 92), but whom the Chron. S. Albin. (as we have already seen) and the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 986, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 382) call Blanche. After two years of marriage with the young king she divorced him, or was divorced by him, and married William of Arles (Richer, l. iii. cc. 94, 95). This is clearly the lady of whom we are in search. The dates fit exactly; William’s first wife, Arsindis, is dead; he marries the divorced queen, probably about 982–983, and they have a daughter who in 1000 will be, as Constance evidently was at her marriage, in the prime of girlish beauty. The probability is strengthened by the fact that Adelaide’s first husband actually was what R. Glaber (l. iii. c. 2, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27) mistakenly calls Constance’s father, count of the “First Aquitaine,” or Toulouse; for Richer (l. iii. c. 92) says she was widow of Raymond “duke of the Goths,” i.e. of Septimania or Toulouse:—by the name of “Candida,” the Latin equivalent for “Blanche,” given to the wife of William of Arles by Peter of Maillezais (l. i. c. 6, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 182; see above, p. 173, note 5{386});—and even by the blundering Angevin chronicle which makes Constance a daughter of “Blanche” and “Lothar,” meaning of course Blanche the wife of Lothar’s son, and her third husband. This same Chron. S. Albin., however, adds that the said “Blanche” was a daughter of Fulk the Good. Nobody else seems to have known her origin, and this very “perplexed and perplexing” chronicler is a doubtful authority to build upon; but as there is no intrinsic impossibility in this part of his statement, and as there evidently was in the early twelfth century a tradition that Constance was akin to the house of Anjou, he may be right. From the dates, one would think she was more likely to have been Greygown’s daughter than his sister. If she was his sister, it must surely have been by the half-blood. She might be a daughter of Fulk the Good by his second marriage with the widow of Alan Barbetorte.

Note C.
THE PILGRIMAGES OF FULK NERRA.

Of all the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated of Fulk Nerra, scarcely any two are wholly agreed as to the number and dates of his journeys to Holy Land. Some make out four journeys; some three; one, his own grandson, makes only two (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 377). It is, however, abundantly evident that there were at least three—one before the foundation of Beaulieu (Gesta Cons., ib. p. 117; Hist. S. Flor. Salm., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 273); one after the foundation of Beaulieu, and before that of S. Nicolas (Hist. S. Flor. Salm. as above, p. 275); and one in returning from which he died (see above, p. 168). It is admitted on all hands that his death took place at Metz on June 21st, 1040; the date of the last pilgrimage is therefore undisputed. That of the first is now fixed by a charter quoted by M. Mabille (Marchegay, Comtes, Introd. p. lxxix) to 1003. The points still remaining to be decided therefore are (1) the date of the second journey; (2) the reality of the third.

The only real clue which our original authorities give us to the date of the second journey is the statement of Hist. S. Flor. that it was after the foundation of Beaulieu and before that of S. Nicolas (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 275). Now S. Nicolas was founded in 1020 (ibid.). Beaulieu was consecrated in 1012, but all we know of its foundation is that it cannot have been before Fulk’s return from his first journey in 1004. Modern writers have proposed three different dates for this second pilgrimage. The Art de vérifier les dates (vol. xiii. p. 50) places it in 1028; M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (Hist. des Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 245) in 1019–20; M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, pp. lxxviii, lxxx) and M. de Salies (Foulques-Nerra, pref. pp. xxxii, xxxiii, 143) in 1010–11. The first date, founded on a too literal reading of Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 164), is disposed of at once by the History of S. Florence. The theory of M. de Jubainville has a good deal of plausibility, but there is no documentary evidence for it. M. Mabille quotes in support of his date, 1010, a charter of S. Maur-sur-Loire, setting forth how Fulk, Hildegard and Geoffrey visited that abbey on the eve of Fulk’s departure for Holy Land. This charter is in Marchegay’s Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. p. 356; it has no date of any sort; and it does not specify whether Fulk’s intended journey was his second or third. The presence of Geoffrey proves it was not the first, but nothing more. M. Mabille pronounces for the second, and dates it “vers 1010”; but the editor of the Archives, M. Marchegay, says in a note “vers l’an 1030.” This charter therefore does not help at all. M. de Salies (Foulques-Nerra, p. 143, and pref. ib. p. xxxii) appeals in support of the same date, 1010, to the Chronicle of Tours, whose chronology throughout the century is so wild as to have no weight at all, except in strictly local matters; to the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., where I can find nothing about the question at issue;—and above all, to a charter in Baluze’s collections which says: “In natali S. Barnabæ Apostoli, qui est in Idibus Junii, Rainaldus ... Andecavensium Episcopus rebus terrenis exemptus est ... Ad sepulchrum Domini Hierosolymam comitante Fulcone vicecomite tendebat, progressusque usque Ebredunum” ... died and was there buried “anno ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi 1010.”

In the first place, this charter is suspicious as to date, for the Chronn. S. Albin. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 22), Vindoc. (ib. p. 164), S. Flor. Salm. (ib. p. 187), all date Bishop Rainald’s death 1005, and so, according to Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. col. 558, does the Obituary of S. Maurice; and the Chron. S. Serg. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 134) dates the consecration of his successor Hubert 1007. In the next place, what ground has M. de Salies for assuming that “Fulco vicecomes” is Fulk Nerra count of Anjou? The authors of Gallia Christiana quote this same charter, and their comment on it is this: “Fulco sedenim comes” [it is vicecomes in the charter] “quocum Rainaldus Hierosolymitanum iter aggressus supra memoratur, Andegavensis rei curam annum circa 1010, teste non uno, suscepit.” And as they have been describing various dealings of the bishop with Fulk the Black long before 1010, it is quite clear they take this Fulk to be some one else; though one would like to see their witnesses and know who he really was.

There is however another clue which may suggest a different date for this second pilgrimage. There are only two ways of making sense of the account given in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 88–91) of “the wicked Landry’s” attack on Anjou and the war of Châteaudun. In that account the first misdoings of Landry and his aggressions against Sulpice and Archambald of Amboise are put in the reign of Count Maurice; then Maurice dies and his son Fulk succeeds him, and the raid upon Châteaudun follows as the first exploit of “juvenis haud modici pectoris.” Now we have seen that Maurice was not Fulk’s father but his younger brother, and never was count of Anjou at all. We must therefore either regard the introduction of Maurice as a complete myth and delusion, or interpret the tale as a distorted account of a regency undertaken by Maurice during his brother’s absence. It is hard to see why the chroniclers should have gratuitously dragged in Maurice without any reason. Moreover the charter which establishes the date of Fulk’s first pilgrimage informs us that he left his brother as regent of Anjou on that occasion (Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. lxxvi); it is therefore quite possible that he may have done the same thing a second time. On this theory, to ascertain the date of the war with Landry would be equivalent to ascertaining the date of Fulk’s second pilgrimage.

If we take the Gesta’s account of Landry just as it stands, Landry’s attack on Anjou must have been made at the close of 1014 or in 1015; for he was resisted (say they) by Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin’s, and his brother Archambald. Now Sulpice could not be treasurer of S. Martin’s before 1014, as his predecessor Hervey died in that year (Chron. Tur. Magn. ad ann., Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 119; Chronol. S. Mar. Autiss. ad ann., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 275); and on the other hand, Archambald must have died in 1015 or very early in 1016, for the Chron. Tur. Magn. (as above)—which is likely to be right in its dating of local matters, though hopelessly confused in its general chronology—places in 1016 the building of Sulpice’s stone tower at Amboise, which the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 88, 89) tell us took place after his brother’s death; and the whole affair was certainly over some time before July 1016, the date of the battle of Pontlevoy. According to the Gesta (as above, pp. 89, 90), Landry makes another attack on Sulpice, after his brother’s death, just when Maurice has also died and Fulk succeeded him [i.e. Fulk has come home and resumed the reins of government]; and the raid on Châteaudun follows immediately. Here comes in a new difficulty; Odo of Blois is now brought in with a minute list of his possessions in Champagne, which he only acquired in 1019 at earliest, so that if this part of the story is also to be taken literally, Landry’s war with Sulpice and Fulk’s raid on Châteaudun must be separated by nearly four years. Maurice cannot possibly have been regent all that time, so we must either give him up entirely, or conclude that some of the details are wrong. And the one most likely to be wrong is certainly the description of Odo, whom almost all the old writers call “Campanensis” long before he had any right to the epithet. This is the view of M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, who dates the whole affair of Landry and Châteaudun in 1012–1014 (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. pp. 227, 228), but ignores Maurice and puts Fulk’s second journey in 1019, without giving any reason. It seems to me that this strange Angevin hallucination about Count Maurice, so utterly inexplicable in any other way, becomes intelligible if we believe that he was regent of Anjou in 1014–1015 during a second journey of his brother to Holy Land; a theory which, if it has no positive evidence to support it, seems at least to have none to contradict it, and is not rendered improbable by the general condition of Angevin affairs at the time.

2. As to the third journey. The Gesta Cons. state that Fulk, on one of his pilgrimages, went in company with Robert the Devil. Now as Robert died at Nikaia in July 1035 Fulk cannot have met him on either of his first two journeys, nor on his last; therefore, if this incident be true, we must insert another pilgrimage in 1034–1035. The story appears only in the Gesta Cons. and is therefore open to suspicion, as the whole account of Fulk’s travels there given is a ludicrous tissue of anachronisms (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 100–103). Fulk first goes to Rome and promises to deliver Pope Sergius IV. (who reigned 1009–1012) from Crescentius (who was killed in 997); then he goes to Constantinople, and thence in company with Robert to Jerusalem; Robert dies on the way home (1035) and Fulk on his return founds Beaulieu Abbey (consecrated 1012.) The monk has confounded at least two journeys, together with other things which had nothing to do with either.

The idea of a journey intermediate between the second and the last is however supported by the story of R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 164; Marchegay, Comtes, p. 329) that Geoffrey Martel having been left regent while his father was on pilgrimage kept him out on his return. Now at the time of Fulk’s first pilgrimage Geoffrey was not born; at the time of the second he was a mere child; and from the last Fulk came home only in his coffin. Consequently this story implies another journey; and we seem to get its date at last on no less authority than that of Fulk’s own hand. The charter in Epitome S. Nicolai (quoted in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 386), after relating Fulk’s application to Abbot Walter of S. Aubin’s to find him an abbot for S. Nicolas, and the consequent appointment of Hilduin in 1033, ends thus: “Res autem præscriptas a domno Beringario atque domno Reginaldo scribere jussi, et priusquam ad Jerusalem ultimâ vice perrexissem manu meâ roboravi.” The Chron. S. Albin. says Walter was not abbot till 1036 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 23; the extract in note 3, ibid., makes it 1038), and if so the date of Hilduin’s consecration is wrong. But the authors of Gallia Christiana think it more likely that the abbot’s name is wrong and the date right. Now by “ultimâ vice” Fulk must have meant “the journey whence I last returned.” Before starting for that of 1040 he might hope, but he could not know, that it would be his last. So here we have, apparently, his own authority for a third pilgrimage soon after Hilduin’s consecration—i.e. in 1034 or 1035.

The worst stumbling-block, however, in the way of our chronology of Fulk’s last years is William of Malmesbury. He gives a much fuller account than any one else of Geoffrey’s rebellion and Fulk’s last pilgrimage, and his account, taken alone, is so thoroughly self-consistent and reasonable, and withal so graphic, that it is hard not to be carried away by it. But it utterly contradicts the date which the sources above examined assign to the third journey, as well as that which all other authorities agree in assigning to the last, and also the universally-received account of Fulk’s death. William (l. iii. c. 235; Hardy, pp. 401, 402) says nothing about Geoffrey having rebelled during his father’s absence. He tells us that Fulk in his last years ceded his county to his son; that Geoffrey misconducted himself, and was brought to submission (here comes in the story of the saddle); that Fulk in the same year went out to Palestine (here follows the story of the penance); that he came quietly home, and died a few years after.

This account of William’s is entitled to very much more respectful handling than those of the Gesta Consulum and Ralf de Diceto. William’s statements about the counts of Anjou are of special value, because they are thoroughly independent; where they come from is a mystery, but they certainly come from some source perfectly distinct from those known to us through the Angevin writers. Moreover William shews a wonderfully accurate appreciation of the Angevins’ characters and a strong liking for them—above all for Fulk Nerra, whom he seems to have taken special pains to paint in the most striking colours. His version therefore is not to be lightly treated; nevertheless it seems clear that he is not altogether correct. His omitting all mention of the pilgrimage which immediately preceded Geoffrey’s rebellion is no proof of its non-reality. His account of the last journey of all is a graver matter. According to him, it must have taken place about 1036–1037, and Fulk died, not at Metz, but at home. There is only one other writer who countenances this version, and that is the chronicler of S. Maxentius (a. 1040, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 393), who says that Fulk died in his own abbey of S. Nicolas at Angers. But this very same chronicle gives also an alternative statement—the usual one of the death on pilgrimage which is given by the Gesta, R. Diceto and Fulk Rechin. Against either of the two former witnesses singly William’s solitary word might stand, but not against them with Fulk Rechin to support them. The pilgrimages therefore stand thus: 1. in 1003; 2. in 1014–1015; 3. in 1034–1035; 4. in 1040.

Note D.
GEOFFREY MARTEL AND POITOU.

The whole story of Geoffrey Martel’s doings in Poitou—his wars and his marriage—is involved in the greatest perplexity. There is no lack of information, but it is a mass of contradictions. The only writer who professes to account for the origin of the war is the author of the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 126), and his story, so far as it can apply to anything at all, certainly applies to the battle of Chef-Boutonne between Geoffrey the Bearded and William VII. (Guy-Geoffrey) in 1062. All other authorities are agreed that the battle was fought at S. Jouin-de-Marne, or Montcontour, on September 20, 1033, that William was captured and kept in prison three years, and that he died immediately after his release. As to the marriage of Geoffrey and Agnes, there is a question whether it took place before William’s capture or immediately after his death.

1. The Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg., a. 1032 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 23, 135) say positively that Geoffrey and Agnes were married on January 1 in that year. The Chron. S. Michael. in Per. Maris ad ann. also gives the date 1032 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 176).

2. Will. Poitiers and Will. Malm. say they married after William’s death. “Porro ipsius defuncti ... novercam ... thoro suo [Gaufridus] sociavit.” Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. “Tunc Martellus, ne quid deesset impudentiæ, novercam defuncti matrimonio sibi copulavit.” Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395).

These five are the only writers who directly mention the marriage, except the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 392), which says under date 1037: “Per hæc tempora Gaufredus Martellus duxerat uxorem supradictam,” etc. “Per hæc tempora” with the chronicler of S. Maxentius is a phrase so frequent and so elastic that this passage cannot be used to support either of the above dates. There are therefore three witnesses for 1032, and two for 1036. The chroniclers of S. Aubin and S. Sergius are both Angevin witnesses, and both nearly contemporary; but the S. Sergian writer’s authority is damaged by his having confused the whole story, for he dates the capture of the duke of Aquitaine in 1028, thus evidently mistaking Agnes’s step-son for her husband. William of Poitiers is in some sense a Poitevin witness, and is also nearly contemporary. William of Malmesbury is further from the source, and in this passage seems to have been chiefly following his Poitevin namesake, but his whole treatment of the Angevin counts shews such clear signs of special study and understanding that he is entitled to be regarded as in some degree an independent authority.

That the marriage was not later than 1036 is certain from several charters of that year, in which Agnes appears as Geoffrey’s wife (Marchegay, Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. pp. 377, 402). But the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 131, 132) tell a story of Geoffrey having founded his abbey at Vendôme in consequence of a shower of stars which he saw when standing at his palace window with “his wife, Agnes by name.” As the first abbot of Holy Trinity at Vendôme was appointed in 1033 (Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 379), if this story is true, Agnes must have been married to Geoffrey in 1032. But unluckily, the foundation-charter of the abbey is missing. The only documentary evidence connected with the question consists of two charters. One of these is printed in Besly, Comtes de Poitou, preuves, p. 304. It has no date, and simply conveys some lands for the site of the abbey to Count Geoffrey and Agnes his wife. Of course if this is the deed of sale for the land on which the original buildings were begun in 1032, it settles the question as to the previous marriage; but as the abbey was not consecrated till 1040, it is quite possible that its building was a slow process, and more ground was required as it proceeded. The endowment-charter (dated 1040, Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 732) says: “Ego Goffredus comes et uxor mea Agnes ... monasterium ... a novo fundaremus.” Does the solution lie in those words, “a novo”? Did Geoffrey found his abbey alone in 1032; stop work for a while on account of the Poitevin war and his quarrel with his father; and then, having married Agnes and acquired means by her step-son’s ransom, set to work in earnest conjointly with her and found the abbey anew? It is hard to throw over the distinct statements of two such writers as William of Poitiers and William of Malmesbury for the sake of three not very accurate chronicles and a late twelfth century romancer, doubtfully supported by a very vague charter.

As to the crime of the marriage, it is only the Angevin chroniclers who are so shocked at it. The S. Sergian writer’s mistake between Agnes’s first husband and her step-son might account for his horror, but not for the word he uses; and the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 282) which uses the same, says distinctly that her husband was dead. The two Williams seem to see nothing worse in it than some “impudence” in the count of Vendôme daring to take a wife of such high birth and position. The Chron. S. Maxent. makes no remark on the subject; the chronicler of S. Sergius seems to have thought that Geoffrey’s kinship was not with Agnes herself, but with her former husband, for he says that Geoffrey married her “quæ fuerat consobrini sui Willelmi ... uxor.” The canon law forbade marriages within the seventh degree of kindred; and as the pedigrees of none of the three persons concerned in this case can be traced back with certainty in all their branches up to the seventh generation, it is quite impossible to say what consanguinity there may or may not have been among them. The strong language of the Angevin chroniclers, however, seems to indicate no obscure and remote connexion, but a close and obvious one. There are two possibilities which present themselves at once. 1. We do not know at all who Geoffrey’s mother Hildegard was. 2. We are not perfectly sure who his grandmother Adela was. Hildegard may have been a daughter of Poitou, in which case her son would be akin to William; or a daughter of Burgundy, and then he would be akin to Agnes. Or again, if Adela of Chalon really was daughter to Robert of Troyes, and if she was also really Geoffrey’s grandmother, then William, Agnes and Geoffrey would be all cousins to each other—Agnes and William in the fifth degree, Geoffrey and William in the fourth, Geoffrey and Agnes in the third. The pedigree stands as follows:—

Herbert of Vermandois. |
| ｜ |

｜ | | ｜ |
Liutgard | = | Theobald the Trickster | Robert of Troyes
｜ | | ｜ |

Emma

=
｜

William
Fierabras

Lambert
of Autun

(1)=
｜

Adela

=(2)
｜

Geoffrey Greygown

| ｜ | | ｜ | | ｜ |

William the Great,
3d from Herbert.

Adalbert of Lombardy

=
｜

Gerberga

Fulk Nerra
｜

Otto William.

Geoffrey Martel,
4th from Herbert,
2d from Adela.

| | ｜ |

Agnes,
5th from Herbert,
3d from Adela.

Strictly speaking, this would make both Agnes’s marriages wrong; but the kindred in the case of the second would be much closer, and aggravated by that between Geoffrey and William; and a dispensation might very probably have been obtained for the first marriage, while for the second it is plain that none was even sought.

It is just possible that there was also a spiritual affinity. Agnes’s younger son bore the two names of Guy and Geoffrey; it is not clear which was his baptismal name; but the idea suggests itself that it may have been Geoffrey, and that he may have been godson to the Hammer of Anjou. The case would then be something like that of Robert and Bertha.

CHAPTER IV.
ANJOU AND NORMANDY.
1044–1128.

The history of Anjou during the sixty years comprised in our last chapter groups itself around the figure of Fulk the Black. The period on which we are now to enter has no such personal centre of unity; its interest and its significance lie in the drama itself rather than in its actors; yet the drama has a centre which is living to this day. The city of Le Mans still stands, as it stood in Geoffrey Martel’s day and had stood for a thousand years before him, on the long narrow brow of a red sandstone rock which rises abruptly from the left bank of the Sarthe and widens out into the higher ground to the north and east:—a situation not unlike that of Angers on its black rock above the Mayenne. The city itself and the county of Maine, of which it was the capital, both took their names from a tribe known to the Romans as Aulerci Cenomanni, a branch of the great race of the Aulerci who occupied central Gaul in its earliest recorded days. Alike in legend and in history the Cenomanni are closely linked to Rome. One branch of them formed, according to Roman tradition, a portion of a band of Gallic emigrants who in the mythical days of the Tarquins wandered down through the Alpine passes into the valleys and plains of northern Italy, made themselves a new home on the banks of Padus, where afterwards grew up the towns of Brixia and Verona,[440] and became devoted allies of Rome.[441] When the last struggle for freedom was over in Gaul, few spots took the impress of Rome more deeply or kept it more abidingly than the home of their Transalpine brethren, the “Aulerci Cenomanni whose city to the east is Vindinum.”[442] The remains of the walls and gates of a Roman castrum which succeeded the primeval hill-fortress of Vindinum or Le Mans are only now at last giving way to the destruction, not of time, but of modern utilitarianism. Far into the middle ages, long after Le Mans had outgrown its narrow Roman limits and spread down to a second line of fortifications close to the water’s edge, one part of the city on the height still kept the name of “Ancient Rome.”[443] The wondrous cathedral which now rises in the north-eastern corner of the city, towering high above the river and the double line of walls, stands, if we may trust its foundation-legend, on the very site of the prætorium; when the Cross followed in the train of the eagles, Defensor, the governor of the city, gave up his palace for the site of a church whose original dedication to the Blessed Virgin and S. Peter has long been superseded by the name of its founder S. Julian, a missionary bishop ordained and sent to Gaul by S. Clement of Rome.[444] Defensor is probably only a personification of the official defensor civitatis, the local tribune of the people under the later Roman Empire; but the state of things of which the legend is an idealized picture left its traces on the real relations of Church and state at Le Mans. After the Frankish conquest bishop and people together formed a power which more than matched that of the local lieutenant of the Merovingian kings; a decree of Clovis, confirmed by his grandson Childebert III., enacted that no count of Le Mans should be appointed without their consent.[445] Under the early Karolingians Le Mans seems to have held for a short time the rank afterwards taken by Angers as the chief stronghold of the Breton border; local tradition claims as its first hereditary count that “Roland, prefect of the Breton march,” who is more generally known as the hero of Roncevaux.[446] However this may be, the “duchy of Cenomannia” figures prominently in various grants of territory on the western border made to members of the Imperial house.[447] In the civil wars which followed the death of Louis the Gentle it suffered much from the ravages of Lothar;[448] and it underwent a far worse ordeal a few years later, when the traitor count Lambert of Anjou led both Bretons and northmen into the heart of central Gaul. The sack of Le Mans by Lambert and Nomenoë in 850[449] was avenged some years later when the traitor fell by the sword of Count Gauzbert of Maine;[450] but in 851 Charles the Bald was compelled to cede the western part of the Cenomannian duchy to the Breton king Herispoë;[451] the northern foes who had first come in the train of the Bretons swept over Maine again and again; and it was in making their way back to the sea after one of these raids by the old Roman road from Le Mans to Nantes that they entrapped Robert the Brave to his death at the bridge of Sarthe. The treaty of Clair-sur-Epte left Maine face to face with the northman settled upon her northern border; and in 924 a grant of the overlordship of the county was extorted by Hrolf from King Rudolf of Burgundy. In the hands of Hrolf’s most famous descendant the claim thus given was to become a formidable reality; at the moment however its force was neutralized by another grant made in the same year by Charles the Simple, which placed Maine together with the rest of Neustria under the jurisdiction of Hugh the Great.[452] In vain the counts of Le Mans strove to ignore or defy the house of France and that of Anjou, to which, as we have seen, the ducal claims over Maine were soon delegated. All their efforts were paralyzed by the opposing influence of that other officer in their state whose authority was of older date as well as loftier character than theirs, who held his commission by unbroken descent alike from the Cæsars and from the Apostles, and who had once at least been distinctly acknowledged as the equal, if not the superior, of his temporal colleague. The bishops were the nominees of the king, and therefore the champions of French and Angevin interests at Le Mans. In the last years of the tenth century and the early part of the eleventh, two of them in succession, an uncle and nephew named Sainfred and Avesgaud, were members of the house of Bellême who owned the borderlands of Perche, Séez and Alençon, between France and Normandy, who were never loyal to either neighbour, and whose name, as we have already seen, was one day to become a by-word for turbulent wickedness both in Normandy and in England. Sainfred was said to have owed his bishopric to Fulk Nerra’s influence with the king;[453] Avesgaud’s life was passed between building, hunting, and quarrelling with Count Herbert Wake-dog. Herbert’s military capacities, proved on the field of Pontlevoy, enabled him to stand his ground;[454] but very soon after his death Fulk’s dealings with Maine and its bishop began to bear fruit. Fulk survived both Herbert and Avesgaud. The count of Maine died in the prime of life in 1036,[455] leaving as his heir a son named Hugh, who, on pretext of his extreme youth, was set aside by a great-uncle, Herbert surnamed Bacco. Bishop Avesgaud, too, had died a few months before, and his office passed a second time from uncle to nephew in the person of his sister’s son, Gervase of Château-du-Loir.[456] The selection of a third prelate from the hated house of Bellême was in itself enough to excite the count’s wrath; Herbert Bacco moreover had a special reason for jealousy—the young nephew whose rights he had usurped was a godson of Gervase. For two years Herbert contrived to keep the new bishop out of Le Mans altogether; at the end of that time he admitted him, but no sooner were the rival rulers established side by side than their strife became as bitter and ceaseless as that of Herbert Wake-dog and Avesgaud. Gervase looked for help to the king, who, whether as king or as duke of the French, was patron and advocate of the see; but there was no help to be got from the feeble, selfish Henry I. of France. Despair hurried the bishop into a rasher step than any that his uncle had ever taken. Thinking that a less exalted protector, and one nearer to the spot and more directly interested, would be of more practical use, he besought King Henry to grant the patronage and advocacy of the see of Le Mans to Count Geoffrey of Anjou for his life.[457]

[440] Tit. Liv., l. v. c. 35; Polyb., l. ii. c. 17.

[441] Polyb., l. ii. cc. 23, 24, 32.

[442] Ptolem., l. ii. c. 7. On the Peutinger Table, however, the name is Subdinnum.

[443] “Ex parte vici de veteri Româ” is quoted by M. Voisin (Les Cénomans anciens et modernes, p. 86, note 3) from a document in the city archives.

[444] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 1, in Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, pp. 239–241.

[445] Charter of Childebert III. a. 698, in Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 283.

[446] Eginhard, Vita Car. Magni, c. 9 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. v. p. 93).

[447] Charles the Great granted “ducatum Cenomannicum” to his son Charles in 790; Ann. Mettens. ad ann. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. v. pp. 346, 347). “Ducatus Cenomannicus, omnisque occiduæ Galliæ ora inter Ligerim et Sequanam constituta,” formed the share of Charles the Bald in 838; Ann. Bertin. ad ann. (ib. vol. vi. p. 199).

[448] Ann. Bertin. a. 841 (ib. vol. vii. p. 60).

[449] Chron. Fontanell. a. 850 (ib. p. 42).

[450] The Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 366), two Aquitanian chronicles (in Labbe, Nova Bibl., vol. i. pp. 291, 324) and Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 226) date this 852; Regino and the Ann. Mettens. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 190) place it in 860.

[451] Above, p. 102. Part at least of this ceded territory must have been soon regained; for it extended “usque ad viam quæ a Lotitiâ Parisiorum Cæsarodunum Turonum ducit.” Ann. Bertin. a. 856 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 71).

[452] Frodoard. Chron. a. 924 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 181). See above, p. 124.

[453] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 29 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 303).

[454] See the story of his struggles with Avesgaud in Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 30 (as above, pp. 303, 304).

[455] Necrol. S. Pet. de Culturâ (Le Mans), quoted in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 632. Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 161) seems to imply that he had contracted a mortal disease in his Angevin dungeon.

[456] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., pp. 305, 306). From the dates there given, Avesgaud must have died in October 1035, about five months before Herbert Wake-dog.

[457] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above (p. 305).

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people of the diocese and the brave men of the land,”[458] and headed a revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to become the wife of Duke Alan of Britanny.[459] It was this Bertha, now a widow and a fugitive from Rennes, whence she was driven by her brother-in-law after her husband’s death,[460] whom Gervase now wedded to Hugh. Such a choice was not likely to conciliate Geoffrey Martel; all the less if—as some words of a local historian seem to imply—the daughter of Odo of Blois was gifted with all the courage and energy that were lacking in her brothers.[461] By some of the usual Angevin arts Geoffrey entrapped Gervase into his power and cast him into prison,[462] where for the next seven years the luckless bishop was left to reflect upon the consequences of his short-sighted policy and to perceive that in striving to secure a protector against Herbert Bacco he had placed himself and his country at the mercy of an unscrupulous tyrant. During those years Maine, nominally ruled by the young Count Hugh, was really in the power of Geoffrey Martel, and it became the scene of a fierce warfare between Anjou and Normandy. In 1049 the Council of Reims threatened Geoffrey with excommunication unless he released the captive prelate,[463] and next year the excommunication was actually pronounced by the Pope;[464] but neither Council nor Pope could turn the Angevin from his prey. About 1051 Hugh died, and his death sealed the fate of Le Mans. Its count’s son was an infant, its bishop a captive in an Angevin dungeon; its citizens had no choice but to submit. The twice-widowed countess and her children were driven out at one gate as the Hammer of Anjou knocked at the other, and without striking a blow Geoffrey became acknowledged master of Maine from thenceforth till the day of his death.[465] Gervase, his spirit broken at last, purchased his release by the surrender of Château-du-Loir, and by a solemn oath never again to set foot in Le Mans so long as Geoffrey lived. He found a refuge at the court of Duke William of Normandy, till in 1057 he was raised to the metropolitan chair of Reims.[466] In his former episcopal city the oppressor triumphed undisturbed; but the day of retribution had already dawned.

- [458] “Concilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terræ.” Ibid.·/·Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 305). See Mr. Freeman’s note, Norm. Conq., vol. iii. p. 194, note 3.

- [459] Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1008 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 294). For the real date see above, p. 159, note 4{343}.

- [460] See below, p. 211.

- [461] The author of the Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 305), calls her “nobilissimam fœminam” and “uxorem fortissimam.”

- [462] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

- [463] Concil. Rem. in Labbe, Concilia (ed. Cossart), vol. xix. col. 742.

- [464] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 398).

- [465] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above, pp. 305, 306).

- [466] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 306).

The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward mark of his success; the height of his real security had been passed three years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey’s life was the year 1044. The settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop Gervase, all followed close upon each other; and for the next four years the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in the kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on a level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge, the step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual master of Maine. It was with the duke of Normandy that Geoffrey’s last conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition to Apulia in company with his wife’s son-in-law the Emperor,[467] he set himself up against King Henry with a boastful insolence which threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.[468] Five years earlier, Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to win Geoffrey’s help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald; now he profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was just beginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of the Norman Duke William in putting down the rebellion of Geoffrey. The king’s own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further than a successful siege of the castle of Moulinières;[469] after this his conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his parents towards Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William, like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed; and to William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth less the king’s than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his heart, had openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous triumphs by an encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to regard as a foeman worthy of his steel,[470] and had diligently used all the opportunities for provoking a quarrel with the Norman which the dependent position of Maine furnished but too readily. Either by force or guile, or that judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin house excelled, he had managed to get into his own hands the two keys of Normandy’s southern frontier, the castles of Alençon and Domfront, which guarded the valleys of the Sarthe and the Mayenne;[471] and thence, across the debateable lands of Bellême, he was now carrying his raids into undisputed Norman territory.[472]

- [467] See Art de vérifier les dates, vol. xiii. p. 54.

- [468] Henry was “contumeliosis Gaufredi Martelli verbis irritatus.” Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. “Vexavit idem [sc. Gaufredus] Franciam universam regi rebellans.” Ib. p. 182.

- [469] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 230 (Hardy, p. 394).

- [470] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 181.

- [471] Ib. p. 182. Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 9380–9383 (Pluquet, vol. ii. p. 47).

- [472] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276). Cf. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). These two writers ignore the king’s share in the quarrel, and make it arise solely from Geoffrey’s raids upon Normandy (“Brachium levabat in nos quo non leviter sese vulnerabat,” remarks W. Poitiers, as above). The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131) reverse the whole situation and assert that William attacked the count of Maine, whereupon Geoffrey, as the latter’s “auxiliator et tutor,” took up the quarrel, and did William a great deal of damage! Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378) wisely limits himself to the statement that his uncle “had a war with William, duke of the Normans.”

In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of grey rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the east, with the town and the dark woods at its back and the little stream of Varenne winding close round its foot, may tell something of what the castle was when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the builder’s hand, and manned by the fierce moss-troopers of Bellême, reinforced by a band of picked soldiers from Anjou.[473] The rock itself was an impregnable fortress of nature’s own making. To horsemen it was totally inaccessible; foot-soldiers could only scale it by two narrow and difficult paths. Assault was hopeless; William’s only chance lay in a blockade, and even this was an enterprise of danger as well as difficulty, for Domfront stood in the heart of a dense woodland amid which the Normans were continually exposed to the ambushes and surprises of the foe. To William however the forest was simply a hunting-ground through which he rode day after day, with hawk on wrist, in scornful defiance of its hidden perils, while the siege was pressed closer and closer all through the winter’s snows, till at last the garrison were driven to call upon Geoffrey Martel for relief.[474] What followed reads like an anticipation of the story of Prestonpans as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman tale, Geoffrey not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a formal challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the morrow at break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun rose on that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.[475] Duke William’s chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious explanation of their departure; and it is impossible to contradict him, for the whole campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin chroniclers. The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having challenged Duke William at eventide and run away from him before sunrise, and no Angevin voice seems ever to have been lifted to deny or palliate the charge. He had scarcely turned his back when Alençon fell; and its fall was quickly followed by that of Domfront. William carried away his engines of war to set them up again on undisputed Cenomannian ground, at Ambrières on the Mayenne: still Geoffrey made no movement; William laid the foundations of a castle on the river-bank at Ambrières, and leaving it securely guarded marched home unmolested to Rouen.[476]

- [473] Will. Poitiers (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182.

- [474] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

- [475] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 183. Cf. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, pp. 396, 397).

- [476] Will. Poitiers, as above. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276). Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 9430–9635 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 49–58).

So began the most momentous feud ever waged by the counts of Anjou. After the first burst of the storm came a lull of nearly seven years, one of which was marked, as we have seen, by Geoffrey’s final acquisition of Le Mans; but his power had sustained a shock from which it never wholly recovered. In the struggles with Normandy which fill the latter years of Henry I. of France, the king and the count of Anjou play an almost equally ignoble part. Henry, who had once courted the friendship of William to ward off the blows of the Angevin Hammer, no sooner perceived which was really the mightier of the two princes than he completely reversed his policy, gave an almost open support to the treasons in William’s duchy, and at length, in 1054, when these indirect attacks had failed, summoned all the princes of his realm to join him in a great expedition for the ruin of the duke of Normandy. They flocked to the muster at Mantes from all quarters save one; strangely enough, the count of Anjou was missing.[477] Only a few months ago the terror which clung around Martel’s name and the number of troops at his command had sufficed to make his stepson William of Aquitaine disband an army with which he was preparing to encounter him, and sue for peace at his mere approach;[478] yet it seems that not even with all the forces of king and kingdom at his side would Geoffrey risk an encounter with the man whom he had challenged and fled from at Domfront.

- [477] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 24 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 281) says he was there; but see Mr. Freeman’s remarks, Norm. Conq., vol. iii., p. 144.

- [478] Charter of William of Passavant, dated Montilliers, 1053, in Archives d’Anjou (Marchegay), vol. i. p. 271. Besly (Comtes de Poitou, preuves, p. 327) printed it with the date 1043, and it is apparently on this that the Art de vérifier les dates founds a war between Geoffrey and Peter-William in that year—an almost impossible thing.

By thus deserting the king at a moment when Henry had every reason to count upon his support, Geoffrey escaped all part in the rout of Mortemer; but the consequence was that when peace was made next year between the king and the duke, one of its clauses authorized William to make any conquests he could at the expense of the count of Anjou.[479] William at once sent warning to Geoffrey to expect him and all his forces at Ambrières within forty days. South of Ambrières, lower down in the valley of the Mayenne, stands the town which bears the same name as the river; its lord, Geoffrey, was the chief man of the district. He went in haste to his namesake and overlord and bitterly complained to him that if these Normans were left unhindered to work their will at Ambrières, the whole land would be at their mercy. “Cast me off as a vile and unworthy lord,” was Martel’s reply, “if thou seest me tamely suffer that which thou fearest!” But the boast was as vain as the challenge before Domfront. William completed without hindrance his fortifications at Ambrières; as soon as his back was turned Geoffrey laid siege to the place, in company with the duke of Aquitaine and Odo, uncle and guardian of the young duke of Britanny; but the mere rumour of William’s approach sufficed to make all three withdraw their troops “with wonderful speed, not to say in trembling flight.” Geoffrey of Mayenne, made prisoner and left to bear alone the whole weight of William’s wrath, took the count of Anjou at his word, and casting off the “vile and unworthy lord” whose desertion had brought him to this strait, owned himself the “man” of the Norman duke.[480]

- [479] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 187. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 233 (Hardy, p. 399).

- [480] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 187, 188.

Two castles in the heart of Maine thus acknowledged William for their lord. Three years passed away without further advance from either side; Geoffrey’s energies were frittered away in minor disputes which brought him neither gain nor honour. The old quarrel about Nantes woke up once more and was once more settled in 1057 under circumstances very discreditable to the count of Anjou. Duke Alan of Britanny died in 1040, leaving as his heir a boy three months old. The child was at once snatched from the care of his mother—Bertha of Blois—by his uncle Odo, who set himself up as duke of Britanny in his stead.[481] The duchy split up into factions, and for sixteen years all was confusion, aggravated, there can be little doubt, by the meddlesomeness of Geoffrey of Anjou, who seems to have taken the opportunity thus offered him for picking a quarrel with count Hoel of Nantes.[482] In 1056 or 1057, however, a party among the Breton nobles succeeded in freeing the young Conan, by whom Odo was shortly afterwards made prisoner in his turn.[483] On this Geoffrey, it seems, following the traditional policy of the Angevin house in Britanny, made alliance with his late enemy the count of Nantes; and Hoel, on some occasion which is not explained, actually ventured to intrust his capital to Geoffrey’s keeping, whereupon Geoffrey at once laid a plot for taking possession of it altogether. His treachery however met the reward which it deserved; he held Nantes for barely forty days, and then lost it for ever.[484] Troubles were springing up too in another quarter. Geoffrey’s marriage with the widowed countess of Poitou had failed to bring him the advantages for which he doubtless hoped when he carried it through in defiance of public opinion and his father’s will. He had been unable to keep any hold over his stepsons. Guy-Geoffrey fought and bargained with the rival claimant of Gascony till he had made himself sole master of the county: Peter-William, though he bears the surname of “the Bold,” seems to have kept his land in peace, for his reign is a blank in which the only break is caused by his quarrels with Anjou. The first of these, in 1053, came as we have seen to no practical consequence, and two years later William is found by Geoffrey’s side at Ambrières. But the tie between them was broken; Geoffrey and Agnes were no longer husband and wife,[485] and Geoffrey was married to Grecia of Montreuil. There are sufficient indications of Geoffrey’s private character to warrant the assumption that the blame of this divorce rested chiefly upon his shoulders,[486] and it may be that Peter-William acted as the avenger of his mother’s wrongs. The quarrel, whatever may have been its grounds, broke out afresh in the spring or early summer of 1058, when the duke of Aquitaine blockaded Geoffrey himself within the walls of Saumur. But before the end of August a sudden sickness drove William of Aquitaine home to Poitiers to die,[487] and set the Angevin count free for one last struggle with William of Normandy.

- [481] Chron. Brioc. ad ann. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 35).

- [482] Fulk Rechin mentions among his uncle’s wars one “cum Hoello comite Nannetensi.” Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378.

- [483] Chron. S. Michael. a. 1056 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 29). Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1057 (ib. p. 371).

- [484] Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. a. 1057 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 167, 399). The Chron. Britann. in Morice (Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 101) records this affair under the year 1040; but on that chronicle’s own showing Hoel was not count of Nantes till 1051, while the Chron. Brioc. (ib. col. 36) places his succession in 1054.

- [485] The last charter signed by Agnes as countess of Anjou is dated 1050 (Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. lxxxiii). From 1053 onwards she reappears at the court of her elder son—generally by the title of “mater comitum”—witnessing his charters, founding churches in Poitou, and in short holding her old place as duchess of Aquitaine, while her place as countess of Anjou is taken by Grecia, widow of Berlay of Montreuil, and mother of Eustachia, the wife of Agnes’s stepson William the Fat. See Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 293, and Besly, Comtes de Poitou, p. 89.

- [486] See a charter of our Lady of Charity (Ronceray) quoted in note to Hist. S. Flor. Salm. as above.

- [487] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 400).

King Henry was now gathering up his strength for another invasion of the Norman duchy. This time Geoffrey did not fail him. Both had discovered, too late, who was really their most dangerous rival, and all old grudges between them were forgotten in the common instinct of vengeance upon the common foe. Early in 1058 Henry came to visit the count at Angers;[488] and the plan of the coming campaign was no doubt arranged during the time which they then spent together. It was to be simply a vast plundering-raid; neither king nor count had now any ambition to meet the duke in open fight. In August they set forth—Geoffrey, full of zeal, at the head of all the troops which his four counties could muster. The French and Angevin host went burning and plundering through the Hiesmois and the Bessin, the central districts of Normandy, as far as Caen. Half of the confederates’ scheme was accomplished; but as they crossed the Dive at the ford of Varaville they were overtaken at once by the inflowing tide and by the duke himself; the two leaders, who had been the first to cross, could only look helplessly on at the total destruction of their host, and make their escape from Norman ground as fast as their horses would carry them.[489] The wars of Henry and Geoffrey were over. The king died in the summer of 1060; in November he was followed by the count of Anjou. A late-awakened conscience moved Geoffrey to meet his end in the abbey of S. Nicolas which had been founded by his father and completed under his own care. One night he was borne across the river and received the monastic habit; next morning at the hour of prime he died.[490]

- [488] Henry was at Angers on March 1, 1058; charter in Epitome S. Nicolai, p. 9, referred to by Mabille, Introd. Comtes, pp. lxxxiii, lxxxiv. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. place this visit in 1057 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 167, 399).

- [489] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 188. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 28 (ib. p. 283). Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 10271–10430 (Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 87–94).

- [490] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379, gives the year and the day, November 14, 1060. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 167, 402) agree with him; the Chron. S. Albin. (ib. p. 25) gives the same day, but a year later; the Chron. S. Serg. (ib. p. 137) dates the event in the right year, 1060, but places it on November 13 instead of 14; the Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (ib. p. 189) says nothing of Geoffrey’s death, but places both his assumption of the monastic habit and King Henry’s death a year too early, in 1059.

With him expired the male line of Fulk the Red. But there was no lack of heirs by the spindle-side. Geoffrey’s eldest nephew was his half-sister Adela’s son, Fulk “the Gosling,” to whom after long wrangling he had been compelled to restore the county of Vendôme.[491] He was bound by closer ties to the two sons of his own sister Hermengard, daughter of Fulk Nerra and Hildegard, and wife of Geoffrey count of the Gâtinais, a little district around Châteaulandon near Orléans.[492] Her younger son, Fulk, was but seventeen years old when at Whitsuntide 1060 he was knighted by Geoffrey Martel, invested with the government of Saintonge, and sent to put down a revolt among its people.[493] The elder, who bore his uncle’s name, was chosen by him for his heir.[494]

- [491] Origo Com. Vindoc., in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi., p. 31. Vendôme seems however to have counted thenceforth as a dependency of Anjou—and, for the most part, a loyal and useful one.

- [492] See note A at end of chapter.

- [493] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379. The revolt was headed by one “Petrus Didonensis.”

- [494] See note B at end of chapter.

The dominion which Geoffrey the Hammer thus bequeathed to Geoffrey the Bearded was no compact, firmly-knit whole; it was a bundle of four separate states, held on different tenures, and two of them burthened with a legacy of unsettled feuds. The real character of their union shewed itself as soon as Martel was gone. What had held them together was simply the terror of his name, and the dissolution, already threatening before his death, set in so rapidly that in less than three years afterwards two out of his four counties were lost to his successor. It was in fact only the dominions of Fulk the Black—Anjou and Touraine—that were thoroughly loyal to his son. Geoffrey’s last conquest, Maine, was only waiting till death should loose the iron grasp that choked her to recall her ancient line. His earliest conquest, Saintonge, lying further from the control of the central power, was already drifting back to its natural Aquitanian master. Young Count Fulk was still at his uncle’s death-bed when Saintes was surprised and captured by the duke of Aquitaine,—Guy-Geoffrey of Gascony, who had succeeded his twin-brother by the title of William VII. William seems to have justified his aggression on the plea that by the terms of the cession of 1036 Martel had no right to leave Saintonge to collateral heirs, and that on his death without children it ought to revert to the duke.[495] The city of Saintes itself however had been Angevin ever since Fulk Nerra’s days, and a strong party of citizens devoted to Anjou besought Geoffrey’s successor to come and deliver them. While the two brothers prepared to march into Poitou, William gathered an immense force to the siege of Chef-Boutonne, a castle on a rocky height above the river Boutonne, on the borders of Poitou and Saintonge. Thence, at the Angevins’ approach, he descended to meet them in the plain, on S. Benedict’s day, March 21, 1061. The duke’s army, including as it did the whole forces of Gascony and Aquitaine, must have far outnumbered that of the brother-counts; but there was treason in the southern ranks; the standard-bearers were the first to flee, and their flight caused the rout of the whole ducal host.[496] Saintes threw open its gates to the Angevin victor;[497] but its loss was only delayed. Next year the duke of Aquitaine blockaded the city till sword and famine compelled the garrison to surrender;[498] and from that moment Saintonge was lost to the count of Anjou.

- [495] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 126. See note C at end of chapter.

- [496] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 402). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 126–130. See note C at end of chapter.

- [497] Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 130.

- [498] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1062 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 403).

Meanwhile a change fraught with far graver consequences had undone Geoffrey Martel’s work in the north. The conqueror of Le Mans was scarcely in his grave when Maine flung off the yoke and called upon the son of her late count Hugh to come home and enjoy his own again. It was however but a shadowy coronet that she could offer now; her independence had received a fatal shock; and, to increase the difficulty of his position, Herbert II. was still a mere boy, without a friend to guide and protect him except his mother, Bertha of Blois. Bertha saw at once that his only chance of saving his father’s heritage from the shame of subjection to Anjou was to throw himself on the honour of the duke of Normandy; to William therefore, as overlord, Herbert commended himself and his county, on the terms of the old grant made to Hrolf by King Rudolf.[499] The commendation was accompanied by an agreement that Herbert should in due time marry one of William’s daughters; but there seems to have been a foreboding that the boy-count’s life was not to be a long one, for it was further provided that if he died without children Maine should revert in full property to William;[500] and a marriage was also arranged between William’s eldest son Robert and Herbert’s sister Margaret, whereby in the next generation the rights of the “man” and his lord, of the house of Hrolf and the house of Herbert Wake-Dog, might be united.[501]

- [499] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 487). Will. Poitiers (ibid.), p. 189.

- [500] Will. Poitiers, as above.

- [501] Ord. Vit. as above.

In 1064 Herbert died, leaving neither child nor wife. By the treaty which had seemed so admirably planned to meet all possible contingencies, his county was now to revert to William; but there was more than one difficulty to be met before he could take possession of it. The first was a sudden revival of the Angevin claim. The indifference with which Geoffrey the Bearded seems to have viewed the transactions between Herbert and William may perhaps have been due to the pressure of the war in Saintonge. Far more puzzling than his tardiness in asserting his rights to the overlordship of Maine is the readiness with which, when he did assert them, they seem to have been admitted by William. Geoffrey did not indeed aspire to the actual possession of the county which his uncle had enjoyed; all that he claimed was its overlordship; and William, it seems, acknowledged his claim by permitting the little Robert to do him homage at Alençon and to receive from him a formal grant of Margaret’s hand together with the whole honour of Maine.[502] Geoffrey’s action is easily accounted for. His only reasonable course was to make a compromise with Normandy: the wonder is that he was allowed to make it on such favourable terms. If the story is correct, the truth probably is that compromise was at this moment almost as needful to William as to Geoffrey, for any Angevin intermeddling in Maine would have rendered his difficulties there all but insurmountable. One clause of the treaty of 1061—the marriage of Robert and Margaret—was still in the remote future, for the bridegroom cannot have been more than nine years old, and the bride was far away in what a Norman writer vaguely describes as “Teutonic parts.”[503] There being thus no security that the county would ever revert to the descendants of its ancient rulers, Cenomannian loyalty turned its hopes from Hugh’s young daughter to her aunts, the three daughters of Herbert Wake-the-dog, of whom the nearest to the spot was Biota, the wife of Walter of Mantes, sister’s son to Eadward the Confessor.[504] In his wife’s name Walter laid claim to the whole county of Maine, and a considerable part of it at once passed into his hands. The capital was held for him by Hubert of Sᵗᵉ-Suzanne and Geoffrey of Mayenne—that same Geoffrey who, deceived in his Angevin overlord, had yielded a compulsory homage to William, and now, casting off all foreign masters alike, proved the most determined champion of his country’s independence. It was between William and Geoffrey of Mayenne that the contest really lay; and again the duke proved victorious. The conqueror made his “joyous entry” into Le Mans, and sent for the little Margaret to be kept under his own protection until her marriage could take place. But before the wedding-day arrived she lay in her grave at Fécamp; Walter and Biota had already come to a mysterious end; and the one gallant Cenomannian who held out when Walter and all else had yielded—Geoffrey of Mayenne—was at length compelled to surrender.[505] Thenceforth William ruled Maine as its Conqueror, and as long as he lived, save for one brief moment, the homage due to Anjou was heard of no more.

- [502] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 532. The story is somewhat suspicious, because Orderic tells it not in its proper place, but in a sort of summary of Cenomannian history, introductory to the war of 1073; so that it looks very much like a confused anticipation of the treaty of Blanchelande (see below, p. 223). Still there is nothing intrinsically impossible in it, and I do not feel justified in rejecting it without further evidence.

- [503] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 190.

- [504] On the pedigree of the house of Maine see note D at end of chapter.

- [505] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 190, 191. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 27 (ib. p. 283). Ord. Vit. (ibid.) pp. 487, 488.

The rapid decline of the Angevin power after Geoffrey Martel’s death was due partly to the reaction which often follows upon a sudden rise, partly to the exceptional greatness of the rival with whom the Angevin count had to deal in the person of William the Conqueror. But behind and beyond these two causes lay a third more fatal than either. The house of Anjou was divided against itself. From the hour of Martel’s death, a bitter dispute over his testamentary dispositions had been going on between his nephews. To young Fulk it seemed an unpardonable wrong that he was left without provision—for even Saintonge, as we have seen, had now slipped from his grasp—while his elder brother was in full possession not only of the paternal county of Gâtinais but also of their uncle’s heritage. In later days Fulk went so far as to declare that his uncle had intended to make him sole heir, to the complete exclusion of Geoffrey the Bearded.[506] Fulk is in one aspect a very interesting person. Almost the sole authority which we possess for the history of the early Angevin counts is a fragment written in his name. If it be indeed his work—and criticism has as yet failed to establish any other conclusion—Fulk Rechin is not merely the earliest historian of Anjou; he is well-nigh the first lay historian of the Middle Ages.[507] But in every other point of view he deserves nothing but aversion and contempt. His very surname tells its own tale; in one of the most quarrelsome families known to history, he was pre-eminently distinguished as “the Quarreller.”[508] With the turbulence, the greed, the wilfulness of his race he had also their craft and subtlety, their plausible, insinuating, serpent-like cleverness; but he lacked the boldness of conception, the breadth of view and loftiness of aim, the unflinching perseverance, the ungrudging as well as unscrupulous devotion to a great and distant end, which lifted their subtlety into statesmanship and their cleverness into genius. The same qualities in him degenerated into mere artfulness and low cunning, and were used simply to meet his own personal needs and desires of the moment, not to work out any far-reaching train of policy. He is the only one of the whole line of Angevin counts, till we reach the last and worst of all, whose ruling passion seems to have been not ambition but self-indulgence. Every former count of Anjou, from Fulk the Red to Geoffrey Martel, had toiled and striven, and sinned upon occasion, quite as much for his heirs as for himself: Fulk Rechin toiled and sinned for himself alone. All the thoroughness which they threw into the pursuit of their house’s greatness he threw simply into the pursuit of his own selfish desires. Had Geoffrey the Bearded possessed the highest capacities, he could have done little for his own or his country’s advancement while his brother’s restless intrigues were sowing strife and discontent among the Angevin baronage and turning the whole land into a hotbed of treason.[509] Geoffrey’s cause was however damaged by his own imprudence. An act of violent injustice to the abbey of Marmoutier brought him under the ban of the Church;[510] and from that moment his ruin became certain. From within and without, troubles crowded upon the Marchland and its unhappy count. The comet which scared all Europe in 1066 was the herald of evil days to Anjou as well as to the land with which she was one day to be linked so closely. In that very year a Breton invasion was only checked by the sudden death of Duke Conan just after he had received the surrender of Châteaugonthier.[511] Next spring, on the first Sunday in Lent, Saumur was betrayed by its garrison to Fulk Rechin;[512] on the Wednesday before Easter he was treacherously admitted into Angers, and Geoffrey fell with his capital into the clutches of his brother.[513] The citizens next day rose in a body and slew the chief traitors;[514] the disloyalty of Saumur was punished by the duke of Aquitaine, who profited by the distracted state of Anjou to cross the border and fire the town;[515] while the remonstrances of Pope Alexander II. soon compelled Fulk to release his brother.[516] Next year, however, Geoffrey was again taken prisoner while besieging Fulk’s castle of Brissac.[517] This time the king of France, alarmed no doubt by the revelation of such a temper among his vassals, took up arms for Geoffrey’s restoration, and he was joined by Count Stephen of Blois, the son of Theobald from whom Geoffrey Martel had won Tours. Fulk bought off both his assailants. Stephen, who was now governing the territories of Blois as regent for his aged father, was pacified by receiving Fulk’s homage for Touraine; the king was bribed more unblushingly still, by the cession of what was more undeniably Geoffrey’s lawful property than any part of the Angevin dominions—his paternal heritage of the Gâtinais.[518] It thus became Philip’s interest as well as Fulk’s to keep Geoffrey in prison. For the next twenty-eight years he lay in a dungeon at Chinon,[519] and Fulk ruled Anjou in his stead.

[506] See note B at end of chapter.

[507] “It needs some self-sacrifice to give up the only lay historian whom we have come across since the days of our own Æthelweard.” Freeman, Norm. Conq., 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 638.

[508] This seems to be the meaning of “Rechin.”

[509] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 138, 139.

[510] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 134–137. See also Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 664, note.

[511] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 33 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 286). Chron. Brioc. and Chron. Britann. a. 1066 (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. cols. 36, 102). Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1067 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 12, 137, 168)—which, however, means 1066, as all these chronicles place both the comet and the conquest in the same year.

[512] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 403, 404). This was February 25 (ibid.).

[513] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc. a. 1067 (ib. pp. 12, 25, 137, 138, 168). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 138, 139), antedated by a year.

[514] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin. (as above); S. Serg. (ib. p. 138); Vindoc. (ib. pp. 168, 169).

[515] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (ib. p. 404).

[516] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379.

[517] Ib. pp. 379, 380. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1068 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 12, 26, 138, 169).

[518] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 139. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1067 (Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 125)—a date which must be at least a year too early.

[519] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 723, 818. He makes it thirty years, but the dates are undoubtedly 1068–1096.

That time was a time of shame and misery such as the Marchland had never yet seen. Eight years of civil war had fostered among the barons of Anjou and Touraine a spirit of turbulence and lawlessness which Fulk, whose own intrigues had sown the first seeds of the mischief, was powerless to control. Throughout the whole of his reign, all southern Touraine was kept in confusion by a feud among the landowners at Amboise;[520] and it can hardly have been the only one of its kind under a ruler who, instead of putting it down with a strong hand, only aggravated it by his undignified and violent intermeddling. Nor were his foreign relations better regulated than his home policy. For a moment, in 1073, an opportunity seemed to present itself of regaining the lost Angevin overlordship over Maine. Ten years of Angevin rule had failed to crush out the love of independence among the Cenomannian people; ten years of Norman rule had just as little effect. While their conqueror was busied with the settlement of his later and greater conquest beyond sea, the patriots of Maine seized a favourable moment to throw off the Norman yoke. Hugh of Este or of Liguria, a son of Herbert Wake-the-dog’s eldest daughter Gersendis, was received as count under the guardianship of his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. But Geoffrey, who in the hour of adversity ten years before had seemed little short of a hero, yielded to the temptations of power; and his tyranny drove the Cenomannians to fall back upon the traditions of their old municipal freedom and “make a commune”—in other words, to set up a civic commonwealth such as those which were one day to be the glory of the more distant Cenomannian land on the other side of the Alps. At Le Mans, however, the experiment was premature. It failed through the treachery of Geoffrey of Mayenne; and the citizens, in the extremity of despair, called upon Fulk of Anjou to save them at once from Geoffrey and from William. Fulk readily helped them to dislodge Geoffrey from the citadel of Le Mans;[521] but as soon as William appeared in Maine with a great army from over sea Fulk, like his uncle, vanished. Only when the conqueror had “won back the land of Maine”[522] and returned in triumph to Normandy did Fulk venture to attack La Flèche, a castle on the right bank of the Loir, close to the Angevin border, and held by John, husband of Herbert Wake-dog’s youngest daughter Paula.[523] At John’s request William sent a picked band of Norman troops to reinforce the garrison of La Flèche; Fulk at once collected all his forces and persuaded Hoel duke of Britanny to bring a large Breton host to help him in besieging the place. A war begun on such a scale as this might be nominally an attack on John, but it was practically an attack on William. He took it as such, and again calling together his forces, Normans and English, led them down to the relief of La Flèche. Instead, however, of marching straight to the spot, he crossed the Loir higher up and swept round to the southward through the territories of Anjou, thus putting the river between himself and his enemies. The movement naturally drew Fulk back across the river to defend his own land against the Norman invader.[524] The two armies drew up facing each other on a wide moor or heath stretching along the left bank of the Loir between La Flèche and Le Lude, and overgrown with white reindeer-moss, whence it took the name of Blanchelande. No battle however took place; some clergy who were happily at hand stepped in as mediators, and after a long negotiation peace was arranged. The count of Anjou again granted the investiture of Maine to Robert of Normandy, and, like his predecessor, received the young man’s homage to himself as overlord.[525] Like the treaty of Alençon, the treaty of Blanchelande was a mere formal compromise; William kept it a dead letter by steadily refusing to make over Maine to his son, and holding it as before by the right of his own good sword. A few years later Fulk succeeded in accomplishing his vengeance upon John of La Flèche by taking and burning his castle;[526] but the expedition seems to have been a mere border-raid, and so long as William lived neither native patriotism nor Angevin meddlesomeness ventured again to question his supremacy over Maine.

- [520] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 175 et seq.

- [521] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 33 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 308).

- [522] Eng. Chron. a. 1074.

- [523] See note D at end of chapter.

- [524] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533. See note E at end of chapter.

- [525] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533.

- [526] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1081 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 26). See note E at end of chapter.

But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by the treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent. From the moment when Robert came into actual possession of the fief with which he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the Angevin overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The action of the Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself upon Fulk’s support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at the first ray of hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his Norman duchy and quarrels with his brother the king of England, and their attitude grew so alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at Rouen, sent for the count of Anjou and in a personal interview besought him to use his influence in preventing their threatened revolt. Fulk consented, on condition that, as the price of his good offices, Robert should obtain for him the hand of a beautiful Norman lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527] Fulk’s domestic life was as shameless as his public career. He had already one wife dead and two living; Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he had married in 1070[528] and who was the mother of his heir,[529] had been abandoned in 1075 without even the formality of a divorce for Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;[530] and Arengard was now set aside in her turn to make way for Bertrada.[531] These scandals had already brought Fulk under a Papal sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a further punishment at the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him simply as a stepping-stone to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093 she eloped with King Philip of France.[533]

- [527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681.

- [528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070.

- [529] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 140.

- [530] According to a charter in Marchegay, Documents inédits sur l’Anjou, p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the feast of S. Agnes (January 21) 1075—i.e. what we call 1076, as the year was usually reckoned in Gaul from Easter to Easter; see editor’s note 4, as above. The Art de vérifier les dates, however (vol. xiii. p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s collection where the marriage is dated 1087.

- [531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681, seems to date Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon. Magn. puts it in 1091 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 128); but a charter in Marchegay, Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. p. 365, shows that it had already taken place in April 1090.

- [532] Gregor. VII. Epp., l. ix. ep. 22. Fulk’s violence to the archbishop of Tours had also something to do with his excommunication; see ib. ep. 23; Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1081 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 126), and Narratio Controversiæ in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 459. So too had his imprisonment of his brother; Rer. Gall. Scriptt. as above, p. 664, note.

- [533] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1093 (as above, p. 128).

By that time Maine was again in revolt. The leader of the rising was young Elias of La Flèche, a son of John and Paula; but his place was soon taken by the veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose treasons seem to have been forgiven and forgotten, and who now once more installed Hugh of Este as count at Le Mans. Hugh proved however utterly unfit for his honourable but dangerous position, and gladly sold his claims to his cousin Elias.[534] For nearly six years the Cenomannians were free to rejoice in a ruler of their own blood and their own spirit. We must go to the historian of his enemies if we would hear his praises sung;[535] his own people had no need to praise him in words; for them he was simply the incarnation of Cenomannian freedom; his bright, warm-hearted, impulsive nature spoke for itself. The strength as well as the charm of his character lay in its perfect sincerity; its faults were as undisguised as its virtues. In the gloomy tale of public wrong and private vice which makes up the history of the time—the time of Fulk Rechin, Philip I. and William Rufus—the only figure which shines out bright against the darkness, except the figure of S. Anselm himself, is that of Count Elias of Maine.

- [534] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 34 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.), pp. 310–312. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 683, 684.

- [535] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 768, 769.

During these years Anjou interfered with him as little as Normandy; Fulk was overwhelmed with domestic and ecclesiastical troubles. His excommunication was at length removed in 1094;[536] two years later Pope Urban II., on his way to preach the Crusade in western Gaul, was received by the count at Angers and consecrated the abbey church of S. Nicolas, now at length brought to completion.[537] From Angers Urban passed to Tours and Le Mans; and among the many hearts stirred by his call to take the cross there can have been few more earnest than that of Elias of Maine. Robert of Normandy was already gone, leaving his dominions pledged to his brother the king of England. Elias prepared to follow him; but when his request to William Rufus for the protection due to a crusader’s lands during his absence was met by a declaration of the Red King’s resolve to regain all the territories which had been held by his father, the count of Maine saw that he must fight out his crusade not in Holy Land but at home. The struggle had scarcely begun when he was taken prisoner by Robert of Bellême, and sent in chains to the king at Rouen.[538] The people of Maine, whose political existence seemed bound up in their count, were utterly crushed by his loss. But there was another enemy to be faced. Aremburg, the only child of Elias, was betrothed to Fulk Rechin’s eldest son, Geoffrey,[539] whose youthful valour had won him the surname of “Martel the Second;” Geoffrey hurried to save the heritage of his bride, and Fulk was no less eager to seize the opportunity of asserting once more his rights to the overlordship of Maine.[540] The Cenomannians gladly welcomed the only help that was offered them; and while Geoffrey reinforced the garrison of Le Mans, Fulk tried to effect a diversion on the border.[541] But meanwhile Elias had guessed his design, and frustrated it by making terms with the Norman.[542] If Maine must needs bow to a foreign yoke, even William Rufus was at least a better master than Fulk Rechin. To William, therefore, Elias surrendered his county as the price of his own release;[543] and to William he offered his services with the trustful frankness of a heart to which malice was unknown. The offer was refused. Then, from its very ashes, the spirit of Cenomannian freedom rose up once more, and for the second time Elias hurled his defiance at the Red King. An Angevin count in William’s place would probably have flung the bold speaker straight back into the dungeon whence he had come; the haughty chivalry of the Norman only bade him begone and do his worst.[544] In the spring Elias fought his way back to Le Mans, where the people welcomed him with clamorous delight; William’s unexpected approach, however, soon compelled him to withdraw;[545] and Maine had to wait two more years for her deliverance. It came with the news of the Red King’s death in August 1100. Robert of Normandy was too indolent, Henry of England too wise, to answer the appeal for succour made to each in turn by the Norman garrison of Le Mans; Elias received their submission and sent them home in peace;[546] and thenceforth the foreign oppressor trod the soil of Maine no more. When the final struggle for Normandy broke out between Robert and Henry, Elias, with characteristic good sense, commended himself to the one overlord whom he saw to be worthy of his homage.[547] Henry was wise enough loyally to accept the service and the friendship which Rufus had scorned; and he proved its value on the field of Tinchebray, where Elias and his Cenomannians decided the battle in his favour, and thus made him master of Normandy. On the other hand, the dread of Angevin tyranny had changed into a glad anticipation of peaceful and equal union. The long battle of Cenomannian freedom, so often baffled and so often renewed, was won at last. When next a duke of Normandy disputed the possession of Maine with a count of Anjou, he disputed it not with a rival oppressor but with the husband of its countess, the lawful heir of Elias; and the triumph of Cenomannia received its fitting crown when Henry’s daughter wedded Aremburg’s son in the minster of S. Julian at Le Mans.

[536] Letter of the legate, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, dated S. Florence of Saumur, S. John Baptist’s day, 1094; Gallia Christiana, vol. iv., instrum. cols. 10, 11.

[537] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., a. 1095 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 14, 27, 140); Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1096 (ib. p. 411). This last is the right year; see the itinerary of Pope Urban in Gaul, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 3 note m, and 65 note d.

[538] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 769–771. Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 313). The exact date of the capture is April 20, 1098; Chron. S. Albin. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 28).

[539] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 313). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142.

[540] “Quia capitalis dominus erat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 772.

[541] Ibid. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[542] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above), p. 314.

[543] Ibid. Ord. Vit., as above.

[544] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 773.

[545] Ib. pp. 774, 775. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[546] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 784, 785.

[547] Ib. p. 822.

The union of Anjou and Maine did not, however, come to pass exactly as it had been first planned; Aremburg became the wife of an Angevin count, but he was not Geoffrey Martel the Second. That marriage, long deferred by reason of the bride’s youth, was frustrated in the end by the death of the bridegroom. His life had been far from an easy one. Fulk, prematurely worn out by a life of vice, had for some years past made over the cares of government to Geoffrey.[548] Father and son agreed as ill as their namesakes in a past generation; but this time the fault was not on the young man’s side. Geoffrey, while spending all his energies in doing his father’s work, saw himself supplanted in that father’s affection by his little half-brother, Bertrada’s child. He found a friend in his unhappy uncle, Geoffrey the Bearded, whose reason had been almost destroyed by half a lifetime of captivity; and a touching story relates how the imprisoned count in a lucid interval expressed his admiration for his nephew’s character, and voluntarily renounced in his favour the rights which he still persisted in maintaining against Fulk.[549] On the strength of this renunciation Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban, at length extorted his father’s consent to the liberation of the captive. It was, however, too late to be of much avail; reason and health were both alike gone, and all that the victim gained by his nephew’s care was that, when he died shortly after, he at least died a free man.[550] His bequest availed as little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly announced his intention of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of Bertrada’s child. A brief struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the duke of Aquitaine and Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk’s abdication. For three years Geoffrey ruled well and prosperously,[551] till in May 1106, as he was besieging a rebellious vassal in the castle of Candé on the Loire, he was struck by a poisoned arrow and died next morning.[552] The bitter regrets of his people, as they laid him to sleep beside his great-uncle in the church of S. Nicolas at Angers,[553] were intensified by a horrible suspicion that his death had been contrived by Bertrada, and that Fulk himself condoned her crime.[554] It is doubtful whether her child, who now had to take his brother’s place, had even grown up among his own people; she had perhaps carried her baby with her, or persuaded the weak count to let her have him and bring him up at court; there, at any rate, he was at the time of Geoffrey’s death. Philip granted him the investiture of Anjou in Geoffrey’s stead, and commissioned Duke William of Aquitaine, who happened to be at court, to escort him safe home to his father. The Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into his own territories, and there put him in prison. Philip’s threats, Bertrada’s persuasions, alike proved unavailing, till the boy’s own father purchased his release by giving up some border-towns to Poitou, and after a year’s captivity young Fulk at last came home.[555] Two years later, on April 14, 1109, he was left sole count of Anjou by the death of Fulk Rechin.[556]

[548] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 130).

[549] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 141.

[550] Ibid. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 128). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 723.

[551] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1103–1105 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 30).

[552] Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 15, 16, 30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three first-named chronicles give the day as May 19, the Chron. S. Maxent. makes it May 26, and according to M. Marchegay’s note (as above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June 1. This, however, might be owing to an accidental omission of the “xiv.” (or “vii.”) before Kal. Junii. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142, places the death a year later.

[553] Ord. Vit. and Gesta Cons. as above.

[554] Gesta Cons. as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 130). See also a quotation from Le Pelletier’s Epitome S. Nicolai, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 486, note.

[555] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1, has a different version, which does not look authentic.

[556] Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Maxent. (ib. pp. 143, 424), date it 1108.

“Ill he began; worse he lived; worst of all he ended.”[557] Such is the verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we should have been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history. Fulk Rechin’s utter worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of Geoffrey Martel and Fulk the Black; amid the wreck of the Angevin power in his hands, the only result of their labours which seemed still to remain was the mere territorial advantage involved in the possession of Touraine. Politically, Anjou had sunk far below the position which she had held in the Black Count’s earliest days; she had not merely ceased to be a match for the greatest princes of the realm, she had ceased to be a power in the realm at all. The title of count of Anjou, for nearly a hundred years a very synonym of energy and progress, had become identified with weakness and disgrace. The black cloud of ruin seemed to be settling down over the marchland, only waiting its appointed time to burst and pour upon her its torrent of destruction. It proved to be only the dark hour before the dawn of the brightest day that Anjou had seen since her great Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Beaulieu—perhaps even since her good Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Tours.

- [557] Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 360.

Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had succeeded his father Philip as king of France.[558] His accession marks an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-point in the struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with each other for control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the rivalry between Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the whole history of the first three generations of the kingly house founded by Hugh Capet. The royal authority was a mere name; but that name was still the centre round which the whole complicated system of French feudalism revolved; it was the one point of cohesion among the various and ill-assorted members which made up the realm of France, in the wider sense which that word was now beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any one of the great fiefs—Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine—was far more really powerful and independent than the king, who was nominally the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of each in turn. In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there was, however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled it to swallow up and outlive all its rivals. The end was as yet far distant; but the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was crowned at Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty-two he ascended the throne with a fixed determination to secure such an absolute authority within the immediate domains of the Crown as should enable him to become the master instead of the servant of his feudataries.

- [558] Hist. Franc. Fragm. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.), p. 7.

This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry of England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry’s homage for the duchy;[559] and it may have been to avoid the necessity of performing this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems, refrained from formally assuming the ducal title, at least so long as his captive brother lived.[560] Whatever may have been his motive, the fact aptly typifies his political position. Alike in French and English eyes, he was a king of England ruling Normandy as a dependency of the English Crown. Such a personage was far more obnoxious to Louis and his projects than a mere duke of the Normans, or even a duke of the Normans ruling England as a dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand, Henry, in the new position given him by his conquest, had every reason to look with jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France. The uncertain relations between the two kings therefore soon took an openly hostile turn. In 1110 a quarrel arose between them concerning the ownership of the great border-fortress of Gisors. They met near the spot, each at the head of an army; but they parted again after wasting a day in fruitless recriminations and empty challenges.[561] Their jealousy was quickened by a dispute, also connected with the possession of a castle, between Louis and Henry’s nephew Theobald count of Blois.[562] Uncle and nephew made common cause against their common enemy; but the strife had scarcely begun when a further complication destined to be of far weightier consequence, if not to France at least to England, arose out of the position and policy of the young count of Anjou.

- [559] See Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 193.

- [560] Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 180 and note 2.

- [561] Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 15 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 27, 28).

- [562] Ib. c. 18 (pp. 35, 36).

The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a new era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not unlike each other: each stands out in marked contrast to his predecessor, and in Fulk’s case the contrast is even more striking than in that of Louis, for if little good was to be expected of the son of Philip I., there might well be even less hope of the child of Fulk Rechin and Bertrada. As a ruler and as a man, however, young Fulk turned utterly aside from the evil ways of both his parents.[563] Yet he was an Angevin of the Angevins; physically, he had the ruddy complexion inherited from the first of his race and name;[564] while in his restless, adventurous temper, at once impetuous and wary, daring and discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-grandfather Fulk the Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk V. only as if to remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-blood of Anjou still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept under subjection to higher influences; the sense of right that only woke now and then to torture the conscience of the Black Count seems to be the guiding principle of his great-grandson’s life. The evil influences which must have surrounded his boyhood, whether it had been passed in his father’s house, or, as seems more probable, in the court of Philip and Bertrada, seem, instead of developing the worse tendencies of his nature, only to have brought out the better ones into more active working by sheer force of opposition. Politically, however, there can be no doubt that the peculiar circumstances of his early life led to important results, by reviving and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown which had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin’s days. The most trusted counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not unfrequently the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression, was Almeric of Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after persecuting Louis by every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an ally as she had been a dangerous enemy. Almeric’s influence, won by his own talents, seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king; over the count of Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s own mother. Their policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of the French crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I.

- [563] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143.

- [564] “Vir rufus, sed instar David.” Will. Tyr. l. xiv. c. 1.

The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed; Fulk, by his mother’s counsel, sought and won her for his wife.[565] Her marriage crowned the work of Elias. The patriot-count’s mission was fulfilled, his task was done; and in that very summer he passed to his well-earned rest.[566] Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became count of Maine, and the immediate consequence was a breach with Henry on the long-vexed question of the overlordship of the county. Whether Elias had or had not recognized any right of overlordship in Fulk Rechin or Geoffrey Martel II. is not clear; he certainly seems to have done homage to Henry,[567] and their mutual relations as lord and vassal were highly honourable to both; but it was hardly to be expected that Fulk, whose predecessors had twice received the homage of Henry’s elder brother for that very county, should yield up without a struggle the rights of the count of Anjou. He refused all submission to Henry, and at once formed a league with the French Crown in active opposition to the lord of England and Normandy.

- [565] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 818. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143. Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1.

- [566] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1110 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 31, 143). Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 839.

- [567] “Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie of tham cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow.” Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Nobody seems to know what “on cweow” means; Mr. Thorpe (Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211) suggests that it may stand for “Angeow.”

The war began in 1111, and the danger was great enough to call Henry himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for nearly two years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou, whose marriage enabled him to add the famous “Cenomannian swords” to the forces of Touraine and the Angevin March.[568] Moreover, treason was, as usual, rife among the Norman barons; and the worst of all the traitors was Robert of Bellême. One after another the lesser offenders were brought to justice; at last, in November 1112, Robert himself fell into the hands of his outraged sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both sides of the sea, was flung into a lifelong captivity.[569] Then at last Henry felt secure in Normandy; the capture of Robert was followed by the surrender of his fortress of Alençon, and the tide of fortune turned so rapidly that Fulk and Louis were soon compelled to sue for peace. Early in Lent 1113 Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near Alençon; the count submitted to perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant daughter was betrothed to Henry’s son, the little Ætheling William. In March the treaty was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors; and as the first-fruits of their new alliance there was seen the strange spectacle of a count of Anjou and a count of Blois fighting side by side to help the lord of Normandy in subduing the rebels who still held out in the castle of Bellême.[570]

- [568] Eng. Chron. a. 1111, 1112.

- [569] Eng. Chron. a. 1112. Ord. Vit. (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 841, 858. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 626).

- [570] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 841.

Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571] This ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was himself the aggressor; Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not clearly ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against their lord had probably something to do with it; but there seems also to have been another and a far more interesting element at work. “There arose a grave dissension between Count Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers.”[572] In this provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which was just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI. and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias of Le Mans; but the faint echo of the dispute between count and citizens is drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with Theobald himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis retaliated by a raid upon Normandy; the Norman barons recommenced their old intrigues;[573] and they were soon furnished with an excellent pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert’s infant son William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle to the care of his half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-Saëns. Elias presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the child; at once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled with his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands, seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of Flanders.[574] At last the faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by seeing the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and Louis. In 1117 they leagued themselves together with the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son in the duchy of Normandy; and their league was at once joined by the count of Anjou.[575]

- [571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 69. Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 237.

- [572] “Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem Juniorem et burgenses Andecavenses.” Chron. S. Serg. a. 1116 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 143). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1114 (ib. p. 32) has “Guerra burgensium contra comitem”; but M. Marchegay says in a note that two MSS. read “baronum” for “burgensium.”

- [573] See details in Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 843.

- [574] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 837, 838.

- [575] Eng. Chron. a. 1117. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 239).

The quarrel had now assumed an aspect far more threatening to Henry; but it was not till the middle of the following summer that the war began in earnest. Its first honours were won by the count of Anjou, in the capture of La Motte-Gautier, a fortress on the Cenomannian border.[576] In September the count of Flanders was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Eu;[577] Louis and Fulk had however more useful allies in the Norman baronage, whose chiefs were nearly all either openly or secretly in league with them. Almeric of Montfort, who claimed the county of Evreux, was the life and soul of all their schemes. In October the city of Evreux was betrayed into his hands;[578] and this disaster was followed by another at Alençon. Henry had granted the lands of Robert of Bellême to Theobald of Blois; Theobald, with his uncle’s permission, made them over to his brother Stephen; and Stephen at once began to shew in his small dominions the same incapacity for keeping order which he shewed afterwards on a larger scale in England. His negligence brought matters at Alençon to such a pass that the outraged citizens called in the help of the count of Anjou, admitted him and his troops by night into the town, and joined with him in blockading the castle.[579] Stephen meanwhile had joined his uncle and brother at Séez. On receipt of the evil tidings, the two young counts hurried back to Alençon, made an unsuccessful attempt to revictual the garrison, and then tried to surround the Angevin camp, which had been pitched in a place called “the Park.” A long day’s fighting, in which the tide seems to have been turned at last chiefly by the valour of Fulk himself, ended in an Angevin victory and won him the surrender of Alençon.[580]

- [576] Ord. Vit. (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 844. His chronology is all wrong.

- [577] Ib. p. 843. Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 45). Eng. Chron. a. 1118. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 403 (Hardy, pp. 630, 631) substitutes Arques for Eu.

- [578] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 843, 846.

- [579] Ib. p. 847.

- [580] The details of this story—in a very apocryphal-looking shape—are in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 145–150. The Angevin victory, however, comes out clearly in Ord. Vit. (as above).

The following year was for Henry an almost unbroken series of reverses and misfortunes, and in 1119 he was compelled to seek peace with Fulk. Their treaty was ratified in June by the marriage of William the Ætheling and Matilda of Anjou; Fulk made an attempt to end the Cenomannian difficulty by settling Maine upon his daughter as a marriage-portion,[581] and gave up Alençon on condition that Henry should restore it to the dispossessed heir, William Talvas.[582] Henry had now to face only the French king and the traitor barons. With the latter he began at once by firing the town of Evreux.[583] Louis, on receiving these tidings from Almeric of Montfort, assembled his troops at Etampes and marched upon Normandy. In the plain of Brenneville, between Noyon and Andely, he was met by Henry with the flower of his English and Norman forces. Louis, in the insane bravado of chivalry, disdained to get his men into order before beginning the attack, and he thereby lost the day. The first charge, made by eighty French knights under a Norman traitor, William Crispin, broke against the serried ranks of the English fighting on foot around their king; all the eighty were surrounded and made prisoners; and the rest of the French army was put to such headlong flight that, if the Norman tale can be true, out of nine hundred knights only three were found dead on the field. Louis himself, unhorsed in the confusion, escaped alone into a wood where he lost his way, and was finally led back to Andely by a peasant ignorant of his rank.[584] In bitter shame he went home to Paris to seek comfort and counsel of Almeric, who, luckily for both, had had no share in this disastrous expedition. By Almeric’s advice a summons was issued to all bishops, counts, and other persons in authority throughout the realm, bidding them stir up their people, on pain of anathema, to come and help the king. The plan seems to have had much the same result as a calling-out of the “fyrd” in England, and the host which it brought together inflicted terrible ravages upon Normandy. In October Louis sought help in another quarter. Pope Calixtus had come to hold a council at Reims; the ecclesiastical business ended, he had to listen to a string of appeals in all sorts of causes, and the first appellant was the king of France, who came before the Pope in person and set forth a detailed list of complaints against Henry. The archbishop of Rouen rose to defend his sovereign, but the council refused to hear him. Calixtus, however, was on too dangerous terms with Henry of Germany to venture upon anathematizing his father-in-law, Henry of England; and in a personal interview at Gisors, in November, the English king vindicated himself to the Pope’s complete satisfaction. The tide had turned once more. Almeric had been won over by a grant of the coveted honour of Evreux; and his defection from Louis was followed by that of all the other rebel Normans in rapid succession. William the Clito—as Duke Robert’s son is called, to distinguish him from his cousin William the Ætheling—was again driven into exile, with his faithful brother-in-law still at his side; a treaty was arranged between Henry and Louis; all castles were to be restored, all captives freed, and all wrongs forgiven and forgotten.[585]

- [581] Ord. Vit. (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 851. Eng. Chron. a. 1119. Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 45). Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652).

- [582] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [583] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 852.

- [584] Ib. pp. 853–855. See also Eng. Chron. a. 1119, Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 241), and Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 45).

- [585] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 858, 859, 863–866. Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1120.

We seem to be reading the story of Fulk Nerra over again as we are told how his great-grandson, as soon as peace seemed assured and he was reconciled to all his neighbours, desired also by penance for his sins to become reconciled to God, and leaving his dominions in charge of his wife and their two little sons, set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[586] The “lord of three cities,”[587] however, could not leave his territories to take care of themselves as the Black Count seems to have done; the regency of his boys was merely nominal, for the eldest of them was but seven years old; and though their mother, the daughter of Elias, may well have been a wise and courageous woman, it was no light matter thus to leave her alone with the rival kings on each side of her. To guard against all dangers, therefore, Fulk again formally commended the county of Maine to King Henry as overlord during his own life, and bequeathed it to his son-in-law the Ætheling in case he should not return.[588] Two months before his departure, the cathedral of Le Mans, which had just been rebuilt, was consecrated in his presence and that of his wife. At the close of the ceremony he took up his little son Geoffrey in his arms and placed him on the altar, saying with tears: “O holy Julian, to thee I commend my child and my land, that thou mayest be the defender and protector of both!”[589] The yearning which drew him literally to tread in his great-grandfather’s steps was too strong to be repressed; but he went,[590] it is clear, with anxious and gloomy forebodings; and before he reached his home again those forebodings were fulfilled. The treaty that had promised so well was scattered to the winds on November 25, 1120, by the death of William the Ætheling in the wreck of the White Ship.[591]

- [586] Ord. Vit. (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 871.

- [587] “Trium urbium dominus.” I think it is Orderic who somewhere thus expressively designates the lord of Angers and Le Mans and Tours.

- [588] This seems to be the meaning of Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652); “Quin et Ierosolymam Fulco ire contendens, comitatum commendavit regi suum, si viveret; futurum profecto generi, si non rediret.” The “county” in question can only be Maine, of the gift of which to the Ætheling at his marriage William has just been speaking.

- [589] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 318).

- [590] In company with Rainald, bishop of Angers, in 1120. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 32, 190).

- [591] Eng. Chron. a. 1120; Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, pp. 653, 654); Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 242); Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 288, 289; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 868, 869, etc.

In that wreck perished not merely Fulk’s hopes for the settlement of Maine, but Henry’s hopes for the settlement of England and Normandy. Setting aside the father’s personal grief for the loss of his favourite child, the Ætheling’s death was the most terrible political blow that could have fallen upon Henry. All his hopes for the continuance of his work were bound up in the life of his son. The toils and struggles of twenty years would be little more than lost labour unless he could guard against two dangers which had been the bane of both England and Normandy ever since the Conqueror’s death:—a disputed succession to the English throne, and a separation between the insular and the continental dominions of the ducal house. In the person of William the Ætheling both dangers seemed provided against; if Henry lived but a few years more, there was every reason to expect that William, and William alone among the Conqueror’s surviving descendants, would be able to mount the English throne without opposition. On any accepted principle, his only possible competitor would have been his cousin and namesake the Clito. Neither people nor barons would have been likely to think for a moment of setting aside the son of their crowned king and queen—a king born in the land and a queen who represented the ancient blood-royal of England—for a landless, homeless stranger whose sole claim rested on the fact that by strict rule of primogeniture he was the heir male of the Conqueror; and, once master of England, William might fairly be expected to keep his hold upon Normandy as his father had done. The shipwreck of November 1120, however, left Henry suddenly face to face with the almost certain prospect of being succeeded in all his dominions by his brother’s son, his enemy, the rival of his lost boy, the one person of all others whose succession would be most repugnant alike to his feelings and to his policy. As soon as Henry himself was gone, the Clito would have positively no competitor; for of all Henry’s surviving children, the only one who had any legal rights was a daughter. The future of Henry’s policy had hung upon the thread of a single life, and now the silver cord was loosed.

The Ætheling’s child-widow was in England: on that sad night she had crossed with her father-in-law instead of her husband, and thus escaped sharing the latter’s fate. Fulk at once sent to demand his daughter back;[592] but Henry was unwilling to part from her, and kept her constantly with him as if she were his own child, till the little girl herself begged to see her own parents again, and was allowed to return to Angers.[593] Henry seems really to have clung to her as a sort of legacy from his dead son; but, to Fulk’s great indignation, he kept her dowry as well as herself.[594] An embassy sent to England at Christmas 1122—apparently after her return to Anjou—came back without success after a delay of several months and a stormy parting from the king.[595] The most important part of the dowry however was still in Fulk’s own hands. His settlement of Maine upon William and Matilda and their possible posterity was annulled by William’s death; Fulk was once more free to dispose of the county as he would. Regarding all ties with Henry as broken, and urged at once by Almeric of Montfort and Louis of France, he offered it, with the hand of his second daughter Sibyl, to William the Clito.[596]

- [592] Eng. Chron. a. 1121.

- [593] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 875.

- [594] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 655).

- [595] Eng. Chron. a. 1123.

- [596] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 838, 876. Eng. Chron. a. 1124. Will. Malm. as above (p. 654).

To the threatening attitude of France and Anjou was added, as a natural consequence, a conspiracy among the Norman barons, headed by the arch-plotter Almeric and the young Count Waleran of Meulan, a son of Henry’s own familiar friend. Their scheme, planned at a meeting held in September at the Croix-Saint-Leuffroy, was discovered by the king; he marched at once upon Waleran’s castle of Pontaudemer, and took it after a six weeks’ siege, during which he worked in the trenches as hard as any young soldier. This success was counterbalanced by the loss of Gisors, which was taken and sacked by Almeric; Henry retaliated by seizing Evreux. Advent and a stormy winter checked the strife; one battle in the spring put an end to it. On March 25, 1124, the rebels were met at Bourgthéroulde by Ralf of Bayeux, who commanded at Evreux for King Henry; despite their superior numbers, they were completely defeated, and Waleran was taken prisoner.[597] His capture was followed by the surrender of his castles; Almeric, who had as usual escaped, again made his peace with Henry; and the Clito’s cause, forsaken by his Norman partizans, was left almost wholly dependent on the support of Anjou.[598] Meanwhile Henry had found an ally in his son-in-law and namesake the Emperor, and in August France was threatened with a German invasion. Louis seized the consecrated banner—the famous Oriflamme—which hung above the high altar in the abbey of S. Denis, and hurried off with it, as Geoffrey Martel had once ridden forth with the standard of S. Martin of Tours, to meet the foe. But the invasion came to an unexpected end. For some reason which is not explained, the Emperor turned suddenly homeward without striking a blow.[599]

- [597] Eng. Chron. a. 1124. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 876–880. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 21 (ib. p. 302). The date comes from the Chronicle; the continuator of Will. Jumièges makes it a day later.

- [598] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 880–882.

- [599] Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 49, 50).

The English king found a more useful friend in the Pope than in the Emperor. By dint of threats, promises and bribes, he persuaded the court of Rome to annul the marriage of Sibyl and the Clito on the ground of consanguinity.[600] Of their kinship there is no doubt;[601] but it was in exactly the same degree as the kinship between Henry’s own son and Sibyl’s sister, to whose marriage no objection had ever been raised. The Clito refused to give up his bride, and was thereupon excommunicated by the Pope;[602] Fulk publicly burnt the letter in which the legate insisted upon the dissolution of the marriage, singed the beards of the envoys who carried it, and put them in prison for a fortnight. The consequence was an interdict[603] which compelled him to submit; the new-married couple parted, and William the Clito became a wanderer once more.[604]

- [600] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 838.

- [601] They were descended, one in the fifth, the other in the sixth degree, from Richard the Fearless; Ord. Vit. as above, giving details of the pedigree.

- [602] Brief of Calixtus II., August 26 [1124], in D’Achéry, Spicilegium, vol. iii. p. 479.

- [603] Brief of Honorius II., April 12 [1125], ibid.

- [604] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 882.

Next Christmas Henry struck his final blow at his nephew’s hopes of the succession. An old tradition which declared that whatsoever disturber of the realm of France was brought face to face with the might of S. Denis would die within a twelvemonth was fulfilled in the person of the Emperor Henry V.[605] His widow, the only surviving child of Henry of England and the “Good Queen Maude,” was summoned back to her father’s court.[606] She came not without regret, for she had dwelt from childhood among her husband’s people, and was held by them in great esteem. The dying Emperor had no child to take his place. He had committed his sceptre to his consort;[607] and some of the princes of Lombardy and Lorraine took this symbolical bequest in such earnest that they actually followed Matilda over sea to demand her back as their sovereign.[608] But King Henry had other plans for his daughter. At the midwinter assembly of 1126–1127 he made the barons and prelates of England swear that in case of his death without lawful son they would acknowledge her as Lady of England and Normandy.[609]

- [605] Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 52). Henry V. died in Whit-week, 1125; Ord. Vit. (as above)·/·(Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.) p. 882).

- [606] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 304). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 1 (Hardy, p. 689). She went to England with her father in September 1126. Eng. Chron. ad ann.

- [607] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [608] Will. Jumièges Contin. and Will. Malm. as above.

- [609] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 304). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. cc. 2, 3 (Hardy, pp. 690–692).

The first result of this unprecedented step was that the king of France set himself to thwart it by again taking up the cause of William the Clito, offering him, as compensation for the loss of Sibyl and Maine, a grant of the French Vexin and a bride whom not even Rome could make out to be his cousin—Jane of Montferrat, half-sister to Louis’s own queen.[610] Two months later the count of Flanders was murdered at Bruges. He was childless; the king of France adjudged his fief to William the Clito as great-grandson of Count Baldwin V., and speedily put him in possession of the greater part of the county.[611] Henry’s daring scheme now seemed all but hopeless. His only chance was to make peace with some one at least of his adversaries; and the one whom he chose was not the king of France, but the count of Anjou. He saw—and Fulk saw it too—that until the question about Maine was settled there could be no lasting security, and that it could only be settled effectually by the union of all conflicting claims in a single hand. For such an union the way was now clear. The heir of Anjou was growing up to manhood; the chosen successor of Henry was a childless widow. Regardless of his promise not to give his daughter in marriage to any one out of the realm[612]—regardless of the scorn of both Normans and English,[613] of the Empress’s own reluctance,[614] and also of the kindred between the houses of Normandy and Anjou—Henry sent Matilda over sea shortly after Pentecost 1127 under the care of her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester and Count Brian of Britanny, who were charged with instructions to the archbishop of Rouen to make arrangements for her marriage with Geoffrey Plantagenet, eldest son of the count of Anjou. In the last week of August the king himself followed them;[615] at the following Whitsuntide he knighted Geoffrey at Rouen with his own hand;[616] and eight days later Geoffrey and Matilda were wedded by the bishop of Avranches in the cathedral church of S. Julian at Le Mans.[617]

- [610] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 884. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 151.

- [611] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 884, 885. See the Flemish Chronicles in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii.

- [612] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693).

- [613] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. “Hit ofthute nathema ealle Frencisc and Englisc.”

- [614] Will. Jumièges Contin. as above, l. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 304).

- [615] Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692). Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247).

- [616] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 234–236.

- [617] Ib. p. 236. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt.), p. 889. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 321). On the date see note F at end of chapter.

It was a triumphant day for Fulk; but more triumphant still was the day when he and Geoffrey brought the new countess home to Angers. A large part of the barons and prelates who filled S. Julian’s minster on the wedding-day were Normans who in their inmost souls viewed with mingled rage and shame what they held to be the degradation of the Norman ducal house; a large part of the crowd who with their lips cheered the bridal procession as it passed through the streets of Le Mans were all the while cursing in their hearts the Angevin foe of Normandy.[618] But in Fulk’s own capital the rejoicings were universal and unalloyed. Many a brilliant match had been made by the house of Anjou, from that wedding with the heiress of Amboise which had been the beginning of its founder’s fortunes, down to Fulk’s own marriage, only seventeen years ago, with Aremburg of Maine; but never before had Black Angers welcomed such a bride as King Henry’s daughter. A writer of the next generation has left us a picture of Angers as it was in his days—days when the son of Geoffrey and Matilda was king of England and count of Anjou. In its main features that picture is almost as true a likeness now as it can have been seven hundred years ago, and by its help we can easily recall the scene of the bride’s homecoming. We can see the eager citizens swarming along the narrow, crooked streets that furrow the steep hill-side;—the clergy in their richest vestments assembling from every church in what is still, as it was then, emphatically a city of churches, and mustering probably on the very summit of the hill, in the open space before the cathedral—not the cathedral whose white twin spires now soar above all things around, the centre and the crown of Angers, but its Romanesque predecessor, crowned doubtless by a companion rather than a rival to the neighbouring dark tower of S. Aubin’s abbey, which now contrasts so vividly with the light pinnacles of S. Maurice. Thence, at a given signal, the procession streamed down with lighted tapers and waving banners to the northern gate of the city, and with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, half drowned in the shouting of the people and the clang of the bells overhead, led the new countess to her dwelling in the hall of Fulk the Black. It was Fulk who had made the first rude plans for the edifice of statesmanship which had now all but reached its last and loftiest stage. The unconscious praise of the Black Count was in every shout which beneath his palace-windows hailed in the person of his worthiest namesake and descendant the triumph of the house of Anjou.

- [618] I think this may be safely inferred from the English Chronicler’s words a. 1127 (above, p. 243, note 5{613}), and from a singularly suggestive passage in the account of the wedding festivities in Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above·/·Marchegay, Comtes), p. 237: “Clamatum est voce præconis ne quis indigena vel advena, dives, mediocris vel pauper, nobilis vel plebeius, miles vel colonus ex hâc regali lætitiâ se subtraheret; qui autem gaudiis nuptialibus minime interesset, regiæ procul dubio majestatis reus esset.”

There was no mother to welcome Geoffrey and his bride; Aremburg had not lived to see the marriage of her son;[619] and now the shadow of another coming separation fell over the mutual congratulations of Fulk and of his people. Another royal father besides Henry was seeking an Angevin bridegroom for his daughter and an Angevin successor to his throne. It was now just thirty years since the acclamations of the crusading host had chosen Godfrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem. The crown, which he in his humility declined to wear, passed after his death to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, and then to another Baldwin, of the noble family of Réthel in Champagne. After a busy reign of ten years, Baldwin II., having no son, grew anxious to find a suitable husband for his eldest daughter and destined heiress, Melisenda. In the spring of 1128, with the unanimous approval of his subjects, he offered her hand, together with his crown, to Count Fulk of Anjou.[620] He could not have chosen a fitter man. Fulk was in the prime of life,[621] young enough to bring to his task all the vigour and energy needful to withstand the ever-encroaching Infidels, yet old enough to have learned political caution and experience; and if the one qualification was needed for defence against external foes, the other was no less so for steering a safe course amid the endless jealousies of the Frank princes in Palestine. Moreover, Fulk was known in the East by something more than reputation. Free of all connexion with the internal disputes of the realm, he was yet no utter stranger who would come thither as a mere foreign interloper. He had dwelt there for a whole year as a guest and a friend, and the memory of his visit had been kept alive in the minds of the people of the land, as well as in his own, by a yearly contribution which, amid all his cares and necessities at home, he had never failed to send to the Knights of the Temple for the defence of the Holy City.[622] Baldwin had thus every inducement to make the offer; and Fulk had equally good reasons for accepting it. His was clearly no case of mere vulgar longing after a crown. There may have been a natural feeling that it would be well to put Geoffrey’s father on a titular level with Matilda’s; if the prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was already in circulation, there may have been also a feeling that it was rapidly approaching its fulfilment. But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in temper to be dazzled by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and Aquitaine had ever been; he must have known that the consort of the queen of Jerusalem would find little rest upon her throne. But this second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It was work that he longed for: and work at home was at an end for him. The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished; when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence. Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin’s proposal come a year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and duty; coming as it did just after Henry’s, it extricated all parties from their last difficulty.

- [619] She died in 1126; Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 190). A story of her last illness, in Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 320), is very characteristic of Fulk, and indicates, too, that whether or not his marriage with her began in policy alone, it ended in real affection.

- [620] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.) p. 321.

- [621] He cannot have been more than thirty-eight; he may have been only thirty-six.

- [622] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 871). Will. Tyr. as above.

Fulk could not, however, accept the proposal without the consent of his overlord King Louis and that of his own subjects.[623] Both were granted; his people had prospered under him, but they, too, doubtless saw that alike for him and for them it was time to part. On that same Whit-Sunday when young Geoffrey was knighted at Rouen by King Henry, his father, prostrate before the high altar in the cathedral church of Tours, took the cross at the hands of Archbishop Hildebert.[624] From the wedding festivities at Le Mans he came home to make his preparations for departure. It may be that once more in the old hall overlooking the Mayenne the barons of Anjou and Touraine gathered round the last Count Fulk, to be solemnly released from their allegiance to him, and to perform their homage to his successor. A more secluded spot was chosen for the last family meeting. A few miles south-east of Saumur, in the midst of dark woods and fruitful apple-orchards, a pious and noble crusader, Robert of Arbrissel, had founded in the early years of Fulk’s reign the abbey of Fontevraud, whose church has counted ever since among the architectural marvels of western Europe. An English visitor now-a-days feels as if some prophetic instinct must have guided its architect and given to his work that peculiar awe-striking character which so exactly fits it for the burial-place of the two Angevin kings of England whose sculptured effigies still remain in its south transept. The first of their race who wore a crown, however, came thither not for his last sleep, but only for a few hours of rest ere he started on his eastward journey. The monastery was a double one—half for men and half for women; in the latter Fulk’s eldest daughter, the widow of William the Ætheling, had lately taken the veil. The cloisters of Fontevraud offered a quiet refuge where father and children could all meet undisturbed to exchange their last farewells.[625] Before Whitsuntide came round again Fulk and Anjou had parted for ever.[626]

- [623] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 205.

- [624] Gesta Cons. (ibid.), p. 152.

- [625] “Ego Fulco junior Andegavensium comes, Fulconis comitis filius, ire volens Hierusalem, conventum sanctimonialium Fontis-Evraudi expetii. Adfuerunt etiam ibi filii mei Gaufridus et Helias, et filiæ meæ Mathildis et Sibylla, quarum una, id est Mathildis, paulo ante pro Dei amore se velari fecerat, etc. Acta charta apud Fontem-Ebraudi anno ab Incarnat. Dom. 1129” (Rer. Gall. Script., vol. xii. p. 736 note, from “Clypeum nascentis Fontis-Ebraldi”).

- [626] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 153. Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 205. Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24, l. xiv. c. 1. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1129 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 144).

It is not for us to follow him on his lifelong crusade.[627] The Angevin spirit of restless activity and sleepless vigilance, of hard-working thoroughness and indomitable perseverance, never, perhaps, shewed to better advantage than in this second half of the eventful life of Fulk of Jerusalem; but we have to trace its workings only as they influenced the history of our own land. Our place is not with the devoted personal followers who went with Fulk across land and sea, but with those who stayed to share the fortunes of his successor in Anjou. Our concern is with the father of the Angevin kings, not of Jerusalem, but of England.

- [627] Its history is in Will. Tyr., l. xiv. cc. 1–27.

Note A.
THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GÂTINAIS.

All historians are agreed that Geoffrey the Bearded and Fulk Rechin were sons of Geoffrey Martel’s sister and of a count (or viscount) of Gâtinais, or Châteaulandon, which is the same thing—the Gâtinais being a district on the north-eastern border of the Orléanais whereof Châteaulandon was the capital. But the names of both husband and wife differ in different accounts. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 375) calls his mother Hermengard; R. Diceto (ib. p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) calls her Adela; in the Gesta Cons. no names are given. If we could be sure that Fulk really wrote the fragment which bears his name, his testimony would of course be decisive; as it is, we are left in doubt. The point is one of trifling importance, for whatever the lady’s name may have been, there is no doubt that she was the daughter of Fulk the Black and Hildegard. But who was her husband?

First, as to his name. The Gesta Cons. do not mention it. The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1060 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 402), Hugh of Fleury (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 797), and R. Diceto (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) call him Alberic. Fulk Rechin (as above) calls him Geoffrey. None of them tell us anything about him. It seems in fact to be the aim of the Angevin writers to keep us in the dark as to the descent of the later counts of Anjou from the house of Gâtinais through the husband of Hermengard-Adela; but they try to make out a connexion between the two families six generations further back. One of the earliest legends in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 39–45) tells how Châteaulandon and the Gâtinais were given to Ingelger as a reward for his defence of his slandered godmother, the daughter and heiress of a Count Geoffrey of Gâtinais, and the alleged gift is coupled with a grant from the king of the viscounty of Orléans. What Ingelger may or may not have held it is impossible to say, as we really know nothing about him. But there is proof that the viscounty of Orléans at least did not pass to his descendants. The very first known charter of Fulk the Good, one dated May 942, is witnessed by Geoffrey viscount of Orléans; and Geoffrey Greygown’s charter for the reform of S. Aubin’s in 966 is witnessed by Alberic viscount of Gâtinais, whose signature has already appeared in 957, attached to a charter of Theobald the Trickster. This Alberic may very likely have been the son of his predecessor Geoffrey, but he cannot well have been the father of Fulk Nerra’s son-in-law; there is a generation dropped out, and of the man who should fill it the only trace is in Ménage (Hist. de Sablé), who says that Fulk Rechin’s father, Geoffrey count of Gâtinais, was the son of another Geoffrey and Beatrice, daughter of Alberic II. of Mâcon (Mabille, introd. Comtes, pp. lxxxv–lxxxvi). It seems probable that Orléans and Châteaulandon went together in fact as well as in Angevin legend. Assuming therefore that Ménage was copying a document now lost, the pedigree would stand thus:

Geoffrey,
viscount of Orléans 942

｜ |

Alberic,
viscount in 957 and 966

｜ |

Geoffrey,
viscount of Orléans and count of Gâtinais

｜ |

Alberic or Geoffrey

=
｜

Hermengard or Adela,
daughter of Fulk Nerra

| ｜ | ｜
| Geoffrey the Bearded. | Fulk Rechin.

If we might assume also, with M. Mabille, that the “Alberic” whose signature appears beside that of Fulk the Red in 886 (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. lix, note 1) was the father of the first Geoffrey of Orléans, then the two names would stand alternate till we come to Hermengard’s husband. Is it just possible that (on a principle somewhat like that which made all the dukes of Aquitaine assume the name of William) this alternation of names grew into a family tradition, so that the son of Geoffrey II. and Beatrice having by some accident been christened by his father’s instead of his grandfather’s name, assumed the latter officially on succeeding to the title, and thus became known to outsiders as “Alberic,” while his own son (Fulk Rechin) spoke of him by his original and real name?

However this may be, he was most probably descended from the family who became viscounts of Orléans at about the same time that the house of Anjou was being founded. They make no figure in history, and the Angevin writers do their best to efface them altogether. Ralf de Diceto just names the father of the two young counts, and that is all; in the Gesta Cons. his very name is dropped, and the reader is left in utter darkness as to who and what Martel’s nephews were. They were Martel’s nephews, and that was all that anybody was intended to know about them. Fulk Rechin himself, or his representative, merges the Châteaulandon connexion almost completely in the Angevin, and regards himself simply as the grandson of Fulk Nerra. After all, they are right; it was Fulk Nerra’s blood that made his grandsons what they were; their father might have been anybody, or, as he almost appears, nobody, for all the influence he had on their characters or their destinies.

Note B.
THE HEIR OF GEOFFREY MARTEL.

Of the disposal of his territories made by Geoffrey Martel there are three versions.

1. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131), R. Diceto (ib. p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) and Chron. Tur. Magn. (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, pp. 122, 123) say that Anjou and Saintonge were left to Fulk, Touraine and Gâtinais to Geoffrey.

2. A MS. representing the earliest form of the Gesta Cons. (ending in 1106) says just the opposite: Anjou and Saintonge to Geoffrey, Touraine and Gâtinais to Fulk (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131, note 1. See Mabille, introd. Comtes, ib. pp. iv–viii).

3. Orderic (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 532) and Will. Poitiers (ib. pp. 188, 189) ignore Fulk and make Geoffrey sole heir.

The first version is easily disposed of. In three charters of S. Florence of Saumur, one of 1061 (Marchegay, Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. p. 259) and two whose dates must be between 1062 and 1066 (ib. p. 278), and in one of S. Maur, 1066 (ib. pp. 358–360), Geoffrey the Bearded is formally described as count of Anjou. The strongest proof of all is a charter of Fulk Rechin himself, March 11, 1068, setting forth how Geoffrey, nephew and heir of Geoffrey Martel, had made certain promises to S. Florence, which he, Fulk, having now got possession of Anjou, fulfilled (ib. p. 260).

The second version, though apparently not contradicted by any documentary proof, has nothing to support it, and contains an internal difficulty. For how could Martel leave the Gâtinais to Fulk? Surely it was not his to leave at all, but would pass as a matter of course to Geoffrey as Alberic’s (Geoffrey’s?) eldest son. The old confusion of the relations of the Gâtinais to Anjou peeps out again here.

The third account is that of foreign writers; but those writers are Orderic and William of Poitiers. And they are not unsupported. Geoffrey Martel’s last act, a charter granted to Marmoutier on his deathbed, is signed by his nephew and successor-designate Geoffrey, and by Fulk, who is described simply as the latter’s brother (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. lxxxiv).

The conclusion to which all this leads is that Martel bequeathed the whole of his dominions to his elder nephew Geoffrey, and that all the conflicting stories of a division of territory were inventions to save the character of Fulk Rechin. It is possible that Martel did, as Fulk says, invest him with Saintonge, but even here it is evident that the elder brother’s rights were reserved, for it is Geoffrey, not Fulk, who fights for Saintonge with the duke of Aquitaine.

One portion of Martel’s dominions is named in none of these accounts, except Fulk’s; and that is Maine. Fulk coolly puts it into the list of his own possessions, and M. Mabille regards this as a blunder proving that the author of the Fragment was not what he professes to be. May it not rather tell the other way? A forger would have remembered that Maine was lost and not risked such a glaring falsehood; the count ignores its de facto loss because he holds himself its overlord de jure. We shall find Geoffrey the Bearded making his appearance as titular overlord of Maine in 1063. Did Martel feel about Maine as William the Conqueror seems to have felt about England?

Note C.
THE WAR OF SAINTONGE.

The account of this war between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey, alias William VII., of Aquitaine, has to be made out from one direct source and one indirect one. The first is the Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 402, 403): “Goffredus et Fulco habentes certamen cum Gaufredo duce propter Sanctonas, venientes cum magno exercitu, pugnaverunt cum eo in bello etiam in Aquitaniâ, ubi e contrario Pictavorum exercitus adunatus est; et ab utrisque partibus magnis animositatibus pugnatum est, sed traditores belli et ceteri signiferi, vexillis projectis, exercitum Pictavensium in fugam verterunt. Quapropter vulnerati multi sunt et plurimi occisi atque nonnulli capti; unde quidam versibus eam confusionem ita describit, dicens: Cum de Pictavis bellum sit et Andegavinis, Inque die Martis fuit et Sancti Benedicti, Circa forte Caput Wultonnæ contigit esse, Annus millenus tunc sexagesimus unus.”

That entry comprises all the direct information on the subject. The Angevin monastic chronicles and Fulk Rechin do not mention it at all. Neither do the Gesta Cons. in the right place; but they mix it up with the war between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat in 1033. By the light of the Chron. S. Maxent., it seems possible to disentangle the two stories. It even seems possible to make sense of a passage in the Gesta which never can be sense as it stands, by understanding it as referring to Geoffrey the Bearded instead of his uncle: “Willelmus Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi preoccupatum tenebat, quia patrui sui fuerat. Martellus eumdem consulatum reclamabat quia avi sui fuerat, cujus heredes absque liberis mortui erant; et ideo ad heredes sororis avi sui debere reverti affirmabat” (Gesta Cons., Marchegay, Comtes, p. 126). This is the story by which the Gesta-writer professes to explain the cause of the war of Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat, of which he then gives an elaborate account, ending with William’s capture and the consequent surrender of Saintes to Geoffrey. But the story is utterly senseless; the claims of William and Martel as therein stated are alike devoid of all show of reason. In the account of the war itself, too, there are strong traces of confusion; Saintes is assumed to have passed back into the duke’s hands, of which there is no sign elsewhere; and to crown all, the scene of the battle in which William is taken is laid, not as by the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 1032, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 392) and Fulk Rechin (Comtes, p. 378), at S. Jouin-de-Marne or Montcontour, but at Chef-Boutonne. The question then arises: Can this wild tale in the Gesta, which is quite impossible as an explanation of Martel’s war with William V., be interpreted so as to explain his successor’s war with William VII.?

“Willelmus [VII., alias Guy-Geoffrey] Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi præoccupatum tenebat [having presumably seized it on Martel’s death], quia patrui sui [for patrui read fratris—William the Fat—or patris, William the Great] fuerat. Martellus [Barbatus] eumdem consulatum reclamabat, quia avi sui [Fulconis Nerræ] fuerat, cujus hæredes [i.e. G. Martellus] absque liberis mortui essent; et ideo ad hæredes sororis avi sui [read avunculi sui—Martel’s sister, the Bearded one’s mother] debere reverti affirmabat.”

Read in this way, the story is quite reasonable and intelligible, and the rest of the Gesta’s account might stand almost intact, except the capture of the duke, which of course is dragged in from the earlier war. The confusion between the Williams of Aquitaine is easily accounted for, and so is that between the Geoffreys of Anjou, especially as all the Geoffreys after Martel occasionally took to themselves his cognomen.

Note D.
THE DESCENDANTS OF HERBERT WAKE-DOG.

Not the least puzzling matter connected with the Cenomannian wars is the genealogy of the sovereign house of Maine. The succession of the counts themselves—Hugh I. (or David), Herbert I. (Wake-dog), Hugh II., Herbert II.—is plain enough, as also that each was the son of his predecessor. But the filiation of the women of the family—Margaret, Gersendis, Paula and Biota—is far from being equally clear.

1. As to Margaret, there is no real doubt. Orderic does once (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 683) call her a daughter of Herbert [II.]; but his own statements in two other places (ib. pp. 487 and 532), as well as Will. Poitiers (ib. p. 190), shew that this is a mere slip. Margaret was clearly a daughter of Hugh II. and sister of Herbert II.

2. As to Biota. Orderic (as above, p. 487) calls her “Hugonis Cenomannensium comitis filiam”; in Will. Poitiers (ib. p. 189) she is “soror Hugonis”; and Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq., 3d ed., vol. iii. p. 200, and note T, p. 676) adopts the latter version. Biota, then, was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog and sister of Hugh II. But were Gersendis and Paula her sisters or her nieces?

3. The fullest and most distinct statement of the Cenomannian pedigree is that of Orderic in Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 532: “Hugo filius Herberti ... Bertam ... in conjugium accepit; quæ filium nomine Herbertum et tres filias ei peperit. Una earum data est Azsoni Marchiso Liguriæ. Alia nomine Margarita Rodberto filio Guillelmi Ducis Neustriæ desponsata est ... Tertia vero Joanni domino castri quod Flecchia dicitur nupsit.”

With regard to this last marriage, it is to be observed that in the speech which Orderic puts into the mouth of Elias of La Flèche, addressing Hugh of Este (ib. p. 684), he says nothing about his mother at all, but makes him trace his descent from Herbert Wake-dog through his grandmother, whom he calls Herbert’s daughter: “Filia Herberti comitis Lancelino de Balgenceio nupsit, eique ... Joannem meum genitorem peperit.” The name of John’s wife, Paula, comes from another passage of Orderic (ib. p. 768); but he there says nothing about her parentage, merely calling her son Elias “Hugonis Cenomannorum consulis consobrinus.” The houses of Le Mans and La Flèche cannot have intermarried twice in two succeeding generations; one of Orderic’s statements must be wrong; but which, I cannot decide.

The last point is the parentage of Gersendis, the wife of Azzo of Este; and as the whole tone of Elias’s speech (as above) implies that he and her son were related to the counts of Le Mans in the same degree, the solution of this question might almost be held to decide the previous one also. This seems to be Mr. Freeman’s opinion, and he regards Orderic’s statement quoted above as conclusive that Gersendis and Paula were both daughters of Hugh II., and sisters therefore of Margaret and Herbert II., in spite of the biographer of the bishops of Le Mans (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 308), who expressly says that Gersendis was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog, and the continuator of Will. Jumièges, who says:—“Cenomannenses ... consilium ineunt cum Heliâ filio Joannis de Flecâ ... ut filiam cujusdam comitis Langobardiæ, neptem videlicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannensis comitis ex primogenitâ filiâ, in matrimonium ducat.” Will. Jumièges, l. viii. c. 5 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 294). This re-appears in R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 183, 184; Marchegay, Comtes, p. 334) in the following form:—“Helias, filius Johannis de Flecâ, Sibillam, filiam cujusdam comitis Longobardiæ, neptem scilicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannorum comitis, duxit uxorem, et cum eâ comitatum Cenomanniæ suscepit.” But this is certainly wrong; for the first wife of Elias was Matilda of Château-du-Loir, and the second was Agnes of Perche.

What Elias could have had to gain by the marriage thus proposed for him it is impossible to guess, as he himself certainly was quite as nearly related to the counts of Maine as this oddly-described bride could have been. Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq., 3d ed., vol. iii., note T, p. 676), takes the description as favouring Orderic’s theory, and remarks: “The words could only have been written by one who looked on Gersendis as a sister of Herbert.” “Neptem Hereberti,” then, he interprets, “niece of Herbert [II].” But is it not a much simpler interpretation of the whole phrase—“neptem Hereberti ex primogenitâ filiâ”—to read it “granddaughter of Herbert [I.] through his eldest daughter”? In that case, we should have another witness on the side of the bishops’ biographer.

There is another curious bit of evidence which at first glance seems also to tell in his favour. I do not think that it really proves anything about the matter; but it is worth examining for other reasons. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 392, note 5), declares it proved on documentary evidence that Stephen-Henry of Blois, the father of our King Stephen, was the son of Theobald III. by his first marriage with Gersendis of Maine. About the marriage itself there is no doubt, nor about the divorce which followed it; and the latter had taken place in 1049 at latest, for Theobald was excommunicated for that very cause by the Council of Reims. Most historians seem however to have supposed that Gersendis was then a mere child, and that the mother of Stephen, as well as of Theobald’s other children, was his second wife, Adela of Valois. M. de Jubainville, in support of his opinion, refers especially to two charters. One is in Gallia Christiana, vol. viii., instr. col. 548. It has no date, and says nothing about Stephen’s mother or his stepmother; I therefore cannot see its bearing on the question. The other is in Bernier, Histoire de Blois, preuves, pp. xiii–xiv. In it Stephen-Henry, in the year 1089, grants certain lands to Pontlevoy “pro animæ meæ et uxoris et Theobaldi patris mei et matris meæ Gandree ... remedio”; and has the grant confirmed “nomine ... Alæ uxoris meæ, Alæ uxoris Thebaudi comitis,” etc. This certainly seems to shew that Adela was not his mother, though it does not necessarily follow that “Gandree” represents Gersendis. If it does, Stephen-Henry must have been born in 1049 at latest, and therefore Gersendis cannot possibly have been a daughter of Hugh II., who was not married till 1040 at the very earliest.

The greatest puzzle in the whole matter, however, is this: If Stephen-Henry was really the eldest son of Gersendis of Maine, how does it happen that neither in 1073, nor in 1089, nor in any of the Cenomannian revolutions and wars, do we hear a single word about his claims upon the county? M. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s suggestion in fact opens a question much more important and much more obscure than that of the age and parentage of Gersendis. He certainly seems to have proved that Adela of Valois was not Stephen’s mother; but has he proved that Gersendis was? The only bit of evidence, direct or indirect, which it seems possible to bring to bear upon this matter is a passage in the Historia Pontificalis (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 531) where it is said that the cause of our King Stephen was upheld by some of the Roman cardinals who claimed kindred with him “eo quod avia ejus Lumbarda fuerit.” Now, as the second husband of Gersendis was a Lombard, this may come from some confused idea about her. But it also suggests another possible solution of the whole question about Stephen-Henry’s mother. Theobald and Gersendis were divorced in 1049 at latest; the first record in which Adela appears as Theobald’s wife is dated 1061 (Jubainville, Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 393, note 3). May not the mysterious “Gandrea” of the charter of 1089 have been an Italian lady who was married to Theobald, became the mother of his heir, and died, between those two dates?

Note E.
THE SIEGE OF LA FLÈCHE AND TREATY OF BLANCHELANDE.

There are two questionable points connected with these matters: 1. the date; 2. the geography.

1. The only original writer who gives a detailed account of both siege and treaty is Orderic, who carries his story straight on from the quelling of the revolt of Maine in 1073 to the siege of La Flèche, as if it had all happened in the same year, before William returned to England with his troops. On the other hand, none of the Angevin writers mention La Flèche under date 1073; but the Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 26, 189) have “Exercitus de Fissâ,” the former in 1077, the latter in 1078; and in the Art de vérifier les Dates these entries are interpreted as referring to the siege which was followed by the treaty of Blanchelande. M. Voisin (Les Cénomans, p. 414) dates the whole affair 1085; he gives no reason and seems to be quite unsupported. The choice lies therefore between Orderic’s date and that of the Angevin chronicles. Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq., vol. iv. pp. 560–563) follows Orderic, and I have done the same.

2. As to the geography. Orderic (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 533) says that to meet William the Angevin and Breton host, leaving La Flèche, “Ligerim fluvium audacter pertransierunt.” Now this must be wrong, as the Loire is a long way south of La Flèche. It is clear that for Ligerim, “Loire,” we must read Liderim, “Loir,” as Mr. Freeman says (Norm. Conq., vol. iv. p. 562, note 2). Even crossing the Loir seems rather a strange proceeding; for La Flèche being on the right or north bank of that river, they must have crossed it to the southward—i.e. away from Normandy. How came it that William, marching against them out of Normandy, had gone so far down to the south of them?

There is however a further question as to the actual place of the treaty, which Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 562) places at Bruère in the Passais. If such was the case, Orderic’s story of the crossing of the river becomes quite hopeless, as Bruère is a long way north-west of La Flèche. But there is another version. J. Pesche in his Dictionnaire historique de la Sarthe, vol. i. p. 168, under “Blanchelande ou Blanche-bruyère,” says: “Vaste espace de terrain infertile, où croît abondamment le lichen des rennes, dont la blancheur lui aura fait donner son nom; situé entre La Flèche et Le Lude, côtoyé par la route qui conduit de l’une à l’autre de ces deux villes.” It is this which Pesche and, following him, M. Voisin (Les Cénomans, p. 414, note 1) mark as the scene of the treaty. So does M. Prévost in a note to Orderic, vol. ii. p. 258, and he adds that a farm there still in 1840 bore the name of Blanchelande. If this theory is correct, Orderic’s geography is quite right and clear; the besiegers of La Flèche, on the north side of the Loir, crossing over to its southern bank, would march straight upon the “white moor.” William must then have crossed higher up and made a circuit to the south-east of them. The only question remaining would be, what was his reason for this movement? To which there was doubtless a good military answer.

With regard to the second siege of La Flèche by Fulk Rechin, in 1081, there is a very strange story in the Chron. Rain. Andeg. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 13). We are there told that Fulk not only took and burned the castle (as the Chron. S. Albin., ib. p. 26, also states under the same year) in revenge, for John’s rebellion against him, but also punished King William for his previous relief of the castle, by so worsting him in battle that he retreated after giving hostages for peace, among whom were his brother the count of Mortain and his own son! Mr. Freeman says nothing of this very apocryphal-looking story. Is it anything more than an Angevin travesty of Robert’s homage to Fulk at Blanchelande?

Note F.
THE MARRIAGE OF GEOFFREY AND MATILDA.

The date of this marriage is commonly given as 1127. A comparison of evidence seems however to lead to the conclusion that its true date is 1128.

1. The Angevin chronicles never mention the marriage at all. The Gesta Cons., Will. Jumièges and several other writers mention it without any kind of date. The English Chronicle, Sim. Durh., Will. Malm. and Hen. Hunt. give no distinct date, but imply that the proposal was immediately followed by the wedding. They speak as if Robert and Brian had taken Matilda over sea and married her to Geoffrey without more ado.

2. Orderic mentions the marriage in two places. In the first (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 763) he gives no clue to the date; in the second (ib. p. 889) he dates it 1129.

3. The Chron. Fiscannense (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 778) dates it 1127.

4. A charter of agreement between the bishop of Séez and the convent of Marmoutier (printed in Gilles Bry’s Hist. de Perche, p. 106) has “signum Henrici Regis quando dedit filiam suam Gaufredo comiti Andegavensi juniori.” It is dated “anno ab Inc. Dom. 1127, Indictione VI.”

5. The last witness is John of Marmoutier, the author of the Historia Gaufredi Ducis. From him we might have expected a distinct and authentic statement; but he does not mention the year at all. He says that Geoffrey was knighted on Whit-Sunday and married on its octave, and that he was then fifteen years of age (Hist. Gaufr. Ducis, Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 236, 233). Afterwards, in speaking of the birth of Henry Fitz-Empress, he says that it took place in the fourth year of his parents’ marriage (ib. pp. 277, 278). Henry was born on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, 1133; if therefore the writer reckoned backwards from the Whitsuntide of that year, his words ought to mean that the marriage was in 1129. But as he goes on to state that Matilda’s third son was born in the sixth year of her marriage, and that Henry I. died “anno eodem, ab Incarnatione videlicet Domini 1137,” it is impossible to say what he did mean. Whether he is collecting the traditions of the ancient counts or writing the life of his own contemporary sovereign, John’s chronology is pursued by the same fate; whenever he mentions a date by the year, he is almost certain to make it wrong. But that he should have done the like in his reckoning of days, or even of his hero’s age, by no means follows. To consider the latter point first: Geoffrey the Handsome was born on August 24, 1113 (Chron. S. Albin. ad ann., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 32). Therefore, if John meant that he was past fifteen at his marriage, it must have been in 1129. But if he only meant “in his fifteenth year,” it would be 1128. In that year the octave of Pentecost fell on June 17; Geoffrey then lacked but two months to the completion of his fifteenth year; and considering Matilda’s age, it is no wonder that the panegyrist tried to make her husband out as old as possible. It is in fact plain that such was his intention, for though he places Geoffrey’s death in the right year, 1151, he gives his age as forty-one instead of thirty-eight (Hist. Gaufr. Ducis, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 292).

The most important matter, however, is John’s statement that the wedding took place on the octave of Pentecost. The date in this case is not one casually slipped in by the writer in passing; it comes in a detailed account of the festivities at Rouen on the occasion of Geoffrey’s knighting, which is expressly said to have occurred at Pentecost, and to have been followed by his marriage on the octave. Now this leaves us on the horns of a dilemma fatal alike to the date in the Chron. Fiscann., 1127, and to that of Orderic, 1129. For, on the one hand, Will. Malm. (Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3, Hardy, p. 692) says that Matilda did not go to Normandy till after Whitsuntide [1127]; and Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247), adds that the king followed her in August (Sim. Durh., ed. Arnold, vol. ii. pp. 281, 282, really witnesses to the same effect; for his chronology of the whole story is a year in advance). Consequently, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks, “the union could not have taken place before the spring of the following year, 1128” (Princesses of England, vol. i. pp. 107, 108). On the other hand, it is plain that Fulk was present at his son’s wedding; but before Whitsuntide 1129 Fulk was himself married to the princess of Jerusalem (Will. Tyr., l. xiii. c. 24).

From all this it results: 1. If Geoffrey and Matilda were married in 1127, it cannot have been earlier than September, i.e. at least three months after Whitsuntide. 2. If they were married in 1129, it must have been quite at the beginning of the year, and Orderic must, on this occasion at least, have made his year begin in English fashion, at Christmas. 3. If they were married at Whitsuntide, it can only have been in 1128.

We have in short to choose one out of three authorities: the Chronicle of Fécamp, Orderic and John of Marmoutier—for the Séez charter, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks (Princesses, vol. i. p. 108), proves nothing more than that the betrothal had taken place in 1127. Of these three, the first is certainly of least account. Orderic, on the other hand, is on most other subjects a far better authority than John. But his chronology is very little better than John’s, at any rate towards the close of his work; his whole account of Henry’s later years is sketchy and confused; while John is Geoffrey Plantagenet’s own special biographer, writing within sixty years of the event, from materials furnished by personal followers of his hero. I cannot but regard him as our primary authority on this subject, and believe on his testimony that the real wedding-day of Geoffrey and Matilda was the octave of Pentecost, June 17, 1128.

CHAPTER V.
GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS.
1128–1139.

All the mental and bodily gifts wherewith nature had endowed the most favoured members of the Angevin house seemed to have been showered upon the eldest son of Fulk V. and Aremburg of Maine. The surname by which he is most generally known, and which an inveterate usage has attached to his descendants as well as to himself, is in its origin and meaning curiously unlike most historical surnames; it seems to have been derived simply from his boyish habit of adorning his cap with a sprig of “planta-genista,” the broom which in early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold. With a fair and ruddy countenance, lit up by the lightning-glance of a pair of brilliant eyes; a tall, slender, sinewy frame, made for grace no less than for strength and activity:—[628] in the unanimous opinion of his contemporaries, he was emphatically “Geoffrey the Handsome.” To this prepossessing appearance were added the charms of a gracious manner and a ready, pleasant speech;[629] and beneath this winning exterior there lay a considerable share of the quick wits of his race, sharpened and developed by such a careful education as was given to very few princes of the time. The intellectual soil was worthy of the pains bestowed upon it, and brought forth a harvest of, perhaps, somewhat too precocious scholarship and sagacity. Geoffrey’s fondness for the study of the past seems to have been an inheritance from Fulk Rechin; the historian-count might have been proud of a grandson who carried in his memory all the battles fought, all the great deeds done, not only by his own people but also in foreign lands.[630] Even Fulk the Good might have approved a descendant who when still a mere boy could shine in serious conversation with such a “lettered king” as Henry I.;[631] and Fulk the Black might not have been ashamed of one who in early youth felt the “demon-blood” within him too hot to rest content in luxury and idleness, avoided the corrupting influences of mere revelry, gave himself up to the active exercises of military life,[632] and, while so devoted to letters that he would not even go to war without a learned teacher by his side,[633] turned his book-learning to account in ways at which ruder warriors and more unworldly scholars were evidently somewhat astonished.[634] Like his ancestor the Black Count, Geoffrey was one of those men about whom their intimate associates have a fund of anecdotes to tell. The “History” of his life put together from their information, a few years after his death, is chiefly made up of these stories; and through the mass of trite moralizing and pedantic verbiage in which the compiler has imbedded them there still peeps out unmistakeably the peculiar temper of his hero. Geoffrey’s readiness to forgive those who threw themselves upon his mercy is a favourite theme of his biographer’s praise; but the instances given of this clemency indicate more of the vanity and display of chivalry in its narrower sense than of real tenderness of heart or generosity of soul. Such is the story of a discontented knight whose ill-will against his sovereign took the grotesque form of a wish that he had the neck of “that red-head Geoffrey” fast between the two hot iron plates used for making a wafer-cake called oublie. It chanced that the man whose making of oublies—then, as now, a separate trade—had suggested the wish of this knight at St.-Aignan shortly afterwards made some for the eating and in the presence of Count Geoffrey himself, to whom he related what he had heard. The knight and his comrades were presently caught harrying the count’s lands; and the biographer is lost in admiration at Geoffrey’s generosity in forgiving not only their depredations, but the more heinous crime of having, in a fit of ill-temper after dinner, expressed a desire to make a wafer of him.[635] On another occasion we find the count’s wrath averted by the charms of music and verse, enhanced no doubt by the further charm of a little flattery. Four Poitevin knights who had been taken captive in one of the skirmishes so common on the Aquitanian border won their release by the truly southern expedient of singing in Geoffrey’s hearing a rime which they had composed in his praise.[636] A touch of truer poetry comes out in another story. Geoffrey, with a great train of attendants and noble guests, was once keeping Christmas at Le Mans. From his private chapel, where he had been attending the nocturnal services of the vigil, he set out at daybreak at the head of a procession to celebrate in the cathedral church the holy mysteries of the festival. At the cathedral door he met a poorly-dressed young clerk, whom he flippantly saluted: “Any news, sir clerkling?”—“Ay, my lord, the best of good news!”—“What?” cried Geoffrey, all his curiosity aroused—“tell me quick!”—“‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!’” Abashed, Geoffrey asked the youth his name, bade him join the other clergy in the choir, and as soon as mass was over went straight to the bishop: “For the love of Him Who was born this day, give me a prebend in your church.” It was no sooner granted than taking his new acquaintance by the hand, he begged leave to make him his substitute, and added the further gift of a stall in his own chapel, as a token of gratitude to the poor clerk whose answer to his thoughtless question had brought home to him, perhaps more deeply than he had ever felt them before, the glad tidings of Christmas morning.[637] From another of these anecdotes Geoffrey seems, as far as we can make out, to have been the original hero of an adventure which has since, in slightly varying forms, been attributed to several other princes, from Charles the Great down to James the Fifth of Scotland, and which indeed may easily have happened more than once. Led away by his ardour in pursuit of the chase—next to literature, his favourite recreation—the count one day outstripped all his followers, and lost his way alone in the forest of Loches. At last he fell in with a charcoal-burner, who undertook to conduct him back to the castle. Geoffrey mounted his guide behind him; and as they rode along, the peasant, ignorant of his companion’s rank, and taking him for a simple knight, let himself be drawn into conversation on sundry matters, including a free criticism on the government of the reigning count, and the oppressions suffered by the people at the hands of his household officers. When they reached the gates of Loches, the burst of joy which greeted the wanderer’s return revealed to the poor man that he had been talking to the count himself. Overwhelmed with dismay, he tried to slip off the horse’s back; but Geoffrey held him fast, gave him the place of honour at the evening banquet, sent him home next day with a grant of freedom and a liberal gift of money, and profited by the information acquired from him to institute a thorough reform in the administration of his own household.[638]

- [628] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 233.

- [629] Ib. pp. 232, 233.

- [630] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 232.

- [631] Ib. p. 235.

- [632] Ib. p. 233.

- [633] Ib. p. 276.

- [634] See the story of the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 286.

- [635] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 257–260.

- [636] Ib. pp. 253–256.

- [637] Ib. pp. 274–276.

- [638] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 240–250.

Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious one; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feeling. The imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined characters of his race lay in him very near the surface, but it did not go very deep. His imagination was sensitive, but his heart was cold; his impulses sprang from the play of a quick fancy, not from the passion of an ardent soul. One more story may furnish a slight, but significant, illustration of his temper. For some wrong done to the see of Tours Geoffrey was once threatened by the archbishop with excommunication. Either the earlier or the later Fulk of Jerusalem would have almost certainly begun by a reckless defiance of the threat, and the later one, at least, would almost as surely have ended by hearty penance. Geoffrey began and ended with a jest: “Your threats are vain, most reverend father; you know that the archbishop of Tours has no jurisdiction over the patrimony of S. Martin, and that I am one of his canons!”[639] In all the sterling qualities of a ruler and a man, the hasty, restless, downright Fulk V. was as superior to his clever charming son as Fulk the Black was superior to Geoffrey Martel. But it is only fair to bear in mind that Geoffrey Plantagenet’s life was to a great extent spoilt by his marriage. The yoke which bound together a lad of fifteen and a woman of twenty-five—especially such a woman as the Empress Matilda—could not fail to press heavily on both parties; but the one most seriously injured by it was probably the young husband. Even in a political point of view, to him personally his marriage was more of a hindrance than an advantage; it cut him off from all chance of striking out an independent career. The man himself was in fact sacrificed to his posterity. Chained down while his character was yet undeveloped to the irksome position of a mere appendage to King Henry’s heiress;—plunged suddenly, and for life, into a sphere of interests and duties alien from his own natural temper and inclinations:—weak, selfish, unprincipled as Geoffrey too plainly shewed himself to be, still it was well not only for him but for others that he had enough of the dogged Angevin thoroughness to carry him safely and successfully, if not always gloriously, through his somewhat dreary task till he could make it over to the freer, as well as stronger, hands of his son.

- [639] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 252.

The hope which inspired both the king of England and the count of Anjou when they planned their children’s marriage can only have been the hope of a grandson in whom the blood of both would be united, who would gather into his own person all conflicting claims, and in whom all feuds would have an end. On this depended all King Henry’s schemes for the future; on this were concentrated all his desires, on this were founded all his plans and arrangements during the last seven years of his reign. In the internal history of England those years are an almost complete blank; they are in fact simply seven more years of the administration of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, for Henry himself spent almost the whole of them upon the continent. His work was finished, and all that remained to do was to maintain the order of things which he had established so as to hand it on in full working to his successor. He must, however, have begun to doubt the success of his schemes when Geoffrey and Matilda separated little more than twelve months after their marriage. At first, everything had seemed to be turning in favour of Henry’s arrangements. Six weeks after the wedding, the death of William the Clito, wounded in a skirmish with a rival claimant of the county of Flanders,[640] removed the only competitor whom the king could deem likely to stand in the way of his plans for the descent of the crown. In the spring Fulk’s departure for Holy Land left the young couple sole masters at Angers. All things looked tranquil and secure when Henry returned to England in July 1129. He had, however, been there only a few days when he learned, to his great indignation, that his daughter had been sent away with scorn by her husband, and had betaken herself with a few attendants to Rouen.[641] There she remained for nearly two years, while Geoffrey was busy with a general revolt among his barons. East and west and south and north had all risen at once; the list of rebels includes the chief landowners in all parts of the Angevin dominions, from the old eastern outpost Amboise to Laval on the Breton border, and from Sablé on the confines of Anjou and Maine to Montreuil-Bellay, Thouars and Mirebeau in the Aquitanian territory of Loudun, and the yet more remote fief of Parthenay in Poitou.[642] It seems as if the disaffected barons, worsted in their struggle with Fulk, had only been waiting till he was out of the country, and now, when Geoffrey by his quarrel with his wife had deprived himself of all chance of help from his father-in-law, they closed in upon the boy-count with one consent, thinking to get him into their power and wring from him any concessions they pleased. They unintentionally did him an immense service, for by thus suddenly throwing him upon his own resources they made a man of him at once. No one knew better than Geoffrey Plantagenet that he was not the first count of Anjou who had been left to shift for himself in difficult circumstances at the age of fifteen; and he faced the danger with a promptitude and energy not unworthy of Fulk Nerra’s representative. One after another he besieged the rebel leaders in their strongholds; one after another was forced, tricked or frightened into submission. Once, while besieging Theobald of Blazon in the great fortress of Mirebeau, Geoffrey was blockaded in his turn by the count of Poitou, whom the traitors had called to their aid; even from this peril, however, his quick wit and youthful energy extricated him in triumph; and the revolt was finally crushed by a severe punishment inflicted on its most powerful leader, Lisiard of Sablé. Geoffrey ravaged the whole of Lisiard’s estates, razed his castle of Briolet, seized that of Suze and kept it in his own hands for the rest of its owner’s life; while to guard against further dangers from the same quarter, by the advice of his faithful barons he reared, for the express purpose of defence against incursions from Sablé, a fortress to which he gave the name of Châteauneuf, on the left bank of the Sarthe, just below the bridge made famous by the death of Count Robert the Brave.[643]

- [640] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 886, 887.

- [641] Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. 1129.

- [642] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 263.

- [643] For the barons’ revolt, see Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 263–268. The strange and not very clear story of the double siege of Mirebeau is in pp. 265, 266. “Exercitus de Mirebello” is recorded in Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. a. 1130 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 191). The Chron. S. Albin. also records the building of Châteauneuf, a. 1131; the Hist. Gaufr. Ducis, p. 270, connects it with the revolt of a lord of Sablé, but apparently with the later revolt of Lisiard’s son Robert—which, however, the date in the chronicle shows to be a mistake.

King Henry had joined his daughter in Normandy in the summer of 1130; in July of the next year they returned to England together. They were soon followed by a message from Geoffrey, who was now becoming awake to his rights and duties as husband of King Henry’s heiress, and having made himself thoroughly master in his own dominions felt it time to demand the return of his wife. A great council held at Northampton on September 8 decided that his request should be granted;[644] and the assembled prelates and barons repeated their homage to Matilda as her father’s destined successor.[645] She then went back to her husband, by whom she was, if not warmly welcomed, at least received with all due courtesy and honour.[646] Fortunately for the ill-matched couple, they were both of that cold-blooded temperament to which intense personal affection is not a necessary of life. Henceforth they were content to work together as partners in political enterprise, and to find in community of worldly interests a sufficient bond of union. On Mid-Lent Sunday—March 5, 1133—the bond was made indissoluble by the birth of their son and heir. Most fittingly, the child to whom so many diverse nationalities looked as to their future sovereign[647] was born not in the actual home of either of his parents, but in that city of Le Mans which lay midway between Normandy and Anjou, which had so long been the ground of their strife, and had at last been made the scene of their union.[648] He was baptized in the cathedral church by the bishop of the diocese on Easter Eve, receiving the name of his grandfather Henry, and was then, by his mother’s special desire, solemnly placed under the protection of the local patron saint on the same altar where his father had been dedicated in like manner thirteen years before.[649]

- [644] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 41 (Arnold, p. 252).

- [645] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 6 (Hardy, p. 698).

- [646] Hen. Hunt. as above.

- [647] “Quem multi populi dominum expectant.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 763.

- [648] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 322). Cf. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1133 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 144, 145), Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 1133 (ib. p. 191, giving a wrong day), Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 277, 278, also wrongly dated.

- [649] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. as above.

To King Henry the birth of his grandson was the crowning of all his hopes. The greatest difficulty which had hitherto stood in the way of his scheme for the descent of the crown—the objection which was sure to be made against Matilda on account of her sex—would lose more than half its force now that she could be regarded as regent for her infant son; and Henry at once summoned another great council at which he again made the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons of his realm swear fealty to the Empress “and also to her little son whom he appointed to be king after him.”[650] All things seemed as safe as human foresight could make them when in the beginning of August he crossed over to Normandy.[651] Signs and wonders in earth and sky, related afterwards as tokens of coming evil, accompanied his voyage;[652] but nearly two years passed away before the portents were fulfilled. In the spring Matilda joined her father at Rouen, and there, shortly before Whitsuntide, her second son was born.[653] The old king’s pleasure in his two little grandchildren was great enough to keep him lingering on in Normandy with them and their mother, leaving England to the care of Bishop Roger, till the middle of the following year,[654] when there came tidings of disturbance on the Welsh border which made him feel it was time he should return.[655] His daughter however set herself against his departure. Her policy is not very clear; but it seems impossible to acquit her of playing a double game and secretly instigating her husband to attack her father while the latter was living with her in unsuspecting intimacy and confidence. Geoffrey now suddenly put forth a claim to certain castles in Normandy which he asserted had been promised to him at his marriage.[656] Henry denied the claim; the Angevin temper burst forth at once; Geoffrey attacked and burned the castle of Beaumont, whose lord was like himself a son-in-law of Henry, and altogether behaved with such insulting violence that the king in his wrath was on the point of taking Matilda, who was with him at Rouen all the while, back with him to England. But he now found it impossible to leave Normandy. The land was full of treason; many barons who only disguised their real feelings from awe of the stern old king had been gained over in secret to the Angevin cause; among those whose fidelity was most suspected were Roger of Toëny and William Talvas the lord of Alençon, who had been restored to the forfeited estates of his family at the intercession of Geoffrey’s father in 1119. Roger’s castle of Conches was garrisoned by the king; William Talvas was summoned to Rouen more than once, but the conscious traitor dared not shew his face; at last Henry again seized his estates, and then, in September, Talvas fled across the border to be received with open arms by the count of Anjou.[657] The countess pleaded warmly with her father for the traitor’s pardon, but in vain. When she found him inexorable, she suddenly threw off the mask and shewed on which side her real sympathies lay by parting from the king in anger and going home to her husband at Angers.[658] Father and daughter never met again. In the last week of November Henry fell sick while hunting in the Forest of Lions; feeling his end near, he sent for his old friend Archbishop Hugh of Rouen to receive his confession and give him the last sacraments. His son Earl Robert of Gloucester hurried to the spot at the first tidings of his illness; his daughter made no sign of a wish for reconciliation; yet when the earl and the primate asked for his final instructions concerning the succession to the crown, he remained true to his cherished purpose and once more bequeathed all his dominions on both sides of the sea to Matilda and her heirs for ever.[659] He died on the night of December 1, 1135.[660]

- [650] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 187.

- [651] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700).

- [652] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

- [653] Chron. S. Albin. and Rob. Torigni, a. 1134.

- [654] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 253).

- [655] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 900.

- [656] This is the version of Orderic (as above); according to Rob. Torigni (a. 1135) the claim included a good deal more: “Erat et alia causa ipsius discordiæ major, quia rex nolebat facere fidelitatem filiæ suæ et marito ejus de omnibus firmitatibus Normanniæ et Angliæ.”

- [657] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 900.

- [658] Rob. Torigni, a. 1133. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 310).

- [659] So says Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 701). We shall see however that there were other versions of Henry’s final testamentary dispositions.

- [660] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700). Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1135 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95). Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 254). Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 33 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 309). Ord. Vit. (ibid.), p. 901.

With him expired the direct male line of the Conqueror; for Duke Robert’s long captivity had ended a year before.[661] Of the nine children of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, the youngest and the last survivor was now gone, leaving as his sole representatives his daughter the countess of Anjou and her infant boys. By a thrice-repeated oath the barons of Normandy and England stood pledged to acknowledge her as their sovereign. Suddenly there sprang forth an unexpected competitor. A rivalry which had seemed dead for nearly a hundred years revived in a new form; and the house of Anjou, on the very eve of its triumph, found itself once more face to face with the deadliest of its early foes—the house of Blois.

- [661] Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1134 (Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 94, 95).

Since Geoffrey Martel’s victory over Theobald III. in 1044 the counts of Blois have ceased to play a prominent part in our story. Theobald himself accepted his defeat as final; he seems indeed to have been almost crushed by it, for he scarcely makes any further appearance in history, save at his brother Stephen’s death in 1047, when he requited the help which Stephen had given him against Anjou by turning his son out of Champagne and appropriating all his possessions. The injured heir took refuge in Normandy, married the Conqueror’s sister, and afterwards found in England such ample compensation for what he had lost that neither he nor his posterity ever made any attempt to regain their continental heritage. The reunion of Champagne thus helped to repair the fortunes of the elder line of Blois, so severely shattered by the blows of the Angevin Hammer; and the ill-gotten gain prospered so far that some thirty-five years later Theobald’s son and successor—the young Count Stephen-Henry who in 1069 received Fulk Rechin’s homage for Touraine—could venture on aspiring to the hand of King William’s daughter Adela.[662] In winning her he won a prize of which he was scarcely worthy. Stephen-Henry was indeed, in every way, a better man than either his father or his grandfather; but he had the nerveless, unstable temper which was the curse of his race. He went on the Crusade, and deserted before Antioch was won. He came home to bury his shame; his wife sent him out again to expiate it. Her burning words changed the coward into a martyr, and the stain was washed out in his life-blood beneath the walls of Ramah.[663] In the ordinary course of things, his successor in the counties of Blois, Chartres and Champagne would have been his eldest son William. But Stephen had left the entire control of his affairs, including the disposal of his territories, to his wife; and Adela knew that her firstborn was a youth of slow wit, quite unfit for public life. She therefore disinherited him, to his own complete satisfaction; for he had sense enough to be conscious of his incapacity for government, and gladly withdrew to the more congenial life of a simple country gentleman on the estates of his wife, the lady of Sully in Champagne, while the duties and responsibilities of the head of the family were laid on the abler shoulders of his next brother, Theobald. Of the two remaining brothers, the youngest had been from his infancy dedicated to the Church; the third, who bore his father’s name of Stephen, had been intrusted for education to his uncle the king of England.[664] Adela seems to have been Henry’s favourite sister; she was certainly, in all qualities both of heart and head, well worthy of his confidence and esteem; and she once at least did him a service which deserved his utmost gratitude, for it was she who contrived the opportunity for his reconciliation with S. Anselm. She was moreover the only one of his sisters who had children; and the relation between a man and his sister’s son was in the Middle Ages held as a specially dear and sacred tie. Its force was fully acknowledged by Henry in the case of the little Stephen. He had the child carefully brought up at his court with his own son; he knighted him with his own hand, and bestowed on him, in addition to ample estates in England, the Norman county of Mortain, which had been for several generations held by a near connexion of the ducal house, and entitled its possessor to rank as the first baron of the duchy. Finally, some few years before the second marriage of the Empress, he arranged a match between Stephen and another Matilda of scarcely less illustrious descent—the only daughter and heiress of Count Eustace of Boulogne and Mary of Scotland, sister to Henry’s own queen.[665] Stephen seems in fact to have been, next to William the Ætheling, the person for whom Henry cared most; and after the disaster of the White Ship—in which a lucky attack of illness saved him from sharing—he became virtually the king’s adoptive son, and the first layman in the kingdom. His position is illustrated by a dispute which occurred when the barons took the oath of homage and fealty to Matilda in the Christmas council of 1126. They swore in order of precedence. The first place among the lay peers belonged as an unquestioned right to the king of Scots; the second was claimed at once by Stephen and by the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester; the dignity of the nephew was held to outweigh the privilege of the son; and the second layman who swore on bended knee to acknowledge the Empress Matilda as her father’s successor was her cousin Count Stephen of Mortain and Boulogne.[666]

- [662] The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the “devil of Saumur,” when Odo’s mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely asked him for a certain “bare hill” on the south bank of the Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise, till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy. Geoffrey’s delicate beauty won him the surname of “the Maiden,” but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally; and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of his former lord and the daughter of his present one (Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 573. After the Conqueror’s death Geoffrey found the state of things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father’s side in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy (Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 185, 197, 198).

- [663] On the flight from Antioch see Will. Tyr., l. v. c. 10, and all the historians of the first crusade. On Stephen’s second expedition and death see Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 789 et seq.; Will. Tyr., l. x. c. 20; and Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 384 (Hardy, pp. 593, 594).

- [664] “Nutriendum promovendumque.” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 31).

- [665] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 811. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (ib. p. 310). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 31). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).

- [666] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).

But for that council and its oath, the succession both to the English crown and to the Norman ducal coronet would have been at Henry’s death an open question. Had Matilda’s child been old enough to step at once into the place destined for him by his grandfather, there would most likely have been no question at all; Henry II. would have succeeded Henry I. without opposition, and England would have been spared nineteen years of anarchy. But Henry Fitz-Empress was not yet three years old. The practical choice at the moment lay between the surviving adult descendants of the Conqueror; and of these there were, besides the Empress, at least two others who might be considered quite as well qualified to represent him as she was. Independently of any special engagement, the barons would be fully entitled to choose between the daughter of William’s son and the sons of his daughter—between Matilda of Anjou, Theobald of Blois, and Stephen of Boulogne. Of the three, Matilda was on the whole the one who had least to recommend her. Her great personal advantage was that she, and she alone, was the child of a crowned king and queen, of the “good Queen Maude” in whose veins flowed the ancient royal blood of Wessex, and the king whom his English subjects revered after he was gone as “a good man,” who “made peace for men and deer.”[667] Matilda’s birth would be a valuable qualification in English eyes; but it would carry very little weight in Normandy. Old-English blood-royal went for nothing there; and King Henry’s good peace had been much less successfully enforced, and when enforced much less appreciated, in the duchy than in the kingdom. Personally, Matilda was almost a stranger in both countries. She had left her own people and her father’s house at the age of eight years, to be educated not as the daughter of the English king but as the child-wife of the Emperor. All her associations, all her interests, were in Germany; there she was known and respected, there she was at home. She had only returned to England very unwillingly for a couple of years, and then left it again to become the wife of a man known there only as the son of that “earl of Anjou” who had been King Henry’s most troublesome foe; while in Normandy the Angevin was known but too well, and hated with a mingled hate and scorn which had grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of both county and duchy ever since the days of Geoffrey Martel. If the principle of female succession was to be admitted at all—if the Conqueror’s throne was to be filled by a stranger—one of his daughter’s sons might fill it at least as worthily as his son’s daughter and her Angevin husband. And if a sovereign was to be chosen for his personal qualifications, it would have been hard to find a better choice than Theobald the Great, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne. He did not owe his historical epithet solely to his vast possessions; he was almost the only member of the house of Blois who shewed any trace of intellectual or moral greatness. His public life was one long series of vexations and disappointments; the misfortunes which his race were so apt to bring upon themselves by their own unsteadiness and self-will seemed to fall upon him without provocation on his part; it was as if his heritage had come to him charged with the penalties of all his forefathers’ errors. But it had not come to him charged with the heavier burthen of their fatal intellectual perversity and moral weakness. In its place he had the tact, the dignity, the stedfastness of his Norman mother; and the whole of his after-career fully justified the esteem of the Norman barons, grounded upon their acquaintance with his person and character during those wars against the king of France in which his cause had been inseparably bound up with that of his uncle Henry. In England, however, he could only be known by report, as the nephew and ally of the king, and the elder brother of Stephen. It was Stephen, not Theobald, who had been the king’s favourite and constant companion, lacking nothing of the rank of an adoptive son save the avowed prospect of the crown. Stephen had lived in England from his childhood; his territorial possessions, his personal interests, lay wholly in England and Normandy; his name and his face were almost as familiar there as those of Henry himself; he was the first baron of the duchy, the first layman of the kingdom; moreover, he was the husband of a lady who stood as near to the Old-English royal line and represented it, to say the least, as worthily as her imperial cousin and namesake. Lastly, his marriage gave him yet one more advantage, slight in itself, but of no small practical use at the moment. As count of Boulogne, he had immediate command of the shortest passage from the Continent to England.

- [667] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.

The tidings of Henry’s death soon reached Angers; and before the first week of December was out, Matilda presented herself in Normandy to take possession of her inheritance. The officer in charge of the border-territories, comprising the forfeited lands of William Talvas and the county of Hiesmes, at once surrendered them to her and received her as his liege lady;[668] but before she had time to secure the duchy, the kingdom was snatched from her grasp. Stephen set out at once from Wissant and crossed the Channel amid a storm so terrific that men on shore deemed it could bode nothing less than the end of the world.[669] It only boded the arrival at Dover of a candidate for the English crown.

- [668] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 903. The places specified, besides Hiesmes, are Argentan and Domfront. See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1135 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 34), and Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 294, where Geoffrey gets the credit of winning them. Rob. Torigni, a. 1135, adds Ambrières, “Gorra” and Coulommiers.

- [669] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 703).

Stephen’s promptitude served him as well as the promptitude of William Rufus and Henry had served them in a like case. But this time the part which had been played in 1087 by the primate and in 1100 by “the Witan who were there nigh at hand” was to be played by the citizens of London. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury[670]—for the men of Kent had an hereditary grudge against any one coming from Boulogne—Stephen pushed on to London, where the well-known face of King Henry’s favourite nephew was hailed with delight by the citizens, vehemently declaring that they would have no stranger to rule over them.[671] They claimed to have inherited the right to a voice in the election of the sovereign which had once, in theory at least, belonged to the whole nation, and accordingly the “aldermen and wise folk”[672] came together to consider what provision should be made for the safety of the realm, and, for that end, to choose a king. A kingless land, said they, was exposed to countless perils; the first thing needful was to make a king as speedily as possible.[673] Of Matilda and her claims not a word seems to have been said; if any of the leading burgesses, as tenants-in-chief of the crown, had sworn fealty to her, they were in no humour to regard it now; and the citizens in general would doubtless not hold themselves bound by an oath which they had not personally taken. They claimed the right of election as their special prerogative, and exercising it without more ado in favour of the only person then at hand whose birth and character fitted him to undertake the defence of the kingdom, and who seemed to have been sent to them as by a special providence in their hour of need, they by common consent acknowledged Stephen as king. He hurried to Winchester to get possession of the treasury; the bishop—his own brother—came forth with the chief citizens to meet him; and the treasurer, who had refused to give up his keys to the bishop, surrendered them at once to the king-elect.[674]

- [670] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.

- [671] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 3, 4.

- [672] “Majores ... natu, consultuque quique provectiores.” Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 3.

- [673] Ib. pp. 3, 4.

- [674] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 4–6.

Thus far the two men who ought to have taken the lead in the national counsels—the primate and the justiciar—had stood looking passively on. Both now joined Stephen.[675] He lacked nothing to make him full king but the rite of coronation. This however depended on the primate, and when called upon to perform it William of Canterbury again drew back. He had scruples, first, about the oath which he himself, as well as Stephen and all the barons, had sworn to the Empress Matilda; and secondly, about the validity of an election so hastily made by a small part only of the nation. The second objection passed unheeded; to the first Stephen’s adherents answered that the oath had been extorted and was therefore not binding, and that several persons who were with Henry at his death had heard him openly express repentance for having forced it upon the barons.[676] Roger of Salisbury affirmed that it was annulled in another way; it had been sworn, by him at least, on condition of a promise from Henry that he would not give his daughter in marriage out of the realm without the consent of the Great Council—a promise which had been immediately broken.[677] Hugh Bigod, too, the late king’s seneschal, declared upon oath that Henry had in his presence solemnly absolved the barons from their engagement,[678] and had even formally disinherited Matilda and designated Stephen as his successor.[679] The argument which really prevailed, however, was the objection to a woman’s rule, and the urgent need of having a man to take the government, and to take it at once.[680] Henry had not yet been three weeks dead, and already England was in confusion. The first outcome of the reaction against his stern control had been a general raid upon the forests; and when men in their frantic vehemence had left themselves no more game to hunt, they turned their arms against each other and trampled all law and order under foot.[681] Such a state of things, resulting solely from the fact that England had been three weeks without a king, spoke more in Stephen’s favour than any amount of legal reasonings. The archbishop gave way; all that he demanded from Stephen was a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of the Church. Bishop Henry of Winchester offered himself as surety in his brother’s behalf, and thereby won him the crown.[682] He received it at Westminster,[683] probably either on the last Sunday in Advent or on Christmas day,[684] and he issued at the same time, by way of coronation-charter, a promise at once comprehensive and vague, to maintain the laws established by his predecessor.[685]

[675] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, pp. 703, 704). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 6.

[676] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 6, 7.

[677] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, pp. 692, 693).

[678] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.

[679] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217. Cf. the speeches before the battle of Lincoln in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 270), and that of Stephen’s advocates at Rome in 1151, in Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 543). Gerv. Cant. (as above) does not name Hugh, but merely says “quidam ex potentissimis Angliæ.”

[680] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 8. R. Wend. as above.

[681] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 1, 2.

[682] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 704).

[683] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95).

[684] The date is variously given, as follows: December 15, Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 902.—December 20, Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above).—December 21, Ann. Waverl. a. 1136 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 225).—December 22, Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94; and Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1135 (Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Norman. Geschichtsquellen, p. 79).—December 23, Ann. Cantuar. a. 1135 (Liebermann, as above, p. 5).—December 24, Ann. Margam, a. 1135 (Luard, as above, vol. i. p. 13).—December 25, Eng. Chron. a. 1135; Ric. Hexh. (Raine, Priory of Hexham, vol. i.) p. 70; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 156; and Chron. Mort.-Mar. a. 1135 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 782).—December 26, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 189; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217.—January 1, Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 113.— Will. Malm., the Contin. Flor. Worc., and the Ann. Margam all add that the day was a Sunday. This in 1135 would be right for William’s date, December 22; nothing can make it agree with that of Florence’s continuator, “xiii. kal. Jan.”; but the Margam annalist may very possibly have substituted ix. for xi., really meaning the same as William. The two extreme dates—Orderic’s and John of Hexham’s—seem equally impossible; unless we may take Orderic’s “xviii. kal. Jan.” to have simply an x too much, and then there would be another witness for Christmas-day.

[685] Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 119.

Thus the two great feuds which had hitherto influenced the political career of the Angevin house—the feud with Blois and the feud with Normandy—merged at last into one. The successors of Odo of Blois and those of William the Conqueror were now both represented, as against the successors of Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel, by one and the same man, who yet was not, in strict law, the nearest representative of either. We shall see hereafter that some of the Normans entertained a project of making Theobald their duke; had they succeeded, the older quarrel would have revived almost in its original form, as a direct conflict between the heads of the two rival houses, only with Normandy instead of Touraine for its object and its battle-ground. Its original spirit was, however, more likely to be revived, on one side at least, by the substitution of Stephen for Theobald. Stephen had renounced all share in his father’s territories; but there was one paternal heir-loom which he could not renounce, and which descended to him, and him alone, among the sons of Stephen-Henry and Adela. This was the peculiar mental and moral constitution which the house of Blois inherited from Odo II. as surely as the Angevins inherited theirs from Fulk the Black. In the reigning Count Theobald, indeed, the type was fortunately almost lost, and in his youngest brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, it was very greatly modified by the infusion of Norman blood derived from their mother. In Stephen, however, the Norman blood had but little influence on a nature which in its essence was that of the old counts of Blois. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race were there, just as deeply rooted as in Odo of Champagne himself; the whole difference lay in this, that in Stephen the qualities lay uppermost and shewed themselves in their most attractive aspect, while the defects took a form so mild that till their fatal consequences were seen they appeared hardly more than amiable weaknesses. Gallant knight and courteous gentleman; warm-hearted, high-spirited, throwing himself eagerly into every enterprise; all reckless valour in the battle-field, all gentleness and mercy as soon as the fight was over; open-handed, generous, gracious to all, and apparently unstained by any personal vices:—it is easy to understand Henry’s affection for him, and the high hopes with which at the opening of his career he was regarded by all classes in the realm.[686] His good qualities were plainly visible; time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect which vitiated them all. That defect was simply the old curse of his race—lack of stedfastness; and it ruined Stephen as surely as it had ruined Odo. It was ingrained in every fibre of his nature; it acted like an incurable moral disease, mingling its subtle poison with his every thought and act, and turning his very virtues into weaknesses; it reduced his whole kingly career to a mere string of political inconsistencies and blunders; and it wrecked him at last, as it had wrecked his great-grandfather, on the rock of the Angevin thoroughness.

- [686] See sketches of his character in Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704), and Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 3.

For the moment, however, Stephen had outstripped his rival. The Angevin sagacity had been for once at fault. Steeped as were both Geoffrey and his wife in continental ideas and feelings, their first thought was of Normandy, and they had failed to see that in order to secure it their true policy was to secure England first; or rather, perhaps, they had failed to see that the mere will of the late king was not sufficient to give them undisputed possession of both. Stephen’s bold stroke, whether it resulted from a closer acquaintance with the relation between the two countries, or simply from a characteristic impulse to dash straight at the highest object in view, gained him kingdom and duchy at one blow. Geoffrey had followed his wife into Normandy at the head of an armed force, and accompanied by William Talvas, whose influence secured him a welcome at Séez and in all the territories of the house of Alençon. But the rival races were no sooner in actual contact than their old hatred burst uncontrollably forth. The Angevins, though they ostensibly came only to put their countess in peaceful possession of her heritage, could not yet bring themselves to look upon the Normans in any light but that of natural enemies; they treated the districts which had submitted to them as a conquered land, and went about harrying and plundering till the people rose and attacked them with such fury that they were compelled to evacuate the country.[687] The Norman barons now held at Neubourg a meeting at which they decided to invite Count Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of the duchy. Theobald came to Rouen, and thence to Lisieux, where on December 21 he had an interview with Matilda’s half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester. They were interrupted by a messenger from England with the tidings of Stephen’s election as king.[688] The Norman barons then felt that the decision was taken out of their hands; since Stephen and England had been too quick for them, their best course now was to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledged the king-elect as duke of Normandy.[689] To this Robert of Gloucester assented.[690] Theobald, despite his natural vexation, at once withdrew his claim, and made in his brother’s name a truce with Geoffrey to last from Christmas till the octave of Pentecost; and having thus done his best to secure the peace of the duchy till its own duke could come to it, he quietly returned to his own dominions.[691]

- [687] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 903.

- [688] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 902, 903.

- [689] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 903.

- [690] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135.

- [691] Ord. Vit. as above. Cf. Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 294.

In England, meanwhile, Stephen was carrying all before him. The first public act in which he had to take part as king was the burial of his predecessor at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany;[692] the next was the defence of his realm against a danger which it had not known for more than forty years—a Scottish invasion. King David of Scotland, true to the oath which every one else seemed to have forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda’s rights, led his troops into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her behalf. Stephen met him near Durham, pacified him by a grant of the earldoms of Carlisle, Huntingdon and Doncaster to his son Henry,[693] and came back in peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the crowning of his queen.[694] Adherents now came flocking in; the splendour of the Easter court made up for the meagreness of the Christmas meeting.[695] Baron and knight, clerk and layman, rallied round the winning young sovereign who was ready to promise anything, to undertake anything, to please anybody. The only class who still held aloof were the “new men” of the last reign, men like Payne Fitz-John and Miles the sheriff of Gloucester, who owed everything to Henry, and who were bound alike by gratitude and by policy to uphold his daughter’s cause. But the chief of them all, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, had already joined Stephen, and the rest were soon persuaded to follow his example.[696] Shortly after Easter there came in a yet more important personage. Earl Robert of Gloucester, the eldest son of the late king, influential alike on both sides of the sea by his rank, his wealth and his character, was looked upon both in Normandy and in England as the natural leader of the baronage. The suddenness of Stephen’s accession had snatched the leadership out of his hands, and he lingered on in Normandy, watching the course of events without sharing in them, and meditating how to reconcile his own interest with his duty to his sister. Stephen, anxious to win him over, sent him repeated invitations to England; till at last he decided to let himself be won, at least in appearance, if only for the sake of gaining a footing in England which might enable him afterwards to work there in Matilda’s favour. The king’s son, however, made terms for himself more like a king than a mere earl. He came to Stephen’s court and did homage for his English estates; but he did it only on the express condition of being bound by it only so long as Stephen’s own promises to him were kept, and he himself was maintained in all his honours and dignities.[697] The first result of his submission—if submission it can be called—was seen in a great council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king, and the vague promise to maintain the “Laws of King Henry,” which Stephen had issued on his coronation-day, was amplified into a more detailed and definite charter.[698] Suddenly, a few weeks later, there went forth a rumour that the king was dead, and the barons at once broke into revolt. Baldwin of Redvers threw himself into Exeter; Hugh Bigod, who but a few months ago had been foremost among the supporters of Stephen, seized Norwich castle, and was only dislodged by the king in person.[699] He was apparently forgiven; another rebel, Robert of Bathenton,[700] was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to surrender. The great castle of Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself up with his family and a picked band of young knights, all sworn never to yield, cost a long and troublesome siege; but the agonies of thirst at length drove the garrison to break their vow and ask for terms. Stephen let them all go out free; Baldwin requited his leniency by hastening to a castle which he possessed in the Isle of Wight, and there setting himself up as a sort of pirate-chief at the head of a band of men as reckless as himself. But when Stephen hurried to Southampton and began to collect a fleet, Baldwin suddenly took fright and surrendered. His lands were confiscated, and he went into exile in Anjou, where he was eagerly welcomed by the count, and added one more to the elements of strife already working in Normandy.[701] In England his defeat put an end to the revolt, and the Christmas court at Dunstable brought the first year of King Stephen to a tranquil close.[702]

[692] Ord. Vit. (as above·/·Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 901, 902. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, pp. 257, 258). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 95. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 13 (Hardy, p. 705).

[693] For the details of this Scottish expedition and treaty see Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, pp. 258, 289), Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 72, and Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 114.

[694] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 96.

[695] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, p. 259).

[696] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 14–16.

[697] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 705–707). Cf. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 9.

[698] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 15 (Hardy, pp. 707–709). Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 119–121.

[699] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 259).

[700] Or Bakington. In the Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 18, the name of the place is Batthentona, which Lappenberg and Mr. Freeman render by Bathenton in Devon. (Mr. Sewell, the editor of the Gesta Steph., rendered it Bath.) But while two MSS. of Hen. Hunt. have “Bathentun,” three others have “Bachentun” or “Bakentun” (Arnold, p. 259, note 6. In the index Mr. Arnold suggests “Bagington? Bathampton?”).

[701] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 18–29. Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1135. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 96, 97.

[702] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260).

Yet already there were signs that those who had thought to find in Henry’s nephew such another king as Henry himself[703] were doomed to disappointment. It was no good omen for the fulfilment of the pledges embodied in his charters when Stephen broke the one which appealed most strongly to popular feeling—the promise to mitigate the severe forest laws—by holding a forest assize at Brampton after his triumph over Baldwin of Redvers in 1136.[704] Neither was it satisfactory that the accession of a king specially bound by the circumstances of his election to rule as a national sovereign proved to be the signal for a great influx of foreigners—not as in Henry’s time, honest industrious settlers who fled from their own unquiet homes to share “the good peace that he made in this land” and to become an useful element in the growing prosperity of the nation; but as in the Red King’s time, a rapacious and violent race of mercenary adventurers, chiefly from Britanny and Flanders; men to whom nothing was sacred, and who flocked to Stephen as they had flocked to Rufus, attracted by the report of his prodigality and the hope, only too well founded, of growing rich upon the spoils of England.[705] However much Henry may have provoked his subjects by his preference for ministers of continental birth, he had at least never insulted them by taking for his chief counsellor and confidant a mere foreign soldier of fortune like that William of Ypres who acted as the leader of Stephen’s Flemish mercenaries and whose influence over him excited the wrath of both the English and the Norman barons.[706] The peace of the country was probably all the better kept during the year 1137 because its preservation was left wholly to Bishop Roger and his nephews, while Stephen, accompanied by his Flemish friend, was well out of the way in Normandy, where he spent the year in concerting an alliance with his brother,[707] obtaining the French king’s sanction to his tenure of the duchy, for which his eldest son did homage in his stead,[708] and vainly endeavouring to secure it from the combined dangers of internal treason and Angevin intermeddling. No disturbance occurred in England during his absence; a Scottish invasion, threatened soon after Easter, was averted by Archbishop Thurstan of York, who persuaded the Scot king to accept a truce till Advent,[709] when Stephen was expected to return. He was no sooner back than David sent to demand for his son the earldom of Northumberland,[710] which had been, it was said, half promised to him a year before;[711] on the refusal of his demand,[712] early in January he led an army into England. An unsuccessful siege of the border fortress of Carham or Wark was followed by such a harrying of the whole land from Tweed to Tyne as had not been heard of since the wild heathenish days of Malcolm Canmore’s youth.[713] David, indeed, was not personally concerned in this horrible work; he had left it to the conduct of his nephew William Fitz-Duncan, while he himself with a strong body of troops took up his quarters at Corbridge.[714] Stephen marched against him early in February, whereupon he returned to the siege of Carham; dislodged thence by the English king, he buried himself and his troops in an almost inaccessible swamp near Roxburgh, bidding the townsfolk decoy the Southrons by a false show of friendliness and thus enable him to surround and despatch them.[715] Stephen however discovered the trap—apparently through the double treachery of some of his own barons who were concerned in it;[716] he crossed the Tweed, but instead of marching upon Roxburgh he turned south-westward and ravaged David’s territories till the lack of provisions forced him to return to the south.[717]

[703] “Hi uuendon thæt he sculde ben alsuic alse the eom wæs.” Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

[704] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 260).

[705] “Sub Henrico rege multi alienigenæ, qui genialis humi inquietationibus exagitabantur, Angliam adnavigabant, et sub ejus alis quietum otium agebant; sub Stephano plures ex Flandriâ et Britanniâ, rapto vivere assueti, spe magnarum prædarum Angliam involabant.” Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 34. Cf. l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 731, 706).

[706] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. William of Ypres was son of Philip of Flanders, second son of Count Robert the Frisian. Although he had no legal place in the house of Flanders, he was one of the claimants of the county after the death of Charles of Denmark, against William the Clito and Theodoric of Alsace. After being the torment of his own country for nearly ten years, he was compelled to fly, and took service in England under Stephen. See Walter of Térouanne, Vita B. Caroli Com., in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii. pp. 336, 342–347; Galbert of Bruges, Vita B. Car. (ibid.), pp. 354, 355, 359 et seq.; Geneal. Com. Flandr. (ibid.), pp. 412, 413; Joh. Ypr. Chron. Sith. (ibid.), 466, 468. The people’s hatred of William was justifiable enough; but it ill became the barons to cast stones at him. His evil-doings were not a whit greater than theirs, and the changeless devotion with which he—a mere hireling, bound to Stephen by no tie but that of a bargain which Stephen certainly cannot long have had means to fulfil—stuck to the king in adversity as firmly as in prosperity, might have put them all to shame.

[707] Theobald renounced all claims upon kingdom and duchy for two thousand marks of silver to be paid him annually by Stephen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137.

[708] This was because William the Ætheling had done homage to Louis, and it was agreed that Stephen should hold Normandy on the same terms as his predecessor Henry. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 909. Cf. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, and Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). This was in May. Ord. Vit. as above.

[709] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 76, 77. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 115.

[710] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 77. Joh. Hexh. as above.

[711] Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 72) says that some who were present at the treaty made between Stephen and David in 1136 affirmed that Stephen had then promised that if ever he should contemplate bestowing the earldom of Northumberland upon any man, he would first cause to be fairly tried in his court the claims upon it which Henry of Scotland had inherited from his mother, the eldest daughter of the last old English earl, Waltheof.

[712] According to Orderic, Stephen had some ground for his refusal; for it seems that the form in which the lately expired truce reached him—at any rate, that in which it reached Orderic—was that of a plot made by “quidam pestiferi” to kill all the Normans in England on a certain day, and betray the realm to the Scots. Some of the plotters were said to have confessed to Bishop Nigel of Ely, who revealed the plot, and so it all came out. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 912. This plot appears also in R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 253, but is there attributed solely to one Ralf, a clerk of Bishop Nigel’s, and nothing is said about the Scots.

[713] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 77–80. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), pp. 115, 116. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, pp. 260, 261). The Scottish host was “coadunatus de Normannis, Germanis, Anglis, de Northanhymbranis et Cumbris, de Teswetadalâ, de Lodoneâ, de Pictis, qui vulgo Galleweienses dicuntur, et Scottis, nec erat qui eorum numerum sciret.” Ric. Hexh., p. 79.

[714] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 79. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 116.

[715] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 81. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 117.

[716] Joh. Hexh. as above.

[717] Ric. Hexh. and Joh. Hexh., as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p. 261), and Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 102.

He had not long turned his back when David re-entered Northumberland and marched ravaging along the eastern coast till a mutiny among his soldiers compelled him to retreat to the border. Thence he sent William Fitz-Duncan to ravage the district of Craven, while he himself remained busy with the siege of Carham till he was dislodged by Count Waleran of Meulan.[718] The Empress meanwhile plied him with entreaties for support, both by her own letters and through her friends in the north, chief among whom was her father’s old minister Eustace Fitz-John,[719] lord of the mighty castles of Bamborough, Knaresborough, Malton and Alnwick. Eustace had already forfeited his best stronghold, Bamborough, through his plottings against Stephen;[720] in May 1138 he openly placed himself, his remaining castles and his men at the disposal of the Scot king. David hesitated no longer. Gathering up all the forces of his kingdom,[721] he joined Eustace in an unsuccessful attempt to regain Bamborough; thence the united host marched burning and harrying through the already thrice-wasted Patrimony of S. Cuthbert, crossed the Tees, and in the middle of August made its appearance in Yorkshire.[722]

- [718] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 81–84. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 117. The record of Waleran’s exploit is in Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above)·/·(Thorpe), vol. ii., p. 112.

- [719] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 35.

- [720] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 117. “De magnis proceribus Angliæ, regi quondam Henrico familiarissimus, vir summæ prudentiæ et in secularibus negotiis magni consilii, qui a rege Anglorum ideo recesserat quod ab eo in curiâ contra patrium morem captus, castra quæ ei Rex Henricus commiserat reddere compulsus est.” Æthelred Riev. De Bello Standardi (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 343. On Eustace Fitz-John see also Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, p. 50, note 11.

- [721] The Hexham chroniclers reckon them at something over twenty thousand.

- [722] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 84, 85, 89. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 118.

There was no help to be looked for from the king. All through that summer the whole south and west of England had been in a blaze of revolt which was still unsubdued, and Stephen had neither time, thought, nor troops to spare for the defence of the north. But in face of such a danger as this the men of the north needed no help from him. When their own hearths and altars were threatened by the hereditary Scottish foe, resistance was a matter not of loyalty but of patriotism. The barons and great men of the shire at once organized their plans under the guidance of Archbishop Thurstan, whose lightest word carried more weight in Yorkshire than anything that Stephen could have said or done. Inspired by him, the forces of the diocese met at York in the temper of crusaders. Three days of fasting, almsgiving and penance, concluding with a solemn absolution and benediction from their primate, prepared them for their task. Worn out as he was with years and labours—so feeble that he could neither walk nor ride—Thurstan would yet have gone forth in his litter at the head of his men to encourage the host with his presence and his eloquence; but the barons shrank from such a risk. To them he was the Moses on whose uplifted hands depended their success in the coming battle; so they sent him back to wrestle in prayer for them within his own cathedral church, while they went forth to their earthly warfare against the Scot.[723]

- [723] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 86, 87. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), pp. 118, 119.

Early in the morning of Tuesday, August 22, the English forces drew up in battle array upon Cowton Moor, two miles from Northallerton. In their midst was the “Standard” from which the fight afterwards took its name:—a cart into which was fixed a pole surmounted by a silver pyx containing the Host, and hung round with the consecrated banners of the local churches, S. Peter of York, S. John of Beverley, S. Wilfrid of Ripon.[724] Thurstan’s place as chief spiritual adviser of the army was filled by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys;[725] their chief military adviser was Walter Lespec, the pious and noble founder of Kirkham and Rievaux—the very type and model of a Christian knight of the time. Standing upon the cart, with the sacred banners waving round his head, in a voice like a trumpet he addressed his comrades.[726] He appealed to the barons to prove themselves worthy of their race; he appealed to the English shire-levies to prove themselves worthy of their country; he pictured in glowing colours the wrongs which they all had to avenge, and the worse they would have to suffer if they survived a defeat; then, grasping the hand of William of Aumale, the new-made earl of York,[727] he swore aloud to conquer or die.[728] The unanimous “Amen!” of the English host was answered by shrill cries of “Albin! Albin!” as the Scots came charging on.[729] The glory of the first onset was snatched, much against David’s will, by the men of Galloway, who claimed it as their hereditary right.[730] The second division of the Scottish host comprised the Cumbrians and the men of Teviotdale, and the followers of Eustace Fitz-John. A third body was formed by the men of Lothian and of the western islands, and a fourth by the king’s household troops, a picked band of English and Norman knights commanded by David in person.[731] The English array was simple enough; the whole host stood in one compact mass clustered around the Standard,—the barons and their followers occupying the centre, the archers intermingled with them in front, and the general mass of less well-armed troops of the shire in the rear, with a small detachment of horse posted at a little distance; the main body of both armies fought on foot in the old English fashion. The wild Celts of Galloway dashed headlong upon the English front, only to find their spears and javelins glance off from the helmets and shields of the knights as from an iron wall, while their own half-naked bodies were riddled with a shower of arrows; their leader fell, and they fled in confusion.[732] The second line under the king’s son, Henry, charged with better success; but an Englishman lifted up a gory head upon a pole crying out that it was David’s; and like the English long ago in a like case at Assandun, the Scottish centre at once fled almost without waiting to be attacked.[733] David himself fought on well-nigh alone, till the few who stood around him dragged him off the field, lifted him on horseback, and fairly compelled him to retreat.[734] His scattered troops caught sight of the dragon on his standard,[735] and discovering that he was still alive, rallied enough to enable him to retreat in good order. Henry gathered up the remnants of the royal body-guard—the only mounted division of the army—and with them made a gallant effort to retrieve the day; but the horsemen charged in vain against the English shield-wall, and falling back with shattered spears and wounded horses they were compelled to fling away their accoutrements and escape as best they could.[736] Three days elapsed before Henry himself could rejoin his father at Carlisle.[737] Eleven hundred Scots were said to have been slain in the battle or caught in their flight through the woods and marshes and there despatched.[738] Out of two hundred armed knights only nineteen carried their mail-coats home again;[739] such of the rest as escaped at all escaped only with their lives; and the field was so strewn with baggage, provisions and arms, left behind by the fugitives, that the victors gave it the nickname of Baggamore.[740] The enthusiasm which had carried the Yorkshiremen through the hour of danger carried them also through the temptation of the hour of triumph. They sullied their victory by no attempt at pursuit or retaliation, but simply returned as they had come, in solemn procession, and having restored the holy banners to their several places with joy and thanksgiving, went quietly back every man to his own home.[741] Some three months later the garrison of Carham, having salted their last horse save one, were driven to surrender; but their stubborn defence had won them the right to march out free with the honours of war, and all that David gained was the satisfaction of razing the empty fortress.[742]

[724] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 90, 91. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 119. Cf. the description of the Milanese carroccio—“quod apud nos standard dicitur” as the German writer remarks—in 1162 (Ep. Burchard. Notar. Imp. de Excidio Mediolan., in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Scriptt., vol. vi. p. 917).

[725] On Ralf see Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eborac., vol. i. p. 168.

[726] So says Æthelred of Rievaux (De Bello Standardi, Twysden, X. Scriptt., cols. 338, 339), giving a charming portrait of Walter and a vivid picture of the scene. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 262), attributes the speech to Bishop Ralf.

[727] “The the king adde beteht Euorwic.” Eng. Chron. a. 1138.

[728] Æthelred Riev., De Bello Standardi (as above), cols. 339–342.

[729] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 263).

[730] Æthelred Riev. De Bello Stand. (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 342. His account of the quarrel for precedence and its consequences makes one think of the Macdonalds at Culloden. Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 92), says the “Picti” were in the van; Joh. Hexh. (ib. p. 119), calls them “Scotti”—both meaning simply what at a later time would have been called “wild Highlanders,” i.e. in this case men of Galloway. Hen. Hunt. puts the Lothian men in front, but he is clearly wrong.

[731] Æthelred Riev. (as above), cols. 342, 343.

[732] Ib. col. 345. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, pp. 263, 264), who, however, turns the Galwegians into men of Lothian; see above, note 2{730}.

[733] Æthelred Riev. as above.

[734] Æthelred Riev. De Bello Stand. (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 346. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 264).

[735] “Regale vexillum, quod ad similitudinem draconis figuratum facile agnoscebatur.” Æthelred Riev. as above. Had S. Margaret’s son adopted the old royal standard of her West-Saxon forefathers?

[736] Æthelred Riev. and Hen. Hunt., as above. The two accounts do not seem to tally at first sight, but they are easily reconciled.

[737] Æthelred Riev. as above. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 112.

[738] Hen. Hunt. as above. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93.

[739] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[740] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 120. Serlo (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), cols. 331, 332. According to this last, the scattered eatables consisted chiefly of bread, cheese and horseflesh, which, as well as other flesh, the Scots ate indifferently raw or cooked.—There is yet one other curious version of the Scottish rout and its cause: “Archiepiscopus cum militibus regis latenter occurrens super Cotowne more juxta Northallerton, fieri jussit in viis subterraneis quædam instrumenta sonos horribiles reddentia, quæ Anglicè dicuntur petronces; quibus resonantibus, feræ et cætera armenta quæ procedebant exercitum prædicti David regis in adjutorium, timore strepitûs perterriti, in exercitum David ferociter resiliebant.” (MS. Life of Abp. Thurstan, quoted by Mr. Raine, Priory of Hexh., vol. i. p. 92, note t). The primate’s share in the victory was so strongly felt at the time that in the Ann. Cicestr. a. 1138 (Liebermann, Geschichtsquellen, p. 95), the battle appears as “Bellum inter archiepiscopum Eboracensem et David.”

[741] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 120.

[742] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 100. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 118.

The defeat of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of danger and disruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.[743] Between the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of confidence. It could not be otherwise; for their mutual obligations were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress, so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was the king not sure of his subjects; he was not sure of himself. How far Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in one way: by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken. What he proved was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones, without first counting the cost; and it was no sooner done than he found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero, a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant; he was “a mild man, soft and good—and did no justice.”[744] His weakness shewed itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness and increased his difficulties. His first expedient to strengthen his position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries; his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he regarded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking the resentment and contempt of the older nobility; while to indemnify his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them some means of supporting their titular dignity, he was obliged to provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.[745] But his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for his own needs;[746] and the next steps were the debasement of the coinage[747] and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted for the benefit of his insatiable favourites.[748] They grew greedier in asking, and he more lavish in giving; castles, lands, anything and everything, were demanded of him without scruple; and if their demands were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.[749] He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless activity;[750] he did more harm to himself than to his enemies, giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow peace,[751] and then, when he found every man’s hand against him and his hand against every man, bitterly complaining, “Why have they made me king, only to leave me thus destitute? By our Lord’s Nativity, I will not be a king thus disgraced!”[752]

- [743] “Hi igitur duo anni [i.e. 1136 and 1137] Stephani regis prosperrimi fuerunt, tertius vero ... mediocris et intercisus fuit; duo vero ultimi exitiales fuerunt et prærupti.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). By this reckoning it seems that after Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln Henry does not count him king at all.

- [744] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

- [745] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 712).

- [746] “He hadde get his [Henry’s] tresor, ac he todeld it and scatered sotlice.” Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

- [747] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 34 (Hardy, p. 732).

- [748] See the first and fullest example in the story of the siege of Bedford, December 1138–January 1139; Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 30–32. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p. 260). The sequel of the story is in Gesta Steph., p. 74.

- [749] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 711).

- [750] “Modo hic, modo illic subitus aderat,” ibid. “Raptabatur enim nunc huc nunc illuc, et adeo vix aliquid perficiebat.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. Cf. R. Glaber’s description of Stephen’s ancestor Odo II. (above, p. 150).

- [751] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, pp. 711, 712).

- [752] Ib. c. 17 (p. 711).

Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of Gloucester. As son of the late king and half-brother of the Empress; as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England—earl of Gloucester by his father’s grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon—all-powerful throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march—Robert was the one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to set them at variance; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was a mere form;[753] and a few months after Stephen’s return to England he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl’s English and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.[754] The consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England instructions to prepare for war.[755] This message proved the signal for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford castle;[756] in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, joined hands with the Scot king; while throughout the south and west the barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert’s decision. Bristol under Robert’s own son;[757] Harptree under William Fitz-John;[758] Castle Cary under Ralf Lovel; Dunster under William of Mohun; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan;[759] Dudley under Ralf Paganel;[760] Burne, Ellesmere, Whittington and Overton under William Peverel;[761] on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of Earl Robert’s, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn Maminot[762]:—all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made ready for defence or defiance; and Stephen’s own constable Miles, who as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into that city with regal honours,[763] now followed the earl’s example and formally renounced his allegiance.[764]

[753] Ib.·/·Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 17 (Hardy, p. 710).

[754] Ib. c. 18 (p. 713).

[755] Ib. p. 712; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. The grounds of the defiance were—1, the unlawfulness of Stephen’s accession; 2, his breach of his engagements towards Robert; 3, the unlawfulness of Robert’s own oath to him as being invalidated, like Stephen’s claim to the crown, by the previous oath to Matilda. (Will. Malm. as above.)

[756] At Ascension-tide. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). There is also an account of the seizure of Hereford by Geoffrey Talbot in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 69, where it seems to be placed in 1140. The writer has apparently confused the seizure by Geoffrey in 1138 with that by Miles of Gloucester in December 1139, and misdated both.

[757] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 917. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 36.

[758] Ord. Vit. as above. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 43.

[759] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

[760] “Paganellus [tenuit] castellum de Ludelaue,” says Hen. Hunt. (as above). But we shortly afterwards find Stephen, according to Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 110), marching against “castellum de Duddelæge, quod Radulf Paignel contra illum munierat.” As Henry makes no mention of Dudley at all, and the continuator of Florence makes no mention of Ludlow till 1139, when he says nothing of its commander, it seems plain that there has been some mistake between the two names, which indeed might easily get confounded. Mr. Eyton (Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. v. pp. 244, 245) rules that the Continuator is right, as there is no trace of any connexion between Ralf Paganel and Ludlow, which indeed he shews to have been in other hands at this time. See below, p. 301.

[761] Ord. Vit. as above.

[762] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

[763] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 105.

[764] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104.

The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five weeks’ duration the town caught fire below the bridge; the alarmed rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them to depart free.[765] After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly, and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,[766] he seems to have returned to London[767] and there collected his forces for an attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his prize; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring and staff—a statement which tells something of the way in which the king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of Bristol.[768]

- [765] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above)·/·(Thorpe), vol. ii., p. 106. The writer adds that on the very day of Stephen’s departure (June 15) Geoffrey set fire to everything beyond the Wye; seven or eight Welshmen perished, but no English (ib. p. 107)—an indication that the part of Hereford beyond the Wye was then a Welsh quarter.

- [766] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 106.

- [767] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 36.

- [768] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), pp. 108, 109. In Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 37–39, 41, 42, the story is told at greater length, and the writer seems to defend the bishop and to consider his own hero rather ungrateful.

A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a natural stronghold of no common order; and on the one side where nature had left it unprotected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town stood—the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the water—was in the Conqueror’s last days occupied by a castle which in the Red King’s reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan; in those of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,[769] it grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,[770] and surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined those of the Avon on the south.[771] Bristol was in fact Robert’s military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now become the chief muster-place of all his dispossessed partizans and followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth and renown of its lord.[772] From this stronghold they sallied forth in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds; wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds; every wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till he had given up his uttermost farthing.[773] One Philip Gay, a kinsman of Earl Robert, specially distinguished himself in the contrivance of new methods of torture.[774] In his hands, and those of men like him, Bristol acquired the title of “the stepmother of all England.”[775] If Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen’s work would be more than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Meanwhile, added the supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges, while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret sympathies were with the besieged, argued that whatever material, wood or stone, was used for the construction of the dam would be either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its current; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,[776] a fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds, still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place yielded to Stephen;[777] according to another,[778] he built over against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained by a stratagem somewhat later on;[779] for the present Stephen left it to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the neighbourhood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrewsbury.[780] The old “town in the scrub,” or bush, as its first English conquerors had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl, Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason of Robert of Bellême, had been granted by Henry I. to his second queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress; and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda’s interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert of Gloucester.[781] William himself, with his wife and children, slipped out at the king’s approach, leaving the garrison sworn never to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with wood, set it on fire, and literally smoked them out.[782] The noblest were hanged; the rest escaped as best they could,[783] while Stephen followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged to Fitz-Alan’s uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with ninety-three of his comrades.[784] This unwonted severity acted as a salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom. Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the tidings of her husband’s victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to surrender.[785] This was in August.[786] When a truce had been patched up with Ralf Paganel,[787] the west of England might be considered fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against Earl Robert’s southernmost fortress, Wareham.[788] Nothing, however, seems to have come of this expedition; and Robert himself was still out of reach beyond sea. In the midland shires William Peverel, the lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the king. Stephen’s successes in the west, his wife’s success at Dover, were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor; and meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene.

[769] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).

[770] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37.

[771] See plans and description in Seyer, Mem. of Bristol, vol. i. pp. 373 et seq.

[772] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37.

[773] Ib. p. 40, 41. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 109. Both writers, however, seem to lay to the sole account of the Bristol garrison all the horrors which in the Eng. Chron. a. 1137, are attributed to the barons and soldiers in general throughout the civil war.

[774] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[775] “Ad totius Angliæ novercam, Bristoam.” Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 41.

[776] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 43. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

[777] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 43, 44.

[778] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[779] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 44.

[780] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. On Dudley see above, p. 295, note 4{760}.

[781] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 917.

[782] “Omnes infumigat et exfumigat.” Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

[783] Ibid.

[784] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 917.

[785] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261).

[786] Ord. Vit. as above.

[787] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[788] Ibid.

In the spring of 1138 a schism which had rent the Western Church asunder for seven years was ended by the death of the anti-pope Anacletus, and Pope Innocent II. profited by the occasion to send Alberic bishop of Ostia as legate into England—Archbishop William of Canterbury, who had held a legatine commission together with the primacy, having died in November 1136.[789] Alberic landed just as the revolt broke out, and Stephen had therefore no choice but to accept his credentials and let him pursue his mission, whatever it might be.[790] It proved to be wholly a mission of peace. Alberic made a visitation-tour throughout England,[791] ending with a council at Carlisle, whither the king of Scots, who had adhered to Anacletus, now came to welcome Innocent’s representative. There, on the neutral ground of young Henry’s English fief, the legate made an attempt to mediate between David and Stephen; but all that the former would grant was a truce until Martinmas, and a promise to bring to Carlisle and there set free all the captive Englishwomen who could be collected before that time, as well as to enforce more Christian-like behaviour among his soldiers for the future.[792] On the third Sunday in Advent the legate held a council at Westminster, when Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and certain delegates of the convent, in presence of the king and the legate.[793] Theobald’s consecration, two days after Epiphany, brought Alberic’s mission to a satisfactory close.[794]

- [789] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. On Alberic see Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 96, 97.

- [790] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106.

- [791] Ibid. The details of his movements in the north are in Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 98, and Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 121.

- [792] Ric. Hex. (Raine), pp. 99, 100. Joh. Hexh. as above.

- [793] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 265). Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 101–103. Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107–109, and vol. ii. p. 384. Chron. Becc., in Giles, Lanfranc, vol. i. p. 207. Vita Theobaldi (ibid.), pp. 337, 338.

- [794] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 109.

In the work of mediation he had soon found that there was one who had the matter more nearly at heart, and who had a much better chance of success than himself. Queen Matilda was warmly attached to her Scottish relatives, and lost no opportunity of urging her husband to reconciliation with them. At last, on April 9, she and her cousin Henry met at Durham; David and Henry gave hostages for their pacific conduct in the future, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted to Henry.[795] The treaty was ratified by Stephen at Nottingham;[796] the Scottish prince stayed to keep Easter with his cousins, and afterwards accompanied the king in an expedition against Ludlow. The castle of Ludlow, founded probably by Roger de Lacy in the reign of William Rufus, was destined in after-days to become a treasure-house alike for historian, antiquary and artist. Memories of every period in English history from the twelfth century to the seventeenth throng the mighty pile, in which almost every phase of English architecture may be studied amid surroundings of the most exquisite natural beauty. The site of the fortress, on a rocky promontory rising more than a hundred feet above the junction of the Corve and the Teme, was admirably adapted for defence. The northern and western walls of its outer ward rose abruptly from the steep slope of the rock itself; on the east and south it was protected by a ditch, crossed by a bridge which led to the inner ward and the keep, securely placed near the south-western angle of the enclosure.[797] The fief of Ludlow had escheated to the Crown soon after Stephen’s accession,[798] and he had apparently bestowed it upon one Joce or Joceas of Dinan,[799] who now, it seems, was holding it against him. The siege came to nothing, though it was made memorable by an incident which nearly cost the life of Henry of Scotland and furnished occasion for a characteristic display of Stephen’s personal bravery. A grappling-iron thrown from over the wall caught the Scottish prince, dragged him off his horse, and had all but lifted him into the castle, when the king rushed forward and set him free.[800] This adventure, however, seems to have cooled Stephen’s ardour for the assault, and after setting up two towers to hold the garrison in check, he again withdrew to London.[801] Early in the year he had taken Earl Robert’s castle of Leeds;[802] and altogether his prospects were beginning to brighten, when they were suddenly overclouded again by his own rashness and folly.

- [795] With the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, and on condition that the local customs established by Henry I. should be maintained inviolate. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 105, 106. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265), has a very strange version of the way in which this treaty was brought about; see below, p. 302, note 3{802}.

- [796] Ric. Hexh. (as above), p. 106.

- [797] See plan and description in Clark, Mediev. Milit. Archit., vol. ii. pp. 273–290.

- [798] By the death of Payne Fitz-John. See Eyton, Antiqu. Shropshire, vol. v. p. 244.

- [799] This is Joceas’s surname according to the romantic History of Fulk Fitzwarine, and it is adopted by Mr. Eyton, who takes it as derived from Dinan in Britanny; see his account of Joceas, Antiqu. Shropsh., vol. v. pp. 244–247. According to this, the name of Dinham, now borne by the part of Ludlow which lies south and west of the castle, would be a corruption of Dinan, which the above-mentioned romance (a work of the reign of Henry III.) says was the name given to the whole place in Joceas’s time. Mr. Wright, however (Hist. Ludlow, pp. 13, 34), thinks that Dinham was the original name, afterwards superseded by Ludlow; in which case Joceas becomes simply “Joceas of Dinham,” with a surname derived not from a foreign birthplace, but from an English fief.

- [800] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

- [801] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 115.

- [802] Hen. Hunt. as above. This is Leeds in Kent. It is probably through mistaking it for its Yorkshire namesake that Henry was misled into his odd notion that Stephen himself was fighting in the north, and compelled the Scots to a pacification. See above, p. 300, note 7{800}.

The administrative machinery of the state was still in the hands of Bishop Roger of Salisbury and the disciples whom he had trained. Roger himself retained his office of justiciar; the treasurership was held by his nephew, Nigel bishop of Ely, and the chancellorship by one whom he also called his nephew, but who was known to be really his son. This latter was commonly distinguished as “Roger the Poor”—a nickname pointed sarcastically at the enormous wealth of the elder Roger, compared with which that of the younger might pass for poverty. Outwardly, the justiciar stood as high in Stephen’s favour as he had stood in Henry’s; whatever he asked—and he was not slack in asking—was granted at once: “I shall give him the half of my kingdom some day, if he demands it!” was Stephen’s own confession.[803] But the greediness of the one and the lavishness of the other sprang alike from a secret mistrust which the mischief-makers of the court did their utmost to foster. Stephen’s personal friends assured him that the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews were in treasonable correspondence with the Empress, that they were fortifying and revictualling their castles in her behalf, and that the worldly pomp and show, the vast retinue of armed followers, with which they were wont to appear at court, was really intended for the support of her cause.[804] How far the suspicion was correct it is difficult to decide. Roger owed his whole career to King Henry; he had broken his plighted faith to Henry’s child; it is no wonder if his heart smote him for the ungrateful deed. If, on the other hand, that deed had been done from a real sense of duty to the state, a sincere belief in the advantage of Stephen’s rule for England, then it is no wonder if he felt that he had made a grievous mistake, and sought to repair it by a return to his earlier allegiance. But whatever may be thought of the bishop’s conduct, nothing can justify that of the king. At Midsummer 1139 Stephen summoned Bishop Roger to come and speak with him at Oxford. Some foreboding of evil—possibly some consciousness of double-dealing—made the old man very unwilling to go;[805] but he did go, and with him went his son the chancellor, and his two nephews, the treasurer and Alexander bishop of Lincoln,[806] each accompanied by a train of armed knights. Stephen, equally suspicious, bade his men arm themselves likewise, to be ready in case of need. While he was conversing with the bishops in Oxford castle,[807] a dispute about quarters arose between their followers and those of the count of Meulan and Alan of Richmond;[808] a fray ensued, in which Alan’s nephew was nearly killed,[809] whereupon the two Rogers and the bishop of Lincoln were at once seized by the king. Nigel of Ely, who was lodging apart from the others outside the town,[810] escaped, threw himself into his uncle’s castle of Devizes, and prepared to stand a siege.[811]

- [803] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 32 (Hardy, p. 729).

- [804] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 46, 47.

- [805] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107. (This writer puts the event a year too early, but afterwards corrects himself, ib. p. 116). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717), says that he himself heard Roger’s expression of reluctance: “Per dominam meam S. Mariam (nescio quo pacto) reluctatur mens mea huic itineri! Hoc scio, quod ejus utilitatis ero in curiâ, cujus est equinus pullus in pugnâ.” This really seems to imply nothing more than that he was conscious of having lost all power to control or guide the king.

- [806] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107.

- [807] “In castro Oxenfordiæ.” Ann. Oseney, a. 1139 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. iv. p. 23).

- [808] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717), lays the blame on the men of Alan of Richmond (or Britanny); the Gesta Steph. (Sewell, p. 49) on Waleran of Meulan. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108, gives no name.

- [809] Will. Malm. as above. Cf. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 124.

- [810] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 919.

- [811] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 50.

The town of Devizes stands on a steep escarpment of greensand penetrated by two deep ravines which give it the form of a semicircle with a tongue projecting in the middle. On this tongue of rocky ground, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, the bishop of Salisbury had reared a castle unsurpassed in strength and splendour by any fortress in Europe.[812] At its gates Stephen soon appeared, bringing the two Rogers with him as captives. The elder he lodged in a cowshed, the younger he threatened to hang if the place was not surrendered at once. Its unhappy owner, in terror for his son’s life, vowed neither to eat nor drink till the castle was in the hands of Stephen;[813] but neither his uncle’s fasting nor his cousin’s danger moved Nigel to yield. The keep, however, was held by the chancellor’s mother, Matilda of Ramsbury, and the sight of a rope actually round her son’s neck overcame her resistance. She offered her own life in exchange for his, and the offer being refused, she surrendered. Nigel could only follow her example.[814] Roger’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury, soon fell likewise into the king’s hands, and with them the enormous treasure collected by their owner.[815] Alexander of Lincoln was dragged to the gates of Newark and there kept starving till he induced his people to give up the place; and his other castle, Sleaford, was gained by the same means.[816]

- [812] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

- [813] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. In Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 920, it is the king who vows to starve the bishop till the castle is won. Cf. Hen. Hunt. (as above) and Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 718).

- [814] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [815] Hen. Hunt. and Will. Malm. Hist. Nov. as above. The Eng. Chron. tells the whole tale briefly under a wrong year (a. 1137).

- [816] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

Such an outrage as Stephen had committed could not pass unchallenged. His victims indeed were unpopular enough; but two of them were bishops, and the whole English Church was up in arms at once. And the English Church was no longer without a fully qualified spokesman and leader. That leader, however, was not the new-made primate. The legatine commission held by William of Corbeil was not renewed to his successor in the archbishopric: it was sent instead to the man who had long been the most influential member of the English episcopate—Henry, bishop of Winchester. For nearly four months Henry kept this all-powerful weapon lying idly in the scabbard;[817] now, at the call of duty, neither fear nor love hindered him from drawing it against his own brother. Having vainly dinned into Stephen’s ears, both privately and publicly, his entreaties for the restoration of the two bishops, he fell back upon his legatine powers and cited the king to answer for his conduct before a council at Winchester on August 29.[818]

- [817] Innocent’s commission bore date March 1, 1139. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 22 (Hardy, p. 719).

- [818] Ib. c. 21 (p. 719).

The council sat for three days, and the case was argued out between Stephen’s advocate Aubrey de Vere, the bishop of Salisbury and the legate. Henry formally charged his brother with sacrilege, in having laid violent hands upon bishops, and appropriated their lands and goods to his own use. Stephen met the charge with the plea which had been used by the Conqueror against Odo of Bayeux—he had arrested the culprits not as bishops, but as unfaithful ministers and disloyal subjects; and the property which he had taken from them they had acquired as private men, in defiance of the canons of the Church. Roger retorted that all these accusations were false; both parties threatened an appeal to Rome, and swords were drawn almost in the council-chamber.[819] The legate and the primate intervened as peacemakers, and a compromise was arranged. It was decreed by the council that all prelates who held fortresses other than those which belonged to their sees should place them under the king’s control, and confine themselves henceforth to their canonical duties and rights.[820] On the other hand, Stephen’s act was solemnly condemned, and he had to lay aside his royal robes and come as an humble penitent to receive the censure of the Church.[821] This humiliation saved him from the ecclesiastical penalties of his misdeed; from its political consequences nothing could save him now. He had filled up the measure of his follies. When the obedience of the barons had been forfeited—when the trust of the people had been shaken—two forces still remained by whose help he might have recovered all that he had lost: the administration and the clergy. At a single blow he had destroyed the one and thrown the other into opposition.

- [819] Ib.·/·Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. cc. 22–28 (pp. 719–724).

- [820] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 116. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 51.

- [821] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 51, 52.

His rivals saw that the hour for which they were vainly waiting in Normandy had struck at last in England. All Geoffrey’s attempts on Normandy had failed. At the expiration of his truce with Theobald of Blois in 1136 the barons of Anjou were again in revolt,[822] and it was not till the end of September that Geoffrey was free to invade the duchy. Its internal confusion was such that the twin earls of Meulan and Leicester (sons of King Henry’s friend Robert), who were trying to govern it for Stephen, had been obliged again to call Count Theobald to their aid; but at sight of the hated “Guirribecs,” as the Angevins were derisively called, the Normans forgot their differences and rose as one man against the common foe. On October 1 Geoffrey was wounded in the right foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap near Lisieux; that night his wife joined him with reinforcements; but the morning had scarcely dawned when, like another Geoffrey of Anjou ninety years earlier, he fled with all his host[823]—not, however, before the military fame of the Norman duke, but before the vengeance of the Norman people. Next spring he again ventured to attack the Hiesmois.[824] Stephen, who was now in Normandy and had just won its investiture from King Louis, prepared to meet the invader; but the jealousies between his Norman and his Flemish troops compelled him to abandon the attempt and make another truce for two years.[825] In April next the Angevins broke the truce;[826] in June Robert of Gloucester openly declared for them, and under his influence Bayeux and Caen surrendered to Geoffrey. The count of Anjou retired, however, before a threatened attack from Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois, in conjunction with Waleran of Meulan and William of Ypres.[827] Early in October he made an unsuccessful attempt upon Falaise.[828] In November he marched upon Toucques, then one of the most flourishing seaport towns of Normandy. The burghers were taken captive “seated in their own arm-chairs,” and in their comfortable houses the Angevins, after feasting to their heart’s content, settled themselves carelessly for the night. But their presence was known to William Trussebut, the governor of the neighbouring castle of Bonneville; and at dead of night a band of desperate characters, purposely chosen for a desperate deed, came by his orders from Bonneville to Toucques, dispersed silently throughout the town, and fired it in forty-five places. The Angevins, wakened by the cries of the watchmen and the roaring of the flames, fled headlong, leaving their arms, horses and baggage behind them. William Trussebut had come forth at the head of his men to intercept their flight, but the smoke and the darkness were such that neither party could distinguish friends from foes. Geoffrey, bewildered as he was, managed to bring some of his men to a stand in a cemetery; there the rest of the Angevin force gradually collected, and waited, in shame and trembling, for the day. At the first gleam of morning they fled, and never stopped till they had buried themselves and their disgrace safe within the walls of Argentan.[829] This time the Normans had taught Geoffrey a lesson which he did not soon forget; he did not venture to meddle with them again for more than two years. Neither he nor his wife made any movement at all till late in the following summer, when a prospect was opened for them beyond the sea by Stephen’s arrest of the two bishops. The council of Winchester broke up on the first of September;[830] on the thirtieth the Empress was in England.

- [822] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 268, 269. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 903.

- [823] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 903–908. Rob. Torigni, a. 1136.

- [824] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 909, says he was “stipendiarius conjugi suæ factus.”

- [825] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 910. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, makes it three years. Stephen also promised an annual payment of two thousand marks of silver.

- [826] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 916.

- [827] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [828] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 918. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1138 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 34, 145).

- [829] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 918, 919.

- [830] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724).

CHAPTER VI.
ENGLAND AND THE BARONS.
1139–1147.

On the last day of September 1139 Matilda sailed in company with her brother Robert and a hundred and forty knights;[831] they landed at Arundel, and were received into the castle by its owner, the ex-queen Adeliza.[832] Stephen hurried to besiege them there, but before he could reach the spot one of the travellers had left it. Earl Robert only stayed to place his sister in safety beneath her step-mother’s roof,[833] and then set off to arouse her friends in England with the tidings of her arrival. Stephen flew after him, but in vain. With an escort of only twelve knights he rode right across southern England, met Brian of Wallingford and told him the news, carried it on to Miles at Gloucester, and got safe to his journey’s end at Bristol.[834] The baffled king threw all his energies into the siege of Arundel, till his brother joined him and suggested another scheme. Bishop Henry argued that it was useless to besiege the Empress at one end of England while her brother was stirring up the other, and that it would be far wiser to get all the enemies collected in one spot by letting her follow him to Bristol.[835] That Stephen, having once made up his mind to this course, should not only give his rival a safe-conduct but should commission the count of Meulan and the bishop of Winchester himself to escort her till she reached her brother’s care,[836] was only what might have been expected from his chivalrous character. Of the wisdom of the proceeding it is difficult to judge. We can hardly imagine either of Stephen’s predecessors giving a safe-conduct to a competitor for his crown; but neither Rufus nor Henry had had to deal at once with a lady-rival and with her brother; and both had been, materially, politically and morally, in a much stronger position than Stephen. As matters then stood with him, what in itself looks like a piece of Quixotism may have been the best means of cutting an awkward knot; and both he and Matilda played their game so badly from beginning to end that it is hardly worth while to criticize single moves on either side.

- [831] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724). The Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 56, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1139, also name Arundel as the landing-place, but give no date. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266), says merely “statim,”—i.e. immediately after the council at Winchester. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 116, 117, says first “in October,” and afterwards “before S. Peter-in-chains,”—i.e. August 1; but he is clearly wrong in this as well as in saying they landed at Portsmouth.

- [832] Will. Malm. as above(p. 725).

- [833] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139, says he left her there “cum uxore suâ et aliis impedimentis.”

- [834] Will. Malm. as above. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 56. Rob. Torigni, a. 1139.

- [835] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 56, 57.

- [836] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 725). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 117. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

The next seven years were a time such as England never saw before or since. For want of a better name, we call them the years of civil war and count them as part of the reign of Stephen; but the struggle was not worthy of the name of war, and the authority of the Crown, whether vested in Stephen or in Matilda, was a mockery and a shadow. The whole system of government established by King Henry had fallen with his ministers; the death of Bishop Roger in December 1139[837] was typical of the extinction of all law and order throughout the kingdom, nearly half of which had already slipped from Stephen’s grasp. While he kept his Christmas feast in Roger’s episcopal city,[838] Matilda was doing the like in regal state at Gloucester, receiving homage from the western shires, and distributing lands and honours at her will.[839] Of the Easter assembly there is no notice at all,[840] and by Whitsuntide matters had reached such a pass that Stephen held his court not at Westminster as usual but in the Tower, and only one bishop, and that one a foreigner, could be got to attend it.[841] “In those days,” wrote one who lived through them, “there was no king in the land, and every man did not only, as once in Israel of old, that which was right in his own eyes, but that which he knew and felt to be wrong.”[842] For the first and last time in English history, the feudal principle had full play, uncontrolled by any check either from above or from below, from regal supremacy or popular influence. England was at the mercy of the body of feudal nobles whose aim throughout the last seventy years had been to break through the checks placed upon their action by the Conqueror and his sons, and to master the power of the Crown and the control of the state for their own private interests, as the French feudataries had striven in an earlier time to master the Crown of France. This was the condition into which Normandy fell whenever its ducal coronet passed to a weak man or a child, and from which it had had to be forcibly rescued by almost every duke in succession, from Richard the Fearless to Henry the First. By their sternly repressive policy, by their careful adoption and dexterous use of all those safeguards and checks upon the power of the baronage which could be drawn from old English constitutional practice, by their political alliance with the nation against the disruptive tendencies of feudalism, and by their strict administrative routine, the Conqueror and his sons had hitherto managed to save England from such a catastrophe. The break-down of their system under Stephen revealed its radical defect: it rested, in the last resort, on a purely personal foundation—on the strong hand of the king himself. The “nineteen winters” that England “suffered for her sins” under the nominal reign of Stephen were a time of discipline which taught the people, the sovereign, and at last even the barons themselves, to seek a wider and more lasting basis for the organization and administration of the state. The discipline was a very bitter one. The English chronicler’s picture of it has been copied times out of number, yet whoever would paint that terrible scene can but copy it once again. “Every rich man made his castles and held them against the king, and filled the land with castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-work; and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. They took the men who they weened had any goods, both by night and by day, men and women, and put them in prison for gold and silver, and tortured them with unspeakable torture; never were martyrs so tortured as they were.... When the wretched men had no more to give, they reaved and burned all the townships; and well thou mightest fare all a day’s journey and shouldst never find a man sitting in a township, or land tilled. Corn and cheese and butter were dear, for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved of hunger; some went about asking alms who once were rich men; some fled out of the land. Never was more wretchedness in a land, and never did heathen men worse than these did, for they forbore neither for church nor churchyard, but took all the goods that were therein and then burned church and all.... If two or three men came riding to a township, all fled from them, thinking they were reavers. The bishops and clerks were ever cursing them; but that was nought to them; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost. Even if it was tilled, the earth bare no corn, for it was all undone with their deeds; and they said openly that Christ slept, and His holy ones. Such things, and more than we can say, did we thole nineteen winters for our sins.”[843]

- [837] Will. Malm. (as above)·/·Hist. Nov., l. ii., c. 32 (Hardy, p. 727). Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above),·/·(Thorpe), vol. ii., p. 113, under a wrong year.

- [838] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 122.

- [839] Ib. p. 118. Will. Malm. (as above), cc. 29, 31 (pp. 725, 726).

- [840] The only allusion to it is in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 12 (Arnold, p. 267); “Ubi autem ad Natale vel ad Pascha fuerit [sc. rex], dicere non attinet.” As to Christmas, however, see above, p. 310.

- [841] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. c. 37 (Hardy, p. 734). The bishop was John of Séez.

- [842] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 22 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 69).

- [843] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

The military history of the struggle is scarcely worth following out in detail; for the most part it is but a dreary tale of raid and counter-raid, of useless marches and unfinished sieges, of towns and castles taken and retaken, plundered and burned, without any settled plan of campaign on either side.[844] By the close of the year 1140 the geographical position of the two parties may be roughly marked off by a line drawn from the Peak of Derbyshire to Wareham on the Dorset coast. Owing to the influence of Robert of Gloucester, Matilda was generally acknowledged throughout the western shires; but she was almost imprisoned in them, for the great highway of central England, the valley of the Thames, from Oxford to the sea, was still in Stephen’s hands; London was loyal to him, and so was Kent, although the archbishop as yet stood aloof from both parties, as did also the legate-bishop of Winchester and the bishops and clergy in general. North of Thames, the midland shires served as a wide battle-field where each of the combatants in turn gained and lost ground, without any decisive advantage on either side. In East-Anglia, Hugh Bigod was for the moment again professing obedience to Stephen, but he was simply watching the political tide to take it at the flood and use it for his own interest; and so were the chief men of central and northern England, the earls of Northampton, Derby and York, the lords of the Peak, of Holderness and of Richmond. In the north-west, between the Welsh march and the southern border of Cumberland, lay a district ruled by an almost independent chieftain whose action brought about the first crisis in the war.

- [844] The details of the first year’s fighting are in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 58–69; Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 118–128; and Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. ii. cc. 30, 31, 34–37 (Hardy, pp. 726, 730–735).

Of all the great nobles, the one whom both parties were most anxious to win to their own interest was the earl of Chester. His earldom was no empty title, no mushroom creation of the last few years, but a great palatine jurisdiction inherited in regular succession from Hugh of Avranches, on whom it had been conferred by the Conqueror, and comprising the sole government and ownership of the whole of Cheshire. Within its limits the earl ruled supreme; every acre of land, save what belonged to the Church, was held under him; every man owed him suit and service; the king himself had no direct authority within the little realm of Chester, and could claim from its sovereign nothing but the homage due from vassal to overlord. The earl, in fact, as has been often said, “held Chester by the sword as freely as the king held England by the crown;” and as things now stood the earl’s tenure was by far the more secure of the two. The present ruler of this miniature kingdom, Ralf by name, had been married almost in his boyhood to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester.[845] All his father-in-law’s persuasions, however, had as yet failed to draw him to Matilda’s side. Stephen on the other hand was equally alive to the importance of securing Ralf’s adherence, and lavished upon him all the honours he could desire,[846] with one exception. That one was the earldom of Carlisle, which his father had held for a few years and then surrendered in exchange for that of his cousin Richard of Chester, who perished in the White Ship.[847] Ralf accordingly quarrelled for the possession of Carlisle with Henry of Scotland, of whose Cumbrian earldom it now formed a part. Henry appealed to Stephen, who could not but take his side,[848] yet for his own sake was anxious to satisfy Ralf. The mother of Ralf and of his elder half-brother William of Roumare was a great Lincolnshire heiress, daughter of Ivo Taillebois by his marriage with a lady of Old-English race whose family held considerable estates in that county, of which one of them had been sheriff under the Conqueror.[849] In consequence, no doubt, of this old connexion, Stephen at the close of the year 1140 contrived a meeting with the two brothers somewhere in Lincolnshire, and there bestowed great honour upon them both,[850] including, as it seems, a grant of the earldom of Lincoln to William of Roumare.[851] A mere empty title, however, satisfied neither of the brother-earls. Rather, as the English chronicler says of them and of all the rest, “the more he gave them the worse they were to him.”[852] His back was no sooner turned than they planned a trick, which their wives helped them to execute, for gaining possession of Lincoln castle.[853] There Ralf set himself up as lord and master of the city and the neighbourhood;[854] and we can want no more speaking witness to the character of such feudal tyranny as was represented in his person than the fact that not only the citizens, but Stephen’s late victim Bishop Alexander himself, sent the king an urgent appeal to come and deliver them from the intruder.[855]

- [845] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

- [846] “Noht forthi thæt he ne iaf him al thæt he cuthe axan him, alse he dide alle othre.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [847] On the earldoms of Carlisle and Chester, see Mr. Hodgson Hinde’s Introd. to Pipe Rolls of Cumberland, and his paper on the “Early History of Cumberland,” in Archæological Journal, vol. xvi. pp. 229, 230.

- [848] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 131, 132.

- [849] On the person, pedigree and connexions of Ralf’s mother, Countess Lucy, see Appendix P.P. to Mr. Freeman’s Norm. Conq., vol. iii. pp. 778, 779; and Mr. J. G. Nichols’s paper on the “Earldom of Lincoln,” in Proceedings of Archæological Institute, Lincoln, 1849, pp. 254–257.

- [850] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

- [851] See Nichols, “Earldom of Lincoln” (Proc. Archæol. Inst., Lincoln, 1849), p. 260.

- [852] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [853] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 921.

- [854] “Cumque civibus et affinibus dira injungeret.” Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 70.

- [855] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 70. Ord. Vit. as above. The last alone mentions the bishop.

The news reached Stephen as he was keeping Christmas in London, and the peaceful gathering of the court changed into the muster of an armed host which set off at once for Lincoln, and, actively supported by the citizens and the bishop, sat down to besiege the castle.[856] The present polygonal keep of Lincoln castle appears to have been built by Ralf of Chester in the last years of Stephen’s reign. That which he now occupied stood on the same spot, on the south side of the enclosure, and was the original round shell built by the Conqueror upon a mound of still earlier date. Its base was surrounded by ditches, the outer fortifications on that side being on a lower level, and probably still consisting of nothing more than the old English rampart-mound and palisade; the other three sides of the enclosure, where there was no such steep natural incline, were protected by a curtain-wall raised upon the old mounds, and encircled by ditches wide and deep, but dry, for there was no means of contriving a moat on the top of that limestone crag. The brother-earls were not prepared for Stephen’s prompt and vigorous attack: their force was small, and they had their wives and children to protect. Ralf slipped out alone,[857] made his way to Chester to raise his followers there, and sent a message to his father-in-law offering his allegiance to the Empress if Robert would help the besieged at Lincoln out of their strait.[858] Even had his own daughter not been among them, Earl Robert was not the man to miss such a chance. At the head of the entire force of his party he answered Ralf’s appeal; but so keenly did he feel the importance of the crisis that he kept the real object of his expedition a secret from all but his own nearest friends; and the bulk of his host followed him all the way from Gloucester without any idea whither he was leading them, till they found themselves actually in sight of the foe.[859]

- [856] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Ord. Vit. as above·/·(Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 921. According to Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 38, 39 (Hardy, pp. 739, 740), the castle was closely invested all round, and a chief base of operations seems to have been the minster.

- [857] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 740). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 921.

- [858] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [859] Will. Malm. (as above), c. 39 (p. 741).

The two earls probably met at Claybrook in Leicestershire. At that point Ralf, coming down from Chester by the Watling Street, and Robert, marching up by a branch road from Gloucester, would both strike into the Foss-Way, and thence would follow its north-eastward course along the eastern side of the Trent valley. Between the road, the river and the promontory of Lincoln stretched a tract of low-lying marshy ground across which the Foss-Dyke ran from the Trent at Torksey into the Witham just above the bridge of Lincoln, thus connecting the two rivers and forming an outlet for the superfluous waters of the Trent, which in rainy seasons was only too apt, as it is even now, to overflow its banks and flood all the surrounding country. Against the storms of the winter of 1140 all precautions had failed; the surging stream had risen far above the level of the dyke, and the greater part of the ground between it and the south-western slope of the Lincoln hill was drowned in one vast sheet of water. The Foss-Way entered the city by a bridge over the Witham; the two earls, however, could not venture to take this route, and made instead for an ancient ford which crossed the river a little farther westward, nearer to its junction with the Foss-Dyke. Stephen was evidently expecting them and had anticipated their course, for he had posted a detachment of troops to guard the site of this ford.[860] All trace of the ford itself, however, was lost in the flood. “Even so would I have it,” cried the earl of Gloucester to his son-in-law, as in the dawn of Candlemas-day they reached the southern margin of the water; “once across, retreat will be impossible; we must conquer or die.” The two leaders plunged in, swam boldly across the fordless stream, and their whole host followed their example.[861] Stephen’s outpost fled or was overcome, and the earls apparently wound their way round the foot of the hill till they reached a tract of comparatively high and dry ground on its south-western side. On the eastern border of this tract, close under shelter of the ridge, a dark moving shadow might tell them that swift and secret as their march had been, Stephen was aware of it and had drawn out all his forces to meet them;[862] while on the height above there loomed out dimly, through the chill grey mist of the February morning, the outlines of the fortress which they had come to deliver.

- [860] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of chapter.

- [861] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 741). Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 268).

- [862] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of chapter.

As they drew up in battle array on the marshy meadows there arose a momentary dispute for precedence. The fiery young earl of Chester pleaded that as the quarrel was his, so the foremost place of danger and of honour should be his likewise. But the quarrel was no longer Ralf’s alone. The flower of the army which had come to aid him consisted of the “Disinherited,” the men whom Stephen had deprived of their lands and honours to bestow them on his own favourites—the men whom Henry had raised up and whom Stephen had cast down[863]—and for them Earl Robert claimed the right of striking the first blow to avenge at once their own wrongs and those of King Henry’s heiress. While his eloquence was winding up their feelings to the highest pitch of excitement,[864] all was astir in the royal camp. There, too, crown and kingdom were felt to be at stake, and many of Stephen’s friends besought him not to risk everything in a pitched battle till he should have gathered a larger force—above all, not on that holy day, for it was Sexagesima Sunday as well as the feast of the Purification.[865] Sinister omens at the early mass—the breaking of the lighted taper in the king’s hand, the falling of the pyx upon the altar[866]—lent additional force to their entreaties; but Stephen was impatient for the crisis and would hear of no delay.[867] He drew up his host in three divisions; two on horseback, commanded respectively by Alan of Richmond and William of Ypres;[868] the third on foot around the royal standard, with the king himself in their midst.[869] In the opposing army the van was taken by the “Disinherited”; the men of Chester, who had first occupied it, now stood in the second line, under the command of their own earl, and on foot.[870] The third line was headed by Robert of Gloucester, and on the wings of the host was a crowd of half-savage Welshmen, drawn from the Welsh dependencies of the earldoms of Gloucester and Chester, and “better furnished with daring than with arms.”[871]

- [863] “Quos magnus rex Henricus erexit, iste dejecit—ille instruxit, iste destruxit.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 270).

- [864] See Robert’s speech in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, pp. 268–271); and cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 922. What does Orderic mean by “Bassiani”?

- [865] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 921.

- [866] Ib. p. 922. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271). There is another version of the story about the taper in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 70, 71.

- [867] Ord. Vit. as above.

- [868] “Tres nimirum cohortes sibi Rex constituit.... In primâ fronte regalis exercitûs Flandritæ et Britones erant.” Ibid. Compared with the account of the actual battle in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274), the meaning seems to be as given above.

- [869] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

- [870] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 922. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268), and c. 18 (p. 273).

- [871] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Cf. Ord. Vit. as above.

In the midst of a spirited harangue addressed to the royal troops by Baldwin of Clare—for among all Stephen’s popular gifts, that of eloquence was lacking[872]—Earl Robert sounded his trumpets for the attack. The Disinherited charged the first line of the royal cavalry under the earls of Richmond, Meulan, Norfolk, Northampton and Surrey, with such vigour that it was scattered almost in a moment. The second line of Stephen’s cavalry—the Flemings under William of Ypres and the count of Aumale—were attacked in flank by the Welsh, whom they put to flight, but a charge of the men of Chester dispersed them in their turn, and the whole body of horsemen on the king’s side turned tail at once.[873] Even William of Ypres for once forsook his royal friend; and the hasty flight of the other leaders, with Alan of Richmond at their head, shewed how half-hearted was their attachment to the king.[874] Stephen and his foot-soldiers were left alone in the midst of the foe, who closed round them on all sides and set to work to assault them as if besieging a fortress. Again and again the horsemen dashed upon that living wall, each time leaving a ghastly breach, but each time driven back from the central point[875] where the king stood like a lion at bay,[876] cutting down every one who came within reach of his sword. The sword broke; but a citizen of Lincoln who stood at his side replaced it by a yet more terrible weapon—one of those two-handed Danish battle-axes which it seems had not yet gone quite out of use in the Danelaw.[877] Almost all his followers were taken or slain, yet still he fought on, with the rage of a wild beast[878] and the courage of a hero, alone against an army. At last Chester charged with all his forces straight at the king. Down upon his helmet came the axe, and Ralf, on his knees in the mire, learned that he was even yet no match for his deserted and outraged sovereign.[879] Most likely it was that blow, dealt at the traitor with all Stephen’s remaining strength, which broke the axe in his hands.[880] Then a stone, hurled no one knew whence, struck him on the head and he fell.[881] A knight, William of Kahaines, seized him by the helmet, shouting “Hither, hither! I have the king!”[882] Yet even then Stephen shook him off, and it was only to Robert of Gloucester in person that he deigned to surrender at last.[883] Baldwin of Clare and three other faithful ones were captured with him; all the rest of the gallant little band were already taken or slain.[884] The triumphant host marched into Lincoln and sacked the town under the royal captive’s eyes.[885] He was then conveyed to Gloucester and there presented, as a great prize, by Earl Robert to his sister, who straightway sent him to prison in Bristol castle.[886]

[872] “Tunc quia rex Stephanus festivâ carebat voce.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

[873] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274).

[874] “His men him suyken and flugæn.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 134, says Alan deserted before the battle began, but Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 273), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 922, both name him as receiving the first charge. Orderic (as above) is loud in his denunciations of the traitors. He says that some of them had adopted a practice not unknown in the civil war of the seventeenth century, and still more largely followed in the Jacobite risings of the eighteenth—that of joining the king with a part of their men, and sending the remainder to his enemies.

[875] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274).

[876] “Stetit autem rex in acie quasi leo.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 135.

[877] Ibid. Hen. Hunt. (as above) says the axe was the first weapon, and the sword replaced it when broken, but John’s is far the more likely version. See also Ord. Vit. (as above) and Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

[878] “Rugiens ut leo ... stridens dentibus, spumans ore, apri more.” Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

[879] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 135.

[880] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274), says that both sword and axe broke.

[881] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 742).

[882] Hen. Hunt. as above.

[883] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.) p. 922. Joh. Hexh. as above. For other accounts see Will. Malm. as above; Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 71; and Will. Newb., l. i. c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 39, 40). All agree in praise of Stephen’s valour.

[884] Ord. Vit. as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 274, 275).

[885] Will. Malm., Hen. Hunt. and Will. Newb.as above.

[886] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 41 (Hardy, p. 742). Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 40). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 72. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 129, giving the date, February 9 [1141].

Matilda’s day had come now. Within three weeks after the battle of Lincoln one of her adherents, Miles Beauchamp, regained Bedford castle from its titular earl Hugh the Poor;[887] William Peverel was forced to surrender Nottingham;[888] Hervey of Lions, Stephen’s son-in-law, was driven out of Devizes;[889] and Alan of Richmond, repenting of his treason and vainly striving to atone for it, was caught in a trap which he himself had laid for Ralf of Chester, flung into a dungeon, and compelled to make submission to the earl and the Empress both at once;[890] while voluntary offers of service and homage came flowing in to Gloucester from all quarters.[891] Still the clergy held aloof. The outrage of Midsummer 1139 had made it impossible for them to support the king; but he was still the Lord’s anointed, to whom their faith was pledged; and their leader, Henry of Winchester, was his own brother. Matilda, anxious above all things to gain Henry’s adhesion, bluntly sent him word that if he would join her, she would honour him as the chief among her counsellors; if not, she would lead “all the armies of England” against him at once. The legate, thus driven into a corner—for, at the moment, her words were by no means an empty threat—felt that even for his brother’s interest, let alone the interest of the Church, which was really dearer to him than all beside, his best course was to make terms with the victorious party.[892] The terms were arranged between him and his imperial cousin in person, on a rainy March morning in the plain before Winchester. Next day the old West-Saxon capital opened its gates to the Empress, and the legate himself, with a long train of bishops and abbots, clergy and people, led her in triumphal procession to the “Old Minster” where so many of her forefathers had been crowned and buried.[893]

- [887] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. ib. p. 32.

- [888] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

- [889] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. ib. p. 69. Hervey, it must be noticed, was actually expelled not by Matilda’s partizans, but by the poor country folk whom his oppressions had exasperated. But it was Matilda who got the benefit of his expulsion.

- [890] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

- [891] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 74.

- [892] Ib. p. 75.

- [893] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, pp. 743, 744). In Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130, this entry into Winchester on March 3 is confused with Matilda’s formal election there in April. So it is also in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 75.

In a few days the archbishop of Canterbury followed the legate’s example and swore fealty to the Empress at Wilton.[894] She next advanced to her father’s burial-place, Reading, and thence summoned Robert of Oilly, who had been her father’s constable, to surrender Oxford castle; the summons was obeyed,[895] and she held her Easter court at Oxford.[896] The key of the upper valley of the Thames being thus in her hands, she set herself to win its lower valley by advancing to S. Alban’s and thence opening negotiations with London.[897] A deputation of its citizens were at the same time invited by the legate-bishop to a great council at Winchester on the second Monday after Easter. The first day of the council was spent in a succession of private conferences; on the second Henry spoke out publicly. He set forth how, as vicar of the Apostolic see, he had summoned this assembly to consider of the best means of restoring order in the land; he contrasted its present wretched state with the good peace which it had enjoyed under King Henry; he recited how the crown had been promised to Matilda;—how, in consequence of her absence at her father’s death, it had seemed wiser to secure a king at once in the person of Stephen;—how he, the speaker, had stood surety for the maintenance of the new king’s promises to the Church and the nation:—and how shamefully those promises had been broken. He had tried to bring his brother to reason, but in vain; and now the matter had been decided by a higher Power. The judgment of the God of battles had delivered Stephen into the hand of his rival, and cast him down from his throne; the speaker’s duty was to see that throne filled at once. He had spent the previous day in consultation with the bishops and clergy to whom the right of election chiefly belonged; their choice had fallen upon the candidate to whom their faith had been plighted long ago; he called upon them now publicly to confirm their choice, and swear fealty to King Henry’s heiress as Lady of England and Normandy.

- [894] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, p. 744). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130.

- [895] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

- [896] Will. Malm. as above. The Contin. Flor. Worc. says she spent Easter at Wilton, and places the visits to Reading and Oxford between Easter and Rogation-tide; but his chronology is very confused, while that of Will. Malm. is especially careful just here. William’s account of all these matters is by far the best. The Gesta Steph. cuts them very short.

- [897] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

Not a dissentient voice was raised save that of a clerk of the queen’s household, who ventured to read out a letter from his mistress to the legate, passionately entreating for her husband’s restoration. The deputation from London, who seem to have been the only laymen in the assembly, did not exactly oppose the decision of the majority; they merely pleaded for Stephen’s release, and carried back a report of the proceedings to their fellow-citizens, with a view to gaining their assent. It was not till just before midsummer that the Londoners were finally persuaded to forsake their own chosen king;[898] then, indeed, they opened their gates with the utmost humility;[899] and thus the Lady entered her capital and took up her abode at Westminster in triumph.[900]

- [898] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 43–48 (Hardy, pp. 744–749).

- [899] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 76, 77.

- [900] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

The triumph did not last long. Matilda fell, just as her rival had fallen, by her own fault; only the faults of the two cousins were of a directly opposite nature. The Lady’s habitual temper was that of her grandfather the Conqueror—“very stern to all who withstood her will”; and her will was not, like his, kept under the control of sound policy and reason. Where Stephen had erred through his fatal readiness to listen to the most worthless counsellors, Matilda erred through her obstinate refusal to listen to any counsellors at all. She was no sooner in London than she began confiscating lands and honours and disposing of Church property more ruthlessly than ever Stephen had done; and neither the brother to whom she owed her victory, nor the legate to whom she owed her throne, nor the old king of Scots who came to share his niece’s triumph and give her the benefit of his mature wisdom, could succeed in bringing her to reason. Not a word of conciliation would she hear from any one. The queen appealed to her in behalf of her captive husband; some of the great nobles did the like; but she was deaf to their prayers. The bishop of Winchester besought her at least to secure to Stephen’s children the possessions which he had held before he became king; but she would not hear him either. The citizens of London besought her to give them back “the Laws of King Eadward”;[901] and that, too, she refused. She did worse; she summoned the richest burghers to her presence, demanded from them instant payment of a large sum of money, and when they respectfully remonstrated, drove them away with a torrent of abuse, utterly refusing all abatement or delay.[902] She was soon punished. All through the spring Matilda of Boulogne had been busy in Kent with the help of William of Ypres, rallying her husband’s scattered partizans, and gathering an army which she now led up, wasting, plundering, slaughtering all before them, almost to the gates of London. Her vigorous action determined that of the citizens. One day, as the Empress was quietly sitting down to dinner, the bells began to ring, the people came swarming out of their houses “like bees out of a hive”; the whole city flew to arms; and she and her friends were driven to flee, some one way, some another, as fast as their horses could carry them.[903] Earl Robert accompanied his sister as far as Oxford;[904] thence she hurried on to Gloucester to consult with her favourite Miles, the only person who seems to have had any real influence over her, and brought him back with her to Oxford to help in rallying her scattered forces.[905] Her cousin the queen meanwhile was in London at the head of an enthusiastic city, eager for the restoration of Stephen; from one end of England to the other the heroic wife was leaving no stone unturned in her husband’s interest, and her zeal was speedily rewarded by the re-conversion of the legate. Utterly disgusted at the result of his second attempt at king-making for the good of the Church, after one last warning to the Empress he met his sister-in-law at Guildford, reversed all the excommunications issued against Stephen’s party by the council of Winchester, and pledged himself to do henceforth all that in him lay for the restoration of the captive king.[906] Robert of Gloucester vainly sought to win him back;[907] then the Lady resolved to try her own powers of persuasion, and without a word of notice even to her brother, at the head of a strong body of troops she set off for Winchester.[908]

- [901] “Ut leges eis Regis Edwardi observari liceret, quia optimæ erant, non patris sui Henrici, quia graves erant.” Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 132.

- [902] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 77.

- [903] Ib. pp. 78, 79. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin. as above, and Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 48 (Hardy, p. 749).

- [904] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 79.

- [905] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

- [906] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).

- [907] Ib. c. 50 (p. 751).

- [908] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov. as above. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 80. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 133) says this was just before August 1.

Of the two royal dwelling-places founded at Winchester by the Conqueror, only one now remained. He and his sons apparently found the castle at the western end of the city a more agreeable residence than the palace whose inconvenient proximity drove the monks of the New Minster to remove to Hyde. This palace was almost as great a nuisance to the Old Minster as to the New, and three years after King Henry’s death his nephew and namesake the bishop determined to get rid of it. Amid the gathering storms of the year 1138 Bishop Henry, in his turn, grew dissatisfied with his episcopal abode hard by the cathedral church, and resolved that he too would have a castle of his own. With an audacity characteristic alike of the man and of the time, he carried the stones of his grandfather’s deserted palace down to a clear space within the “soke” or “liberty” of the church, just within the eastern boundary of the city, and there set them up again in the shape of a mighty fortress[909] afterwards known as Wolvesey-house, some fragments of whose walls still stand, broken and overhung with ivy, in a green enclosure between the river-bank and the long, dark pile of the cathedral. As the Lady rode into Winchester by one gate the bishop rode out by another, to shut himself up in Wolvesey.[910] Matilda established herself without opposition in the castle,[911] and thence sent him a civil message requesting him to come and speak with her. He answered, “I will make me ready”;[912] and he did so, by despatching an urgent summons to all the partizans of the king.[913] The Empress, too, called up her friends; they hurried to her support, quartered themselves in the city with the goodwill of the inhabitants, and beset both the bishop’s palace and his fortress with all the troops they could muster.[914] But his summons was no less effectual than hers. It brought up all the barons who still held with Stephen; it brought up a troop of mercenaries;[915] best of all, it brought up, not only William of Ypres with his terrible Flemings,[916] but a thousand valiant citizens of London with Stephen’s own Matilda at their head.[917] The besiegers of Wolvesey found themselves beset in their turn by “the king’s queen with all her strength”;[918] the bishop himself ordered the town to be fired, and the wind, which saved the cathedral, carried the flames northward as far as Hyde abbey.[919] While he thus made a desert for the besiegers within the city, the queen was doing the like without. Under her directions the London contingent were guarding every approach from the west, whence alone the Lady’s troops could look for supplies: the convoys were intercepted, their escorts slain; and while eastward the roads were lined all the way to London with parties bringing provision for the bishop and his little garrison, his besiegers already saw famine staring them in the face.[920] At last they sent out a body of knights, three hundred strong, to Wherwell, intending there to build a castle as a cover for their convoys.[921] They had no sooner reached the spot than William of Ypres pounced upon them and captured the whole party.[922]

[909] “Hoc anno fecit Henricus episcopus ædificare domum quasi palatium cum turri fortissimâ in Wintoniâ.” Ann. Winton. a. 1138 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 51). The story of the pulling down of the royal palace is in Girald. Cambr., Vita S. Remigii, c. 27 (Opera, ed. Dimock, vol. vii. p. 46).

[910] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 80. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 133.

[911] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 133. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, p. 751).

[912] “Ego parabo me.” Will. Malm. as above.

[913] Ibid.

[914] “Castellumque episcopi, quod venustissimo constructum schemate in civitatis medio locârat, sed et domum illius quam ad instar castelli fortiter et inexpugnabiliter firmârat, validissimâ obsidione claudere præcepit” [sc. comitissa]. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 80. The first-named “castellum” is clearly the old palace of the bishops; the “domus” is Wolvesey, where Henry now was. The list of Matilda’s followers is given in Gesta Steph., p. 81, and in Will. Malm. as above.

[915] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 82.

[916] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275).

[917] Gesta Steph. as above.

[918] “Tha com the kings cuen mid all hire strengthe and besæt heom.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

[919] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, p. 752). Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 133. The latter gives the date—August 2.

[920] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 50 (Hardy, pp. 751, 752). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 83.

[921] Gesta Steph. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine, p. 138) says two hundred knights, commanded by John the Marshal and Robert, son of King Henry and Eda (i.e. Edith who married Robert of Oilly).

[922] Gesta Steph. and Joh. Hexh. as above.

Then Robert of Gloucester felt that the case was hopeless, and that, cost what it might, he must get his sister out. Suddenly, as he was marshalling his host to cut their way through at all risks,[923] on the evening of September 13, the city gates were opened, and peace was proclaimed in the bishop’s name.[924] Robert hereupon decided to march quietly out next morning. He took, however, the precaution of sending his sister out first of all, while he brought up the rear with a small band of men as dauntless as himself.[925] He did wisely. Matilda had but just ridden through the west gate when the bishop, doubtless from his tower at Wolvesey, gave the signal for attack. The whole host of the queen’s partizans rushed upon those of the Lady and routed them completely. Earl Robert succeeded in covering his sister’s retreat, and cut his own way out in another direction, but was overtaken at Stockbridge by William of Ypres and his Flemings, who surrounded and took him prisoner.[926] Miles of Gloucester (whom the Empress had made earl of Hereford), surrounded in like manner, threw down his arms and fled for his life, reaching Gloucester in disgrace, weary, alone, and almost naked.[927] King David, it is said, was thrice made prisoner, but each time bribed his captors to let him go,[928] and was hidden in safety at last by a certain David Holcfard, who happened to be his godson.[929] The archbishop of Canterbury and several other bishops who had accompanied the Empress were despoiled of their horses and even of their clothes. The Lady herself had escaped in company with the Breton lord of Wallingford, Brian Fitz-Count, who had long been her devoted friend and who never forsook her.[930] Their first halt was at Luggershall; urged by her friends, still in terror of pursuit, she mounted another horse and spurred on to Devizes; there, half dead with fatigue, she laid herself on a bier, and bound to it with ropes as if she had been a corpse, she was carried at last safe into Gloucester.

- [923] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 753). Cf. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 84.

- [924] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 134.

- [925] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 753).

- [926] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 135. Cf. Gesta Steph., Will. Malm. (as above), and Joh. Hexh. (as above)·/· (Raine, p. 138). The Geneal. Com. Flandr. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii. p. 413) declares that this was the service for which Stephen rewarded William with the earldom of Kent.

- [927] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 135.

- [928] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 85.

- [929] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 138.

- [930] Gesta Steph. as above. Brian was a son of Alan Fergant, duke of Britanny (Eng. Chron. a. 1127). Together with Robert of Gloucester, he escorted Matilda over sea when she went to be married to Geoffrey, and he is said to have been one of the three persons with whom alone Henry consulted about the marriage. Eng. Chron. a. 1127; Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693). He was, all his life, a most loyal and useful member of the Angevin party. His father’s first wife was the Conqueror’s daughter Constance; the second was Fulk Rechin’s daughter Hermengard; Brian, however, had no kindred with the house which he served so well.

Earl Robert was brought back to Winchester to the feet of the queen, who sent him, under his captor’s charge, into honourable confinement in Rochester castle.[931] The next six weeks were spent in negotiations for his release and that of Stephen; for the party of the Empress found themselves helpless without Robert, and the chief aim of Matilda of Boulogne was to get her husband free. She proposed to Countess Mabel of Gloucester—for the Empress held sullenly aloof—that the two illustrious captives should simply be exchanged, and to this Mabel eagerly assented. Robert, however, protested that an earl was no equivalent for a king, and insisted that all those who had been captured with him should be thrown in to balance the crown. To this their various captors naturally demurred, and the project failed.[932] It was next proposed to settle the whole dispute by restoring Stephen to his throne and making Robert governor of England in his name;[933] but the earl would agree to nothing without his sister’s consent, and the Empress refused to modify her claims in any way.[934] The queen threatened that if Robert did not yield, she would send him over to Boulogne and keep him there in chains for the rest of his life; but he knew that if a hair of his head was touched his countess, whom he had left in command at Bristol, would at once ship off her royal captive to Ireland, and the threat produced no effect. Meanwhile the party of the Empress was falling to pieces so rapidly that her few genuine adherents grew alarmed for her personal safety, and besought Robert to accept freedom on any terms, as the sole chance of averting her ruin. The original proposition of a simple exchange was therefore revived, and accepted in the first days of November.[935]

- [931] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above)·/·(Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 135, p. 134.

- [932] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 58 (Hardy, pp. 759, 760).

- [933] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 136. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 59 (Hardy, p. 760).

- [934] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. At this point we lose him.

- [935] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 51, 60–64 (Hardy, pp. 754, 760–762). Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1140; Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275); and Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 85, 86.

The earl rejoined his sister at Oxford;[936] the king re-entered his capital amid general rejoicings.[937] His misfortunes, the heroism of his queen, the overbearing conduct of the Empress, all helped to turn the tide of popular feeling in his favour once more. Early in December the legate, with such daring indifference to the awkwardness of his own position as can surely have been due to nothing but conscious integrity of purpose, called a council at Westminster and formally undid the work which he had done at Winchester in the spring. After a solemn complaint had been lodged by Stephen against the vassals who had betrayed and captured him—the counterpart of the charge once made in a similar assembly against Stephen himself, of having been false to his duty as king—Henry rose and made his apology. He had acquiesced in the rule of the Empress, believing it a necessary evil; the evil had proved intolerable, and he was thankful to be delivered from its necessity. In the name of Heaven and its Roman representative he therefore once more proclaimed his brother as the lawfully-elected and apostolically-anointed sovereign to whom obedience was due, and denounced as excommunicate all who upheld the claims of the Angevin countess. The clergy sat in puzzled silence; but their very silence gave consent.[938]

- [936] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 51 (Hardy, p. 754).

- [937] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 85. Hen. Hunt. as above·/·, l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275).

- [938] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 52–53 (Hardy, pp. 755, 756). The council met on December 7.

Throughout the winter both parties remained quiet, Stephen in London, Matilda in Oxford; both, in the present exhausted state of their forces, had enough to do in simply standing their ground, without risking any attack upon each other. In the spring Matilda removed to Devizes; there, at Mid-Lent, she held with her partizans a secret council which resulted in an embassy to Anjou, calling upon Geoffrey to come and help in regaining the English heritage of his wife and son. At Pentecost the answer came. Geoffrey, before he would accede to the summons, required to be certified of its reasonableness, and he would accept no assurance save that of the earl of Gloucester in person. Robert, knowing how closely his sister’s interest and even her personal safety was bound up with his presence at her side, was very unwilling to undertake the mission. A scheme was however contrived to satisfy him. Matilda returned to her old quarters at Oxford; the chief men of her party bound themselves by oath to keep within a certain distance of the city, and to guard her against all danger until her brother’s return. On this understanding he sailed from Wareham shortly before Midsummer. He was but just gone when Stephen, who since Easter had been lying sick at Northampton, swooped down upon Wareham so suddenly that the garrison, taken by surprise, yielded to him at once.[939] The king marched up to Cirencester, surprised and destroyed a castle lately built there by the Empress,[940] and thence turned westward to try conclusions with Matilda herself by attacking her headquarters at Oxford.

- [939] Ib.·/·Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 66–71 (Hardy, pp. 763–766).

- [940] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 87, 88.

Oxford was, from its geographical situation, one of the most important strategical posts in England. It stood at the very centre and crowning-point of the valley of the Thames, the great high-way which led from the eastern sea and the capital into the western shires, through the very heart of the land. So long as it remained loyal to Stephen, he was master of the whole Thames valley, and the Angevins, however complete might be their triumph in the west, were cut off from all direct communication with eastern England and even with the capital itself. The surrender of Oxford castle to Matilda in the summer of 1141 had reversed this position of affairs. It probably helped to determine—it was at any rate soon followed by—the surrender of London; and even when London was again lost to the Empress, her possession of Oxford still gave her command over the upper part of the river-valley and thus secured her main line of communication with her brother’s territories in the west, while Stephen in his turn was almost prisoned in the eastern half of his realm. For nearly eleven months he had seen her defying him from her father’s palace of Beaumont or from the impregnable stronghold of the castle, where the first Robert of Oilly, not content with raising a shell-keep on the old English mound, had built another tall square tower which still stands, on the western side of the enclosure, directly above the river.[941] Not until her brother had left her did the king venture to take up the challenge which her very presence there implied; then indeed he felt that the hour had come. Matilda, as if in expectation of his attack, had been employing her followers on the construction of a chain of forts intended to protect and keep open her communications with the west.[942] One by one Stephen broke the links of the chain—Cirencester, Bampton, Ratcot[943]—and from this last place, a little village in the midst of a marsh, half-way between Bampton and Farringdon, he led his host across the Isis and round by the meadows on its southern shore to the ford below S. Frideswide’s from which the city took its name. Matilda’s partizans no sooner discovered his approach—three days before Michaelmas[944]—than they streamed down to the bank of the river, across which they greeted him first with a torrent of abuse and then with a flight of arrows. The vanguard of the royal host, with Stephen himself at their head, sprang into the water, swam rather than waded across the well-known and time-honoured ford,[945] and by the fury of their onset drove their insulting enemies back to the city gates. The rest of the army quickly followed; Matilda’s adherents fled through the open gate, their pursuers rushed in after them, entered the town without difficulty, set it on fire, captured and slew all on whom they could lay their hands, and drove the rest to take shelter in the castle with their Lady.[946]

- [941] See above, p. 42, note 2{113}.

- [942] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 87, 88.

- [943] Ib. p. 88. “Apud viculum Ratrotam fluctibus inaccesse et paludibus obseptum.” Ib. p. 87. Ratcot is Anthony Wood’s rendering.

- [944] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 71 (Hardy, p. 766).

- [945] “Præmonstrato antiquo sed eximiæ profunditatis vado.” Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 89.

- [946] Ibid.

Stephen had doubtless not braved S. Frideswide’s wrath by entering Oxford, so to say, under her very eyes. His troops had won the city; his task was to win the castle, and that task he vowed never to abandon till both fortress and Empress should be in his hands. For nearly three months he blockaded the place, till its inhabitants were on the verge of starvation. The barons who had sworn to protect Matilda, bitterly ashamed of their failure, gathered at Wallingford ready to meet Stephen if he should chance to offer them battle; but he had no such intention, and they dared not attack him where he was.[947] At last a gleam of hope came with Earl Robert’s return, quickened, it seems, by tidings of his sister’s danger. Landing at Wareham with a force of some three or four hundred Normans, he regained the port and the village without difficulty, and as his force was too small to effect Matilda’s relief directly, he laid siege to the castle, hoping by this means to make a diversion in her favour.[948] The garrison of Wareham did in fact send a message to Stephen beseeching him to come and relieve them before a certain day, as if he did not, they must give up the place.[949] But the king was not to be drawn from his prey; he left Wareham to its fate, and after a three weeks’ siege it surrendered. Robert went on to Portland and Lulworth, took them both, and then summoned all the friends of the Empress to meet him at Cirencester, thence to set out with their united forces for the rescue of Matilda herself.[950] In Oxford castle the provisions were all but exhausted; the Lady despaired of succour.[951] Her faithful friend the lord of the castle, Robert of Oilly, had died a fortnight before the siege began.[952] Christmas was close at hand; the snow lay thick on the ground; the river was frozen fast. From the top of D’Oilly’s tall tower nothing was to be seen but one vast sheet of cold, dead white, broken only by the dark masses of Stephen’s host encamped round about upon the frozen meadows:—a dreary outlook, but the prospect within was drearier still. Matilda had gone through too many adventures to shrink from the risk of one more. One night four white-robed figures[953] dropped down by a rope[954] over the castle-wall upon the frozen river at its foot; they crossed dry-shod over the stream whose waters, a little lower down, had been almost over the heads of their enemies three months before; their footsteps fell noiseless upon the fresh snow, their white garments reflected its gleams and deceived the eyes of Stephen’s sentinels; in the stillness of the night, broken only by the bugle-call and the watchman’s cry, they stole through the besieging lines and across the very sleeping-quarters of the king—never caught, never discovered save by one man in all the host; and he, whether taking them for ghosts, or in chivalrous sympathy for their desperate venture, let them pass unchallenged and kept his story till the morrow.[955] Five miles they fled on foot “over snow and ice, over ditch and dale”; at Abingdon they took horse, and before the morning broke the Empress Matilda and her faithful comrades were safe under the protection of Brian Fitz-Count in his great fortress of Wallingford.[956]

- [947] Will. Malm. as above·/·Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 71 (Hardy, p. 766).

- [948] Ib. cc. 72, 73 (Hardy, pp. 767, 768). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 91. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124.

- [949] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 73 (Hardy, p. 768).

- [950] Ib. c. 74 (p. 768). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 124, 125.

- [951] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 90.

- [952] Ann. Osen. a. 1142 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. iv. p. 24).

- [953] Gesta Steph. as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 124, makes them six.

- [954] Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant. (as above) says “per posticium.”

- [955] Gesta Steph. as above.

- [956] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 90. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 124, 125. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 20 (Arnold, p. 276). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43).

At Wallingford her brother came to meet her, accompanied not by her husband but by her son, a child nine years old whom Geoffrey, now absorbed in the conquest of Normandy, had sent to England in his stead.[957] The escape from Oxford was Matilda’s last exploit. The castle surrendered to Stephen as soon as she had left it;[958] she returned to her old quarters at Bristol or Gloucester; and thenceforth she ceased to figure prominently in the war which dragged languidly on for five more years. A battle between Stephen and Earl Robert near Wilton, on July 1st, 1143, in which the king was utterly routed and only escaped being made prisoner a second time by taking to headlong flight,[959] was the last real success of the Angevin party. The year closed with a severe blow to the Empress, in the death of her trusted friend Miles of Hereford, who was slain on Christmas Eve, not in fight, but by a chance shot in hunting.[960] Early in the next year Ralf of Chester again seized Lincoln castle;[961] but Ralf fought for his own hand rather than for the Empress; and so, too, did Hugh Bigod, Turgis of Avranches and Geoffrey of Mandeville, who kept all eastern England in ceaseless commotion.[962] Stephen’s energies were absorbed in a vain endeavour to reduce them to order, while Robert struggled almost as vainly against the anarchy of the western shires; in the north Ralf of Chester now ruled supreme from the Witham to the Dee; and the upper valley of the Thames was at the mercy of William of Dover, who had built a castle at Cricklade, from which he ravaged the whole country between Oxford and Malmesbury.[963]

- [957] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765). Rob. Torigni, a. 1142. Gerv. Cant. (as above),·/·(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 125.

- [958] Will. Malm. as above, c. 74 (p. 769. At this point he ends). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 91. Hen. Hunt. as above·/·, l. viii. c. 20 (Arnold, p. 276).

- [959] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 92. Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 125, 126. Will. Newb. as above·/· l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 42).

- [960] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 101. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 146.

- [961] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 22 (Arnold, p. 277).

- [962] On Hugh Bigod and Turgis see Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 109–111; on Geoffrey of Mandeville, ib. pp. 101–104; Will. Newb., l. i. c. 11 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 44–46); and Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 21 (Arnold, pp. 276, 277).

- [963] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 106, 107, 111.

Suddenly, after capturing the commandant of Malmesbury and sending him as a great prize to the Empress, the lord of Cricklade threw aside his evil work and went off to die for a nobler cause in Palestine.[964] Geoffrey de Mandeville, the worst of all the troublers of the land, who had accepted titles and honours from both the rival sovereigns and had never for one moment been true to either, met his death in the same summer of 1144 in a skirmish with the king’s troops; his fellow-sinner Robert of Marmion was soon afterwards slain by the earl of Chester’s men at the gates of the abbey of Bath which he had desecrated.[965] For a moment it seemed as if the cry which had long been going up from all the desolated sanctuaries of England—“Up, Lord, why sleepest Thou?”—had been heard and answered at last.[966] Philip of Gloucester, Earl Robert’s son, who had taken William of Dover’s place at Cricklade, was so hard pressed by the garrison of Oxford[967] that he called his father to his aid; Robert built a great castle at Farringdon, but the king besieged it with such vigour that its defenders were compelled to surrender.[968] From that moment the Angevin party fell rapidly to pieces. Young Philip of Gloucester himself went over to Stephen and turned his arms against his own father.[969] The earl of Chester came to meet the king at Stamford,[970] humbly apologized for his rebellion, and sought to prove the sincerity of his repentance by regaining Bedford for Stephen, by constantly accompanying him with a band of three hundred picked knights, and by helping him to build a fortress at Crowmarsh to keep the garrison of Wallingford in check.[971] As, however, he still refused to give up the castles which he had seized and to pay his dues to the royal treasury, he was naturally regarded with suspicion by the other barons and by the king himself.[972] In the summer of 1146 their mutual distrust came to a crisis at Northampton. Ralf besought Stephen’s help against the Welsh; the barons persuaded Stephen to let them answer in his name that he would not give it unless Ralf surrendered his castles and gave hostages for his fidelity; he refused indignantly; they accused him of plotting treason, laid hands upon him with one accord, and gave him in charge to the royal guards, by whom he was flung into prison.[973] As in the case of the seizure of the bishops, it is difficult to say how far Stephen was responsible, and how much justification he had, for this arrest. We can hardly get nearer to the truth than the English chronicler: “The king took him in Hamton through wicked rede, and did him in prison; and soon after he let him out again through worse rede, with the precaution that he swore on the halidom and found hostages that he should give up all his castles; some he gave up and some gave he not, and did then worse than before.”[974] But among the castles which Ralf did give up for the sake of regaining his freedom was that which Stephen valued most—Lincoln.[975] Then at last the king felt that his enemies were at his feet; and he resolved that the city which had beheld his worst overthrow should also behold his highest triumph. In defiance of an old superstition which forbade any English king to appear in regal state within the walls of Lincoln, he kept his midwinter feast there with a splendour which had been unknown for years, and wore his crown at high mass in the minster on Christmas-day.[976]

[964] Ib.·/·Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. p. 111.

[965] Will. Newb., l. i. cc. 11, 12 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 46–48). Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 104. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 22 (Arnold, p. 277).

[966] “Dicebaturque a laborantibus piis ‘Exsurge, quare obdormis, Domine?’ At postquam ... ‘excitatus est,’ ut ait propheta, ‘tanquam dormiens Dominus, et percussit inimicos Suos in posteriora.’” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 11 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 45). “Quia igitur improbi dixerunt Deum dormire, excitatus est Deus.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 22 (Arnold, p. 227)—two different interpretations of the Chronicler’s phrase, “men said openly that Christ slept, and His hallows.”

[967] Under William of Chamai, “civitatis Oxenefordiæ præses, regalisque militiæ dux et assignator.” Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 112. This seems to mean that he was the king’s constable—an office which had apparently gone with the command of Oxford castle ever since the Norman conquest.

[968] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 112–114. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 23 (Arnold, p. 278). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 13 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 48).

[969] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 116.

[970] Eng. Chron. a. 1140. The real date must be 1146, as given by Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 24 (Arnold, p. 279).

[971] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 115. Hen. Hunt. as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 129, 130.

[972] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 115, 116.

[973] Ib. pp. 121–123. Cf. Hen. Hunt. as above.

[974] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

[975] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 123, 124. Hen. Hunt. as above. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 13 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 49).

[976] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 279). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 18 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 57). Compare the different tone of the two writers.

The hour of Stephen’s exultation over Matilda in England was the hour of her husband’s complete triumph on the other side of the Channel. In the seven years which had gone by since they parted, the count of Anjou had really achieved far more than his wife. As soon as he heard of Stephen’s capture, early in 1141, Geoffrey again summoned the Norman barons to give up their castles and submit to his authority in peace. They held a meeting at Mortagne in the middle of Lent to consider their answer; despairing of Stephen, yet still unwilling to accept Geoffrey, they fell back upon their original scheme and once more besought Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of both duchy and kingdom. Theobald refused the impossible task; but, thinking like every one else that all was over with Stephen, he undertook to arrange terms with Geoffrey for the pacification of both countries. Stephen’s claims, as king and duke, were to be given up to the Angevins on condition that they should set him at liberty and secure to him and his heirs the honours which he had held during his uncle’s lifetime; while to Theobald, as the price of his services in negotiating this settlement, Geoffrey was to restore the county of Tours.[977] The treaty however remained a dead letter; for one of the contracting parties had reckoned without his brother and the other without his wife, both of whom refused their consent. But it served Geoffrey’s purpose nevertheless. The twin earls of Meulan and Leicester, hitherto Stephen’s most active partizans, and the former of whom was after Robert of Gloucester the most influential man in Normandy, at once accepted the proposed terms as final and made their peace with Anjou.[978] Nearly a third part of the duchy followed their example. Mortagne had submitted already; Verneuil and Nonancourt soon did the like; in the last week of Lent Lisieux was surrendered by its bishop;[979] Falaise yielded shortly after;[980] and in a few weeks more the whole Roumois—that is, the district between the Seine and the Rille—except the capital itself, acknowledged Geoffrey as its master.[981]

- [977] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 923.

- [978] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 923. Cf. Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

- [979] Ord. Vit. as above. At this point we lose him.

- [980] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1141 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 34, 145).

- [981] Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

All this happened while the Empress was in full career of success in England. There, however, as we have seen, summer and autumn undid the work of spring; the news of Matilda’s triumph were quickly followed by those of her fall, of her brother’s capture, of his release in exchange for Stephen, and finally, at Whitsuntide 1142, by the visit of Earl Robert himself to entreat that Geoffrey would come and help his wife to reconquer her father’s kingdom. Geoffrey’s views of statecraft were perhaps neither very wide nor very lofty; but his political instinct was quicker and more practical than that of either his wife or her brother. He saw that they had lost their hold upon England; he knew that he had at last secured a hold upon Normandy; and he resolved that no temptation from over sea should induce him to let it go. Instead of helping Robert to conquer the kingdom, he determined to make Robert help him to conquer the duchy. He represented that it was impossible for him to leave matters there in their present unsatisfactory condition; if the earl really wanted him in England, he must first help him in bringing Normandy to order. Thereupon Robert, finding that he could get no other answer, agreed to join his brother-in-law in a campaign which occupied them both until the end of the year.[982] The central part of Normandy, from Nonancourt and Lisieux on the east to a line marked by the course of the Orne on the west, and from the Cenomannian border up to Caen, was already in Geoffrey’s power; he had in fact inserted a big wedge into the middle of the duchy. To gain its western side was the object of the present expedition. The brothers-in-law seem to have started from Robert’s native Caen, and their first success was probably the taking of Bastebourg—Bastebourg above the ford of Varaville, whose name recalls an earlier time and another Geoffrey of Anjou. Then the expedition moved south-westward from Caen through the diocese of Bayeux and up the left bank of the Orne to Villers, Aunay, Plessis and Vire, till it reached and won the already historic site of Tinchebray, on the north-eastern frontier of Stephen’s old county of Mortain.[983] The town and castle of Mortain, and the whole county, with the fortresses of Le Teilleul and St.-Hilaire, were speedily won.[984] Geoffrey marched on to Pontorson, the south-western outpost of the Norman duchy, close upon the Breton frontier, at the bottom of a sandy bay guarded by the Mont-St.-Michel; warned by the general experience, the whole population, men and women, townsfolk and garrison, streamed out to welcome the conqueror as soon as he made his appearance. Thence he turned northward again, to Cérences in the Avranchin; and this place, too, surrendered without striking a blow.[985]

- [982] Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765).

- [983] The story of this campaign, as told by the historians of the time, is little more than a list of the places taken, put together evidently at random, just as the names happened to come into the writer’s mind. Its real order must however have been somewhat as suggested above. The fullest list is in Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 70 (Hardy, p. 765): Tinchebray, St. Hilaire, “Brichesart,” Aunay, Bastebourg, “Trivères,” Vire, “Plaiseiz,” Villers, Mortain. Bastebourg lies quite apart from all the rest, and must have been the object of a distinct expedition from Caen. The other places would follow in geographical order. “Plaiseiz” may be either Plessis-Grimoult or Placy; “Brichesart” and “Trivères” are still to be accounted for. There is a Trévières about half-way between Bayeux and Isigny, but this is even farther away from all the other places than Bastebourg, and in an opposite direction. From Rob. Torigni (a. 1142) we get another list: Aunay, Mortain, Tinchebray, Cérences, Le Teilleul, all in the county of Mortain. The Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 295) names only Mortain and St. Hilaire. The Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg., a. 1142 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 35, 145), say Geoffrey won “castella plurima,” but specify only Mortain.

- [984] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 295, 296. Rob. Torigni, a. 1142.

- [985] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), pp. 296–298. The last-named place appears in Rob. Torigni, a. 1142, as “Cerences.” In the Hist. Gaufr. Ducis, as printed by M. Marchegay (p. 298), it is “Cerentias”; in the old editions it was “Carentias,” which the editors of Rer. Gall. Scriptt. rendered “Carentan.” “Cérences” is the rendering of M. Delisle (Rob. Torigni, vol. i. p. 226, note 2). It lies about half-way between Avranches and Coutances. There is a “Chérencé-le-Roussel” a few miles north-west of Mortain.

At this point the campaign of the count and the earl seems to have been interrupted by tidings of Stephen’s success and Matilda’s danger at Oxford. That Robert must go at once was clear; but that it would be wise for Geoffrey to accompany him was even more doubtful now than it had been six months ago. A substitute was found in the person of little Henry Fitz-Empress, who, if he could do nothing practically to help his mother’s cause and his own, at least ran no risk of damaging it by raising such a storm of ill-feeling as would probably have greeted the count of Anjou himself. While Robert and Henry sailed for England together, Geoffrey remained to finish his work in Normandy. Avranches, the next place which he threatened, made a ready submission; he took up his abode in the castle, and summoned the lords of all the fortresses in the Avranchin to come and do him homage, one after another. When they had all obeyed, he set himself to win the Cotentin. St.-Lô, which had been strongly fortified by the bishop of the diocese, surrendered after a three days’ siege. The victor advanced straight upon Coutances; the bishop was absent; no one else dared to offer resistance; Geoffrey simply marched into the city and took it. Thither, as at Avranches, he summoned the barons of the county to perform their homage, and they all obeyed except two brothers, Ralf and Richard of La Haye. Ralf was soon brought to submission; Richard flung himself with some two hundred knights into Cherbourg, a mighty fortress on a foundation of solid rock, guarded on one side by a belt of woodland full of wild beasts, and on the other by a bay whose advantages as a naval station have only been put to their full use in much later times. A siege of Cherbourg was likely to be a lengthy, troublesome and costly undertaking. But such a siege was of all military operations that in which Geoffrey most excelled and most delighted. He had little sympathy with the downright hand-to-hand fighting by which Fulk Nerra had won his spurs at Conquereux, or Fulk V. had repulsed Theobald and Stephen before Alençon, or Stephen had put his very captors to shame beneath the walls of Lincoln. Engineering was Geoffrey’s favourite science; in its developement he spared neither labour nor expense; and he now brought up against Cherbourg such a formidable array of machines that Richard thought it prudent to slip away by sea, intending to go to England and ask help of King Stephen. He was however overtaken by pirates and carried away “among strange peoples”; and a rumour of his fate reaching the garrison whom he had left behind, they lost heart and made submission to the Angevin.[986] The whole duchy south and west of the Seine was now his,[987] except the one town of Vaudreuil; before the close of the year this, too, was won, and the Angevin power even advanced beyond the river, for “Walter Giffard and all the people of the Pays de Caux made agreement with Count Geoffrey.”[988] The Norman capital now stood out alone against the Angevin conqueror of Normandy, as Tours had once stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine. In January 1144 Geoffrey crossed the Seine at Vernon and pitched his camp at La Trinité-du-Mont, close to the walls of Rouen.[989] Next day the citizens opened their gates, and conducted him in solemn procession to the cathedral church.[990] The castle was still held against him by some followers of the earl of Warren;[991] the barons, headed by Waleran of Meulan, came to help him in besieging it, but neither their valour nor his machines were of any avail, and it was not till a three months’ blockade had reduced the garrison to the last straits of hunger that the citadel of Rouen was given up on S. George’s day.[992]

- [986] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 298–301. The year, 1143, is given by Rob. Torigni.

- [987] Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Albin. a. 1143 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 35, 146). The Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (ib. p. 191) ventures to say in 1142: “Goffredus Comes totam Normanniam adquirit hoc anno, iii. octabarum Paschæ, x. kalendas maii.” This is the true date for the Wednesday in Easter week, 1142, but the fact is placed two years too early.

- [988] Rob. Torigni, a. 1143.

- [989] Ib. a. 1144.

- [990] Chron. Rotom. a. 1144 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 785); Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. The former makes the day January 19; the latter, January 20.

- [991] Rob. Torigni, as above.

- [992] Chron. Rotom. a. 1144 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 785); Rob. Torigni, a. 1144.

Allies offered themselves readily now to help in the little that remained to be done; foremost among them was the overlord of Normandy, the young King Louis VII. of France. All was changed since the days when his father, Louis VI., had granted the investiture of Normandy to Stephen’s little son. The inveterate enmity between the house of Blois and the French Crown had broken out afresh, in a new and most disastrous form, between Count Theobald and the young king; Louis fell back upon the traditional policy of his forefathers and gladly embraced the Angevin alliance against all the branches of the house of Blois on both sides of the sea. Thus when Geoffrey, after composing matters as well as he could at Rouen, mustered his forces to subdue the few still outstanding castles, he was joined at once by his own brother-in-law Theodoric of Flanders and by the king of France. Driencourt was the first place won by their united hosts; then Lions-la-Forêt—the old hunting-seat where King Henry had died—was given up by Hugh of Gournay;[993] the rest of the castles beyond Seine were quickly won, and then Geoffrey was master of the whole Norman duchy,[994] save one fortress, Arques, which a Fleming called William the Monk held so pertinaciously for Stephen that the Angevin was obliged to leave a body of troops before the place and go home without waiting to finish the siege in person.[995] Next summer the “monk” was shot dead by a chance arrow, and the surrender of Arques completed Geoffrey’s conquest of Normandy.[996] He made no pretence of holding it in the name of either his wife or his son; it was his own by right of conquest, and that right was formally acknowledged by the king of France. Before they parted in 1144 Louis granted to Geoffrey the investiture of the whole Norman duchy, save one spot which he claimed as the price of his favour:—the old bone of contention, Gisors.[997]

- [993] Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. Driencourt is now known as Neufchâtel-en-Bray.

- [994] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1144 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 35, 146); Chronn. S. Michael. and S. Steph. Cadom. a. 1144 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 773, 780).

- [995] Rob. Torigni, a. 1144. “Willermus Monachus Flandrensis”—can he have been really a monk?

- [996] Rob. Torigni, a. 1145.

- [997] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 282.

The Angevin conqueror had been called home by a revolt among his own barons.[998] The leader was, as before, Robert of Sablé;[999] but there was worse to come. Geoffrey’s brother Elias was persuaded by the rebels to put forth a claim to the county of Maine and uphold his pretension by force of arms. Geoffrey defeated him, took him prisoner, and put him in ward at Tours,[1000] where he remained five years, and whence he was released only to die of the effects of his imprisonment.[1001] The revolt failed as all previous revolts against Geoffrey had failed; the count swooped down upon Robert and his accomplices with such irresistible energy that they were utterly confounded and made submission at once.[1002] Undisputed master from the Poitevin border to the English Channel, Geoffrey once more cast his eyes across the sea, not with any thought of joining his wife in her desperate venture, but with an uneasy longing to get his heir safe out of the entanglement of a losing cause and bring him home to share in his own triumph. He therefore sent envoys to Earl Robert, begging that Henry might be allowed to come and see him, if only for a short time. The request was at once granted, and by Ascension-tide 1147 the boy was again at his father’s side.[1003] His uncle the earl of Gloucester had escorted him as far as Wareham;[1004] there they parted, as it turned out, for the last time. Robert caught a fever and died at Bristol early in the following November.[1005] Then at last the Empress herself felt that all was lost. Her last faint chance had expired with the wise and valiant brother whose patient devotion she had never fully appreciated until it was too late. In the early spring of 1148 she gave up the struggle and followed her son back to Normandy, to live thenceforth in peace by her husband’s side;[1006] while the knot which the sword had failed to cut was left to be slowly disentangled by more skilful hands which had long been preparing for their task.

- [998] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1145 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 35, 146).

- [999] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above·/·Marchegay, Comtes), p. 269.

- [1000] Ibid. Gesta Cons. (ibid.), p. 155.

- [1001] Gesta Cons. as above. The Chron. Vindoc. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 173), gives the date, 1150. Cf. Chron. Tur. Magn. a. 1110 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 131).

- [1002] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 270–272. It is here that the writer places the building of Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe (see above, p. 267). In connexion with this affair he gives an amusing reason for the warlike habits of the Angevins: “Antiquitus nempe Andegavenses præliandi consuetudinem habebant, forsan, ut puto, a Deo sibi permissum, ne per otium pejoribus inimicis expugnarentur, moribus scilicet vitiosis.” Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), pp. 270, 271.

- [1003] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 131. Rob. Torigni, a. 1147.

- [1004] Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1005] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 131. Gervase is not clear about the year, which we learn from Ann. Tewkesb. a. 1147 (Luard, Ann. Monast. vol. i. p. 47), and from Ann. Cantuar. a. 1147 (Liebermann, Geschichtsquellen, p. 6). The place is given in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 132.

- [1006] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 133—dated a year too early.

Note.
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN.

The topography of the battle of Lincoln is a very puzzling matter. We have two sources of information, and it seems impossible to make them agree. The questions to be solved are two: 1. Which way did Robert and Ralf approach the city? 2. Where was the battle actually fought?

1. The first question lies between William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. William (Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 39, 40; Hardy, p. 741) says distinctly that the main army started from Gloucester; that Ralf and his troops joined them somewhere on the road; that Stephen, hearing of their approach, left off besieging the castle and went forth to meet them; and that on Candlemas day they arrived “ad flumen quod inter duos exercitus præterfluebat, Trenta nomine, quod et ortu suo et pluviarum profluvio tam magnum fuerat ut nullatenus vado transitum præberet.” He then gives the story of the crossing. Henry of Huntingdon (l. viii. c. 13; Arnold, p. 268) describes the crossing much in the same way, except that the “consul audacissimus” to whom he attributes the first plunge seems to be Ralf, whereas in William’s version Robert is the hero. But Henry makes no mention of the Trent; in his story the plunge is into “paludem pœne intransibilem.”

For both these versions there is something to be said. The authority of the two witnesses is very evenly balanced. Chronologically, both are equally near to their subject. Geographically, the archdeacon of Huntingdon is nearer than the librarian of Malmesbury; but he is not a whit more likely to have been personally present; and if Henry may have got his information from Bishop Alexander, William may just as probably have got his from Earl Robert himself. The question therefore becomes one of the intrinsic probability of the two stories. Here again there is something to be said for William; for although the most direct and obvious road from Gloucester to Lincoln would undoubtedly be the Foss-Way, along the eastern side of the Trent valley, yet it is possible that the earls might have chosen a more unusual route along its western side, just because it would seem less likely to their enemies. Yet we can hardly accept William’s version; for the fording of the Trent, especially in winter, and when its waters were—as he himself tells us—swollen with heavy rains, would be little short of a physical impossibility. At the origin of his mistake (or of Earl Robert’s, for it must surely have been Robert who told him the story) we may perhaps be able to guess. The writer of the Gesta Stephani (Sewell, p. 71) says nothing of either river or marsh; the only thing which he mentions is a ford, of whose whereabouts he gives no indication whatever. “Cumque fortissimam ... [Stephanus] præmississet cohortem in exitu cujusdam vadi eis ad obsistendum, illi ... cum violentiâ in ipsos irruentes vadum occupaverunt.” Now, if the earls had followed the Foss-Way quite up to Lincoln, it would have brought them not to any ford, but to the bridge over the Witham, leading directly into the city by the south gate. But the city was bitterly hostile to them; had they attempted to pass through it to reach the castle, they must have cut their way through a crowd of enemies. There was however another and a much more practicable route open to them. Some little distance to westward of the bridge, the Witham at its junction with the Foss-Dyke expands into a broad sheet of water known by the name of Brayford. The kindness of the Rev. Precentor Venables has enabled me to ascertain that half way between the bridge and Brayford Head (i.e. the eastern end of this sheet of water) there still exists in the bed of the river a well-paved ford road, probably of Roman origin. By this ford the army could cross the river and advance towards the castle without entering the town at all; and I feel little doubt that this was the ford at which Stephen posted the guard mentioned by his biographer, and across which the two earls swam with their followers. In that case William of Malmesbury’s mistake as to the name of the river is not surprising. The Foss-Dyke unites the Witham and the Trent; a medieval geographer could hardly be expected to know accurately where the one ended and the other began. Out of the three names so closely connected, he not unnaturally chose the one most generally known, and concluded the whole water-way under the comprehensive name of Trent; while on the other hand, the overflowing of dyke and river may quite sufficiently account for Henry of Huntingdon having described them and the flooded ground on each side of them all together as an “almost impassable marsh.”

2. Local tradition persists in asserting that the battle was fought to the north of the city, somewhere beyond the New Port. If this was so, Stephen must have led his troops out of the city by the old Roman way—the Ermine Street—through the New Port, and drawn them up on the plateau formed by the top of the range of hills whose southern extremity is occupied by the city itself; and his enemies, after crossing the water, must have marched all round the south-western foot of the hill, below the castle, and then climbed the western slope to meet Stephen on the top. Such a manœuvre is doubtless possible; but it hardly seems to agree with the indications—provokingly few and slight though they are—given us by the historians. None of them indeed tells us which way Stephen went forth; the nearest approach to a clear statement is that of his own biographer, who says “extra civitatem obvius eis audacter occurrit” (Gesta Steph. as above). Now marching up northward can hardly be called “going forth boldly to meet” an enemy who was coming from the south-west. The tradition in fact is in itself very improbable, and has no evidence to support it. In 1881 I made two attempts at a personal examination of the topography, with the help of indications kindly furnished me by Precentor Venables. The result was as follows: The western wall of the castle-enclosure does not stretch to the extreme edge of the hill; beyond it lies a part of the plateau, now occupied by the County Asylum, and marked by Stukeley as the site of Stephen’s encampment. Stukeley was probably misled by the circumstance that an adjoining bit of ground was called “Battle-piece”—a name which is now known to have been derived not from any battle fought there, but from the place having been set apart for trials by battle. But farther to the west there lies at the foot of the ridge a tract of comparatively level ground, rising slightly on the one side to join the slope of the hill, and on the other gradually sinking into the lower land which spreads to the bank of the Trent. This tract—part of it is now a race-course—seems to be really the only place in which it is possible for the two armies to have met. The ground immediately south of the castle, between its outer wall and the northern bank of the Foss-Dyke, is too steep to allow of anything like a pitched battle between two formally-arrayed armies. The earls after crossing the ford could hardly do anything but lead their troops round the foot of the hill, to draw them up at last on the western side of the level tract above described. Stephen, on the other hand, could hardly have chosen a better post for defence than its eastern side, with the ridge of the hill at his back.

CHAPTER VII.
THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
1136–1149.

The departure of the Empress was followed by a time of comparative quiet; but it was the quiet of exhaustion, not of rest. In the twelve years which had passed away since King Henry’s death all his work seemed to have been utterly undone. Every vestige of law and authority, order and peace, had been swept away by the torrent of destruction which in those twelve years had overwhelmed the whole country. When at last the waves began to subside, one ark of refuge was found to have escaped the general desolation; one vessel alone had been able to outride the storm. The state was a wreck; the Church remained.

The pilot of the sacred bark, during the first seven years of Stephen’s reign, had been the king’s brother Henry, bishop of Winchester. The youngest child of Stephen-Henry and Adela of Blois, devoted by his mother to the religious life, had been brought up in the famous abbey of Cluny; thence, in 1126, he was summoned by his uncle the king of England to become abbot of one of the most ancient and illustrious monasteries in Britain, that of Glastonbury; and three years later the young abbot—he cannot have been more than twenty-eight—was raised to the bishopric of Winchester.[1007] His rapid advancement was no doubt owing to the personal favour of his uncle; but none the less did it place in the important see of Winchester a prelate as different in temper as in origin from the crowd of low-born secular clerks who then filled the ranks of the English episcopate. Steeped in ecclesiastical and monastic traditions from his very cradle, Henry was before all things a churchman and a monk. It was to him and to men like him that the religious revival which sprang up in his uncle’s later years naturally looked for the guidance which it could not find either in the secular bishops or in the shy, irresolute primate; and the consequences appeared as soon as the king was dead, when the helm of the state and that of the Church—the one dropped by Roger of Salisbury, the other never firmly grasped by William of Canterbury—were both at once taken by the young bishop of Winchester. His personal influence sufficed to ensure his brother’s election to the throne; the legatine commission sent to him in 1139, overriding the claims of the new primate, made him the acknowledged leader of the English Church, and, coinciding as it did with the complete break-down of all secular government at Bishop Roger’s fall, practically vested in him and in the clerical synods which he convened the sole remnant of deliberative and legislative authority throughout the kingdom. Clergy and people followed him like a flock of sheep; yet he was never really trusted by either of the two political parties, because he never really belonged to either. His own political ideal was independent of all party considerations. It was the ideal of the ecclesiastical statesman in the strictest sense: to insure the well-being of the state by securing the rights and privileges and enforcing the discipline of the Church. In his eyes the whole machinery of secular government, including the sovereign, existed solely for that one end, and he carried out his theory to its logical result in the synods which deposed Stephen and Matilda each in turn, as each in turn broke the compact with the Church which had raised them to the throne. Of the use to be made in later days of the precedent thus created he and his brother-clergy never dreamed; they are, however, entitled to the credit of having been the only branch of the body-politic which made an organized effort to rescue England from the chaos into which she had fallen. The failure of their efforts hitherto was due partly to the overwhelming force of circumstances, partly to the character of Henry himself. His temper was like that of the uncle whose name he bore—the calm, imperturbable Norman temper which neither interest nor passion could throw off its balance or off its guard; and with the Norman coolness he had also the Norman tenacity, fearlessness and strength of will. But although the main elements of his nature were thus derived from his mother’s ancestors, he had not altogether escaped the doom of his father’s house. He was free from the worst defect of his race, their fatal unsteadiness of purpose; but he had his full share of their rashness, their self-will, and their peculiar mental short-sightedness. His policy really had a definite and a noble end, but his endeavours to compass that end were little more than a series of bold experiments. Moreover, his conception of the end itself was out of harmony with the requirements of the time. Churchman as he was to the core, his churchmanship was almost as unlike that of the rising generation, trained up under the influence of the new religious orders, as the downright worldliness of the Salisbury school with which some of them were, though most unjustly, half inclined to confound him. He belonged to a type of ecclesiastical statesmen, or rather political churchmen, who did not shrink from arraying the Church militant in the spoils of earthly triumph, and would fain elevate her above the world in outward pomp and majesty no less than in inward purity and holiness. This was the school of which Cluny had been, ever since the days of Gregory VII., the citadel and stronghold; and Henry was thus attached to it by all the associations of his youth as well as by his own natural disposition. But in the second quarter of the twelfth century this Cluniac school was losing its hold upon the finer and loftier spirits of the time, and the influence of Cluny was beginning to pale before the purer radiance diffused from S. Bernard’s “bright valley,” Clairvaux.

- [1007] Joh. Glaston. (Hearne), pp. 165, 166.

Henry’s legatine commission, too, which was a chief source of his strength, was really a source of moral and spiritual weakness to the English Church; for it set him over the head of the man who ought to have been her representative and leader, and placed in the hands of a mere diocesan bishop all, and more than all, the power and authority which belonged of right to the primate of all Britain.[1008] Until very recent times the English Church had been, by an unwritten but perfectly well-established privilege of immemorial antiquity, exempt from all legatine control; papal envoys were admitted only for special purposes, and exercised no authority within the province of the “transmarine Pope”—the primate of all Britain. In technical language, the archbishop of Canterbury, as successor of S. Augustine, was by virtue of his office legatus natus of the Holy See, and therefore not subject to the jurisdiction of a legatus a latere. During the reign of Henry I. three attempts had been made to break through this venerable tradition; on the third occasion, in 1125, the outrageous behaviour of the legate John of Crema roused Archbishop William to go and protest at Rome, whence he returned clothed in his own person with the functions of legatus a latere.[1009] This commission, granted by Honorius II., was renewed by Innocent,[1010] and William thus retained it until his death. When that event occurred Henry of Winchester must have felt himself, and must have been generally felt throughout the country, to be almost naturally marked out for William’s successor. It seems, indeed, that he was actually elected to the vacant primacy. There was however a difficulty which proved to be insuperable. The translation of a bishop from one see to another could only be effected by a special license from the Pope; and in this case the license was apparently refused.[1011] Driven thus to seek elsewhere for a primate, Stephen, or it may be Stephen’s wiser queen, sought him in the home of Lanfranc and Anselm, and brought over a third abbot of Bec to walk in the steps and sit on the throne of his sainted predecessors at Canterbury.[1012] Theobald came of a good Norman family, and was well reported of for learning, virtue and piety;[1013] further than that, the world as yet knew nothing of him; it was therefore not unnatural, though it was distinctly unfortunate, that when Pope Innocent II. determined to appoint a resident legate in England he appointed Henry instead of Theobald.

- [1008] See on this Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 53); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384; and Will. Newb. l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43).

- [1009] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 84; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 381, 382.

- [1010] In 1132, it seems. See Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. i. c. 7 (Hardy, p. 699).

- [1011] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 908.

- [1012] Queen Matilda’s share in the appointment seems distinctly implied in Vita Theobaldi (Giles, Lanfranc, vol. i.), p. 337; Chron. Becc. a. 1137 (ib. p. 207).

- [1013] See Vita Theobaldi (as above), pp. 337–339; Chron. Becc. (ibid.), p. 207.

For several years the archbishop bore his supersession quietly. His political sympathies appear to have always inclined to the side of the Empress, but his conduct shewed no trace of party spirit; no personal jealousy on his part ever thwarted Henry’s attempts at pacification. He doubtless felt that he could afford to wait; for his metropolitical rights, though kept in abeyance for a time, were inalienable and independent of all outward accidents, while the legatine authority was drawn solely from the commission of an individual Pope, and a change either of persons or of policy at Rome might at any moment reduce Henry of Winchester to the rank of a mere suffragan bishop. Henry himself was so conscious of this danger that he began to urge upon his patron Innocent a project for raising the see of Winchester to metropolitical rank and furnishing it with two (or, according to another account, seven) suffragan sees, to be carved out of the southern part of the province of Canterbury. This wild scheme was so far endorsed by Innocent that he actually sent Henry a pall, the emblem of archiepiscopal dignity, in 1142; so, at least, the story ran.[1014] As yet, however, the matter rested wholly between legate and Pope; if the archbishop knew anything of their plots against him, he was wise enough to let them plot undisturbed. Instead of trying to fish in the troubled waters of the present, he was looking to the open sea of the future and meditating how best to prepare himself, his Church and his adopted country for the voyage which lay before them. While the legate was making and unmaking sovereigns and plotting a revolution in the Anglican hierarchy, the primate was quietly gathering into his own household the choicest spirits of the time, drawing around him a group of earnest, deep-thinking students, of highly-cultured, large-minded, dispassionate politicians; in a word, making his palace the seminary and the training-college, the refuge and the home, of a new generation of English scholars and English statesmen.

- [1014] Ann. Winton. a. 1143 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 53); R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 255.

Foremost among them stood Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket, ex-port-reeve of London. Troubles had fallen heavy upon Gilbert and his wife since the days when from their comfortable home in Cheapside their boy rode forth to his school at Merton or to his hawking excursions with Richer de l’Aigle. A series of disastrous fires had brought them down from affluence almost to poverty[1015] and compelled them to take their son away from school at an earlier age than the mother, at least, would have desired. She watched over his studies with the deepest interest and care,[1016] and it was probably her influence and good management which, after an interval of idleness at home, sent him off again to study for a short time in Paris.[1017] The boy learned quickly and easily, as he did everything to which he chose to put his hand and give his mind; but his heart was set upon riding and hawking and the sports and occupations of active life, far more than upon the book-learning to which he devoted himself chiefly for the sake of pleasing his mother; and when she died, in his twenty-second year,[1018] his studies came to an end. Her death broke up the home; Gilbert, worn out with age and grief, was powerless to guide or help his son; and Thomas soon found it impossible to make their scanty means sufficient to maintain them both.[1019] Irksome as the work must have been to such a temper as his, he took a situation as clerk in the counting-house of a kinsman, Osbern Huitdeniers, or “Eightpenny” as we might perhaps call him now.[1020] Osbern was a wealthy man, enjoying great consideration both in the city and at court;[1021] at this time—just after the outbreak of the civil war—he seems to have been one of the sheriffs of London, for we are told that Thomas himself held a subordinate civic post as clerk and accountant to those functionaries.[1022] For two or three years, the years of the personal struggle between Stephen and Matilda, Thomas endured the drudgery of the office as best he might,[1023] till at length a more congenial position was offered him, first in the household of his old friend Richer de l’Aigle[1024] and then in that of Archbishop Theobald. When the war-storm had partly subsided and the primate was beginning to organize his plans, some of his clerks who had been guests at the little house in Cheapside in its prosperous days remembered the bright boy whom they had often noticed there, and determined to enlist him in their own ranks. One of them, known to us only by his nickname of “Baille-hache” or the “Hatchet,” undertook to persuade the young man himself;[1025] two others, Baldwin the archdeacon and Eustace his brother, commended him and his father to the primate. It chanced that Gilbert, though he had been domiciled at Rouen before his emigration to England, was a native of Thierceville, close to the Bec-Herlouin. A chat with Thomas’s father over old times and old names around Bec made its former abbot all the more disposed to welcome Thomas himself, when he rode out to Harrow and let his friend Baille-hache present him to the archbishop.[1026] Before many months had passed he was admitted to the innermost circle of Theobald’s confidential counsellors. That circle consisted of three young men—John of Canterbury, Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and Thomas of London. Without consulting one or other of these three the archbishop rarely did anything;[1027] and in matters of special difficulty or delicacy he relied mainly upon Thomas.[1028]

[1015] Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 8, 9; E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 359; Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), p. 3.

[1016] Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 8.

[1017] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 14. The Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 21–25, has a curious and pretty legend of his stay in Paris.

[1018] Will. Cant. and Anon. I. as above. This brings Rohesia’s death to a date between December 21, 1138, and December 21, 1139; for although Mr. Magnusson (Preface to Thomas Saga, vol. ii. pp. c, ci) declares that Thomas was born “not as stated [ T.,” i.e. Thomas Saga, “i. 12] in 1117, but in 1118,” his own chronological argument infallibly leads to just the opposite conclusion.

[1019] E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 359.

[1020] “Tandem civi vice tabellionis adhæsit,” Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), p. 3. “Ad quendam Lundrensem, cognatum suum,” Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 8. “Osbernus Octo-nummi cognomine,” E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 361. “Osbern Witdeniers,” Garnier (Hippeau), p. 9. In the Pipe Roll 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 146, among the London accounts, one of the sureties for the debts of Hugh Cordele is “Osbertus viii denarii”—clearly the same man.

[1021] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.

[1022] “Reversus” [sc. Thomas a Parisiis], “receptus est in partem sollicitudinis reipublicæ Londoniensis, et vicecomitum clericus et rationalis effectus.” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 14.

[1023] E. Grim, Anon. I. and Garnier, as above.

[1024] Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 31. It is not very clear whether Thomas’s stay with Richer should come after or before his stay with Osbern, which the Saga omits altogether.

[1025] Garnier (Hippeau), p. 10; E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 361; Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 9. None of them name the man; but he is clearly the one who ultimately introduced Thomas to the primate; and we know his nickname from the sneer of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque; Garnier (as above); E. Grim (as above), p. 362; Anon. I. (as above), p. 10.

[1026] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 15. “Thierrici-villa” is interpreted by M. Hippeau (Garnier, Vie de S. Thomas, introd. p. xxiv) “Probablement Thierceville, canton de Montfort, département de l’Eure.”

[1027] Will. Cant. (Robertson, Becket, vol. i.), p. 4.

[1028] There is a curious and amusing account of their mutual relations in Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 37.

He had secured his services at the right moment; for the long impending crisis between himself and the legate was now fast drawing near. In purely secular politics Theobald had hitherto been content to follow Henry’s lead; on a question of ecclesiastical politics they had now come to a distinct severance. Archbishop Thurstan of York had died in February 1140;[1029] in January 1141 William, treasurer of the see, was appointed in his stead, and received the investiture of the temporalities from Stephen in the camp before Lincoln.[1030] The appointment had somewhat the look of a court job; for William was a nephew of the king and the legate;[1031] he had been brought up in wealth, luxury and idleness, and although of amiable and blameless character, was obviously not the man for such a post as the northern primacy. A minority of the York chapter therefore, supported by many of the most respected clergy of the province, chief among whom was Abbot Richard of Fountains, protested against the election as having been procured by undue influence, in the form of bribery on William’s own part and intimidation on that of William of Aumale, earl of York, acting on behalf of the king and the legate; and this view was shared by the southern primate. The legate, apparently shrinking from the responsibility of consecrating his nephew by his own sole authority (for Theobald absolutely refused to assist him), let the matter rest during the remainder of that troubled year and then sent the elect of York to plead his own cause at Rome. In Lent 1143 the Pope gave his decision: “If Dean William of York can swear that the chapter did not receive through the earl of Aumale a command from the king to elect his nephew: and if the archbishop-elect himself can swear that he did not seek his election by bribery:—then let him be consecrated.” A council met at Winchester in September to receive the two oaths and witness the consecration. The dean of York, however, was unable to attend; he had been elected to the bishopric of Durham, and was absorbed in struggling for the possession of his see with an intruder named William Cumin, who had been placed there by the king of Scots. The partizans of the archbishop-elect, foreseeing some obstacle of this kind, had procured the addition to the Pope’s decree of a saving clause whereby they were permitted to substitute “some other approved person” for the dean: such, at least, was their account of the matter. Ralf, bishop of Orkney, and two abbots therefore took the required oath in the place of William of Durham, and William of York was consecrated by his uncle the legate, three days before Michaelmas 1143.[1032] Theobald still refused his assent to the whole proceeding.[1033]

- [1029] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 130.

- [1030] Ib. pp. 133, 134.

- [1031] Apparently a son of their sister Emma by her marriage with a certain Count Herbert. See Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149 and note v.

- [1032] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 139, 142–146. See also Thos. Stubbs (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 1721, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 123.

- [1033] Gerv. Cant. as above.

Henry was triumphant; but it was his last triumph. On that very day a new Pope, Celestine II., was chosen in place of Innocent, who had died two days before. The legatine commission expired with the Pope who had granted it; the bishop of Winchester became again a mere suffragan of Canterbury, and Theobald suddenly found himself primate in fact as well as in name. Everything now depended on the dispositions of the new Pope. Accordingly, early in November both Theobald and Henry set out for Rome.[1034] The latter soon learned that his journey was useless; Celestine was “a favourer of the Angevins”;[1035] and when Theobald and his confidant Thomas arrived at Rome they found no difficulty in persuading the Pope to transfer the legatine commission from the bishop of Winchester to the primate.[1036] Henry consoled himself by turning aside to Cluny and spending a quiet winter in the home of his boyhood. Next spring came another change; Celestine died on March 9, 1144, and was succeeded by Lucius II. To Lucius Henry went, and in his eyes he found at least so much favour that he was acquitted of sundry charges brought against him by emissaries from Anjou. But the legation was apparently left altogether in abeyance; if it was not renewed to Theobald—a point which is not quite clear—it was at any rate not restored to Henry.[1037]

- [1034] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 43). Cf. Ann. Waverl. a. 1143 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 229).

- [1035] “Alumpnus Andegavensium.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 146.

- [1036] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.

- [1037] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 146, 147.

The tide which had borne both Henry and Stephen to their triumph was in truth now rising far above their heads. The religious movement of which Henry had once seemed destined to become a leader had gone sweeping on till it left him far behind. It was the one element of national life whose growth, instead of being checked, seems to have been actually fostered by the anarchy. The only bright pages in the story of those “nineteen winters” are the pages in the Monasticon Anglicanum which tell of the progress and the work of the new religious orders, and shew us how, while knights and barons, king and Empress, were turning the fairest regions of England into a wilderness, Templars and Hospitaliers were setting up their priories, Austin canons were directing schools and serving hospitals, and the sons of S. Bernard were making the very desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The vigour of the movement shewed itself in the diversity of forms which it assumed. Most of them were offshoots of the Order of S. Augustine. The Augustinian schools were the best in England; the “Black Canons” excelled as teachers; they excelled yet more as nurses and guardians of the poor. One of the most attractive features of the time is the great number of hospices, hospitals, or almshouses as we should call them now, established for the reception and maintenance of the aged, the needy and the infirm. Such were the two famous houses of S. Giles, Cripplegate, and S. Bartholomew, Smithfield; such was the Hospital of S. Katharine near the Tower, founded in 1148 by Stephen’s queen Matilda, and served by the canons of Holy Trinity at Aldgate, to whom the younger “good Queen Maude” was almost as devoted a friend as her aunt and namesake had been. Such, too, was another foundation whose white church, nestling amid a clump of trees in the meadows through which the little blue Itchen goes winding down to the sea, is the only unmutilated remnant that Winchester still retains of the handiwork of her legate-bishop Henry. There, before he built his own fortified house, Henry founded for thirteen poor old men the Hospital of the Holy Cross; and there, while the dwelling which he made so strong for himself has perished, the “Almshouse of noble Poverty” still stands—the hospital indeed rebuilt by a later bishop to whom it owes its poetical name, but the church unaltered since its founder’s days—a lasting memorial of that better, spiritual side of his character which the world least saw and least believed in. Another class of hospitals was destined for the reception of poor travellers, especially pilgrims. Such had been, in far-off Palestine, the original purpose of two societies of pious laymen which had now made their way back into Europe and even into England in the shape of two great military orders, the Hospitaliers or Knights of S. John and the Templars. They, too, lived by the rule of S. Austin. Another offshoot of the Augustinian order consisted of the White Canons or Premonstratensians (so called from their first establishment at Prémontré in the diocese of Laon), for whom, in the midst of the civil war, Peter de Gousla endowed a priory at Newhouse in Lincolnshire, while his wife founded a house at Brodholm in Nottinghamshire for sisters of the same order.[1038] “What shall we think,” exclaims an inmate of one of the great Augustinian houses of Yorkshire, William of Newburgh,—“what shall we think of all these religious places which in King Stephen’s time began more abundantly to arise and to flourish, but that they are God’s castles, wherein the servants of the true Anointed King do keep watch, and His young soldiers are exercised in warfare against spiritual evil? For indeed at that time, when the royal authority had lost all vigour, the mighty men of the realm, and whosoever was able, were all building castles either for their own protection or for their neighbours’ hurt; and thus while through King Stephen’s weakness, or rather through the malice of the Devil, who is ever a nourisher of strife, evils were swarming and abundant, there did yet more abound and more gloriously shine forth the wise and salutary providence of the Almighty King, Who at that very time did the more mightily confound the king of pride by raising up for Himself such fortresses as beseemed the King of Peace. For in the short while that Stephen reigned, or rather bore the title of king, there arose in England many more dwellings of the servants and handmaids of God than had arisen there in the course of the whole previous century.”[1039]

- [1038] The Augustinian houses are in Dugdale’s Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. 1; the hospitals, the military orders and the Premonstratensians in vol. vi. pt. 2.

- [1039] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 15 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 53).

It is significant that this enthusiastic outburst of the historian-canon of Newburgh is called forth by the contemplation not of his own order, but of three great Cistercian houses, Byland, Rievaux and Fountains. Buried in their lonely wildernesses, the Cistercians seem at first glance to have been intent only on saving their own souls, taking no part in the regeneration of society at large. But the truth is far otherwise. While the other orders were—if we may venture to take up the suggestive figure employed by William of Newburgh—the working, fighting rank and file of the spiritual army, the White Monks were at once its sentinels, its guides and its commanding officers; they kept watch and ward over its organization and its safety, they pointed the way wherein it should go, they directed its energies and inspired its action. For the never-ending crusade of the Church against the world had at this time found its leader in a simple Cistercian monk, who never was Pope, nor legate, nor archbishop, nor even official head of his own order—who was simply abbot of Clairvaux—yet who, by the irresistible, unconscious influence of a pure mind and a single aim, had brought all Christendom to his feet. It was to the “Bright Valley,” to Clairvaux, that men looked from the most distant lands for light amid the darkness; it was to S. Bernard that all instinctively turned for counsel and for guidance. The story of S. Gilbert of Sempringham may serve for an example. The father of Gilbert was a Norman holding property in Lincolnshire in the time of Henry I.; his mother was a woman of Old-English descent. The boy ran away from school and made his escape to France; there he repented of his idleness, threw himself zealously into the pursuit of letters, and after some years came home to set up in his native place a school for boys and girls. He taught them a great deal more than mere book-learning; his purity, sweetness and fervour won the very hearts and souls of all who came under his influence; and there was something in his lofty yet tender nature which made him seem peculiarly fitted for a spiritual director of women. Seven maidens first devoted themselves to the religious life under his guidance; others soon followed their example; several men did the like. A double monastery thus grew up at Sempringham, under the protection of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, in the earliest years of Stephen’s reign. For some time it continued subject to no other rule than its founder’s own will. He saw, however, the necessity for a more lasting basis of organization; instead of trying to devise one himself, he applied to the general chapter of Cîteaux and besought them to take charge of his little flock. They, however, refused; since Gilbert had been inspired to found a new religious society, they would not presume to interfere with his mission; he must draw up a rule for his own spiritual children. He ended by working out his scheme into a composite institution which aimed at combining the excellencies of all earlier rules, but in which the Cistercian element strongly predominated. The Gilbertine priories, when fully constituted, consisted of four orders of persons: canons, who followed the rule of S. Austin; lay-brethren, nuns and lay-sisters, all bound by the rule of Cîteaux; while the whole community was held together by certain additional regulations specially devised by the founder. The new order spread rapidly through eastern England; and before S. Gilbert’s own life reached its close, he had the satisfaction of seeing his spiritual children take a highly honourable part in the great ecclesiastical struggle of which the foremost champion and victim was S. Thomas of Canterbury.[1040]

- [1040] On the Gilbertines and their founder see Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. 2, pp. iii*–lix*; and Will. Newb., l. i. c. 16 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 54, 55).

One sees in this story how instinctively the religious reformers of the day went to Cîteaux for a model and a guide; and one sees, too, how little the Cistercians were as yet inclined to abuse their influence by reaping where they had not sown. The extraordinary position of Bernard himself was not of his own seeking; the “care of all the churches” came upon him whether he would or not; as one of his biographers expresses it, all Christendom looked upon him as a divinely-appointed Moses of whom the ordained hierarchy and even the supreme pontiff himself were but subordinate mouthpieces and representatives.[1041] Like their prototype in the Old Testament, the Aarons of the time did not always understand the policy or appreciate the aims of their inspired brother, and the spiritual party in the Church sometimes found its worst stumbling-block within the walls of the Lateran. Year by year, however, its influence grew and spread, till on the death of Pope Lucius II. in February 1145 a Cistercian, Bernard abbot of S. Anastasius at Rome, was raised to the chair of S. Peter by the name of Eugene III. With him the anti-Bernardine party had no chance of a moment’s hearing; threats, flatteries or bribes were all alike thrown away upon a pontiff whose glory and whose strength lay in having no will of his own, in being simply the voice which proclaimed and the hand which executed the thoughts of his greater namesake at Clairvaux. “They say I am Pope, not you!” wrote S. Bernard to him,[1042] half playfully, half in gentle reproach, and Eugene gloried in the saying. A new departure in the policy of the Roman see was marked by the fulfilment of one of Bernard’s most cherished schemes, the preaching of a new crusade for the deliverance of the Holy Land, whence an imploring cry for help came from the widowed Queen Melisenda—for King Fulk of Anjou had been cut off suddenly in the midst of his labours, and his realm, left to the rule of a woman and a child, was rapidly falling a prey to the Infidels.[1043] At Vézelay, on Easter-day 1146, the young King Louis of France took the cross from S. Bernard’s own hands amid a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. The Emperor Conrad soon followed his example, and at Pentecost 1147 the expedition set out.

- [1041] Ern. Bonneval, Vita S. Bernardi, l. ii. c. 4 (S. Bern. Opp., ed. Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1102).

- [1042] S. Bernard. Ep. ccxxxix (Opp., Mabillon, vol. 1. col. 235).

- [1043] On Fulk’s reign in Palestine see Will. Tyr., ll. xiv. and xv. The exact date of his death is doubtful; Will. Tyr., l. xv. c. 27, and l. xvi. c. 2, gives it as November 13, 1142, and says that Baldwin II. was crowned on the following Christmas-day. But in l. xvi. c. 4 he says that Edessa was lost in the interval between Fulk’s death and his son’s coronation, and it is known from other sources that Edessa was taken by the Infidels on Christmas-night 1144. Moreover there is in Paoli’s Codice Dipl. del S. Mil. Ord. Gerosol., vol. i. p. 29, a charter of Melisenda dated “1149, Indictione xii.,” which she calls the fifth year of her son’s reign. The Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 35, 146), Chron. Turon. Magn. (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 134), Chron. Namnet. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 558) and Ric. Poitiers (ib. p. 415) all date Fulk’s death 1143; the Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 191) places it in 1141, but couples it with the death of Pope Innocent, which certainly occurred in 1143. Fulk’s end was characteristic, being caused by his own impetuosity. He was thrown from his horse in dashing too hastily after a hare started by some children, as he was riding with Melisenda outside the walls of Acre (Will. Tyr., l. xv. c. 27). See the peculiar philosophizing of the Tours chronicler thereon (Salmon, as above).

As far as its direct object was concerned, this second crusade failed completely; yet it had not been projected in vain. As said a friend and biographer of S. Bernard: “If it was God’s will thereby to deliver, not the bodies of many eastern folk from the bondage of the heathen, but the souls of many western folk from the bondage of sin, who shall dare to ask why He has thus done?”[1044] If the movement did nothing for Palestine, it did something for England. Torn and exhausted with her internal divisions, she could take no part in it as a state; but nowhere was it more readily joined by individual volunteers. The preaching of the Crusade was a spark which kindled into flame, in the heart of more than one of the troublers of the land, the smouldering embers of a capacity for better things; it was a trumpet-call which roused more than one brave knight to forsake the miserable party-strife with which perhaps in his secret soul he had long been growing disgusted, and fling into a better cause the energies which he had been wasting upon his country’s ruin.[1045] But the movement did more for England than this. It brought to light among the English people a spirit whose existence at such a time could otherwise hardly have been suspected. The one success of the Crusade was achieved by a little independent squadron of one hundred and sixty-four ships which sailed from Dartmouth on May 23, six days before the feast of the Ascension, 1147. The expedition consisted of Germans, Flemings and Englishmen, the latter being the most numerous. Nearly all were men of low degree; they had no commander-in-chief; each nationality chose its own leader. The “men of the Empire”—a body of Low-Germans who, for some unknown reason, chose to be independent of the great Imperial host—followed Count Arnold of Aerschot, who seems to have been the only person of rank in the whole assemblage; the Flemings and the men of Queen Matilda’s county of Boulogne were led by Christian of Gistelles. The English grouped themselves according to the districts of their birth under the guidance of four marshals; Hervey of Glanville led the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of Dover[1046] commanded the ships of Kent; a man named Andrew was chief of the Londoners; and a miscellaneous contingent from other parts of the country was headed by Saher de Arcelles. The whole company bound themselves by vows almost as stringent as those of a religious order; they were pledged to eschew all fine clothes and personal indulgences, and to help and avenge one another in all things as sworn brethren; each ship had its own chaplain and its regular services, as if it were a parish; every man confessed and communicated once a week; and for the enforcement of all these rules two men were elected out of every thousand to form a body of sworn judges[1047] who should administer the common funds and assist the marshals in maintaining order. These warrior-pilgrims, sailing down the western coast of the Spanish peninsula on their way to the Mediterranean Sea, touched at Oporto; at the entreaty of the Portuguese King Alfonso and his people they exchanged their intended crusade in Holy Land for one which was perhaps more useful—a campaign for the deliverance of Christian Portugal from its Moorish oppressors. The Moors who occupied Lisbon were starved into surrender by a four months’ blockade; the crusaders entered the city in triumph; in the hour of temptation English discipline proved strong enough to control German greed,[1048] and renouncing all share in the fruit of their victory these single-hearted soldiers of the Cross made over the future capital of Portugal to its Christian sovereign and went home rejoicing that they, a few poor men of lowly birth and no reputation, had been counted worthy to strike a successful blow for the Faith, while its royal and imperial champions at the head of their countless hosts met with nothing but disaster and disgrace.[1049]

- [1044] Geoff. Clairvaux, Vita S. Bern., l. iii. c. 4 (S. Bern. Opp., Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1120).

- [1045] See, in particular, the cases of William of Cricklade and Philip of Gloucester, Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 111, 119, 120.

- [1046] “Dorobernensis,” Osbern. De Expugn. Lyxbon. (prefixed to Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, Stubbs), p. cxliv. This ought to mean Canterbury; but is not Dover more likely in this case?

- [1047] “Qui judices et conjurati dicerentur.” Osbern (Stubbs, Itin. Reg. Ric.), p. cxliv.

- [1048] The characteristic way in which the Germans and the English acted when they got into the city should be noticed in Osbern (Stubbs, Itin. Reg. Ric.), pp. clxviii.–clxxx.

- [1049] Osbern (Stubbs, Itin. Reg. Ric.), pp. clxxxi, clxxxii. See also a letter in Martène and Durand, Ampliss. Coll., vol. i. cols. 800–802; another in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xvii. p. 27; and Hen. Hunt. l. viii. c. 27 (Arnold, p. 281).

There was no need to despair of a country whose middle and lower classes could still produce men capable of an exploit such as this. When a spontaneous gathering of poor yeomen, common sailors and obscure citizens could reveal such a spirit, it was plain that all England wanted to rescue her from her misery was a competent leader. S. Bernard, watching over the fortunes of the English Church through the eyes of his brethren at Fountains and Rievaux, had seen this already; and he saw, too, that it was vain to look for such a leader in either the king or the king-maker, Henry of Winchester. Before the Church of England could rescue the state, she must be freed from the political entanglements into which she had been dragged by Henry’s impetuosity, and enabled to resume a position of spiritual independence under her rightful leader, the archbishop of Canterbury. With this view the whole Cistercian order in England, supported and directed by S. Bernard, had set their faces against William Fitz-Herbert’s appointment to the see of York, as an attempt of king and legate to override the constitutional rights of the southern primate and of the Church as a whole. “The bishop of Winchester and the archbishop of York do not walk in the same spirit with the archbishop of Canterbury, but go their own way in opposition to him; and this comes from the old quarrel about the legation”—thus Bernard summed up the case.[1050] Moreover the saving clause whereby William of Durham was allowed to swear by proxy in behalf of his namesake appears to have been interpolated by the latter’s friends into the Papal decree; for “One William has not sworn, yet the other is archbishop”[1051] was the burthen of S. Bernard’s cry to the Pope; and when in 1144 a cardinal-legate, Hicmar, came to England with a pall for William of York, he promised Bernard not to give it till he should have received the oath from the bishop of Durham in person.[1052]

- [1050] In a letter to Eugene III., S. Bern. Ep. ccxxxviii. (Opp. Mabillon, vol. i. col. 234).

- [1051] S. Bern. Epp. ccxxxv.–ccxxxvi., both to Celestine II. (as above, cols. 229–231).

- [1052] S. Bern. Ep. ccclx. (as above, cols. 324, 325)—to Abbot William of Rievaux. See also Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 149, and, for date, note u, ibid.

Neither prelate took any notice of Hicmar’s presence; but when he was recalled by the death of Pope Lucius and the accession of Eugene, the archbishop of York suddenly perceived what a blunder he had made, and hurried to Rome in quest of the pall about which he had hitherto been so indifferent. Instead of giving it, Eugene suspended him from all episcopal functions till such time as William of Durham should have taken the oath required by the sentence of Pope Innocent. The archbishop hereupon retired to Sicily and took up his abode there with his fellow-countryman the chancellor, Robert of Selby or Salisbury,[1053] under the protection of King Roger. As Roger was then at bitter feud with the Church, this step was not likely to mend William’s ecclesiastical reputation. His cause, bad from the first and made worse by his own carelessness, was presently ruined by his friends. The leaders of the opposition to him in England were the abbots of Rievaux and Fountains; the latter, Henry Murdac, was a native of Yorkshire who in Archbishop Thurstan’s time had given up houses and lands, home and kindred, to go out to Clairvaux at the call of S. Bernard. In 1135 he was sent thence to found the abbey of Vauclair;[1054] in 1143 he was appointed to succeed Abbot Richard II. of Fountains, who had died at Clairvaux while on his way to attend the general chapter of his order at Cîteaux.[1055] Henry Murdac went back to his native land charged with an implied commission to make Fountains an English Clairvaux and himself an English representative of S. Bernard, and he fulfilled his charge with true Cistercian zeal and fidelity.[1056] As soon as William’s suspension became known, his friends attributed it to the influence of Murdac, whom they sought to punish by making an armed raid upon his abbey. Plunder, of course, they got little or none in a freshly-reformed Cistercian house;[1057] so, after a hurried and unsuccessful search for Murdac himself, they set the place on fire. Every stone of it perished except the church, which escaped as by miracle; and the abbot escaped with it, for he had been lying all the while, unnoticed by the passion-blinded eyes of his foes, prostrate in prayer before the high altar. The energy of the monks and the sympathy of their neighbours soon enabled Fountains to rise from its ashes more glorious than before;[1058] but William’s day of grace was at once brought to a close by this outrage. At a council held in Paris in the spring of 1147, the abbot of Fountains and a deputation from the chapter of York once more formally presented to the Pope their charges against their primate, and Eugene deposed William from his episcopal office.[1059] On the eve of S. James the chapter of York, with the two suffragan bishops of the province—Durham and Carlisle—met in obedience to a papal mandate for the election of a new archbishop. The choice of the majority fell upon Henry Murdac. From Clairvaux, whither he had gone after the council, the abbot of Fountains was summoned to the papal court at Trier, and there, on the octave of S. Andrew, he received his consecration and his pall both at once from Pope Eugene’s own hand.[1060]

[1053] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 150–152. Robert was “oriundus in Angliâ, scilicet in Salesbiâ.” Mr. Raine renders this Selby; Twysden made it Salisbury; Bishop Stubbs (Lect. on Mediev. and Mod. Hist., p. 133), leaves the question undecided.

[1054] On the earlier life of Henry Murdac see Dixon and Raine, Fasti Ebor., pp. 210–213; and Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. p. 84, note 3.

[1055] Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. pp. 78, 81–83. S. Bern. Epp. cccxx, cccxxi (Opp. Mabillon, vol. i. cols. 297, 298).

[1056] Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. pp. 84, 85.

[1057] “Ferentes secum spolia, parum quidem pecuniæ, sed plurimum dampnationis.” Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. p. 102.

[1058] Ib. pp. 101, 102.

[1059] On the council of Paris see Labbe, Concilia (Cossart), vol. xxi., cols. 709, 710. As to the date, it appears from Jaffé (Regesta Pontif. Rom., pp. 626, 627) that Eugene reached Paris before Easter (April 20) and was there till June 11; so the council must fall in the interval. On William’s deposition see Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. “Hoc concilio” ought, by all logical and grammatical rules, to mean the council of Reims, held in March 1148, and of which Gervase has just been speaking. Accordingly most of his commentators (including the editors of the Fountains and Hexham books, and the compilers of the Fasti Eboracenses) say that William was deposed at the council of Reims; and then, as his successor was undoubtedly consecrated in December 1147, they are obliged to antedate the council of Reims by a year. But Gervase himself says, almost in the same breath, that the deposition took place in Paris. He has confused the two councils; see Pagi’s note to Baronius, Annales, vol. xix. pp. 7, 8; and cf. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 154.

[1060] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 154, 155. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 135. Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. p. 103. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 56). The Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 518) says Henry was consecrated at Auxerre, but this is incompatible with dates.

The subsequent conduct of Stephen and Henry of Winchester proved that their aim in securing the occupation of the northern primacy had been rightly understood by Eugene and Bernard. They had staked everything upon the success of their scheme, and when it failed not only the king but even the once cool and sagacious bishop completely lost his head. Upon William himself the papal sentence had the very opposite effect; it woke him from his dreams of easy dignity and worldly pride; from that moment the idle, showy, self-indulgent young ecclesiastic changed into an humble saint, and when he came home next year it was not to renew the strife but to turn away from the world and possess his soul in patience.[1061] But his uncles would not hear of submission; Henry took him to live in his own house, and there persisted in ostentatiously treating him with all the honours due to the archbishop of York;[1062] and when in the summer of 1148 the new archbishop also came back to England, Stephen demanded sworn security for his fidelity before he would let him set foot in the country.[1063] The citizens of York, instigated by the treasurer of the see, Hugh of Puiset, who like William was a nephew of the king, shut their gates in their primate’s face; he withdrew to Ripon, laid his diocese under interdict and excommunicated Hugh; but Hugh, strong in the support of his uncles, defied the interdict and was even impudent enough to return the excommunication.[1064]

- [1061] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 154.

- [1062] Ibid. Will. Newb. as above·/·, l. i. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 56).

- [1063] Ibid. Oddly enough, this York affair is almost the only one in which William rather inclines to take the part of the king.

- [1064] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 158.

In the southern province matters had come to a still more dangerous crisis. Early in 1148 all the English bishops were summoned by the Pope to a council which was to meet at Reims on Mid-Lent Sunday. Three of them—Hereford, Chichester and Norwich—were sent by Stephen himself; but when the archbishop of Canterbury made the usual application for leave to quit the country, the king refused, set a watch at every port to stop his egress, and at his brother Henry’s instigation swore that if Theobald did go he should be banished on his return. Theobald however had made up his mind to go at any cost; he slipped away in an old broken boat with only two companions—Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and Thomas of London, the latter of whom had now been for several years the most trusted medium of intercommunication between the primate and the court of Rome. The daring voyagers reached their journey’s end in safety, and Theobald was triumphantly presented to the council by the Pope as one who had swum rather than sailed across the Channel for the sake of his duty to the Church.[1065] The bishops who had failed to attend were all suspended, Henry of Winchester being specially mentioned by name. His brother, however,—the good count of Blois who seems to have been at once the scapegoat and the peacemaker for all the sins of his family, and who was held in the deepest esteem by both Eugene and Bernard—made intercession on his behalf, and obtained a relaxation of the sentence against him on condition of his coming to Rome within six months.[1066] As for the king, Eugene would have excommunicated him at once; but for him the other Theobald stepped forward as mediator, like Anselm in a somewhat similar case, and procured him a respite of three months.[1067] The intercessor’s reward was the threatened sentence of banishment, issued as soon as he returned to Canterbury. He withdrew into France and appealed to the Pope, while Stephen seized the temporalities of the see and began playing the part of the Red King on a small scale. Eugene wrote to all the English bishops, severally and in a body, bidding them summon the king to restore the primate at once, lay all his dominions under interdict if he refused, and tell him that he should certainly be excommunicated by the Pope on Michaelmas day. The bishops however were all on the court-side; the interdict, duly published by Theobald, was unheeded save in his own diocese; and the king remained obstinate.[1068] But his wiser queen, aided by William of Ypres, who, however he may have sinned against others, was unquestionably Stephen’s truest friend, made an effort to restore peace; and at their request Theobald removed to St. Omer, as being a more accessible place for negotiation than his French retreat.[1069]

- [1065] Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx.), p. 519; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 134. Both accounts seem to be derived from a letter of S. Thomas (Ep. ccl., Robertson, Becket, vol. vi. pp. 57, 58). Thomas’s presence at the council is distinctly stated in Hist. Pontif. (as above), p. 522, and so is that of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque.

- [1066] Hist. Pontif. (as above), p. 520. Cf. Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 92).

- [1067] Hist. Pontif. (as above), p. 519.

- [1068] Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx.), pp. 530, 532.

- [1069] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 135.

Matilda of Boulogne doubtless saw what Theobald must have known full well, that the quarrel involved a great deal more than strictly ecclesiastical questions. The issue which the ordeal of battle had failed to decide was on its trial now in a different form and before another tribunal. The most curious symptom of this feeling, perhaps, was the action of Brian Fitz-Count, who, after having been for years Matilda’s most devoted and most successful champion in the field, suddenly exchanged the sword for the pen and brought out a defence of his Lady’s rights in the shape of a little treatise which gained the approval of one of the cleverest men and greatest scholars of the time, Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester.[1070] Geoffrey Plantagenet, with his Angevin quickness, was the first openly to proclaim the true position of affairs by sending to Stephen, through Bishop Miles of Térouanne, a formal challenge to give up his ill-gotten realm and submit to an investigation of his claims before the papal court. Stephen retorted by a counter-challenge, calling upon Geoffrey to give up his equally ill-gotten duchy before he would agree to any further proceeding in the matter.[1071] Geoffrey took him at his word, but in a way which he was far from desiring. He did give up the duchy of Normandy, by making it over to his own son, Henry Fitz-Empress.[1072]

- [1070] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 94–102).

- [1071] Hist. Pontif. (as above), p. 531.

- [1072] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1149 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 36). But the story of Gilbert Foliot’s consecration shews that the cession must really have taken place in 1148.

The crisis was now close at hand; Stephen was at last face to face with his true rival. He appears to have consented, as if in desperation, to the proposed trial at Rome. It seems at first glance as if the envoys whom he sent to represent him there must indeed have been driven to their wits’ end for an argument in his behalf when they raked up again a scandal which S. Anselm had laid to rest half a century ago, as to the validity of the marriage between Matilda’s father and mother.[1073] Yet such was the argument publicly put forth by many voices against the legality of her claims to the crown; and though one account of the proceedings states that her adversaries were triumphantly confuted by Bishop Ulger of Angers,[1074] another, written by an eye-witness whose own opinions were wholly in her favour, declares that her advocates answered never a word.[1075] The trial seems to have ended without any decision;[1076] it was however quickly followed by a very significant event. The witness just referred to was Gilbert Foliot, a Cluniac monk who since 1139 had been abbot of Gloucester, and whose reputation for learning, wisdom and holiness had secured to him the confidence of the primate and the consideration of all parties alike in Church and state. He had reluctantly and after some delay obeyed Theobald’s summons to join him at the papal court; once there, he seems to have flung all his energies into the organization of the new policy of which Theobald was to be the leader.[1077] During the session of the council at Reims the bishop of Hereford died.[1078] The Pope at once appointed Gilbert Foliot vicar of the diocese;[1079] in September he was consecrated by Theobald at St. Omer, with the consent and approval of the young duke of the Normans, given on the express condition that he should do homage for the temporalities of his see to the duke and not to the king.

- [1073] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 101). Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx.), p. 543.

- [1074] Hist. Pontif. (as above), p. 544.

- [1075] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (as above).

- [1076] From the way in which this trial is brought into the Hist. Pontif., it would at first glance seem to have taken place in 1151. But the presence of Bishops Ulger of Angers and Roger of Chester, both of whom died in 1149, and the account of the proceedings written by Gilbert Foliot to Brian Fitz-Count clearly prove the true date to be 1148.

- [1077] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. vi., vii., lxxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 13, 14, 92).

- [1078] Hist. Monast. S. Petr. Glocestr. (Hart), vol. i. p. 18.

- [1079] “G. gratiâ Dei abbas, et Herefordiensis ecclesiæ mandato Domini Papæ vicarius,” runs the salutation of his Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 93).

The very first thing Gilbert did was to break this promise;[1080] but that Theobald should have consecrated such a man on such terms was a sign of the times which Stephen could hardly fail to understand. Theobald himself soon afterwards ventured back to England; crossing from Gravelines, he landed at Gosford in the territories of Hugh Bigod, by whom he was hospitably received; the bishops of London, Chichester and Norwich, with several barons, came to meet him at Hugh’s castle of Framlingham; the king was reconciled, the primate restored, the interdict raised, and the suspended prelates, all save one, allowed to resume their functions.[1081] The exception was Henry of Winchester, who by neglecting to go to Rome within the prescribed six months had necessarily fallen under the sentence pronounced against him by Eugene at the council of Reims. Even to him, however, Theobald was willing at Stephen’s request to hold out the hand of fellowship and forgiveness.[1082] But Henry of Winchester’s days of king-making were over. It was time for another Henry to appear upon the political scene, to take his cause into his own hands and stand forth as the champion of his own claims against the man who had supplanted him on his grandfather’s throne.

- [1080] Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx.), pp. 532, 533.

- [1081] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 136, 137.

- [1082] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 152.

CHAPTER VIII.
HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS.
1149–1154.

No loving hands have done for the early life of Henry Fitz-Empress what they did for that of his contemporary, his friend, his opponent Thomas of London; we have no stories of his boyhood, no picture of his home. Home indeed, in the full sense of the word, he never had and never could have. That instinctive attachment to one particular spot, or at the least to one particular country, which is innate in most men, was to a child of Geoffrey and Matilda simply impossible. Geoffrey was the son of an Angevin count and a Cenomannian countess; Matilda was the daughter of a king born in England of a Norman father and a Flemish mother, and of a queen whose parents were the one a Scottish Celt, the other a West-Saxon with a touch of High-German blood. In the temper of the Empress the Norman element was undoubtedly the strongest; no trace can be seen in her of the gentle spirit of her mother; and it is clear that no lingering regrets for the land of her birth[1083] haunted the girl-bride of the Emperor in her palace at Aachen as they haunted the monk Orderic, from boyhood to old age, in his cell at Saint-Evroul. Yet when she came to Normandy in her twenty-third year, she came there unwillingly and as a complete stranger. If Henry was to inherit any national or patriotic feeling at all, it could not be from his mother; what she transmitted to him instead was a sort of cosmopolitanism which saved the future duke of Normandy and king of England from the too exclusive influence of the demon-blood of Anjou, not by making him a Norman, still less an Englishman, but by rendering his nationality a yet more insoluble problem than her own. Even in his father, too, there are signs of a divided national sentiment. The son of Aremburg of Maine, the grandson and heir of Elias, could not cling to the black rock of Angers with the exclusive attachment of its earlier counts; a share of his patriotic affection and pride must have been given to that other, red rock above the Sarthe which had held out so long and so bravely against both Normandy and Anjou, to that Cenomannian land of heroes which Norman and Angevin alike had counted it their highest glory to overcome and win. It may have been by chance, or it may have been of set purpose, that Geoffrey and Matilda were at Le Mans when their first child was born; no other spot could have been half so appropriate. The land which Normans and Angevins and even Englishmen[1084] had done their utmost to wipe out of the list of states, the land whose claim to a separate existence, ignored or denied by them all, had yet proved the insurmountable stumbling-block which forced them into union:—that land was the most fitting birth-place for the child who was to be neither Norman, nor Angevin, nor English, and yet was to be all three at once. The vengeance of Maine upon her conquerors formed a characteristic close to her national career. They had swallowed her up at last; but they had no sooner done it than she gave a master to them all.

- [1083] She was born in London: Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 13.

- [1084] Eng. Chron. a. 1073.

If, then, Normandy, England and Anjou had each a part in Henry, Le Mans had two parts, as being at once the home of his father’s mother and the scene of his own birth. His earliest recollections, however, must rather have been associated with Normandy. His first journey thither was made when he was about twelve months old, when he accompanied his mother on a visit to King Henry in the spring 1134. His brother Geoffrey was born at Argentan on June 1, and the two children narrowly escaped being left motherless under their grandfather’s care.[1085] Possibly this made them all the dearer to him; he certainly found in them his last earthly pleasure, of which he was finally deprived by a quarrel with their mother, who seems to have sent them back to Angers shortly before her own return thither in the autumn of 1135.[1086] For the next seven years little Henry can have seen nothing of his future duchy; and we have no means of knowing whether its stately capital, its people, its dialect, had left any impression upon him, or whether any dim personal remembrance was associated in his mind with that name of “my grandfather King Henry” to which he appealed so constantly in later life. His training, after his return to Angers as before, must have devolved chiefly upon Matilda; for Geoffrey during the next three years was too busy with unsuccessful fighting abroad in the interest of his wife and son to have much leisure for devoting himself to their society at home. It was not till the close of 1138 that his influence can have been seriously brought to bear upon his children, of whom there were now three, another son, named William, having been born in August 1136.[1087] After the disaster of Toucques the count appears to have spent his time until the beginning of 1141 for the most part quietly at home, where his wife’s departure over sea left him in his turn sole guardian of his boys. In one respect at least he did not neglect his paternal duty. “Unlettered king, crowned ass,” was a reproach which would have fallen with double disgrace upon the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the grandson of Henry I.; and Geoffrey took care that his firstborn should never be exposed to it. It may even be that in those two years when war and politics left him at leisure for the quieter enjoyments of his books, his hunting and his home, the young father himself took up the task, of which he was certainly quite capable, of instilling into his child the first rudiments of that book-learning which he loved so well. At any rate, it was he who chose the first teacher to whom Henry’s education was intrusted. As if on purpose to add one more to the varied influences already working in that young mind, the teacher was neither Angevin, nor Cenomannian, nor Norman. He was one Master Peter of Saintes, “learned above all his contemporaries in the science of verse.”[1088]

- [1085] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1134 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 33); Rob. Torigni, a. 1134. Cf. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. cc. 27, 28 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., pp. 305, 306).

- [1086] Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (as above, p. 310).

- [1087] Rob. Torigni, ad ann.

- [1088] “Hic [sc. Gaufridus] filium suum Enricum natu majorem ad erudiendum tradidit cuidam magistro Petro scilicet Xantonensi, qui in metris instructus est super omnes coætaneos suos.” Anon. Chron., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 120.

Under Peter’s care the boy remained till the close of 1142, when, as we have seen, he was sent to England in company with his uncle Robert of Gloucester. Henry now entered upon a third phase of education. For the next four years his uncle took charge of him and kept him in his own household at Bristol under the care of one Master Matthew, by whom he was to be “imbued with letters and instructed in good manners, as beseemed a youth of his rank.”[1089] This arrangement may have been due to the Empress, or it may have originated with Geoffrey when he sent the boy over sea in the earl’s company; for much as they differed in other matters, on the subject of a boy’s training the two brothers-in-law could hardly fail to be of the same mind. A well-balanced compound of soldier, statesman and scholar was Earl Robert’s ideal no less than Count Geoffrey’s; an ideal so realized in his own person that he might safely be trusted to watch over its developement in the person of his little nephew. As far as the military element was concerned, the earl of Gloucester, with his matured experience and oft-proved valour, was no less capable than the count of Anjou of furnishing a model of all knightly prowess, skill and courtesy; and if Henry’s chivalry was to be tempered with discretion—if it was to be regulated by a wise and wary policy—if he was to acquire any insight into the principles of sound and prudent state-craft—Robert was certainly, among the group of adventurers who surrounded the Empress, the only man from whom he could learn anything of the kind. The boy was indeed scarce ten years old, and even for the heir of Anjou and England it was perhaps somewhat too early to begin such studies as these. For the literary side of his education, later years proved that Robert’s choice of a teacher was as good as Geoffrey’s had been; the seed sowed by Peter of Saintes was well watered by Matthew, and it seems to have brought forth in his young pupil’s mind a harvest of gratitude as well as of learning, for among the chancellors of King Henry II. there appears a certain “Master Matthew” who can hardly be any other than his old teacher.[1090]

- [1089] “Puer autem Henricus sub tutelâ Comitis Roberti apud Bristoviam degens, per quatuor annos traditus est magisterio cujusdam Mathæi, litteris imbuendus et moribus honestis ut talem decebat puerum instituendus.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs.), vol. i. p. 125.

- [1090] “The person meant was no doubt that Matthew who is called Henry’s chancellor in Foliot’s letters.” Stubbs, Gerv. Cant., vol. i. p. 125, note 2. (“Master Matthew, the chancellor,” is named in Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cli., Giles, vol. i. pp. 201, 202). In his Lect. on Med. and Mod. Hist., p. 120, Bishop Stubbs speaks of Matthew as the king’s “tutor, who was some time his chancellor, and who probably was identical with the Bishop of Angers, Matthew of London.” Bishop Matthew of Angers is described by the editors of Gall. Christ. (vol. xiv. col. 570) as a native of Loudun—“Losduni natus.” He was consecrated in 1155, which seems hardly to leave time for his chancellorship.

To teach the boy “good manners”—in the true sense of those words—must have been a somewhat difficult task amid his present surroundings. Bristol, during the years of Henry’s residence there, fully kept up its character as the “stepmother of all England”; he must have been continually seeing or hearing of bands of soldiers issuing from the castle to ravage and plunder, burn and slay, or troops of captives dragged in to linger in its dungeons till they had given up their uttermost farthing or were set free by a miserable death. It seems likely, however, that the worst of these horrors occurred during Robert’s absence and without his sanction, for even the special panegyrist of Stephen gives the earl credit for doing his utmost to maintain order and justice in the shires over which he ruled.[1091] It was not his fault if matters had drifted into such a state that his efforts were worse than useless; and his good intentions were at any rate not more ineffectual than those of the king. Within the domestic circle itself it is not unlikely that the child was better placed under the influence of Robert and Mabel than either in the household of his violent-tempered mother or in that of his refined but selfish father, whom he rejoined in the spring of 1147, a year before the return of the Empress. He was in his sixteenth year when Geoffrey ceded to him the duchy of Normandy. A boy of that age, especially in the house of Anjou, was counted a man, and expected to act as such. The cession was in fact intended and understood as a solemn proclamation both to friends and foes that henceforth they would have to deal with King Henry’s chosen heir no longer indirectly, but in his own person; that his rights were to be vindicated in future not by his parents but by himself.

- [1091] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 94.

He lost no time in beginning his work. In the middle of May 1149 Stephen, while endeavouring to put down a fresh revolt of the earls of Chester and Pembroke,[1092] was startled by news of Henry’s arrival in England. The young duke of the Normans landed we know not where, and made his way northward, recruiting a few of his mother’s old adherents as he went: his great-uncle King David welcomed him at Carlisle, and there knighted him on Whit-Sunday.[1093] Stephen evidently took this act as a challenge, for he immediately retorted by knighting his eldest son Eustace, thus pointedly setting up his own heir as a rival to his young kinsman.[1094] He then hastened with all his forces to York, but no hostilities took place.[1095] The intended campaign of David and Henry was frustrated by Ralf of Chester’s failure to keep his engagement with them;[1096] the two kings sat awhile, one at York and the other at Carlisle, each waiting for the other to strike, till David grew weary and retired to his own kingdom,[1097] taking his nephew with him; and in January Henry again withdrew beyond the sea.[1098] He saw that the political scales were as yet too evenly balanced to be turned by the mere weight of his maiden sword; and his work was being done for him, better than he could do it himself, by clerk and primate, abbot and Pope—most surely of all, by the blundering king himself.

- [1092] Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 124–127, gives the details of this rising.

- [1093] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 140, 141. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282). Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 159. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. The writer of Gesta Steph. (pp. 128, 129) has a most romantic account of Henry’s adventures. Henry, he says, came over with a very small force, and nothing to pay them with except promises. He made an attempt upon Bourton and Cricklade, and was repulsed; whereupon his troops all fell away and left him so helpless that he was obliged to ask his mother for some money. She had none to give him; he then asked his uncle Gloucester, but the latter, “suis sacculis avide incumbens,” refused. Then Henry in desperation appealed to the king, beseeching his compassion for the sake of their kindred blood; and Stephen at once sent him the needful sum. The trait is just what might be expected in Stephen; but it is hard to conceive Henry ever getting into such a plight; and the mention of Robert of Gloucester as still alive shews there must be something wrong in the story.

- [1094] Hen. Hunt. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 130.

- [1095] Hen. Hunt. as above.

- [1096] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 159, 160. Ralf had agreed to give up his claims on Carlisle and accept instead the honour of Lancaster for himself and the hand of one of David’s granddaughters for his son; he promised on these conditions to join David and Henry in an attack upon Lancaster, but was, as usual, false to the tryst.

- [1097] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 282).

- [1098] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 142.

A double chain connected English politics with those of the Roman court. The links of the one chain were S. Bernard and Henry Murdac; those of the other were Theobald of Canterbury and Thomas of London. What was the exact nature of those communications between the primate and the Pope of which Thomas was the medium—how much of the credit of Theobald’s policy is due to himself and how much to his confidential instrument and adviser—we have no means of determining precisely. The aim of that policy was to consolidate the forces of the English Church by deepening her intercourse and strengthening her connexion with the sister-Churches of the West, and thus bring the highest religious and political influences of Latin Christendom to bear upon the troubles of the English state. The way had been paved by Henry of Winchester in his legatine days. He and the councils which he convened had first suggested the possibility of finding a remedy for the lack of secular administration in an appeal to the authority of the canon law, now formulated as a definite code by the labours of a Bolognese lawyer, Gratian. The very strifes and jealousies which arose from Henry’s over-vigorous assertion of his authority tended to a like result; they led to more frequent appeals to Rome, to elaborate legal pleadings, to the drawing of subtle legal distinctions unknown to the old customary procedure of the land; as a contemporary writer expresses it, “Then were laws and lawyers first brought into England.”[1099] On the Continent the study of the civil jurisprudence of the Roman Empire had been revived together with that of the canon law; some members of Archbishop Theobald’s household resolved to introduce it into England, hoping thereby, as it seems, to sow amid the general confusion some seeds of a more orderly and law-abiding spirit. During the time of comparative quiet which intervened between his first journey to Rome in 1143 and his expedition with Theobald to the council of Reims in 1148, Thomas of London had spent a year at Bologna and Auxerre to perfect himself in the literary culture which he had somewhat neglected in his youth.[1100] The university of Bologna was the chief seat of the new legal learning; it may therefore have been through Thomas that a Lombard teacher, Vacarius, was induced to visit England in 1149 and open lectures at Oxford on the Roman law.[1101] Rich and poor flocked to hear him, and at the request of his poorer scholars he made an abridgement of the Code and Digests, sufficient for practical use, and more within reach of their scanty means than the heavy folios of Justinian.[1102] His lectures however were summarily brought to an end by order of the king; Stephen, scared by young Duke Henry’s presence in the north, jealous of the primate, jealous of the Church, jealous of everything in which he saw or thought he saw the least token of an influence which might be used against himself, at once silenced the teacher and ordered the students to give up their books. He gained as little as is usually gained by such a mode of proceeding in such cases. The study of the civil law only spread and prospered the more for his efforts to hinder it;[1103] and the law-school of the future university of Oxford may have sprung from a germ left in the cloisters of Oseney or S. Frideswide’s by the brief visit of the Lombard master, just as the divinity-school may have sprung from a germ left there sixteen years before by the lectures of Robert Pulein.

- [1099] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 384.

- [1100] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 17.

- [1101] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. Joh. Salisb., Polycraticus, l. viii. c. 22 (Giles, vol. iv. p. 357), says that “domus venerabilis patris Theobaldi” brought the Roman law into England.

- [1102] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149.

- [1103] Joh. Salisb. as above.

Stephen had struck at the southern primate indirectly this time; with the northern one he was still at open feud. One use which he made of his stay in Yorkshire was to exact a heavy fine from the inhabitants of Beverley, as a punishment for having given shelter to Henry Murdac. After the king’s departure the archbishop at last succeeded in enforcing his interdict at York; Eustace hurried thither, insisted upon the restoration of the services, and drove out all who refused to take part in them; there was a great tumult, in which the senior archdeacon was killed by the followers of the king’s son.[1104] About the same time a cardinal-legate, John Paparo, on his way to Ireland, asked for a safe-conduct through the dominions of the English king; Stephen refused to give it unless he would promise to do nothing on his journey to the prejudice of the English realm. John went home highly indignant at such an insinuation against his honour and that of the Apostolic See.[1105] Meanwhile Archbishop Murdac was writing bitter complaints both to S. Bernard and to the Pope. They apparently determined to give Stephen a warning which even he could not fail to understand; and they did it by sending a commission as resident legate a latere for all Britain to the archbishop of Canterbury.[1106]

- [1104] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 160. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 17 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 56, 57).

- [1105] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 164. In the Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. pp. 518, 519) this first legation of John Paparo seems to be dated some years earlier. But the Hist. Pontif. is very erratic in its chronology; and John of Hexham seems quite clear and consistent in his account of the matter.

- [1106] The date of Theobald’s legatine commission seems to be nowhere stated. He had certainly received it before Lent 1151; it was therefore in all probability granted some time in 1150, under the circumstances related above.

The warning took effect; Stephen changed his policy at once. He was weary of all his fruitless labour; his chief anxiety now was to secure the crown to his son; and he suddenly awoke to the necessity of setting himself right with the one power which alone could enable him to carry out his desire. Eustace himself was sent to act as mediator between his father and Henry Murdac; a reconciliation took place, and the archbishop was enthroned at York on S. Paul’s day 1151. Thence he went to keep Easter with the Pope, having undertaken, at Stephen’s request, to intercede for him with Eugene concerning the state of politics in England, and especially to obtain, if possible, the papal sanction to a formal acknowledgement of Eustace as heir to the crown.[1107] The southern primate meanwhile was beginning his legatine career with a Mid-Lenten council in London, at which Stephen, Eustace, and the principal barons of England were present. The main feature of this council was a crowd of appeals to Rome, whereof three were made by the bishop of Winchester.[1108] One of these appeals must have been against the suspension to which he had been sentenced at the council of Reims, and by which the Pope, less placable than the primate, still held him bound. Moreover, complaints against him were pouring into Rome from all quarters; so he carried his appeals in person, and went to clear himself before the supreme pontiff. He succeeded in obtaining absolution;[1109] his friends, of whom there were still many at the papal court, tried hard to win for him something more—either a renewal of the legation, or the accomplishment of his old scheme of a primacy over Wessex, or at least the exemption of his own see from the jurisdiction of Canterbury; but Eugene was inexorable. He believed that Stephen’s misconduct towards the Church was instigated by his brother; a very natural view, but somewhat unjust to the bishop.[1110] The truth seems rather to be that Henry, after vainly trying to rule the storm, had for awhile been swept away by its violence. Now he had emerged into the calm once more; and there henceforth he was content to remain. He consoled himself for the failure of his political hopes with a choice collection of antique statues purchased in Rome for the adornment of his palace at Winchester, and sailed quietly home with these treasures, stopping on his way to pay his devotions at the shrine of S. James at Compostella.[1111] At his request the Pope ordered Archbishop Murdac to absolve Hugh of Puiset, who was making himself useful at Winchester, not on clerical duty, but in taking charge of the bishop’s castles during his absence.[1112] With Hugh’s absolution the schism in the northern province came to an end, and the English Church was once again reunited.

- [1107] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 162.

- [1108] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 282): “Totum illud concilium novis appellationibus infrenduit.” It is, however, rather too hard upon Henry of Winchester when he adds that appeals to Rome had not been used in England till that prelate in his legatine days “malo suo crudeliter intrusit.”

- [1109] Ann. Winton. a. 1151 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. pp. 54, 55).

- [1110] As the author of the Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 542) truly says: “Credebatur fratrem suum regem contra ecclesiam instigare; sed rex, quod manifesta declarant opera, nec illius nec sapientis alterius consilio agebatur.”

- [1111] Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., vol. xx.), p. 542.

- [1112] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 158, 162. He places Hugh’s absolution in 1150, but on his own shewing it cannot have occurred before 1151.

For England and for Stephen alike the prospect seemed to be brightening. Stephen however was clearly beginning to feel that for him as well as for his Angevin rivals it was time to give place to a younger generation. It must have been chiefly for Eustace’s sake that he valued his crown; and in Eustace’s case, as in that of Henry Fitz-Empress, there were many circumstances which might make the pretensions of the child more generally acceptable than those of the parent. Eustace seems to have been about the same age as Henry, or probably a few years older; he was free from the personal obloquy and suspicion attaching to Stephen from the errors of the past; on the other hand, as the son of Matilda of Boulogne, he might reap the benefit of his mother’s well-earned personal popularity, as well as of her descent from the royal house of Wessex. Henceforth, therefore, Stephen showed a disposition to treat Henry Fitz-Empress as the rival less of himself than of his son, and to follow up every movement in Henry’s public life by a parallel step in the career of Eustace. And as Henry’s first independent act had been a sort of reconnoitring expedition to England, so the first retaliation was a visit made by Eustace to the king of France, with a view to ascertain his chances of support in an attempt to regain Normandy.

The existing phase of the rivalry between the houses of Anjou and Blois—their struggle for the dominion of Normandy and England—was a matter which concerned the interests of the French Crown almost as deeply as the earlier phase in which Fulk the Black and Odo of Champagne strove with each other for political mastery over their common lord paramount. Neither the accumulation of England, Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in a single hand, nor the acquisition of Normandy and England by a branch of the mighty and troublesome house which already held Blois, Chartres and Champagne, could be viewed by the French king without grave uneasiness. Either alternative had its dangers; to Louis VII., however, the danger would appear much less threatening than to his father. Shortly before the dying Louis VI. granted the investiture of Normandy to Stephen’s little son in 1137, the last of the old line of the dukes of Aquitaine—William IX., son of the gay crusader and troubadour whom the Red King had hoped to succeed—died on a pilgrimage at Compostella.[1113] His only son was already dead, and before setting out for his pilgrimage he did what a greater personage had done ten years before: with the consent of his barons, he left the whole of his dominions to his daughter. Moreover, he bequeathed the girl herself as wife to the young King Louis of France.[1114] This marriage more than doubled the strength of the French Crown. It gave to Louis absolute possession of all western Aquitaine, or Guyenne as it was now beginning to be called; that is, the counties of Poitou and Gascony, with the immediate overlordship of the whole district lying between the Loire and the Pyrenees, the Rhône and the ocean:—a territory five or six times as large as his own royal domain, and over which his predecessors had never been able to assert more than the merest shadow of a nominal superiority.[1115] To a man who was at once king of France and duke of Aquitaine it was comparatively no great matter whether the dominions of Henry I. were to be annexed to those of Geoffrey of Anjou or allied to those of Theobald of Blois. The truest interest of France, however, obviously was that England and Normandy should be divided, one of them being held by each of the two competitors; and it was doubtless with this view that Louis, while sanctioning and aiding Geoffrey’s conquest of the Norman duchy, still kept on peaceful terms with the English king, and held to a promise of marriage made some years before between his own sister and Stephen’s son Eustace.[1116]

- [1113] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 909. Hist. Franc. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.), p. 116. Anon. Chron. (ibid.) p. 119. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Maxent. a. 1137 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 34, 432).

- [1114] Suger, Vita Ludov. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.) p. 62. Chron. Mauriniac. (ibid.) p. 83. Hist. Franc. (ibid.), p. 116. Ord. Vit. as above. See also Besly, Comtes de Poitou, p. 137.

- [1115] Perhaps the most striking indication of the importance of the duke of Aquitaine is the ceremony of the ducal crowning, which Louis, as husband of the duchess, underwent at Poitiers immediately after his marriage; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 911. There was a special “Ordo ad benedicendum ducem Aquitaniæ” (printed in Besly, Comtes de Poitou, preuves, pp. 183 et seq., and Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 451–453), nearly as solemn as the office for the crowning of a king.

- [1116] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 112. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 125.

At the time of Geoffrey’s final success Louis was at deadly strife with the count of Blois; a strife in which the king was wholly in the wrong, and for whose disastrous consequences he afterwards grieved so deeply that his penitence was the chief motive which induced him to go on crusade.[1117] Since then, Geoffrey in his turn had incurred the royal displeasure. There was a certain Gerald, lord of a castle called Montreuil-Bellay, near the southern border of Anjou—one of the fortresses raised by the great castle-builder Fulk Nerra in the earliest days of his warfare with Odo of Blois—whom an Angevin chronicler describes as an absolute monster of wickedness,[1118] but who had so won the favour of the king that he made him seneschal of Poitou. In 1147 this Gerald was the ring-leader of a fresh revolt of the Angevin barons against their count. The revolt was as usual soon put down: but it was not so easy to punish Gerald; for Montreuil was an almost impregnable fortress, with a keep of great strength and height, “lifting itself up to the stars,” surrounded by a double wall and rampart, and further protected by an encircling chasm, very deep and precipitous, which was called the “Valley of Judas,” and prevented any engines of war from coming within range of the castle.[1119] Some time in 1148 Geoffrey built three towers of stone in the neighbourhood of Montreuil, as a base for future operations against it.[1120] In the summer of 1150 an outrage committed by Gerald upon the abbot and monks of S. Aubin at Angers brought matters to a crisis;[1121] Geoffrey made the monks’ quarrel his own and at once set his engineers to level the ground all around Montreuil, in preparation for bringing up his machines to the assault. After nearly twelve months’ labour,[1122] however, the “Judas-Valley” still yawned between himself and his foes, till he ordered the annual fair usually held at Saumur to be transferred to Montreuil. In a fortnight the energies of the crowd who flocked to the fair, joined to those of his own soldiers, filled up the valley and made it into level ground.[1123] Geoffrey could now bring his engines within range, and he used them with such effect that at the first assault the outworks were destroyed and the garrison driven to take refuge in the keep. A summons to surrender was, however, scornfully rejected by Gerald, trusting in the strength of his tower and the expected help of the king.[1124]

- [1117] See Arbois de Jubainville, Comtes de Champagne, vol. ii. pp. 344 et seq.

- [1118] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 84.

- [1119] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 282–284. See also Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 147).

- [1120] Rob. Torigni, a. 1149. As he himself, as well as the chronicles, makes the siege last altogether three years and end in 1151, he must mean 1148.

- [1121] See the whole curious story in Cartæ et Chronn. de Obedientiâ Mairomni (Marchegay, Eglises), pp. 65 et seq.

- [1122] Chron. Mairom. (as above), p. 87. Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (ib. p. 147).

- [1123] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), p. 284.

- [1124] Ib. p. 285.

For Louis had now returned from Palestine;[1125] and so great was his wrath at Geoffrey’s treatment of his favourite that he consented to join Eustace in an attack upon the Norman duchy. Its defence was left to its young duke, then busy with the siege of Torigni on the Vire, held against him by his cousin Richard Fitz-Count—a son of Earl Robert of Gloucester.[1126] Louis and Eustace marched upon Arques; Henry led a force of Normans, Angevins and Bretons to meet them; but his “older and wiser” barons averted a battle,[1127] and nothing more came of the expedition. Geoffrey had never stirred from his camp before Montreuil. Despite a formidable array of engines,[1128] he made little progress; every breach made in the walls by day was mended by night with oaken beams, of which the besieged seemed to have a never-ending supply. Geoffrey was characteristically taking counsel with his books as to the best method of overcoming this difficulty when some monks of Marmoutier came to him on an errand for their convent. One of them took up the book which the count laid down— the treatise of Vegetius Renatus De Re Militari, then, and long after, the standard work on military engineering. It may have been some memory of bygone days when he, too, had worn helm and hauberk instead of cowl and scapulary that brought into the monk’s eyes a gleam which made Geoffrey exclaim, “Stay with me till to-morrow, good brother, and what you are now reading shall be put in action before you.” Next day a large red-hot iron vessel filled with boiling oil was launched from the beam of a mangonel against one of the timber insertions in the wall, and its bursting set the whole place on fire.[1129] Gerald, his spirit broken at last, came forth with his family and his garrison “like serpents crawling out of a cave,” as a hostile chronicler says,[1130] and surrendered to the mercy of the count, who sent him to prison at Angers. The keep was razed at once, save one fragment of wall, left by Geoffrey, and still standing at this hour, as a memorial of his victory and of the skill and perseverance by which it had been won.[1131]

- [1125] He returned in the autumn of 1149. See Rob. Torigni, ad ann., and M. Delisle’s note thereon, vol. i. p. 252, note 1.

- [1126] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 and 1154.

- [1127] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151. See also Chronn. S. Albin. a. 1150 and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 36, 148).

- [1128] “Petroritas, fundibularias, mangonellos et arietes,” Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 285, and “sex tormenta quæ vulgo perreriæ vocantur.” Chron. S. Serg. (as above), p. 147.

- [1129] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), pp. 286, 287. The monk is called “frater G.” M. Marchegay suggests that he may have been the “Gauterius Compendiensis,” monk of Marmoutier, whom the writer names among his authorities in the Proœmium to his Hist. Abbrev. (ib. p. 353). If so, this detailed account of the last scene at the siege of Montreuil is due to an eye-witness.

- [1130] Chron. Mairom. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 87.

- [1131] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 287.

The count of Anjou now moved northward to help his son against the king. By the help of a brother of his old ally William Talvas he gained possession of La Nue, a castle belonging to the king’s brother Count Robert of Dreux.[1132] Louis and Robert avenged themselves by burning the town of Séez. Presently after, in August, Louis gathered together all his forces and brought them down the Seine to a spot between Meulan and Mantes. Geoffrey and Henry collected an opposing army on their side of the Norman border; but an attack of fever detained the king in Paris, and a truce was made until he should recover.[1133] The ostensible ground of the dispute was Geoffrey’s treatment of Gerald of Montreuil, which certainly seems to have been unjustly cruel. Not content with receiving his unconditional surrender, razing his castle, and forcing him to make full atonement to the injured monks of S. Aubin, Geoffrey still persisted in keeping in prison not only Gerald himself but also his whole family. The Pope anathematized him for his unchristianlike severity;[1134] but anathemas usually fell powerless upon an Angevin count. Geoffrey was in truth visiting upon Gerald his wrath at the double-dealing of Gerald’s royal master; for he was well aware that King Louis’s interference was prompted by far other motives than disinterested sympathy for his seneschal. Louis was, according to his wont, playing fast and loose with the rival claimants of Normandy, in such shameless fashion that his own chief minister, Suger, had been the first to reprove him in strong terms for his unwarrantable attack upon the Angevins, had stood firmly by Geoffrey all through the struggle, and was now endeavouring, through the mediation of the count of Vermandois and the bishop of Lisieux, to baffle the schemes of Eustace and his party and bring the king back to his old alliance with Anjou.[1135]

- [1132] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151 (Delisle, vol. i. p. 254; see the editor’s note 3, ib.)

- [1133] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

- [1134] Geoff. Clairv., Vita S. Bern., l. iv. c. 3 (S. Bern. Opp., Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

- [1135] Suger, Epp. cl., cliii., clxvii., clxviii., clxxv. (Migne, Patrologia, vol. 186, cols. 1418, 1419–1420, 1427–1429, 1432).

As soon as Louis was sufficiently recovered a meeting was held in Paris to discuss the possibility of a settlement, and the cause of peace was pleaded by no less an advocate than S. Bernard in person. But, almost for the first time, Bernard pleaded in vain; Geoffrey started up in the midst of the colloquy, and without a word of salutation to any one, sprang upon his horse and rode away. The assembly broke up in despair, and Gerald, who had been brought to hear its result, threw himself at the feet of S. Bernard to implore a last benediction before returning, as he thought, to lifelong captivity. “Fear not,” replied the saint, “deliverance is nearer than you think.” Scarcely had the prisoner turned away when his jailer reappeared.[1136] Geoffrey during his solitary ride had revolved the political situation in his mind and perceived that for his son’s sake he must make peace with the king. Matters in England had reached such a crisis that it was absolutely necessary to secure Henry’s tenure of Normandy, as he might at any moment be required to go beyond sea. To that end Geoffrey did more than give up his personal vengeance upon Gerald of Montreuil; he persuaded Henry to give up the Norman Vexin—the land between the Epte and the Andelle, so long the battle-ground of France and Normandy—to the king of France, in exchange for the investiture of the rest of the duchy. If we may believe the French chroniclers, the young duke made a yet further sacrifice and became the “liegeman” of the king—a form of homage to which none of his predecessors had ever stooped.[1137] Of the homage in some shape or other there is however no doubt;[1138] and it appears that the same opportunity was taken to secure for Henry, without waiting for his father’s death, the investiture of his father’s own dominions.[1139]

- [1136] Geoff. Clairv., Vita S. Bern., l. iv. c. 3 (S. Bern. Opp., Mabillon, vol. i. col. 1135).

- [1137] Hist. Ludov., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 127; Chron. Reg. Franc. (ibid.), p. 213. Both these writers, however, tell an apocryphal story of Louis, at Geoffrey’s and Henry’s request, reconquering the duchy for them and receiving these concessions in return for his help.

- [1138] Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

- [1139] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 291 (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 336).

Geoffrey was but just entering his thirty-ninth year, and one can hardly help speculating for a moment as to his plans for his own future. For him, now that his work in the west was done, there was no such brilliant opening in the east as there had been for Fulk V. when he, too, in the prime of manhood, had chosen to make way for a younger generation. But Geoffrey had begun public life at an earlier age than either his father or his son; and he seems to have had neither the moral nor the physical strength which had enabled one Angevin count to carry on for half a century, without break and without slackening, the work upon which he had entered before he was fifteen, and to die in harness at the very crowning-point of his activity and his success. Geoffrey Plantagenet was no Fulk Nerra; he was not even a Fulk of Jerusalem; and he may well have been weary of a political career which must always have been embittered by a feeling that he was the mere representative of others, labouring not for himself, hardly even for his country or his race, but only that the one might be swallowed up in the vast dominions and the other merged in the royal line of his ancestors’ Norman foe. He may have seriously intended to pass the rest of his days among his books; or he may have felt an inner warning that those days were to be very few. With a perversity which may after all have been partly the effect of secretly failing health, although he had now set Gerald at liberty he still refused to acknowledge that he had treated him with unjust severity, or to seek absolution from the Pope’s censure; and he even answered with blasphemous words to the gentle remonstrances of S. Bernard. “With what measure thou hast meted it shall be meted to thee again” said the saint at last as he turned away; one of his followers, more impetuous, boldly prophesied that Geoffrey would die within a year. He did die within a fortnight.[1140] On his way home from the king’s court,[1141] overcome with the heat, he plunged into a river to cool himself;[1142] a fever was the consequence; he was borne to Château-du-Loir, and there on September 7 he passed away.[1143] His last legacy to his son was a piece of good advice, given almost with his dying breath:—not to change the old customs of the lands over which he was called to rule, whether by bringing those of Normandy and England into Anjou, or by seeking to transfer those of the Angevin dominions into the territories which he inherited from his mother.[1144] Dying in the little border-fortress whence his grandfather Elias had gone forth to liberate Maine, Geoffrey was buried, by his own desire, not among his Angevin forefathers at Tours or at Angers, but in his mother’s home at Le Mans.[1145] A splendid tomb, bearing his effigy adorned with gold and gems, was raised over his remains in the cathedral church,[1146] whence it has disappeared to become a mere antiquarian curiosity in a museum. Geoffrey’s sole surviving monument is the one which he made for himself—the ruined, blackened fragment of his great ancestor’s keep at Montreuil.

- [1140] Geoff. Clairv., Vita S. Bern., l. iv. c. 3 (S. Bern. Opp., Mabillon, vol. ii. col. 1135).

- [1141] At Paris, says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; on the frontier of Normandy and France, say the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 156. But if it was the assembly at which Henry received his investiture, that was certainly in Paris; and there does not seem time enough for another.

- [1142] Gesta Cons. as above.

- [1143] Ibid. Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (ibid.), p. 292. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 36, 37, 147). Rob. Torigni, a. 1151; etc.

- [1144] “Ne Normanniæ vel Angliæ consuetudines in consulatûs sui terram, vel e converso, variæ vicissitudinis altercatione permutaret.” Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), pp. 292, 293.

- [1145] Chron. S. Serg. a. 1151 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 147); Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), p. 292. “Inque solo materno sibi locum eligens sepulturæ.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 16 (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 341).

- [1146] Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), p. 293. “Hic solus omnium mortalium intra muros civitatis Cinomannicæ sepultus est,” says Rob. Torigni, a. 1151.

Stephen could not do what Geoffrey had done. His kingdom was no mere fief to be passed from hand to hand by a formal ceremony of surrender and investiture; the crowned and anointed king of England could not so easily abdicate in favour of his son. He might however do something to counterbalance Henry’s advancement by obtaining a public recognition of Eustace as his heir. In Lent 1152, therefore, he summoned a great council in London, at which all the earls and barons swore fealty to Eustace.[1147] Still the king felt that his object was far from being secured. He himself was a living proof how slight was the worth of such an oath when the sovereign who had exacted it was gone. There was, however, one further step possible, a step without precedent in England, but one which the kings of France had taken with complete success for several generations past: the solemn coronation and unction of the heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. It was at this that Stephen had aimed when he sent Archbishop Henry of York to Rome. He took an unusually wise as well as a characteristically generous measure in intrusting his cause to a reconciled enemy; nevertheless the attempt failed. Pope Eugene by his letters absolutely forbade the primate to make Eustace king; therefore, when Stephen called upon Theobald and the other bishops to anoint and crown the youth, they one and all refused. Father and son were both equally vexed and angry. They shut up all the bishops in one house and tried to tease them into submission. A few, remembering that “King Stephen never had loved clerks,” and that it was not the first time he had cast bishops into prison,[1148] were so frightened that they gave way; the majority stood firm, and the primate himself escaped down the Thames in a fishing-boat, made his way to Dover, and thence retreated beyond sea.[1149] Without him there was nothing to be done, and of his yielding there was no chance whatever; for close at his side stood the real fount and source of the papal opposition—Thomas of London.[1150]

- [1147] Ann. Waverl. a. 1152 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 234). Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1152 (Liebermann, Geschichtsquellen, p. 82).

- [1148] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284).

- [1149] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 151. Vita Theobald. (Giles, Lanfranc, vol. i.), p. 338.

- [1150] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.

Some of Henry’s partizans in England now thought it time for him to interfere, and despatched his uncle Reginald earl of Cornwall to urge him to come over at once.[1151] Soon after Easter a meeting of the Norman barons—already summoned by Henry in the previous autumn,[1152] but delayed by the unexpected catastrophe of his father’s death—was held at Lisieux to consider the matter.[1153] But whatever the result of their deliberations may have been, Henry found something else to do before he could cross the sea. King Louis VII. had been meditating a divorce from his wife, the Aquitanian duchess Eleanor, ever since their return from the crusade. The great obstacle to his scheme was his father’s and his own old friend and minister Suger, who saw the grave political danger of such a measure and opposed it with all the influence he possessed.[1154] But Suger was dying; and the king had made up his mind. He took the first step at Christmas 1151 by going with Eleanor into Aquitaine and withdrawing all his own garrisons from her territories.[1155] Suger’s death on January 13 recalled him to Paris,[1156] and at the same time set him free to accomplish his desire unopposed. A Church council was held under the presidency of Archbishop Hugh of Sens at Beaugency on the Tuesday before Palm Sunday;[1157] the king and queen were made out to be akin, and their union was dissolved.[1158] Eleanor set out for her own dominions; she had however some trouble in reaching them. She was young and beautiful; her personal charms were more than equalled by those of her two great duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony; and more than one ambitious feudatary was eager to seize the prize which his sovereign had thrown away. At her first halting-place, Blois, the young count Theobald—son and successor of Theobald the Great who had died two months before[1159]—sought to take her by force and make her his wife. She fled by night to Tours, and there narrowly escaped being captured with the same intention by a still more youthful admirer, Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry’s brother. The audacious boy laid a plot to catch her at Port-de-Piles, on the frontier of Touraine and Poitou; but she was warned in time and made her escape by another road safe into her own territory.[1160] Thence she at once wrote to offer herself and her lands to the husband of her own choice—Henry duke of the Normans. He set out to join her immediately, and at Whitsuntide they were married at Poitiers.[1161]

[1151] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

[1152] Ibid. a. 1151.

[1153] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

[1154] Vita Suger., l. i. c. 5 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 104).

[1155] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 135). Cf. Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 53 (Labbe, Nova Biblioth., vol. ii. p. 307; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 437).

[1156] Vita Suger., l. iii. cc. 11, 13 (as above, pp. 111, 113).

[1157] Gesta Ludov., c. 29 (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 411). The Hist. Ludov. (ib. p. 415) makes it Friday (March 21) instead of Tuesday.

[1158] Gesta Ludov. and Hist. Ludov. as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. as above, etc.

[1159] In January 1152. See Arbois de Jubainville, Comtes de Champagne, vol. ii. p. 398, note 12.

[1160] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 135).

[1161] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149. See also Will. Newb., l. i. c. 31 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 93); Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (as above); Hist. Ludov. (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 413, and Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 127); Fragm. Chron. Com. Pictav. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 410). This last gives the place; Rob. Torigni, a. 1152, gives the season. Whit-Sunday was May 18; and a charter referred to by M. Delisle in a note to Rob. Torigni ad ann. (vol. i. p. 260), proves that they were married before May 27. Gervase’s story is the fullest; according to him, they married for love, and Eleanor had herself procured the divorce for that object—such, at least, was the story which she wrote to her young lover. As to the question of consanguinity, that of Louis and Eleanor is not very clear; it was at any rate more remote than that of Eleanor and Henry, who certainly were within the forbidden degrees. One would like to know what S. Bernard, who had put a stop to a proposal of marriage between Henry and Eleanor’s daughter (S. Bern. Ep. ccclxxi., Opp., Mabillon, vol. i. col. 333), thought of the matter; a saint of the next generation, Hugh of Lincoln, thought and said plainly that it was the fatal sin which was visited upon the children of the guilty couple in the downfall of the Angevin empire. Magna Vita S. Hugonis, l. v. c. 16 (Dimock, p. 332). In his eyes, however, the sin lay in the fact not of the kindred between the parties, but of Eleanor’s divorce; and it is noteworthy that William of Newburgh, who did not live to see the final catastrophe or to know the worst crimes of Eleanor’s youngest son, took exactly the same view; l. iii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 281).

Suger’s worst fears were now realized. Aquitaine was lost to the king of France; it had gone to swell the forces of the prince who was already the mightiest feudatary of the realm, and who would probably be king of England ere long; and as Louis and Eleanor had no son, there was very little hope that even in the next generation it would revert to the French Crown. In feudal law, an heiress had no right to marry without the consent of her overlord. It seems that Louis accordingly summoned Henry to appear before the royal court and answer for his conduct in thus hastily accepting Eleanor’s hand. But Henry Fitz-Empress, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, Touraine and Maine, and duke of Aquitaine—for, rightly or wrongly, he was married, and in full possession of his wife’s territories—master of more than half Gaul, from the Flemish to the Spanish March and from the Rhône to the ocean—could venture to defy a mere king of the French. He therefore refused to appear before the court or to acknowledge its jurisdiction in any way.[1162] Eustace seized the favourable moment to regain the French alliance; he came over to visit King Louis; his long-standing betrothal with Constance of France ended at last in marriage;[1163] and Henry, on the point of sailing from Barfleur, just after midsummer, was stopped by the discovery that Louis, Eustace, Robert of Dreux, Henry of Champagne,[1164] and his own brother Geoffrey had made a league to drive him out of all his possessions and divide them among themselves.[1165]

- [1162] “Qui citatus ad Curiam, venire noluit ad jus faciendum, vel capiendum in Regis præsentiâ Palatii judicium omnino respuit et contempsit.” Gesta Ludov., c. 28 (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 411). “Ante dominum suum Regem Ludovicum defecit a justitiâ.” Hist. Ludov. (ib. p. 414). This is related as a piece of shameful ingratitude for Louis’s supposed help towards the conquest of Normandy. The story then proceeds to relate that Louis in wrath besieged and took Vernon and Neufmarché, whereupon Henry humbly promised to be more obedient for the future, and Louis, accepting his assurances, restored the two castles. We are not told on what charge Henry had been cited to the court, and no hint is given that the quarrel was in any way connected with his marriage, which indeed is not mentioned till some time after. Yet I can find no indication of any ground for such a citation, except the marriage; and that, indeed, would be a most obvious pretext.

- [1163] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [1164] Second son of Theobald the Great of Blois, and betrothed husband of the infant princess Mary, eldest child of Louis and Eleanor.

- [1165] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 37).

Geoffrey by his father’s will had inherited Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau;[1166] with this vantage-ground he began operations against his brother’s authority in Anjou, while the other four princes crossed the Norman border and laid siege to Neufmarché. Henry set out from Barfleur on July 16 to relieve Neufmarché, but arrived too late to save it from surrender;[1167] Louis handed it over to Eustace,[1168] and proceeded to muster his forces near Chaumont in the French Vexin. Henry did the like on the banks of the Andelle, and began ravaging the country between that river and the Epte—the old Norman Vexin, so lately ceded to Louis as the price of his alliance. In August Louis brought his host across the Seine at Meulan; Henry crossed lower down, by the bridge of Vernon, and thinking that the king intended to attack Verneuil, was hurrying to reach it before him when a message from the lord of Pacy told him that this last place was the one really threatened. He turned and proceeded thither at such a pace that several of his horses fell dead on the road; Louis, finding himself outwitted, gave up the expedition and returned to Meulan. Henry next invaded the county of Dreux, burned Brézolles and Marcouville, took hostages from Richer de l’Aigle—Thomas Becket’s old friend—whose fidelity was doubtful, and burned his castle of Bonmoulins, which was said to be “a den of thieves”; he then planted a line of garrisons all along the Norman frontier, and at the end of August went down into Anjou. There he blockaded the rebel leaders congregated in the castle of Montsoreau on the Loire till most of them fell into his hands, and his brother gave up the useless struggle.[1169] Louis meanwhile profited by his absence to burn part of the town of Tillières and a village near Verneuil, and to make an attempt upon Nonancourt, in which however he failed.[1170] Immediately afterwards he fell sick of a fever; his army dissolved, and he was obliged to retire into his own domains[1171] and make proposals for a truce.[1172] Henry was ready enough to accept them; for he had just received another urgent summons from England, and he felt that this time it must be answered in person.

- [1166] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1152 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 136).

- [1167] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

- [1168] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 31 (Arnold, p. 283).

- [1169] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. See also a shorter account in Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 149, 150, and a general summing-up of the result in Chron. S. Albin. a. 1152 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 37).

- [1170] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

- [1171] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 150.

- [1172] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152.

Since the Empress’s departure, Stephen had made but little progress in reducing the castles of those barons who still, either in her name or in their own, chose to defy his authority. A revolt of Ralf of Chester and Gilbert of Pembroke in 1149 and two unsuccessful attempts made by the king to recover Worcester from Waleran of Meulan, to whom he had himself intrusted it in the days when Waleran was one of his best supporters,[1173] make up almost the whole military history of the last four years. Ralf of Chester’s obstinate claim upon Lincoln was at last disposed of by a compromise.[1174] There was however one fortress which throughout the whole course of the war had been, almost more than any other, a special object of Stephen’s jealousy. This was Wallingford, a castle of great strength seated on the right bank of the Thames some twelve miles south of Oxford, and held as a perpetual thorn in the king’s side by a Breton adventurer, Brian Fitz-Count, one of the most able and energetic as well as most faithful and persevering members of the Angevin party in England. Hitherto all Stephen’s attempts against Wallingford—even the erection of a rival fortress, Crowmarsh, directly over against it—had produced no effect at all. At last, in the winter of 1152, he built a strong wooden tower at the foot of the bridge over the Thames whereby alone the garrison of Wallingford obtained their supplies. Brian and his men saw their convoys hopelessly shut out; they knew that none of their friends in England were strong enough to relieve them; they therefore sent to their lord the young duke of the Normans, and begged that he would either give them leave to surrender with honour, or send help to deliver them out of their strait.[1175]

- [1173] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 30 (Arnold, p. 282).

- [1174] See the terms in Dugdale, Baronage, vol. i. p. 39.

- [1175] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 284). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 153.

Henry did not send; he came. Landing with a small force on the morning of the Epiphany,[1176] he entered a church to honour the festival with such brief devotion as a soldier could spare time for, and the first words that fell on his ear sounded like an omen of success: “Behold, the Lord the ruler cometh, and the kingdom is in his hand.”[1177] Before the week was out he had taken the town of Malmesbury and the outworks of the castle, and was blockading Bishop Roger’s impregnable keep. Stephen, warned by its commandant, hastened to its relief. On a bitter January morning king and duke, each at the head of his troops, met for the first time face to face, divided only by the river Avon—here at Malmesbury a mere streamlet in itself, but so swollen by the winter’s rains that neither party dared venture to cross it. A torrent of rain, sleet and hail was pouring down, drifting before a violent west wind, striking the Angevins in their backs, but beating hard in the faces of the king and his host; drenched, blinded, scarce able to hold their weapons, they stood shivering with cold and terror, feeling as if Heaven itself had taken up arms against them, till Stephen turned away in despair and led his dispirited forces back to London. Malmesbury surrendered as soon as he was gone.[1178] The young duke marched straight upon Wallingford, demolished Stephen’s wooden tower at the first assault, and revictualled the castle. He then laid siege to Crowmarsh. Stephen advanced to relieve it; again the two armies fronted each other in battle array, but again no battle took place. The barons, who were only anxious to maintain both the rival sovereigns as a check upon each other, and dreaded nothing so much as the complete triumph of either, took advantage of a supposed bad omen which befell the king[1179] to insist upon a parley, and proposed that Stephen and Henry in person should arrange terms with each other, subject to ratification by their respective followers.[1180] Yielding to necessity, and both fully aware of their advisers’ disloyal motives, the two leaders held a colloquy across a narrow reach of the Thames.[1181] For the moment a truce was arranged, on condition that Stephen should raze Crowmarsh at the end of five days.[1182] As the barons doubtless expected, however, no solution was reached on the main question at issue between the rivals, and with mutual complaints of the treason of their followers they separated once again.[1183]

- [1176] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153, says he came with thirty-six ships. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 88), gives the force as one hundred and forty horse and three thousand foot. From the sequel it seems that he landed on the Hampshire or Dorset coast.

- [1177] “Ecce advenit dominator Dominus, et regnum in manu ejus:”—first words of the introit for Epiphany. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 151, 152.

- [1178] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, pp. 285–287). See also Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

- [1179] His horse reared and nearly threw him three times while he was marshalling his troops. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 154.

- [1180] Ibid. Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 287).

- [1181] Gerv. Cant. as above. Cf. Hen. Hunt. as above (p. 288).

- [1182] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 34 (Arnold, p. 288). Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

- [1183] Hen. Hunt. as above.

But there were others who, in all sincerity, were labouring hard for peace. Archbishop Theobald was in constant communication with the king in person and with the duke through trusty envoys, endeavouring to establish a basis for negotiations between them. He found an ally in Henry of Winchester, now eager to help in putting an end to troubles which he at last perceived had been partly fostered by his own errors.[1184] The once rival prelates, thus united in their best work, saw their chief obstacle in Eustace.[1185] Not only was it the hope of his son’s succession which made Stephen cling so obstinately to every jot and tittle of his regal claims; but Eustace’s character was such that the mere possibility of his rule could not be contemplated without dread; and to look for any self-renunciation on his part was far more hopeless than to expect it from Stephen. Eustace was in fact a most degenerate son, unworthy not only of his high-souled mother but even of his weak, amiable father. He had one merit—he was an excellent soldier;[1186] for the rest, his character was that of the house of Blois in its most vicious phase, unredeemed by a spark of the generous warmth and winning graciousness for which so much had been forgiven to Stephen.[1187] Even with his own party and his own father he could not keep at peace. The issue of the Crowmarsh expedition threw him into a fury; after loading his father with reproaches, he deserted him altogether and rode away to Canterbury, vowing to ravage the whole country from end to end, sparing neither the property of the churches nor the holy places themselves. He began with S. Edmund’s abbey. He was hospitably received there, but his demand for money was refused, and he ordered the crops to be destroyed. A century and a half before, the heathen Danish conqueror Swein had in like manner insulted East Anglia’s patron saint, and had been stricken down by a sudden and mysterious death. So too it was with Eustace. As he sat at table in the abbey, the first morsel of food choked him, and in the convulsions of raging madness he expired.[1188]

- [1184] Ib.·/·Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 289).

- [1185] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 90).

- [1186] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 35 (Arnold, p. 288).

- [1187] Ibid. Eng. Chron. a. 1140, and all the contemporary writers are unanimous in their accounts of him—except the Gesta Steph. (Sewell, p. 130).

- [1188] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 155. Rob. Torigni, a. 1153, says the sacrilege was committed on S. Laurence’s day, and the punishment followed “circa octavas.” Cf. Joh. Salisb., Polycrat., l. viii. c. 21 (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 354, 355).

Eustace’s death was only one of a striking series. The roll had opened with Geoffrey of Anjou in September 1151. Suger and Theobald of Blois both died in January 1152. Politically as well as personally, the death of the good and wise brother who had stood by him so faithfully and so unselfishly through all his difficulties in Normandy and at Rome must have been a heavy blow to Stephen; but heavier still was the blow that fell upon him three months later, when on May 3 he lost the wisest, probably, of his counsellors as well as the truest and bravest of all his partizans in England—his queen, Matilda of Boulogne.[1189] She was followed in little more than a month by her cousin Henry of Scotland.[1190] Next year the list of remarkable deaths was longer still. On this side of the sea it included, besides Eustace, Ralf earl of Chester,[1191] Walter Lespec,[1192] and David king of Scots.[1193] Another person who had made some figure in the history of northern England, William bishop of Durham, had died in the previous November.[1194] The appointment of Hugh of Puiset to his vacant chair,[1195] being strongly opposed by Archbishop Murdac, nearly caused another schism in the province; the southern primate, however, doubtless feeling that it was no time now for ecclesiastical squabbles, took the case into his own hands and sent the elect of Durham to be consecrated at Rome by the Pope.[1196] But the Pope was no longer Eugene III. Rome lost her Cistercian bishop on July 9, 1153. Six weeks later Clairvaux itself became a valley of the shadow of death, as its light passed away with S. Bernard;[1197] and two months later still the metropolitan chair of York was again vacated, and the three great Cistercian fellow-workers were reunited in their rest, by the death of Henry Murdac.[1198] The generation which had been young with Stephen seemed to be rapidly passing away; the primate, the bishop of Winchester and the king himself were left almost alone, like survivors of a past age, in presence of the younger race represented by Henry of Anjou.

- [1189] Rob. Torigni, a. 1152. Chron. S. Crucis Edinb. a. 1152. Gerv. Cant. (as above)·/·(Stubbs), vol. i., p. 151.

- [1190] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. a. 1152.

- [1191] Ibid. a. 1153. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 155.

- [1192] Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. p. 280.

- [1193] Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. as above. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 168.

- [1194] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 166.

- [1195] On January 22, 1153; Ib. p. 167.

- [1196] See details in Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 167, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 157, where the date is wrong.

- [1197] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

- [1198] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, vol. i. p. 109.

With the life of Eustace ended the resistance of Stephen. He had other sons, but they were mere boys; it was hopeless to think of setting up even the eldest of them as a rival to Henry. The young duke was carrying all before him; Stamford, Nottingham,[1199] Reading, Barkwell, had yielded to him already, when Countess Gundrada of Warwick surrendered Warwick castle,[1200] and the adhesion of Earl Robert of Leicester placed more than thirty fortresses all at once at the young conqueror’s disposal.[1201] Henry was, however, fully alive to the wisdom of securing his kingdom by a legal settlement rather than by the mere power of the sword. At last a treaty was made, on November 6, in the place where it had been first projected—Wallingford.[1202] It was agreed that Stephen and Henry should adopt each other as father and son; that Stephen should keep his regal dignity for the rest of his life, Henry acting as justiciar and practical ruler of the kingdom under him; and that after his death Henry should be king.[1203] The details of the settlement have come down to us only in a poetical shape which expresses not so much what the contracting parties actually undertook to do as what needed to be done—what was the ideal at which the peace-makers aimed, and how far removed from it was the actual condition of the country. The rights of the Crown, which the nobles had everywhere usurped, were to be resumed; the “adulterine castles”—castles built during the anarchy and without the king’s leave, to the number of eleven hundred and fifteen—were to be destroyed; all property was to be restored to the lawful owners who had held it in King Henry’s time. The farms were again to be supplied with husbandmen; the houses which had been burnt down were to be rebuilt and filled with inhabitants; the woods were to be provided with foresters, the coverts replenished with game, the hill-sides covered with flocks of sheep and the meadows with herds of cattle. The clergy were to enjoy tranquillity and peace, and to be relieved from all extraordinary and exorbitant demands. The sheriffs were to be regularly appointed in accustomed places, and held strictly to their duties; they were not to indulge their greed, nor to prosecute any one out of malice, nor shew undue favour to their own friends, nor condone crimes, but to render to every man his due; some they were to influence by the threat of punishment, others by the promise of reward. Thieves and robbers were to be punished with death. Soldiers were to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; the Flemings were to quit the camp for the farm, the tent for the workshop, and render to their own masters the service which they had so long forced upon the English people; the country-folk were to dwell in undisturbed security, the merchants to grow rich through the revival of trade. Finally, one standard of money was to be current throughout the realm.[1204]

- [1199] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 36 (Arnold, p. 288).

- [1200] Rob. Torigni, a. 1153.

- [1201] Gerv. Cant. (as above)·/·(Stubbs), vol. i., pp. 152, 153.

- [1202] The date is given by Rob. Torigni and Chron. S. Cruc. Edinb. a. 1153; the place by Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 255.

- [1203] “ ... Ferden te ærceb. and te wise men betwux heom and makede th. sahte th. te king sculde ben lauerd and king wile he liuede, and æfter his dæi ware Henri king; and he helde him for fader and he him for sune; and sib and sæhte sculde ben betwyx heom and on al Engleland. This and te othre forwuuardes thet hi makeden suoren to halden the king and te eorl and te b. and te eorles and rice men alle.” Eng. Chron., a. 1140. The accounts of Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 90, 91), R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 296, and Chron. Mailros, a. 1153, are to much the same effect. Rog. Howden (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 212) adds: “Rex vero constituit ducem justitiarium Angliæ sub ipso, et omnia regni negotia per ipsum terminabantur.” Stephen’s proclamation of the treaty is in Rymer’s Fœdera, vol. i. p. 18. Its date is Westminster, 1153, and it is in form of a writ addressed to the archbishops, bishops, barons, and all faithful subjects, proclaiming and notifying to them the treaty just made. The primary article, concerning the adoption of Henry as heir, is stated exactly as by the chroniclers. The remainder of the document relates entirely to details of homage done by prelates and barons to Henry, stipulations in behalf of Stephen’s son William, and arrangements for surrender of royal castles to Henry on Stephen’s death. Finally: “In negotiis autem regni ego consilio ducis operabor. Ego vero in toto regno Angliæ, tam in parte ducis quam in meâ, regalem justiciam exercebo.” By “the duke’s part” and “my part” Stephen probably meant simply the parts which each held at the moment; the whole clause seems to mean that the regal justice was to be exercised in his name and for his profit, but by Henry’s wisdom—which agrees very well with Rog. Howden’s statement.

- [1204] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297. Concerning the coinage, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211, says: “Fecit [Henricus] monetam novam, quam vocabant monetam ducis; et non tantum ipse, sed omnes potentes, tam episcopi quam comites et barones, suam faciebant monetam. Sed ex quo dux ille venit, plurimorum monetam cassavit.” This however is placed under the year 1149.

The treaty was ratified in an assembly of bishops, earls and barons, held at Winchester at the end of the month.[1205] Stephen afterwards accompanied his adoptive son to London, where he was joyfully welcomed by the citizens.[1206] King and duke seem to have kept Christmas apart; Henry indeed set himself to his task of reform in such earnest that he could have little time to spare for mere festivities. On the octave of Epiphany another assembly was held at Oxford, where the nobles of England swore homage and fealty to the duke as to their lord, reserving only the faith due to Stephen as long as he lived. The next meeting, at Dunstable, was not quite so satisfactory. Henry, doing his share of the public work with true Angevin thoroughness, was irritated at finding that some of the builders of unlicensed castles had gained the king’s ear and persuaded him to exempt their fortresses from the sentence of universal destruction. Against this breach of faith the duke earnestly remonstrated; but he found it impossible to enforce his wishes without a quarrel which he was too prudent to risk.[1207] He therefore let the matter rest, and in Lent he accompanied Stephen to Canterbury and thence to a meeting with the count and countess of Flanders at Dover.[1208] There it was discovered that some of the Flemish mercenaries, to whom Henry and his good peace were equally hateful,[1209] were conspiring to kill him on his return to Canterbury. The shock of this discovery, added to that of an accident which befell Stephen’s eldest surviving son William, who is said to have been aware of the plot,[1210] was too much for the king’s overwrought nerves, and with a last benediction he hurried his adoptive son out of the country at once.[1211] Henry passed through Canterbury before the conspirators were ready for him, made his way to Rochester and London, and thence safe over sea to Normandy,[1212] where he landed soon after Easter.[1213]

- [1205] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 156. See also Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 289).

- [1206] Hen. Hunt. as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [1207] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 38 (Arnold, pp. 289, 290).

- [1208] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. The countess was Henry’s aunt, Sibyl of Anjou, once the bride of William the Clito, now the wife of his rival Theodoric.

- [1209] “Qui duci simul ac paci invidebant.” Ibid.

- [1210] Ibid.

- [1211] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 91, 92).

- [1212] Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1213] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

Only fifteen months had passed since his arrival in England; only five had passed since the treaty of Wallingford; yet in that short time Henry had made, as the contemporary English chronicler says, “such good peace as never was here”[1214]—never, that is, since peace and order were buried with his grandfather, eighteen years before. So well was the work begun that even when he was thus obliged to leave it for a while in the weak hands of Stephen, it did not fall to pieces again. Stephen indeed, as was remarked by the writers of the day, seemed now at length for the first time to be really king.[1215] For eighteen years he had been king only in name; his regal dignity had never been truly respected, his regal authority had never been fully obeyed, till the last twelve months of his life, when he was avowedly only holding them in trust for the future sovereign whom “all folk loved,” because he did what Stephen had failed to do—“he did good justice and made peace.”[1216] After Henry was gone Stephen gathered up his failing strength for a campaign against some of the rebellious castles in the north. Sick and weary as he was, his youthful valour and prowess were even yet not altogether departed; castle after castle fell into his hands, the last and most important being that of Drax in Yorkshire.[1217] He then went southward again to hold another meeting with the count of Flanders at Dover.[1218] There his health finally gave way; and eight days before the feast of All Saints his nineteen years’ reign, with all its troubles and disappointments, its blunders and failures, its useless labours and hopeless cares, was ended by a quiet death.[1219]

- [1214] “And hit ward sone suythe god pais, sua th. neure was here.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [1215] Will. Newb. as above·/·, l. i. c. 30 (Howlett, vol. i. (p. 91). Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39 (Arnold, p. 290). R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 297.

- [1216] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

- [1217] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 39 (Arnold, p. 291). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 94). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213.

- [1218] Hen. Hunt. as above. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159.

- [1219] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above. The Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1154 (Liebermann, Geschichtsquellen, p. 82) dates it a day later.

The primate and the nobles, while they laid him in Feversham abbey beside his wife and son,[1220] sent the news to the king-elect, begging him to come and take his crown without delay.[1221] The message reached Henry just as he was completing the suppression of a disturbance in Normandy. A series of desultory attacks made by the French king upon the duchy during Henry’s absence in 1153 had led to no direct result, but they probably helped to foster the turbulence of the Norman barons, who were fast getting into their old condition of lawless independence when at Easter 1154 the duke re-appeared in their midst. He began to assert his authority by resuming—not all at once, but gradually and cautiously—the demesne lands of the duchy, which his father had been compelled to alienate for a time in order to purchase the support of the nobles. A hurried visit to Aquitaine was followed in August by peace with the king of France; for Louis had at last come to see that his opposition was as vain as Stephen’s. Immediately afterwards the young duke was struck down by a severe illness. In October he was sufficiently recovered to join Louis in a campaign for the settlement of some disturbances in the Vexin; thence he went once more to besiege his rebellious cousin and vassal Richard Fitz-Count at Torigni. The place had apparently just surrendered when the tidings of Stephen’s death arrived. Henry took counsel first of all with his mother; then he summoned his brothers and the barons of Normandy to meet him at Barfleur; but when he arrived there with Eleanor the wind was so unfavourable that a whole month elapsed before they could venture to cross.[1222] Henry, however, could afford to wait; and England could wait for him. Three weeks without a king had been enough to throw the whole country into disorder when Henry I. had died leaving only a woman and an infant as his heirs; six weeks passed away without any disturbance now while Archbishop Theobald was guarding the rights of the Crown[1223] for one who had already proved himself King Henry’s worthy grandson. “No man durst do other than good, for the mickle awe of him.”[1224] At last, on December 8,[1225] he landed in Hampshire;[1226] first at Winchester, then in London, he received a rapturous welcome;[1227] and on the Sunday before Christmas Henry Fitz-Empress, duke of the Normans, count of Anjou and duke of Aquitaine, was crowned king of England in Westminster abbey.[1228]

- [1220] Hen. Hunt. as above·/·, l. viii. c. 39 (Arnold, p. 291). Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Will. Newb., l. i. c. 32 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 95).

- [1221] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40 (Arnold, p. 291).

- [1222] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

- [1223] “Nutu divino et cooperante Theodbaldo Cantuariensi archiepiscopo.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159.

- [1224] Eng. Chron. a. 1154. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40 (Arnold, p. 291).

- [1225] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1154, gives the date as December 7. Most likely the crossing was made, as seems to have been the usual practice with Henry at least, in the night.

- [1226] “Hostreham,” Gerv. Cant. as above. “Apud Noveforest,” Hen. Hunt. as above; which Mr. Arnold glosses in the margin “Lymington.”

- [1227] Hen. Hunt. and Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1228] The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1154 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 38) says: “xiv kalendas januarii apud Wintoniam rex consecratur, et Natale Domini celebrans Londoniæ, cum uxore coronatur.” But the English writers mention only one crowning, at Westminster. The Eng. Chron. a. 1154, says Henry was “to king blessed in London on the Sunday before Midwinter-day.” Rob. Torigni ad ann., R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 299), Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 72), Ann. S. Aug. Cant. ad ann. (Liebermann, Geschichtsquellen, p. 82), all give the same date; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 159) makes it December 17, but as he also calls it the Sunday before Christmas, he evidently means 19. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 40 (Arnold, pp. 291, 292), greets the new king with some hexameter verses, and then adds: “Et jam regi novo novus liber donandus est.” But the book, if it was ever written, is lost.

CHAPTER IX.
HENRY AND ENGLAND.
1154–1157.

The Christmas-tide of the year 1154 was an epoch in English history almost as marked as that of 1066. The crowning of Henry Fitz-Empress was, scarcely less than that of William the Conqueror, the beginning of a new era; and—unlike many historical events whose importance is only realized long after they are past—it was distinctly recognized as such by the men of the period. For the first time since the Norman conquest, the new king succeeded to his throne without a competitor, and with the unanimous goodwill of all ranks and all races throughout his kingdom. Normans and English, high and low, cleric and lay, welcomed the young Angevin king as the herald of a bright new day which was to dispel the darkness that had settled down upon the land during the nineteen winters of anarchy, and to bring back all, or more than all, the peace and prosperity of England’s happiest ages. But if Henry’s subjects looked forward to the year which was just beginning with a hope such as no new year had brought them since his grandfather’s death, Henry himself may well have contemplated with an anxiety little short of despair the task which lay before him. It was nothing less than the resuscitation of the body politic from a state of utter decay. The legal, constitutional and administrative machinery of the state was at a deadlock; the national resources, material and moral, were exhausted. To bring under subjection, once for all, the remnant of the disturbing forces which had caused the catastrophe, and render them powerless for future harm:—to disinter from the mass of ruin the fragments of the old foundations of social and political organization, and build up on them a secure and lasting fabric of administration and law;—to bring order out of chaos, life out of decay:—this was the work which a youth who had not yet completed his twenty-second year now found himself called to undertake, and to undertake almost single-handed.

The call did not indeed take him by surprise. The last year which he had spent in England must have given him some knowledge of the state of things with which as king he would have to deal; and the prospect of having so to deal with it sooner or later had been constantly before his eyes from his very infancy. His qualifications for the work must however have been chiefly innate. The first nine years of his life spent under the care of mother and father alternately in Anjou; the next four, under his uncle Earl Robert at Bristol; then two years in Anjou again, followed by a year with King David of Scotland, three more spent in securing his continental heritage and that of his bride, a year occupied in securing England, and another busied with self-defence in Normandy:—such a training was too desultory to have furnished Henry with the knowledge or the experience necessary for the formation of anything like a matured theory of government; and he could have had no time to think out one for himself in a life so busy and so short. Yet in his very youth and inexperience there was an element of strength. He came trammelled by no preconceived political theories, no party-pledges, no local and personal ties; he came simply with his own young intellect unwarped by prejudice, unruffled by passion, unclouded by care; fresh with the untried vigour and elasticity of youth, and ready, whatever his hand should find to do, fearlessly to do it with his might.

Thus much, at least, those who crowded to welcome the new sovereign might read in his very face and figure. Henry of Anjou had no claim to the personal epithet universally bestowed upon his father; and yet, as one of his courtiers expressively said, his was a form which a soldier, having once seen, would hasten to look upon again.[1229] He was of moderate height,[1230] appearing neither gigantic among small men nor insignificant among tall ones;[1231] in later days it was remarked that he had hit the golden mean of stature which his sons had all either overshot or failed to attain.[1232] His frame was made for strength, endurance and activity;[1233] thick-set, square-shouldered, broad-chested:—with arms muscular as those of a gladiator;[1234] highly-arched feet which looked made for the stirrup;[1235]—a large, but not disproportionate head, round and well-shaped, and covered with close-cropped hair of the tawny hue which Fulk the Red seems to have transmitted to so many of his descendants:[1236] a face which one of his courtiers describes as “lion-like”[1237] and another as “a countenance of fire”[1238]—a face, as we can see even in its sculptured effigy on his tomb, full of animation, energy and vigour;—a freckled skin;[1239] somewhat prominent grey eyes, clear and soft when he was in a peaceable mood, but bloodshot and flashing like balls of fire when the demon-spirit of his race was aroused within him:—[1240] Henry, his people might guess almost at a glance, was no mirror of courtly chivalry and elegance, but a man of practical, vigorous and rapid action. He inherited as little of Geoffrey’s personal refinement as of his physical grace. When the young duke of the Normans had first appeared in England, his shoulders covered with a little short cape such as was then usually worn in Anjou, the English knights, who since his grandfather’s time had been accustomed to wear long cloaks hanging down to the ground, were struck by the novelty of his attire and nicknamed him “Henry Curtmantel.”[1241] When once the Angevin fashion was transferred to the English court, however, there was nothing in Henry’s dress to distinguish him from his servants, unless it were its very lack of display and elegance; his clothing and headgear were of the plainest kind; and how little care he took of his person was shewn by his rough coarse hands, never gloved except when he went hawking.[1242] In his later years he was accused of extreme parsimony;[1243] even as a young man, he clearly had no pleasure in pomp or luxury of any kind. He was very temperate in meat and drink;[1244] over-indulgence in that respect seems indeed never to have been one of the habitual sins of the house of Anjou; and whatever complex elements may have had a part in his innermost moral constitution, in temper and tastes Henry was an Angevin of the Angevins. His restlessness seems to have outdone that of Fulk Nerra himself. He was always up and doing; if a dream of ease crossed him even in sleep, he spurned it angrily from him;[1245] he gave himself no peace, and as a natural consequence, he gave none to those around him. When not at war, he was constantly practising its mimicry with hawk and hound; his passion for the chase—a double inheritance, from his father and from his mother’s Norman ancestors—was so great as to be an acknowledged scandal in all eyes.[1246] He would mount his horse at the first streak of dawn, come back in the evening after a day’s hard riding across hill, moor and forest, and then tire out his companions by keeping them on their feet until nightfall.[1247] His own feet were always swollen and bruised from his violent riding; yet except at meals and on horseback, he was never known to be seated.[1248] In public or in private, in council or in church, he stood or walked from morning till night.[1249] At church, indeed, he was especially restless; unmindful of the sacred unction which had made him king, he evidently grudged the time taken from secular occupations for attendance upon religious duties, and would either discuss affairs of state in a whisper[1250] or relieve his impatience by drawing little pictures all through the most solemn of holy rites.[1251] His English or Norman courtiers, unaccustomed to deal with the demon-blood of Anjou, vainly endeavoured to account for an activity which remained undiminished when they were all half dead with exhaustion, and attributed it to his dread of becoming disabled by corpulence, to which he had a strong natural tendency.[1252] A good deal of it, however, was probably due to sheer physical restlessness and superabundant physical energy; and a good deal more to the irrepressible outward working of an extraordinarily active mind.

[1229] “Vir ... quem miles diligenter inspectum accurrebant [accurrebat?] inspicere.” W. Map, De Nugis Curialium, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

[1230] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 71). Peter of Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 193).

[1231] Pet. Blois as above.

[1232] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1233] W. Map as above.

[1234] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1235] Pet. Blois as above.

[1236] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1237] Pet. Blois as above.

[1238] Gir. Cambr. as above.

[1239] See how Merlin’s prophecy about “fortem lentiginosum” was applied to him, Gir. Cambr. Itin. Kambr., l. i. c. 6 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 62).

[1240] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). Pet. Blois as above.

[1241] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. c. 28 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 157).

[1242] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 193, 194).

[1243] See Ralf Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. Ralf, however, was a bitter enemy. Gerald on the other hand seems to draw, and to imply that Henry drew, a distinction between official and personal expenditure: “Parcimoniæ, quoad principi licuit, per omnia datus.” De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). “Largus in publico, parcus in privato” (ib. p. 71).

[1244] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 70). Pet. Blois as above (p. 195). W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

[1245] W. Map as above (p. 227).

[1246] Ibid. Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 71). Pet. Blois as above (p. 194).

[1247] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 71).

[1248] Ibid. Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

[1249] Pet. Blois as above.

[1250] Gir. Cambr. as above (p. 72).

[1251] “Oratorium ingressus, picturæ et susurro vacabat.” R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 169. It is only fair to add that some of the highest clergy of the day were just as unscrupulous as the king about talking business during mass. See, e.g., Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 73, 74; and there are plenty of other examples.

[1252] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

It was no light matter to be in attendance upon such a king. His clerks, some playfully, some in all seriousness, compared his court to the infernal regions.[1253] His habit of constantly moving about from one place to another—a habit which he retained to the very end of his life—was in itself sufficiently trying to those who had to transact business with him, and was made positively exasperating by his frequent and sudden changes of plan. “He shunned regular hours like poison.”[1254] “Solomon saith,” wrote his secretary Peter of Blois to him once, after vainly striving to track him across land and sea, “Solomon saith there be three things difficult to be found out, and a fourth which may hardly be discovered: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a ship in the sea; the way of a serpent on the ground; and the way of a man in his youth. I can add a fifth: the way of a king in England.”[1255] In a letter to his old comrades of the court Peter gives a detailed account of the discomforts brought upon them by Henry’s erratic movements. “If the king has promised to spend the day in a place—more especially, if his intention so to do has been publicly proclaimed by a herald—you may be quite sure he will upset everybody’s arrangements by starting off early in the morning. Then you may see men rushing about as if they were mad, beating their packhorses, driving their chariots one into another—in short, such a turmoil as to present you with a lively image of the infernal regions. If, on the other hand, the king announces that he will set out early in the morning for a certain place, he is sure to change his mind; you may take it for granted that he will sleep till noon. Then you shall see the packhorses waiting with their burthens, the chariots standing ready, the couriers dozing, the purveyors worrying, and all grumbling one at another. Folk run to the women and the tent-keepers to inquire of them whither the king is really going; for this sort of courtiers often know the secrets of the palace. Many a time when the king was asleep and all was silent around, there has come a message from his lodging, not authoritative, but rousing us all up, and naming the city or town whither he was about to proceed. After waiting so long in dreary uncertainty, we were comforted by a prospect of being quartered in a place where there was a fair chance of accommodation. Thereupon arose such a clatter of horse and foot that hell seemed to have broken loose. But when our couriers had gone the whole day’s ride, or nearly so, the king would turn aside to some other place where he had perhaps one single house, and just enough provision for himself and none else. I hardly dare say it,” adds the sorely-tried secretary, “but I verily believe he took a delight in seeing the straits to which he put us! After wandering a distance of three or four miles in an unknown wood, and often in the dark, we thought ourselves lucky if we stumbled upon some dirty little hovel; there was often grievous and bitter strife about a mere hut; and swords were drawn for the possession of a lodging which pigs would not have deemed worth fighting for. I used to get separated from my people, and could hardly collect them again in three days. O Lord God Almighty! wilt Thou not turn the heart of this king, that he may know himself to be but man, and may learn to shew some grace of regal consideration, some human fellow-feeling, for those whom not ambition, but necessity, compels to run after him thus?”[1256]

- [1253] Ibid.·/·W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. i. c. 2 (pp. 5, 6); dist. v. c. 7 (p. 238). Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 50).

- [1254] R. Niger (Anstruther), p. 169.

- [1255] Pet. Blois, Ep. xli. (Giles, vol. i. p. 125). Arnulf of Lisieux makes a like complaint in a more serious tone: Arn. Lis., Ep. 92 (Giles, p. 247). See also the remark of Louis of France on Henry’s expedition to Ireland in 1172: R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 351.

- [1256] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 50, 51).

This bustling, scrambling, roving Pandemonium was very unlike the orderly, well-disciplined court of the first King Henry, where everything was done according to rule;—where the royal itinerary was planned out every month, and its stages duly announced and strictly adhered to, so that every man knew exactly when and where to find his sovereign, and his coming brought people together as to a fair:—where all the earls and barons of the realm were set down in a written list, according to which every one on his arrival at court was furnished with a certain allowance of bread, wine and candles for the term of his sojourn;[1257]—where the king’s own daily life was passed in a steady routine, holding council with his wise men and giving audiences until dinner-time, devoting the rest of the day to the society of the young gallants whom he drew from every country on this side of the Alps to increase the splendour of his household:—a court which was “a school of virtue and wisdom all the morning, of courtesy and decorous mirth all the afternoon.”[1258] Yet this hasty, impetuous young sovereign, in whose rough aspect and reckless ways one can at first glance discern so little either of regal dignity or of steady application to regal duty, was in truth, no less than his grandfather, an indefatigable worker and a born ruler of men. His way of doing business, apparently by fits and starts, bewildered men of less versatile intellect and less rapid decision; but they saw that the business was done, and done thoroughly, though they hardly understood when or how. They resigned themselves to be swept along in the whirl of Henry’s unaccountable movements, for they learned to perceive that those movements did not spring from mere caprice and perversity, but had always a motive and an object, inscrutable perhaps to all eyes save his own, but none the less definite and practical. When he dragged them in one day over a distance which should have occupied four or five, they knew that it was to forestall the machinations of some threatening foe. When he ran over the country from end to end without a word of notice, it was to overtake his officials at unawares and ascertain for himself how they were or were not attending to their duty.[1259] If he was never still, he was also never idle. He seemed to be specially haunted by that dread of the mischief attendant upon idle hands which an Angevin writer quaintly puts forth as an apology for the ceaseless warfare in which his race passed their lives.[1260] Henry’s hands were never idle; in the intervals of state business, when not laden with bow and arrows, they almost invariably held a book; for Henry was, to the very close of his life, the most learned crowned head in Christendom.[1261] He was a match for the best among his subjects in all knightly exercises and accomplishments; he was no less a match for the best, among laymen at least, in scholarship and mental culture. If we may believe one of his chaplains, Walter Map, he knew something of every language “from the bay of Biscay to the Jordan,” though he only spoke two, Latin and his native French;[1262] he evidently never learned to speak, and it is doubtful how far he understood, the natural tongue of the people of his island realm. He loved reading; he enjoyed the society of learned men; his delight was to stand amid a little group of clerks, arguing out some knotty point with them; not a day passed in his court without some interesting literary discussion.[1263] His habit of shutting himself up in his own apartments with a few chosen companions was a grievance to those who remembered his grandfather’s practice of coming forth in public at stated hours every day;[1264] yet Henry II. was never difficult of access; once, when the prior of Witham made a witty retort to the marshals who refused him admittance to the royal chamber, the king himself, overhearing the jest, opened the door with a peal of laughter;[1265] and a courier charged with important news from the north made his way to the sovereign’s bedside and woke him in the middle of the night without hesitation.[1266] When he did shew himself to the people, they thronged him without ceremony; they caught hold of him right and left, they pulled him this way and that, yet he never rebuked them, never gave them an angry look, but listened patiently to what each man had to say, and when their importunity became intolerable he simply made his escape without a word.[1267] Though not gifted with a good voice,[1268] he was a ready and pleasant speaker;[1269] and he had two other natural qualifications specially useful for a king. Unlike his grandfather Fulk V., who never could remember a face and constantly had to ask the names of his own familiar attendants,[1270] Henry never failed to recognize a man whom he had once looked at; and a thing once heard, if worth remembering, never slipped from his memory, which was consequently stored with a fund of historical and experimental knowledge ready for use at any moment.[1271]

- [1257] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, pp. 224, 225).

- [1258] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 5 (Wright, p. 210).

- [1259] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

- [1260] See above, p. 343, note 6{1002}.

- [1261] Pet. Blois as above.

- [1262] W. Map, De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

- [1263] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (Giles, vol. i. p. 194).

- [1264] W. Map as above (p. 230).

- [1265] Ib. dist. i. c. 6 (p. 7).

- [1266] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 25 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 189).

- [1267] W. Map, as above, dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 231).

- [1268] “Voce quassâ.” Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 70). This however refers to his later years.

- [1269] Ib. p. 71. Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

- [1270] Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. i.

- [1271] Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 73).

His worst private vices only reached their full developement in later years; it is plain, however, that he was much less careful than his grandfather had been of the outward decorum of his household; and unluckily his consort was not a woman to control it by her influence or improve it by her example like the “good Queen Maude.” His wrath was even more terrific than the wrath of kings is proverbially wont to be.[1272] His passions were strong, and they were lasting; when once he had taken a dislike to a man, he could rarely be induced to grant him his favour; on the other hand, when his friendship and confidence were once given, he withdrew them with the utmost difficulty and reluctance;[1273] and he had the gift of inspiring in all who came in contact with him a love or a hatred as intense and abiding as his own. His temper was a mystery to those who had not the key to it; it was the temper of Fulk Nerra. He had the Black Count’s strange power of fascination, his unaccountable variations of mood, and his cool, clear head. Like Fulk, he was at one moment mocking and blaspheming all that is holiest in earth and heaven, and at another grovelling in an agony of remorse as wild as the blasphemy itself. Like Fulk, he was an indefatigable builder, constantly superintending the erection of a wall, the fortification of a castle, the making of a dyke, the enclosing of a deer-park or a fish-pond, or the planning of a palace;[1274] and all the while his material buildings were but types of a great edifice of statecraft which, all unseen, was rising day by day beneath the hands of the royal architect;—his ever-varying pursuits, each of which seemed to absorb him for the moment, were but parts of an all-absorbing whole;—and his seeming self-contradictions were unaccountable only because the most useful of all his Angevin characteristics, his capacity for instinctively and unerringly adapting means to ends, enabled him to detect opportunities and recognize combinations invisible to less penetrating eyes. This was the moral constitution which in Fulk III. and Fulk V. had made the greatness of the house of Anjou; its workings were now to be displayed on a grander scale and in a more important sphere.

- [1272] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223).

- [1273] Pet. Blois, Ep. lxvi. (ib. p. 194). Gir. Cambr. as above·/·De Instr. Princ., dist. ii. c. 29 (Angl. Christ. Soc., (p. 71).

- [1274] Pet. Blois as above (p. 195).

The young king saw at once that for his work of reconstruction and reform in England the counsellors who surrounded him in Normandy were of no avail; that he must trust solely to English help, and select his chief ministers partly from among those who had been in office under his predecessor, partly from such of his own English partizans as were best fitted for the task. First among the former class stood Richard de Lucy, who held the post of justiciar at the close of Stephen’s reign,[1275] who retained it under Henry for five-and-twenty years, and whose character is summed up in the epithet said to have been bestowed on him by his grateful sovereign—“Richard de Lucy the Loyal.”[1276] For thirteen years he shared the dignity and the duties of chief justiciar with Earl Robert of Leicester,[1277] who, after having been a faithful supporter of Stephen in his earlier and better days, had transferred his allegiance to Henry, and continued through life one of his most trusty servants and friends. The weight of Robert’s character was increased by that of his rank and descent; as head of the great house of Leicester, he was the most influential baron of the midland shires; while as son of Count Robert of Meulan, the friend of Henry I., he was a living link with that hallowed past which Henry II. was expected to restore, and a natural representative of its traditions of honour and of peace. Of the great ministers who had actually served under the first King Henry only one survived: the old treasurer, Nigel, bishop of Ely. We know not who took his place on his fall in 1139; but the treasurer in Stephen’s latter years can have had little more than an empty title; and when Nigel reappears in office, immediately after Henry’s accession, it is not as treasurer, but as chancellor.[1278] This, however, was a merely provisional arrangement; in a few weeks the bishop of Ely was reinstated in his most appropriate place, on the right side of the chequered table, gathering up the broken threads of the financial system which he had learned under his uncle of Salisbury;[1279] while the more miscellaneous work of the chancellor was undertaken by younger hands.

- [1275] At the peace he held the Tower of London and the castle of Windsor; Rymer, Fœdera, vol. i. p. 18: these were peculiarly in the custody of the justiciar; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 449, note 1.

- [1276] Jordan Fantosme, vv. 1540–1541 (Michel, p. 70).

- [1277] Robert appears as capitalis justicia in a charter of, apparently, 1155 (Eyton, Itin. Hen. II., p. 3). In 1159–1160, John of Salisbury describes him as “illustris comes Legrecestriæ Robertus, modeste proconsulatum gerens apud Britannias” (Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. c. 25; Giles, vol. iv. p. 65), and at his death in 1168 he is named in the Chron. Mailros (ad ann.) as “comes justus Leicestrie, et qui summa justitia vocatur.”

- [1278] A charter issued at Westminster, evidently soon after the coronation, is witnessed by “N. Epọ de Ely et Canc.” Eyton, Itin. Hen. II., p. 2, note 2.

- [1279] Dial. de Scacc., l. i. c. 8 (Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 199).

Under the old English constitutional system, alike in its native purity and in the modified form which it assumed under the Conqueror and his sons, the archbishop of Canterbury was the official keeper of the royal conscience and the first adviser of the sovereign. Theobald had contributed more than any other one man to secure Henry’s succession; he saw in it the crowning of his own life’s work for England; while Henry saw in Theobald his most weighty and valuable supporter. It was therefore a matter of course that the primate should resume the constitutional position which he had inherited from Anselm and Lanfranc and their old-English predecessors. Theobald, however, was now in advanced age and feeble health; and when he fully perceived what manner of man it was to whom he was bound to act as spiritual father and political guide, he felt that to regulate these strong passions, to direct these youthful impulses, to follow these restless movements, was a task too hard for his failing strength. He feared the evil influences of the courtiers upon the young king, who seemed so willing to be led aright, and might for that very reason be so easily led astray;[1280] he feared for the English Church, through which there was already running a whisper of ill-omen concerning the Angevins’ known hostility to the rights of religion;[1281] he feared for his own soul, lest Henry should wander out of the right path for lack of guidance, and the sin should lie at the door of the incompetent guide.[1282] There was one man who, if he could but be placed at the young king’s side, might be trusted to manage the arduous and delicate task. So to place him could be no very difficult matter; for his own past services to Henry’s cause were far too great to be left unrewarded. Neither the recommendations of the bishops of Winchester,[1283] Bayeux and Lisieux,[1284] nor even those of the primate, could have as much weight as the known qualifications of the candidate himself in obtaining the office of chancellor for Thomas Becket.[1285]

- [1280] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

- [1281] Vita S. Thomæ, Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 11.

- [1282] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

- [1283] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 18.

- [1284] “Quorum consiliis rex in primordiis suis innitebatur.” Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 12.

- [1285] “Facile regi inspiratum est commendatum habere quem propria satis merita commendabant.” E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 363. I cannot attach any importance to the version of Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 45–47.

The chancellor’s duties were still much the same as they had been when first organized by Roger of Salisbury. He was charged with the keeping of the royal seal, the drawing-up of royal writs and charters, the conduct of the royal correspondence, the preservation of legal records, the custody of vacant fiefs and benefices, and the superintendence of the king’s chaplains and clerks;[1286]—in a word, the management of the whole clerical and secretarial work of the royal household and of the government. Officially, he seems to have been ranked below the chief ministers of state—the justiciar, or even the treasurer;[1287] personally, however, he was brought more than either of them into close and constant relations with his sovereign. The actual importance and dignity of the chancellorship depended in fact upon the capacity of individual chancellors for magnifying their office. Thomas magnified it as no man ever did before or since. In a very few months he became what the justiciar had formerly been, the second man in the kingdom;[1288] and not in the kingdom alone, but in all the lands, on both sides of the sea, which owned Henry Fitz-Empress for their sovereign.[1289] Theobald’s scheme far more than succeeded; his favourite became not so much the king’s chief minister as his friend, his director, his master.[1290] The two young men, drawn together by a strong personal attraction, seemed to have but one heart and one soul.[1291] Thomas was the elder by fifteen years; but the disparity of age was lost in the perfect community of their feelings, interests and pursuits. Thomas was now in deacon’s orders, having been ordained by Archbishop Theobald at the close of the previous year on his appointment to the archdeaconry of Canterbury,[1292] an office which was accounted the highest ecclesiastical dignity in England after those of the bishops and abbots.[1293] He felt, however, no vocation and no taste for the duties of sacred ministry, and was only too glad to “put off the deacon” and fling all his energies into the more congenial sphere of court life.[1294] Alike in its business and in its pleasures he was thoroughly at home. His refined sensibilities, his romantic imagination, revelled in the elegance and splendour which to Henry’s matter-of-fact disposition were simply irksome; he gladly took all the burthen of state ceremonial as well as of state business upon his own shoulders; and he bore it with an easy grace which men never wearied of admiring. One day he would be riding in coat of mail at the head of the royal troops, the next he would be dispensing justice in the king’s name;[1295] and his will was law throughout the land, for all men knew that his will and Henry’s were one.[1296]

[1286] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above·/·(Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 18. On the chancellor’s office see Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 352, 353.

[1287] Will. Fitz-Steph., as above, does indeed say “Cancellarii Angliæ dignitas est ut secundus a rege in regno habeatur”; but he had in his mind one particular chancellor. He also says “Cancellaria emenda non est”; but it seems that Thomas himself paid for his appointment (Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxciv., Giles, vol. i. p. 268; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv. pp. 523, 524), like the chancellors before and after him, and like the other great ministers of state.

[1288] “In regno secundus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169. “Secundus a rege,” Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 18. “Nullus par ei erat in regno, excepto solo rege,” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216. E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 363, and the Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 49, liken his position to that of Joseph.

[1289] “Secundum post regem in quatuor regnis quis te ignorat?” writes Peter of Celle to Thomas (Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ii. p. 4).

[1290] “Regis amicus,” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 169. “Regis rector et quasi magister,” ib. pp. 160 and 169.

[1291] Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13).

[1292] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 159, 160. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213. Will. Cant. (Robertson, Becket, vol. i.), p. 4. Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), p. 168. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 11.

[1293] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above. He says it was worth a hundred pounds of silver.

[1294] Herb. Bosh. (as above), p. 173.

[1295] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 12.

[1296] Ibid. E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 364.

In outward aspect Thomas must have been far more regal than the king himself. He was very tall and elegantly formed,[1297] with an oval face,[1298] handsome aquiline features,[1299] a lofty brow,[1300] large, lustrous and penetrating eyes;[1301] there was an habitual look of placid dignity in his countenance,[1302] a natural grace in his every gesture, an ingrained refinement in his every word and action;[1303] the slender, tapering, white fingers[1304] and dainty attire of the burgher’s son contrasted curiously with the rough brown hands and careless appearance of Henry Fitz-Empress; the order, elegance and liberality of the chancellor’s household contrasted no less with the confusion and discomfort of the king’s. The riches that passed through Thomas’s hands were enormous; revenues and honours were heaped on him by the king; costly gifts poured in upon him daily from clergy and laity, high and low. But what he received with one hand he gave away with the other; his splendour and his wealth were shared with all who chose to come and take a share of them. His door was always open, his table always spread, for all men, of whatever race or rank, who stood in need of hospitality.[1305] Besides fifty-two clerks regularly attached to his household—some to act as his secretaries, some to take charge of the vacant benefices in his custody, some to serve his own numerous livings and prebends[1306]—he had almost every day a company of invited guests to dinner; every day the hall was freshly strewn with green leaves or rushes in summer and clean hay or straw in winter, amid which those for whom there was no room on the benches sat and dined on the floor. The tables shone with gold and silver vessels, and were laden with costly viands; Thomas stuck at no expense in such matters; but it was less for his own enjoyment than for that of his guests;[1307] and these always included a crowd of poor folk, who were as sumptuously and carefully served as the rich;[1308] the meanest in his house never had to complain of a dinner such as the noblest were often obliged to endure in King Henry’s court, where half-baked bread, sour wine, stale fish and bad meat were the ordinary fare.[1309] The chancellor’s hospitality was as gracious as it was lavish. He was the most perfect of hosts; he saw to the smallest details of domestic service; he noted the position of each guest, missed and inquired for the absent, perceived and righted in a moment the least mistake in precedence; if any man out of modesty tried to take a lower place than was his due, it was in vain; no matter in what obscure corner he might hide, Thomas was sure to find him out; he seemed to pierce through curtains and walls with those wonderful eyes whose glance brightened and cheered the whole table.[1310] No wonder that barons and knights sent their sons to be educated under his roof,[1311] and that his personal followers were far more numerous than those of the king.[1312]

[1297] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib.·/·Robertson, Becket vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), p. 327. Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), p. 3. Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29.

[1298] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1299] Will. Fitz-Steph., Herb. Bosh., and Thomas Saga, as above.

[1300] Herb. Bosh. as above.

[1301] Ib. p. 229.

[1302] Will. Cant., Will. Fitz-Steph., and Thomas Saga, as above.

[1303] Anon. II. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 84.

[1304] Herb. Bosh. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 327.

[1305] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 20, 21. Joh. Salisb., Entheticus in Polycraticum (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 3.

[1306] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above, p. 29.

[1307] Ib. pp. 20, 21.

[1308] Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13.

[1309] Pet. Blois, Ep. xiv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 49).

[1310] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 229.

[1311] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ibid.), p. 22.

[1312] E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 363. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13.

Henry might have been jealous of his minister; but there was no thought of jealousy in his mind. He was constantly in and out at the chancellor’s house; half in sheer fun, half to see for himself the truth of the wonderful stories which he heard about it, he would come uninvited to dinner, riding up suddenly—often bow in hand, on his way to or from the chase—when Thomas was seated at table; sometimes he would take a stirrup-cup, nod to his friend and ride away; sometimes he would leap over the table, sit down and eat. When their work was over, king and chancellor played together like a couple of schoolboys, and whether it was in their private apartments, in the public streets, in the palace, or in church, made no difference at all. It was a favourite tale among their associates how as they rode together through the streets of London one winter’s day, the king, seeing a ragged shivering beggar, snatched at the chancellor’s handsome new mantle of scarlet cloth lined with vair, crying—“You shall have the merit of clothing the naked this time!” and after a struggle in which both combatants nearly fell off their horses, sent the poor man away rejoicing in his new and strangely acquired garment, while with shouts of applause and laughter the bystanders crowded round Thomas, playfully offering him their cloaks and capes in compensation for his loss.[1313]

- [1313] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 24, 25.

It is hardly possible to deny that such enormous wealth as passed through Thomas’s hands during his tenure of the chancellorship must have been acquired, in part at least, by means which in the case of a minister of the Crown in our own day would be accounted little less than scandalous. But in the twelfth century there was no scandal about the matter. Costly gifts of all kinds were showered at the feet of kings and great men openly and as matter of course, and kings and great men received them as openly, often without any idea of bribery on either side. Moreover it is to be remembered that Thomas’s position as chancellor gave him command over a considerable portion of the royal revenues, and that he was left free to draw upon them at his own discretion to meet an expenditure of which part was incurred directly in the king’s behalf, while the whole of it might be regarded as indirectly tending to the king’s glorification and benefit. The two friends in fact seem to have had but one purse as well as “one mind and one heart,” and not till many years later was there any thought of disentangling their accounts. Amid all the chancellor’s wild magnificence, there is no evidence of corruption; and there was certainly no arrogance. Thomas had nothing of the upstart in him; he never ignored his burgher-origin, he never dropped the friends of his boyhood; his filial submission to the primate remained unchanged;[1314] his gratitude to his early teachers at Merton was proved by his choice of a confessor from among them,[1315] and by his successful efforts to bring their house under the special patronage of the king.[1316] His tastes were those of the most refined aristocrat, but his sympathies were with the people from whose ranks he had sprung; his boundless almsgiving was doubled in value by the gracious considerateness with which it was bestowed; his tenderness for the poor was as genuine and as delicate as that of his mother the good dame Rohese, and he was quick alike to supply their needs and to vindicate their cause.[1317]

- [1314] Anon. I. (Robertson, Beckett, vol. iv.) p. 11.

- [1315] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 21. This confessor, Robert by name, was with him all through his exile; see Garnier (Hippeau), p. 137.

- [1316] Will. Fitz-Steph. (as above), p. 23.

- [1317] Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13. Cf. Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 49, 55–57.

Like the king himself, Thomas was a standing marvel to his contemporaries; the strict stood aghast at his unclerical mode of life; the simple were half inclined to take him for a wizard.[1318] But his witchery was universal and irresistible; and after all it was only the magic of a winning personality, a vivid imagination, a dauntless spirit and a guileless heart. For the chancellor’s frivolity was all on the surface of his life; its inner depths were pure. Amid the countless temptations of a corrupt court, no stain ever rested upon his personal honour. He shared in all the king’s pursuits, except the evil ones; into them Henry tried to entrap him night and day, but in vain.[1319] The one thing he would not do, the one thing he would not tolerate, was evil; the one species of human being to whom his doors were inexorably closed was a man of known bad character.[1320] Coarseness, immorality, dishonesty, in word or deed, met with summary and condign punishment at his hands.[1321] Above all things, “lying lips and a deceitful tongue were an abomination unto him.”[1322] When in after-days a biographer of the martyred archbishop copied from the Epistle to the Ephesians the description of the spiritual armour in which his hero was supposed to have clothed himself at his consecration, he significantly omitted the first piece of the panoply;[1323] Thomas had no need then to put on the girdle of truth, for he had worn it all his life.

- [1318] Will. Cant. (Robertson, Becket, vol. i.), p. 5.

- [1319] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 21. Cf. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.) p. 166; Joh. Salisb. (ib. vol. ii.), p. 303; Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), pp. 5, 6; Garnier (Hippeau), pp. 12, 13; Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. pp. 53–55.

- [1320]

- “Nota domus cunctis, vitio non cognita soli.”
“Huic, quæ sola placet, solâ virtute placebis.”

- Joh. Salisb., Enthet. in Polycrat. (Giles, vol. iii.) pp. 2, 3.

- [1321] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 8. Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 21.

- [1322] Herb. Bosh. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 166.

- [1323] Ib. p. 198.

His position at court was no easy one; for a while envy, hatred and malice assailed him from all sides, and their attacks, added to an immense load of work, so overwhelmed him that he more than once declared to his friends and to the primate that he was weary of his life and would be thankful to end it, or at any rate to break away from the bondage of the court, if only he could do so with honour. But he was not the man to forsake a task which he had once undertaken;[1324] his nature was rather to do it, like the king himself, with all his might. In the after-years, when friends and foes alike could hardly look back upon any period of Thomas’s career save in the light of the martyr’s aureole, more than half the credit of Henry’s early reforms was bestowed upon the chancellor.[1325] Even at the time, he was described by no mean authority as the champion of all liberty,[1326] the defender of all rights, the redresser of all wrongs, the restorer of peace,[1327] the mediator who stood between king and people to soften the inflexibility of law and prevent justice from degenerating into legal wrong.[1328] It is certain that the brightest and happiest years of Henry’s reign were those during which Thomas held the foremost rank and took the foremost part in the administration of government. For the successful execution of Henry’s policy, therefore, Thomas is entitled to a large share of credit. But that he in any serious degree influenced and moulded the general scope of that policy is a theory opposed both to the evidence of actual events and to the inferences which must be drawn from the characters of the two men, as developed in their after-careers. Thomas may have suggested individual measures—we shall see that he did suggest one of very great importance;—he may have contrived modifications in detail; but Henry’s policy, as a whole, bears the clear stamp of one mind—his own. The chancellor’s true merit lies in this, that he was Henry’s best and most thorough fellow-worker—not so much his counsellor or minister as his second self. It is not hard to see why they were friends; nor to see, too, why they were to quarrel so fatally. The same characteristics which drew them together were fated to part them in the end. The king found in the burgher’s son a temper as energetic, a spirit as versatile and impetuous, a tongue as quick and sharp,[1329] a determination as resolute, dauntless and thorough as his own, with a much less subtle brain, a much more excitable imagination, and much more sensitive feelings. While they moved side by side in the same sphere, they had “but one heart and one soul”; when once their spheres became opposed, the friends could only change into bitter antagonists.

- [1324] Joh. Salisb. (ib.·/·Enthet. in Polycrat. (Giles, vol. ii.), p. 305. Cf. Anon. I. (ib.·/·Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 12; and Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 59.

- [1325] See Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 19.

- [1326] Joh. Salisb., Entheticus, v. 1357 (Giles, vol. v. p. 282).

- [1327] Joh. Salisb. Enthet. in Polycrat. (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 3.

- [1328]

- “Hic est qui regni leges cancellat iniquas,
Et mandata pii principis æqua facit.”

- Joh. Salisb., Enthet. in Polycrat. (Giles, vol. iii.) p. 2. This seems to be the earliest version of the jest about law and equity, and sums up, in a playful shape, the chancellor’s relation to both.

- [1329] Although Thomas was “slightly stuttering in his talk.” Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 29. The statement occurs in none of the extant Latin lives, but from its very strangeness can hardly be anything but a touch of genuine tradition. The impediment however can only have been a very slight one, and was most likely nothing more than the effect of his extreme impetuosity. It certainly did not hinder him speaking his mind fully and forcibly upon any important occasion when his feelings were deeply stirred.

Henry’s first manifesto was published before Thomas entered his service. Immediately after his coronation he issued a charter setting forth the broad principles of his intended policy:—the restoration and confirmation of all liberties and customs in Church and state as settled by his grandfather.[1330] The actual wording of the charter was hardly more explicit than that of Stephen’s; but the marked omission of all reference to Stephen was in itself a significant indication that the return to an earlier and better order of things was intended to be something more than a phrase. On Christmas-day the king held his court at Bermondsey, and with the counsel of the assembled barons set himself to enforce at once the provisions of the treaty of Wallingford which Stephen had proved incapable of executing. Peremptory orders were issued for the expulsion of the Flemish mercenaries and the demolition of the unlicensed castles.[1331] The effect was magical. The Flemings saw at once that their day was over, and vanished like an army of spectres, so suddenly that folk marvelled whither they could have gone.[1332] The razing of the castles was necessarily a less rapid process, but it was accomplished without delay and without disturbance.[1333] These preliminary obstacles being cleared out of the way, the next step was to re-assert the rights of the Crown by abolishing the fiscal earldoms[1334] and reclaiming the demesne lands and fortresses which had passed into private hands during the anarchy. Henry proclaimed his determination clearly and firmly; all alienations of royal revenue and royal property made during the late reign were declared null and void; all occupiers of crown lands and castles were summoned to surrender them at once, and the charters of donation from Stephen whereby they attempted to justify their occupation were treated simply as waste paper.[1335] There was one at least of the usurping barons to whom Henry knew that he must carry his summons in person if he meant it to be obeyed: William of Aumale, the lord of Holderness, whose father had once aspired to the crown, whom Stephen had made earl of York, and who ruled like an almost independent chieftain in Yorkshire, where he held the royal castle of Scarborough and was in no mind to give it up. As soon as the festival season was over Henry began to move northward; by the end of January he was at York, and William of Aumale was at his feet, making complete surrender of Scarborough and of all his other castles.[1336] Another great northern baron, William Peverel of the Peak, had been scared into a monastery by the mere rumour of the king’s approach;[1337] he had been concerned two years before in an attempt to poison Henry’s earliest English ally, Earl Ralf of Chester; he knew that he was a doomed man,[1338] and when the king turned southward again after receiving the surrender of Scarborough, he dared not trust even his monastic tonsure to save him from his doom, but fled the country and left all his fiefs to his sovereign’s mercy.[1339]

- [1330] Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 135.

- [1331] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 160.

- [1332] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 101, 102).

- [1333] Ib. p. 102. Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1334] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

- [1335] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).

- [1336] Ib. cc. 2 and 3 (pp. 103, 104).

- [1337] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.

- [1338] See a charter of Henry, duke of the Normans, promising Peverel’s fief to Ralf on proof of the former’s guilt; Rymer, Fœdera, vol. i. p. 16. Ralf of Chester died in 1153; Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 171. Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 155. See above, p. 399.

- [1339] Gerv. Cant. (as above), p. 161.

After such an exhibition of Henry’s powers of coercion on the two chief nobles of the north, lesser men were not likely to venture upon defiance; the occupiers of crown lands passed from rage to terror and dismay, and began sullenly to make restitution.[1340] The grantees of Stephen, however, soon proved to be the least part of the difficulty. Several of the royal fortresses were held by partizans of the Empress, who had won them either while warring against Stephen in her behalf, or by a grant from their imperial mistress in her brief day of power; and they not unnaturally resented the king’s attempt to deprive them of what they looked upon as the well-earned rewards of their service to his mother and himself. Henry, however, had made up his mind that there must be no distinction of parties or of persons; all irregularities, no matter whence they proceeded, must be suppressed; every root of rebellion must be cut off, and every ground of suspicion removed.[1341] Early in March he called another council in London,[1342] confirmed the peace and renewed the old customs of the realm,[1343] and again summoned all holders of royal castles to give an account of their usurpations.[1344] The two mightiest barons of the west revolted at once; Roger of Hereford, the son of Matilda’s faithful Miles, hurried away from court to fortify his castles of Hereford and Gloucester against the king, and made common cause with Hugh of Mortemer, the lord of Cleobury and Wigmore, who held the royal fortress of Bridgenorth. Roger was brought to reason in little more than a week by the persuasions of his kinsman Bishop Gilbert of Hereford;[1345] Hugh was suffered to complete his preparations for defiance while Henry kept the Easter feast and held a great council at Wallingford to settle the succession to the throne, first upon his eldest child William, and, in case of William’s death, upon the infant Henry, who was scarcely six weeks old.[1346] That done, the king marched with all his forces against Hugh of Mortemer. He divided his host into three parts; one division laid siege to Cleobury, another to Wigmore,[1347] and the third, commanded by Henry himself, sat down before Bridgenorth.[1348] On the spot where the spirit of feudal insubordination, incarnate in Robert of Bellême, had fought its last fight against Henry I., the same spirit, represented by Hugh of Mortemer, now fought against Henry II. The fight had been useless fifty years ago; it was equally useless now. One after another the three castles were taken, and on July 7 a great council met beneath the walls of Bridgenorth to witness Hugh’s surrender.[1349]

- [1340] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 103).

- [1341] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 161.

- [1342] Ibid. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 72.

- [1343] Chron. de Bello as above.

- [1344] Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1345] Ib. p. 162.

- [1346] Ibid. Rob. Torigni, a. 1155, giving the date—Sunday after Easter, i.e. April 10.

- [1347] Gerv. Cant. as above.

- [1348] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).

- [1349] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 75.

At the opposite side of the kingdom two great barons still remained to be dealt with. One was Hugh Bigod, the veteran turncoat who had been seneschal to Henry I., and who had (as the Angevin party believed) perjured himself to oust Matilda from her rights, yet whose hereditary and territorial influence had, it seems, been great enough to win from the young king a confirmation of his earldom of Norfolk,[1350] as well as to procure him a long day of grace before he was called upon to give up his many unlawfully-acquired castles. The other was William of Blois, Stephen’s eldest surviving son, by marriage earl of Warren and Surrey, to whom the treaty of Wallingford had assigned two royal castles, Pevensey and Norwich. The danger of leaving these important fortresses in William’s hands was increased by the position of Norwich, in the very midst of Hugh Bigod’s earldom; and after a year’s delay Henry determined to put an end to this state of things in East Anglia. Contrary to all precedent, he summoned the Whitsuntide council of 1157 to meet at Bury S. Edmund’s.[1351] This peaceful invasion of their territories sufficed to bring both earls to submission. William contentedly gave up his castles in exchange for the private estates which his father had held before he became king; Hugh surrendered in like manner,[1352] and was likewise taken back into favour, to have another opportunity of proving his ingratitude sixteen years later. This settlement of East Anglia completed the pacification of the realm. Even before this, however, as early as the autumn of 1155, peace and order were so far secured that Henry could venture to think of leaving the country. At Michaelmas in that year he laid before his barons a scheme for conquering Ireland as a provision for his brother William.[1353] The Pope, who was traditionally held to be the natural owner of all islands which had no other sovereign, had granted a bull authorizing the expedition;[1354] but the Empress, whose counsel was always deferentially sought by her royal son, disapproved of his project;[1355] and when he went over sea in January 1156 it was not to win a kingdom for his youngest brother in Ireland, but to put down a rebellion of the second in Anjou.[1356]

- [1350] Granted by Stephen before 1153; Rymer, Fœdera, vol. i. p. 18. In the Pipe Roll of 1157 there is a charge “in tercio denario comitatûs comiti Hugoni l. libras de anno et dimidio,” among the accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Norfolk, rendered by Hugh himself as ex-sheriff (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 75). As his successor in the sheriffdom renders an account “de firmâ dimidii anni” (ib. p. 76), the year and half above mentioned takes us back to the autumn of 1155. In the Pipe Roll of 1156, however, Hugh does not appear at all.

- [1351] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 85. In the Winchester accounts for the year (Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 107) is a charge of 22s. “pro portandis coronis regis ad S. Ædmundum.” “Coronis” looks as if Eleanor wore her crown also.

- [1352] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.

- [1353] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

- [1354] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 205, 206).

- [1355] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155.

- [1356] Ib. a. 1156.

In England the year of his absence was a year without a history. Not a single event of any consequence is recorded by the chroniclers save the death of Henry’s eldest son, shortly before Christmas;[1357] and even this was a matter of no political moment; for, as we have seen, there was another infant to take his place as heir-apparent. The blank in the chronicles has to be filled up from the Pipe Roll which once again makes its appearance at Michaelmas 1156, and which has a special value and interest as being the most authoritative witness to the character of the young king’s efforts for the reorganization of the government, and to the results which they had already produced. The record itself is a mere skeleton, and a very imperfect one; the carefulness of arrangement, the fulness of detail, the innumerable touches of local and personal colour which make the one surviving Pipe Roll of Henry I. so precious and so interesting, are sadly wanting in this roll of the second year of Henry II.; yet between its meagre lines may be read a suggestive, almost a pathetic story. Its very imperfections, its lack of order and symmetry, its scantiness of information, its brief, irregular, confused entries, help us to realize as perhaps nothing else could how disastrous had been the break-down of the administrative machinery which we saw working so methodically five-and-twenty years ago, and how laborious must have been the task of restoration. Three whole shires, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, send in no account at all, for they were still in the hands of the king of Scots; in almost every shire there are significant notices of “waste,” and a scarcely less significant charge for repair of the royal manors. The old items reappear—the Danegeld, the aids from the towns, the proceeds of justice, the feudal incidents; but the total product amounts to little more than a third part of the sum raised in 1130; and even this diminished revenue was only made up with the help of sundry “aids” and “gifts” (as they were technically called), and of a new impost specially levied upon some of the ecclesiastical estates under the name of scutage.

- [1357] Mat. Paris, Hist. Angl. (Madden), vol. i. p. 307.

The origin of this tax is implied in its title; it was derived from the “service of the shield” (scutum)—one of the distinguishing marks of feudal tenure—whereby the holder of a certain quantity of land was bound to furnish to his lord the services of a fully-armed horseman for forty days in the year. The portion of land charged with this service constituted a “knight’s fee,” and was usually reckoned at the extent of five hides, or the value of twenty pounds annually. The gradual establishment of this military tenure throughout the kingdom was a process which had been going on ever since the Norman conquest; the use of the word “scutage,” implying an assessment of taxation based on the knight’s fee instead of the old rating division of the hide, indicates that it was now very generally completed. The scutage of 1156 was levied, as we learn from another source,[1358] specially to meet the expenses of a war which Henry was carrying on with his rebel brother in Anjou. For such a purpose the feudal host itself was obviously not a desirable instrument. Ralf Flambard’s famous device of 1093, when he took a money compensation from the English levies and sent it over sea to pay the wages of the Red King’s foreign mercenaries, suggested a precedent which might be applied to the feudal knighthood as well as to the national host. Its universal application might be hindered at present by a clause in the charter of Henry I., which exempted the tenants by knight-service from all pecuniary charges on their demesne lands. It was, however, possible to make a beginning with the Church lands. These habitually claimed, with more or less success, immunity from military service except in the actual defence of the country; on the other hand, now that the bishops and abbots had been made to accept their temporalities on the same tenure as the lay baronies, there was a fair shew of reason for compelling them to compromise their claim by a money contribution assessed on the same basis as the personal service for which it was a substitute.[1359]

- [1358] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 178).

- [1359] On scutage and knight’s fees see Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 431–433, 581, 582, 590.

Such, it seems, was the origin of the great institution of scutage. Its full developement, which it only attained three years later, was avowedly the work of Thomas the chancellor; whether or not its first suggestion came from him is not so clear. At the moment no resentment seems to have been provoked by the measure; its ultimate tendency was not foreseen, the sum actually demanded was not great, and the innovation was condoned on the ground of the king’s lawful need and in the belief that it was only an isolated demand.[1360] A greater matter might well have been condoned in consideration of Henry’s loyal redemption of his coronation-pledges, to which the Pipe Roll bears testimony. If the king had been prompt in resuming his kingly rights, he had been no less prompt in striving to fulfil his kingly duties. The work of necessary destruction was no sooner accomplished than the work of reconstruction began in all departments of state administration. The machinery of justice was set in motion once again; the provincial visitations of the judges of the king’s court were revived; thirteen shires were visited by some one or more of them between Michaelmas 1155 and Michaelmas 1156. The person most extensively employed in this capacity was the constable, Henry of Essex:[1361] the chancellor also appears in the like character, twice in Henry’s company[1362] and once in that of the earl of Leicester.[1363] Nay, the supreme “fount of justice” itself was always open to any suitor who could be at the trouble and expense of tracking its ever-shifting whereabouts; not only was the chancellor, as the king’s special representative, constantly employed in hearing causes, but Henry himself was always ready to fulfil the duty in person; at the most inconvenient moments—in the middle of the siege of Bridgenorth, at the crisis of his struggle with the Angevin rebels—he found time and patience to give attentive hearing to a wearisome suit which had been going on at intervals for nearly six years between Bishop Hilary of Chichester and Walter de Lucy the abbot of Battle.[1364] Hand in hand with the revival of order and law went the revival of material prosperity. In the dry, laconic prose of the financial record we can find enough to bear out, almost to the letter, the historians’ poetical version of the work of Henry’s first two years. The wolves had fled or become changed into peaceable sheep; the swords had been beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks;[1365] and the merchants again went forth to pursue their business, the Jews to seek their creditors, in peace and safety as of old.[1366]

- [1360] Such was apparently the state of mind of John of Salisbury: “Interim scutagium remittere non potest [rex], et a quibusdam exactionibus abstinere, quoniam fratris gratia male sarta nequicquam coiit.” Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 178).

- [1361] Pipe Roll 2 Hen. II. (Hunter), pp. 17, 31, 32, 47, 54, 57, 60, 65.

- [1362] Ibid. pp. 17, 65.

- [1363] Ibid. p. 26.

- [1364] Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), pp. 75, 76.

- [1365] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.) p. 19. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 1 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 102).

- [1366] “Exeunt securi ab urbibus et castris ad nundinas negotiatores, ad creditores repetendos Judæi.” Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

Henry returned to England soon after Easter 1157.[1367] His first step, as we have seen, was to secure the obedience of East-Anglia. Having thus fully established his authority throughout his immediate realm, his next aim was to assert the rights of his crown over its Scottish and Welsh dependencies. The princes of Wales, who had long been acknowledged vassals of England, must be made to do homage to its new sovereign; the king of Scots owed homage no less, if not for his crown, at any rate for his English fiefs; moreover, his title to these was in itself a disputed question. Three English shires, Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, had been conquered by David, nominally in behalf of his niece the Empress Matilda, in the early years of Stephen’s reign; Stephen, making a virtue of necessity, had formally granted their investiture to David’s son Henry;[1368] and they were now in the hands of Henry’s son, the young king Malcolm IV. The story went that old King David, before he knighted his grand-nephew Henry Fitz-Empress in 1149, had made him swear that if ever he came to the English throne he would suffer the king of Scots to keep these shires in peace for ever.[1369] Henry does not seem to have denied his oath; he simply refused to keep it, on the ground that it ran counter to his duty as king. Acting on what his enemies declared to be his habitual principle, of choosing to do penance for a word rather than for a deed,[1370] he declared that the crown of England must not suffer such mutilation, and summoned his Scottish cousin to give back to him the territory which had been acquired in his name.[1371]

- [1367] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. Cf. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 84.

- [1368] Cumberland was granted to Henry of Scotland by Stephen in 1136 and Northumberland in 1139; see above, pp. 282, 300. Westmoreland seems to have counted as a dependency of Cumberland.

- [1369] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 211. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 105).

- [1370] “Quoties res in arctum devenerat, de dicto malens quam de facto pœnitere, verbumque facilius quam factum irritum habere.” Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ. dist. ii. c. 24 (Angl. Christ. Soc. p. 72).

- [1371] Will. Newb. as above.

Meanwhile, without waiting for Malcolm’s answer, Henry prepared for his first Welsh war. The domestic quarrels of the Welsh princes furnished him with an excellent pretext. Owen, prince of North-Wales, had confiscated the estates of his brother Cadwallader and banished him from the country; Cadwallader appealed to King Henry, and of course found a gracious reception.[1372] A council was held at Northampton on July 17,[1373] and thence orders were issued for an expedition into North-Wales. The force employed was the feudal levy, but in a new form; instead of calling out the whole body of knights to serve their legal term of forty days, Henry required every two knights throughout England to join in equipping a third[1374]—no doubt for a threefold term of service. By this expedient he obtained a force quite sufficient for his purpose, guarded against the risk of its breaking up before its task was accomplished—a frequent drawback in medieval warfare—and made the first innovation upon the strict rule of feudal custom in such a manner as to avoid all offence.

- [1372] Caradoc of Llancarvan (Llwyd), p. 159. Some grants of land in Shropshire to Cadwallader appear in the Pipe Rolls of 1156 and 1157 (Hunter, pp. 43 and 88).

- [1373] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 163.

- [1374] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. See Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 455, 589.

The invasion was to be twofold, by land and sea.[1375] The host assembled near Chester,[1376] on Saltney marsh,[1377] and was joined by Madoc Ap Meredith, prince of Powys. Owen of North-Wales, with his three sons and all his forces, entrenched himself at Basingwerk.[1378] The king, with his youthful daring,[1379] set off at once by way of the sea-coast, hoping to fall upon the Welsh at unawares; Owen’s sons however were on the watch,[1380] and in the narrow pass of Consilt[1381] the English suddenly found themselves face to face with the foe. Entangled in the woody, marshy ground, they were easily routed by the nimble light-armed Welsh;[1382] and a cry that the king himself had fallen caused the constable, Henry of Essex, to drop the royal standard and fly in despair. Henry of Anjou soon shewed himself alive, rallied his troops, and almost, like his ancestor Fulk at Conquereux, turned the defeat into a victory;[1383] for he cut his way through the Welsh ambushes with such vigour that Owen judged it prudent to withdraw from Basingwerk and seek a more inaccessible retreat.[1384] Cutting down the woods and clearing the roads before him, Henry pushed on to Rhuddlan, and there fortified the castle.[1385] Meanwhile the fleet had sailed[1386] under the command of Madoc Ap Meredith.[1387] It touched at Anglesey and there landed a few troops whose sacrilegious behaviour brought upon them such vengeance from the outraged islanders[1388] that their terrified comrades sailed back at once to Chester, where they learned that the war was ended.[1389] Owen, in terror of being hemmed in between the royal army and the fleet, sent proposals for peace, reinstated his banished brother,[1390] performed his own homage to King Henry,[1391] and gave hostages for his loyalty in the future.[1392] As the South-Welsh princes were all vassals of North-Wales, Owen’s submission was equivalent to a formal acknowledgement of Henry’s rights as lord paramount over the whole country, and the young king was technically justified in boasting that he had subdued all the Welsh to his will.[1393]

[1375] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. A charge in the year’s Pipe Roll—“In locandâ unâ nave ad portandum corredium regis usque Pembroc” (Winchester accounts, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 108) —looks as if Henry had meditated an attempt upon South as well as North Wales. But it also seems to imply that the attempt was not actually made.

[1376] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. Brut y Tywysogion, a. 1156. (The chronology of these Welsh chronicles is hopelessly wrong).

[1377] Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 159.

[1378] Ann. Cambr., Brut y Tywys., and Caradoc as above.

[1379] Gir. Cambr. Itin. Kambr., l. ii. c. 10 (Opera, Dimock, vol. vi. p. 137), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 165, make no scruple of calling it rashness.

[1380] Ann. Cambr. and Caradoc as above.

[1381] “In arcto silvestri apud Coleshulle, id est, Carbonis collem” (Gir. Cambr. as above, c. 7, p. 130) —that is, Consilt, near Flint. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 107).

[1382] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 107, 108). Brut y Tywys. a. 1156. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. Itin. Kambr., l. ii. c. 7 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130) and c. 10 (p. 137).

[1383] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 108). Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 165. Caradoc (Llwyd, p. 160) has a totally different version of the battle, but it is incompatible with the undoubted facts about Henry of Essex.

[1384] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Brut y Tywys. a. 1156.

[1385] Ibid.

[1386] Ann. Cambr. and Brut y Tywys. as above.

[1387] So says Caradoc (as above); but is it possible that Madoc, a Welsh prince and one whose territory lay wholly inland, should have been put in command of the English fleet?

[1388] Ann. Cambr. a. 1158. Brut y Tywys. a. 1158. Caradoc (Llwyd), p. 160. Gir. Cambr. Itin. Kambr., l. ii. c. 7 (Dimock, vol. vi. p. 130).

[1389] Caradoc as above.

[1390] Ann. Cambr., Brut y Tywys., and Caradoc, as above.

[1391] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 5 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 108, 109). Mat. Paris (Hist. Angl., Luard, vol. i. p. 308) says the homage was done at Snowdon; how could this be?

[1392] See reference to the hostages in Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 114.

[1393] “Subjectis ad libitum Walensibus,” Rob. Torigni, a. 1157. The only entries in this year’s Pipe Roll visibly relating to the Welsh war are: “Pro thesauro conducendo ad Waliam xxxi s. et viii d.” (Oxfordshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II., Hunter, p. 82), and a payment of two marks of silver by the abbot of Abbotsbury “de Exercitu Wal.” (Dorset, ib. p. 99). In the next year’s roll there are several references to the matter; Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter) pp. 114, 170, 175. The first relates to the hostages, the second to payments made to Henry’s Welsh allies, and the last is a payment made to Ralf “vitulus” (cf. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. iii. c. 73, Hardy, p. 767) of Winchester “de Itinere de Waliâ”—i.e. for the fleet.

It was doubtless on his triumphant return that the king of Scots came to meet him at Chester.[1394] Whichever of the royal kinsmen might have the better cause, Malcolm now clearly perceived that the power to maintain it was all on Henry’s side. He therefore surrendered the three disputed shires,[1395] with the fortresses of Newcastle, Bamborough and Carlisle,[1396] and acknowledged himself the vassal of the English king “in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of King Henry the Elder.”[1397] The precise import of this formula is uncertain, and was probably not much less so at the time; the exact nature and grounds of the Scottish homage to England formed a question which both parties usually found it convenient to leave undetermined.[1398] For Henry’s present purpose it sufficed that, on some ground or other, the homage was done.

- [1394] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.

- [1395] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 105, 106).

- [1396] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.

- [1397] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.

- [1398] The Scottish theory seems to be that Malcolm did homage for the earldom of Huntingdon, which had lapsed on his father’s death, and which Will. Newb. (as above, p. 106) and Rob. Torigni (a. 1157) say was now granted afresh to him. But, on the one hand, the treatise “De Judithâ uxore Waldevi comitis” in Chroniques Anglo-Normandes (Francisque Michel, vol. ii. p. 128) says that Huntingdon was not granted to Malcolm till 1159; and on the other, the terms of homage as stated by the Chron. Mailros exclude Huntingdon, which was granted to Henry of Scotland not by Henry I. but by Stephen. The truth probably lurks in another phrase of Rob. Torigni (a. 1157), which says that Malcolm surrendered, besides the three fortresses above-named, Edinburgh “et comitatum Lodonensem.” This can only mean that he made a surrender of Lothian, to receive its investiture again on the same terms as his forefathers—i.e. as a fief of the English Crown. Huntingdon appears in the Pipe Rolls of 1156, 1157 and 1158, but without mention of its third penny.

The closing feast of the year was celebrated with a brilliant gathering of the court at Lincoln. More cautious than his predecessor, Henry did not venture to defy local tradition by appearing in his regal insignia within the city itself; he wore his crown on Christmas day, not in the great minster on the hill-top, but in the lesser church of S. Mary in the suburb of Wigford beyond the river.[1399] Next Easter the king and queen went through this ancient solemnity of the “crown-wearing” together, and for the last time, in Worcester cathedral. When the moment came for making their oblations, they laid their crowns upon the altar and vowed never to wear them again.[1400] The motive for this renunciation was probably nothing more than Henry’s impatience of court pageantry; but the practice thus solemnly forsaken was not revived, save once under very exceptional circumstances in the middle of the next reign, till the connexion between England and Anjou was on the eve of dissolution; and as it happens, the abandonment of this custom of Old-English royalty marks off one of the lesser epochs in Henry’s career. He was about to plunge into a sea of continental politics and wars which kept him altogether away from his island-realm for six years, and from which he never again thoroughly emerged. This last crown-wearing at Worcester serves as a fitting point at which we may leave our own country for a while and glance once more at the history of the lands united with her beneath the sceptre of the Angevin king.

- [1399] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 117, 118). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; it is he who gives the name of the suburb, “Wikeford.” Will. Newb. has a wrong date; the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 136, settles that point.

- [1400] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; more briefly, R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302; both with very confused dates, but again they are set right by the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 175.

CHAPTER X.
HENRY AND FRANCE.
1156–1161.

Formidable as was the task of England’s internal reorganization, it was but a small part of the work which lay before Henry Fitz-Empress. His accession brought the English Crown into an entirely new relation with the world at large. The realm which for ages had been counted almost as a separate sphere, whose insularity had been strong enough to survive even the Norman conquest and to turn the conqueror’s own native land into a dependency of the conquered island, suddenly became an unit in a vast group of states gathered into the hands of a single ruler, and making up altogether the most extensive and important empire in Christendom. Among the earlier kings of England Cnut is the only one whose dominions were at all comparable in extent to those of Henry II. But the empire of Cnut and that of Henry differed widely in character and circumstances. Cnut’s northern empire was to a certain extent homogeneous; its members had at least one thing in common besides their common allegiance—they were all, geographically and politically, almost as completely severed from the rest of Europe as England herself. It was only as an indirect consequence partly of his territorial power, but still more of his personal greatness, that Cnut and his realms came into connexion with central and southern Europe. In Henry’s case, on the contrary, such a connexion was rendered inevitable by the geographical position of his continental territories. They lay in the very heart of western Christendom; they covered the largest and some of the fairest regions of Gaul; they positively surrounded on two sides the domains of the French Crown to which they owed a nominal homage; they touched the borders of Spain, and they went very near to those old Burgundian lands which formed the south-western march of Germany and the north-western march of Italy. Again, Cnut’s territories were all perfectly independent of any ruler save himself; no rival power disputed his claims to any one of them; no other sovereign had any pretension to receive homage from him. Henry, on the other hand, was by the possession of his Gaulish fiefs placed in direct personal connexion with the French king who was not merely his neighbour but also his overlord. A like connexion had indeed existed between the Norman kings of England and the French kings as overlords of Normandy. But Henry’s relations with France were far more complex and fraught with far weightier political consequences than those of his Norman predecessors. He held under the king of France not a single outlying province, but—at the lowest reckoning—not less than five separate fiefs, all by different titles and upon different tenures, which were yet further complicated by the intricate feudal and political relations of these fiefs one with another.

Normandy was the least puzzling member of the group; Henry had inherited it from his mother, and held it on the same tenure as all her ancestors from Hrolf downwards. About Anjou, again—the original patrimony of the heirs of Fulk the Red—there could hardly be any question; and the old dispute whether Maine should count as an independent fief of the Crown or as an underfief of Normandy or of Anjou was not likely to be of any practical consequence when the immediate ruler of all three counties was one and the same. Yet all these had to be treated as separate states; each must have its special mention in the homage done by Henry to Louis; each must be governed according to its own special customs and institutions. So, too, must the other appendage of Anjou—Touraine, for which homage was still owed to the count of Blois, and where he still possessed a few outlying lands which might easily be turned into bones of contention should he choose to revive the ancient feud. Lastly, over and above all this bundle of family estates inherited from his father and his mother, Henry’s marriage had brought him the duchy of Aquitaine:—that is, the immediate possession of the counties of Poitou and Bordeaux; the overlordship of a crowd of lesser counties and baronies which filled up the remaining territory between the Loire and the Pyrenees; and a variety of more or less shadowy claims over all the other lands which had formed part of the old Aquitanian kingdom, and whose feudal relations with each other, with Poitou and with the Crown of France were in a state of inextricable confusion:—added to which, there was a personal complication caused by the two marriages of Eleanor, whereby her second husband owed homage to the first for the territories which he held in her name. Without going further into the details of the situation, we can easily see that it was crowded with difficulties and dangers, and that it would require the utmost care, foresight and self-restraint on the part of both Henry and Louis to avoid firing, at some point or other, a train which might produce an explosion disastrous to both alike.

Henry’s chief assistant in the management of his continental affairs was his mother, the Empress Matilda. Still closer to his side, indeed, stood one who in after-years shewed herself gifted with far greater administrative sagacity, and who had already acquired considerable political experience as queen of France and duchess of Aquitaine. As yet, however, Henry was likely to derive less assistance from the somewhat dangerously quick wit of his wife than from the mature wisdom of his mother. Matilda had been a harsh, violent, impracticable woman; but there was in her character an element of moral and intellectual grandeur which even in her worst days had won and kept for her the devotion of men like Miles of Hereford and Brian Fitz-Count, and which now in her latter years had fairly gained the mastery over her less admirable qualities. She had inherited a considerable share of her father’s talents for government; she had indeed failed to use them in her own behalf, but she had learned from her failure a lesson which enabled her to contribute not a little, by warnings and suggestions, to the success of her son. In England, where the haughtiness of her conduct had never been forgiven, whatever was found amiss in Henry’s seems to have been popularly laid to her charge.[1401] In Normandy, however, she was esteemed far otherwise. From the time of her son’s accession to the English crown she lived quietly in a palace which her father had built hard by the minster of Notre-Dame-des-Prés, outside the walls of Rouen;[1402] taking no direct share in politics, but universally held in profound respect by reason of her dignified and pious life, and of the influence which she was known to exercise upon the mind and policy of the young duke. His first step on the tidings of Stephen’s death had been to hold a consultation with her; so long as she lived, her opinions and her wishes were an element never absent from his calculations before entering upon any serious undertaking; and if he did not formally leave her as regent of the Norman duchy, yet he trusted in great measure to her for the maintenance of its tranquillity and order during his own absence beyond the sea.

- [1401] “Nos autem illi doctrinæ [sc. maternæ] fidenter imputamus omnia quibus erat tædiosus” [rex]. W. Map. De Nug. Cur., dist. v. c. 6 (Wright, p. 227).

- [1402] Draco Norm., l. iii. cc. 1, 2, vv. 37–66 (Howlett, Will. Newb., vol. ii. pp. 712–714).

A personal visit was, however, necessary to make sure of his ground with the king of France. As soon, therefore, as matters in England were sufficiently composed, early in 1156 Henry went to Normandy;[1403] Louis came to meet him on the border, and shortly afterwards, at a second meeting, received a repetition of his homage for all his French fiefs, including the duchy of Aquitaine.[1404] It was time; for to every one of those fiefs, except Aquitaine and Normandy, there was a rival claimant in the person of his brother. The story went that Geoffrey Plantagenet as he lay dying at Château-du-Loir had made the bishops and barons around his bed promise that they would not suffer him to be laid in the grave till his eldest son had sworn to abide by the contents of a will which he had just executed. When they called upon Henry to take the oath, he hesitated a long while; at last, seeing no other means of getting his father buried in peace, with a burst of tears he swore as he was required. After the funeral the will was read; and Henry found himself thereby pledged to make over the whole of his patrimonial territories—Anjou, Touraine and Maine—to his brother Geoffrey, as soon as the addition of the English crown to his Norman coronet should put him in complete possession of his mother’s heritage. Till then Geoffrey was to be content with three castles, Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau. For the moment Henry dissembled his vexation; the contingency contemplated in the will was still in the unknown future. But before it came to pass Geoffrey, as we have seen, provoked his brother’s ill-will by using his three castles as a basis of rebellion. Henry on his part sought and obtained a papal absolution from the extorted oath, and flatly refused to keep it.[1405] Hereupon Geoffrey again began stirring up a revolt whose suppression was one of the chief objects of Henry’s visit to the continent in 1156. The brothers met at Rouen, but they could not agree; Geoffrey hurried back to fortify his three castles, and Henry followed to besiege them.[1406] The troops which he employed were, as we have already seen, mercenaries paid out of the proceeds of a scutage levied in England; and if the chancellor’s share in the matter amounted to nothing more than the suggestion of this contrivance, its perfect success in every way would be enough to justify the statement of a contemporary, that Henry “profited greatly by his assistance.”[1407] Loudun and Mirebeau were successively besieged and taken;[1408] and in July the fall of Geoffrey’s last and mightiest fortress, Chinon, brought him to complete surrender of all his claims, for which he accepted a compensation in money from his brother.[1409] Next month Queen Eleanor came over to share her husband’s triumph;[1410] she doubtless accompanied him in a progress through Aquitaine, where he received homage from the vassals of the duchy, took hostages for their fidelity,[1411] and kept Christmas at Bordeaux.[1412] Every part of his continental dominions was thus thoroughly secured before he returned to England in the spring of 1157.[1413]

- [1403] He was at Rouen on Candlemas day. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

- [1404] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215. Between the two meetings with Louis came one with the count and countess of Flanders at Rouen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

- [1405] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 112, 113).

- [1406] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

- [1407] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 162, says that Henry won his success “Thomæ cancellarii sui magno fretus auxilio.” It is not quite clear whether Thomas was with him in person; he was certainly in England part of this year, witness the Pipe Roll.

- [1408] Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

- [1409] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 7 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 114). Rob. Torigni, a. 1156. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1156 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 38). The first states the compensation as “terram planam ex quo fructuum utilitas proveniret”; the second as a thousand pounds sterling and two thousand Angevin per annum. All say Geoffrey lost his castles, except Loudun, which Henry restored to him (Chron. S. Albin. as above). The date is from Rob. Torigni.

- [1410] She and Richard de Lucy were both with Henry at Saumur on August 29. Chron. de Bello (Angl. Christ. Soc.), p. 76.

- [1411] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215.

- [1412] Anon. Chron., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 121.

- [1413] Eleanor went back independently before Easter. “In corredio reginæ quando venit de Normanniâ” appears among the accounts “de veteri firmâ” of Hampshire, Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 107.

Henry and Eleanor had now two children living. The eldest, born in London on February 28, 1155,[1414] and baptized by his father’s name, had already been recognized as his heir; the second was a girl, born in 1156,[1415] and named after her grandmother the Empress Matilda. A third, Richard, was born at Oxford[1416] on September 8, 1157.[1417] Eleanor had moreover by her former marriage with Louis of France two daughters, Mary and Adela, betrothed to the brother-counts of Champagne and Blois;[1418] while the second marriage of Louis with Constance of Castille had given him one child, the infant princess Margaret.[1419] Early in 1158 Henry resolved to secure the hand of this little girl for his eldest son, and he sent his chancellor over sea to make the proposal to Louis.[1420]

- [1414] Rob. Torigni, a. 1155. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1155 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 38).

- [1415] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.

- [1416] Ibid.

- [1417] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1157 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 39).

- [1418] Gesta Ludov., c. 29 (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 411). Hist. Ludov. (ibid.) p. 415. Mary had once been proposed as wife for Henry Fitz-Empress, but S. Bernard put a stop to the scheme on the ground of consanguinity (see above, p. 393, note 2{1161})—an objection which, however, applied still more strongly to Henry’s marriage with her mother. Mary was betrothed to Henry of Champagne before the Crusade (Gesta Ludov., c. 18, as above, pp. 403, 404). Adela was born in 1149 or 1150, and apparently betrothed to Theobald of Blois in 1152 or soon after (ib. cc. 27, 29, as above, pp. 410, 411; Hist. Ludov., ib. pp. 414, 415). Neither couple was married till 1164.

- [1419] Gesta Ludov., c. 29 (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv.), p. 411. Hist. Ludov. (ibid.), p. 415.

- [1420] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 29. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302.

Never, since Haroun-al-Raschid sent his envoys to Charles the Great, had such an embassy been seen in western Europe. Thomas made up his mind to display before the eyes of astonished France all the luxury and splendour which the wealth of the island-realm could procure, that King Henry might be glorified in his representative.[1421] The six ships with which he habitually crossed the Channel[1422]—the king himself had but one for this purpose, till his chancellor presented him with three more[1423]—can hardly have sufficed for the enormous train which he took with him on this occasion. It comprized, in the first place, some two hundred members of his household, knights, clerks, stewards, servants, squires, and young pages of noble blood, all provided with horses and fitted out with new and gay attire as beseemed their several degrees. Thomas himself had twenty-four changes of raiment, most of which he gave away in the course of his journey; besides a quantity of rich silks, rare furs, and costly cloths and carpets, “fit to adorn the sleeping-chamber of a bishop.” He had a right royal train of coursing-dogs and hawks of all kinds. Above all, he had eight mighty chariots, each drawn by five horses equal to war-chargers in beauty and strength; beside each horse ran a stalwart and gaily-clad youth, and each chariot had its special conductor. Two of these vehicles were laden with casks of ale, to be given to the French, who marvelled at the beverage, strange to them, which the English thought superior to wine. The other chariots bore the furniture of the chancellor’s chapel, of his private chamber, and of his kitchen; others again contained treasure, provisions for the journey, necessaries of the toilet, trappings and baggage of all kinds. Next, there were twelve sumpter-horses, of which eight were loaded with coffers containing the gold and silver vessels of the chancellor’s household, vases, ewers, goblets, bowls, cups, flagons, basins, salt-cellars, spoons, plates and dishes. Other chests and packages held the money for daily expenses and gifts, the chancellor’s own clothes, and his books. One pack-horse, which always went first, bore the sacred vessels, altar-ornaments and books belonging to the chapel. To each horse there was a well-trained groom; to each chariot was fastened a dog, large, strong and “terrible as a lion or a bear”; and on the top of every chariot sat a monkey. The procession travelled along the road in regular order; first came the foot-pages, to the number of about two hundred and fifty, in groups of six, ten or more, “singing together in their native tongue, after the manner of their country.” They were followed at a little distance by the coursing-dogs and hounds coupled and in leashes under the charge of their respective keepers. Next, the great chariots covered with hides came heavily rolling and rattling along; after them trotted the pack-horses, each with a groom; these again were followed by the squires, bearing the shields and leading the chargers of the knights; then came a crowd of other attendants, pages, and those who had charge of the hawks; then the sewers and other servants of the chancellor’s household; then his knights and his clerks, all riding two and two; and lastly, amid a select group of friends, the chancellor himself. In every town and village along the road the French rushed out to inquire the meaning of such a startling procession, and when told that it was the chancellor of the king of England coming on a mission to the king of France, exclaimed: “If this is the chancellor, what must his master be?”

- [1421] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above·/·(Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 29.

- [1422] Partly, it seems, for the sake of giving a free passage to any one who wanted to go. Ib. p. 23.

- [1423] Ibid. p. 26.

Immediately after landing Thomas notified his arrival to Louis; at Meulan he received an answer, fixing a day for an audience in Paris. It was the custom of the French kings to provide at their own expense for every man who came to their court during his sojourn there; Louis therefore issued a proclamation in Paris forbidding the sale of any article whatsoever to the chancellor or his attendants. Thomas however was resolved to decline the royal hospitality; he sent his caterers in disguise and under feigned names to all the fairs round about—Lagny, Corbeil, Pontoise, S. Denys—where they bought up such an abundance of bread, meat, fish and wine that when he reached his lodging at the Temple he found it stocked with three days’ provisions for a thousand men. One dish of eels, which had cost a hundred shillings sterling, was long remembered as an instance of the English chancellor’s prodigality. Every possible courtesy was interchanged between him and the French king. Every member of the court, were he count, baron, knight or serving-man, received some token of insular wealth and generosity; Thomas gave away all his gold and silver plate, all his costly raiment; to one a cloak, to another a fur cape, to another a pelisse, to another a palfrey or a destrier.[1424] The masters and scholars of the university came in for their share; the chancellor’s gracious reception of them, and of the citizens with whom the English scholars lodged,[1425] was a marked feature in his visit to Paris.[1426] The embassy was successful; Louis promised his daughter’s hand to the heir of England, and Thomas went home in triumph, having finished up his expedition by capturing and casting into prison at Neufmarché a certain Guy of Laval whose lawless depredations were a continual insult to King Henry and a continual terror to his subjects.[1427] Henry himself soon afterwards went over sea, partly, no doubt, to confirm the family alliance thus concluded with Louis. But there was also another reason which urgently required his presence in Gaul.

- [1424] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 29–33.

- [1425] “Cives scholarium Angligenarum creditores” (ib. p. 32) must mean something like this.

- [1426] Ibid.

- [1427] Ibid. p. 33.

A fresh opening had presented itself to the ambition of the Angevin house in a quarter where they seem to have had no dealings since the time of Geoffrey Martel, but which was intimately associated with their earliest traditions and with the very foundations of their power. The long rivalry between the counts of Nantes and of Rennes had ended, like that between the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou, in a marriage, and for eighty-two years all Britanny had been united beneath the immediate and undisputed sway of the one ducal house, when in 1148 Duke Conan III. on his death-bed disavowed the young Hoel who had hitherto passed as his son and heir.[1428] The duchy split up into factions once again; the greater part accepted the rule of Count Eudo of Porhoët, who was married to Conan’s only daughter Bertha; the people of Nantes alone, fired with their old spirit of independence and opposition, opened their gates to Hoel and acknowledged him as their count. Hoel however proved unable to cope with the superior forces of his rival; at the end of eight years his people grew hopeless of maintaining their independence under him. Rather than give it up once more to those whom they looked upon as representatives of the hated supremacy of Rennes, they fell back upon their old traditional alliance with Anjou, and having driven out the unfortunate Hoel, offered themselves and their country to young Geoffrey Plantagenet.[1429] Geoffrey, smarting under the defeat which he had just sustained at his brother’s hands in Anjou, was naturally delighted with this new acquisition, and all the more as he had a fair prospect of enjoying it in peace; for Eudo at that very moment was suddenly confronted by another rival. Earl Conan of Richmond, Bertha’s son by a former marriage, being now grown to manhood, came over from England in this same summer of 1156 to claim the heritage which his stepfather had usurped;[1430] and during the struggle which ensued between them neither party had time or energy to spare for dislodging the Angevin intruder from Nantes, where he remained undisputed master for nearly two years.

- [1428] Chron. Britann. ad ann. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 103).

- [1429] Ib. a. 1148, 1156, 1157 (as above). Chron. Brioc. (ibid.), col. 37.

- [1430] Chron. Brioc. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1156.

On July 26, 1158, Geoffrey died.[1431] The county of Nantes was at once seized by Conan and claimed by the king of England as heir to his childless brother;[1432] and on the eve of the Assumption Henry landed in Normandy to enforce his claim. Before resorting to arms, however, he deemed it prudent to secure the assent of the lord paramount of Britanny, King Louis of France, to his intended proceedings. The negotiations were again intrusted to the chancellor, and again with marked success. At a conference held on the last day of August[1433] Louis did far more than sanction Henry’s claim upon Nantes; he granted him a formal commission to arbitrate between the competitors for the dukedom of Britanny and settle the whole question in dispute as he might think good, in virtue of his office as grand seneschal of France.[1434] This office was now little more than honorary, and was held throughout the greater part of the reign of Louis VII. by the count of Blois; but the rival house of Anjou seems to have also put forth a claim to it, which Louis admitted for a moment, as on the present occasion, whenever it suited his own purposes.[1435] From Argentan, on September 8, Henry issued a summons to the whole feudal host of Normandy to assemble at Avranches on Michaelmas-day for an expedition into Britanny. He himself spent the interval in a visit to Paris, where he was entertained by Louis with the highest honours; the betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was ratified, and the baby-bride was handed over to the care of her future father-in-law, who intrusted her for education to a faithful Norman baron, Robert of Neubourg.[1436] The host gathered at Avranches on the appointed day, but only to witness Conan’s submission. He knew that he was no match for the king of England with the king of France at his back; so he put himself into Henry’s hands, and received his confirmation in the dukedom of Britanny in return for the surrender of Nantes.[1437] Henry, after a visit to the Mont-S.-Michel and a brief halt at Pontorson to restore the castle, proceeded to take formal possession of Nantes; he then went to besiege Thouars,[1438] whose lord was in rebellion against him. In November he met Louis at Le Mans,[1439] and thence conducted him on a triumphal progress through Normandy. After going through Pacy and Evreux to Neubourg, that the French king might see his little daughter, they were received with a solemn procession at Bec; they then visited the abbey of Mont-S.-Michel, where Louis had a vow to pay, and from Avranches Henry escorted his guest by way of Bayeux, Caen and Rouen safely and honourably back to his own dominions.[1440]

[1431] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 166). Chron. S. Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 39).

[1432] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Chron. Brioc. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i.), col. 37. Chron. Britann. a. 1158 (ib. col. 103).

[1433] Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 167).

[1434] “Eo tempore, per industriam Thomæ cancellarii a Lundoniâ, rex Angliæ a rege Francorum Christianissimo, viro tamen nimis simplici, optinuit ut quasi senescallus regis Francorum intraret Britanniam, et quosdam ibidem inter se inquietos et funebre bellum exercentes coram se convocaret et pacificaret, et quem inveniret rebellum violenter coherceret.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

[1435] On the office of seneschal of France see A. Luchaire, Hist. des Institutions Monarchiques sous les premiers Capétiens, vol. i. pp. 173–181. The treatise of Hugh of Clères “De senescalciâ et majoratu regni Franciæ” (printed in Marchegay, Comtes d’Anjou, pp. 387–394), which sets forth the Angevin claim in detail, is shown by M. Mabille to be a forgery (Introd., pp. xlix–li); and so too, it seems, is the only charter in which Henry appears as seneschal (ib. p. li, note). The treatise was, however, written between 1150 and 1168 (ib. p. li), and must therefore have been intended to support a claim made at that time. M. d’Arbois de Jubainville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. ii. pp. 270–274; vol. iii. pp. 96, 97) gives from charters a list of the seneschals of France from A.D. 1091 to A.D. 1163. No count of Anjou appears; and from 1154 to 1163 (inclusive) the seneschal each year is Theobald of Blois. That the Angevin claim was, however, not only made but occasionally admitted—doubtless for some special purpose—is shewn by the passage of Gerv. Cant. quoted above (note 3{1434}), and also by two passages in Robert of Torigni, none of which are noticed by M. Luchaire. In A.D. 1169 Robert tells us that the younger Henry did homage to Louis at Montmirail for the county of Anjou, “et concessit ei rex Francorum ut esset senescallus Franciæ, quod pertinet ad feudum Andegavense;” and he adds that at Candlemas young Henry officiated as seneschal to the king in Paris; after which he proceeds to abridge from the pseudo-Hugh de Clères the story of the origin of the dignity. In A.D. 1164 he says: “Comes Carnotensis Tedbaudus despondit filiam Ludovici regis Franciæ, et ideo rex ei concessit dapiferatum Franciæ, quem comes Andegavensis antiquitus habebat.” M. de Jubainville’s list shews that Theobald had been seneschal long before this; but the words shew that the Angevin claim was well known, at any rate in the Angevin dominions.

[1436] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.

[1437] Ibid. Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 169). Chron. Britann. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i.), col. 104. This last dates the surrender “circa festivitatem S. Dionysii” [Oct. 9]; the two former make it Michaelmas. According to Rob. Torigni the actual cession comprised the city of Nantes and the northern half of the county, said to be worth sixty thousand shillings Angevin.

[1438] Rob. Torigni and Contin. Becc. as above. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1158 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 39). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

[1439] Gerv. Cant. as above.

[1440] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. Contin. Becc. a. 1158 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170). Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

The county of Nantes was in itself a very trifling addition to the vast possessions of Henry Fitz-Empress; yet its acquisition was a more important matter than appears at first sight. Nantes, by its geographical position, commanded the mouth of the Loire; its political destinies were therefore of the highest consequence to the princes whose dominions lay along the course of that river. The carefully planned series of advances whereby Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black had gradually turned the whole navigable extent of the Loire into a high-way through their own territories would have been almost useless had they not begun by securing the entrance-gate. To Henry, who as count of Poitou had command of the opposite shore of the estuary, there might have been less danger in the chance of hostility at Nantes; but the place was, for another reason, of greater value to him than it could ever have been to his ancestors. From the English Channel to the Pyrenees he was master of the entire western half—by far the larger half—of Gaul, with one exception: between his Norman and his Aquitanian duchy there jutted out the Breton peninsula. Britanny must have been in Henry’s eyes something like what Tours had been in those of Geoffrey Martel:—a perpetual temptation to his ambition, a fragment of alien ground which must have seemed to him destined almost by the fitness of things to become absorbed sooner or later into the surrounding mass from which it stood out in a sort of unnatural isolation. By his acquisition of Nantes he had gained a footing in the Breton duchy, somewhat as his forefathers had gained one in the city of Tours by their canonry at S. Martin’s; and as a grant of investiture from the French king had served as the final stepping-stone to Martel’s great conquest, so the privilege of arbitration conferred by Louis upon Henry might pave the way for more direct intervention in Britanny. The meaning of this autumn’s work is well summed up by Gervase of Canterbury: “This was Henry’s first step towards subduing the Bretons.”[1441] A week before the assembly at Avranches his fourth son had been born;[1442] the infant was baptized by the name of Geoffrey. It would indeed have been strange if the name made famous by Henry’s own father, as well as by so many of the earlier members of the family, had been allowed to drop out of use in the next generation. Yet by the light of after-events one may suspect that its revival at this particular moment had a special reference to the memory of the lately deceased Count Geoffrey of Nantes, and that the new-born child’s future destiny as duke of Britanny was already foreshadowed, however vaguely, in his father’s dreams.

- [1441] “Hic fuit primus ingressus ejus super Britones edomandos.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 166.

- [1442] On September 23; Rob. Torigni, a. 1158.

The year closed amid general tranquillity. So cordial was, or seemed to be, the alliance of the two kings, that they planned a joint crusade against the Moors in Spain, and wrote to ask the Pope’s blessing upon their undertaking;[1443] and a long-standing dispute between Henry and Theobald of Blois was settled before Christmas by the mediation of Louis.[1444] In England the year is marked by nothing more important than a new issue of coinage.[1445] The administration of the country was directed by the two justiciars, assisted, formally at least, by the queen,[1446] until shortly before Christmas, when she went over sea to keep the feast with her husband at Cherbourg.[1447] Unhappily, the beginnings of strife followed in her train.

- [1443] Letter of Adrian IV.—date, February 19 [1159]—in Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. pp. 590, 591.

- [1444] Rob. Torigni, a. 1158. The quarrel had originated in Henry’s refusal, when he succeeded his father as count of Anjou, to do homage for Touraine. To this was added a dispute about Fréteval and Amboise. See details in Gesta Ambaz. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 216, 222, 223.

- [1445] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302. There are some references to this new coinage in the Pipe Roll of the year (4 Hen. II., Hunter, pp. 114, 181). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 215, misdates it 1156.

- [1446] Richard de Lucy and Eleanor seem to share the regency during her stay in England; see Eyton, Itin. Hen. II., pp. 42, 43, and Palgrave, Eng. Commonwealth, vol. ii. pp. v, vi. After her departure her place seems to be taken by Robert of Leicester.

- [1447] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

The duchy of Aquitaine, or Guyenne, as held by Eleanor’s predecessors, consisted, roughly speaking, of the territory between the Loire and the Garonne. More exactly, it was bounded on the north by Anjou and Touraine, on the east by Berry and Auvergne, on the south-east by the Quercy or county of Cahors, and on the south-west by Gascony, which had been united with it for the last hundred years. The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had in fact included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhône and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the counts of Poitou asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal title; they had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the counts of Toulouse. These represented an earlier line of dukes of Aquitaine, successors of the dukes of Gothia or Septimania, under whom the capital of southern Gaul had been not Poitiers but Toulouse, Poitou itself counting as a mere underfief. In the latter half of the tenth century these dukes of Gothia or Aquitania Prima, as the Latin chroniclers sometimes called them from the old Roman name of their country, had seen their ducal title transferred to the Poitevin lords of Aquitania Secunda—the dukes of Aquitaine with whom we have had to deal. But the Poitevin overlordship was never fully acknowledged by the house of Toulouse; and this latter in the course of the following century again rose to great importance and distinction, which reached its height in the person of Count Raymond IV., better known as Raymond of St. Gilles, from the name of the little county which had been his earliest possession. From that small centre his rule gradually spread over the whole territory of the ancient dukes of Septimania. In the year of the Norman conquest of England Rouergue, which was held by a younger branch of the house of Toulouse, lapsed to the elder line; in the year after the Conqueror’s death Raymond came into possession of Toulouse itself; in 1094 he became, in right of his wife, owner of half the Burgundian county of Provence. His territorial influence was doubled by that of his personal fame; he was one of the chief heroes of the first Crusade; and when he died in 1105 he left to his son Bertrand, over and above his Aquitanian heritage, the Syrian county of Tripoli. On Bertrand’s death in 1112 these possessions were divided, his son Pontius succeeding him as count of Tripoli, and surrendering his claims upon Toulouse to his uncle Alfonso Jordan, a younger son of Raymond of St. Gilles.[1448] Those claims, however, were disputed. Raymond’s elder brother, Count William IV., had left an only daughter who, after a childless marriage with King Sancho Ramirez of Aragon,[1449] became the wife of Count William VIII. of Poitou.[1450] From that time forth it became a moot point whether the lord of St. Gilles or the lord of Poitiers was the rightful count of Toulouse. Raymond unquestionably bore the title and exercised its functions for some six years before his brother’s death and his niece’s second marriage,[1451] and one historian asserts that he had acquired the county by purchase from his brother.[1452] Another story relates that William of Poitou having married the heiress of Toulouse after her father’s death,[1453] immediately entered upon her inheritance, but afterwards pledged it to Raymond in order to raise money for the Crusade.[1454] The reckless, spendthrift duke, whose whole energies were given up to verse-making, discreditable adventures, and either defying or eluding the ecclesiastical authorities who vainly strove to check the scandals of his life, never found means to redeem his pledge; neither did his son William IX.,[1455] although it appears that he did at some time or other contrive to obtain possession of Toulouse.[1456] On his death, however, it immediately passed back into the hands of Alfonso Jordan.

- [1448] On the counts of Toulouse and St. Gilles see Vic and Vaissète, Hist. du Languedoc (new ed., 1872), vol. iii.

- [1449] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 48 (Labbe, Nova Biblioth., vol. ii. p. 304).

- [1450] Ibid. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. This second marriage took place in 1094: MS. Chron. quoted by Besly, Comtes de Poitou, preuves, p. 408.

- [1451] Vic and Vaissète, Hist. du Languedoc, vol. iii. pp. 452, 453.

- [1452] Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iv. c. 388 (Hardy, p. 603).

- [1453] William IV. of Toulouse died in 1093. Vic and Vaissète, Hist. du Languedoc, vol. iii. p. 465.

- [1454] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 121, 122). It will be remembered that Duke William sought to pledge his own Poitou to the Red King for the same purpose.

- [1455] Will. Newb. as above (p. 122).

- [1456] Geoff. Vigeois, as above, describes Eleanor’s father as “Guillelmus dux Aquitaniæ filius Guillermi et filiæ comitis Tholosani, qui jure avi sui urbem Tholosanam possedit.” Besly (Comtes de Poitou, p. 132) has an account of the matter, but I cannot find his authorities.

With all these shiftings and changes of ownership the kings of France had never tried to interfere. Southern Gaul—“Aquitaine” in the wider sense—was a land whose internal concerns they found it wise to leave as far as possible untouched. It was, even yet, a land wholly distinct from the northern realm whose sovereign was its nominal overlord. The geographical barrier formed by the river Loire had indeed been long ago passed over, if not exactly by the French kings, at least by the Angevin counts. But a wider and deeper gulf than the blue stream of Loire stood fixed between France and Aquitaine. They were peopled by different races, they belonged to different worlds. There was little community of blood, there was less community of speech, thought and temper, of social habits or political traditions, between the Teutonized Celt of the north and the southern Celt who had been moulded by the influences of the Roman, the Goth and the Saracen. Steeped in memories of the Roman Empire in its palmiest days, and of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse which had inherited so large a share of its power, its culture and its glory, Aquitania had never amalgamated either with the Teutonic empire of the Karolings or with the French kingdom of their Parisian supplanters. Her princes were nominal feudataries of both; but, save in a few exceptional cases, the personal and political relations between the northern lord paramount and his southern vassals began and ended with the formal ceremonies of investiture and homage. In the struggle of Anjou and Blois for command over the policy of the Crown, in the struggle of the Crown itself to maintain its independence and to hold the balance between Anjou and Normandy, the Aquitanian princes took no part; the balance of powers in northern Gaul was nothing to them; neither party ever seriously attempted to enroll them as allies; both seem to have considered them, as they considered themselves, totally unconcerned in the matter. Whatever external connexions and alliances they cultivated were in quite another direction—in the Burgundian provinces which lay around the mouth of the Rhône and the western foot of the Alps, and on the debateable ground of the Spanish March, the county of Barcelona, which formed a link between Gascony and Aragon. The marriage of Louis and Eleanor, however, altered the political position of Aquitaine with respect not only to the French Crown but to the world at large. She was suddenly dragged out of her isolation and brought into contact with the general political system of northern Europe, somewhat as England had been by its association with Normandy. The union of the king and the duchess was indeed dissolved before its full consequences had time to work themselves out. Its first and most obvious result was a change in the attitude of the Crown towards the internal concerns of Aquitaine. Whether the count of Toulouse paid homage to the count of Poitou, or both alike paid it immediately to the Crown—whether Toulouse and Poitiers were in the same or in different hands—mattered little or nothing to the earlier kings whose practical power over either fief was all bound up in the mere formal grant of investiture. But to Eleanor’s husband such questions wore a very different aspect. To him who was in his own person duke of Aquitaine as well as its overlord, they were matters of direct personal concern; the interests of the house of Poitou were identified with those of the house of France. For his own sake and for the sake of his posterity which he naturally hoped would succeed him in both kingdom and duchy, it was of the utmost importance that Louis should strive to make good every jot and tittle of the Poitevin claims throughout southern Gaul.

Four years after his marriage, therefore, Louis summoned his host for an expedition against the count of Toulouse.[1457] It tells very strongly against the justice of the Poitevin claims in that quarter that one of his best advisers—Theobald of Blois—so greatly disapproved of the enterprize that he refused to take any part in it at all;[1458] and it may be that his refusal led to its abandonment, for we have no record of its issue, beyond the fact that Alfonso Jordan kept Toulouse for the rest of his life, and dying in 1148 was succeeded without disturbance by his son Raymond V.[1459] Four years later the duchy of Aquitaine passed with Eleanor’s hand from Louis VII. to Henry Fitz-Empress. Once again the king of France became its overlord and nothing more:—his chance of enforcing his supremacy fainter than ever, yet his need to enforce it greater than ever, since Aquitaine, far from sinking back into her old isolation, was now linked together with Anjou and Normandy in a chain which encircled his own royal domain as with a girdle of iron. In these circumstances the obvious policy of France and Toulouse was a mutual alliance which might enable them both to stand against the power of Henry. It was cemented in 1154 by the marriage of Raymond V. with Constance, widow of Eustace of Blois and sister of Louis VII.[1460] Four more years passed away; Henry’s energies were still tasked to the uttermost by more important work than the prosecution of a doubtful claim of his wife against the brother-in-law of her overlord and former husband. Whether the suggestion at last came from Eleanor herself, during the Christmas-tide of 1158, we cannot tell; we only know that early in 1159 Henry determined to undertake the recovery of Toulouse.

- [1457] At Midsummer 1141. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 923.

- [1458] Alterius Roberti App. ad Sigebertum, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii. p. 331.

- [1459] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

- [1460] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 122).

A summons to Raymond to give back the county to its heiress was of course met with a refusal.[1461] It was a mere formal preliminary, and so was also a conference between Henry and Louis at Tours, where they discussed the matter and failed to agree upon it,[1462] but parted, it seems, without coming to any actual breach; Henry indeed was evidently left under the impression that his undertaking would meet with no opposition on the part of France.[1463] Early in Lent he went to Poitiers and there held council with the barons of Aquitaine. The upshot of their deliberations was an order for his forces to meet him at Poitiers on Midsummer-day, ready to march against the count of Toulouse.[1464]

- [1461] Ib. (·/·Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 123).

- [1462] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 171).

- [1463] “Inde graves inimicitiæ inter ipsum” [sc. Ludovicum] “et regem Anglorum ortæ sunt, cum videret sibi regem Francorum nocere, de cujus auxilio plurimum confidebat” remarks Rob. Torigni on Louis’s arrival at Toulouse (a. 1159).

- [1464] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172).

A question now arose of what those forces were to consist. The feudal levies of Eleanor’s duchy might fairly be called upon to fight for the supposed rights of their mistress; those of Anjou and Maine might perhaps be expected to do as much for the aggrandizement of their count; but to demand the services of the Norman knighthood for an obscure dynastic quarrel in southern Gaul—still more, to drag the English tenants-in-chivalry across sea and land for such a purpose—would have been both unjust and impolitic, if not absolutely impracticable. On the other hand, the knights of Aquitaine were of all Henry’s feudal troops those on whom he could least depend; and they would be moreover, even with the addition of those whom he could muster in his paternal dominions, quite insufficient for an expedition which was certain to require a large and powerful host, and whose duration it was impossible to calculate. In these circumstances the expedient which had been tentatively and in part adopted three years before was repeated, and its application this time was sweeping and universal. The king gave out that in consideration of the length and hardship of the way which lay before him, and desiring to spare the country-knights, citizens and yeomen, he would receive instead of their personal services a certain sum to be levied as he saw fit upon every knight’s fee in Normandy and his other territories.[1465] This impost, which afterwards came to be known in English history as the “Great Scutage,” was, as regards England, the most important matter connected with the war of Toulouse. It marks a turning-point in the history of military tenure. It broke down the old exemption of “fiefs of the hauberk” from pecuniary taxation, in such a way as to make the encroachment upon their privilege assume the shape of a favour. To the bulk of the English knighthood the boon was a real one; military service beyond sea was a burthen from which they would be only too glad to purchase their release; the experiment, so far as it concerned them, succeeded perfectly, and made a precedent which was steadily followed in after-years. From that time forth the word “scutage” acquired its recognized meaning of a sum paid to the Crown in commutation of personal attendance in the host; and the specially cherished privilege of the tenants-in-chivalry came to be not as formerly exemption from money-payment on their demesne lands, but, by virtue of their payment, exemption from service beyond sea.

- [1465] “Rex igitur Henricus ... considerans longitudinem et difficultatem viæ, nolens vexare agrarios milites nec burgensium nec rusticorum multitudinem, sumptis LX. solidis Andegavensium in Normanniâ de feudo uniuscujusque loricæ et de reliquis omnibus tam in Normanniâ quam in Angliâ, sive etiam aliis terris suis, secundum hoc quod ei visum fuit,” etc. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

The sums thus raised in 1159 are however entered in the Pipe Roll of the year not as scutage but under the vaguer and more comprehensive title of donum. The reason doubtless is that they were assessed, as the historians tell us and as the roll itself shews, not only upon those estates from which services of the shield were explicitly due, but also upon all lands held in chief of the Crown, and all Church lands without distinction of tenure:[1466]—the basis of assessment in all cases being the knight’s fee, in its secondary sense of a parcel of land worth twenty pounds a year. Whatever the laity might think of this arrangement, the indignation of the clergy was bitter and deep. The wrong inflicted on them by the scutage of 1156 was as nothing compared with this, which set at naught all ancient precedents of ecclesiastical immunity, and actually wrung from the Church lands even more than from the lay fiefs.[1467] Their wrath however was not directed solely or even chiefly against the king. A large share of the blame was laid at the chancellor’s door; for the scheme had his active support, if it was not actually of his contriving. Its effects on English constitutional developement were for later generations to trace; the men of the time saw, or thought they saw, its disastrous consequences in the after-lives of its originators. In the hour of Thomas’s agony Gilbert Foliot raked up as one of the heaviest charges against him the story of the “sword which his hand had plunged into the bosom of his mother the Church, when he spoiled her of so many thousand marks for the army of Toulouse”;[1468] and his own best and wisest friend, John of Salisbury, who had excused the scutage of 1156, sorrowfully avowed his belief that the scutage of 1159 was the beginning of all Henry’s misdoings against the Church, and that the chancellor’s share in it was the fatal sin which the primate had to expiate so bitterly.[1469]

- [1466] “Secundum ejus scutagium assisum pro eodem exercitu Walliæ” [this writer assigns a like object to the scutage of 1156, but in both cases he is contradicted by chronology and contemporary evidence] “reperies in rotulo anni quinti regis ejusdem inferius. Fuitque assisum ad duas marcas pro quolibet feodo, non solum super prælatos, verum tam super ipsos quam super milites suos, secundum numerum feodorum, qui tenuerunt de rege in capite; necnon et super residuos milites singulorum comitatuum in communi.” [Cf. Rob. Torigni as quoted above, p. 459, note 2.] “Intitulaturque illud scutagium, De Dono. Eâ quidem, ut credo, ratione, quod non solum prælati qui tenentur ad servicia militaria sed etiam alii, abbates utpote de Bello et de Salopesbirie et alii, tunc temporis dederunt auxilium.” Alex. Swereford (Liber Ruber Scacc.) quoted in Madox, Hist. Exchequer, vol. i. p. 626. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, calls it a scutage: “Scotagium sive scuagium de Angliâ accepit.” The references to it are in almost every page of the Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.); the most important are collected by Madox, Hist. Exch., vol. i. pp. 626, 627. There are also a few notices in the next year; Pipe Roll 6 Hen. II. (Pipe Roll Soc.), pp. 3, 6, 24, 29, 30, 32, 51. There are a few entries of “scutage” by that name—from the abbot of Westminster (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., pp. 6, 24, 27; 6 Hen. II., pp. 11, 24, 28), the bishop of Worcester (5 Hen. II., p. 24), William of Cardiff (ibid.), the abbot of Evesham (ib. p. 25), and the earl of Warwick (ib. p. 26). Some of these pay “donum” as well. In reference to this matter some of the Northumbrian tenants-in-chivalry are designated by a title which is somewhat startling in the middle of the twelfth century: the sheriff of Northumberland renders an account “de dono militum et tainorum” (Pipe Roll 5 Hen. II., p. 14). What was the distinction between them?

The sum charged on the knight’s fee in Normandy was sixty shillings Angevin;[1470] in England it seems to have been two marks.[1471] The proceeds, with those of a similar tax levied upon Henry’s other dominions,[1472] amounted to some hundred and eighty thousand pounds,[1473] with which he hired an immense force of mercenaries.[1474] But his host did not consist of these alone. The great barons of Normandy and England, no less than those of Anjou, Aquitaine and Gascony, were eager to display their prowess under the leadership of such a mighty king. The muster at Poitiers was a brilliant gathering of Henry’s court, headed by the chancellor with a picked band of seven hundred knights of his own personal following,[1475] and by the first vassal of the English Crown, King Malcolm of Scotland,[1476] who came, it seems, to win the spurs which his cousin had refused to grant him twelve months ago, when they met at Carlisle just before Henry left England in June 1158.[1477] The other vassal state was represented by an unnamed Welsh prince;[1478] and the host was further reinforced by several important allies. One of these was Raymond Trencavel, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, a baron whom the count of Toulouse had despoiled, and who gladly seized the opportunity of vengeance.[1479] Another was William of Montpellier.[1480] The most valuable of all was the count of Barcelona, a potentate who ranked on an equality with kings.[1481] His county of Barcelona was simply the province which in Karolingian times had been known as the Spanish March—a strip of land with the Pyrenees for its backbone, which lay between Toulouse, Aragon, Gascony and the Mediterranean sea. It was a fief of the West-Frankish realm; but the facilities which every marchland in some degree possesses for attaching itself to whichever neighbour it may prefer, and so holding the balance between them as to keep itself virtually independent of them all, were specially great in the case of the Spanish March, whose rulers, as masters of the eastern passes of the Pyrenees, held the keys of both Gaul and Spain. During the last half-century they had, like the lords of another marchland, enormously strengthened their position by three politic marriages. Dulcia of Gévaudan, the wife of Raymond-Berengar III. of Barcelona, was heiress not only to her father’s county of Gévaudan, but also, through her mother, to the southern half of Provence, whose northern half fell to the share of Raymond of St.-Gilles. Her dower-lands were settled upon her younger son. He, in his turn, married an heiress, Beatrice of Melgueil, whose county lay between Gévaudan and the sea; and the dominions of the house of St.-Gilles were thus completely cut in twain, and their eastern half surrounded on two sides, by the territories of his son, the present count of Provence, Gévaudan and Melgueil.[1482] The elder son of Dulcia, having succeeded his father as Count Raymond-Berengar IV. of Barcelona, was chosen by the nobles of Aragon to wed their youthful queen Petronilla, the only child of King Ramirez the Monk. He had thus all the power of Aragon at his command, although, clinging with a generous pride to the old title which had come down to him from his fathers, he refused to share his wife’s crown, declaring that the count of Barcelona had no equal in his own degree, and that he would rather be first among counts than last among kings.[1483] A man with such a spirit, added to such territorial advantages, was an ally to be eagerly sought after and carefully secured. Henry therefore invited him to a meeting at Blaye in Gascony, and secured his co-operation against Toulouse on the understanding that the infant daughter of Raymond and Petronilla should in due time be married to Henry’s son Richard, and that the duchy of Aquitaine should then be ceded to the young couple.[1484]

[1467] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 223; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. cxciv., p. 378).

[1468] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxciv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 269; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ccxxv., p. 525).

[1469] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 223, 224).

[1470] See above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

[1471] So says Alex. Swereford. See above, p. 460 note{1466}.

[1472] “De aliis vero terris sibi subjectis inauditam similiter censûs fecit exactionem.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167. Cf. above, p. 459, note 2{1465}.

[1473] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167. He makes this to be the proceeds of the scutage in England alone, but see Bishop Stubbs’s explanation, Constit. Hist., vol. i. p. 457, note 4, and his remarks in the preface to Gesta Hen. Reg. (“Benedict of Peterborough”), vol. ii. pp. xciv–xcvi.

[1474] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1475] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 33.

[1476] Gerv. Cant. as above. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1477] Chron. Mailros, a. 1158.

[1478] “Quidam rex Gualiæ.” Gerv. Cant. as above.

[1479] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125). He miscalls him William Trencavel.

[1480] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1481] “Vir magnus et potens, nec infra reges consistens.” Will. Newb. as above (p. 123).

[1482] On these marriages, etc., see Vic and Vaissète, Hist. du Languedoc, vol. iii.

[1483] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 123–125). Raymond’s speech, and the whole story of Raymond, Ramirez and Petronilla, as given in this chapter, form a charming romance, whose main facts are fully borne out by the more prosaic version of Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1484] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

A last attempt to avert the coming struggle was made early in June; the two kings met near the Norman border, but again without any result.[1485] Immediately after midsummer, therefore, Henry and his host set out from Poitiers and marched down to Périgueux. There, in “the Bishop’s Meadow,” Henry knighted his Scottish cousin, and Malcolm in his turn bestowed the same honour upon thirty noble youths of his suite.[1486] The expedition then advanced straight into the enemy’s country. The first place taken was Cahors; its dependent territory was speedily overrun;[1487] and while in the south Raymond Trencavel was winning back the castles of which the other Raymond had despoiled him, Henry led his main force towards the city of Toulouse itself.[1488] Count and people saw the net closing round them; they had seen it drawing near for months past, and one and all—bishop, nobles and citizens—had been writing passionate appeals to the king of France, imploring him, if not for the love of his sister, at least for the honour of his crown, to come and save one of its fairest jewels from the greedy grasp of the Angevin.[1489] Louis wavered till it was all but too late; he was evidently, and naturally, most unwilling to quarrel with the king of England. He began to move southward, but apparently without any definite aim; and it was not till after another fruitless conference with Henry in the beginning of July[1490] that he at last, for very shame, answered his brother-in-law’s appeal by throwing himself into Toulouse almost alone, as if to encourage its defenders by his presence, but without giving them any substantial aid.[1491] Perhaps he foresaw the result. Henry, on the point of laying siege to the city, paused when he heard that his overlord was within it. Dread of Louis’s military capacity he could have none; personal reverence for him he could have just as little. But he reverenced in a fellow-king the dignity of kingship; he reverenced in his own overlord the right to that feudal obedience which he exacted from his own vassals. He took counsel with his barons; they agreed with him that the siege should be postponed till Louis was out of the city—a decision which was equivalent to giving it up altogether.[1492] The soldiers grumbled loudly, and the chancellor loudest of all. Thomas had now completely “put off the deacon,” and flung himself with all his might into the pursuit of arms. His knights were the flower of the host, foremost in every fight, the bravest of the brave; and the life and soul of all their valour was the chancellor himself.[1493] The prospect of retreat filled him with dismay. He protested that Louis had forfeited his claim to Henry’s obedience by breaking his compact with him and joining his enemies, and he entreated his master to seize the opportunity of capturing Toulouse, city, count, king and all, before reinforcements could arrive.[1494] Henry however turned a deaf ear to his impetuous friend. Accompanied by the king of Scots and all his host, he retreated towards his own dominions just as a body of French troops were entering Toulouse.[1495]

[1485] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 172).

[1486] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, Nova Biblioth., vol. ii. p. 310). The Chron. Mailros, a. 1159, says Malcolm was knighted at Tours on the way back from Toulouse; Geoff. Vigeois implies that it was on the way out.

[1487] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 34. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159. Cf. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 126), who however has got the sequence of events wrong.

[1488] Will. Newb. as above.

[1489] Letters of Peter archbishop of Narbonne:—Hermengard viscountess of Narbonne:—“commune consilium urbis Tolosæ et suburbii”— Epp. xxxiii., xxxiv., ccccxiv., Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. pp. 574, 575, 713. The archbishop curiously describes the threatening invader as “Dux Normanniæ.” The citizens make a pitiful appeal; the viscountess makes a spirited one, and wishes the king “Karoli regis magnanimitatem.”

[1490] Contin. Becc. a. 1159 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. pp. 173, 174).

[1491] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 33. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125).

[1492] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 33, Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, Nova Biblioth., vol. ii. p. 310), Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 125), the Draco Norm., l. i. c. 12, vv. 437–464 (ib. vol. ii. pp. 608, 609), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303, attribute the retreat to Henry’s reverence for his overlord; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, seems to look upon it as a measure of necessity; but considering that Louis had brought almost nothing but himself to Raymond’s aid, one does not see what necessity there could be in the case. The Draco alone mentions Henry’s consultation with the barons—unless there is some allusion to it in the words of Will. Fitz-Steph., who describes Henry as “vanâ superstitione et reverentiâ tentus consilio aliorum.”

[1493] The English archdeacon’s unclerical doings in this war were however quite eclipsed by those of the archbishop of Bordeaux. See a letter from the citizens of Toulouse to King Louis; Ep. ccccxxv., Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 718.

[1494] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 34.

[1495] Ibid.

He had, however, conquered the greater part of the county,[1496] and had no intention of abandoning his conquests; but the task of protecting them against Raymond and Louis together, without the support of Henry’s own presence, was a responsibility which all his great barons declined. Two faithful ministers accepted the duty: Thomas the chancellor and Henry of Essex the constable.[1497] Thomas fixed his head-quarters at Cahors;[1498] thence, with the constable’s aid, he undertook to hold the country by means of his own personal followers,[1499] backed by Raymond of Barcelona, Trencavel, and William of Montpellier.[1500] He ruled with a high hand, putting down by proscription and even with the sword every attempt at a rising against Henry’s authority storming towns and burning manors without mercy in his master’s service;[1501] in helm and hauberk he rode forth at the head of his troops to the capture of three castles which had hitherto been considered impregnable.[1502] Henry’s “superstition” (as it was called by a follower of Thomas)[1503] about bearing arms against his overlord applied only to a personal encounter in circumstances of special delicacy; he had no scruples in making war upon Louis indirectly, as he had done more than once before, and was now doing not only through Thomas but also at the opposite end of France. The English and Scottish kings had retired from Toulouse to Limoges, where they arrived about Michaelmas.[1504] Meanwhile Count Theobald of Blois, now an ally of Henry, was despatched by him “to disquiet the realm of France”—that is, doubtless, to make a diversion which should draw off the attention of the French from Toulouse and leave a clear field to the operations of Thomas. The French king’s brothers, Henry, bishop of Beauvais, and Robert, count of Dreux, retaliated by attacking the Norman frontier with fire and sword.[1505] Thomas, having chased away the enemies across the Garonne and secured the obedience of the conquered territory, hurried northward to join his sovereign, whom he apparently followed into Normandy. There he undertook the defence of the frontier. Besides his seven hundred picked knights, he maintained at his own cost for the space of forty days twelve hundred paid horsemen and four thousand foot in his master’s service against the king of France on the marches between Gisors, Trie and Courcelles; he not only headed his troops in person, but also met in single combat a valiant French knight of Trie, Engelram by name; and the layman went down before the lance of the warlike archdeacon, who carried off his opponent’s destrier as the trophy of his victory.[1506] The king himself marched into the Beauvaisis, stormed Gerberoi, and harried the surrounding country till he gained a valuable assistant in Count Simon of Montfort, who surrendered to him all his French possessions, including the castles of Montfort, Rochefort and Epernon. As these places lay directly in the way from Paris to Etampes and Orléans, Louis found himself completely cut off from the southern part of his domain, and was compelled to ask for a truce. It was made in December, to last till the octave of Pentecost.[1507] Henry’s wife had now joined him; they kept Christmas together at Falaise,[1508] and Henry used the interval of tranquillity to make some reforms in the Norman judicature.[1509] When the truce expired the two kings made a treaty of peace,[1510] negotiated as usual by the indefatigable chancellor;[1511] the betrothal of little Henry and Margaret was confirmed, and the Vexin was settled upon the infant couple. As for the Aquitanian quarrel, Louis formally restored to Henry all the rights and holdings of the count of Poitou, except Toulouse itself; Henry and Raymond making a truce for a year, during which both were to keep their present possessions, and complete freedom of action was left to their respective allies.[1512]

[1496] Ibid.·/·Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 34. Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1497] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 34.

[1498] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1499] Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

[1500] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1501] E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 365. Herb. Bosh. (ib. vol. iii.), pp. 175, 176.

[1502] Will. Fitz-Steph. (ibid.), p. 34.

[1503] Ib. p. 33. See above, p. 465, note 1{1485}.

[1504] Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 58 (Labbe, Nova Biblioth., vol. ii. p. 310).

[1505] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1506] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), pp. 34, 35.

[1507] Rob. Torigni, a. 1159.

[1508] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1509] Contin. Becc. a. 1160 (Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. ii. p. 180).

[1510] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

[1511] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

[1512] The treaty is printed in Lyttelton’s Hen. II., vol. iv. pp. 173, 174. It has no date; we have to get that from Rob. Torigni—May 1160. The terms of the treaty are summarized by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218, who places it a year too late. He also introduces a second betrothal, between Richard and Adela, the second daughter of Louis and Constance. But the treaty printed by Lyttelton says nothing of this; and if it be the treaty mentioned by Rob. Torigni the clause is impossible, for Adela was not born till the autumn of 1160.

This imperfect settlement, as far as Toulouse was concerned, advanced no further towards completion during the next thirteen years. Henry’s expedition could hardly be called a success; and whatever advantage he had gained over Raymond was dearly purchased at the cost of a quarrel with Louis. There can be little doubt that Henry had fallen into a trap; Louis had misled him into lighting the torch of war, and then turned against him in such a way as to cast upon him the blame of the subsequent conflagration. The elements of strife between the two kings could hardly have failed to burst sooner or later into a blaze; the question was whose hand should kindle it. In spite of Henry’s Angevin wariness, Louis had contrived to shift upon him the fatal responsibility; and for the rest of his life the fire went smouldering on, breaking out at intervals in various directions, smothered now and then for a moment, but never thoroughly quenched; consuming the plans and hopes of its involuntary originator, while the real incendiary sheltered himself to the last behind his mask of injured innocence.

For six months all was quiet. In October the two kings held another meeting; the treaty was ratified, and little Henry, who had lately come over from England with his mother, was made to do homage to Louis for the duchy of Normandy.[1513] About the same time the queen of France died, leaving to her husband another infant daughter.[1514] Disappointed for the fourth time in his hopes of a son, Louis in his impatience set decency at defiance; before Constance had been a fortnight in her grave he married a third wife, Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald the Great, and sister of the two young counts who were betrothed to the king’s own elder daughters.[1515] His subjects, sharing his anxiety for an heir, easily forgave his unseemly haste and welcomed the new queen, who in birth, mind and person was all that could be desired.[1516] It would, however, have been scarcely possible to find a choice more irritating to Henry of Anjou. On either side of the sea, the house of Blois seemed to be always in some way or other crossing his path; in their lives or in their deaths, they were perpetually giving him trouble. At that very time the death of Stephen’s last surviving son, Earl William of Warren,[1517] had led to a quarrel between the king and his dearest friend. William was childless, and the sole heir to his county of Boulogne was his sister Mary, abbess of Romsey. This lady was now brought out of her convent to be married by Papal dispensation to Matthew, second son of the count of Flanders.[1518] The scheme, devised by King Henry,[1519] was strongly opposed by the bridegroom’s father,[1520] and also by Henry’s own chancellor. Thomas, somewhat unexpectedly perhaps, started up as a vindicator of monastic discipline, remonstrated vehemently against the marriage of a nun, and used all his influence at Rome to hinder the dispensation; he gained, however, nothing save the enmity of Matthew, and a foretaste of that kingly wrath[1521] which was to burst upon him with all its fury three years later. Even without allowing for Henry’s probable frame of mind in consequence of this affair, the French king’s triple alliance with the hereditary rivals of the Angevin house would naturally appear to him in the light of a provocation and a menace. The chancellor seems to have made his peace by suggesting an answer to it.

- [1513] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

- [1514] Ibid. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. Hist. Ludov. (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv.), p. 415. Constance died on October 4; Lamb. Waterloo, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii. p. 517.

- [1515] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 303. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 167, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Adela was crowned at Paris with her husband on S. Brice’s day (November 13); Hist. Ludov. (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv.), p. 416.

- [1516] Hist. Ludov. as above.

- [1517] He died in October 1159, on the way home from Toulouse; Rob. Torigni, ad ann.

- [1518] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160. Lamb. Waterloo (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii.), p. 517. According to Matthew Paris, Hist. Angl. (Madden), vol. i. p. 314, the marriage took place in 1161.

- [1519] Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 328.

- [1520] Lamb. Waterloo as above.

- [1521] Herb. Bosh. as above. Mat. Paris, Hist. Angl. (Madden), vol. i. pp. 314, 315.

One of Henry’s great desires was to recover the Vexin, which at his father’s suggestion he had ceded to Louis in 1151 as the price of the investiture of Normandy. By the last treaty between the two kings it had been settled that this territory should form the dowry of little Margaret; her father was to retain possession of it, and to place its chief fortresses in the custody of the Knights Templars, for the next three years, until she should be wedded to young Henry with the consent of Holy Church; whenever that should take place, Henry’s father was to receive back the Vexin. In other words, the dowry was not to be paid till the bride was married; and there was evidently a tacit understanding, at any rate on the French side, that this was not to be for three years at least.[1522] Later in the summer two cardinal-legates visited France and Normandy on business connected with a recent Papal election.[1523] Henry, apparently at the instigation of Thomas,[1524] persuaded them to solemnize the marriage of the two children on November 2 at Neubourg.[1525] The written conditions of the treaty were fulfilled to the letter—the babes were wedded with the consent of Holy Church, represented by the Pope’s own legates; and the castles of the Vexin were at once made over to Henry by the Templars,[1526] three of whom were present at the wedding.[1527] Louis found himself thoroughly outwitted. His first step was to banish the three Templars, who were cordially received by Henry;[1528] his next was to concert with the brothers of his new queen a plan of retaliation in Anjou. The house of Blois naturally resented a curtailment of the possessions of the crown which they now hoped one day to see worn by a prince of their own blood. Louis and Theobald accordingly set to work to fortify Chaumont, a castle which Gelduin of Saumur had long ago planted on the bank of the Loire as a special thorn in the side of the Angevin counts. Henry flew to the spot, put king and count to flight, besieged and took the castle of Chaumont together with thirty-five picked knights and eighty men-at-arms whom Theobald had sent to reinforce its garrison; he then fortified Fréteval and Amboise, and, secure from all further molestation, went to keep Christmas with Eleanor in his native city of Le Mans.[1529]

- [1522] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159), distinctly states that the children were not to be married till they were of a fit age; and such was no doubt the intention of Louis; but it was by no means expressed in the treaty:—“Totum remanens Wilcassini” [i.e. all except three of its fiefs which were specially reserved to Henry] “regi Francie; hoc modo, quod ipse illud remanens dedit et concessit maritagium cum filiâ suâ filio regis Anglie habendum. Et eum unde seisiendum ab Assumptione B. Marie proximâ post pacem factam in tres annos, et si infra hunc terminum filia regis Francie filio regis Anglie desponsata fuerit, assensu et consensu Sancte Ecclesie, tunc erit rex Anglie seysitus de toto Wilcassino, et de castellis Wilcassini, ad opus filii sui.” Treaty in Lyttelton, Hen. II., vol. iv. p. 173. The question turned on the construing of “tunc.” Louis intended it to mean “then, when the three years are expired, if the children shall be wedded”; Henry and his friends the Templars made it mean “then, when the children are wedded, whether the three years are expired or not.”

- [1523] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 197). Of their business we shall see more later.

- [1524] This must surely be the meaning of Herb. Bosh. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 175: “Quam industrie munitiones quinque munitissimas, in Franciæ et Normanniæ sitas confinio, domino suo regi, ad cujus tamen jus ab antiquo spectare dignoscebantur, a rege Francorum per matrimonium, sine ferro, sine gladio, absque lanceâ, absque pugnâ, in omni regum dilectione et pace revocaverit, Gizortium scilicet, castrum munitissimum, et alia quatuor.” Cf. Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 57, which seems however to refer rather to the drawing-up of the treaty.

- [1525] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304. Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 168, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 218, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

- [1526] Rog. Howden and Rob. Torigni, as above. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 24 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 159).

- [1527] Roger of Pirou, Tostig of S. Omer and Richard of Hastings; Rog. Howden as above.

- [1528] Ibid.

- [1529] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

A year of peace followed: Henry spent the greater part of it in Normandy, garrisoning the castles of the duchy, strengthening its newly-recovered border-fortresses, providing for the restoration of the old royal strongholds and the erection of new ones in all parts of his dominions, and superintending the repair of his palace at Rouen, the making of a park at Quévilly, and the foundation of an hospital for lepers at Caen.[1530] The chancellor was still at his side, and had lately, as a crowning mark of his confidence, been intrusted with the entire charge of his eldest son. Thomas received the child into his own household, to educate him with the other boys of noble birth who came to learn courtly manners and knightly prowess in that excellent school; he playfully called him his adoptive son, and treated him as such in every respect.[1531] Little Henry was now in his seventh year, and his father was already anxious to secure his succession to the throne. The conditional homage which he had received as an infant was, as Henry knew by personal experience, a very insufficient security. Indeed, the results of every attempt to regulate the descent of the crown since the Norman conquest tended to prove that the succession of the heir could be really secured by nothing short of his actual recognition and coronation as king during his father’s life-time. This was now becoming an established practice in France and Germany. In England, where the older constitutional theory of national election to the throne had never died out, such a step had never been attempted but once; and that attempt, made by Stephen in behalf of his son Eustace, had ended in signal failure. Discouraging as the precedent was, however, Henry had made up his mind to follow it; and in the spring of 1162 he sent his boy over sea and called upon the barons of England to do him homage and fealty, as a preliminary to his coronation as king.[1532]

- [1530] Ibid.·/·Rob. Torigni, a. 1161.

- [1531] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 22. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), pp. 176, 177.

- [1532] E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 366. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 13.

A matter so important and so delicate could be intrusted to no one but the chancellor. He managed it, like everything else that he took in hand, with a calm facility which astonished every one. He brought the child to England, presented him to the bishops and barons of the realm in a great council summoned for the purpose,[1533] knelt at his feet and swore to be his faithful subject in all things, reserving only the fealty due to the elder king so long as he lived and reigned;[1534] the whole assembly followed his example, and thus a measure which it was believed that Henry’s personal presence would hardly have availed to carry through without disturbance was accomplished at once and without a word of protest,[1535] save from the little king himself, who with childish imperiousness, it is said, refused to admit any reservation in the oath of his adoptive father.[1536] Henry probably intended that the boy’s recognition as heir to the crown should be speedily followed by his coronation.[1537] This, however, was a rite which could only be performed by the primate of all England; and the chair of S. Augustine was vacant. Once again it was to Thomas that Henry looked for aid; but this time he looked in vain. Thomas had done his last act in the service of his royal friend. The year which had passed away since Archbishop Theobald’s death had been, on both sides of the sea, a year of almost ominous tranquillity. It was in truth the forerunner of a storm which was to shatter Henry’s peace and to cost Thomas his life.

- [1533] Anon. I. as above·/·(Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 13. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 306.

- [1534] R. Diceto as above.

- [1535] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 13.

- [1536] Mat. Paris, Hist. Angl. (Madden), vol. i. p. 316.

- [1537] Such an intention is distinctly stated by E. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 366: ... “filio suo, jam tunc coronando in regem.”

CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD.
1156–1161.

All Henry’s endeavours for the material and political revival of his kingdom had been regulated thus far by one simple, definite principle:—the restoration of the state of things which had existed under his grandfather. In his own eyes and in those of his subjects the duty which lay before him at his accession, and which he had faithfully and successfully fulfilled, was to take up the work of government and administration not at the point where he found it, but at the point where it had been left by Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury: to pull down and sweep away all the innovations and irregularities with which their work had been overlaid during the last nineteen years, and bring the old foundations to light once more, that they might receive a legitimate superstructure planned upon their own lines and built upon their own principles. In law, in finance, in general administration, there was one universal standard of reference:—“the time of my grandfather King Henry.”

But there was one side of the national revival, and that the most important of all, to which this standard could not apply. The religious and intellectual movement which had begun under Henry I., far from coming to a standstill at his death, had gone on gathering energy and strength during the years of anarchy till it had become the one truly living power in the land, the power which in the end placed Henry II. on his throne. It looked to find in him a friend, a fellow-worker, a protector perhaps; but it had no need to go back to a stage which it had long since overpassed and make a new departure thence under the guidance of a king who was almost its own creation. At the very moment of Henry’s accession, the hopes of the English Church were raised to their highest pitch by the elevation of an Englishman to the Papal chair. Nicolas Breakspear was the only man of English birth who ever attained that lofty seat; and the adventures which brought him thither, so far as they can be made out from two somewhat contradictory accounts, form a romantic chapter in the clerical history of the time. Nicolas was the son of a poor English clerk[1538] at Langley, a little township belonging to the abbey of S. Alban’s.[1539] The father retired into the abbey,[1540] leaving his boy, according to one version of the story, too poor to go to school and too young and ignorant to earn his bread; he therefore came every day to get a dole at the abbey-gate, till his father grew ashamed and bade him come no more; whereupon the lad, “blushing either to dig or to beg in his own country,” made his way across the sea.[1541] Another version asserts that Nicolas, being “a youth of graceful appearance, but somewhat lacking in clerkly acquirements,” sued to the abbot of S. Alban’s for admission as a monk; the abbot examined him, found him insufficiently instructed, and dismissed him with a gentle admonition: “Wait awhile, my son, and go to school that you may become better fitted for the cloister.”[1542] Whether stung by the abbot’s hint or by his father’s reproofs, young Nicolas found his way to Paris and into its schools, where he worked so hard that he out-did all his fellow-students.[1543] But the life there wearied him as it had wearied Thomas Becket; he rambled on across Gaul into Provence, and there found hospitality in the Austin priory of S. Rufus. His graceful figure, pleasant face, sensible talk and obliging temper so charmed the brotherhood that they grew eager to keep him in their midst,[1544] and on their persuasion he joined the order.[1545] It seems that he was even made superior of the house, but the canons afterwards regretted having set a stranger to rule over them, and after persecuting him in various ways appealed to the Pope to get rid of him. The Pope—Eugene III.—at first refused to hear them; but on second consideration he decided to give them over to their own evil devices and offer their rejected superior a more agreeable post in his own court.[1546] Nicolas, who had already twice visited Rome, proceeded thither a third time and was made cardinal[1547] and bishop of Albano.[1548] Shortly afterwards he was appointed legate to Norway and Denmark, an office which he filled with prudence and energy during some years.[1549] Returning to Rome about 1150, he apparently acted as secretary to Eugene III. until the latter’s death in July 1153.[1550] The next Pope, Anastasius III., reigned only sixteen months, and dying on December 2, 1154, was succeeded by the bishop of Albano, who took the name of Adrian IV.[1551]

[1538] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 109).

[1539] Gesta Abbat. S. Albani (Riley), vol. i. p. 112.

[1540] Will. Newb. as above. Probably he separated from his wife in consequence of some of the decrees against clerical marriage passed under Henry I.; that she was not dead is plain from John of Salisbury’s mention of her as still living in the days of his friendship with Nicolas. Joh. Salisb., Metalog., l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 205).

[1541] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 109, 110).

[1542] Gesta Abbat. as above. The abbot’s name is there given as Robert, but this must be wrong, as Robert did not become abbot till 1151, and by 1150, as we shall see, Nicolas was at Rome.

[1543] Gesta Abbat. (as above), pp. 112, 113.

[1544] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 6 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 110).

[1545] Ibid. Gesta Abbat. (Riley), vol. i. p. 113.

[1546] Will. Newb. as above (pp. 110, 111). The church of S. Rufus (diocese Valence) had between 1145 and 1151 an abbot named N.... The editors of Gall. Christ. (vol. xvi. cols. 359, 360) will not allow that this N. was Nicolas Breakspear, and of course the date will not agree with the version of his history in the Gesta Abbat.; but it agrees perfectly with that of Will. Newb.; while the Gesta’s dates are confuted by Nicolas’s undoubted signatures at Rome.

[1547] Gesta Abbat. as above.

[1548] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

[1549] Will. Newb. as above.

[1550] “A partir de l’année 1150, on trouve la souscription de Nicolaus episcopus Albanensis au bas des bulles d’Eugène III.” Delisle, Rob. Torigni, vol. i. p. 288, note 2.

[1551] Will. Newb. as above (p. 111). Date from Cod. Vatic., Baronius, Annales (Pagi), vol. xix. p. 77.

The English Church naturally hailed with delight the accession of a pontiff who was at once one of her own sons and a disciple of Eugene, whom the leaders of the intellectual and spiritual revival in England had come to regard almost as their patron saint.[1552] Adrian indeed shared all their highest and most cherished aspirations far more deeply and intimately than Eugene himself could have done. It was in the cloisters of Canterbury that these aspirations were gradually taking definite shape under the guidance of Archbishop Theobald. There, beneath the shadow of the cathedral begun by Lanfranc and completed by S. Anselm, their worthy successor had been throughout the last ten or twelve years of the anarchy watching over a little sanctuary where all that was noblest, highest, most full of hope and promise in the dawning intellectual life of the day found a peaceful shelter and a congenial home. The Curia Theobaldi, the household of Archbishop Theobald, was a sort of little school of the prophets, a seminary into which the vigilant primate drew the choicest spirits among the rising generation, to be trained up under his own eyes in his own modes of thought and views of life, till they were fitted to become first the sharers and then the continuators of his work for the English Church and the English nation. Through his scholars had come the revival of legal and ecclesiastical learning in England; through them had come the renewal of intercourse and sympathy with the sister-Churches of the west; through them had been conducted the negotiations with Rome which had led to the restoration of order and peace; and in them, as Theobald hoped, the Church, having saved the state, would find her most fitting instruments for the work of reform and revival which still remained to be done within her own borders. One by one, as the occasion presented itself, he began to send them forth to take independent positions in the Church or in the world. Of the chosen three whom he specially trusted, the first who thus left his side was John of Canterbury, who in 1153 succeeded Hugh of Puiset as treasurer of York. Next year Theobald was able to place another of his disciples in the northern metropolis in a far more important capacity: he succeeded in obtaining the royal assent to the appointment of Roger of Pont-l’Evêque as archbishop of York, in succession to S. William, who had been restored by Pope Anastasius after Henry Murdac’s death, but died six weeks after his restoration.[1553]

- [1552] John of Salisbury frequently writes of him as “Sanctus Eugenius.”

- [1553] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 298, 299. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158. Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 26 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 80, 82). Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), pp. 10, 11.

Roger’s history before his entrance into the primate’s household is so completely lost that even the rendering of his surname is a matter of some doubt; it may have been derived from the English town of Bishopsbridge, and if so Roger was now going back as primate to his own native shire; it seems however more probable that he came from Pont-l’Evêque in Normandy.[1554] He was evidently some years older than Theobald’s other favourites, John of Canterbury and Thomas of London; for we find him and Gilbert Foliot quarrelling, apologizing, lecturing and forgiving each other with an outspoken freedom and familiarity possible only between two men of equal standing who have been friends from their youth.[1555] With Thomas Becket, on the other hand, Roger was never upon really friendly terms; jealous, no doubt, of the younger man who seemed likely to supersede him in the primate’s confidence, Roger lost no opportunity of teasing the “hatchet-clerk” (as he called Thomas, from the nickname of the man who had first introduced him to Theobald), and made his life so wretched that he was twice driven to quit the archbishop’s house and take refuge with Theobald’s brother, Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury, till the latter smoothed the way for his return.[1556] On Walter’s elevation to the see of Rochester in 1148 his archdeaconry was given to Roger;[1557] he also held some other preferments, all of which he was at one time in great danger of losing—most likely on account of his share in the famous “swimming-voyage” to Reims; but his friend Gilbert Foliot secured him the protection of the Pope;[1558] and the restoration of the archbishop would naturally involve that of the archdeacon. After six years’ tenure of his office at Canterbury Roger was called to go up higher. Theobald had more than one reason for desiring his archdeacon’s elevation. He wished it for Roger’s own sake; he wished it still more for the sake of his younger favourite, whom he longed to establish in a position of dignity and importance, yet close to his own side; above all, he wished it for the sake of the Church;[1559] for he naturally hoped that in leaving one of his own foremost disciples seated on the metropolitan chair of York, he would be leaving at least one prelate of the highest rank firmly pledged to those schemes of ecclesiastical policy and organization which he himself had most at heart. His confidence in Roger was over-great. After all the disputes about the canonical relations between Canterbury and York which had wasted the energies of Lanfranc and embittered the last days of S. Anselm, Theobald missed his opportunity of securing at last a full acknowledgement of Canterbury’s superior rights, and was rash enough to consecrate Roger without requiring from him a profession of obedience.[1560] The large-hearted primate evidently never dreamed that any question of obedience could arise between himself and one of his spiritual sons, or that Roger’s loyalty to him could fail to be extended to his successor. He never discovered his mistake; it was Roger’s old rival, and with him the English Church, who ultimately had to bear its unhappy consequences.

- [1554] There is a bit of evidence on this side in Thomas Saga (Magnusson), vol. i. p. 40, where the writer calls him “Rogerum Nevstriensem.”

- [1555] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. cix.–cxi. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 135–145). This was after Roger became archbishop; the quarrel went so far that Roger appealed to Rome about it, and carried his appeal in person. (What can be the date of this?) Gilbert owns that he had let his sharp tongue run away with him; Roger lectures him soundly, but ends with “ecce jam in occursum vestrum vetus festinat amicus,” and a proposal to kill the fatted calf in celebration of his repentance (Ep. cx. p. 141).

- [1556] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 16. Cf. Anon I. (ib. vol. iv.), pp. 9, 10; E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 362; and Gamier (Hippeau), p. 10.

- [1557] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 133.

- [1558] “Clericus ... dilecti filii vestri domini Cantuariensis archiepiscopi Magister R. de Ponte Episcopi vestrum adit urgente necessitate præsidium ut ad tuenda ea quæ canonice possidet a vestrâ imploret serenitate patrocinium.” Gilb. Foliot, Ep. xvii (Giles, vol. i. p. 30). The salutation of the letter runs “Summo Dei gratiâ Pontifici E., frater G. Glocestriæ dictus abbas”; it looks very much as if written in the interval between the council of Reims and Gilbert’s consecration.

- [1559] Anon. I. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 10.

- [1560] “Sed professionem non fecit” [Roger], significantly remarks R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 298. Roger was consecrated at Westminster on October 10, 1154; ibid. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 158.

Immediately after Roger’s consecration Thomas was raised by his primate to deacon’s orders and made archdeacon of Canterbury.[1561] A few months later the accession of Henry II. opened the way for his advancement in another direction. His appointment to the chancellorship involved a great self-sacrifice on the part of Theobald; for the chancellor’s duties—at least as conceived by Thomas, and as Theobald had intended him to conceive them—took him not only quite away from those of his archdeaconry and from his primate’s side, but very often out of the country altogether; so that Theobald in giving him up to the king had condemned himself to pass his declining years apart from the object of his warmest earthly affections. But the Curia Theobaldi was by no means deserted; though it had lost its most brilliant star, there was no lack of lesser lights to brighten the primate’s home-circle; there was one whose soft mild radiance, less dazzling than the glory of Thomas, was a far truer and steadier reflex of Theobald’s own calm and gentle spirit. Yet John of Salisbury had entered the archbishop’s household within a comparatively recent period. His father’s name seems to have been Reinfred;[1562] his family connexions were all in or around the city whence his surname was derived;[1563] but there is some indication that John himself may have been born in London.[1564] In the year after the death of Henry I. he went to study in Paris, and there received his first lessons in dialectics from the greatest scholar of the day—sitting at the feet of Peter Abelard, and eagerly drinking in, to the utmost capacity of his young mind, every word that fell from the master’s lips. Abelard departed all too soon, and John pursued his studies for about two years under his successors Alberic and Robert, of whom the latter, although commonly called “Robert of Melun” from having taught with distinction in that place, was an Englishman by birth, and will come before us again in later days as Gilbert Foliot’s successor in the bishopric of Hereford. It must have been precisely during those two years that Thomas of London also was in Paris for the first time, striving for his mother’s sake to overcome his dislike of books; and it was possibly there that the two young Englishmen, who must have been of nearly the same age, began to form an acquaintance which afterwards ripened into a lifelong friendship. And it can only have been about the same time, and in that same wonderful meeting-place where so many of the happiest and most fruitful associations of the time had their beginnings, that John of Salisbury first met with Nicolas of Langley.

- [1561] Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.), p. 17. Herb. Bosh. (ibid.), p. 168. Will. Cant. (ib. vol. i.), p. 4. Anon. I. (ib. vol. iv.), p. 11. Garnier (Hippeau), p. 10. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 159. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 213, where he is called “Thomas Beket”—apparently for the first time.

- [1562] “Magister B. filius Reinfred peccator, fraterculus meus,” is named by Joh. Salisb. Ep. xc. (Giles, vol. i. p. 135).

- [1563] See his correspondence passim.

- [1564] There is among John’s letters a most enigmatical one— Ep. cxxx. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109) —without date, address, or writer’s name, but very much in the tone and style of John’s familiar letters—in which a Londoner, or rather a man who tried to make himself out to be such, is described as “concivis noster.” It looks very much as if written by John to Thomas.

Thomas went home to the plodding life of a city merchant’s clerk; Nicolas set out on the long course of wandering which was to bring him at last to the Papal chair; John, having as he says “steeped himself to the finger-tips in dialectics, and moreover learned to think his knowledge greater than it really was,” applied himself for the next three years to the schools of the grammarians William of Conches and Richard l’Evêque, with whom he went over again the whole course of his previous studies, penetrated somewhat deeper into those of the quadrivium which he had begun under the direction of a German named Hardwin, and improved some slight notions of rhetoric which he had acquired at the lectures of a certain Master Theodoric. His relatives were quite unable to maintain him all this while; like all poor students of the day, he earned his living and his college-fees by teaching others, and as he pleasantly says “What I learned was the better fixed in my mind, because I constantly had to bring it out for my pupils.” One of these pupils was William of Soissons, to whom he taught the elements of logic, “and who afterwards contrived, as his followers say, a method of breaking down the old strongholds of logic, producing unexpected consequences, and overthrowing the opinions of the ancients.” John however declined to believe in a “system of impossibilities,” for which he at any rate was clearly not responsible; for he had soon transferred his pupil to the care of one Master Adam, an English teacher deeply versed in Aristotelian lore. It seems just possible that this Master Adam, who was at this time helping John in his studies not as a teacher but as a friend,[1565] was the same who many years before had stood in a somewhat similar relation to Gilbert Foliot.[1566] He may, however, perhaps be more probably identified with Adam “du Petit-Pont”—so called from the place where he lectured in Paris—who in 1176 became bishop of S. Asaph’s.[1567] After a while John found that with all his efforts he could hardly earn enough to live upon in Paris; so by the advice of his friends he determined to set up a school elsewhere.[1568] While sitting at the feet of the “Peripatetic” doctors on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève he had become acquainted with a young native of Champagne, Peter by name, who was studying in the school of S. Martin-des-Champs.[1569] The two friends, it seems, settled together at Provins in Peter’s native land, and there, under the protection of the good Count Theobald,[1570] laboured and prospered for three years.[1571] Long afterwards, from his anxious post at the side of the dying Archbishop Theobald, John’s thoughts strayed tenderly back to the days which he and his young comrade, with hearts as light as their purses, had spent among the roses of Champagne: “I am the same that ever I was,” he wrote to Peter, now abbot of Celle, “only I possess more than you and I had between us at Provins.”[1572] He returned to Paris, revisited his old haunts on the Mont-Ste.-Geneviève, and was amused to find his old school-companions just where and as he had left them. “They did not seem to have advanced an inch towards disposing of the old questions, nor to have added one new proposition.” He, in his three years of healthy meditation in the country, had discovered that their dialectics, however useful as a help to other studies, were in themselves but a fruitless and lifeless system; he therefore now gave himself up to the study of theology under a certain Master Gilbert, Robert “Pullus”—in whom one is tempted to recognize the Robert Pulein who had planted the seed of the first English University by his divinity-lectures at Oxford in 1133—and lastly, Simon of Poissy.

- [1565] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 78–80). Adam’s nationality appears in l. iii. c. 3 (p. 129), where he is described as “noster ille Anglus Peripateticus Adam.”

- [1566] See below, p. 492, 493.

- [1567] Wright, Biogr. Britt. Lit., vol. ii. pp. 245, 246.

- [1568] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 80, 81).

- [1569] On Peter of Celle see Migne, Patrologia, vol. ccii. cols. 399, 400, and Gall. Christ., vol. xii. col. 543.

- [1570] Cf. Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxxxii. and cxliii. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 114, 206); and see also Demimuid, Jean de Salisbury, pp. 26, 27.

- [1571] “Reversus itaque in fine triennii.” Joh. Salisb. Metalog. as above (p. 81).

- [1572] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 114).

John’s whole career in the schools, after occupying about twelve years,[1573] apparently came to an end shortly before the council of Reims. His old friend Peter had already retired into the peace of the cloister, and about this time became abbot of Celle, near Troyes. There John, who was utterly without means of living, found a shelter and a home, nominally, it seems, in the capacity of Peter’s “clerk” or secretary, but in reality as the recipient of a generous hospitality which sought for no return save the enjoyment of his presence and his friendship.[1574] Such a light as John’s, however, could not long remain thus hidden under a bushel. So felt Peter himself;[1575] and at that moment a better place for it was easily found. At the council of Reims, or during his exile after it, the archbishop of Canterbury probably met the abbot of Celle and his English “clerk”;[1576] he certainly must have met the abbot of Clairvaux; and S. Bernard, with his unerring instinct, had already discovered John’s merits. He named him to Theobald in terms of commendation; and it was he who furnished the letter of introduction,[1577] as it was Peter who furnished the means,[1578] wherewith John at last made his way to the archbishop’s court,[1579] of which he soon became one of the busiest and most valued members. So busy was he—so “distracted with diverse and adverse occupations,” as he himself said—that he complained of being scarce able to steal an hour for the literary and philosophical pursuits which he so dearly loved. Ten times in the next thirteen years[1580] did he cross the Alps, twice did he visit Apulia, on business with the Roman court for his superiors or his friends; besides travelling all over England and Gaul on a variety of errands, and fulfilling a crowd of home-duties which left him scarcely time to look after his own private affairs, much less to indulge in study.[1581] The greater part of the communications between Theobald and Eugene III. must have passed through his hands, either as messenger or as amanuensis; but his name never figures in their diplomatic history; his place therein was a subordinate one. It was not in his nature to take the foremost rank. Not that he was unfit for it:—with his gracious, genial temper; his calm clear judgement, generally sound because always disinterested; his delicate wit, his easy, elegant scholarship, and his wide practical experience of the world—John of Salisbury might have adorned far higher positions in either Church or state than any which he ever actually occupied. But his own position was a thing of which he seems never to have thought, save as a means of serving others. His apology for his unwilling neglect of literature—“I am a man under authority”[1582]—might have been the motto of his life. He left it to others to lead; if they led in the way of righteousness, they might be sure of one faithful adherent who would serve and follow them through good report and evil report, who would try to clear the path before them at any risk to himself; who would criticize their conduct and tell them of their errors with fearless simplicity, while striving to avert the consequence of those errors and to cover their retreat; who in poverty and exile, incurred for another’s sake, would make light of his own sufferings and be constantly endeavouring to relieve those of his fellow-sufferers, and who would always find or make a silver lining to the darkest cloud. This was what John did for the possible acquaintance of his early student-days whom he had now rejoined in the household of Archbishop Theobald. To the end of his life he was more than satisfied to count the friendship of Thomas Becket as his chief title of honour, and to let whatever share of lustre might have been his own go to brighten the aureole of his friend. It brightened it far more than he knew. When detractors and panegyrists have both done their worst, there remains this simple proof of the real worth of Thomas—that he inspired such devotion as this in a man such as John of Salisbury, and that he knew how to appreciate it as it deserved.

- [1573] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. ii. c. 10 (Giles, vol. v. p. 81).

- [1574] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117). Pet. Cell. Epp. lxvii.–lxxv. (Migne, Patrol., vol. ccii. cols. 513–522).

- [1575] Pet. Cell. Ep. lxx. (as above, col. 516).

- [1576] The Historia Pontificalis, certainly the work of one who was present at this council, is attributed to John.

- [1577] S. Bern. Ep. ccclxi. (Mabillon, vol. i. col. 325).

- [1578] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxxv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 117).

- [1579] From the Prologue to the Polycraticus, l. i. (Joh. Salisb. Opp., Giles, vol. iii. p. 13), it appears that at the time of writing it John had been twelve years at the court. As the Polycraticus was written during the war of Toulouse, this takes us back to 1148. He must in fact have joined Theobald very soon after the council of Reims.

- [1580] He himself makes it twenty years (Joh. Salisb. Metalog., prolog. l. iii., Giles, vol. v. p. 113); but he cannot possibly have left Paris before 1147, and the Metalogicus was finished before Theobald’s death in 1161. Either there is something wrong in John’s reckoning, or in his copyist’s reading of it, or this passage was added some years after the completion of the book.

- [1581] Joh. Salisb. Metalog. as above.

- [1582] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., prolog. l. vii. (Giles, vol. iv. p. 80).

It was however John’s friendship with Nicolas of Langley which in these years of his residence in the primate’s household made him so valuable to Theobald as a medium of communication with Rome. We can hardly doubt that this acquaintance, too, had begun in Paris; now, as the English cardinal-secretary and the envoy of the English primate discussed in the Roman court the prospects of their common mother-country and mother-Church, their acquaintance ripened into a friendship which no change of outward circumstances could alter or disturb. Nicolas cared more for John than for his own nearest relatives; he declared in public and in private that he loved him above all men living; he delighted in unburthening his soul to him. When he became Pope there was no change; a visit from John was still Adrian’s greatest pleasure; he rejoiced in welcoming him to his table, and despite John’s modest remonstrances insisted that they should be served from the same dish and flagon.[1583] King and primate were both alike quick to perceive and use such an opportunity of strengthening the alliance between England and Rome; while Adrian on his part was all the more ready to give a cordial response to overtures made to him from the land of his birth, when they came through the lips of his dearest friend. As a matter of course, it was John who very soon after the accession of Henry II. was sent to obtain a Papal authorization for the king’s projected conquest of Ireland.[1584] Naturally, too, it was John who now became Theobald’s private secretary and confidential medium of communication with Pope Adrian. A considerable part of the correspondence which goes under John’s name really consists of the archbishop’s letters, John himself being merely the amanuensis. This part of his work, however, was a relaxation which he only enjoyed at intervals; he was still constantly on active duty of some kind or other not only at the court of the primate but also at that of the king; and sorely did he long to escape from its weary trifling, to find rest for his soul in the pursuit of that “divine philosophy” which had been the delight of his youth.[1585] But obedience, not inclination, had brought him to court, and obedience kept him there. Thomas knew his worth and would not let him go; at last, to pacify his uneasiness, he bade him relieve his mind by pouring it out in a book. John protested he had scarce time to call his soul his own, much less his intellect or his hands.[1586] He was, however, set free by the removal of the court over sea for the expedition against Toulouse; and while Thomas was riding in coat of mail at the head of his troops against Count Raymond and King Louis, John was writing his Polycraticus in the quiet cloisters of Canterbury.[1587]

- [1583] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. p. 205).

- [1584] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., l. iv. c. 42 (Giles, vol. v. pp. 205, 206).

- [1585] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. i. prolog. (Giles, vol. iii. p. 13).

- [1586] Ib. l. vii. prolog. (vol. iv. p. 80).

- [1587] Ib. l. i. prolog. (vol. iii. p. 16). Cf. ib. l. viii. c. 24 (vol. iv. p. 379).

This book of Polycraticus on the Triflings of Courtiers and the Foot-prints of Philosophers[1588] is a strange medley of moral and political speculations, personal experiences, and reflections upon men and things, old and new. Its greatest charm lies in the revelation of the writer’s pure, sweet, child-like character, shining unconsciously through the veil of his scholastic pedantries and rambling metaphysics; its historical value consists in the light which it throws on the social condition of England with respect to a crowd of matters which the chroniclers leave wholly in the dark. “Part of it,” says the author in his dedication, “deals with the trifles of the court; laying most stress on those which have chiefly called it forth. Part treats of the foot-prints of the philosophers, leaving, however, the wise to decide for themselves in each case what is to be shunned and what to be followed.”[1589] We need not weary ourselves with John’s meditations upon Aristotle and Plato and their scholastic commentators; they all come round to one simple conclusion—that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him the end of all true philosophy.[1590] It is in the light of this truth that he looks at the practical questions of the day, and reviews those “trifles of the court” which are really the crying abuses of the government, the ecclesiastical administration, and society at large. In the forefront of all he does not hesitate, although dedicating his book to the chancellor whose passion for hunting almost equalled that of the king himself, to set the inordinate love of the chase and the cruelties of the forest-law.[1591] The tardiness of the royal justice and the corruption of the judges—“justitiæ errantes, justices errant are they rightly called who go erring from the path of equity in pursuit of greed and gain”[1592]—was also, after seven years of Henry’s government, still a ground of serious complaint. So, too, was the decay of valour among the young knighthood of the day—a consequence of the general relaxation of discipline, first during the years of anarchy, and then in the reaction produced by the unbroken peace which England had enjoyed since Henry’s accession. Chivalry was already falling back from its lofty ideal; military exercises were neglected for the pleasures and luxury of the court; the making of a knight, in theory a matter almost as solemn as the making of a priest, was sinking into a mere commonplace formality;[1593] and the consequences were beginning to be felt on the Welsh border.[1594] John was moved to contrast the present insecurity of the marches with their splendid defence in Harold’s time,[1595] and to lament that William the Conqueror, in his desire to make his little insular world share the glories of the greater world beyond the sea, had allowed the naturally rich and self-sufficing island to be flooded with luxuries of which it had no need, and thus fostered rather than checked the indolent disposition which had helped to bring its people under his sway.[1596]

- [1588] Polycraticus de Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum.

- [1589] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. i. prolog. (Giles, vol. iii. p. 13).

- [1590] This is the idea which runs through the whole of Polycraticus, and indeed through all John’s writings. It is neatly expressed in two lines of his Entheticus (vv. 305, 306, Giles, vol. v. p. 248):

- “Si verus Deus est hominum sapientia vera,
Tunc amor est veri philosophia Dei.”

- [1591] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. i. c. 4 (Giles, vol. iii. pp. 19–32).

- [1592] Ib. l. v. c. 15 (p. 322). Cf. cc. 10, 11 (pp. 300–311). Pet. Blois, Ep. xcv. (Giles, vol. i. p. 297), makes a like play on the title of the judges.

- [1593] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. cc. 2, 3, 5, 8–10 (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 8–12, 15, 16, 20–23).

- [1594] Ib. cc. 6, 16 (pp. 16, 17, 39, 40).

- [1595] Ib. c. 6 (p. 18).

- [1596] Ib. l. viii. c. 7 (p. 238).

The ills of the state had each its counterpart in the Church; the extortions and perversions of justice committed by the secular judges were paralleled by those of the ecclesiastical officials, deans and archdeacons;[1597] and at the bottom of the mischief lay the old root of all evil. Simony was indeed no longer public; spiritual offices were no longer openly bought with hard cash; but they were bought with court-interest instead;[1598] the Church’s most sacred offices were filled by men who came straight from the worldly life of the court to a charge for which they were utterly unfit;[1599] although, in deference to public opinion, they were obliged to go through an elaborate shew of reluctance, and Scripture and hagiology were ransacked for examples of converted sinners, which were always found sufficient to meet any objections against a candidate for consecration and to justify any appointment, however outrageous.[1600] All the sins of the worldly churchmen, however, scarcely move John’s pure soul to such an outburst of scathing sarcasm as he pours upon the “false brethren” who sought their advancement in a more subtle way, by a shew of counterfeit piety:—the ultra-monastic, ultra-ascetic school, with their overdone zeal and humility, and their reliance on those pernicious exemptions from diocesan jurisdiction which the religious orders vied with each other in procuring from Rome, and which were destroying all discipline and subverting all rightful authority.[1601]

- [1597] Ib.·/·Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. v. c. 15 (vol. iii. pp. 327, 328).

- [1598] Ib. l. vii. c. 18 (vol. iv. pp. 149, 152).

- [1599] Ib. l. v. c. 15 (vol. iii. p. 329).

- [1600] Ib. l. vii. cc. 18, 19 (vol. iv. pp. 149–152, 156–158).

- [1601] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vii. c. 21 (Giles, vol. iv. pp. 169–178). It is to be noted that the two orders which John considers to be least infected with this hypocrisy are those of the Chartreuse and of Grandmont. Ib. c. 23 (pp. 180, 181).

Over against the picture of the world and the Church as they actually were, the disciple of Archbishop Theobald sets his ideal of both as they should be—as the primate and his children aimed at making them. For John’s model commonwealth, built up in a somewhat disjointed fashion on a foundation partly of Holy Writ and partly of classic antiquity, is not, like the great Utopia of the sixteenth century, the product of one single, exceptionally constituted mind; it is a reflection of the plans and hopes of those among whom John lived and worked, and thus it helps us to see something of the line of thought which had guided their action in the past and which moulded their schemes for the future. Like all medieval theorists, they began at the uppermost end of the social and political scale; they started from a definite view of the rights and duties of the king, as the head on which all the lower members of the body politic depended. The divine right of kings, the divine ordination of the powers that be, were fundamental doctrines which they understood in a far wider and loftier sense than the king-worshippers of the seventeenth century:—which they employed not to support but to combat the perverted theory that “the sovereign’s will has the force of law,” already creeping in through the influence of the imperial jurisprudence;[1602]—and which were no less incompatible with the principle of invariable hereditary succession. “Lands and houses and suchlike things must needs descend to the next in blood; but the government of a people is to be given only to him whom God has chosen thereto, even to him who has God’s Spirit within him and God’s law ever before his eyes.... Not that for the mere love of change it is lawful to forsake the blood of princes, to whom by the privilege of the divine promises and by the natural claims of birth the succession of their children is justly due, if only they walk according to right. Neither, if they turn aside from the right way, are they to be immediately cast off, but patiently admonished till it become evident that they are obstinate in their wickedness”[1603]—then, and then only, shall the axe be laid to the root of the corrupt tree, and it shall cumber the ground no more.[1604]

- [1602] Ib.·/·Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. iv. c. 7 (vol. iii. p. 241).

- [1603] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. v. c. 6 (Giles, vol. iii. p. 278).

- [1604] Ib. l. iv. c. 12 (pp. 259, 260).

Such was the moral which the wisest and most thoughtful minds in England drew from the lessons of the anarchy. On a like principle, it was in the growth of a more definite and earnest sense of individual duty and responsibility, as opposed to the selfish lawlessness which had so long prevailed, that they trusted for the regeneration of society. They sought to teach the knights to live up to the full meaning of their vows and the true objects of their institution—the protection of the Church, the suppression of treason, the vindication of the rights of the poor, the pacification of the country;[1605] so that the consecration of their swords upon the altar at their investiture should be no empty form, but, according to its original intention, a true symbol of the whole character of their lives and, if need be, of their deaths.[1606] And then side by side with the true knight would stand the true priest:—both alike soldiers of the Cross, fighting in the same cause though with different weapons—figured, according to John’s beautiful application of a text which medieval reformers never wearied of expounding, by the “two swords” which the Master had declared “enough” for His servants, all the lawless undisciplined activity of self-seekers and false brethren being merely the “swords and staves” of the hostile multitude.[1607] Into a detailed examination of the rights or the duties of the various classes of the people no one in those days thought it necessary to enter; their well-being and well-doing were regarded as dependent upon those of their superiors, and the whole question of the relation between rulers and ruled—“head and feet,” according to the simile which John borrows from Plutarch—was solved by the comprehensive formula, “Every one members one of another.”[1608] To watch over and direct the carrying-out of this principle was the special work of the clergy; and the clerical reformers were jealous for the rights of their order because, as understood by them, they represented and covered the rights of the whole nation; the claims which they put forth in the Church’s name were a protest in behalf of true civil and religious liberty against tyranny on the one hand and license on the other.[1609] “For there is nothing more glorious than freedom, save virtue; if indeed freedom may rightly be severed from virtue—for all who know anything aright know that true freedom has no other source.”[1610]

- [1605] Ib.·/·Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. c. 8 (vol. iv. p. 21).

- [1606] Ibid. c. 10 (p. 23). Cf. Pet. Blois, Ep. xciv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 291–296).

- [1607] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. c. 8 (Giles, vol. iv. p. 21). John’s use of the text is perhaps only a generalization from S. Bernard’s application of it to Suger and the count of Nevers, left regents of France in 1149. Odo of Deuil, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 93.

- [1608] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., l. vi. c. 20 (as above, pp. 51, 52).

- [1609] Ib. l. vii. c. 20 (pp. 161–169).

- [1610] Ibid. c. 25 (p. 192).

How far these lofty views had made their way into the high places of the Church it was as yet scarcely possible to judge. The tone of the English episcopate had certainly undergone a marked change for the better during the last six years of Stephen’s reign. Theobald’s hopes must, however, have been chiefly in the rising generation. Of the existing bishops there was only one really capable of either helping or hindering the work which the primate had at heart; for Henry of Winchester, although his royal blood, his stately personality and his long and memorable career necessarily made him to his life’s end an important figure in both Church and state, had ceased to take an active part in the affairs of either, and for several years lived altogether away from England, in his boyhood’s home at Cluny.[1611] A far more weighty element in the calculations of the reforming party was the character and policy of the bishop of Hereford, Gilbert Foliot. From the circumstances in which we find Gilbert’s relatives in England,[1612] it seems probable that he belonged to one of the poorer Norman families of knightly rank who came over either in the train of the great nobles of the conquest or in the more peaceful immigration under Henry I. His youth is lost in obscurity; of his education we know nothing, save by its fruits. Highly gifted as he unquestionably was by nature, even his inborn genius could hardly have enabled him to acquire his refined and varied scholarship, his unrivalled mastery of legal, political and ecclesiastical lore, his profound and extensive knowledge of men and things, anywhere but in some one or other of the universities of the day. It is curious that although Gilbert’s extant correspondence is one of the most voluminous of the time—extending over nearly half a century, and addressed to persons of the most diverse ranks, parties, professions and nationalities—it contains not one allusion to the studies or the companions of his youth, not one of those half playful, half tender reminiscences of student-triumphs, student-troubles and student-friendships, which were so fresh in the hearts and in the letters of many distinguished contemporaries. Only from an appeal made to him, when bishop of London, in behalf of his old benefactor’s orphan and penniless children, do we learn that he had once been the favourite pupil, the ward, almost the adoptive son, of a certain Master Adam.[1613] It is tempting, but perhaps hardly safe, to conjecture that this Master Adam was the learned Englishman of that name who in like manner befriended another young fellow-countryman, John of Salisbury, when he too was studying in Paris.[1614] This, however, was not till Gilbert Foliot’s student-days had long been past. Wherever his youth may have been spent, wherever his reputation may have been acquired, the one was quite over and the other was fully established before 1139, when he had been already for some years a monk of Cluny, had attained the rank of prior in the mother-house, and had thence been promoted to become the head of the dependent priory of Abbeville.[1615]

- [1611] He went there in 1155 (Rob. Torigni, ad ann.), and does not reappear in England till March 1159 (Palgrave, Eng. Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. xii).

- [1612] See his letters passim.

- [1613] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. dxv., dxvii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 323, 324, 326). The writer of the first is “Ranulfus de Turri”; the second is anonymous. Both appeal earnestly to the bishop’s charity and gratitude in behalf of “J. filius A. magistri quondam vestri, procuratoris vestri, tutoris vestri.... Hæreat animo sanctitatis vestræ illa M. Adæ circa vos curarum gravitas, alimoniæ fœcunditas, diligentia doctrinæ, specialis impensa benivolentiæ. Quis hodie proprios liberos regit providentius, educat uberius, instruit attentius, diligit ferventius? Sic pæne amor ille modum excessit, ut vos diligeret non quasi excellenter, sed quasi singulariter ... qui vos aliquando pro filio adoptavit” (Ep. dxv.). “Tangat memoriam vestram illa M. Adæ circa vos curarum gravitas, doctrinæ profunditas, alimoniæ ubertas, postremo fervens, immo ardens caritas. Hæreat animo vestro quantâ curâ, quali amplexu, quam speciali privilegio, illa doctoris vestri, procuratoris, tutoris, diligens vigilantia vos non modo supra familiares, verum supra quoslibet mortales adoptaverit, qualiterque ejus spiritus in vestro, ut ita dicam, spiritu quieverit.” Ep. dxvii.

- [1614] See above, p. 482. In any case, Gilbert’s Master Adam is surely a somewhat interesting person, of whom one would like to know more. This was the condition of his eldest son, when commended to the gratitude of Gilbert: “Pater ejus cum fati munus impleret, filium reliquit ære alieno gravatum, fratrum numerositate impeditum, redituum angustiis constrictum, et quibusdam aliis nexibus intricatum.”

Gilb. Foliot, Ep. dxvii. (Giles, vol. ii. p. 326). “Onerant enim eum supra modum redituum angustiæ, debitorum paternorum sarcinæ, amicorum raritas, fratrum sororumque pluralitas et reliquæ sarcinæ parentelæ.” Ep. dxv. (ib. p. 323).

- [1615] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cclxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 366).

In 1139 the abbot of S. Peter’s at Gloucester died; Miles the constable, the lord of Gloucester castle and sheriff of the county, and the greatest man of the district after Earl Robert himself, secured the vacant office for Gilbert Foliot,[1616] who was a family connexion of his own.[1617] The abbey of S. Peter at Gloucester, founded as a nunnery in the seventh century, changed into a college of secular priests after the Danish wars, and finally settled as a house of Benedictine monks in the reign of Cnut, had risen to wealth and fame under its first Norman abbot, Serlo, some of whose work still survives in the nave of his church, now serving as the cathedral church of Gloucester. Gloucester itself, the capital of Earl Robert’s territories, was still, like Hereford and Shrewsbury, a border-city whose inhabitants had to be constantly on their guard against the thievery and treachery of the Welsh, who, though often highly useful to their English earl as auxiliary forces in war, were anything but loyal subjects or trustworthy neighbours. The position of abbot of S. Peter’s therefore was at all times one of some difficulty and anxiety; and Gilbert entered upon it at a specially difficult and anxious time. Stephen’s assent to his appointment can hardly have been prompted by favour to Miles, who had openly defied the king a year ago; he may have been influenced by fear of giving fresh offence to such a formidable deserter, or he may simply have been, as we are told, moved by the report of Gilbert’s great merits.[1618] The new abbot proved quite worthy of his reputation. His bitterest enemies always admitted that he was a pattern of monastic discipline and personal asceticism; and his admirable judgement, moderation and prudence soon made him a personage of very high authority in the counsels of the English Church. Holding such an important office in the city which was the head-quarters of the Empress’s party throughout the greater part of the civil war, he of course had his full share of the troubles of the anarchy, whereof Welsh inroads counted among the least. There is no doubt that in bringing him to England Miles had, whether intentionally or not, brought over one who sympathized strongly with the Angevin cause; but Gilbert’s sympathies led him into no political partizanship. During his nine years’ residence at Gloucester he consistently occupied the position which seems to have been his ideal through life: that of a churchman pure and simple, attached to no mere party in either Church or state, but ready to work with each and all for the broad aims of ecclesiastical order and national tranquillity. That these aims came at last to be identified with the success of the Angevin party was a result of circumstances over which Gilbert had no control. He was honoured, consulted and trusted by the most diverse characters among the bishops. Mere abbot of a remote monastery as he was, Nigel of Ely was glad to be recommended by him to Pope Celestine, Jocelyn of Salisbury to Lucius, and Alexander of Lincoln to Eugene III.[1619] He was treated almost as an equal not only by his own diocesan Bishop Simon of Worcester, by his neighbour Robert of Hereford, and by Jocelyn of Salisbury, but even by the archbishop of Canterbury and the legate Henry of Winchester; and he writes in the tone of a patron and adviser to Bishop Uhtred of Landaff and to the heads of the religious houses on the Welsh border.[1620] He seems indeed to have been the usual medium of communication between the Church in the western shires and its primate at far-off Canterbury, who evidently found him a trustworthy and useful agent in managing the very troublesome Church affairs of the Welsh marches during the civil war.

- [1616] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 114. Hist. Monast. S. Pet. Gloc. (Riley), vol. i. p. 18.

- [1617] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 162.

- [1618] Flor. Worc. Contin., a. 1139 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 114). Hist. S. Pet. Gloc. (Riley), vol. i. p. 18.

- [1619] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. v., xi., xxv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 12, 22, 37).

- [1620] See his correspondence while abbot of Gloucester; Gilb. Foliot Opp. (Giles), vol. i. pp. 3–94.

When at last the storm subsided and a turn of the tide came with the spring of 1148, Theobald openly shewed his confidence in the abbot of Gloucester by commanding his attendance on that journey to Reims which the king had forbidden, and which was therefore looked upon as the grand proclamation of ecclesiastical independence, as well as of devotion to the house of Anjou. Gilbert, with characteristic caution, excused himself on the plea that the troubles of his house urgently required his presence at home;[1621] but he ended by going nevertheless,[1622] and when his friend Bishop Robert of Hereford—one of the three prelates whom Stephen had permitted to attend the council of Reims—died during its session, the Pope and the primate rewarded Gilbert with the succession to the vacant see.[1623] For his perjury in doing homage to Stephen for its temporalities after swearing to hold them only of Henry Fitz-Empress he may be supposed to have quieted his conscience with the plea that there was no other means of securing them for Henry’s benefit;—a plea which Henry, after some delay,[1624] found it wise to accept. The heads of the Angevin party knew indeed that Gilbert regarded all homage to Stephen as simply null and void; he had just written it plainly to Brian Fitz-Count, when criticizing Brian’s apology for the Empress, in a letter[1625] which, we may be very sure, must have been handed about and studied among her friends as a much more valuable document than the pamphlet which had called it forth.

- [1621] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. vi., vii. (ib. pp. 13, 14).

- [1622] He writes—evidently from the spot—a report of the council of Reims to Robert archdeacon of Lincoln; Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxvi. (as above, p. 92). In July he was at Arras with Theobald: Ep. lxxiii. (ib. p. 89).

- [1623] See above, pp. 370, 371.

- [1624] Gilb. Foliot, Epp. xc., cxxx. (as above, pp. 116, 170).

- [1625] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 94–102); a most interesting and valuable letter, being a detailed review of the whole question of the succession, as well as of Brian’s “book.” The latter is unhappily lost.

The career of the new bishop of Hereford was but the natural continuation of that of the abbot of Gloucester. His more exalted office enabled him to be more than ever Theobald’s right hand in the direction of the western dioceses. In their secular policy he and Theobald were wholly at one; whether they really were equally so in their ideas of Church reform is a question which was never put to the test; but the tone of Gilbert’s mind, so far as it can be made out from his letters and from his course in after-years, does not seem to have altogether harmonized with that which prevailed in the primate’s household; and the one member of that household with whom Gilbert was on really intimate terms was precisely the one who, as afterwards appeared, had imbibed least of its spirit—Roger of Pont-l’Evêque. Gilbert’s character is not an easy one to read. Its inner depths are scarcely reflected in his letters, which are almost all occupied with mere business or formal religious exhortation; we never get from him such a pleasant little stream of unpremeditated, discursive talk as John of Salisbury or Peter of Blois delighted to pour out of the abundance of their hearts into the ears of some old comrade, or such a flood of uncontrolled passion as revealed the whole soul of Thomas Becket. Gilbert’s letters are carefully-balanced, highly-finished compositions; almost every one of them reads as if it had received as much polishing, in proportion to its length and importance, as the review of Earl Brian’s book, which, the abbot owns, occupied what should have been his hours of prayer during two days.[1626] A strong vein of sarcasm, very clever as well as very severe, is the only token of personal feeling which at times forces its way strangely, almost startlingly, through the veil of extreme self-depreciation with which Gilbert strove to cover it. The self-depreciation is even more disagreeable than the sarcasm; yet it seems hardly fair to accuse Gilbert of conscious hypocrisy. There was a bitter, sneering disposition ingrained in his innermost being, and he knew it. His elaborate expressions of more than monastic humility and meekness may have been the outcome of a struggle to smother what he probably regarded as his besetting sin; and if he not only failed to smother it, but drifted into a much more subtle and dangerous temptation, still it is possible that he himself never perceived the fact, and was less a deceiver than a victim of self-deception. During his episcopate at Hereford, at any rate, no shadow of suspicion fell upon him from any quarter; primate and Pope esteemed, trusted and consulted him as one of the wisest as well as most zealous doctors of the English Church; and when the young king came to his throne he did not fail to shew a duly respectful appreciation of Gilbert’s character and services.

- [1626] “Et biduo saltem ores pro me, quia biduo mihi est intermissa oratio ut literas dictarem ad te.” Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxix. (Giles, vol. i. p. 102).

The king’s own attitude towards the religious revival was as yet not very clearly defined. Henry was not without religious impulse; but it had taken a special direction which indeed might naturally be expected in a grandson of Fulk of Jerusalem:—a restless desire to go upon crusade. He had no sooner mounted his throne than he began to urge upon the English Pope, newly crowned like himself, the importance of giving special attention to the necessities of the Holy Land.[1627] Four years later he proposed to join Louis of France in a crusade against the Moors in Spain. Louis wrote to the Pope announcing this project and begging for his advice and support; Adrian in reply assured the two kings of his sympathy and goodwill, but though praising their zeal he expressed some doubt of its discretion, advised them to ascertain whether the Spaniards desired their help before thrusting it upon them unasked, and reminded Louis in plain terms of the disastrous issue of his former rash crusade.[1628] The warning was needless, for it was hardly written before the intending brothers-in-arms were preparing to fight against each other; and before the war of Toulouse was over the English Pope was dead.[1629]

- [1627] Pet. Blois, Ep. clxviii. (Giles, vol. ii. pp. 116–118). The letter is headed merely “Tali Papæ talis rex,” but there can be no doubt that they are Henry and Adrian. The king congratulates himself and his country—“noster Occidens”—on the elevation of a native thereof to the Papal chair, and makes suggestions to the Pope about the work which lies before him.

- [1628] Adrian IV. Ep. ccxli. (Migne, Patrol., vol. clxxxviii., cols. 1615–1617; Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. pp. 590, 591). Date, February 18 [1159].

- [1629] Adrian died at Anagni on September 1, 1159. Alex. III. Ep. i. (Migne, Patrol., vol. cc., col. 70).

His death was a heavy blow to the Church of his native land; and it was followed by a schism which threatened disastrous consequences to all western Christendom. Two Popes were elected—Roland of Siena, cardinal of S. Mark and treasurer of the Holy See, and Octavian, cardinal of S. Cecilia, a Roman of noble birth. This latter, who assumed the name of Victor IV., was favoured by the Emperor, Frederic Barbarossa. After a violent struggle he was expelled from Rome and fled to the protection of his imperial patron, who thereupon summoned a general council to meet at Pavia early in the next year and decide between the rival pontiffs.[1630] Only the bishops of Frederic’s own dominions obeyed the summons, and only one of the claimants; for Alexander III. (as Roland was called by his adherents) disdained to submit to a trial whose issue he believed to have been predetermined against him. He was accordingly condemned as a rebel and schismatic, and Victor was acknowledged as the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1631] This decision, however, bound only the bishops of the Imperial dominions; and its general acceptance throughout the rest of Christendom, doubtful from the first, became impossible when Alexander and his partizans published their account of the mode by which it had been arrived at. Victor—so their story went—had actually placed his pontifical ring in the Emperor’s hands and received it back from him as the symbol of investiture.[1632] The Church at large could have no hesitation in deciding that a man who thus climbed into the sheepfold by surrendering, voluntarily and deliberately, the whole principle of spiritual independence whose triumph Gregory and Anselm had devoted their lives to secure, was no true shepherd but a thief and robber. Frederic however lost no time in endeavouring to obtain for him the adhesion of France and England; and in the last-named quarter he had great hopes of success. Henry had for several years past shewn a disposition to knit up again the old political ties which connected England with Germany; friendly embassies had been exchanged between the two countries;[1633] now that he had begun to quarrel with France, too, he was likely to be more inclined towards an imperial alliance. Moreover it might naturally be expected that Frederic’s bold and apparently successful attempt to revive the claims of his predecessor Henry IV. on the subject of ecclesiastical investitures would meet with sympathy from the grandson and representative of Henry I. Indeed, the official report of the council of Pavia declares that Henry had actually, by letters and envoys, given his assent to its proceedings.[1634] But nothing of the kind was known in Henry’s own dominions;[1635] and it seems that the Emperor was forestalled by a Norman bishop.

- [1630] Radevic of Freisingen, l. ii. cc. 43, 50–56 (Muratori, Rer. Ital. Scriptt., vol. vi. cols. 819, 823–834), largely made up of official letters. This is the Victorian or Imperialist version; for the Alexandrine see Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 118, 119), and Arn. Lisieux, Epp. 21, 22, 23 (Giles, pp. 108–122. Arnulf calls the antipope “Otto.”) It seems quite hopeless to reconcile them or decide between them.

- [1631] Rad. Freising., l. ii. cc. 64–72 (as above, cols. 838–853). Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 119, 120).

- [1632] Arn. Lisieux, Ep. 23 (Giles, p. 118).

- [1633] Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 112. Cf. Rad. Freising., l. i. c. 7 (Muratori, Rer. Ital. Scriptt., vol. vi. cols. 744, 745). Another embassy from Henry reached Frederic in Lombardy, in the winter of 1158–1159, immediately after one from Louis. The object of each king was to secure Frederic’s alliance against the other, in prospect of the coming war of Toulouse; Rad. Freising., l. ii. c. 22 (as above, col. 804).

- [1634] Report in Rad. Freising., l. ii. c. 70 (as above, col. 850). But the bishop of Bamberg, also an eye-witness, says: “Nuntius regis Francorum promisit pro eo neutrum se recepturum usque dum nuntios Imperatoris recipiat. Nuntius regis Anglorum idem velle et idem nolle promisit, tam in his quam in aliis” (ib. c. 71, col. 851); which leaves it doubtful whether the English envoy really echoed the decision of the council, or the answer of his French brother.

- [1635] Not even to Stephen of Rouen, the author of the Draco Normannicus, who has a long account of the schism, curious as proceeding from a Norman monk whose sympathies are wholly and openly on the opposite side to that which was formally adopted by his own sovereign, nation and Church. Draco Norm., l. iii. cc. 6–11, vv. 361–868 (Howlett, Will. Newb., vol. ii. pp. 724–739).

Arnulf of Lisieux came of a family which had for more than half a century been constantly mixed up in the diplomatic concerns of Normandy and Anjou. Arnulf himself had begun his career about 1130 by writing a treatise in defence of an orthodox Pope against an usurper;[1636] he had been chosen to succeed his uncle Bishop John of Lisieux[1637] shortly before Geoffrey Plantagenet’s final conquest of Normandy, and had bought at a heavy price his peace with the new ruler;[1638] and for the next forty years there was hardly a diplomatic transaction of any kind, ecclesiastical or secular, in England or in Gaul, in which he was not at some moment and in some way or other concerned. He had little official influence; he had indeed a certain amount of territorial importance in Normandy, for Lisieux was the capital of a little county of which the temporal as well as the spiritual government was vested in the bishop; but a Norman bishop, merely as such, had none of the political weight of an English prelate; and Arnulf never held any secular office. He was not exactly a busybody; he was a consummate diplomatist, of wide experience and far-reaching intelligence, with whose services no party could afford to dispense; and his extraordinary caution and sagacity enabled him to act as counsellor and guide of all parties at once without sacrificing his own reputation as a sound Churchman and a loyal subject. In his youth he had come in contact with most of the rising scholars and statesmen of the day in the schools of Paris; and as he was an indefatigable and accomplished letter-writer, he kept up through life a busy correspondence with men of all ranks and all schools of thought on both sides of the sea.[1639] During the quarrel between Louis VII. and Geoffrey Plantagenet concerning the affair of Montreuil-Bellay, Arnulf was intrusted by Suger with a chief part in the negotiations for the restoration of peace;[1640] the final settlement in 1151, whereby the investiture of Normandy was secured to Henry, was chiefly owing to his diplomacy;[1641] he accompanied Henry to England and was present at his crowning;[1642] and on all questions of continental policy he continued to be Henry’s chief adviser till he was superseded by Thomas Becket.

- [1636] See his Tractatus de Schismate in his “Works” (ed. Giles), pp. 43–79.

- [1637] In 1141. Gall. Christ., vol. xi. cols. 774, 775.

- [1638] Ib. col. 775.

- [1639] One of his fellow-students was Ralf de Diceto, the future historian and dean of S. Paul’s, to whom he writes affectionately in after-years, recalling vividly the memories of joy and sorrow which they had shared in their college days. Arn. Lis. Ep. 16 (Giles, pp. 100, 101). Another of his early friends was Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, whose good offices he earnestly entreated in behalf of the young Duke Henry when the latter made his expedition to England in 1149. Ep. 4 (pp. 85, 86).

- [1640] Suger, Epp. clxvii., clxviii. (Migne, Patrol., vol. clxxxvi., cols. 1428, 1429).

- [1641] Arn. Lis. Ep. 5 (Giles, pp. 86, 87). One passage looks as if the demand for Henry’s investiture had come from England; it is described as “postulatio Anglorum.”

- [1642] Rob. Torigni, a. 1154.

To Arnulf there was nothing new or startling in a schism at Rome; his experiences of thirty years before enabled him to penetrate the present case at once, and as then with his pen, so now with his tongue, he proved the readiest and most powerful advocate of the orthodox pontiff. Fortunately, Henry was in Normandy; before any one else had time to gain his ear and bias his mind, before he himself had time to think of forming an independent judgement on the subject, Arnulf hurried to his side,[1643] and set forth the claims of Alexander with such convincing eloquence that the king at once promised to acknowledge him as Pope. He refrained however from issuing an immediate order for Alexander’s acceptance throughout his dominions, partly in deference to the Emperor,[1644] and partly to make sure of the intentions of the king of France. Louis, like Henry, had sent a representative to the council of Pavia, but he had taken care not to commit himself to any decision upon its proceedings.[1645] He was not naturally inclined to favour the Emperor’s views. The question of the investitures had never been as important in France as in Germany or in England, and had been settled by a kind of tacit concordat which the Most Christian King had no mind to forfeit his title by disturbing; France was always the staunchest upholder of the independence of the Apostolic see;[1646] and neither king nor clergy desired to change their attitude. They met in council at Beauvais some time in the summer of 1160; a similar gathering of the Norman bishops, in Henry’s presence, took place in July at Neufmarché; both assemblies resulted in the acknowledgement of Alexander.[1647] The formal assent of the Churches of England and Aquitaine had still to be obtained before either king would fully proclaim his decision.[1648] Archbishop Theobald’s anxious request for information and instructions concerning the schism[1649] was answered by an exhaustive and eloquent statement of the case from the pen of the indefatigable bishop of Lisieux;[1650] and in accordance with his directions the English bishops in council assembled unanimously declared their acceptance of Alexander III. as the lawful successor of S. Peter.[1651]

- [1643] Arn. Lis. Epp. 18 and 21 (Giles, pp. 103, 104, 111).

- [1644] Arn. Lis. Ep. 21 (Giles, p. 111).

- [1645] See above, p. 499, note 3{1634}.

- [1646] Arn. Lis. Ep. 23 (Giles, p. 120).

- [1647] Rob. Torigni, a. 1160.

- [1648] Arn. Lis. Epp. 23, 24 (Giles, pp. 120, 129).

- [1649] Joh. Salisb. Ep. xliv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 45, 46).

- [1650] Arn. Lis. Ep. 23 (Giles, pp. 116–122). Cf. Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 197).

- [1651] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii. (as above). Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxiv (Giles, vol. i. p. 79).

Alexander’s legates were already in Normandy;[1652] unluckily, however, the use which Henry made of their presence led as we have seen to a fresh rupture between him and Louis; and by this the Emperor and the anti-pope immediately sought to profit. Tempting as their overtures were to Henry, it does not appear that he ever seriously entertained them; but the leaders of the English Church, having now learned the circumstances of the case and grasped the full importance of the triumph insured to the reforming party by his acceptance of Alexander, were naturally alarmed lest he should be induced to change his mind. Their anxiety was increased by the enfeebled state of their own ranks. The struggles of Bishop Richard of London to clear off the debts incurred in raising a fine required by Stephen at his election seemed to have only aggravated the confusion of his affairs, which his friends the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln were engaged in a desperate effort to disentangle,[1653] while Richard himself, to complete his misfortunes, was stricken helpless by paralysis.[1654] Henry of Winchester had returned to his diocese, after nearly four years’ absence, in 1159;[1655] but by the spring of 1161 he again left the Church of England to her fate and went back to his beloved Cluny.[1656] The bishoprics of Chester (or Lichfield), Exeter and Worcester were vacant;[1657] and, worst of all, Archbishop Theobald was dying.

- [1652] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxlviii (as above).

- [1653] Gilb. Foliot, Ep. cxx. (Giles, vol. i. p. 158).

- [1654] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 304.

- [1655] See above, p. 492, note 1{1611}.

- [1656] R. Diceto, as above.

- [1657] Walter of Lichfield died December 7, 1160 (Stubbs, Registr. Sac. Ang., p. 30); Alfred of Worcester, July 31, 1160; and Robert of Exeter some time in the same year (ib. p. 31).

The primate’s letters during the last few months of his life shew him calmly awaiting his call to rest, yet anxiously longing to be assured of the future of those whom he was leaving behind, and to set in order a few things that were wanting before he could depart altogether in peace. Very touching are the expressions of his longing to “see the face of the Lord’s anointed once again”—to welcome the king back to his country and his home, safely removed from political temptations to break away from the unity of the Church.[1658] And there was another for whose return Theobald yearned more deeply still: his own long absent archdeacon—“the first of my counsellors, nay, my only one,” as he calls him, pleading earnestly with the king to let him come home.[1659] For a moment, indeed, Theobald was on the point of being left almost alone. Some rather obscure mischief-making in high places had caused John of Salisbury to be visited with the king’s severe displeasure; treated as a suspected criminal in England, forbidden to go and clear himself in Normandy, John found his position so unbearable that he contemplated taking refuge in France under the protection of his old friend Abbot Peter of Celle.[1660] He seems, however, to have ended by remaining in England under Theobald’s protection; before the winter of 1160, at any rate, he was again at Canterbury, watching over and tending the primate’s gradual decline;—almost overwhelmed with “the care of all the churches,” which Theobald had transferred to him;[1661]—characteristically finding relief from his anxieties in correspondence with old friends, and in the composition of another little philosophical treatise, called Metalogicus, whose chief interest lies in the sketch which it contains of its author’s early life.[1662] John’s disinterested affection and devoted services were fully appreciated by Theobald;[1663] but they could not make up for the absence of Thomas. Not only did the old man long to see his early favourite once more; not only were there grave matters of diocesan administration dependent on the archdeacon’s office and urgently requiring his personal co-operation:[1664]—it was on far weightier things than these that the archbishop desired to hold counsel with Thomas. In the hands of Thomas, as chief adviser and minister of the king, rested in no small degree the future of the English Church; Theobald’s darling wish was that it should rest in his hands as primate of all England.[1665]

- [1658] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxiii, lxiv,* lxiv** (Giles, vol. i. pp. 77, 78, 80–82), all from Theobald to Henry.

- [1659] “Qui [sc. Thomas] nobis unicus est et consilii nostri primus.” Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxx. (ib. p. 93).

- [1660] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxi., xcvi., cviii., cxii., cxiii., cxv., cxxi. (ib. pp. 74, 75, 141–144, 158, 160, 161, 164, 165, 169, 170). See Demimuid, Jean de Salisbury, pp. 183–188.

- [1661] Joh. Salisb. Metalog., prolog. (Giles, vol. v. pp. 8, 9), and l. iv. c. 42 (ib. p. 206).

- [1662] Ib. l. ii. c. 10 (pp. 78–81).

- [1663] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxiv.* (Giles, vol. i. p. 80), from Theobald to Henry.

- [1664] Joh. Salisb. Epp. xlix., lxxi. (ib. pp. 51, 52, 94, 95), both from Theobald to Thomas. The initial in the address of lxxi. is clearly wrong. See Robertson, Becket, vol. v. p. 11, note a.

- [1665] This is distinctly stated by John of Salisbury:—

- “Ille Theobaldus qui Christi præsidet aulæ,
Quam fidei matrem Cantia nostra colit,
Hunc successurum sibi sperat et orat, ut idem
Præsulis officium muniat atque locum.”

- Entheticus, vv. 1293–1296 (Giles, vol. v. p. 280.)

Later writers dilate upon the startling contrast between Becket’s character and policy as chancellor and as archbishop. That contrast vanishes when we look at the chancellor through the eyes of the two men who knew him best; and we find that the real contrast lies between their view of him and that of the outside world which only saw the surface of his life and could not fathom its inner depths. Those who beheld him foremost in every military exercise and every courtly pastime, far outdoing the king himself in lavish splendour and fastidious refinement, devoting every faculty of mind and body to the service and the pleasure of his royal friend:—those who saw all this, and could only judge by what they saw, might well have thought that for such a man to become the champion of the Church was a dream to be realized only by miracle or by imposture. But Archbishop Theobald and John of Salisbury had known his inmost soul, better perhaps than he knew it himself, before ever he went to court; and they knew that however startling his conduct there might look, he was merely fulfilling in his own way the mission on which he had been sent thither:—making himself all things to all men, if thereby he might by any means influence the court and the king for good.[1666] Even his suggestion of the scutage for the war of Toulouse did not seriously shake their faith in him; they blamed him, but they believed that he had erred in weakness, not in wilfulness.[1667] In the middle of the war John dedicated the Polycraticus to him as the one man about the court to whom its follies and its faults could be criticized without fear, because he had no part in them.[1668] Thomas himself does not seem to have contemplated the possibility of removal from his present sphere. It was not in his nature at any time to look far ahead; and Henry seemed to find his attendance more indispensable than ever, declaring in answer to Theobald’s intreaties and remonstrances that he could not possibly spare him till peace was thoroughly restored.[1669]

- [1666] Joh. Salisb. Enthet., vv. 1435–1440 (Giles, vol. v. p. 285).

- [1667] Joh. Salisb. Ep. cxlv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 223, 224).

- [1668] Joh. Salisb. Polycrat., prolog. (Giles, vol. iii. p. 13).

- [1669] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 106).

Thomas was in a strait. His first duty was to his dying spiritual father; but he could not go against the king’s will without running such a risk as Theobald would have been the first to disapprove. Thomas himself therefore at last suggested that the archbishop should try to move the king by summoning his truant archdeacon to return home at once on pain of deprivation.[1670] Theobald, unable to reconcile the contradictory letters of king and chancellor with the general reports of their wonderful unanimity, steered a middle course between severity and gentleness, from fear of bringing down the royal displeasure upon his favourite, whom he yet half suspected of being in collusion with the king. His secretary, John, had no such doubts; but he too was urgent that by some means or other Thomas should come over before the primate’s death.[1671] If he did go, it can only have been for a flying visit; and there is no sign that he went at all. One thing he did obtain for Theobald’s satisfaction: the appointment of Bartholomew archdeacon of Exeter to the bishopric of that diocese.[1672] In April Richard Peche, on whom the see of Chester had been conferred, was consecrated at Canterbury by Walter of Rochester, the archbishop being carried into the chapel to sanction by his presence the rite in which he was too feeble to assist.[1673] By the hand of the faithful secretary John he transmitted to King Henry his last solemn benediction and farewell, and commended to the royal care the future of his church and the choice of his successor.[1674] A few days later, on April 18, 1161, the good primate passed away.[1675]

- [1670] Ib.·/·Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. (p. 105).

- [1671] Joh. Salisb. Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 105–107).

- [1672] Joh. Salisb. Epp. lxx., lxxi., lxxviii. (as above, pp. 94, 95, 106). On Bartholomew see also Ep. xc. (ib. pp. 132–136), where John addresses him as a personal friend.

- [1673] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 168.

- [1674] Joh. Salisb. Ep. liv. (Giles, vol. i. pp. 56–58). See the archbishop’s will in Ep. lvii. (ib. pp. 60–62).

- [1675] Gerv. Cant. as above.

ERRATA

Page050, line 08 from foot, insert “and” before “bore.”

” 158, ” 05, for “in” read “by.”

” 268, ” 18, dele “the following.”

” 274, ” 14 from foot, for “two” read “three.”

” 282, ” 14, insert “and” before “made.”

” 417, lines 3 and 4 from foot, for “husband ... heiress” read “head.”

” 438, note 5, line 8, for “David” read “Henry of Scotland.”

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh

INDEX

Aaron of Lincoln, ii. 487
Abelard, i. 480
Abingdon, its customs in 1185, ii. 475–477;
its fair, 481, 482.
See Faricius
Achard, lord of Châlus, ii. 382, 383
Aclea, battle of, i. 102
Acre taken by the crusaders, ii. 319
Adaland, archbishop of Tours, i. 131, 132
Adalbert, count of Périgord, i. 145
Adam, Master, i. 482, 492, 493
Adam de Bruce, ii. 145
Adam de Port, ii. 162

Adela, first wife of Geoffrey Greygown, i. 121, 135

Adela, countess of Chalon-sur-Saône, second wife of Geoffrey Greygown, i. 121, 134, 135, 199

Adela of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor, i. 445

Adela, daughter of Louis VII. and Constance, born, i. 468;
betrothed to Richard, ii. 62;
offered to John, 314;
marries the count of Ponthieu, 374

Adela of Blois, daughter of Theobald IV., third wife of Louis VII., i. 468

Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, wife of Stephen-Henry of Blois, i. 272;
her children, 273

Adela of Vendôme, daughter of Fulk Nerra and Elizabeth, i. 172

Adela, see Hermengard

Adelaide or Blanche, mother of Queen Constance, i. 191, 192

Adelard of Bath, i. 94, 95

Adeliza of Louvain, second wife of Henry I., i. 94;
married to William of Aubigny, 298;
receives the Empress Matilda, i. 309

Ademar, count of Angoulême, ii. 316, 381, 398, 399

Ademar, viscount of Limoges, ii. 220, 230, 381, 382

Adrian IV., Pope, i. 476;
his relations with the English Church and the Curia Theobaldi, 477;
friendship with John of Salisbury, 485;
bull for conquest of Ireland, 431; ii. 95, 96, 182;
relations with Henry II., i. 497;
dies, 498.
See Nicolas

Ælendis of Amboise, wife of Ingelger, i. 105, 131

Aerschot, see Arnold

Agnes of Burgundy, her marriages, i. 174, 197–199;
kinship with Geoffrey Martel, 136, 175, 199;
divorced, 212
Agnes of Merania, ii. 395, 401

Agnes of Poitou, daughter of William IV., marries Emperor Henry III., i. 176

“Aids” from towns, i. 25, 29;
the Sheriff’s, ii. 15;
pour fille marier, 125, 126;
for the king’s ransom, 325
Aileach, kings of, see Donell, Murtogh

Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes and duke of Britanny, i. 115

Alan III., duke of Britanny, helps Herbert Wakedog against Avesgaud and Fulk, i. 159, note 4{343};
marriage, 205;
death, 206, 211

Alan Fergant, duke of Britanny, his marriages, i. 328, note 4{930}

Alan, count of Nantes, i. 146
Alan of Richmond, i. 318, 319, 321
Albano, see Henry
Alberic, bishop of Ostia, legate, i. 299, 300
Alberic, count of Gâtinais, see Geoffrey
Albinus or Aubin, S., bishop of Angers, i. 98
Alcuin, i. 181
Aldgate, priory of Holy Trinity at, i. 66
Alençon, i. 208, 209;
treaty of, 217;
surrendered to Henry I., 233;
restored to William Talvas, 236;
won by Fulk V., ib.
See Robert, William
Alexander II., Pope, i. 220
Alexander III., Pope, i. 498;
acknowledged in France and England, 502;
grants the pall to Thomas, ii. 6;
meets Henry and Louis at Chouzy, 13;
holds a council at Tours, 14;
relation to the Becket quarrel, 29, 50–52;
condemns Constitutions of Clarendon, 42;
returns to Rome, 55;
appoints Thomas legate, 67;
sends commissioners to mediate between Henry and Thomas, 69, 70;
authorizes Roger of York to crown young Henry, 71;
forbids him, 72;
interdicts the Angevin dominions and excommunicates the murderers of S. Thomas, 79;
sends envoys to Henry, 80

Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, i. 83, 94, 303, 304

Alfhun, master of S. Bartholomew’s hospital, i. 67

Alfonso II., king of Aragon, ii. 133;
helps Richard in Aquitaine, 230, 231

Alfonso VIII., king of Castille, marries Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., ii. 60;
submits his quarrel with Navarre to Henry’s arbitration, 190

Alfonso Jordan, count of Toulouse, i. 455, 456, 458

Alfred of Beverley, ii. 445, 446

Alice of Maurienne betrothed to John Lackland, ii. 132–134;
dies, 184

Almeric of Montfort, i. 232, 236, 237, 238, 241

Almeric, viscount of Thouars, ii. 395, 427, 428

Alnwick, ii. 161
Amboise, i. 105, 106;
house of the Angevin counts at, 151;
Odo’s last attack on, 163.
See Lisoy, Sulpice
Ambrières, i. 209, 211
Anagni, see John
Andegavi, i. 97
Andely, Isle of, ii. 376, 377;
besieged by Philip, 411, 412;
John’s attempt to relieve it, 413–415;
taken, 416
Andely, Nouvel or Petit, ii. 377;
taken by Philip, 416;
fate of its townsfolk, 417, 418
Andes, i. 97, 130
Andrew of London, i. 363
Angareth, wife of William de Barri, ii. 453
Angers (Juliomagus), i. 98;
its position as a border-fortress, 101;
seized by northmen, 103;
relieved by Charles the Bald, ib., 104;
its aspect in tenth century, 108;
palace of the counts, 109, 132–134, 165;
of the bishops, 133;
fires at, ib., 152;
R. Diceto’s description of, 134;
Henry I. of France at, 213;
betrayed to Fulk Rechin, 220;
Urban II. at, 225;
burghers of, revolt against Fulk V., 234;
Fulk Nerra’s buildings at, 165;
abbeys of S. Aubin and S. Sergius at, 98;
our Lady of Charity (Ronceray), 165;
S. Nicolas, ib., 172, 214, 225, 228;
Henry II.’s buildings at, ii. 197, 199, 200;
Henry and his sons at, 224;
given up to Arthur, 389;
seized by his friends, 407;
retaken by John, 428;
bishops, see Albinus, Dodo, Rainald, Raino, Ulger

Angevin March, the, i. 101;
its extent, 130
Angevins, see Anjou
Angoulême, disputed succession, ii. 220.
See Ademar, Isabel, Matilda, Vulgrin, William

Anjou, its geographical position and character, i. 97;
political position, 106, 107;
its character as a marchland, 107;
its golden age, 113;
sources of its history, 126, 127;
county of, “bipartite,” 128, 129, 130;
its extent, 97, 130;
dependence on the duchy of France, 130;
condition at Fulk Rechin’s death, 229;
placed under interdict, 242;
revolts of the barons, 266–267, 343;
rebels in (1173), ii. 136;
condition under Henry II., 194–196;
John acknowledged in, 388;
accepts Arthur, 389;
submits to Philip, 425;
counts of, their origin, i. 105;
character, 108;
palace at Angers, 109, 132–134, 165;
burial-place, 117, note 3{263};
claims upon Nantes, 116, 117;
upon Maine, i. 124, 140–142;
the demon-countess, 143;
house at Amboise, 151;
rivalry with Blois, 145, 150, 188, 271, 279;
extinction of the male line, 214;
decline after Martel’s death, 215, 218;
relations with France, 164; ii. 357;
growth of their power, 187, 188;
career in Palestine, 239;
their work for England, 490, 492.

See Elias, Fulk, Geoffrey, Guy, Henry, Hermengard, Ingelger, Lambert, Matilda, Odo, Robert, Sibyl, William

Annonain, Pont de l’, ii. 200, 201

Anselm, S., archbishop of Canterbury, i. 8, 9;
his struggle with Henry I., 15–18;
consecrates Malchus to Waterford, ii. 89;
dies, i. 63;
proposal to canonize him, ii. 14

Aquitaine, its relations with France, i. 123, 145, 383, 456, 457; ii. 202;
extent and history, i. 454;
granted to Richard, ii. 62;
rebels in (1173), 136;
country and people, 201, 203–205;
its importance for England, 201;
relations with Henry II., 203, 205;
risings in, 58, 109, 220;
submits, 230;
proposal to give it to John, 233;
restored to Richard, 247.
See Eleanor, Odo, Richard, William
Aquitania, i. 99, 454
Aragon, see Alfonso, Ramirez, Petronilla
Arcelles, see Saher

Archambald, brother of Sulpice of Amboise, i. 194

Architecture, English, in twelfth century, i. 55

Aremburg of Maine, betrothed to Geoffrey Martel II., i. 226;
marries Fulk V., 232;
dies, 245
Argentan, i. 373; ii. 79, 80

Aristotle, study of, in the middle ages, ii. 466, 467

Arles, see Bertha, Burgundy, Provence, William

Armagh, synod at, ii. 105.
See Malachi
Arms, Assize of, ii. 177, 178
Arnold, count of Aerschot, i. 362
Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, i. 500;
persuades Henry II. to acknowledge Pope Alexander, 501;
advises Henry to appeal against Thomas, ii. 65;
rebels, 140
Arques, i. 342; ii. 405, 406, 425
Arthur, King, i. 33;

Henry II.’s correspondence with, ii. 57 note 2{226}, 447;
invention and translation of, 447, 448;
romances of, 448, 449

Arthur, son of Geoffrey and Constance of Britanny, born, ii. 245;
recognized by Richard as his heir, 295;
in custody of Philip, 370;
joins Richard, 374;
acknowledged in Anjou, Touraine and Maine, 389;
does homage to Philip, 390;
quarrels with Philip and goes to John, 394;
flies, 395;
does homage to John, 397;
knighted, 404;
meets the Lusignans at Tours, 405;
besieges Mirebeau, 406;
captured, ib.;
imprisoned, 407;
death, 408, 429, 430;
its consequences, 409
Arundel, i. 10, 309.
See William
Assize of Arms, ii. 177, 178;
of Clarendon, 122, 123;
of the Forest, 177;
Great, 122;
Henry Fitz-Aylwine’s, 485;
of Measures, 348;
of Mort d’ancester, 172;
of Northampton, 172, 173;
later developements, 338–340
Aubigny, see William
Aubrey de Vere, i. 305
Augustinians, see Canons
Aulerci Cenomanni, i. 201, 202
Aumale, see William
Austin canons, see Canons
Austria, see Leopold
Autun, see Lambert
Auvergne, its feudal relations, ii. 202, 203;
attacked by Philip, 252;
Richard gives up his claims upon, 361
Auxerre, Thomas Becket studies at, i. 379

Avesgaud, bishop of Le Mans, i. 159 note 4{343}, 204, 205

Avice of Gloucester betrothed to John Lackland, ii. 184;
married, 282;
divorced, 398
Avranches, ii. 81
Axholm, ii. 152, 155
Azay, conference at, ii. 263
Baggamore, i. 291
“Baille-hache,” i. 353, 354
Bailleul, see Bernard, Jocelyn
Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, i. 246
Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, ii. 239
Baldwin IV., king of Jerusalem, ii. 239, 247

Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, takes the cross, ii. 248;
preaches the crusade in Wales, 249;
opposes John’s marriage, 282;
dies, 296, 297;
his proposed college, 437
Baldwin, count of Flanders, i. 235
Baldwin of Clare, i. 318, 320
Baldwin of Redvers, i. 284
Balliol, see Bernard, Jocelyn
Ballon, ii. 394
Bamborough, i. 288
Bar, i. 167
Barcelona, county of, i. 462.
See Raymond-Berengar
Barnwell priory, ii. 463
Barri, see Gerald, William
Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter, i. 506
Bath, i. 35, 296.
See Adelard
Bayeux, i. 11, 307.
See Ralf
Baynard’s Castle, i. 44
Beauchamp, see Miles
Beaugency, council at, i. 392
Beaulieu abbey (Hants), ii. 400
Beaulieu abbey (Touraine), i. 154, 155, 168
Beaumont, see Hermengard
Beauvais, council at, i. 502
Becket, see Gilbert, Rohesia, Thomas
Bedford, i. 320

Bela III., king of Hungary, marries Margaret of France, ii. 235

Bellême, house of, i. 204.

See Robert

Benedictines contrasted with the Cistercians, i. 73

“Bene-work,” i. 57

Berengaria of Navarre, wife of Richard I., ii. 295, 296

Bermondsey, council at, i. 427
Bernard, S., abbot of Clairvaux, i. 70, 72;
his influence, 359;
relations with Rome, 360, 361;
with S. Malachi, ii. 94;
plans for England, i. 364;
pleads for Gerald of Montreuil, 388;
recommends John of Salisbury to Abp. Theobald, 483;
death, 400
Bernard de Balliol, ii. 145, 161
Berry, its feudal relations, ii. 202;
war in, 245, 251, 252

Bertha of Arles, widow of Odo I. of Blois, marries King Robert, i. 149;
separated, ib.

Bertha, daughter of Odo of Blois, wife of Alan of Britanny, i. 205;
of Hugh II. of Maine, 206

Bertha, daughter of Conan III. of Britanny, i. 449

Bertrada of Montfort, marries Fulk Rechin, i. 223, 224;
elopes with King Philip, 224;
suspected of contriving her stepson’s death, 228;
her policy, 232
Bertrand de Born, ii. 204, 205;
stirs up revolt in Aquitaine, 209, 220, 366;
his sirvente for Toulouse, 211, 212;
sets the young king against Richard, 222;
submits, 231;
enters a monastery, 371

Bertrand, count of Toulouse and Tripoli, i. 455

Beverley, i. 30, 37, 38.
See Alfred
Béziers, see Raymond
Bigod, see Hugh
Biota of Maine, i. 217, 218, 254

Bishops, English, their political position, i. 20;
appeal against Thomas, ii. 67.

See Church

Blanche of Castille, daughter of Alfonso and Eleanor, ii. 395, 397

Blanche, see Adelaide
Blanchelande, i. 223, 257
Bloet, see Robert

Blois, counts of, their rivalry with Anjou, i. 145, 150, 188;
their character, 150.

See Adela, Bertha, Henry, Odo, Stephen, Theobald, William

Blondel, ii. 324
Bodmin, gild at, ii. 469
“Bogis,” Peter, ii. 421, 422
Bohun, see Humfrey
Bologna, university of, ii. 460;
S. Thomas at, i. 379
Bonmoulins, conference at, ii. 254, 255
Bonneville, i. 307;
council at, ii. 157
“Boon-work,” i. 57
Bordeaux, see William
Born, see Bertrand
Bosham, see Herbert
Boulogne, see Matilda, Matthew, Mary, William
Bourbon, see Hermengard
Bourges, its feudal relations, ii. 202
Bourgthéroulde, battle of, i. 241
Brabantines, ii. 223
Breakspear, see Nicolas
Breffny, ii. 97
Brenneville, battle of, i. 237
Brian Boroimhe, king of Munster, ii. 85
Brian Fitz-Count, i. 243, 328, 396;
his “book,” 369
Bridgenorth, sieges of, i. 10, 429, 430
Brissarthe, i. 103
Bristol, i. 33, 34, 295, 296;
its slave-trade, 35, ii. 87;
Stephen’s attempt on, i. 296, 297;
ill-doings of its garrison, 297;
Dermot of Leinster at, ii. 98, 99;
Henry II.’s charters to, 118
Britanny, i. 99;
its extent under Herispoë, 102 note 1{236}, 130;
civil wars in, 115;

Geoffrey Martel’s dealings with, 211, 212;
claimed by Eudo of Porhoët and Conan of Richmond, 449;
granted by Henry II. to Conan, 451;
Henry’s designs on, 452, 453;
conquered by Henry, ii. 57, 58;
rebels in (1173), 137;
barons of, appeal to Philip against John, 408.

See Alan, Arthur, Conan, Constance, Eleanor, Geoffrey, Herispoë, Hoel, Juhel, Nomenoë, Odo, Solomon

Broc, see Ralf
Bruce, see Adam, Robert
Brulon, see Geoffrey
Burchard, count of Vendôme, i. 149, 189

Burgundy, kingdom of, granted to Richard I., ii. 331.

See Hugh, Robert, Rudolf.

Cadoc, ii. 416, 421, 425

Cadwallader, brother of Owen of North Wales, i. 435

Caen, surrendered to Henry I., i. 11;
to Geoffrey Plantagenet, 307;
to Philip, ii. 424;
hospital, i. 471; ii. 198;
palace, ii. 196, 197.
See Robert
Cæsarodunum, see Tours
Cahors, i. 464, 466
Calixtus II., Pope, i. 237
Cambridge, ii. 462, 463
Camville, see Gerard
Candé, i. 228

Canons, Austin or Augustinian, their origin, i. 64, 65;
character, 43, 66, 357;
in England, 66–69.

See Aldgate, Barnwell, Carlisle, Chiche, Kirkham, Nostell, Oseney, Oxford, Smithfield

Canons, White, i. 357
Canon law, its effects in England, ii. 18
Canterbury, canons of Laon visit, i. 30;
plot to kill Henry Fitz-Empress at, 403;
Thomas elected at, ii. 3;
privilege of the archbishop to crown the king, 62;

S. Thomas slain at, 79;
Henry II.’s penance at, 159;
Louis VII. at, 216;
Philip of Flanders at, 235;
Richard at, 328;
John crowned at, 400.

See Anselm, Baldwin, Geoffrey, Hubert, John, Ralf, Richard, Roger, Theobald, Thomas, Walter, William

Capua, see Peter
Caputii, ii. 223, 224
Carcassonne, see Raymond Trencavel
Carham, i. 286, 287, 292.
See Wark
Carlisle, i. 36, 37;
S. Godric at, 76;
council at, 300;
Henry Fitz-Empress knighted at, 377;
meeting of Henry and Malcolm IV. at, 462;
besieged by William the Lion, ii. 153, 154;
meeting of William and Henry at, 237;
earldom of, granted to Henry of Scotland, i. 282;
claimed by Ralf of Chester, 314;
see of, 37, 69
Carrick, ii. 109, 111
Carthusians, ii. 435, 436 note 1{2171}
Carucage of 1194, ii. 328, 329, 342;
the Great, 352–354
Carucate, ii. 352
Cashel, metropolis of Munster, ii. 94;
council at, 115

Castille, see Alfonso, Blanche, Constance, Eleanor

Castle Cary, i. 295, 298
Celestine II., Pope, i. 355, 356
Celestine III., Pope, ii. 303, 304, 312, 351
Celle, see Peter
Cenomanni (Aulerci), i. 201, 202
Cenomannia, see Maine
Châlus, ii. 382, 385
Champagne, see Henry, Odo, Stephen, Theobald
Chancellor, the, his office, i. 22, 419.

See Geoffrey, Matthew, Nigel, Ralf, Robert, Roger, Waldric, William

Charles the Bald, Emperor, i. 99, 102, 103, 105

Charles the Fat, king of West-Frankland and Emperor, i. 104

Charles the Simple, king of West-Frankland, i. 104

Charter of Henry I., i. 8;
Henry II., 427;
Stephen, 279, 284
Chartres, see Blois
Château-Gaillard, ii. 375–380;
siege, 416–423;
John’s buildings at, 413, 421, 422
Châteaudun, i. 156.
See Landry
Châteaulandon, see Gâtinais
Château-du-Loir, i. 390.
See Gervase
Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, i. 267
Châteauneuf, see Tours
Châteauroux, ii. 211, 213, 245, 251
Châtillon, conference at, ii. 253
Chaumont-sur-Loire, i. 272 note 1{662}, 471
Chef-Boutonne, battle of, i. 215, 252, 253
Cherbourg, siege of, i. 340
Chester, i. 36;
its slave-trade, ib., ii. 87;
meeting of Henry II. and Malcolm IV. at, i. 438;
privileges granted to its burghers at Dublin, ii. 484;
earldom of, its peculiar character, i. 313, 314.

See Hugh, Ralf
Chiche, priory of S. Osyth at, i. 68, 80
Chichester, see Hilary
Chinon won by Fulk Nerra, i. 167;
Geoffrey the Bearded imprisoned at, 221;
bequeathed to Geoffrey Plantagenet II., 394, 444;
councils at, ii. 58, 64;
Henry II.’s buildings at, 197, 200;
treasury at, plundered by Richard, 246;
Henry II. at, 263, 267;
given up to John, 388, 395;
taken by Philip, 426
Chouzy, conference at, ii. 13
Christchurch or Twinham, i. 32
Chrodegang of Metz, rule of, i. 65
Chronicle, English, i. 81, 82
Church, English, under Henry I., i. 63;
the Augustinian revival, 64–69;
the Cistercian revival, 69–74;
new sees, 68, 69;
its national character, 80;
political position of the bishops, 20;
condition during the anarchy, 347–360;
relations with Rome, 378;
position at accession of Henry II., 474;
vacant sees (1161), 503;
Henry’s schemes of reform, ii. 17–20;
question of the “two swords,” ib. 22, 23;
quarrel of Henry and Thomas, its effects, 46–50;
course of the revival after Theobald’s death, 432;
condition in Henry II.’s later years, 433–438.

See Clergy

Church, Irish, its early glory, ii. 82, 86;
condition in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 91–93;
settlement at Synod of Kells, 94;
submits to Henry II., 115
Circuits, see Justices
Cirencester, i. 330, 333

Cistercians or White Monks, their origin, i. 69, 70;
in England, 71;
work and influence, 74, 358, 359;
quarrel with John, ii. 396, 399, 400;
fall, 434, 435.

See Cîteaux, Clairvaux, Fountains, Newminster, Pontigny, Rievaux, Tintern, Waverley

Cîteaux, i. 70
Clairvaux (abbey), i. 70; ii. 70, 94
Clairvaux (castle), ii. 222, 224

Clare, see Baldwin, Gilbert, Isabel, Richard, Roger, Walter

Clarendon, council of, ii. 25–28, 44, 45;
Constitutions of, 26, 27;
condemned by the Pope, 42;
Assize of, 46, 122, 123
Cleobury, i. 429

Clergy, their position under Henry I., i. 63, 64;
regular and secular, 64, 65;
attitude in the civil war, 321;
criminal clerks, ii. 19.
See Church
Clerkenwell, council at, ii. 241
Clontarf, battle of, ii. 85
Cogan, see Miles
Coinage, debasement under Stephen, i. 293;
new, in 1149, 402 note 1{1204};
in 1158, 453
Colechurch, see Peter

Cöln, gildhall of its citizens in London, ii. 485.

See Reginald
Colombières, conference at, ii. 265, 266
Commune of Le Mans, i. 222;
Gloucester, ii. 469;
London, 309, 310, 344;
York, 469

Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes and duke of Britanny, i. 121;
his war with Geoffrey Greygown, 122, 137–139;
with Fulk the Black, 146–148
Conan II., duke of Britanny, i. 211, 212, 220
Conan III., duke of Britanny, i. 449

Conan, earl of Richmond, claims Britanny, i. 449;
duke, 451;
dies, ii. 80
Conquereux, first battle of, i. 122, 138;
second, 147, 148
Connaught invaded by Miles Cogan, ii. 184.
See Roderic, Terence
Conrad III., Emperor, i. 361
Conrad, marquis of Montferrat, ii. 320, 321
Consilt, battle of, i. 436
Constables, see Henry, Humfrey

Constance of Arles, wife of Robert I. of France, i. 155;
her parents, 190, 192;
her policy, 160, 164

Constance of Britanny, daughter of Conan IV., betrothed to Geoffrey, son of Henry II., ii. 57;
married, 233;
marries Ralf of Chester, 369;
imprisoned, 370;
joins Arthur in Anjou, 389;
does homage to Philip, 390;
marries Guy of Thouars, 395;
dies, 404, note 4{2050}

Constance of Castille, second wife of Louis VII. of France, i. 446, 468

Constance of France, daughter of Louis VI., betrothed to Stephen’s son Eustace, i. 384;
marries him, 394;
marries Raymond V. of Toulouse, 458
Constance, heiress of Sicily, ii. 319
Constantine, Donation of, ii. 95
Constitutions of Clarendon, ii. 26, 27;
condemned by the Pope, 42
Corbeil, see William
Cork, its origin, ii. 83.
See Dermot
Cornwall, see Reginald, William
Coroners, their origin, ii. 338, 339

Councils, see Argentan, Armagh, Beaugency, Beauvais, Bermondsey, Bonneville, Carlisle, Cashel, Clarendon, Clerkenwell, Chinon, Geddington, Gloucester, Inispatrick, Kells, Lisieux, London, Neufmarché, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Pavia, Pipewell, Poitiers, Rathbreasil, Tours, Wallingford, Westminster, Woodstock, Würzburg, York

Council, the Great, its character, i. 20
Courcy, see John, William
Coutances, see Walter
Coventry, see Hugh
Cowton Moor, i. 289
Cricklade, i. 335
Cross, S., see Winchester
Crowmarsh, i. 336, 396
Crown, pleas of the, ii. 337
Crusade, the second, i. 361–363;
in Spain, proposed by Louis VII. and Henry II., 453, 497;
the third, ii. 318–321
Curia Regis, see King’s Court
Customs, “paternal,” i. 16;
royal, ii. 22, 26, 27;
of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 37
Cyprus, ii. 317, 321
Danegeld, i. 25;
abolished, ii. 16, 44
David I., king of Scots, i. 95;
invades England, 282, 286, 287, 288;
defeated at Cowton Moor, 289–291;
treaties with Stephen, 282, 300;
joins the Empress in London, 323;
escapes from Winchester, 328;
knights Henry Fitz-Empress, 377;
dies, 399

David, prince of North-Wales, marries Henry II.’s sister Emma, ii. 181

David, bishop of S. David’s, ii. 454

David, brother of William of Scotland, ii. 140, 153;
claims on Huntingdon and Northampton, 154
David or Hugh, count of Maine, i. 124, 140
David’s, S., bishops of, see David, Peter
Defensor of Le Mans, i. 202
Denis, S., see Suger
Denmark, see Ingebiorg
Déols, ii. 211

Dermot Mac-Carthy, king of Cork or South Munster, ii. 114

Dermot Mac-Maelnambo, king of Leinster, ii. 87, 88

Dermot Mac-Murrough, king of Leinster, ii. 97;
seeks aid of Henry II., 98;
returns to Ireland, 100;
successes in Ossory etc., 102;
summons Richard of Striguil, 103;
dies, 106
Dervorgil, wife of Tighernan O’Ruark, ii. 97
Devizes, i. 304, 321, 330
Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 26
Diceto, see Ralf
Dinan, see Joceas
Dodo, bishop of Angers, i. 109, 133
Dol, ii. 148
Domfront, i. 6, 208, 209
Donatus, bishop of Dublin, ii. 87

Doncaster, earldom of, granted to Henry of Scotland, i. 282

Donell O’Brien, king of Limerick or North Munster, ii. 102, 103, 109, 111, 114

Donell O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach, ii. 90
Donell Kavanagh, ii. 109, 112
Dorchester, see Remigius
Dover, i. 295, 299;
chief mart of the wool trade, 52;
Geoffrey of York arrested at, ii. 305, 306.
See Simon, William
Drausius, S., ii. 65
Dress, English, in twelfth century, i. 56
Dreux, see Robert

Drogo of Nantes, son of Alan Barbetorte, i. 115, 116

Dublin, its origin, ii. 83;
metropolis of Leinster, 94;
taken by Dermot etc., 105;
attacked by wikings, 106;
blockaded by Roderic O’Conor, 109;
Henry II. at, 114, 115;
colonized by Henry, 118;
privileges of the Chester merchants at, 484.

See Donatus, Godred, Gregory, Laurence, Patrick

Dudley, i. 295, 298
Dulcia of Gévaudan, i. 463
Dunstan, S., lives of, i. 80
Dunster, i. 295
Durham, S. Godric at, i. 77;
cathedral, 80;
treaty made at, 300;
customs of the bishop’s estates in 1183, ii. 478–480.

See Hugh, Ralf, Simeon, William
Eadgyth or Edith, S., i. 33
Eadgyth, see Matilda
Eadmer, i. 80, 88

Eadward the Confessor, king of England, his prophecy, i. 1;
his laws demanded by the citizens of London, 324

Eadwulf, prior of Nostell and confessor to Henry I., i. 68;
bishop of Carlisle, 69
Ealdhelm, S., i. 84, 86, 90;
life by Faricius, 81
Earldoms created by Stephen, i. 293
Edith, see Eadgyth
Edmund’s, S., Henry II. at, i. 430;
massacre of Jews at, ii. 289;
its customs, 473, 474;
merchant-gild, 481;
dispute with Ely, 482, 483

Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter of William IX., marries Louis VII. of France, i. 383;
divorced, 392;
marries Henry, 393;
claims on Toulouse, 457, 458;
attempt to divorce her from Henry, ii. 61;
turns against him, 129;
imprisoned, 135;
Richard gives up Aquitaine to, 235;
regent for Richard, 273, 282;
arranges his marriage, 295, 296;
negotiates at Rome, 303;
returns to England, 314;
ravages Anjou, and does homage to Philip, 390;
goes to Spain, 396;
retires to Fontevraud, 405;
besieged in Mirebeau, 406;
dies, 426

Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., marries Alfonso of Castille, ii. 60, 189

Eleanor of Britanny, daughter of Geoffrey and Constance, ii. 244, 325, 371

Elias, count of Maine, i. 224, 225;
war with William Rufus, 225, 226;
Le Mans surrendered to, 227;
relations with Henry I., 11, 227, 233;
marriages,255;
death, 233
Elias of Anjou, son of Fulk V., i. 343
Elias of Saint-Saëns, i. 235

Elizabeth of Hainaut, first wife of Philip Augustus, ii. 217, 234, note 7{1115}

Elizabeth of Vendôme, first wife of Fulk Nerra, i. 152

Ely, see of, founded, i. 68;
quarrel with S. Edmund’s, ii. 482, 483.
See Geoffrey, Nigel

Emma, daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet, ii. 181

Emperors, see Charles, Conrad, Frederic, Henry, Otto

Engelram of Trie, i. 467
England under the Angevins, i. 1–3;
relations with Rome, 15;
with Normandy, 23, 24;
invaded by Robert Curthose, 9;
journey of canons of Laon in, 30–35;
its peace under Henry I., 48;
Flemings settle in, 52;
town life in twelfth century, 54, 55;
rural life, 56–62;
revival under Henry I., 64–95;
religious revival during the anarchy, 356–358;
effects of the second Crusade, 362;
rebels in (1173), ii. 138, 139;
loyal barons in, 144, 145;
rebel castles in the north, 152;
royal strongholds, 153;
condition of rural population under the Angevins, 473–480;
fusion of races, 489;
growth of national feeling, 489.

See Church, Literature, Towns, Trade.

See also Eadward, Eleanor, Henry, John, Jane, Matilda, Richard, Stephen, William

“English” and “French,” i. 24

“English” and “Normans,” different meanings of, i. 23, 24

English and Normans, fusion of, i. 24, 48, 49; ii. 489, 490

Englishry, presentment of, abolished, ii. 489
Essex, see Geoffrey, Henry, William
Este, see Hugh
Euclid, Adelard of Bath’s version of, ii. 95
Eudo, count of Porhoët, i. 449
Eugene III., Pope, i. 361;
deposes S. William and consecrates Henry Murdac, 366;
suspends Henry of Winchester and threatens Stephen, 368;
makes Abp. Theobald legate, 380;
forbids the crowning of Eustace, 391;
dies, 400

Eustace, son of Stephen, king of England, does homage to Louis VI. for Normandy, i. 286;
knighted, 377;
goes to York, 380;
his prospects, 382;
goes to France, 383;
betrothed to Constance, 384;
attacks Normandy, 385;
receives homage, 391;
proposal to crown him, ib.;
marriage, 394;
character, 398;
death, 399
Eustace Fitz-John, i. 72, 288
Eva, daughter of Dermot Mac-Murrough, ii. 104
Evreux ceded to Henry I., i. 11, 62;
betrayed to Almeric of Montfort, 236;
fired by Henry I., ib., 237;
granted to Almeric, 238;
taken by Philip Augustus, ii. 389;
ceded to him, 396.
See Simon
Exchequer, court of, i. 21;
organization under Bishop Roger, 25–27;
headquarters, 31;
Black Book of, ii. 125;
the Norman Exchequer, 194, 197
Exeter, i. 32, 284.
See Bartholomew
Eynesford, see William
Falaise besieged by Henry I., i. 11;
attacked by Geoffrey Plantagenet, 307;
submits, 338;
treaties at, ii. 165, 166;
Arthur imprisoned at, 407;
submits to Philip, 424

Faricius, abbot of Abingdon, i. 68 note 1{187}, 81

Farringdon, i. 335
Faye, see Ralf
Ferm of the shire, i. 25;
of towns, 29
Ferrers, see Robert
Ferté-Bernard, La, conference at, ii. 257
Finchale, i. 77, 78
Fitz-Alan, see William
Fitz-Aldhelm, see William
Fitz-Aylwine, see Henry
Fitz-Count, see Brian, Richard
Fitz-David, see Miles
Fitz-Duncan, see William
Fitz-Gerald, see Maurice
Fitz-John, see Eustace, William
Fitz-Osbert, see William
Fitz-Peter, see Geoffrey, Simon
Fitz-Ralf, see William
Fitz-Stephen, see Robert, William
Fitz-Urse, see Reginald
Flambard, see Ralf

Flanders granted to William the Clito, i. 243;
trade with England, 30, 51, 52.
See Baldwin, Matthew, Philip, Theodoric
Flèche, La, i. 222, 223, 256, 257

Flemings, their settlements in England and Wales, i. 52, 53;
in England under Stephen, 285;
plot to kill Henry, 403;
expelled, 427;
land in Suffolk, ii. 155;
at Hartlepool, 162
Fleury, abbey, i. 112
Florence, S., of Saumur, i. 162
Florence of Worcester, i. 82, 88, 89, 90
Foliot, see Gilbert
Folkmoot of London, i. 45
Fontevraud, i. 248;
Henry II. buried at, ii. 270–272;
Richard buried at, ii. 386;
Eleanor at, 385, 405
Forest, assizes of, i. 285; ii. 171, 177, 356
Fornham, battle at, ii. 150
Foss-Dyke, i. 40
Foss-Way, i. 38
Fougères, see Ralf
Fountains abbey, i. 71–73;
burnt, 366
France, duchy of, see French

France, kingdom of, character of its early history, i. 144;
condition under Hugh Capet, 145;
under Louis VI., 230;
relations with Normandy, 24, 111;
with Toulouse, 457, 458;
with Rome, 501, 502;
union with Aquitaine, 383;
its developement, ii. 357–361.

See Adela, Constance, Henry, Hugh, Louis, Margaret, Mary, Odo, Philip, Robert

Frankland, West, northmen in, i. 100.

See Charles, Lothar, Louis, Odo, Robert, Rudolf

Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor, supports antipope Victor IV., i. 498;
relations with Henry II., 499; ii. 55, 60, 238;
banishes Henry the Lion, 238, 257;
takes the cross, 256;
dies, 318

French, dukes of the, extent of their duchy, i. 103, 105;
underfiefs, 105;
claims upon Maine, 124.
See Hugh, Odo, Robert
“French and English,” i. 24
Fréteval, ii. 73, 366
Fritheswith or Frideswide, S., i. 43.
See Oxford
Fulk the Red, first count of Anjou, i. 106;
his neighbours, 109;
political position, 109, 110;
marriage, 110;
death, 113;
chronology of his life, 128, 129, 132
Fulk II. the Good, count of Anjou, i. 113;
his rule, 113, 115;
canon of S. Martin’s, 114;
letter to Louis IV., ib.;
marriages, 116;
claims upon Nantes, ib.;
death, 117;
vision of S. Martin, 118;
prophecy made to, ib.;
its fulfilment, ii. 187, 373

Fulk III., the Black, count of Anjou, his mother, i. 136;
surnames, 143, note 2{294};
character, 144;
significance of his life, 145, 146, 169;
war with Conan of Rennes, 146, 147;
regains Anjou west of Mayenne, 148;
attacks Blois, 149;
rivalry with Odo II., 150;
castle-building, 151;
seizure of the water-ways, 151–152;
first marriage, 152;
first pilgrimage, 153, 192;
founds Beaulieu abbey, 153–155;
marries Hildegard, 154;
second pilgrimage, 156, 192–195;
his oath, 155;
contrives the death of Hugh of Beauvais, ib.;
sacks Châteaudun, 156;
alliance with Maine, ib.;
victory at Pontlevoy, 157, 158;
subdues Hugh of Maine, 159;
imprisons Herbert of Maine, ib.;
invested with Saintes, ib., 173;
fortifies Montboyau, 161;
takes Saumur, 162;
besieges Montbazon, 163;
treaty with Odo, ib.;
his policy and its success, 164;
makes peace between Constance and her son, ib.;
joins King Henry’s expedition against Sens, ib.;
his home, 165;
buildings at Angers, ib.;
third pilgrimage, 166, 195, 196;
rebellion of his son, 166, 195;
wins Chinon, 167;
fourth pilgrimage, 167, 168;
quarrels with his son, 172, 175;
death, 168;
his tomb, ib.;
his work, 169, 188

Fulk IV. Rechin, son of Geoffrey of Gâtinais and Hermengard of Anjou, invested with Saintonge, i. 214;
his character, 219;
intrigues against his brother, ib.;
wins Saumur and Angers, 220;
captures Geoffrey, ib.;
does homage for Touraine, 221;
cedes Gâtinais to France, ib.;
his rule, ib.;
drives Geoffrey of Mayenne from Le Mans, 222;
besieges La Flèche, ib., 223, 257;
receives Robert’s homage for Maine, 223;
his marriages, 224;
excommunicated, ib.;
absolved, 225;
quarrels with his eldest son, 227, 228;
dies, 229;
his reign and its results, ib.;
his Angevin history, 127
Fulk V., count of Anjou, i. 229;
character and policy, 231, 232;
marries Aremburg, 232;
quarrel with Henry I. and alliance with France, 233;
homage to Henry, 234;
revolt of the burghers against, ib.;
joins league against Henry, 235;
wins Alençon, 236;
treaty with Henry, ib.;
goes to Jerusalem, 238;
quarrel with Henry, 240;
offers Maine to Clito, ib.;
imprisons the legate’s envoys, 242;
marries Melisenda and becomes king of Jerusalem, 246–248;
dies, 361
Fulk the Gosling, count of Vendôme, i. 214
Gaimar, see Geoffrey
Galloway, ii. 164, 179, 237

Gandrea, wife of Theobald III. of Blois, i. 255, 256

Gascony, Richard’s campaign in, ii. 214;
revolt in, 316.
See Guy-Geoffrey, Odo
Gatian, S., bishop of Tours, i. 179
Gâtinais, county of, i. 129;
ceded to France, 221;
counts, 249, 250
Gaubert of Mantes, ii. 415
Geddington, council at, ii. 249
Gelduin of Saumur, i. 161, 162
Geoffrey I. Greygown, count of Anjou, i. 118;
his character, 119;
joins invasion of Lorraine, 120;
his marriages, 121, 134–136;
relations with Britanny, 121, 122, 137–139;
with Maine, 124, 140–142;
war with Poitou, 123, 137, 139;
wins Loudun, 123, 124, 139;
founds church of our Lady at Loches, 153;
dies at siege of Marson, 125

Geoffrey II. Martel, son of Fulk the Black, born, i. 154;
nursed at Loches, ib.;
count of Vendôme, 172;
quarrel with Fulk, ib., 175;
marries Agnes, 136, 174, 197, 199;
war with Poitou, 173–175;
wins Saintonge, 174;
rebels, 166, 195, 196;
count of Anjou, 169;
his character, 170–172;
invested with Tours, 178;
besieges it, 184;
victory at Montlouis, 186;
treaty with Theobald, 187;
its significance, 188;
advocate of see of Le Mans, 205;
imprisons Bp. Gervase, 206;
master of Maine, ib.;
excommunicated, ib.;
revolts, 207;
wins Alençon and Domfront, 208;
challenges William and retires, 209;
war with Aquitaine, 210;
besieges Ambrières, 211;
dealings with Nantes, 211, 212;
marries Grecia, 212;
blockaded in Saumur, 213;
joins invasion of Normandy, ib., 214;
loses Vendôme, 214;
dies, ib.;
break-up of his dominions, 215;
dispute over them, 218;
his heirs, 251–252

Geoffrey III. the Bearded, count of Anjou, i. 214;
victory at Chef-Boutonne, 215, 252, 253;
receives Robert’s homage for Maine, 217;
wrongs Marmoutier, 220;
captured by Fulk, ib.;
imprisoned at Chinon, 221;
released and dies, 228

Geoffrey Martel II. of Anjou, son of Fulk Rechin, betrothed to Aremburg of Maine, i. 226;
joins Henry I., 11;
quarrel with Fulk, 227, 228;
slain, 228

Geoffrey V. Plantagenet, son of Fulk V. and Aremburg, knighted by Henry I., i. 244;
marriage, ib., 258–260;
his person and character, 261–265;
quarrels with his wife, 266;
with Henry, 269, 270;
invades Normandy, 281, 306, 307;
revolts against, 266, 267, 306, 343, 384;
summoned to England, 330;
treaty with Theobald, 337;
conquers Normandy, 338–342;
recalls his son, 343;
challenge to Stephen, 369;
cedes Normandy to his son, ib., 377;
his siege of Montreuil, 384, 386;
treatment of Gerald, 387;
cedes the Vexin to Louis, 388;
death, 389, 390;
burial, 390;
will, 444

Geoffrey of Anjou, second son of Geoffrey and Matilda, born, i. 373;
seeks to marry Eleanor, 393;
rebels against Henry, 394, 395, 444, 445;
count of Nantes, 449;
dies, ib.
Geoffrey I., duke of Britanny, i. 137, 148

Geoffrey, fourth son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 453;
acknowledged heir to Britanny, ii. 58;
duke, 80;
revolts, 135;
knighted, 214;
joins young Henry, 225;
submits, 232;
marries Constance, 233;
dies, 243

Geoffrey, son of Henry II., bishop-elect of Lincoln, ii., 155;
takes Kinardferry etc., ib.;
chancellor, 245;
secures castles of Anjou, 256;
with Henry at Le Mans, 258, 259, 260;
at La Frênaye, 262;
goes to Alençon, ib.;
rejoins Henry, 263;
his devotion to Henry, 268;
appointed archbishop of York, 274, 278, 302;
early life, 301, 302;
character, 304;
consecrated, 305;
returns to England, ib.;
arrested, ib.;
released, 306;
joins John, 307;
enthroned, 313;
quarrel with Hugh of Durham, ib., 316;
buys sheriffdom of Yorkshire, 330;
driven from England, 335;
redeems the Lincoln church-plate, 487

Geoffrey (Alberic), count of Gâtinais, marries Hermengard of Anjou, i. 214, 249, 250

Geoffrey of Brulon, ii. 259
Geoffrey of Chaumont, i. 272, note 1{662}
Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, justiciar, ii. 355, 356;
earl of Essex, 393
Geoffrey Gaimar, ii. 446

Geoffrey of Lusignan, ii. 59 note 1{235}, 136, 250, 405

Geoffrey of Mandeville, i. 334, 335

Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, ii. 124

Geoffrey of Mayenne, i. 211;
holds Le Mans for Walter of Mantes, 218;
submits to William, ib.;
revolts, 221, 222, 224
Geoffrey of Monmouth, ii. 445, 448
Geoffrey of Rancogne, ii. 214, 250, 367

Geoffrey Ridel, archdeacon of Canterbury, ii. 30, 77;
vice-chancellor, 142;
bishop of Ely, 176;
dies, 277
Geoffrey Talbot, i. 294, 296

Gerald de Barri (“Giraldus Cambrensis”), ii. 452–460

Gerald of Montreuil-Bellay, i. 384, 385, 386, 388

Geraldines, the, ii. 108, 183

Gerard de Camville, ii. 280, 298, 299, 300, 329

Gerard la Pucelle, ii. 449

Gerberga, wife of Fulk the Good, i. 116, note 1{258}

Germany, English trade with, under the Angevins, ii. 484, 485

Gersendis of Maine, i. 221, 254–256

Gervase of Château-du-Loir, bishop of Le Mans, i. 205;
imprisoned by Geoffrey Martel, 206;
released, ib.;
archbishop of Reims, 207

Gesta Consulum Andegavensium, its authorship and character, i. 126, 127

Gévaudan, see Dulcia
Gilbert of Sempringham, S., i. 359, 360
Gilbert Becket, i. 50

Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester, i. 369, 370, 493;
bishop of Hereford, 371, 495;
his earlier history, 492, 493;
career as abbot, 494, 495;
relations with Abp. Theobald and with Henry II., 495, 496;
with Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, 478, 479;
character, 496, 497;
remarks on Thomas’s election, ii. 3, 6;
translated to London, 13, 14;
relations with Thomas, 13, 31, 49;
at council of Northampton, 35, 36, 37, 39;
his attitude in the Becket quarrel, 47–49;
his share in the bishops’ appeal, 67;
excommunicated, 70;
denies the primate’s jurisdiction, ib.;
absolved, 72;
dies, 277
Gilbert, bishop of Limerick, ii. 92;
legate in Ireland, ib., 93

Gilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke, i. 377, 395, 396; ii. 99

Gilds, i. 29;
under Henry II. and Richard, ii. 469, 470;
leather-sellers’, i. 30;
merchant, i. 29, 36, 40, 43; ii. 481;
weavers’, i. 30, 52; ii. 481
Gildhall, i. 129;
of German merchants, ii. 485
Gilles, St., see Raymond
Giraldus Cambrensis, see Gerald
Gisors, i. 231, 234, 343;
meeting of Henry I. and Pope Calixtus at, 237, 238;
of Louis VII. and Henry II. at, ii. 148, 165;
claimed by Philip, 232, 236
Glanville, see Hervey, Ralf

Glastonbury, invention of Arthur at, ii. 447, 448

Gleeman, the, i. 90
Gloucester, i. 35, 36;
abbey and city, 493, 494;
council at, ii. 170;
commune at, 469.

See Avice, Gilbert, Miles, Philip, Robert, William

Godfrey de Lucy, bishop of Winchester, ii. 277, 288

Godfrey, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84, 85
Godred, king of Dublin, ii. 88
Godric, S., i. 74–79
“Goliath, Bishop,” ii. 452
Gouleton, ii. 396, 402
Gournay, ii. 403.
See Hugh
Graçay, ii. 213, 361
Grandmesnil, see Ivo, Petronilla
Grandmont, ii. 58, 226;
order of, 435
Gratian, his work on canon law, i. 378

Grecia of Montreuil, second wife of Geoffrey Martel, i. 212

Gregory, archbishop of Dublin, ii. 94
Gregory, bishop of Tours, i. 181
Gué-St.-Rémy, ii. 244

Guerech, bishop and count of Nantes, i. 121, 122, 146

Guimund, prior of S. Frideswide’s, Oxford, i. 43

“Guirribecs,” i. 306

Guy of Anjou (son of Fulk the Red), bishop of Soissons, i. 112, 113

Guy of Anjou, son of Fulk the Good, i. 119
Guy of Crema, see Paschal
Guy, viscount of Limoges, ii. 407
Guy of Lusignan, ii. 59 note 1{235}, 136;
king of Jerusalem, 247;
Cyprus, 317, 321;
ally of Richard, 318, 320
Guy of Thouars, ii. 395, 424
Guy-Geoffrey, count of Gascony, i. 176, 212.
See William VII. of Aquitaine
Hackington, college at, ii. 437
Hainaut, see Elizabeth

Hameline, earl of Warren, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, ii. 40, 144

Hamo de Massey, ii. 139
Hans-house, i. 29;
at York, 36

Harding or Stephen, founder of Cîteaux, i. 69, 70

Harptree, i. 295, 298
Hasculf Thorgils’ son, ii. 105, 106
Hautefort, ii. 204, 231
Haye, La, see Richard

Henry I., son of William the Conqueror, his early life, i. 4–6;
character, 6, 7;
election and coronation, 7;
charter, 8;
marriage, 1, 8, 9;
treaty with Robert, 9;
proceedings against traitors, 10;
Norman campaigns, 11;
victory at Tinchebray, 12, 13;
policy, 13–15, 19;
struggle with Anselm, 15–18;
character of his reign, 19;
his work, 19, 20;
love of “foreigners,” 23;
his ministers, ib.;
called “the Lion of Justice,” 26;
charter to York, 30, 36;
to Norwich, 41;
London, 45, 46;
palace at Woodstock, 44, 94;
court at Oxford, 44;
his “good peace,” 30 note 4{58}, 48, 95;
settles Flemings in Pembroke, 52;
dealings with the Church, 63;
results, 64;
founds see of Ely, 68;
Carlisle, 69;
revival of literature under, 80–95;
relations with Maine, 227;
with France, 230, 231;
wars with France and Anjou, 233, 235;
treaties with Fulk, 234, 236;
victory at Brenneville, 237;
meets Calixtus at Gisors, ib., 238;
treaty with Louis, 238;
wreck of his hopes, 239, 240;
quarrel with Fulk, 240;
quells revolt in Normandy, 241;
alliance with Henry V., ib.;
proclaims Matilda his heiress, 243;
last years, 268–270;
death, 271;
possible successors, 274–275;
state of England after his death, 279;
burial, 282;
his court, 413
Henry II. Fitz-Empress born, i. 268;
Eadward’s prophecy fulfilled in, 1;
Witan swear fealty to, 269;
his early life, 372–374;
tutors, 375, 376;
goes to England, 334;
returns to Anjou, 343;
duke of Normandy, 369, 377;
goes to England, 377;
knighted, ib.;
returns, 378;
besieges Torigni, 386, 405;
does homage to Louis, 388;
marries Eleanor, 393;
ignores Louis’s jurisdiction, 394;
war with Louis and Geoffrey, 395;
lands in England, 396;
besieges Malmesbury, 397;
colloquy at Wallingford, ib.;
treaty with Stephen, 400, 401;
receives homage, 402;
plot to kill him, 403;
returns to Gaul, ib.;
effects of his visit to England, ib.;
resumes Norman demesnes, 404;
peace with Louis, 405;
comes to England, ib.;
crowned, ib.;
his work, 407;
person and character, 408–411, 414–417;
court, 411–413;
first ministers, 417, 418;
relations with Becket, 420, 423–427;
charter, 427;
settlement of the country, ib.;
of the succession, 429;
subdues William of Aumale, 428;
and Hugh of Mortemer, 429;
holds court at S. Edmund’s, 430;
goes to Anjou, 431;
scheme for conquering Ireland, ib., ii. 95;
effects of his first two years’ work in England, i. 431–434;
returns, 434;
demands Northumberland etc., 435;
receives Malcolm’s homage, 438;
wears his crown at Wigford, ib., 439;
at Worcester, 439;
his position compared with Cnut’s, 2, 440, 441;
relations with France, 441, 442;
does homage, 443;
subdues Geoffrey, 444, 445;
proposes for Margaret as wife for his son, 446;
seneschal of France, 450;
grants Britanny to Conan and obtains Nantes, 451;
designs on Britanny, 452, 453;
claims Toulouse, 458;
great scutage, 459–461;
his allies, 462, 463;
knights Malcolm, 464;
takes Cahors and threatens Toulouse, ib.;
withdraws, 465;
treaty, 467;
quarrel with Thomas, 469;
drives Louis from Chaumont, 471;
principle of his reforms, 474;
projects of crusade, 453, 497;
attitude towards the religious revival, 497;
relations with Adrian IV., ib.;
with Germany, 499, 502;
acknowledges Alexander III. as Pope, 502;
appoints Thomas archbishop, ii. 1;
meets Alexander and Louis, 13;
goes to England, ib.;
receives homage of Welsh princes at Woodstock, 14;
quarrel with Thomas, 15, 16;
plans of reform in criminal legislature, 17–20;
propounds his grandfather’s customs at Westminster, 22;
meets Thomas at Northampton, 23;
at Oxford, 24;
publishes constitutions of Clarendon, 26;
meets Thomas at Woodstock, 31, 32;
council of Northampton, 32–40;
sends envoys to the Pope, 41;
confiscates the primate’s estates and banishes his friends, 42;
effects of the quarrel, 46–49;
goes to Normandy, 54;
receives envoys from the Emperor, 55, 60;
plans for his children, 57, 60;
conquers Britanny, 57, 58;
correspondence with Arthur, 57 note 2{226}, 447;
meets Raymond, 58;
attempt to divorce him from Eleanor, 61;
does homage at Montmirail, ib., 62;
holds council at Chinon, 64;
appeals to Rome, 65;
drives Thomas from Pontigny, 68;
meets him at Montmirail, 69;
meets Louis and Thomas at Montmartre, 71;
at Fréteval, 73;
meets Thomas at Tours and Chaumont, 74;
goes to Rocamadour, ib.;
rash words at Bures, 78;
absolved, 81;
promises help to Dermot, 99;
forbids the war in Ireland, 108;
summons Richard of Striguil to Wales, 112;
goes to Ireland, 80, 113;
his fleet, 112;
Irish princes submit to, 114;
settlement of Ireland, 117;
of Dublin, 118;
goes to Normandy, 119;
relations with the barons, 120, 121, 126, 128;
legal and administrative reforms, 122–127;
inquest on Norman demesnes, 128;
alliance with Maurienne, 131;
receives homage of Toulouse, 133;
quarrel with young Henry, 134, 135;
revolt against, 141;
visits England, 143;
his adherents, 144–146;
takes Dol, 148;
meets Louis, ib.;
subdues rebels in Touraine, 151;
regains Saintes, 157;
returns to England, 158;
pilgrimage to Canterbury, 159;
receives news of William’s capture, 160;
takes Huntingdon and subdues Hugh Bigod, 163;
relieves Rouen, 164;
subdues Poitou, 165;
reconciled with his sons, ib.;
treaty with William the Lion, 166;
treatment of the rebels, 167;
end of the struggle, 166, 168;
his position after it, 169;
administrative work in England, 170–178;
his forest visitations, 171;
receives homage for Scotland, 178;
dealings with Wales, i. 435–437; ii. 179–181, 237, 453, 455;
treaty with Roderic O’Conor, ii. 182;
appoints John king of Ireland, 184;
character of his empire, 185–187;
continental policy, 188–191;
arbitrates between Castille and Navarre, 190;
administration in Normandy, 192–194;
buildings, 196, 197;
religious foundations, 197 and note 4{948};
hospitals, 198, 199;
Levée, 200;
bridges, ib.;
relations with Aquitaine, 203, 205;
quarrel with Louis, 212;
treaty, 213;
takes Châteauroux, ib.;
buys La Marche, 214;
house of Blois seek his help, 217;
makes peace in France, ib., 219;
tries to make peace among his sons, 224;
summons a conference at Mirebeau, 225;
besieges Limoges, ib.;
arrests rebel leaders of 1173, 226;
forgives young Henry, 227;
Aquitaine submits to, 230;
interview with Bertrand de Born, 231;
homage to Philip, 232;
proposes to transfer Aquitaine to John, 233, 242;
makes John governor of Ireland, 234;
mediates between France and Flanders, 235;
receives submission of Galloway, 237;
receives the patriarch Heraclius, 240;
meets Philip, 244;
marches into Berry, 245;
truce, 246;
reinstates Richard in Aquitaine, 247;
meets Philip, 248;
takes the cross, 249;
musters his forces in Normandy, 252;
meets Philip, 253;
conference at Bonmoulins, 254;
goes into Aquitaine, 256;
meets Richard, ib.;
goes to Le Mans, 257;
conference at La Ferté, ib.;
flies, 259–262;
returns to Anjou, 262;
goes to Chinon and Azay, 263;
submits to Philip at Colombières, 265, 266;
learns John’s treason, 267;
last days, 268;
death, 269;
burial, 270, 272;
points out Arthur’s tomb, 447;
grants trading privileges to Chester, 484;
grants burial-grounds to the Jews, 486

Henry, second son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 429, 445;
betrothal, 446, 448;
does homage for Normandy, 468;
marriage, 470;
intrusted to Thomas for education, 471, 472;
recognised heir to the crown, 472, 473;
receives homage of Malcolm IV., ii. 15;
withdrawn from Thomas, 23;
homage at Montmirail, 62;
receives Geoffrey’s homage for Britanny, ib.;
officiates as seneschal and does homage to Philip, ib.;
crowned, 72;
crowned again, 81;
rebels, 129, 130;
flies to France, 134;
threatens to invade England, 158, 162;
reconciled, 165;
receives homage of William the Lion, 178;
joins Richard in Aquitaine, 209, 210;
besieges Châteauroux, 211;
at crowning of Philip Augustus, 216, 218, 219;
character, 221;
quarrel with Richard, 222;
enters Aquitaine, 223;
confesses his league with the Poitevins, 224;
holds Limoges against his father, 225;
driven thence, 226;
plunders Grandmont, ib.;
and Rocamadour, 227;
death, ib., 228;
burial, 230, 232
Henry III., Emperor, i. 176
Henry V., Emperor, i. 241, 242

Henry VI., Emperor, his claims on Sicily, ii. 319;
demands for Richard’s ransom, 324, 325;
negotiates with Philip and John, 327;
grants Burgundian kingdom to Richard, 331;
conquers Sicily, 371, 372;
stirs up Richard against France, 372;
dies, ib.

Henry I., king of France, joins Odo II. against Fulk Nerra, i. 163;
tries to drive Odo from Sens, 164;
revolt against, 177, 178;
grants Tours to Geoffrey Martel, 178;
relations with Normandy and Anjou, 207, 210;
visits Angers, 213;
invades Normandy, ib.;
defeated at Varaville, ib., 214;
dies, 214

Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, his early life, i. 347;
supports Stephen, 277, 279;
legate, 305;
summons Stephen before a council at Winchester, 305;
advice at siege of Arundel, 309;
escorts Matilda to Bristol, 310;
receives her at Winchester, 321;
holds council there, 322;
again declares for Stephen, 324, 325;
his fortress of Wolvesey, 325;
besieged, 326;
fires the city, ib.;
holds council at Westminster and again proclaims Stephen, 329, 330;
his Church policy, 348;
character, 349;
position as legate, ib., 350;
elected to Canterbury, 350;
rivalry with Theobald, 351;
loses the legation, 356;
goes to Rome, ib.;
founds S. Cross, 357;
suspended, 368;
appeals, 381;
absolved, ib.;
consecrates S. Thomas, ii. 5;
at council of Northampton, 35, 36, 37, 41;
dies, 80

Henry the Liberal, count of Champagne, joins invasion of Normandy, i. 394;
betrothed to Mary of France, 445

Henry II., count of Champagne, king of Jerusalem, ii. 321

Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, betrothed to Matilda, daughter of Henry II., ii. 55;
married, 59, 60;
exiled 238, 257;
regains his lands, 319

Henry, son of David king of Scots, made earl of Carlisle and Huntingdon, i. 282;

Northumberland promised to, 286;
at battle of the Standard, 290, 291;
earl of Northumberland, 300;
at siege of Ludlow, 301, 302;
dies, 399
Henry of Albano, legate, ii. 256, 257
Henry of Essex, constable, i. 434;
drops standard at Consilt, 436, 437;
present in war of Toulouse, 466;
defeated in ordeal of battle, ii. 61
Henry Fitz-Aylwine, mayor of London, ii. 472;
his assize, 485
Henry of Huntingdon, i. 82, 83, 94
Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains, i. 365;
opposes S. William, ib.;
archbishop of York, 366;
his troubles in Yorkshire, 367, 380;
reconciled to the king and enthroned, 381;
goes to Rome, ib.;
opposes election of Hugh of Puiset to Durham, 399, 400;
death, 400
Henry of Pisa, cardinal, ii. 2
Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, ii. 240

Herbert I. Wake-dog, count of Maine, saves Fulk at Pontlevoy, i. 157, 158;
his surname, 159;
imprisoned by Fulk, ib.;
quarrels with Bp. Avesgaud, ib. note 4{343}, 204;
death, 204;
daughters, 254, 255
Herbert II., count of Maine, i. 216

Herbert Bacco usurps the county of Maine, i. 204;
quarrels with Bishop Gervase, 205;
expelled, ib.

Herbert Lozinga, bishop of Thetford, removes his see to Norwich, i. 41

Herbert, bishop of Salisbury, withstands Hubert Walter, ii. 350

Herbert of Bosham, ii. 9, 10, 38, 40, 75;
verdict on the Becket quarrel, 47
Hereford, i. 36;
castle seized by Geoffrey Talbot, 294;
yields to Stephen, 295.
See Gilbert, Miles, Robert, Roger
Herispoë, king of Britanny, i. 130, 203

Hermengard of Anjou, daughter of Geoffrey Greygown and wife of Conan of Rennes, i. 121, 135

Hermengard (Adela) of Anjou, daughter of Fulk Nerra, wife of Geoffrey of Gâtinais, i. 214, 249

Hermengard of Anjou, daughter of Fulk Rechin, marries Alan Fergant, duke of Britanny, i. 328 note 4{930}

Hermengard of Beaumont, wife of William the Lion, ii. 237

Hermengard of Bourbon, second wife of Fulk Rechin, i. 224

Hervey of Glanville, i. 362
Hervey of Lions, i. 321
Hervey of Mountmorris, ii. 101, 112
Hicmar, legate, i. 364
Higra, the, i. 34
Hilary, bishop of Chichester, ii. 24, 39

Hildegard, wife of Fulk III. of Anjou, i. 154, 165, 168

Historia Comitum Andegavensium, its authorship and character, i. 126, 127

History, English, under Henry I., i. 81–83, 87–91;
decay during the anarchy, ii. 438;
new school of, under Henry II., 439–445;
romantic school, 445, 449
Hoel, duke of Britanny, i. 222
Hoel I., count of Nantes, i. 117, 121
Hoel II., count of Nantes, i. 212
Hoel of Rennes, count of Nantes, i. 449
Holy Land, see Jerusalem
Hommet, see Richard
Hospitaliers, i. 357
Hospitals founded in Stephen’s reign, i. 357;
Henry II., ii. 198, 199

Houses, English, in twelfth century, i. 54, 55

Howden, see Roger
Hrolf the Ganger, i. 111, 124, 203
Hubert Walter, dean of York, ii. 278;
bishop of Salisbury, ib., 333;
elected to Canterbury, 326;
justiciar, ib.;
suppresses revolt, 327;
early life, 332, 333;
rivals, 334–336;
legate, 336;
his policy, ib.;
administration, 337–341, 348, 352–354;
fires Bow church and hangs William Fitz-Osbert, 347;
defeated in council at Oxford, 349, 350;
expedition to Wales, 351;
resigns the justiciarship, ib., 354, 355;
negotiates with Philip, 374;
regent for John, 390, 391;
crowns him, 392;
chancellor, ib.;
persuades John to dismiss the host, 427;
dies, 428;
his proposed college, 437
Hubert de Burgh, ii. 400, 407, 408, 426

Hugh, S., bishop of Lincoln, excommunicates the De Clères, ii. 306;
withstands Hubert Walter, 349;
buries Richard, 386;
dies, 399

Hugh of Nonant, bishop of Chester or Coventry, ii. 280, 293, 306, 310, 329;
his scheme of “new foundation,” 436

Hugh of Puiset, treasurer of York, excommunicated, i. 367;
absolved, 382;
bishop of Durham, 399, 400;
rebels, ii. 140, 141;
makes a truce with the Scots, 151;
fortifies Northallerton, 152;
calls in the Flemings, 162;
submits, 163;
takes the cross, 248;
justiciar, 279;
earl of Northumberland, 280;
character and antecedents, 283–285;
quarrels with the chancellor, 288, 291, 292;
relations with York, 303, 304;
quarrel with Geoffrey, 313, 316;
mission to France, 316;
besieges Tickhill, 323, 327, 328;
resigns Northumberland, 330;
tries to regain it, 335;
dies, 336;
his Boldon Buke, 478–480
Hugh, duke of Burgundy, i. 103, 104

Hugh the Great, duke of the French, i. 112, 123, 124, 204

Hugh Capet, duke of the French, i. 120, 124, 141, 142;
king, 125
Hugh I. count of Maine, i. 124;
subdued by Fulk the Black, 159;
dies, 156

Hugh II. count of Maine, set aside by Herbert Bacco, i. 204;
restored, 205;
marriage and death, 206
Hugh of Este, count of Maine, i. 221, 224
Hugh the Poor, earl of Bedford, i. 320
Hugh Bigod, i. 278;
revolts against Stephen, 284;
earl of Norfolk, 430;
revolts against Henry, ii. 139;
takes Norwich, 155;
submits, 163;
his punishment, 167

Hugh, earl of Chester, rebels against Henry II., ii. 138;
taken prisoner, 148;
restored, 167
Hugh Bardulf, ii. 283, 330, 335
Hugh of Beauvais, seneschal of France, i. 155
Hugh of Gournay, ii. 146, 403
Hugh de Lacy, ii. 113, 116;
governor in Ireland, 117;
with Henry in Normandy, 145, 147;
viceroy again, 185;
slain, 242, 243
Hugh IX., the Brown, of Lusignan, ii. 398
Hugh X. of Lusignan, ii. 398, 405
Hugh of Ste.-Maure, ii. 129, 136
Hugh of Mortemer, i. 429, 430
Hugh de Morville, ii. 78
Hugh of Sillé, ii. 137
Huitdeniers, see Osbern

Humbert, count of Maurienne, ii. 132, 133, 134

Humfrey de Bohun, constable, ii. 113, 145, 149

Hungary, see Bela
Huntingdon, siege of, ii. 154, 156;
surrenders, 163;
earldom of, i. 282, ii. 154;
weavers at, i. 30, 52.
See Henry, Simon
Hyde abbey, i. 31
Ilchester, see Richard

Ingebiorg of Denmark, second wife of Philip Augustus, ii. 395

Ingelger, son of Tortulf, i. 105, 114, 128–131, 182

Ingelger, son of Fulk the Red, i. 112
Inispatrick, synod at, ii. 94
Innocent II., Pope, i. 299, 351, 355; ii. 93
Innocent III., Pope, ii. 351
Inquest, see Jury
Investitures, i. 15–18

Ireland, English trade with, i. 32, 35, ii. 87;
northmen in, ii. 82–86;
civil wars in, 89–91;
Henry II.’s proposal to conquer, 95, 431;
plans of Eugene III. and S. Bernard for, 95;
bull for its conquest, i. 431, 486, ii. 96;
Henry II. in, ii. 113–118;
condition in his later years, 181–185;
John made governor of, 234;
John in, 242;
Gerald’s treatises on, 457, 458.

See Brian, Dermot, Donell, Malachi, Murtogh, Niall, Roderic, Terence.

See also Church
Isaac, king of Cyprus, ii. 317, 319
Isabel of Angoulême, ii. 398;
married to John, 399

Isabel de Clare, wife of William the Marshal, ii. 274

Isabel de Warren, ii. 29
Issoudun, ii. 361.
See Ralf
Ivo of Grandmesnil, i. 10

Jane, third daughter of Henry II., betrothed to William II. of Sicily, ii. 60;
marries him, 189, 190;
marries Raymond VI. of Toulouse, 371;
dies, 397

Jane of Montferrat, wife of William the Clito, i. 243

Jerusalem, kingdom of, condition under the Angevin kings, ii. 239;
taken by Saladin, 247.

See Baldwin, Fulk, Guy, Henry, Melisenda, Sibyl

Jews in England, i. 27, 46, 53;
under Henry II., ii. 486;
burial-grounds granted to, ib.;
massacres of, 289, 290;
relations with the Christians, 487, 488;
ordinance for their bonds, 488, 489
Joceas of Dinan, i. 301
Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, ii. 37, 67, 76
Jocelyn de Balliol, ii. 66

John “Lackland,” son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, ii. 130;
betrothed to Alice of Maurienne, 132–134;
to Avice of Gloucester, 184;
appointed king of Ireland, ib.;
proposal to give him Aquitaine, 233;
knighted and sent to Ireland, 234;
his misconduct in Ireland, 242;
recalled, ib.;
proposal to crown him, ib., 244;
his treason discovered, 267;
reconciled to Richard, 274;
treats with Rees, 280;
his lands in England, 282;
marries Avice, ib.;
his power in England, 293;
quarrels with the chancellor, 297–301;
calls up the barons against him, 307;
enters London, 309;
appointed regent, 310;
alliance with Philip, 314, 323;
its terms, 363;
acknowledged heir by the English barons, 314;
negotiates with the chancellor, 315;
struggle with the justiciars, 323;
truce, 324;
charged with treason, 329;
reconciled to Richard, 334;
helps him against Philip, 369;
acknowledged in Anjou, 388;
invested as duke of Normandy, ib., 389;
burns Le Mans, 390;
goes to England, 391;
crowned, 391–393;
administrative arrangements, 393;
quarrel with Philip, 394;
treaty, 395, 397;
visits England, 396;
receives Arthur’s homage, 397;
Raymond’s, ib.;
does homage to Philip, ib.;
divorces Avice, 398;
marries Isabel, 398, 399;
crowned with her, 399;
meets the Scot king at Lincoln, ib.;
founds Beaulieu abbey, 400;
crowned at Canterbury, ib.;
summons the barons to Portsmouth, ib.;
goes to Paris, 401;
seizes Driencourt, ib.;
charges the Poitevin barons with treason, ib., 402;
cited to the French king’s court, 402;
condemned to forfeiture, 403;
sends troops into Britanny, 404;
relieves Mirebeau and captures Arthur, 406;
destroys Tours, 407;
quarrels with Otto, ib.;
cited by Philip for murder, 408;
condemned, ib.;
his apathy, 410;
plan for relief of Les Andelys, 413, 414;
letter to garrison of Château-Gaillard, 419;
goes to England, ib., 420;
sends ambassadors to Philip, 424;
summons the host and dismisses it, 427;
sails to La Rochelle, 428;
takes Angers, ib.;
flies back to England, ib.;
comment on Hubert Walter’s death, 428, 429;
charter to London, 471, 472
John of Anagni, legate, ii. 257, 258
John of Canterbury, i, 354;
treasurer of York, 477; ii. 19;
bishop of Poitiers, ii. 30, 209
John de Courcy, ii. 184, 242
John of La Flèche, i. 222
John of Marmoutier, i. 126, 127
John the Marshal, ii. 32, 33, 260
John Oldman, ii. 157
John of Oxford excommunicated, ii. 66;
negotiations at Rome, 68;
escorts Thomas to England, 75, 77;
bishop of Norwich, 176

John Paparo, cardinal, legate to Ireland, i. 380; ii. 94

John of Salisbury, his studies and early life, i. 480–483;
enters Abp. Theobald’s household, 483;
becomes his secretary, 484;
character, 484, 485;
relations with Adrian IV., 485, 486;
with Theobald, 486, 504;
Polycraticus, 486–191;
Metalogicus, 504;
exiled, ii. 30;
brings bull “Laudabiliter,” 96
John Scotus, i. 86, 87
John, count of Vendôme, ii. 137, 151
John the Wode, ii. 106
John, S., knights of, see Hospitaliers
Jouin-de-Marne, S., battle of, i. 174
Judges, see Justices
Judicaël, bishop and count of Nantes, i. 148
Juhel Berenger, count of Rennes, i. 116
Julian, S., of Le Mans, i. 202
Juliomagus, see Angers
Jury, the grand, ii. 338
Jury-inquest, ii. 122, 123, 353, 354
Justices itinerant under Henry I., i. 26;
under Henry II., 433, 434; ii. 124, 125, 173–177;
commission of 1194, 337;
circuit of 1198, 356
Justiciar, the, his office, i. 21.

See Hubert, Hugh, Ralf, Richard, Robert, Roger, Walter, William

Kavanagh, see Donell
Kells, synod at, ii. 94
Ketel of S. Edmund’s, ii. 472
Kinardferry, ii. 152, 155
King’s Court, the, i. 20, 21;
its judicial work, 25;
Henry II.’s changes in, ii. 174, 175
Kinsellagh, ii. 100
Kirkham priory, i. 67
Lacy, see Hugh, Roger
L’Aigle, see Richer

Lakenheath, dispute about market at, ii. 482, 483

Lambert, count of the Angevin march, i. 101, 130

Lambert, count of Autun, i. 121, 134, 135
Lambeth, college at, ii. 437
Landry of Châteaudun, i. 156, 193, 194

Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, consecrates Patrick to Dublin, ii. 89

Langley, see Nicolas

Laon, canons of, their journey in England, i. 30–35

Laurence, archbishop of Dublin, ii. 105, 108, 110

Law, canon, introduced into England, i. 378;
Roman civil, 379;
study of, in the schools, ii. 466
Layamon, ii. 491, 492
Leather-sellers’ gild at Oxford, i. 30
Legates in England, i. 350.

See Alberic, Gilbert, Henry, Hicmar, John, Malachi, Peter, Theobald, Thomas, William

Leia, see Peter
Leicester, siege of, ii. 146, 147.
See Robert, Petronilla
Leinster, see Dermot
Leopold, duke of Austria, ii. 319, 371
Lespec, see Walter
Levée, the, on the Loire, ii. 200
Liber Niger Scaccarii, ii. 125
Liber Niger, see Peterborough
Lichfield, i. 40
Lidford, gild at, ii. 469
Lidorius, S., bishop of Tours, i. 179
Limerick, ii. 83.
See Donell, Gilbert
Limoges besieged by Henry II., ii. 225;
plundered by the young king, 226;
surrenders, 230.
See Ademar, Guy
Lincoln, i. 38–40;
weavers at, 30, 52;
merchant gild, 40;
castle seized by Ralf of Chester, 315;
besieged by Stephen, ib.;
battle of, 316–320, 344–346;
sacked by Earl Robert, 320;
castle again seized by Ralf, 334;
given up to Stephen, 336;
Stephen at, 337;
Henry II. at, 438;
castle besieged by William of Longchamp, ii. 299;

John at, 399;
minster-library, 464, 465;
Richard’s charter to, 470.

See Aaron, Alexander, Geoffrey, Hugh, Remigius, Robert, William

Lions, see Hervey
Lisbon won by English crusaders, i. 363
Lisieux, council at, i. 392.
See Arnulf

Lisoy of Bazogers, commandant of Amboise and Loches, i. 157, 184, 185;
advice to Geoffrey Martel, 185;
captures Theobald, 186

Literature, revival of, under Henry I., i. 80–95;
under the Angevins, ii. 439–460, 491–492
Loches, i. 110, 153;
treaty of, 187;
pledged to Philip, ii. 364;
taken by Richard, 366;
taken by Philip, 426.
See Lisoy, Thomas
Lodden, conferences at the, ii. 307, 308
Lombard, see Peter
London, its growing importance, i. 31;
walls and castles, 44;
cathedral, folkmoot, portreeve, sheriffs, 45;
fires, ib., 55;
weavers, 30, 52, ii. 481;
constitution under William I., i. 45;
under Henry I., ib., 46;
Jews in, 46;
suburbs, ib., 47;
schools, 47;
character of its citizens, 47, 48;
Normans in, 48, 49;
trade, 49;
claim of its citizens to elect the king, 277;
loyal to Stephen, 313;
submits to the Empress, 323;
expels her, 324;
citizens at siege of Winchester, 326;
hospitals in, 357;
councils at, 381, 390, 429; ii. 314;
tumults in (1173), ii. 156–157;
meeting of barons at, 309, 310, 311;
the commune, 309, 310, 344;
rising under William Fitz-Osbert, 345–347;
gilds in, 469;
constitution under Henry II., Richard and John, 471, 472;
foreign commerce, 485;
gildhall of German merchants, ib.;
stone bridge, ib., 486.

See Andrew, Gilbert, Henry, Richard, Serlo, Thomas, Westminster

Longchamp, see William

Lorraine, i. 120

Lothar, king of West-Frankland, i. 119, 120, 122

Lothar, see Innocent III.
Lotharingia, i. 120
Loudun, i. 123, 124, 139, 394, 444

Louis the Gentle, Emperor, partition of his realms, i. 98, 99

Louis From-beyond-sea, King of West Frankland, i. 112, 113;

Fulk’s letter to, 114;
dies, 119

Louis the Lazy (Fainéant), King of West Frankland, i. 123;
marriage, 191;
death, 125

Louis VI., King of France, his policy, i. 230;
supports William Clito, 235;
defeated at Brenneville, 237;
treaty with Henry, 238;
marches against the Emperor, 241;
grants Flanders to Clito, 243

Louis VII., King of France, his quarrel with Blois and alliance with Anjou, i. 342;
helps Geoffrey to conquer Normandy, ib.;
grants him its investiture, 343;
takes the cross, 361;
marries Eleanor, 383;
strife with Blois, 384;
attacks Normandy, 385;
dealings with Geoffrey and Eustace, 386, 387;
grants Normandy etc. to Henry, 388, 389;
divorces Eleanor, 392;
cites Henry to his court, 393;
war in Normandy, 395;
receives Henry’s homage, 443;
marries Constance, 446;
makes Henry seneschal, 450;
proposed crusade in Spain, 453, 497;
claims on Toulouse, 457;
throws himself into Toulouse, 464;
attacks Normandy, 466;
treaty, 467;
marries Adela, 468;
alliance with Blois, 469, 471;
driven from Chaumont, 471;
acknowledges Alexander III. as Pope, 502;
meets Alexander and Henry at Chouzy, ii. 13;
threatens war in Auvergne, 31;
welcomes Thomas, 42;
his view of the Becket quarrel, 53, 54;
receives homage of the two Henrys and grants Aquitaine to Richard, 62;
meets Henry at Montmartre, 71;
Fréteval, 73;
supports young Henry’s revolt, 135, 136;
attacks Normandy, 143;
burns Verneuil, 147;
meets Henry II. at Gisors, 148;
besieges Rouen, 164;
truce, 165;
renewed quarrel, 212;
treaty, 213;
pilgrimage to Canterbury, 216;
dies, 219
Louis, son of Philip Augustus, ii. 395, 397
Lucius II., Pope, i. 356, 360
Lucy, see Richard
Ludlow, i. 301
Lupicar, ii. 413
Lusignan, see Geoffrey, Guy, Hugh

Mabel of Glamorgan, wife of Robert, earl of Gloucester, i. 294, 328

MacCarthy, see Dermot

MacMurrough, see Dermot, Eva, Murtogh

Madoc Ap-Meredith, prince of Powys, i. 436, 437

Maidulf, founder of Malmesbury, i. 83
Maine (Cenomannia), duchy of, i. 203;
county, 106, 107;
its defiance of the house of France, 109;
claims of Normandy and France upon, 124, 203, 204;
granted to Geoffrey Greygown, 124, 140–142;
subject to Geoffrey Martel, 206;
relations with Normandy and Anjou, 216, 217, 222, 223;
conquered by William, 218;
revolts, 221, 222;
revolts against Robert, 223, 224;
condition under Elias, 224, 225;
won back by William Rufus, 3, 226;
Henry I. overlord of, 227, 233, 234;
united with Anjou, 233;
settled on William and Matilda, 236, 238;
on Sibyl and Clito, 240;
pedigree of the counts, 253–256;
rebels in (1173), ii. 137.

See Aremburg, Biota, David, Elias, Gersendis, Herbert, Hugh, Margaret, Paula, Roland

Maine, river, see Mayenne
Malachi, S., ii. 93, 94
Malachi II., king of Ireland, ii. 85
Malchus, bishop of Waterford, ii. 89

Malcolm IV., king of Scots, his claims on Northumberland etc., i. 435;
submits to Henry II., 438;
at war of Toulouse, 462;
homage to young Henry, ii. 14, 15
Malmesbury abbey, i. 83–87;
castle surrendered to Stephen, 304;
taken by Henry, 397.

See Ealdhelm, Godfrey, Maidulf, Turold, Warin, William

Maminot, see Walkelyn
Mandeville, see Geoffrey, William
Manorbeer, ii. 452

Mans, Le, (Vindinum), its early history, i. 201–203;
cathedral, 202, 238;
bishop, people and count, 202, 204;
advocacy of the see granted to Geoffrey Martel, 205;
taken by William, 218;
“commune” of, 222;
surrendered to Elias, 227;
marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda at, 244;
Henry Fitz-Empress born at, 268;
Geoffrey buried at, 390;
the young king buried at, ii. 230;
Henry II. at, 257, 258;
taken by Philip, 259, 263;
submits to Arthur, 389;
burnt by John, 390;
given up to John, 394;
hospital, 198.
See Avesgaud, Gervase, Julian, Sainfred
Mantes, see Gaubert, Walter
Map, see Walter
March, Spanish, see Barcelona
Marche, La, bought by Henry II., ii. 214

Margaret of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Constance, i. 446;
betrothed to young Henry, 448;
intrusted to Henry II., 451;
Vexin settled upon her, 467;
married, 470;
crowned, ii. 81;
quarrels over her dowry, 232, 236;
marries Bela of Hungary, 235
Margaret of Maine, i. 216, 254
Marmion, see Robert
Marmoutier, abbey of, i. 181
Marshal, see John, William
Marson, i. 125
Martel, ii. 227

Martin, S., bishop of Tours, his life, i. 179–181;
appearance to Fulk the Good, 118;
“reversion,” 128, 131, 182;
“subvention,” 182, 187;
abbey, see Tours
Martin-le-Beau, S., i. 187

Mary of Boulogne, daughter of Stephen and Matilda, i. 469

Mary of France, daughter of Louis VII. and Eleanor, i. 445

Massey, see Hamo

Matilda (Eadgyth) of Scotland, first wife of Henry I., i. 9, 17, 93, 94;
called “good queen Maude,” 66

Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, widow of Emperor Henry V., i. 242;
acknowledged as Henry’s heiress, 243, 268, 269, 274;
marries Geoffrey, 243, 244, 258–260;
leaves him, 266;
goes to England, 268;
returns, ib.;
quarrels with Henry, 270;
qualifications for the throne, 274, 275;
enters Normandy, 276;
lands at Arundel, 309;
goes to Bristol and Gloucester, 310;
negotiates with the legate, 321;
in London, 323, 324;
besieges the legate at Winchester, 325, 326;
blockaded by the queen, 326;
escapes, 327, 328;
goes to Oxford, 329;
sends for Geoffrey, 330;
besieged at Oxford, 332;
escapes, 333;
returns to Gaul, 344;
trial of her claims at Rome, 370;
later years, 442, 443;
death, ii. 61
Matilda of Boulogne marries Stephen, i. 273;
crowned, 283;
blockades Dover, 299;
mediates between Stephen and David, 300;
drives the Empress from London, 324;
wins over the legate, ib.;
besieges Winchester, 326;
negotiates for Stephen’s release, 328;
founds S. Katharine’s Hospital, 357;
tries to reconcile Stephen and Theobald, 369;
dies, 399

Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 445;
betrothed to Henry the Lion, ii. 55;
married, 59–60, 189;
aid for her marriage, 125;
death, ii. 257 note 2{1241}

Matilda of Anjou, daughter of Fulk V., betrothed to William the Ætheling, i. 234;
married, 236;
quarrel over her dowry, 240;
nun at Fontevraud, 248

Matilda of Angoulême, wife of Hugh IX. of Lusignan, ii. 398

Matilda of Saxony, daughter of Henry the Lion, her suitors, ii. 237;
marriage, 274

Matilda of Ramsbury, i. 304

Matthew, son of Theodoric count of Flanders, marries Mary of Boulogne, i. 469;
dies, ii. 147
Matthew, tutor to Henry Fitz-Empress, i. 375;
chancellor, 376
Maude, “Good Queen,” i. 66.
See Matilda
Mauléon, see Savaric

Maurice, son of Geoffrey Greygown, i. 134, 135;
regent of Anjou, 153, 156, 194
Maurice Fitz-Gerald, ii. 100, 102
Maurice de Prendergast, ii. 102, 110, 111
Maurienne, ii. 131, 132.
See Alice, Humbert
Mayenne or Maine, river, i. 97
Mayenne, see Geoffrey
Measures, Assize of, ii. 348
Meiler Fitz-Henry, ii. 101
Melgueil, i. 463
Melisenda, queen of Jerusalem, i. 246, 361
Melun, i. 149, 189, 190
Merania, see Agnes
Mercadier, ii. 383, 390
Merlin’s prophecy, its fulfilment, ii. 429
Merton priory, i. 51, 67
Messina, Richard at, ii. 294–296;
treaty of, 368, 369
Metalogicus, i. 504
Metz, see Chrodegang
Metz (in Gâtinais?), i. 168
Meulan, see Robert, Waleran
Middle Kingdom, i. 99, 120
Middlesex, sheriffs of, i. 46
Miles Beauchamp, i. 320
Miles Cogan, ii. 105, 106, 184
Miles Fitz-David, ii. 101
Miles of Gloucester defies Stephen, i. 295;
joins the Empress at Oxford, 324;
earl of Hereford, 327;
slain, 334

Mirebeau, castle built by Fulk Nerra, i. 139, 151;
siege of, by Geoffrey Plantagenet, 267;
bequeathed to Geoffrey Plantagenet II., 394, 444;

Eleanor besieged in, ii. 406;
Arthur captured at, ib.
Mohun, see William
Molêmes, abbey of, i. 69, 70
Monmouth, see Geoffrey
Montbazon, i. 151, 163
Montboyau, i. 161, 163

Montcontour or St. Jouin-de-Marne, battle of, i. 174

Montferrat, see Conrad, Jane, William

Montfichet’s Castle, i. 44

Montfort, see Almeric, Bertrada, Robert, Simon

Montlouis, battle of, i. 186
Montmartre, conference at, ii. 71
Montmirail, conference at, ii. 61, 62, 69;
razed, 365
Montpellier, see William
Montrésor, i. 151
Montreuil-Bellay, siege of, i. 384–387.
See Gerald, Grecia
Montrichard, i. 151
Mont-St.-Michel, siege of, i. 5.
See Robert
Moorfields, i. 47
Mort d’ancester, ii. 172
Mortain, see John, Stephen, William
Mortemer, see Hugh, Roger
Morville, see Hugh, Richard
Mountmorris, see Hervey
Mowbray, see Robert, Roger
Munster conquered by the Geraldines, ii. 183.
See Brian, Donell, Murtogh, Terence
Murdac, see Henry
Murtogh Mac-Murrough, ii. 109, 111
Murtogh O’Brien, king of Munster, ii. 89, 90

Murtogh O’Lochlainn, king of Aileach, ii. 90, 97, 98

Nantes, i. 101;
ceded to the Bretons, 102;
Angevin claims on, 116, 117;
attacked by Normans, 117;
counts and bishops, 121, 122;
seized by Conan, 146;
won by Fulk, 148;
Geoffrey Martel’s dealings with, 212;
union with Rennes, 449;
again independent, ib.;
seized by Conan IV. and claimed by Henry II., 450;
surrendered to Henry, 451;
significance of its acquisition, 452, 453;
Henry and Geoffrey at, ii. 58.

See Alan, Drogo, Geoffrey, Guerech, Hoel, Judicaël

Nest, daughter of Rees Ap-Tewdor, ii. 100, 453

Neubourg, i. 282, 470
Neufmarché, council at, i. 502
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 37
Newark, i. 304
Niall of the Nine Hostages, ii. 84

Nicolas Breakspear or of Langley, i. 475, 476, 481.

See Adrian
Nigel, bishop of Ely and treasurer, i. 302;
defends Devizes, 304;
chancellor, 418;
treasurer again, ib.
Nomenoë, king of Britanny, i. 101
Nonancourt, treaty at, ii. 213
Nonant, see Hugh
Norfolk, see Hugh Bigod
Normandy, duchy of, i. 111;
confusion under Robert Curthose, 11;
campaigns of Henry I. in, 11–13;
relations with England, 13, 23, 24;
with France, 24;
invaded by Henry of France, 210, 213;
claimed by Matilda, 276;
invaded by Geoffrey, 281, 306–308;
offered to Theobald of Blois, 282, 337;
Stephen in, 286;
granted to his son, ib.;
conquered by Geoffrey, 338–342;
ceded to Henry Fitz-Empress, 369, 377;
attacked by Louis VII. and Eustace, 385, 386, 394;
inquest on ducal demesnes, ii. 128;
rebels in (1173), 138, 139;
attacked by Louis etc., 143;
loyal barons in (1173), 146;
Henry’s administration in, 192–194;
laid under interdict, 315, 380;
submits to Philip, 424, 425;
dukes of, their claims upon Maine, i. 124, 203, 216.

See Geoffrey, Henry, Hrolf, John, Richard, Robert, William

Normans destroy Fleury, i. 112;
attack Nantes, 117;
fusion of Normans and English, 24, 48, 49; ii. 489, 490

“Normans” and “English,” different meanings of, i. 23, 24

Northallerton, i. 289

Northampton, Ralf of Chester seized at, i. 336;

Henry II. at, ii. 23, 143;
priory of S. Andrew at, 37;
meeting of justiciars and barons at, 391;
Assize of, 172, 173;
councils at, i. 136; ii. 32–40, 172, 427.
See David, Simon

Northmen, their work in Frankland and in England, i. 100;
enter the Loire, 101;
sack Nantes, ib.;
attack Toulouse, Paris, Bordeaux, 102;
defeated at Aclea, ib.;
sack Tours, ib.;
seize Angers, 103;
driven out, 104;
besiege Paris, ib.;
defeated by Rudolf, 115;
attacks on Tours, 181, 182.
See Ostmen
Northumberland, Scottish claims upon, i. 286
Norwich, i. 40, 41;
sacked, ii. 155, 156;
massacre of Jews at, 289;
castle, i. 284, 430.
See Herbert, John
Nostell priory, i. 68
Nottingham, i. 320;
council at, ii. 329

O’Briens, their rivalry with the O’Neills, ii. 86.

See Donell, Murtogh, Terence
O’Conor, see Roderic, Terence
Octavian, cardinal, see Victor IV.
Odelin de Umfraville, ii. 145, 153, 160

Odo, count of Paris, duke of the French and king of West-Frankland, i. 104

Odo, count of Anjou, i. 109, 133

Odo I., count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 145

Odo II., count of Blois etc., seizes Melun, i. 149, 189;
character, 150;
defeated at Pontlevoy, 157, 158;
count of Champagne, 160;
besieges Montboyau, 161;
Saumur, 163;
attacks Amboise, ib.;
seizes Sens, 164;
aims at the Empire, 166;
death, 167

Odo, count of Gascony and duke of Aquitaine, i. 174, 175

Odo, son of Robert II. of France, i. 177, 178
Odo of Britanny, i. 211, 212
Oilly, see Robert
O’Lochlainn, see Donell, Murtogh

O’Neills, their rivalry with the O’Briens, ii. 86

Orderic, i. 24
Orkneys, see Ralf
Orléans, viscounts of, i. 249, 250
O’Ruark, see Tighernan
Osbern Huitdeniers, i. 353
Oseney priory, i. 43
Ossory, ii. 102
Ostia, see Alberic

Ostmen, their settlements in Ireland, ii. 82–84;
relations with England, 83, 86, 87;
struggle with Malachi and Brian, 85;
ecclesiastical relations, 87–89;
share in Irish politics, 89, 90
Otto I., Emperor, i. 119
Otto II., Emperor, i. 119, 120

Otto of Saxony, son of Henry the Lion, his proposed marriage, ii. 341;
chosen Emperor, 372, 373;
quarrel with John, 407
Otto, cardinal, ii. 69
Oundle, i. 60

Owen, prince of North Wales, i. 435, 436, 437; ii. 179

Oxford, i. 41–44;
Robert Pulein at, 43;
Henry I. at, 44;
bishops seized at, 303, 304;
Matilda at, 322, 331–333;
military advantages, 331;
taken by Stephen, 332;
Vacarius at, 379;
Richard I. born at, 445;
Henry and Thomas meet at, ii. 24;
Gerald de Barri at, 460;
councils at, i. 283, 402; ii. 349–350, 427;
castle, i. 41, 331–334;
gilds, 30, 43, 52;
S. Frideswide’s priory, 42;
Port-meadow, 43;
schools, ib.; ii. 462.
See John
Paganel, see Ralf
Pageham, ii. 32
Palestine, see Jerusalem
Paparo, see John
Paris attacked by northmen, i. 102, 104;
capital of the duchy of France, 105;
university of, ii. 461.
See Odo
Paschal III., antipope, ii. 55
Patrick, bishop of Dublin, ii. 88, 89

Patrick, earl of Salisbury, governor of Aquitaine, ii. 58, 59

Paula of Maine, i. 222, 254
Pavia, council at, i. 498, 499.
See William

Peace, edict for preservation of, ii. 339, 340;
conservators of, their origin, 340
Pembroke, Flemings in, i. 52.
See Gilbert, Richard, William
Pencarn, ii. 179
Périgueux, ii. 223
Périgord, see Adalbert
Peter, duke of Aquitaine, see William VI.
Peter “Bogis,” ii. 421, 422
Peter of Capua, cardinal-legate, ii. 375, 395
Peter of Celle, i. 482, 483
Peter of Colechurch, ii. 486

Peter de Leia, bishop of S. David’s, ii. 455, 456

Peter Lombard, ii. 461, 467

Peter of Saintes, tutor to Henry Fitz-Empress, i. 375

Peterborough, “Black Book” of, i. 58;
chronicle, 81

Petronilla, queen of Aragon, wife of Raymond-Berengar IV. of Barcelona, i. 463

Petronilla, wife of Tertullus, i. 128

Petronilla of Grandmesnil, countess of Leicester, ii. 138, 150

Pevensey, i. 430
Peverel, see William
Philip I., king of France, i. 220, 221, 224

Philip Augustus, son of Louis VII. of France, born, ii. 56;
receives young Henry’s homage, 62;
crowned, 216;
quarrels with Blois, 217;
marries Elizabeth, ib.;
crowned again, 218;
succeeds Louis, 219;
demands Margaret’s dowry, 232, 236;
quarrel with Flanders, 234;
plots with Geoffrey, 243;
claims wardship of Eleanor of Britanny, ib.;
of Arthur, 245;
attacks Berry, ib.;
truce, 246;
takes the cross, 249;
takes Châteauroux, 251;
attacks Auvergne, 252;
negotiates with Richard, 253, 254;
receives his homage, 255;
takes Le Mans, 259;
Tours, 264;
treaty with Richard, 275;
policy in Palestine, 320;
returns to France, 313;
demands the Vexin etc., ib., 314;
alliance with John, 314, 323, 363;
attacks Normandy, 363, 364;
routed at Fréteval, 366, 367;
secures Arthur, 370;
war with Flanders, 374;
truce with Richard, 375;
takes Evreux, 389;
receives homage of Arthur, 390;
of Eleanor, ib.;
razes Ballon, 394;
divorces Ingebiorg, 395;
treaty with John, 395–397;
takes Ingebiorg back, 401;
cites John to his court, 402, 408;
conquers eastern Normandy, 403;
besieges Arques, 405, 406;
burns Tours, 407;
takes Saumur and enters Poitou, 410;
successes in Normandy, ib.;
takes Isle of Andely, 411–416;
Petit-Andely, 416;
Radepont, ib.;
Château-Gaillard, 416–423;
Normandy submits to, 424–425;
conquers Poitou, 426;
takes Loches and Chinon, ib.;
marches against John, 428

Philip, count of Flanders, joins young Henry, ii. 141;
threatens to invade England, 155, 158;
his policy in France, 216;
quarrels with France, 234, 235;
pilgrimage to Canterbury, 235
Philip de Broi, ii. 21
Philip Gay, i. 297
Philip of Gloucester, i. 335, 336
Philip de Thaun, i. 94
Pierre-Pécoulée, treaty of, i. 234
Pipe Rolls, i. 26, 431–432
Pipewell, council at, ii. 277
Pisa, see Henry

Poitiers stormed by Adalbert of Périgord, i. 145;

Henry and Eleanor married at, 393;
council at, 458;
Richard enthroned at, ii. 130;
taken by Philip, 426.
See John
Poitou granted to Hugh the Great, i. 123;
barons of, appeal to Philip against John, ii. 402;
conquered by Philip, 426.
See Aquitaine
Polycraticus, i. 486–491
Pontaudemer, siege of, i. 241
Pontigny, abbey of, i. 70;
S. Thomas at, ii. 42, 54
Pont-l’Evêque, see Roger
Pontlevoy, battle of, i. 157, 158

Popes, see Adrian, Alexander, Calixtus, Celestine, Eugene, Innocent, Lucius, Paschal, Urban

Porhoët, see Eudo
Port, see Adam
Portmannimot of Oxford, i. 43
Port-meadow at Oxford, i. 43
Port-reeve, i. 29;
of London, 45.
See Gilbert Becket
Portsmouth, ii. 400, 427
Premonstratensians, i. 357, 358
Prendergast, see Maurice
Provence, i. 454, 463.
See William
Provins, i. 482
Pucelle, see Gerard
Puiset, see Hugh
Pulein, see Robert
Pullus, see Robert
Quévilly, i. 471; ii. 198
Radepont, ii. 403, 416

Rahere, founder of S. Bartholomew’s hospital, i. 67

Rainald, bishop of Angers, i. 193
Raino, bishop of Angers, i. 131, 132
Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys, i. 289, 355

Ralf, bishop of Rochester, made archbishop of Canterbury, i. 68

Ralf, earl of Chester, his marriage, i. 314;
claims Carlisle, ib.;
seizes Lincoln castle, 315;
brings Robert to relieve it, 316;
at battle of Lincoln, 317, 320;
again seizes the castle, 334;
joins Stephen, 336;
imprisoned, ib.;
gives up Lincoln, ib.;
revolts again, 377, 395;
dies, 399

Ralf, earl of Chester, second husband of Constance of Britanny, ii. 369, 370

Ralf of Bayeux, i. 241
Ralf de Broc, ii. 39, 76, 79, 149
Ralf de Diceto, dean of S. Paul’s, ii. 439;
his Angevin History, i. 127
Ralf of Faye, ii. 129

Ralf Flambard, justiciar, i. 8, 9, 21, 32, 432;
bishop of Durham, 80
Ralf of Fougères, ii. 137, 147, 148, 258
Ralf de Glanville, ii. 145, 160;
justiciar, 177;
takes the cross, 248;
resigns and dies, 279
Ralf of Issoudun, ii. 401, 405
Ralf Paganel, i. 295, 298

Ralf of Varneville, chancellor to Henry II., ii. 142, 297

Ralf of Vermandois, i. 307
Ramirez the Monk, king of Aragon, i. 463
Ramsbury, see Matilda
Rancogne, see Geoffrey
Rathbreasil, synod of, ii. 93

Raymond-Berengar III., count of Barcelona, i. 463

Raymond-Berengar IV., count of Barcelona, i. 463, 466

Raymond of St. Gilles, count of Toulouse, i. 454, 455

Raymond V., count of Toulouse, his marriage, i. 458;
war with Henry II., 464–467;
meets Henry at Grandmont, ii. 58;
does him homage, 133;
struggle with Aragon, 211;
quarrel with Richard, 244, 250, 251;
death, 371

Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, marriage, ii. 371;
homage to John, 397

Raymond Trencavel, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, i. 462, 464, 466

Raymond the Fat, ii. 104, 108, 183
Reading, i. 282, 322; ii. 61, 240, 308
Redvers, see Baldwin

Rees Ap-Griffith, prince of South Wales, his dealings with Henry II., ii. 164, 179–181, 237;
with John and Richard, 280;
death, 351

Reginald, earl of Cornwall, i. 391; ii. 144, 146

Reginald, chancellor to Frederic Barbarossa, and archbishop of Cöln, ii. 55

Reginald Fitz-Urse, ii. 78
Reims, councils at, i. 206, 237, 367, 368.
See Gervase, William

Remigius, bishop of Dorchester, moves his see to Lincoln, i. 39

Rennes united with Nantes, i. 449.

See Conan, Hoel, Juhel

Richard, third son of Henry II. and Eleanor, born, i. 445;
first betrothal, 463;
invested with Aquitaine and betrothed to Adela, ii. 62;
enthroned at Poitiers, 130;
revolts, 135;
submits, 165;
his character, 206–208;
fights the barons in Aquitaine, 209, 210, 214, 215, 220, 223;
refuses homage to his brother, 224;
takes Hautefort, 231;
refuses to give up Aquitaine, 233;
war with Geoffrey and John, ib.;
reconciled, 234;
gives up Aquitaine to Eleanor, 235;
wars with Toulouse, 244, 250, 251;
negotiates a truce, 246;
seizes the Angevin treasure, ib.;
reinstated in Aquitaine, 247;
takes the cross, 248;
tries to regain Châteauroux, 252;
negotiates with Philip, 253, 254;
meets Henry and Philip at Bonmoulins, 254;
homage to Philip, 255;
encounter with William the Marshal, 261;
scene with Henry at Colombières, 266;
comes to Fontevraud, 271;
reconciled with the Marshal, 272;
recognized as Henry’s successor, 273;
duke of Normandy, 274;
treaty with Philip, 275;
goes to England, ib.;
crowned, 276;
fills vacant sees, 277, 278;
his policy, 278;
appoints justiciars, 279, 283;
sells sheriffdoms etc., 280;
dealings with Wales, ib.;
with Scotland, 281;
with John, 281–282;
goes to Normandy, 287;
holds council there, 288;
possible successors, 295;
treaty with Tancred, ib.;
marriage, 296;
names William of Monreale for the primacy, 297;
sends Walter of Rouen to England, 297, 298;
his voyage, 317;
conquers Cyprus, ib.;
alliance with Guy of Lusignan, 318, 320;
reaches Acre, 319;
quarrel with Leopold of Austria, ib.;
relations with other crusaders, 319–321;
truce with Saladin, 321;
homeward voyage, 322;
wrecked and captured, ib.;
given up to the Emperor, 324;
his ransom, 325, 326;
negotiates with Philip and John, 327;
returns to England, 328;
imposes taxes, ib., 329;
negotiates with Scotland, 330;
crowned at Winchester, ib., 331;
king of Burgundy, 331;
leaves England, ib.;
forgives John, 334;
gives license for tournaments, 342;
annuls his charters, 343, 356;
sends the abbot of Caen to England, 343;
quarrel with S. Hugh, 350;
edict against the clergy, 355;
cessions to Philip, 361;
difficulties in Gaul, 361, 362;
treaty with Philip, 364;
goes to Normandy, 365;
to Tours, 365, 366;
regains Loches, 366;
routs Philip at Fréteval, ib., 367;
claims wardship of Arthur, 370;
alliance with Toulouse, 371;
with Henry VI., 372;
called to elect an emperor, ib.;
league against Philip, 374;
truce, 375;
builds Château-Gaillard, 375–380;
quarrel with Abp. Walter, 380, 381;
lays siege to Châlus, 382;
wounded, 384;
dies, 385, 386;
burial, 386, 387;
his encouragement of municipal life, 470;
grant to merchants of Cöln, 485

Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 170, 434

Richard I., bishop of London, i. 45

Richard II., bishop of London, i. 502, 503

Richard Fitz-Nigel, treasurer and bishop of London, ii. 277;
his Gesta Henrici, 439
Richard of Ilchester, ii. 66;
bishop of Winchester, 158, 176;
work in the Exchequer, 193, 194;
seneschal of Normandy, 193;
death, 277

Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke or Striguil, ii. 99, 100;
goes to Ireland, 103;
takes Waterford, 104;
marriage, ib.;
blockaded in Dublin, 109, 110;
summoned by Henry, 112;
does homage for Leinster, 113;
in Normandy with Henry, 145, 182;
governor of Ireland, 182;
death, 183
Richard le Breton, ii. 78

Richard Fitz-Count, son of Robert of Gloucester, i. 386, 405; ii. 146

Richard Fitz-Godoberd, ii. 100

Richard of La Haye, i. 340, 341

Richard of Hommet, constable of Normandy, ii. 146

Richard de Lucy, justiciar, his character, i. 417;
his share in election of Thomas, ii. 1–3;
excommunicated, 66;
takes Leicester, 146;
marches against the Scots, 149;
besieges Huntingdon, 154, 156;
protests against the forest visitation, 171;
retires to a monastery, 176
Richard de Morville, ii. 139, 161

Richenda de Clères, sister of William of Longchamp, ii. 305

Richer de l’Aigle, i. 51, 395
Richmond, see Alan
Ridel, see Geoffrey
Rievaux abbey, i. 71
Robert I., king of France, i. 149, 164
Robert the Brave, count of Anjou, i. 102;
duke of the French, 103

Robert the Magnificent, or the Devil, duke of Normandy, i. 166

Robert, son of William the Conqueror, betrothed to Margaret of Maine, i. 216;
homage to Geoffrey the Bearded, 217;
to Fulk Rechin, 223;
seeks Fulk’s help in Maine, ib.;
sells the Cotentin to Henry, 4;
wars with his brothers, 5, 6;
pledges Normandy to Rufus, 3;
crusade, ib.;
invades England, 9;
war with Henry, 11;
taken prisoner, 13;
dies, 271

Robert Bloet, chancellor, justiciar and bishop of Lincoln, i. 22

Robert II., bishop of Lincoln, ii. 24
Robert I., bishop of Hereford, i. 370, 495
Robert of Melun, i. 481;
bishop of Hereford, ii. 24

Robert of Bellême, count of Alençon etc., i. 6;
banished, 10;
sues for peace, 11;
flies at Tinchebray, 13;
captures Elias, 225;
imprisoned, 233
Robert, count of Burgundy, i. 178
Robert, count of Dreux, i. 394
Robert, earl of Ferrers, ii. 139, 163

Robert, earl of Gloucester, son of Henry I., friend of William of Malmesbury, i. 92, 94;
escorts Matilda over sea, 243;
at Henry’s death, 270;
dispute for precedence with Stephen, 274;
joins Stephen, 283;
defies him, 294;
comes to England, 309;
marches to Lincoln, 316, 317;
receives Stephen’s surrender, 320;
made prisoner, 327;
exchanged, 329;
goes to fetch Geoffrey, 330;
returns, 332;
besieges Wareham, ib.;
takes Portland and Lulworth, 333;
meets his sister at Wallingford, 334;
routs Stephen at Wilton, ib.;
builds a castle at Farringdon, 335;
helps Geoffrey in Normandy, 338, 339;
dies, 343, 344

Robert I., earl of Leicester and count of Meulan, i. 16, 54, 56

Robert II., earl of Leicester, joins Henry, i. 400;
justiciar, 417;
at council of Northampton, ii. 39;
refuses the kiss of peace to Reginald of Cöln, 55, 56;
dies, 61

Robert III., earl of Leicester, rebels, ii. 138, 142;
goes to England, 148;
made prisoner, 150;
restored, 167;
repulses Philip from Normandy, 363
Robert II., count of Meulan, ii. 138
Robert de Barri, ii. 101
Robert de Bruce, ii. 145
Robert, abbot of Caen, ii. 343, 344
Robert Fitz-Stephen, ii. 100;
goes to Ireland, 101;
blockaded in Carrick, 109;
made prisoner, 111;
released, 113
Robert of Marmion, i. 335

Robert de Montfort defeats Henry of Essex in ordeal, ii. 60;
rebels, 138
Robert of Mowbray, ii. 155
Robert I. of Oilly, i. 41, 42, 331

Robert II. of Oilly founds Oseney priory, i. 43;
gives up Oxford to the Empress, 322;
death, 332
Robert Pulein, i. 43, 44
Robert Pullus, i. 483
Robert of Sablé, i. 343
Robert of Selby, chancellor of Sicily, i. 365
Robert of Sillé, ii. 137
Robert de Stuteville, ii. 145, 153, 160
Robert of Torigny or de Monte, ii. 194

Robert of Turnham, seneschal of Anjou, ii. 388, 389;
of Poitou, 426;
prisoner, 427
Rocamadour, ii. 74, 226, 227
Rochelle, La, ii. 428
Roches, see William
Rochester, see Ralf, Walter
Roderic O’Conor, king of Connaught, ii. 97;
of Ireland, 98;
treaty with Dermot,102;
gathers a host against him, 104;
blockades Dublin, 109, 110;
routed, 110, 111;
promises tribute to Henry II., 116;
treaty, 182
Roger, king of Sicily, i. 365
Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, i. 354, 368;
archbishop of York, 477;
earlier career, 478, 479;
accepts the royal customs, ii. 24;
dispute with S. Thomas, 30;
crowns young Henry, 72;
appeals to the king, 78;
dies, 285

Roger, chaplain to Henry I., chancellor, bishop of Salisbury and justiciar, i. 22;
his administration, 25, 26;
called the “Sword of Righteousness,” 26;
his Church policy, 63;
joins Stephen, 278;
his family, 302;
relations with Stephen and with the Empress, ib., 303;
seized at Oxford, 303, 304;
death, 310
Roger, earl of Clare, ii. 12, 16, 180
Roger, earl of Hereford, i. 429
Roger of Howden, i. 82; ii. 439
Roger de Lacy, ii. 400, 401;
at Château-Gaillard, 411, 417, 418, 423
Roger of Montrésor, i. 151
Roger de Mortemer, ii. 299
Roger de Mowbray, ii. 139, 152, 160, 162, 163
Roger “the Poor,” chancellor, i. 302, 303
Rohesia, wife of Gilbert Becket, i. 50, 352
Roland, count of Maine, i. 203
Roland of Siena, cardinal, see Alexander III.

Rome, relations of William and Lanfranc with, i. 15;
trial of Stephen’s and Matilda’s claims at, 370;
schism at, 498

Ronceray, i. 165 note 3{363}, 166; ii. 200

Roscilla of Loches, wife of Fulk the Red, i. 110

Rotrou, archbishop of Rouen, ii. 72, 81

Rouen surrenders to Geoffrey Plantagenet, i. 341, 342;
besieged by Louis VII., ii. 164;
palace, 196;
young Henry buried at, 232;
Richard’s heart buried at, 387;
Arthur imprisoned at, 407;
submits to Philip, 425.
See Rotrou, Walter
Rouergue, i. 454
Roumare, see William
Roxburgh, i. 287

Rudolf of Burgundy, king of West-Frankland, i. 111, 115

Rufus, S., priory of, i. 476
Saher de Arcelles, i. 363
Sainfred, bishop of Le Mans, i. 204
Saintes granted to Fulk Nerra, i. 159, 173;
taken by William VII. of Aquitaine, 215;
regained and lost again, 216.
See Peter
Saintonge ceded to Geoffrey Martel, i. 174;
granted to Fulk Rechin, 214;
war of, 215, 216, 252, 253
Saint-Saëns, see Elias

Saints, Old-English, revived veneration for, i. 33, 80

Saladin tithe, ii. 249

Salisbury, i. 32–33.

See Herbert, Hubert, Jocelyn, John, Patrick, William

Saltwood, ii. 79

Sancho VI., king of Navarre, submits to Henry II.’s arbitration, ii. 190

Sancho VII., king of Navarre, suppresses revolt in Gascony and attacks Toulouse, ii. 316;
helps Richard, 366, 367
Saumur, i. 161;
taken by Fulk Nerra, 162;
blockaded by William of Poitou, 213;
betrayed to Fulk Rechin, 220;
burnt, ib.;
Henry II. at, ii. 256;
taken by Philip, 410;
abbey of S. Florence, i. 162, 163.
See Gelduin
Savaric of Mauléon, ii. 405, 426
Saxony, see Henry, Matilda, Otto
Scarborough, i. 428
Schools, Augustinian, i. 43;
at Oxford, ib., ii. 462;
London, i. 47;
Malmesbury, 84, 85.
See Universities
Scotland, its relations with Henry I., i. 96.
See David, Henry, Matilda, William
Scutage, i. 432, 433;
the Great, 459–461;
of 1195, ii. 343;
1196, 348
Sees, removal of, i. 40
Selby, see Robert
Sempringham, order of, i. 359, 360;
helps S. Thomas, ii. 41
Seneschal of France, office of, i. 450
Sens, i. 164; ii. 42, 68
Serfdom in twelfth century, i. 61, 62
Serlo the Mercer, mayor of London, ii. 472
Severn, valley of, i. 35
Sherborne castle, i. 304
“Sheriff’s Aid,” ii. 15
Sheriffs of London, i. 45; ii. 471;
Middlesex, i. 46;
inquest on (1170), ii. 126, 127
Shrewsbury, i. 295, 298, 299
Sibyl, queen of Jerusalem, ii. 247, 320

Sibyl of Anjou, daughter of Fulk V., i. 240, 241

Sicily conquered by Henry VI., ii. 371, 372.
See Constance, Jane, Roger, Tancred, William
Sillé, see Hugh, Robert
Simeon of Durham, i. 81, 82
Simon, count of Montfort, i. 467
Simon de Montfort, count of Evreux, ii. 138
Simon, earl of Northampton, ii. 144;
claim to Huntingdon, 154
Simon of Dover, i. 363
Simon Fitz-Peter, ii. 21
Sleaford, i. 304
Smithfield, i. 47;
S. Bartholomew’s priory and hospital, 67
Soissons, ii. 42, 65.
See Guy, William
Solomon, king of Britanny, i. 103
Spain, proposed crusade in, i. 453, 497
Standard, battle of the, i. 289–291
Stephen Harding, S., i. 69, 70

Stephen of Blois, son of Stephen-Henry and Adela, i. 235, 236;
his “Lombard grandmother,” 256;
brought up by Henry I., 273;
count of Mortain, ib.;
marriage, ib.;
relations with Henry, 274;
oath to Matilda, ib.;
goes to England, 276;
gains the treasury, 277;
crowned, 279;
first charter, ib.;
character, 280, 281;
treaty with Scotland, 282;
early successes, 283;
second charter, 284;
revolt against him, ib.;
holds forest assize, 285;
goes to Normandy, 286;
invades Scotland, 287;
relations with the barons, 292, 293;
with Earl Robert, 294;
revolt in the west, 295–299;
grants Northumberland to Henry of Scotland, 300;
besieges Ludlow, 301, 302;
takes Leeds, 302;
seizes Roger of Salisbury and his nephew, 303, 304;
summoned before a council at Winchester, 305;
penance, 306;
truce with Geoffrey, 307;
besieges Arundel, 309;
sends Matilda to Bristol, 310;
keeps Whitsuntide in the Tower, 311;
besieges Lincoln castle, 315;
exploits at battle of Lincoln, 319, 320;
prisoner, 320;
exchanged, 329;
takes Wareham and Cirencester, 330;
Oxford, 332;
besieges the castle, 332, 333;
routed at Wilton, 334;
takes Farringdon, 335;
builds Crowmarsh, 336;
imprisons Ralf of Chester, ib.;
wears his crown at Lincoln, 337;
banishes Abp. Theobald, 368;
trial of his claims at Rome, 370;
reconciled to Theobald, 371;
knights Eustace, 377;
drives Vacarius from Oxford, 379;
refuses a safe-conduct to John Paparo, 380;
proposes to crown Eustace, 381, 390;
imprisons the bishops, 391;
meets Henry, 397;
treaty, 400;
last days, 403;
death, 404
Stephen I., count of Champagne, i. 160
Stephen II., count of Champagne, i. 177;
rebels, 177, 178;
defeated, 178, 186;
dies, 271

Stephen-Henry, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne, receives Fulk Rechin’s homage, i. 221;
his parents, 255, 256;
marriage, 271, 272;
crusade and death, 272

Stephen of Turnham, seneschal of Anjou, ii. 273, 279

Stockbridge, i. 327
Striguil, see Richard, William
Strongbow, ii. 99 note 7{445}
Stuteville, see Robert, William

Suger, abbot of S. Denis, his views on “Frenchmen and Englishmen,” i. 24;
policy, 387, 388;
opposes divorce of Louis VII., 392;
death, ib., 399
Sulpice of Amboise, i. 156, 157, 194
Synods, see Councils
Taillebourg, ii. 215
Talbot, see Geoffrey
Tallage of 1174, ii. 173; 1194, 337, 342
Talvas, see William
Tancarville, see William
Tancred, king of Sicily, ii. 295
Tara, ii. 84
Taxation, i. 25, 26, 27;
of towns, 29;
“Sheriff’s Aid,” ii. 15;
aid pour fille marier, 125, 126;
Saladin tithe, 249;
tax on moveables, 325;
taxes in 1194, 328, 329, 337, 342;
1195, 343;
1198, 352;
in London, 344, 345
Templars, i. 357
Terence O’Brien, king of Munster, ii. 89

Terence O’Conor, king of Connaught, ii. 90, 91

Tertullus, i. 127, 128

Theobald, abbot of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury, i. 300, 351;
joins the Empress, 321;
his policy, 351, 352, 378;
household, 352, 354, 379, 477;
legate, 356, 380;
“swimming-voyage” to Reims, 368;
banished, ib.;
consecrates Gilbert Foliot, 371;
returns, ib.;
holds a council, 381;
imprisoned, 391;
escapes, ib.;
relations with Henry II., 418;
consecrates Roger of York, 479;
last days, 503–504;
death, 506

Theobald I. the Trickster, count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 106, 115, 116

Theobald III., count of Blois, Chartres and Tours, i. 177;
rebels, 177, 178;
marches to relieve Tours, 184, 185;
prisoner, 186;
cedes Tours to Geoffrey Martel, 187;
his marriages, 255, 256;
seizes Champagne, 271

Theobald IV. the Great, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne, i. 273;
character, 275, 276;
alliance with Henry I., 231;
wars with Louis VI., ib., 235;
invited to Normandy, 282, 337;
treaties with Geoffrey, ib.;
with Stephen, 286;
opposes Louis VII.’s attempt on Toulouse, 457;
quarrel with Louis, 384;
death, 392, 399

Theobald V., count of Blois etc., seeks to marry Eleanor, i. 392;
betrothed to Adela, 445;
ally of Henry II., 466
Theobald Walter, ii. 293, 343
Theodoric, count of Flanders, i. 342
Thierceville, i. 354

Thomas of London, son of Gilbert Becket, his boyhood, i. 50, 51;
studies in Paris, 352;
clerk to Osbern Huitdeniers, 353;
enters Theobald’s household, 353, 354;
goes with him to Rome, 356;
to Reims, 368;
studies at Bologna and Auxerre, 379;
opposes crowning of Eustace, 391;
chancellor, 418;
archdeacon of Canterbury, 420, 479, 480;
his person, 421;
life as chancellor, 421–425;
relations with Henry, 423, 425–427;
embassy to France, 446–448;
exploits in war of Toulouse, 465, 466;
combat with Engelram of Trie, 467;
opposes marriage of Mary of Boulogne, 469;
takes charge of young Henry and procures his recognition as heir, 471–473;
relations with Roger of Pont-l’Evêque, 478;
with John of Salisbury, 485;
character as chancellor and as primate, 504, 505;
archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 1–3;
consecrated, 4–5;
institutes Trinity-Sunday, 5;
receives his pall and resigns the chancellorship, 6;
life as archbishop, 7–10;
his eruditi, 8;
plans of Church reform, 11;
reclaims alienated lands, 11, 12;
dispute with Roger of Clare, 12, 16;
with William of Eynesford, 17;
resigns archdeaconry, 13;
relations with Gilbert Foliot, ib., 31;
at council of Tours, 14;
resists Henry at Woodstock, 15, 16;
refuses the “customs,” 22, 23;
young Henry taken from him, 23;
meets Henry at Northampton, ib.;
consecrates Robert of Melun, 24;
accepts the customs, ib.;
swears to them at Clarendon, 25;
rejects the constitutions of Clarendon, 28;
forbids marriage of William of Anjou, 29;
dispute with Roger of York, 30;
attempts flight, 31;
meets Henry at Woodstock, 31, 32;
dispute with John the marshal, 32, 33, 34;
at council of Northampton, 33–40;
flight, 41;
goes to Soissons and Sens, 42;
effects of the quarrel in England, 46–49;
resigns his ring to the Pope, 52;
goes to Pontigny, 42, 54;
life there, 63;
writes to Henry, 63, 64;
pilgrimage to Soissons, 65;
excommunications at Vézelay, 66;
legate, 67;
goes to Sens, 68;
meets Henry at Montmirail, 69;
excommunications at Clairvaux, 70;
meets Henry at Montmartre, 71;
proclaims interdict, 71;
forbids crowning of young Henry, 72;
meets Henry at Fréteval, 73;
Tours and Chaumont, 74;
his estates restored, 74;
returns to England, 77;
excommunicates the De Brocs, 78;
slain, 79;
canonized, 431;
results of his life and death, 431–433;
lives of, 439

Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches, i. 126, 127, 153, note 3{318}

Thorgils, ii. 82

Thouars, see Almeric, Guy

Thurstan, archbishop of York, his charter to Beverley, i. 30, 38;
protects Fountains, 71;
makes truce with the Scots, 286;
organizes defence of Yorkshire, 288, 289;
dies, 354
Tiberias, battle of, ii. 247
Tickhill, ii. 282, 291, 299, 323, 328

Tighernan O’Ruark, chief of Breffny, ii. 97, 109, 111, 114

Tinchebray, battle of, i. 12, 13, 227
Tintern abbey, i. 71
Tithe, the Saladin, ii. 249
Torigni, 386, 405.
See Robert

Tortulf the Forester (Torquatius), i. 105, 127, 128

Totnes, gild at, ii. 469
Toucques, i. 307
Toulouse, relations with France, i. 457, 458;
war of Henry II. against, 464–466;
its results, 468;
attacked by Sancho of Navarre and the seneschal of Gascony, ii. 316;
counts, i. 454–456.
See Alfonso, Bertrand, Raymond, William
Touraine, i. 107;
ceded to Geoffrey Martel, 187, 188
Tournaments authorized by Richard I., ii. 342

Tours (Cæsarodunum) sacked by northmen, i. 102;
early history, 178–183;
granted to Geoffrey Martel, 178;
siege, 184;
ceded by Theobald, 187;
council at, ii. 14;
taken by Philip, 264;
Richard at, 365, 366;
meeting of Arthur and the Lusignans at, 405;
burnt by Philip, 407;
destroyed by John, ib.;
S. Martin’s abbey, i. 102, 113, 114, 181–183;
its banner, 186;
Châteauneuf, 183, ii. 264, 366.

See Adaland, Gatian, Gregory, Lidorius, Martin, Odo, Theobald

Towns, English, their origin and character, i. 27–29;
taxation, 25, 29;
firma burgi, 29;
condition under Henry I., 30–54;
fusion of races in, 48, 49;
progress under the Angevins, ii. 468–472
Tracy, see William
Trade, English, with Flanders, i. 30, 52;
with Ireland, 32, 34, 35; ii. 87;
of Winchester, i. 32;
Bristol, 34, 35; ii. 87;
Chester, i. 36; ii. 87;
Lincoln, i. 39, 40;
Norwich, 40;
London, 49;
under the Angevins, ii. 481–485
Treasurers, see Nigel, Richard
Trencavel, see Raymond
Trent, river, i. 40, 344, 345
Trèves (near Saumur), i. 162
Trie, see Engelram
Trinity Sunday instituted, ii. 5
Trussebut, see William
Tuam, metropolis of Connaught, ii. 94
Tunbridge, ii. 12, 16
Turlogh, see Terence
Turnham, see Robert, Stephen
Turold, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84
Turones or Turoni, i. 179
Twinham or Christchurch, i. 32
Ulger, bishop of Angers, i. 370
Ulster invaded by John de Courcy, ii. 184
Umfraville, see Odelin
Universities, ii. 460–468.
See Bologna, Cambridge, Oxford, Paris
Urban II., Pope, i. 225
Urban III., Pope, ii. 242, 247
Ursus or Ours, S., i. 110
Vacarius, i. 379
Varaville, i. 213
Varneville, see Ralf

Vegetius Renatus, his book De Re Militari, i. 386

Vendôme, abbey of Holy Trinity at, i. 172.

See Adela, Burchard, Elizabeth, Fulk, Geoffrey, John

Verdun, treaty of, i. 98
Vere, see Aubrey
Vermandois, ii. 360.
See Ralf
Verneuil, ii. 364, 365, 425

Vexin, the French, granted to William Clito, i. 243

Vexin, the Norman, ceded to Louis VII., i. 388;
settled on Margaret, 467, 471;
seized by Henry II., 470
Vézelay, S. Thomas at, ii. 66
Victor IV., antipope, i. 498, 499; ii. 55
Vienna, Richard I. captured at, ii. 322
Villeins in twelfth century, i. 57–62

Vulgrin, count of Angoulême, invades Poitou, ii. 209;
submits to Richard, 210, 215;
dies, 220
Wace, ii. 446
Walbrook, i. 46

Waldric or Gualdric, chancellor of England and bishop of Laon, i. 22, 30

Waleran, count of Meulan, rebels, i. 241;
raises siege of Carham, 287;
escorts the Empress to Bristol, 310;
submits to Geoffrey, 337, 338
Wales, Flemish settlers in, i. 52;
Henry I.’s dealings with, 96;
condition in twelfth century, ii. 99;

Henry II.’s wars in, i. 435–437; ii. 179–181, 237;
crusade preached in, ii. 249;

Gerald’s books on, 458.

See Cadwallader, David, Madoc, Nest, Owen, Rees

Walkelyn Maminot, i. 295, 299
Wallingford, the Empress at, i. 334;
blockaded by Stephen, 396;
relieved by Henry, 397;
treaty of, 400;
council at, 429;
granted to John, ii. 282;
taken from him, 323, 328

Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, ii. 297;
sent to England, 298, 300;
supports John against W. Longchamp, 308, 309;
justiciar, 311, 312;
hostage for Richard’s ransom, 326;
quarrel with Richard, 380, 381;
invests John as duke, 389
Walter, archdeacon of Canterbury, i. 478;
bishop of Rochester, ib., 506; ii. 4
Walter, count of Mantes, i. 217, 218
Walter de Clare, i. 71
Walter Lespec founds Kirkham priory, i. 67;
Rievaux, 71;
at battle of the Standard, 289;
death, 399
Walter Map, ii. 449–452
Walter, see Hubert
Wareham, i. 295, 299, 330, 332, 333
Warin, abbot of Malmesbury, i. 84
Wark, ii. 153.
See Carham
Warren, see Isabel, Hameline, William
Waterford, its origin, ii. 83;
taken by Richard of Striguil, 104;
Henry II. at, 113;
bull “Laudabiliter” published at, 182.
See Malchus
Waverley abbey, i. 71
Weavers, gilds of, i. 30, 52; ii. 481
“Week-work,” i. 57
Weobly, i. 296
Westminster, i. 46;
coronations at, i. 279, 405; ii. 72, 276, 391, 399;
councils at, i. 300, 329, 330; ii. 3, 22, 23, 190

Wexford, ii. 102, 109, 111, 117
Wherwell, i. 327
White Ship wrecked, i. 239
Wigford, i. 439
Wigmore, i. 429

William, S., archbishop of York, i. 354, 355, 364–367, 478

William the Conqueror, king of England and duke of Normandy, his ecclesiastical customs, i. 16;
charter to London, 45;
shelters Bp. Gervase of Le Mans, 206;
helps King Henry against Geoffrey Martel, 207;
besieges Domfront, 208, 209;
regains Alençon and fortifies Ambrières, 209;
challenges Geoffrey, 211;
treaty with Herbert of Maine, 216;
conquers Maine, 218;
Maine revolts against, 221, 222;
treaty with Anjou, 223;
death, ib.

William II. Rufus, king of England, regains Maine, i. 3;
restores Carlisle, 36;
his palace at Westminster, 46;
war with Elias, 225, 226;
death, 3, 226

William the Lion, king of Scots, does homage to young Henry, ii. 72;
joins his rebellion, 140;
invades England, 149, 153, 154;
his border castles, 152;
prisoner, 161, 162;
does homage for his crown, 166, 178;
marriage, 237;
negotiations with Richard, 281, 330, 341;
with John, 391, 393;
homage to John, 399

William II. the Good, king of Sicily, betrothed to Jane, daughter of Henry II., ii. 60;
marriage, 189;
death, 318

William the Ætheling, son of Henry I., betrothed to Matilda of Anjou, i. 234;
receives homage, ib.;
marriage, 236;
drowned, 239

William, eldest son of Henry II. and Eleanor, i. 429, 431

William of Corbeil, prior of Chiche, archbishop of Canterbury, i. 68;
joins Stephen, 278;
crowns him, 279;
dies, 299, 300
William, archbishop of Bordeaux, ii. 140

William I. Shockhead (Tête-d’Etoupe), count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine, i. 123

William II. Fierabras, duke of Aquitaine, i. 123, 139, 173

William IV. the Great, duke of Aquitaine, i. 159, 173

William V. the Fat, duke of Aquitaine, i. 173, 174

William VI. (Peter) the Bold, duke of Aquitaine, i. 176;
relations with Geoffrey Martel, 210–213;
death, 213

William VII. (Guy-Geoffrey), duke of Aquitaine, i. 215;
war with Anjou, ib., 252, 253;
regains Saintonge, 216

William VIII., duke of Aquitaine, offers his duchy in pledge to William Rufus, i. 3;
imprisons Fulk of Anjou, 229;
marriage, 455

William IX., duke of Aquitaine, bequeaths his daughter to Louis VII. of France, i. 383;
claims on Toulouse, 455

William Longsword, duke of Normandy, i. 111

William of Longchamp, bishop of Ely and chancellor, ii. 277, 279;
character and antecedents, 285–287;
justiciar, 288;
proceedings at York, 290;
quarrel with Hugh of Durham, 291;
legate, ib.;
his difficulties, 292, 293;
his rule, 294;
quarrels with John, 298–301;
struggle with Geoffrey of York, 305, 306;
with John etc., 307–311;
his fall, 311, 312;
appeals to the Pope and excommunicates his enemies, 312;
negotiates with Eleanor and John, 315;
goes to England for Richard’s ransom, 325;
makes truce with Philip, 367;
mission to Germany, 372;
death, 373, note 4{1866}
William, dean of York, i. 355;
bishop of Durham, ib.;
death, 399
William Giffard, chancellor, i. 22;
bishop of Winchester, 71

William I., count of Arles or Provence, i. 190, 191

William, count of Angoulême, ii. 136

William IV. count of Toulouse, i. 455

William of Aubigny, earl of Arundel, i. 298; ii. 144, 145, 149

William of Aumale, earl of York, i. 289

William of Blois, chancellor of Lincoln, ii. 456, 461

William, earl of Gloucester, ii. 144, 163, 184

William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, ii. 144;
supports Henry II., 145, 260;
justiciar, 279;
death, 282

William the Marshal rebels against Henry II., ii. 139;
relations with the young king, 228;
early history, 260;
encounter with Richard, 261;
arranges Henry’s funeral, 269, 270;
meeting with Richard, 272;
marriage, 274;
co-justiciar, 279;
regent for John, 390, 391;
earl of Striguil, 393;
sent to Normandy, 400, 401;
goes to relieve Les Andelys, 413;
ambassador to Philip, 424;
persuades John to dismiss the host, 427
William, marquis of Montferrat, ii. 60

William of Mortain, earl of Cornwall, i. 11, 13

William of Roumare, i. 314;
earl of Lincoln, 315
William, earl of Salisbury, ii. 144

William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, son of Henry II., ii. 428

William, earl of Warren and count of Mortain and Boulogne (son of Stephen), i. 430, 469

William of Anjou, third son of Geoffrey and Matilda, born, i. 374;
proposal to conquer Ireland for him, 431;
death, ii. 29
William de Barri, ii. 453

William the Clito, son of Robert of Normandy, i. 235, 238;
betrothed to Sibyl of Anjou, 240;
marriage annulled, 241;
excommunicated, 242;
Flanders granted to, 243;
marriage, ib.;
death, 266

William de Courcy, seneschal of Normandy, ii. 146, 193

William of Dover, i. 335
William of Eynesford, ii. 17
William Fitz-Alan, i. 295, 298

William Fitz-Aldhelm, seneschal to Henry II., ii. 113, 116;
governor of Ireland, 183
William Fitz-Duncan, i. 287
William Fitz-John, i. 295

William Fitz-Ralf, seneschal of Normandy, ii. 194, 260

William Fitz-Osbert or Long-beard, ii. 345–347

William Fitz-Stephen, ii. 38
William of Malmesbury, i. 83–93;
his account of the Angevins, 196
William of Mohun, i. 295
William “the Monk,” i. 342
William, lord of Montpellier, i. 462, 466
William of Newburgh, ii. 441–445
William Peverel, i. 295, 299, 320, 428
William of Pavia, cardinal, ii. 69
William, archbishop of Reims, ii. 218
William des Roches, ii. 394, 407, 426
William of Soissons, i. 481
William de Stuteville, ii. 160, 393

William Talvas, lord of Alençon, i. 236, 270, 281

William of Tancarville, chamberlain of Normandy, ii. 142

William de Tracy, ii. 78
William Trussebut, i. 307
William de Vesci, ii. 145, 160
William of Ypres, i. 285, 294;
at battle of Lincoln, 318, 319;
helps the queen in Kent, 324;
at siege of Winchester, 326;
captures Earl Robert, 327;
tries to reconcile Stephen and Abp. Theobald, 369

Wilton, i. 33;
battle at, 334
Winchester, i. 31;
treaty of, 9;
fair, 32;
Stephen received at, 277;
Matilda received at, 321;
palace, 325;
siege, 326;
Matilda’s escape from, 327, 328;
councils at, 305, 322, 402;
hospital of S. Cross, 357;
coronations at, ii. 81, 330;
meetings of John and W. of Longchamp at, 298, 299, 300.

See Henry, Richard, William
Windsor, ii. 182, 314, 323, 328
Witham, river, i. 38, 40
Wolvesey-house, i. 325
Woodstock, Henry I. at, i. 44, 94;
Henry II. and Thomas at, ii. 31, 32;
Welsh princes at, 14, 179;
council at, 14–16, 43, 44
Wool-trade, Flemish and English, i. 30, 52
Worcester, i. 35;
its historical school, 81, 82;
Henry II. at, 439
Würzburg, council at, ii. 56
York, i. 36;
Henry I.’s charter to, ib.;
S. Mary’s abbey, 71;
dispute for the primacy, 354, 355, 364–366;
tumults at, 380;
Henry Murdac enthroned at, 381;
end of the schism, 382;
Henry II. and William the Lion at, ii. 178;
massacre of Jews at, 289, 290;
council at, 340;
commune at, 469.

See Geoffrey, Henry, Hubert, Hugh, John, Roger, Thurstan, William

Yorkshire, its condition under Henry I., i. 36, 38

Transcriber’s Note

The Errata have been moved to the end of the book, the corrections listed in them have been applied to this transcription.

Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of paragraphs.

All references to footnote numbers (i.e. page and note number) are followed by the footnote number used here in braces e.g. {386}.

Some formatting and punctuation in citations and the index have been standardized.

Variant spelling, inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistent spelling of people’s names are retained, as are inconsistent punctuation after roman numerals (e.g. “i.” and “i” both occur) and inconsistent use of italics, however a few palpable printing errors have been corrected.

“Guib. Noviog. Opp. Opp.” has been changed to “Guib. Noviog. Opp.” in all the footnotes it occurs.

In footnote 727 (originally Page 289 Footnote 5) “The the king” is quoted correctly.

In footnote 1040 (originally Page 360 Footnote 1) “xcix*” has been changed to “lix*” in “see Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. 2, pp. iii*–lix*”.

In footnote 1229 “De Nugis Curialibus” has been changed to “De Nugis Curialium”

In footnote 1291 The closing bracket has been moved:
“Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109; Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13).”
has been changed to
“Joh. Salisb., Ep. lxxviii. (Giles, vol. i. p. 109); Robertson, Becket, vol. v. Ep. ix. p. 13.”

Now the abbreviations “ib.” and “ibid.” are used to refer to the same work as a previous reference on the same page, as is “as above”. Moving footnotes to the end of paragraphs, has meant that occasionally these abbreviations refer to citations in a previous paragraph’s footnotes, so the transcriber has replaced these with the citation to which they refer, the replaced text is shown ·/·thus.

“Ib.” has been replaced in footnotes: 83, 87, 224, 753, 819, 939, 964, 1184, 1597, 1461, 1602, 1605 and 1670.

“ib.” has been replaced in footnotes: 1297 (1st citation), 1324 (1st citation) and 1324 (2nd citation).

“Ibid.” has been replaced in footnotes: 458 (1st citation), 1253 (1st citation), 1496 (1st citation) and 1530.

“ibid.” has been replaced in footnote 427.

“as above” has been replaced in footnotes: 41 (3rd citation), 279, 473, 569 (2nd citation), 576, 581 (1st citation), 586, 614, 618 (2nd citation), 692 (1st citation), 813 (1st citation), 856 (2nd citation), 937, 947, 958 (3rd citation), 959 (3rd citation), 999, 1062 (2nd citation), 1215 (1st citation), 1220 (1st citation), 1273 (2nd citation), 1286 (1st citation), 1421 (1st citation) and 1533 (1st citation).

“(as above)” has been replaced in footnotes: 605 (2nd citation), 718 (3rd citation), 765 (1st citation), 837 (1st citation), 837 (2nd citation), 931, 957 (3rd citation), 1189 (3rd citation) and 1201.

In footnote 926 “(as above)”originally refered to both the 2nd and 3rd citations.

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Table of Contents

- ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS

- VOLUME I

- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- LIST OF MAPS
- PLANS
- CHAPTER I THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I

- CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU

- Note A. ON THE SOURCES AND AUTHENTICITY OF EARLY ANGEVIN HISTORY.

- Note B. THE PALACE OF THE COUNTS AT ANGERS.

- Note C. THE MARRIAGES OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

- Note D. THE BRETON AND POITEVIN WARS OF GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

- Note E. THE GRANT OF MAINE TO GEOFFREY GREYGOWN.

- CHAPTER III ANJOU AND BLOIS

- Note A. THE SIEGE OF MELUN.

- Note B. THE PARENTS OF QUEEN CONSTANCE.

- Note C. THE PILGRIMAGES OF FULK NERRA.

- Note D. GEOFFREY MARTEL AND POITOU.

- CHAPTER IV ANJOU AND NORMANDY

- Note A. THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GÂTINAIS.

- Note B. THE HEIR OF GEOFFREY MARTEL.

- Note C. THE WAR OF SAINTONGE.

- Note D. THE DESCENDANTS OF HERBERT WAKE-DOG.

- Note E. THE SIEGE OF LA FLÈCHE AND TREATY OF BLANCHELANDE.

- Note F. THE MARRIAGE OF GEOFFREY AND MATILDA.

- CHAPTER V GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS

- CHAPTER VI ENGLAND AND THE BARONS

- Note. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN.

- CHAPTER VII THE ENGLISH CHURCH
- CHAPTER VIII HENRY DUKE OF THE NORMANS
- CHAPTER IX HENRY AND ENGLAND
- CHAPTER X HENRY AND FRANCE

- CHAPTER XI THE LAST YEARS OF ARCHBISHOP THEOBALD

- INDEX

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE