Following her marriage, Matilda and her new husband traveled together to the ducal palace of Rouen “with the greatest ceremony and honour.”¹ William of Poitiers reported that the city “gave itself over to rejoicing at the entry of this spouse.”² The duke was no doubt keen to impress his new bride, for Rouen was the foremost city of the province and the source of great admiration among contemporaries. Orderic was dazzled by the obvious wealth that resulted from its flourishing trade, and he described the rich variety of foods and other goods that the burgeoning populace benefited from.³ Surrounded on all sides by hills and forests, and flanked by the river Seine, Rouen was also a beautiful city, and certainly a fitting place to receive the new duchess of Normandy.

Matilda was not the only one whom William was seeking to impress, for he and his bride were accompanied by her parents, who stayed with the couple until all of the pageantry and festivities were concluded several days later. Afterward, the newlyweds made a leisurely progress throughout the domain over which Matilda was now duchess. William was surely keen to show off his new bride, a “magnificent match” whose esteemed lineage diluted considerably the shame of his birth.⁴ Everywhere she went, Matilda was greeted with enthusiasm and tokens of affection by her new subjects and was “very well served and honoured.”⁵ The Normans had not had a duchess since Duke Richard II’s reign (996–1026), as both of his sons had been content to live with their mistresses, and they were determined to celebrate the new arrival.

Matilda had evidently also enhanced her new husband’s international profile. According to Norman sources, shortly after their wedding an extraordinary message arrived from Edward the Confessor, the king of England, promising the throne to William. The message was probably conveyed to William by the Norman Robert of Jumièges,⁶ whom Edward had recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury as part of a consciously pro-Norman policy. Jumièges was passing through Normandy on his way to Rome, and he brought two hostages—Wulfnoth and Haakon, son and grandson respectively of Earl Godwine of Wessex, the most powerful man in England after the king—to prove the integrity of Edward’s promise.⁷ The practice of using hostages as a guarantee of good faith, usually when concluding a treaty, was rooted in ancient times and had been used with great effect by the conquering Romans. In this case, however, Edward had an ulterior motive, for he was only too glad to rid himself of members of the overweening Godwine family.

It may seem perplexing that the English king should promise his crown to a foreign duke with apparently little connection to England and whose origins hardly bore scrutiny. But there had long been an affinity between England and Normandy. For a start, there was their geographical proximity, which made it politic for the rulers of each domain to maintain a close interest in the other. The two lands also shared a Scandinavian heritage, and there had been several marriages between their ruling families, such as the important union between Duke Richard II’s sister Emma and the English king, Aethelred the Unready, in the late tenth century. Edward the Confessor, the son of this union, had spent much of his childhood and youth in Normandy, together with his brother and sister. They had been cared for by a succession of northern French rulers, and the dukes of Normandy had played a particularly prominent part. As a result, Edward had grown up with strongly pro-Norman sympathies.

After becoming king, Edward married Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine, in 1045, but they were childless. It was said that he refused to consummate the marriage—or, as Malmesbury put it, “to know her as a man would”—either from a “love of chastity” or because of his antipathy toward the Godwine family.⁸ Indeed, in order to counter their influence, he began to build up a faction of Norman retainers at court. In 1051, the simmering resentment between the king and his wife’s family burst into open conflict. Edward outlawed the Godwine family and sent Edith to a nunnery. It was this that cast the English succession into doubt and, according to Norman sources, prompted Edward to name William his heir.

Malmesbury asserts that William was “well worthy” of being named heir, “being a young man of high spirit, who had reached his high dignity by energy and strength of character.”⁹ The duke also had a hereditary claim to the throne through the marriage of Aethelred the Unready to his great-aunt Emma. Malmesbury inaccurately asserts that this made him “nearest by blood” to Edward, whereas in fact this honor belonged to the English king’s nephew and namesake. But if William’s claim was rather distant, his wife’s was not. Matilda’s bloodline was far more closely linked to the English crown, and the fact that she could claim her descent from Alfred the Great made her an important asset to William in pursuing his ambitions.

Just how seriously William took Edward’s promise—or indeed whether Edward even made such a promise—can never be known for certain. The accounts of it are mostly Norman and might well have been written as a retrospective justification of the duke’s later invasion. That said, the foremost English source for the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, claims that William visited England in 1051 in order to make Edward confirm his promise in person. The English king was said to have presented William with a ring and ceremonial sword to symbolize his sincerity. However, there is reason to doubt this claim. The duke had more pressing concerns within his own domain at the time of his alleged visit, for he was preoccupied with a campaign around Domfront, a strategically important town on the border with Brittany.

If Edward’s promise was genuine, then William was enough of a pragmatist to realize that he was unlikely to gain much support within England should he ever have the opportunity to claim his inheritance. He also knew that he would be opposed by Earl Godwine of Wessex and his sons Harold and Tostig, whose lands stretched across the whole of southern England from Kent to Cornwall and who had vast armies at their disposal. Although Edward exiled the Godwine family in the same year that he promised William the crown, the political situation remained volatile, and Edward soon learned that the Godwines were just as formidable a threat away from court as they were within it.

However enticing, the English throne must therefore have seemed more a distant prospect than a distinct possibility to William. Nevertheless, it symbolized the remarkable transformation of his position. It is astonishing that within the space of just sixteen years, he had progressed from being an illegitimate minor with an extremely precarious hold upon the duchy of Normandy to one of the most feared leaders in western Europe and the nominated successor of the king of England.

Even so, William continued to find it difficult to forge closer links with France. He had hoped that his marriage into Matilda’s celebrated line might prove useful on this front, but Henry I was no friendlier toward his Norman vassal than he had been before. Shortly after the wedding, he entered into an alliance with the duke’s archenemy, Geoffrey, the count of Anjou, the foremost leader in northwestern France. This created an extremely threatening situation for William, whose territory was now sandwiched between two hostile powers.

But Henry did not stop there. In 1053, he struck at the heart of William’s power by supporting a rebellion led by the duke’s uncles, Archbishop Mauger and William of Arques. William immediately assumed an aggressive stance and besieged the fortress of Arques. In response, the French king led a relief force to aid the duke’s enemies. By now, William was used to being on the offensive against hostile forces within his own domain, and thanks largely to his brilliant leadership, Henry’s troops were beaten into a retreat. This put paid to Archbishop Mauger and William of Arques’ rebellion. Both men fled Normandy shortly afterward, never to return. But the French king was less easy to subdue, and relations remained hostile for some time to come. Henry launched two further campaigns against the duke’s territory in 1054 and 1057, supported by Geoffrey of Anjou.

Although William succeeded in keeping Henry of France at bay, the conflict between her husband and her own family must have been a cause of some embarrassment for Matilda. In an age when intermarriage between royal and noble families was a dominant factor of international politics, such conflict was by no means rare. Even so, she would have been painfully aware that her marriage had already failed to deliver one of its most hoped-for outcomes.

In the midst of these hostilities, there was no question where Matilda’s own loyalties lay. She was the very model of a dutiful wife—“near-perfect” according to one recent observer, and William’s “loyal friend” in the words of the late-twelfth-century chronicler Langtoft.¹⁰ Having been raised in one of the most distinguished courts in Europe, Matilda was well aware of the duties expected of her as a consort. Principal among these was the need for diplomacy. In a society dominated by violence and warfare, medieval women were looked to as peacemakers and mediators. In the famous Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, a marriage is arranged between the children of two deadly enemies, Hrothgar and Froda, in order to “settle with the woman a part of his deadly feuds and struggles.” The Exeter Book, a collection of tenth-century literature, also praises the grace and good manners of aristocratic wives as an antidote to their brutish husbands: “The woman must excel as one cherished among her people and be buoyant of mood, keep confidences, be open-heartedly generous with horses and with treasures, in deliberation over the mead, in the presence of the troop of companions, she must always and everywhere greet first the chief of those princes and instantly offer the chalice to her lord’s hand, and she must know what is prudent for them both as rulers of the hall.”¹¹

Matilda’s obvious aptitude for the role of duchess quickly won her new husband’s admiration and respect. Within a comparatively short space of time, he had come to rely upon and trust her implicitly. Moreover, she had already fulfilled the major expectation of her as consort. Soon after marrying William, she had given birth to a son, who was named Robert after William’s father as well as Matilda’s grandfather, the king of France. Given that the former was known as “the Devil” and the latter as “the Pious,” the infant could not have had two more contrasting role models. The date of Robert’s birth—like that of most of his siblings—is not recorded by contemporary sources, but is thought to have been around 1053.¹² The fact that there is such uncertainty over the arrival of the duke’s son and heir—an event that would usually have been heralded by all of the contemporary chroniclers—suggests that William and Matilda still felt constrained to downplay their union, given that it continued to be outlawed by the papacy. Ironically, although William had desperately wanted to erase his own bastardy by taking a bride of such impeccable pedigree as Matilda, in the eyes of the church their firstborn was illegitimate.

None of this mattered to Matilda. From the start, she doted on the boy. It was a devotion that would last a lifetime. Although William was no doubt pleased to have an heir, he was rather less enamored of Robert, and from the boy’s infancy he disdainfully referred to him as “Brevisocrea” (short-boot)—usually quoted by the chroniclers in its French form, “Curthose” (or “Courte-Heuse”)—on account of his short stature, which he may have inherited from his mother. This was the first obvious point of difference between Matilda and William. It may have seemed a simple matter, the result of an overly indulgent mother and an unduly harsh father, but it would have serious consequences. With Robert’s birth, the seeds of eventual discord between Matilda and her husband were sown.

For now, though, the picture was one of marital harmony—and extraordinary fecundity. During the next decade, Matilda was continually pregnant. Of particular significance from her husband’s perspective was the fact that she gave birth to two more sons—Richard around 1055 and William (known as “Rufus” for his red hair)¹³ around 1060.

All of the chroniclers attest to the success of William and Matilda’s marriage in this regard. As Orderic Vitalis observed: “She bore her distinguished husband the offspring he desired, both sons and daughters.”¹⁴ However, they are vague about the number, names, and dates of those offspring.¹⁵ Jumièges simply writes that Matilda “bore him [William] sons and daughters, one of whom Robert afterward succeeded to his parents’ duchy, performing his father’s office.”¹⁶

It says a great deal about the age that the chroniclers give far more prominence to William and Matilda’s sons than to their daughters. The latter are so obscure that they are either not mentioned at all or the details are confused. Those chroniclers who do include them in their narratives disagree on the names, birth dates, and even the number of daughters.¹⁷ Piecing together the available evidence, it seems most likely that the eldest was Adeliza (or Adelaide),¹⁸ born around 1057, followed by Cecilia in 1058 or 1059. Orderic claims that there was another daughter, Agatha, although she is not mentioned by any other source, and the history that he ascribes to her suggests that she was in fact the same girl as Adeliza.¹⁹

Between the birth of Robert around 1053 and that of William Rufus in 1060, the intermission between each of Matilda’s children was only one or two years. That such a diminutive woman should prove so fecund and so resilient to the many hard years of childbearing that she endured has been remarked upon with surprise by a number of historians.²⁰ This is rather perplexing, given that fertility is not generally linked to height. We do not know if Matilda had any miscarriages, or if any of her children died in infancy, but the sheer number of children who survived into adulthood suggests that there cannot have been many such instances.²¹ At a time when knowledge of obstetrics was rudimentary and riddled with superstition, and childbirth was fraught with danger for both mother and infant, this success rate defied all the odds.²² That Matilda herself apparently remained healthy throughout her childbearing years is also remarkable. Women of this period—even those from the upper classes—often suffered from chronic anemia owing to the lack of protein and iron in their diets, which meant that their life expectancy was shorter than that of men. Infant mortality was also high, with between 15 and 20 percent of children dying in the first year and 30 percent by the age of twenty.²³

Matilda’s fertility did a great deal to protect and enhance her position. The prejudice against women was great, and she was by no means immune to criticism—as will be seen later—but by producing the necessary male heirs, she had fulfilled her most important duty as consort. If she had failed to give William a son, he could easily have repudiated her, just as Matilda’s maternal grandfather had done to his wife. Many other such cases could be cited. There was no equality in marriage. The woman was the subservient partner, and if she failed to provide her husband with an heir, then all of the blame would be placed upon her. That a man should rid himself of such a wife was not just accepted by society; it was positively encouraged. The church even sanctioned annulments.

That Matilda and William produced such a large family bolstered their dynastic ambitions, and the names they chose for their children were loaded with significance. In the medieval period, female ancestry was just as important as male, and if the wife’s family was more distinguished than her husband’s (as was the case with William and Matilda), it was usual to give at least equal prominence to the traditional names of her kin. The sons were named for both sides in more or less equal measure. Robert, Richard, and William were all popular names within the duke’s family, but the former could also be found among Matilda’s forebears. It is interesting that none of the boys was given the name of Matilda’s father, Baldwin. This may indicate that while Duke William was keen to publicize his connections with the French royal family, he did not wish to be seen as a vassal of the Flemish counts. The names of the daughters also reflected William and Matilda’s ancestry. Cecilia was the name Matilda’s cousin, King Philip I of France, had given to one of his daughters. Adeliza, meanwhile, may have commemorated either her father’s half-sister or his aunt.²⁴

The medieval world defined childhood rather differently from our understanding of it. Isidore, the seventh-century archbishop of Seville, gave it a precise duration as part of his “six ages of man,” which appeared in his popular encyclopaedia, Etymologiae. He claimed that infancy—or infantia—was from birth until the age of seven, childhood from eight to fourteen, and adolescence from then until twenty-eight years of age.²⁵ His theory appears to have had an influence upon the education of children, which followed similar stages.

The role of the mother during the first seven years of her child’s life was seen as vital, both for the physical care and nurturing that she gave and for the intellectual stimulation that she provided. Children up to this age were considered to lack moral reasoning, which made such close attention by their mothers indispensable. Matilda seems to have been a paragon of this model. One observer even compared her to a woman in the Bible whose assiduity was legendary: “As a mother, she resembled Martha in her solicitous care.”²⁶ In contrast to later periods, royal and noble children were not immediately farmed out to nursemaids or governesses in separate households of their own. The evidence suggests that all of Matilda’s children were raised at court under her direction, at least initially. Certainly her eldest, Robert, remained by her side during his early years.

It is unlikely that Matilda would have breast-fed her children, because this was known to hinder conception. Instead, they would have received their milk from wet nurses—women usually drawn from the noble classes who were breast-feeding babies of their own. But in all other respects, Matilda was an active and committed mother to her many offspring. She had the support of her own mother and her mother-in-law for some of this time, for the records show that Adela and Herleva spent time at the ducal court. The charters suggest that both women knew their first grandchild, Robert, particularly well.²⁷

Not surprisingly, as far as the upbringing of his children was concerned, William focused all of his energies on his sons. This was entirely commensurate with the traditions of the day: as a general rule, boys were the responsibility of fathers, and daughters of their mothers. But Matilda must have had some say in her sons’ upbringing, because Malmesbury observes that both she and William took “the greatest care” with their education.²⁸ In the royal household, their three sons were raised alongside those of other Norman aristocrats, sent there by their ambitious parents.²⁹ They included Matilda’s godson and kinsman Simon of Crépy, the future count of Amiens, Valois, and the Vexin.³⁰ Her influence on his early education seems to have been profound, because it was mentioned many years later by his biographer.³¹

Despite Matilda’s influence, all of the boys who were educated at William and Matilda’s court would have experienced a very masculine environment in which military prowess and boisterous behavior were encouraged. They would have been taught to ride and hunt from their infancy and would have begun serious military training at the age of twelve. Of the two careers that were open to young men—the military or the church—it was the former that William encouraged more. They were not mutually exclusive, however, as William’s half-brother Odo would prove.

It was not an entirely military upbringing, however. Medieval tradition dictated that the children of noble households should be given a literary education, and this would have been taken very seriously by William and Matilda. Both boys and girls were taught the “liberal arts,” which included reading, rudimentary Latin, and possibly also writing, though the latter was sometimes neglected and it was common for children to be taught simply to recite poems, psalms, and prayers. It certainly seems that Matilda taught her children to recite nursery rhymes, the Lord’s Prayer, and other devotional exercises, and also instructed them in Norman French and perhaps a little Flemish. She was no doubt keen for them to absorb the social and cultural traditions of both sides of their heritage. Young men were also instructed in moral principles and the art of chivalry. According to Malmesbury, William Rufus (who was something of a favorite with his father) spent a great deal of time in “knightly exercises … competing with his elders in courtesy, with his contemporaries in courtly duties.”³²

Most noble sons would have been educated in political theory, and this was certainly true for the ducal family. William was keen to involve his sons in political affairs, and the records show that from the time that they were babes in arms, they were regularly witnessing charters—Robert in particular.³³ They were also often in their father’s company, no doubt in order that they might learn from his example. But mothers were also expected to advise their offspring on matters of policy, so it is likely that Matilda, whose own upbringing had given her an exceptional grounding in international politics, embraced this task with alacrity.³⁴

Marriage was not high up on William’s agenda for his boys. His eldest son, Robert, was the subject of a short-lived betrothal when he was about eight or nine years old. Perhaps this experience, which involved a great deal of trouble on William’s part, was enough to dissuade him from attempting it with his other sons, or perhaps he did not wish them to have any distractions from what he saw as the far more worthwhile pursuit of military excellence. Either way, there is no evidence of any further attempts to use his sons to forge political alliances. Indeed, neither he nor Matilda seemed concerned with securing the longevity of their dynasty by encouraging their sons to marry and produce heirs at the earliest opportunity. It is interesting to note that none of the boys would marry during their mother’s lifetime; William Rufus in fact never married, which was almost certainly due to the fact that he was homosexual. The case would be very different with William and Matilda’s daughters, whose value lay in their potential to strengthen Normandy’s position through advantageous marriages.³⁵

Religious instruction would also have been led by Matilda, whose piety was lauded by all the contemporary chroniclers. According to William of Poitiers, her husband also played a role, for he noted that William was a “pious parent” who taught his sons Christian doctrine.³⁶ The children would certainly have attended church regularly, both for the daily worship that was an integral part of the courtly routine and for the great assemblies that were staged for the dedication of churches or the confirmation of grants to religious houses. But the evidence suggests that Matilda’s efforts in this regard were wasted on two of her sons. Robert was more interested in the pursuit of pleasure than of piety, and William Rufus (whom his parents may have intended for the church) grew up with a contempt for theology and intellectual pursuits.³⁷ Richard alone was lauded for his virtuous and promising character.

Despite his daughters’ worth as currency in the international marriage market, for William it was his sons who counted. Indeed, from the charter evidence, one would be forgiven for thinking that the duke had only sons and no daughters. In a grant addressed to the Abbey of St. Peter, Préaux, he offered several gifts “for the redemption of his soul and those of his wife Mathilidis and his sons.”³⁸

By contrast, it was upon her daughters that Matilda focused most attention. This may seem odd, given that the career choices available to girls from noble families were limited to marriage or a nunnery. As at least one of her daughters would learn to her cost, the former option was by no means guaranteed. Even for the daughters of a distinguished family, finding a suitable husband was not necessarily a straightforward undertaking. There was an abundance of marriageable girls compared to boys, which meant that many were obliged to follow the celibate life of the cloister, there being no other option.

Despite the limited prospects that faced her daughters, Matilda resolved that they should have aspirations far beyond the desire to please a prospective husband. In her view, learning should not be the privilege of men alone. She knew from her own education that this was one sphere in which women could hold sway. It is a telling indication of her sense of ambition that she wished her daughters to set their sights higher than convention dictated.

The more sophisticated lessons in noble households were usually assigned to tutors, and Matilda conformed to this by appointing Arnulf of Chocques, the son of a priest in south Flanders, as schoolmaster to her daughter Cecilia.³⁹ Arnulf was a renowned scholar, and Cecilia no doubt benefited from his instruction, which included the arts, Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

All of Matilda’s children would be remarkable for their level of education—something that would not have been the case if their upbringing had been left to Duke William. The daughters in particular were a credit to the ducal family, and although the sources are sparse in their descriptions, the few references are all complimentary. They were lauded for their beauty, which they inherited from Matilda, as well as for their honesty and chastity.⁴⁰ The evidence suggests that they were close to their mother, and they lived with her at court until they were obliged to enter marriage or the cloister.

Unlike her husband, Matilda did not show a prejudice for either sex. Although she seems to have given greater attention to the education of her daughters, this was by no means to the exclusion of her sons. Her involvement included appointing their tutors.⁴¹ As the eldest, Robert received the greatest attention. He was known to have had at least three tutors during his childhood,⁴² and both William and Matilda were anxious to ensure that he was groomed for the role of duke. Meanwhile, William Rufus was later tutored by the influential Lanfranc of Bec—“a man comparable with the Ancients for learning and religious fervour.”⁴³ Lanfranc became prior of the magnificent abbey that William built in Caen, and William Rufus may have been educated there. Rufus grew up with a stammer, which tended to manifest itself when he was angry. Speech defects such as this often result from an excessively strict or repressive childhood. Whether this was at the hands of Lanfranc or his father is not certain. It could well have been both.

Although Matilda’s sons benefited from being taught by some of the most renowned scholars of the age, they did not seem to appreciate it. A method of teaching that was common in the eleventh century was the lectio, whereby the master would recite passages from selected texts and painstakingly explain their meaning while their pupils were obliged to listen passively and take notes. Robert Curthose later complained of the tedium of such lessons in an argument with his father, exclaiming: “I did not come here to listen to a lecture, for I have had more than enough of those from my schoolmasters.”⁴⁴

The contemporary descriptions of Matilda’s sons are a good deal less positive than those of her daughters. Only her second son, Richard, is universally praised in the contemporary sources. By contrast, the chroniclers are highly critical of both Robert and William Rufus. Although Robert had initially given every appearance of being a dutiful son and had done “exactly as his father told him,” as he and Rufus grew into adulthood it became obvious that their characters were flawed in one way or another.⁴⁵ Both were prone to sin and became notorious for their sexual license. They were also short-tempered, greedy, and at times brutal—characteristics that they shared with their father. In common with other children from noble households, they would also have picked up the baser aspects of life from servants.

William Rufus was perhaps the least likable of all the ducal children. He became known for his cruel, calculating nature. His cynicism and ironic humor did little to endear him to people, and in stark contrast to his parents’ piety, he enjoyed nothing better than shocking high-principled churchmen. In appearance, he was the most like his father, being of stocky, muscular build, and like him he excelled in the military arena. He also inherited the elder William’s “harsh,” booming voice. The nickname “Rufus” was probably intended as an insult, because red hair (which the elder William also had) was seen as a sign of wickedness.

The fact that Robert and William Rufus shared negative character traits did not create any degree of affinity between them. Indeed, the evidence suggests that they harbored an intense dislike toward each other. This animosity would become ever more obvious as the years passed. The bias shown by their parents might have fanned the flames of discord. While William favored his namesake, Matilda made no secret of her adoration of her firstborn son. What began as sibling rivalry would one day tear the ducal family apart.