If the situation looked bleak in England, it was a good deal brighter in Normandy, thanks to the efforts of its duchess. Ever since taking the reins of power on the eve of her husband’s invasion, Matilda had ruled the duchy with great shrewdness and political acumen. Throughout her initial two-year tenure, there was no erosion of ducal power or loss of territories to foreign magnates. In fact, the duchy enjoyed a more stable period than it had for many years. This achievement must not be underestimated. Normandy was, as one leading authority of the period has termed it, “a province notoriously susceptible to anarchy,” and the absence of its powerful duke and most of his army had made it dangerously vulnerable to antagonistic forces.¹ Orderic Vitalis describes the political infighting with which Matilda had to deal: “One would try through jealousy to oust another from his position, and various disturbances broke out which caused wretchedness to the poor; troubles such as these delighted the cruel and distressed all who loved justice and seemliness.”² Such rebelliousness was, he claimed, endemic among the Norman people as a whole: “They tear each other to pieces and destroy themselves, for they hanker after rebellion, cherish sedition, and are ready for any treachery.”³

Yet Matilda, a mere woman, had established her authority from the start and had brought this turbulent duchy firmly under her control. As a result, her husband had been able to concentrate upon the urgent need to consolidate his victory in England, which could have been seriously threatened if his attention had been continually diverted by affairs back in Normandy.

Acting as regent would have absorbed all of Matilda’s time and energy. Contemporary ideals required rulers to be always accessible to their subjects, and this was particularly important when there were potential threats to their power. For Matilda, this meant traveling from city to city and holding court in as magnificent a style as possible. There was very little room for privacy in her life. Among the places she visited most often would have been her and William’s chief residences at Fécamp, Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, Bonneville-sur-Touques, and Lillebonne. In order to reinforce the strength of the Norman dynasty, she might have taken some or all of her children with her on the most important occasions, but otherwise her duties must have involved long periods of separation from them.

By making such sacrifices and working hard to maintain the stability of the realm, Matilda had won the respect of ministers and subjects alike. There could have been no clearer demonstration of her political skill or of her loyalty to William. Even William of Poitiers praised the “wisdom” of “our dearest mistress” and admitted: “Its [Normandy’s] government had been carried on smoothly by our lady Matilda.” However, the fact that he did not use her royal title may have been intended as a slight, and he could not resist musing that the absence of rebellion or invasion during her regency “must, we think, be attributed primarily to the king himself, whose return they feared.”⁴

As a female regent, Matilda was arguably at a disadvantage when it came to bringing her subjects to heel. But she overcame the perceived weakness of her sex, and in the eyes of her grateful husband, her worth soared to even greater heights than before the conquest. To a woman of Matilda’s ambition, this reward was greater than any riches. As an indication that he trusted her above all others, William made it known that in future she was to act with the fullness of his authority in whichever of his domains he needed her. Matilda, Duchess of Normandy, now faced the appealing prospect of being queen of England in more than just name.

Having “united the two shores of the channel,” William returned in triumph to Normandy in the spring of 1067.⁵ Though he was delighted to find that his wife had kept the duchy in such good order, there were rumors that she had been less than faithful to him in other ways. One of the duke’s knights, Grimoult du Plessis, who had stayed behind in Normandy during the conquest of England, repeated a tale that Matilda had been sleeping with another man during William’s absence. Enraged, the duke was said to have dragged his wife from her bed and fastened her hair to a horse’s tail before parading her naked through the streets of Caen. The more detailed accounts attest that she was dragged from the end of the Rue de Vaucelles to her husband’s abbey, thus crossing the entire town. On the way, she passed by a road that she subsequently baptised Rue Froide (Cold Road)—not, as one might assume, because of her lack of attire, but because of the indifference of the inhabitants who lived there. Tradition has it that she also had a monument built on the site where the humiliating parade began, and named it the Croix Pleureuse (Cross of Tears).⁶

On their return to the chateau, William had his wife locked up in a dungeon. Only after Matilda continued to plead her innocence did he eventually agree to restore her. Finally convinced of his wife’s fidelity, he wrought a horrific revenge upon the knight who had told him such a scandalous falsehood, ordering his men to hunt him down and skin him alive with a wooden knife. Grimoult’s corpse was then quartered by four horses. According to the legend, William kept fragments of the knight’s skin under his saddle as a trophy.⁷

This extraordinary tale is typical of the salacious rumors that were put about by chroniclers sympathetic to the English cause, and there is no reference to it in any other source. In fact, Grimoult du Plessis had been one of the rebels who had fought against William at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047. He had subsequently been captured and held prisoner at Rouen, where he later died. As William’s captive, he would hardly have been in a position either to witness Matilda’s infidelity (if such it was) or to relate the tale to William, let alone suffer such a gruesome fate. More to the point, it is highly unlikely that Matilda would have risked her position by playing the whore during her husband’s absence. Even if she had been so inclined, she would hardly have had the time. The regency of Normandy was very much a full-time occupation.

While this rumor can be given little credence, there is another that has a rather firmer grounding in the contemporary records. Although she was on the surface a calm and pragmatic ruler, there is evidence to suggest that Matilda did not flinch from using her power for an altogether more sinister purpose than the just government of her realm. It had been almost twenty years since her humiliation at the hands of Brihtric, the Saxon lord who had spurned her proposal in Flanders, but time had apparently not lessened the implacable hatred that she felt toward him. For Matilda, revenge was a dish best served cold. During the first year of her husband’s reign, she demanded possession of the manor of Tewkesbury, which had been held by Brihtric since before the Conquest.⁸ TheChronicle of Tewkesbury claims that she also deprived his town of Gloucester of its charter. The vengeful queen then “stirred up the king’s wrath against the Saxon nobleman.” William ordered that Brihtric should be seized at his house at Hanley in Worcestershire on a day that should have been one of glory for his captive, witnessing as it did the consecration of a chapel that he had had built by Wulfstan, the bishop of Worcester. The Saxon was taken with all haste to Winchester, where he was thrown into prison, apparently without cause. He languished there for two years before dying in mysterious circumstances. It was widely rumored that Matilda had ordered his murder.⁹

The truth of what happened to Brihtric will probably never be known. The evidence against Matilda is far from conclusive. If she had deprived Brihtric of his estates and his life, then she must have done so through an agent, because she did not arrive in England until the following year. Moreover, there is evidence—overlooked until now—to suggest that Brihtric might have been present at Matilda’s coronation. Among the charters is a grant by William to Giso, the bishop of Wells, restoring some land in Banwell, Somerset, which the late King Harold had appropriated.¹⁰ This diploma has been dated to Whitsun 1068, and the considerable body of witnesses who attested it suggests that it was among the charters that were approved at Matilda’s coronation. The last name on the list is that of Brihtric. This makes it unlikely that Matilda had ordered the seizure of his lands the previous year, and impossible that she had ordered his imprisonment at the same time. It is deliciously tempting to imagine England’s new queen confronted by the sight of her former lover amid the pomp and ceremonial of her coronation. Forced to restrain her emotions for fear of causing a scandal that would ruin the most important day of her life, she may have resolved to exact her revenge at the earliest opportunity. If this is a flight of fancy, then it is certainly feasible that something had prompted Matilda to seek redress for the slight that she had suffered all those years ago. Seeing Brihtric at her coronation would have been the perfect provocation.

We know from Domesday Book that Matilda did inherit a considerable portion of Brihtric’s estates. These dominated the west of England, encompassing Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire.¹¹ His lands in the latter—his home county—besides Tewkesbury, included Avening, Fairford, Thornbury, and Old Sodbury.¹² Matilda retained these during her lifetime, but she gave many of Brihtric’s other estates away. She donated some of his most prized lands in Dorset and Devon to the abbeys of St. Mary’s Le Bec, La Trinité, and St.-Étienne.¹³ Was this a penance for ordering Brihtric’s imprisonment—or, worse, his death? A nineteenth-century source supports such a notion. According to this account, a year before her death, Matilda transferred the ownership of her manor of Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, together with all its rents and dues, to her abbey in Caen. This manor had apparently been part of the spoils that she had wrested from Brihtric, so the fact that she gave it to the church during her final illness can be interpreted as an attempt at atonement for past sins.¹⁴

However, there are question marks surrounding the theory of Matilda’s revenge. For example, the charter for Gloucester was removed before her arrival in England. What is more, Domesday Book tells us that Brihtric had inherited the manor of Tewkesbury in 1020, which suggests that he would have been in his sixties when he died—a comparatively advanced age for the time. It is therefore at least as likely that he died from natural causes as at the orders of the woman whose proposal he had so callously rejected all those years ago. Indeed, it might have been his death that caused his manor to become available and subsequently granted to the queen.

Another explanation for Brihtric’s reputed fall from grace could be that he took part in the Exeter rebellion of 1068. He was one of the few Saxon magnates who had not been immediately dispossessed after the Battle of Hastings, and as such it is possible that he became a figurehead for opposition to the Norman regime. His loyalty to the Norman king was unlikely to have been strong, and he might well have decided to throw all of the wealth and power at his disposal behind the rebels’ cause. The fact that his principal manor of Tewkesbury subsequently suffered “destruction and dismembering” at the hands of one of the king’s most trusted companions, William fitzOsbern, adds weight to this theory.¹⁵

But still the rumors persisted, and the prospect that Matilda had a hand in his death remains a tantalizing one. It was in keeping with her pride and strength of will that she would have harbored a simmering resentment against the man who had so humiliated her in Flanders—and a determination to wreak revenge if ever she had the opportunity. And if this revenge was as terrible as the rumors suggest, then she rivaled even her husband in ruthlessness and brutality.

In early 1067, the same year that Matilda allegedly took revenge upon Brihtric, her daughter Adeliza was again the focus of marriage negotiations. The potentate upon whom her father had fixed his sights was Alfonso VI, King of León, part of modern-day Spain. Alfonso had inherited León upon his father’s death in 1065, while his elder and younger brothers had acquired other parts of the vast Spanish empire over which King Ferdinand had ruled.¹⁶ Even though Alfonso was only the middle son, his overweening ambition drove him to make war with his brothers and lay claim to their territories. He was a fierce warrior, who earned himself the nickname El Bravo (the Brave), and contemporary sources variously depict him as a valiant hero and a ruthless oppressor. Determined to gain the upper hand over his brothers, he set his sights on a daughter of the new king of England, and the evidence suggests that Adeliza was once more chosen as the intended bride.¹⁷

The fact that such a powerful ruler was again singled out for Adeliza suggests that she was considered an appealing match—Orderic describes her as “a most fair maiden,”¹⁸ and she was perhaps the most beautiful of Matilda’s daughters. It also lends weight to the notion that she was the eldest, because as such she would have been the most highly prized in the international marriage market. William of Poitiers claims that two Spanish kings fought for the honor of marrying her. “A bitter quarrel arose between them on her account: for, far from being unworthy, she was in every way worthy of such a parent, and shone with such virtues and such zeal.”¹⁹ According to another account, the two combatants were Alfonso of León and Robert Guiscard, the duke of Apulia and Calabria. However, the latter can surely be discounted, because he was already married at the time.

Adeliza had inherited some of her mother’s strong will, and upon hearing that she was to marry Alfonso of León, she reacted with as much distaste as Matilda had shown for William of Normandy. According to Orderic Vitalis, “she who had not enjoyed union with her first betrothed [Harold Godwinson] shrank with loathing from a second marriage.”²⁰ The chroniclers add that Adeliza had also grown into an extremely pious young woman and fervently desired to eschew such worldly concerns by entering a convent. One account claims that she was already a nun when her father decided that she would be more useful to him as a bride to barter with.

Despite her aversion to the idea of marriage, there was little that Adeliza could do to resist her father’s wishes. It is hard to imagine that William had much patience or sympathy with the girl, for he was a staunch traditionalist where his children were concerned, believing that the only useful function daughters could fulfill was to further his political ambitions. There is no record of Matilda’s part in the matter. If she felt any empathy with her daughter, then she either failed to persuade William to abandon the scheme or realized that it was futile even to attempt to change his mind.

Negotiations duly proceeded. Anxious not to let this desirable bride slip away, Alfonso sent proxies to take part in the wedding ceremony on his behalf, as was the custom in diplomatic marriages when the bride and groom lived many miles apart. He must have been impatient to seal the agreement, for it would have taken his prospective bride only a matter of weeks to travel to Spain. Adeliza remained miserable at the prospect of marrying the Spanish king, whom she knew only by his reputation as a grasping and ruthless leader. Orderic even goes so far as to claim that she still felt too strong an attachment to the late King Harold to marry another: “She had seen and loved the Englishman, but she was terrified of the Spanish husband she had never seen.”²¹

The poor girl prayed fervently that she might be released from her fate and never set foot on Spanish soil. According to Orderic, her prayers would be answered, but not without great cost, for she died on her way to her prospective new land. Her body was brought back to Normandy by the same entourage that had accompanied her on the journey to Spain. Orderic concludes his tale by claiming that Adeliza was then given a fitting resting place at the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Bayeux.

However, there is good reason to doubt the tragic end to Orderic’s tale. Although other sources suggest that Adeliza died young, they do not relate the deadly divine intervention that saved her from marrying the Spanish king. Such a tragedy would have been much talked of at the Norman court, and yet William of Poitiers, whose account was written at the time that Orderic claims her death occurred, does not mention it at all. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that Adeliza was released from her betrothal to Alfonso by some other means—perhaps the collapse of diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, Orderic himself claims that a daughter of William and Matilda was betrothed to Earl Edwin of Mercia, a powerful English magnate, when the duke returned in triumph to Normandy in the spring of 1067, and the most likely contender is Adeliza.

Edwin was one of several high-ranking Englishmen whom William brought with him to Normandy that spring. The others included Edwin’s brother, Earl Morcar, and Edgar the Aetheling, the young man whom William’s recalcitrant subjects had proclaimed king. William clearly wished to abide by the old adage of keeping one’s enemies close. These men served as hostages for peace in England during the new king’s absence, depriving the kingdom of any possible figureheads for a rebellion. In order to neutralize the threat of at least one of them still further, the evidence suggests that William betrothed his eldest daughter, Adeliza, to Edwin during this visit.²²

Determined to celebrate his triumph in England to the full, William kept a magnificent court that Easter at the old ducal monastery of Fécamp.²³ He was joined by Matilda, together with “a brilliant galaxy of bishops and magnates” from across the duchy who flocked to the palace.²⁴ Members of the French aristocracy were also there, in recognition of the fact that William was no longer the vassal of the king of France, but an equal. Men and women of more humble status also thronged the route of their duke’s triumphant return. “Old men, boys, matrons and all the citizens came out to see him; they shouted out to welcome his return, so that you could have thought the whole city was cheering.”²⁵ Even the weather appeared to hail the duke’s victory. William of Poitiers claims that “the sun seemed to shine with the clear brightness of summer, far more strongly than usual at this season.”²⁶

The feasting and entertainments that William and Matilda ordered were so lavish that Normandy had never seen the like. All marveled at “the splendid garments, interwoven and encrusted with gold, worn by the king and his court,” which made their own clothes appear poor by comparison. Indeed, now that they were king and queen of England, William and Matilda’s clothes were more lavish than before. Brightly colored and highly decorated, they would have been made out of priceless materials such as shot silk taffeta and gold thread.

The foreign visitors sent home enthusiastic reports of the couple’s attire, as well as of the rich tapestries and “vessels of silver and gold, of whose number and beauty incredible things could truthfully be told.”²⁷ Poitiers describes “a great banquet” at which William and Matilda “drank only from such goblets or from horns of wild oxen decorated with the same metal at both ends,” proudly adding that the visitors would have “noted many such things, fitting the magnificence of a king, which they praised on their return home because of their novelty.”²⁸ It is likely that Matilda was responsible for this spectacle, for it was the role of the consort to manage and exhibit the family treasure and adornments, and displays of ostentation such as those at the Easter court would have fallen within her remit. It was also the consort’s job to ensure that royals stood out from the crowd, and with the adornments she now employed, the message was clear: William and Matilda were no longer merely duke and duchess of Normandy, but king and queen of England, with all of the associated majesty and splendor.

The celebrations to mark William’s triumph continued long after the assembly at Fécamp. At the beginning of May 1067, he ordered the consecration of the abbey of St. Mary in St.-Pierre-sur-Dives, which attracted a considerable audience.²⁹ Two months later, on July 1, he and his wife attended the dedication of the magnificent new abbey church of St. Mary in Jumièges. The church, which was situated on the river Seine in Rouen, was one of the most important in Normandy—it had strong ties with the ducal family, and its abbots had played a leading role in both government and church reform. The works had been started by Robert of Jumièges, Edward the Confessor’s archbishop of Canterbury, who had undertaken an ambitious program of building more than twenty years before. The result was an imposing new Romanesque church, which rivaled even William and Matilda’s great abbeys in Caen.

While the new king and queen of England were parading their magnificence throughout the duchy, an event occurred that cast a shadow over their celebrations—for Matilda at least. On September 1, 1067, her father, Count Baldwin V, died. There is no evidence that Matilda had seen her father since her marriage to William. This was by no means unusual: distance and domestic duties meant that when daughters of ruling families were married to foreign potentates, they often bade farewell to their family forever. Nevertheless, she seems to have maintained good relations with both of her parents, perhaps through regular correspondence, and she remained proud of her family connections, as well as of Baldwin’s burgeoning prestige. Little wonder, therefore, that she was said to be “overwhelmed with grief” at her father’s death, as well as by pity for her widowed mother.³⁰ Ever the dutiful daughter, she was no doubt glad that she and William had already provided for Adela some years before, when they had arranged for Abbess Elisabeth of Montvilliers to pay her an annual pension in return for her gift of land in the Pays-de-Caux.

As Baldwin had acted as regent of France, his death signaled the resumption of the traditional hostility between Normandy and France. For now, though, the duke had other concerns. Toward the end of 1067, he began making preparations to return to England. In his absence, Odo and fitzOsbern had been unable to quell the rising antagonism to the new regime among the Saxon people, and rebellions had broken out in Kent and Herefordshire. Trouble was also brewing in the west, signaled by the dangerous uprising in Exeter. As well as being a principal city, this was also the home of Harold’s mother, Gytha, who provided a figurehead for dissenters to the Norman regime. Anxious to hold on to his crown, William decided that he must return to his new kingdom with all haste. He had no hesitation in continuing to leave the government of Normandy in the hands of his wife, confident that she would again prove how fit she was to rule.

This time, Matilda was invested with even more independent authority to act in her husband’s name. Roger de Montgomery, who had been appointed to advise her on previous occasions, accompanied William to England. Matilda now possessed a level of power enjoyed by few of her female contemporaries. Even Orderic Vitalis, who tends to underplay her influence, admits, “Queen Matilda was now a powerful ruler with vast resources at her command.”³¹

Having taken his leave of her, William set sail from Dieppe on December 6. He resolved that their separation would not be of long duration, however, for he was impatient to see her crowned in England. In early 1068, by which time he had quashed the rebellions that had flared up during his absence, he sent ambassadors to his wife in Normandy with instructions that she was to join him across the Channel.³² Their son Robert was to take charge of the government of the duchy in her absence. Jumièges and Orderic imply that this would henceforth be a permanent arrangement, but there is no evidence for this. Indeed, the charters attest that Matilda continued to be as active a regent during her husband’s subsequent absences as she had been since his conquest of England.

Much as she might have enjoyed the power of acting alone in Normandy, Matilda was no doubt eager to see her new kingdom, and Orderic Vitalis records that “she gladly obeyed her husband’s commands.”³³ By now in her mid-thirties, she had never before left the shores of continental Europe, so the prospect of a sea voyage must have appealed to her sense of adventure. There is no record of her journey, but we know that she was accompanied by an impressive retinue that included scores of servants and noblewomen. The chronicler Langtoft describes a “rich company of ladies and maidens” in her train.³⁴ As befitted her rank, a number of prominent clergymen were among her attendants, including her chaplain, Guy of Amiens, her physician, Baldwin, abbot of St. Edmundsbury, and the bishop of Lisieux. She may also have been accompanied by some of her children on this or subsequent visits to her new kingdom. Her son Richard was certainly present at her coronation, for he was among the witnesses to a charter that was drawn up at the time, and we know from the evidence of Domesday Book that her daughter Matilda resided in England for some time, because she had her own household there.³⁵

England’s new queen arrived shortly after Easter 1068, which fell on March 23 and had been celebrated by her husband in Winchester. Her appearance in England was noted by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: “At this Easter the king came to Winchester … And soon after that the Lady Matilda came here to the land.”³⁶ She was viewed with some suspicion upon her arrival in England, and her new subjects referred to her as “the strange woman.” Their suspicion was rooted in the fact that she was spoken of as “la Royne” by the Normans, which implied that she was a female sovereign in her own right, rather than being merely the wife of the king.³⁷ It soon became clear how shocking a concept this was to her new subjects.

The lukewarm reception that his wife received in England did nothing to disrupt William’s plans for her. Until now, he had attempted to subdue the English by force alone. However, with Matilda at his side, he now intended to emphasize the magnificence—and legitimacy—of his dynasty. This was greatly helped by the fact that Matilda was almost certainly pregnant at the time of her arrival.³⁸ She had probably conceived toward the end of William’s visit to Normandy and would therefore have been in the early months of her pregnancy. It would be her ninth known child—and her last. The fact that she endured an arduous journey by land and sea at such a time is again a testament to how much she desired to claim her new crown. Furthermore, it was crucial to the establishment of the Norman dynasty that the child she had carried in her womb across the Channel should be born on English soil. Attuned as she was to popular feeling, Matilda fully appreciated this, and she therefore resolved to stay in her new country for the remainder of her term.

The attention that was paid to the aesthetics of the new English royal court soon after her arrival suggests that Matilda was quick to bring her influence to bear. Even the pro-English chroniclers could not help but be impressed by the opulent spectacle that the couple presented, clad from head to toe in gold-encrusted robes and eating their sumptuous meals from gold and silver platters. They proceeded to hold another great court at Westminster for Whitsuntide, which was attended by a host of English notables.

As soon as these celebrations were out of the way, plans began in earnest for the main purpose of Matilda’s visit: her coronation. The event was loaded with significance. Besides being vital to William’s efforts to reinforce his legitimacy in the eyes of his new subjects, Matilda would be the first queen of England to be formally styled “Regina.” Before that, a female consort was simply referred to as the wife or companion of the king, a practice that was viewed with some disdain by the ninth-century commentator Asser, who observed: “The West Saxon people do not allow the queen to sit next to the king and do not even permit the king’s wife to be entitled queen.”³⁹

There were, however, exceptions. Matilda’s ancestor Judith, daughter of Charles the Bold, married Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons, in 856 and became the first consort to be formally consecrated as queen. This concession was probably made on account of Judith’s distinguished pedigree, as well as the influence of her husband, who “commanded that she should sit beside him on the royal throne, against the perverse custom of that people.”⁴⁰

But even though Judith had set the precedent of consecration for a queen in the mid-ninth century, the initial wariness that Matilda’s new subjects had shown toward her proved that the notion of a queen as distinct from a king’s wife was still not fully accepted by the end of the following century. Indeed, the coronation ordo (a collection of prayers, ceremonies, and hymns) used for Aelfthryth, wife of King Edgar, in 973 emphatically limited the role of the female consort to the production of heirs. Although her successors had achieved some recognition of the broader potential of their role, the fertility of a queen was still viewed as her primary function. Only with the consecration of Cnut’s second wife, Emma, did the situation begin to change. The rites used for her consecration as Cnut’s queen in 1017 stressed that she was to share in his power and rule, not just be a passive, silent partner according to the traditional model for consorts.

In order to emphasize the significance of Matilda’s coronation as the first one ever staged just for a queen, the ceremony had to eclipse even that of the king in splendor and magnificence.⁴¹ Every detail was planned with meticulous care. The date that was chosen was heavily symbolic. The coronation was to take place on Whit Sunday (May 11), one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar, which is celebrated fifty days after Easter (hence its Latinate name, Pentecost) and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.⁴² The message was clear: conjoined with her husband, Matilda had been chosen by God as the savior of the people of England.

The ceremony was to take place at Westminster Abbey and be presided over by Archbishop Ealdred of York.⁴³ He had been one of Edward the Confessor’s foremost prelates, and some sources claim that he had crowned Harold Godwinson as king of England. Even though his loyalties clearly lay with the native English people, it was a shrewd move on the part of the royal couple to choose him for the task, helping to retain an element of continuity in their accession to the throne.

Matilda’s coronation was probably the last to follow the ordo used for her predecessors. At the beginning of the ceremony, she was led into the church and prostrated herself in prayer before the altar. This symbolized the end of her previous personality and the birth of her new one as queen. Next she was anointed with holy oil, just as her husband had been at his coronation. This part of the ceremony was intended to emphasize the monarch’s divine status. The new queen was then given a ring to symbolize her “marriage” to the kingdom, as well as to the king in his public duties. Finally she was crowned. The overall effect—a combination of splendor, ritual, and pious stagecraft—inspired awe in everyone who attended, and as such achieved its purpose.

Special laudes—ritual chants—were written for Matilda, probably by Archbishop Ealdred himself. It is likely that this was the first time laudes were used at the crowning of an English monarch, and they were no doubt designed to impress the audience with a Continental practice.⁴⁴ The words emphasized both the legitimacy and the power of Matilda’s position as queen. Three crucial phrases were introduced: constituit reginam in popolo—the queen is placed by God among the people; regalis imperii … esse participem—the queen shares royal power; and laetatur gens Anglica domini imperio regenda et reginae virtutis providential gubernanda—the English people are blessed to be ruled by the power and virtue of the queen.⁴⁵ This conveyed a strong message: Matilda’s authority was constitutional, not customary. Never before had a queen’s power been so formalized—or so equal to that of the king. The “manly” nature of her authority was stressed by the omission of the female saints traditionally referred to in a queen’s laudes; instead, her intercessors were all male apostles. Matilda had apparently transcended even her sex in becoming England’s new queen, and the coronation marked the dawning of a new era for royal consorts. No longer confined to the narrow domestic sphere, she and her successors were expected to play an unprecedentedly active part in the political, judicial, financial, and spiritual life of their kingdom. Matilda would fulfill this role so effectively that she would become a model of ideal queenship for centuries to come.

The “very rich festival” was followed by a magnificent banquet, the ceremonial of which was so admired that it established a series of precedents that endured for many subsequent coronations.⁴⁶ They included the entrance of a “champion” to challenge any man who dared to question the queen’s authority. This was a Norman tradition, unknown to the Saxons, and this first champion, a man named Marmion, was from the conquering land. When the company was all seated for the banquet, he rode into the middle of the hall, fully armed, and declared: “If any person denies that our most gracious sovereign, lord William, and his spouse Matilda, are not king and queen of England, he is a false-hearted traitor and a liar; and here I, as champion, do challenge him to single combat.”⁴⁷ There is no record that any man rose to the challenge on this occasion.

Meanwhile, William granted his cook, a man named Tezelin, the manor of Addington “for composing a dish of white soup called dillegrout, which especially pleased the royal palate.”⁴⁸ The office of “grand pannetier” was also instituted at Matilda’s coronation banquet. His role was to carry the salt and carving knives from the pantry to the royal table and to serve bread to the king and queen. In return for his service, he received the salt cellars, spoons, and knives laid on the royal table, as well as a fee for the bread. It became something of a custom for the officials who served the royal couple at banquets to be rewarded with the precious cups, bowls, or other utensils used during the meal. There are many contemporary accounts of unseemly squabbles breaking out as men jostled with each other for the right to perform such tasks (and thus share in the spoils), and on occasion they even came to blows, but there is no record of any such fracas at Matilda’s coronation. In fact, the occasion seemed to pass remarkably smoothly, particularly compared to that of her husband eighteen months before. This may be an early indication of the influence that Matilda would bring to bear over formal occasions of state.

Two charters that were granted at the time give a sense of the scale and demographic of the assembly that gathered for the ceremonials. In contrast to her husband’s coronation, it was very much an Anglo-Norman congregation. Archbishop Ealdred aside, the other leading English prelate, Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was in attendance, as well as scores of English bishops and abbots. Three of the foremost English earls, Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof, came to pay homage to their new queen, as did retainers such as Tofi, the sheriff of Somerset. The high-ranking Normans were also there in force, including the king’s half-brothers, Bishop Odo and Count Robert of Mortain, and his most trusted advisers, Roger de Montgomery, Count Robert of Eu, and Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances.⁴⁹

The fact that Matilda’s coronation was attended by both English and Norman dignitaries was no accident. With her English lineage, she was key to a carefully planned strategy to integrate the two cultures. Her subjects’ acceptance of their new queen was perhaps eased by the departure of the most high-profile Anglo-Saxon women, principal among them Gytha, the mother of King Harold. Ironically, when these women, “the wives of many good men,” set sail from England, most of them were bound to Matilda’s homeland of Flanders.⁵⁰ The departure of Agatha, widow of Edward the Aetheling, and her daughters Margaret and Christina for Scotland shortly after Matilda’s coronation meant that England’s new queen was now the principal female focus for her subjects.

The replacement of the mother figures of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty by a Norman queen was mirrored farther down the social scale. The chronicles paint a picture of sorrowing Saxon womenfolk making way for a new generation of Norman wives and mothers. But the higher echelons of Saxon women were essential to the new king. By arranging marriages between the remaining Saxon heiresses and his Norman nobles and knights, William perhaps seemed to be further implementing his policy of positive Anglo-Norman integration. At the same time, though, he was able to gain control of even more land and wealth than his military conquests brought him. Although Domesday Book records 350 female landowners in Edward the Confessor’s time, the majority of female-owned estates were concentrated in the hands of just thirty-six Saxon noblewomen.⁵¹

The holders of this land did not all give in to their fate meekly. Some followed Gytha’s example by going into exile, whereas others escaped marriage to an invader by entering a convent. Edward the Aetheling’s granddaughter, Matilda, the future queen of Scotland, spent most of her childhood in convents for this very reason. Indeed, so many others chose this path that even William’s leading churchman, Lanfranc, who might arguably have approved of their choice, became concerned that it would impede the integration that his master was so keen to achieve. Nevertheless, by the end of the twelfth century, the process of uniting the blood of the Saxons with their Norman conquerors was well advanced. Evidence can be found in the predominance of Norman names among the English population. Most of the major chroniclers of the period were born of mixed marriages, including William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, and Henry of Huntingdon.

But such integration would have seemed a distant prospect in the wake of Matilda’s coronation. The new queen now faced the seemingly insurmountable task of winning over her resentful subjects.