Thus ended the life of William the Conqueror, ‘and this was the last end of all that was mortal in him besides his fame’.1 A biographer is always apt to exaggerate the importance of the man he portrays, and undoubtedly the main interest of the historical process which has here been surveyed lies outside the career of any individual, however eminent. The Norman conquest of England (which was the central event in that process) was perhaps the most revolutionary event in English history between the Conversion and the Reformation. It gave to England a new monarchy, a feudal polity of a special type, a reconstituted Church, and a changed concentration on a new set of political and intellectual ideas. But, at the same time, it was so achieved as to ensure the essential continuity of English life. By combining much that was new with the revival of much that was old, it went far to determine the highly individual character of medieval England.
Transformations of this magnitude cannot be referred simply to a single personality. Still less are they to be assessed by means of judgments inspired by the preoccupations of later periods – the more especially as these may often depend upon religious political and social criteria which are themselves open to dispute. By what ultimate standard should one compare the Church of Lanfranc with that of Aldred, the spirituality of John of Fécamp with that of Wulfstan, the virtues and vices of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy with those of their predecessors in England? How should one judge with any finality the relative merits of English political connexions in the Middle Ages with France and Scandinavia? How – again – should one place in the balance the literary production of Ælfric with that of St Anselm, or weigh the merits of the vernacular annals of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler against those of the great Latin history of Ordericus Vitalis, monk of Saint-Évroul who, be it said, was also Anglicanus? The most that can be done towards assessing these changes is to place them in their contemporary setting. The Norman conquest of England was prepared by previous history; it depended upon the developing power and policy of a unique province; and it derived from a complex of political relations which before 1066 had come to enmesh France, Scandinavia, Italy, and much of western Europe. Its results (for good or ill) were not only political and mundane: they were also social, ecclesiastical, and cultural. And they stretched wide. The establishment of the Anglo-Norman kingdom altered the political balance of Europe. It conditioned much of the future history of France. And it modified the internal structure, and the external influence, of western Christendom in the Middle Ages.
The prolonged crisis of the central decades of the eleventh century – so complex in its causes and so pervasive in its results – far transcends in importance the exploits of any one man. Nevertheless, when all proper qualifications have been made, it still remains difficult to explain the momentous developments which then took place without reference to William's own influence on every one of the political movements which have here been examined. A man's place in history depends on the extent to which he can mould, and also respond to, the needs of his time. But his ability to do so derives from his own qualities, and his opportunities in this respect are enhanced in an age when government is essentially personal. For these reasons, if for no others, William's character and personality must challenge attention, since they were among the factors in the making of England and of Europe.
What did he look like – this man who made such a profound impression on his contemporaries? The representations of William in the Bayeux Tapestry, on his seal in England, and on the coins which were struck for him as king, are too stylized to give any clear idea of his personal appearance. But the literary evidence is more illuminating. A Norman monk, who may well have seen him, described him as a burly warrior with a harsh gutteral voice, great in stature but not ungainly.2 Writers in England say that he was majestic, ‘both when seated and standing’, though the excessive corpulence which later disfigured him doubtless began in his middle years.3 He enjoyed remarkably good health, we are told, until the very end of his life, and his exceptional physical strength is often noted. William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges dilate on his prowess in the field of battle, and there are plenty of examples of his capacity to endure great physical hardship.4 It is a composite description which, drawn from so many sources, inspires confidence.
It can, moreover, be supplemented by testimony of a special character. When in 1522 William's tomb at Caen was opened for the first time, the body in its original stone coffin was found to be in a state of good preservation, and, according to an early account, it was that of a large man with notably long arms and legs.5 This detail also can be confirmed. For the single femur which escaped the subsequent destructions by Calvinists, when measured, was found to indicate a man who must have been some five feet ten inches in height.6 Finally, there is yet another piece of evidence to record. When the tomb was first opened in 1522 a portrait was drawn from the remains, and this, painted on wood, was hung over the sepulchre. In due course it too was destroyed, but there survives at Caen an extraordinary picture made early in the eighteenth century which may well be a copy of the sixteenth-century painting.7 This depicts a large and dominating monarch, massive in bulk, with full-fleshed face and russet hair. He is dressed in the manner of a sixteenth-century king, and he resembles closely the famous contemporary portraits of Henry VIII of England. Too much reliance must obviously not be placed upon a picture of this character and of this date.8 But taken in conjunction with the other evidence it may not unreasonably be supposed to reflect in some measure what was in fact the personal appearance of William the Conqueror.
This portly warrior, robust and domineering, may be contrasted physically with the wife whom he won with such difficulty, and with whom he was so closely associated. Contemporaries, who were fully conscious of her influence speak frequently of her virtues, but seldom of her appearance, but here too it is possible to utilize some special testimony. Matilda's tomb in the church of Holy Trinity, Caen, suffered devastation comparable to that which destroyed the sepulchre of her husband in Saint Stephen's. The original coffin was thus destroyed, but in her case the bones were saved, and having been placed in a small casket they were reburied under the original and beautiful stone slab which, with its inscription, still remains in the church.9 In 1961, moreover, this casket was itself disinterred, and its contents examined with remarkable results.10 For the bones proved to be those of an extremely small woman whose height can hardly have exceeded fifty inches. The picture thus suggested is surely challenging. Nor is it without interest to reflect that the famous duchess and queen, who could act as one of William's regents in Normandy, and who on at least one occasion opposed the will of her formidable husband, may have been a lady of this diminutive size. William and his wife when throned and adorned at one of their solemn crown-wearings, surrounded by the great Norman ecclesiastics, and the Norman warrior aristocracy, must in truth have appeared a remarkable couple.
As to William's personal character there is no need to repeat the astonishingly diverse judgments which propaganda has inspired over the centuries.11 It is fortunate, however, that there have survived two contemporary descriptions made by men who knew him. One of these was written shortly after his death by a monk at Caen, and it deserves quotation:
This king excelled in wisdom all the princes of his generation, and among them all he was outstanding in the largeness of his soul. He never allowed himself to be deterred from prosecution of any enterprise because of the labour it entailed, and he was ever undaunted by danger. So skilled was he in his appraisal of the true significance of any event, that he was able to cope with adversity, and to take full advantage in prosperous times of the fickle promises of fortune. He was great in body and strong, tall in stature but not ungainly. He was also temperate in eating and drinking. Especially was he moderate in drinking, for he abhorred drunkenness in all men, and disdained it more particularly in himself and at his court. He was so sparing in his use of wine and other drink that after his meal he rarely drank more than thrice. In speech he was fluent and persuasive, being skilled at all times in making known his will. If his voice was harsh, what he said was always suited to the occasion. He followed the Christian discipline in which he had been brought up as a child, and whenever his health permitted he regularly and with great piety attended Christian worship each morning and evening, and at the celebration of Mass.12
This remarkable description echoes an earlier account of Charlemagne himself, which in its turn is dependant on Suetonius, and while it must of course be received with proper discrimination,13 it is not to be set aside. It must be regarded as an impressive tribute made by a man who was in a position to know the facts.
It needs, however, to be compared with the estimate of the Conqueror made about the same time by an Englishman who had ‘looked upon him and once lived at his court’.14 Here again William appears as ‘a very wise man, and very powerful and more worshipful and stronger than any predecessor of his had been’. But he is shown also as a harsh and violent oppressor, and as one who was himself brutal, avaricious, and cruel. The balanced nature of this notable assessment is indicated by its conclusion. ‘These things we have written about him both good and bad.’
These early accounts of William the Conqueror are of the highest interest, and it is important to consider how far they can be confirmed. There is no doubt, for instance, that William shared in the savagery which marred so many of the secular rulers of his age, and in one respect he was held in England to have been exceptional in his wanton disregard of human suffering. There is no reason to question the tradition that the New Forest was made at his instigation, and writers of the twelfth century found little difficulty in asserting that it was divine vengeance for this crime which caused so many members of his family to perish at that place: his second son Richard about 1075; his third son William in 1100; and his grandson Richard (Robert's bastard) at some other date.15 The amount of devastation which was in fact involved has perhaps been exaggerated,16 but certainly many villages were depopulated and there was doubtless some destruction of church property.17 And even more to be deplored were the savage penalties threatenedagainst those who robbed the royal game. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler breaks into doggerel verse at this point to vent his indignation:
He made great protection for the game
And imposed laws for the same
That who slew hart or hind
Should be made blind
He preserved the harts and boars
And loved the stags
As if he were their father.18
It is in fact a sorry indictment, and there is moreover no doubt that the forest law which came to be characteristic of medieval England was in its essentials an importation from Normandy.19 None the less, the matter should be placed in its context. William came from a province which, then as now, was plentifully filled with forests, and the ducal rights therein are attested in eleventh-century charters.20 But in England, too, before the Conquest, the royal forest artificially created and fiercely protected was a familiar institution.21 Cnut laid heavy penalties on those who hunted in his forests, and Edward the Confessor shared in the passion for the sport. The Conqueror undoubtedly increased the royal forests in England, and with callous cruelty, but he did not create the conditions which made such acts possible, nor was he alone in their perpetration.
A more serious indictment against William in this respect could indeed be made in connexion with the brutality which marred so many of his campaigns. The horrors at Alençon in 1051 were matched by those at Mantes in 1087, and the march round London in 1066 was accompanied by wholesale devastation. Yet if these acts are not to be palliated, they were not wanton or purposeless. The sack of Alençon ended the resistance of Domfront; in 1066 the destruction of Romney made possible the bloodless occupation of Dover; the isolation of London in the same year could be defended as a strategic measure; and after the surrender of Exeter in 1068 William successfully prevented plundering by his troops. The devastation of the north of England in 1069–1070 was of course of a more lethal and terrible character, and it is hard to find any excuse for it even by reference to the crisis which then threatened the Anglo-Norman kingdom from Northumbria and from Scotland, Norway, and Maine. William was without doubt, on occasion, bestially cruel. But it might, none the less, be possible to indulge here in too complacent a condemnation. He was not the first king of England – nor the last – to lay waste a countryside for his sport, and the twentieth century has perhaps little right to sit in judgment on the eleventh in the matter of ruthless warfare.
William was stained with blood. But his avarice was almost equally repulsive. This appears in most of the accounts, and England was of course the chief victim. It is true that his greed was occasioned chiefly by his need for mercenaries, but even so his rapacity was infamous, and the distress it caused widespread. The ruthlessness with which he exacted money from England must be set against the efficient administration he provided. His taxes were savage, and they were imposed without mercy and often without equity:
He had castles built
And poor men hard oppressed
This king was so very stark
And deprived his subjects of many a mark
Of gold and more hundreds of pounds of silver
That he took by weight and with little justice
From his people with little need
For such a deed
Into avarice did he fall
And loved greediness above all.22
No wonder that the Domesday inquiry in 1086 caused riots, for he then ‘acted according to his custom, that is to say he obtained a very great amount of money wherever he had any pretext for it whether just or otherwise’.23
The other side of the picture is, however, not to be ignored. It was this same Englishman who after describing the harshness of William's government noted his patronage of the Church; the majesty of his crown-wearings; his regal dignity and the respect it inspired; and above all the good order promoted by his stern administration. ‘No one however powerful dared do anything against his will’, and as a result ‘any honest man could travel over his kingdom without injury with his bosom full of gold, and no man dared strike [?or kill] another’. This was a strong and pitiless king. But he was not simply a self-regarding tyrant, nor was he regarded as such by those he ruled. The severity of his administration they had felt for themselves, but having experienced also ‘the good security he made in this country’, they left it to God to judge his ruthless suppression of disorder.24
It was a charitable verdict, for the personal portrait which emerges is undoubtedly repellent. It was, however, a duty imposed upon medieval royalty to provide strong justice, and any eleventh-century king must have had much ado to save his soul. Nor in contemplating William's career is it possible not to share, in some measure, the admiration felt by contemporaries for the courage and determination which informed it. William displayed the ineluctable connexion between personality and power, and demonstrated how, in the shaping of events, decision and fortitude may be of more importance than material resources, and how purpose, if it be inflexible, may prove ultimately decisive. Doubtless, his character had been bitterly annealed during his terrible childhood, and during the years when in youth he had waged against odds his long war for survival. But there must have been a wonderful strength in this man which enabled him to rise from his bastard beginnings to a plenitude of power, and to elicit from the hard-faced men who surrounded him the support which alone made possible his success. Only thus was this Norman duke enabled to reach a dominant position in the crisis which overtook western Christendom in his time, so that he could make his own contribution towards linking the destinies of medieval England with those of Latin Europe at a moment when its political and ecclesiastical structure was being formed (partly through his acts) into the pattern characteristic of the high Middle Ages.
His energy likewise deserves some commemoration. Between 1051 and 1054, for example, when still in his twenties he conducted a campaign in Maine; he took possession of Rouen; he captured Arques; he quelled a great rebellion in Upper Normandy; he organized the defence of his duchy against the full strength of the French king; he convoked the council of Lisieux; and he deposed an archbishop of Rouen. Throughout his life his activity was constant and he was ever on the move. Thus his great war in Maine in 1073 followed very closely upon his campaign late in the previous year on the threshold of the Highlands, and his frequent passages to and fro across the Channel were probably more numerous than those which can be specifically recorded. Of the quality of his vigorous leadership there can be no doubt, and something of its nature can be seen in many of the incidents of his life. As when, for instance, he prevented a large force of undisciplined mercenaries from plundering the Norman countryside, or when on that fateful night of 27 September 1066 he lost touch with his fleet, and finding himself alone in mid-Channel, with all his fortunes in the balance, he thereupon feasted ‘as if at home’ to restore the courage of his men.25 Inherent authority made him a master of men.
Assuredly he was a man to fear. ‘Earls he had in his fetters – he expelled bishops from their sees, and abbots from their abbacies; he put thegns in prison and finally he did not spare his own brother Odo.’26 On the other hand, with the exception of Waltheof, the justice of whose fate remains a subject of controversy, few if any of the magnates who unsuccessfully opposed him in Normandy, or England, before or after 1066, suffered death after they were delivered into his hands. The stories later circulated that he resorted to poison are certainly apocryphal,27 and no violent death ever alleged against William is so horrible as the butchery of the atheling Alfred in 1036, or the disgusting murder in 1049 of Beorn in the ships of Sweyn.28 On occasion, too, the Conqueror could be surprisingly lenient to opponents who came into his power. His treatment of Nigel of Saint-Sauveur, or of Count William of Arques, or of Edgar the atheling might even be described as generous.
There was in fact an element of paradox in his character. His brutalities, his avarice, and his oppressions speak for themselves, and they were lamentable. But it would be wholly false to regard him as a crude ruffian, or as simply a sanguinary brute. It was not merely because of his overt patronage of the Church that he won the respect of many of his most illustrious contemporaries. His ecclesiastical appointments were, generally speaking, good; his co-operation with Lanfranc did credit to them both; and the pope whom he opposed paid tribute to his respect for religion. His personal piety was undoubtedly sincere; he was abstemious in the matter of food and drink; and his continence was regarded as exceptional. He was capable of affection, and sometimes able to inspire it. He could on occasion even be affable and generous. Indeed, it was this surprising trait in his character that came prominently into the minds of that little group which assembled in an upper room at Caen after his funeral to reflect upon the vicissitudes of his astonishing career.29 He remains then something of an enigma: admirable; unlovable; dominant; distinct.
His private character was reflected in his public policy, and few students of the events which have here been recorded will be tempted to underestimate his personal contribution to the history of his age. As duke, the concentration of Norman power and the development of Norman policy owed much to his direction. In 1066 his diplomacy was as notable as was his military capacity. As king of England he established without anarchy, though by spoliation, a new feudal order. He, helped to transform the conditions of English ecclesiastical life. Finally he not only preserved the kingdom he had won, but he vitalized many of its ancient institutions. He made his mark on all the countries he ruled, and his death, when it came, was widely held to presage disaster. It was not for nothing that so many of his greater followers then left the world to spend their last days in monastic seclusion, or that a great fear spread among lesser folk who apprehended the disturbances that would follow his passing.
He was, of course, the product of his time, and his achievement was dependent upon developments in Normandy and England, in France and Italy over which he had little control. But it was the mark of his constructive statesmanship that he attuned his purpose to the conditions of the critical age in which he lived. He bestrode his generation, but he also served it: he seized, as well as created, opportunities. If he magnified the might of Normandy he derived from the Norman past, and if he conquered England he resuscitated many English traditions. His essential greatness is to be found in the permanence of what he achieved. The Norman conquest would have been impossible without him, and without him its results would have been very different. The future history of England and of Europe was substantially modified by his acts:
Verely, he was a very great Prince: full of hope to undertake great enterprises, full of courage to atchieue them: in most of his actions commendable, and excusable in all. And this was not the least piece of his Honour, that the kings of England which succeeded, did accompt their order onely from him: not in regard of his victorie in England, but generally in respect of his vertue and valour.30
So, in 1613, wrote John Hayward of William the Conqueror. And his words – those of a contemporary of Shakespeare – may aptly serve as a conclusion to this book.
1 John Hayward, The Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England (1613), p. 22.
2 Monk of Caen.
3 Will. Malms., Gesta Regum, p. 335; AS. Chron., s.a. 1086 (equals 1087).
4 Will. Poit., pp. 36, 196–199; Will. Jum., pp. 122, 123; Will. Malms., loc. cit.
5 C. Hippeau, L'abbaye de Saint-Étienne de Caen (1855), pp. 169, 170, 181.
6 Ibid., p. 182.
7 Ibid., pp. 181, 182; de Bouard, Guillaume le Conquérant, p. 124.
8 It will be recalled that Henry VIII had visited France in 1520 for the ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’.
9 Reproduced in J. S. Cotman, Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (1822), as plate XXXIII in vol. I.
10 Information supplied by Professor de Bouard.
11 Apart from the two contemporary accounts, perhaps the best descriptions of William the Conqueror are to be found in the magnificent death-bed speech put by Ordericus into the mouth of the dying king (Ord. Vit., vol. II, pp. 401–418), and the estimate which Lord Lyttleton included in his History of King Henry II, vol. I (1767), pp. 49–52. I confess, moreover, to admiration for the lapidary conclusion of Professor Southern. ‘William had an undaunted mastery of the problems of the secular world – that is to say of other men's wills – in both fighting and ruling unapproached in creative power by any other medieval ruler after Charlemagne’ (Saint Anselm and his Biographer (1963), p. 4).
12 Printed in Will. Jum. at p. 145. Translated in E.H.D., vol. II, no. 6.
13 The author was a Norman proud of the Norman achievement which William had brought to fulfilment. He was also a monk of an abbey which William had founded.
14 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1086 (equals 1087).
15 Cf. Will. Malms., Gesta Regum, pp. 332, 333.
16 Possibly by Ord. Vit. (vol. IV, p. 32), certainly by Freeman (Norman Conquest, vol. IV, pp. 611–613).
17 The chief authority is F. Baring (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. XVI (1901), pp. 427 et sqq.; and ibid., vol. XXVII (1912), pp. 513 et sqq.). His conclusions are summarized by C. Petit-Dutaillis (Studies Supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional History, vol. II, p. 171) thus: ‘William I found in a corner of Hampshire 75,000 acres of almost deserted country, and of this he made a forest. He added, however, fifteen or twenty thousand acres of inhabited land on which there were a score of villages and a dozen hamlets; and doubtless through fear of poaching, he evicted 500 families numbering about 2,000 persons.’
18 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1086 (equals 1087); translated by S.I. Tucker.
19 Petit-Dutaillis, loc. cit.
20 L. Delisle, Classe agricole, pp. 334 et sqq.
21 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 674.
22 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1086 (equals 1087); translated by S. I. Tucker.
23 Ibid., s.a. 1085 (equals 1086).
24 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1086 (equals 1087).
25 Will. Poit., p. 163.
26 AS. Chron., ‘E’, loc. cit.
27 Below, Appendix F.
28 AS. Chron., ‘C’, s.a. 1036; ‘D’, s.a. 1050 (equals 1049). Earl Godwine was later held to have been responsible for the murder of Alfred (below, pp. 412, 413), and this Sweyn was Godwine's son and the elder brother of King Harold.
29 Hugh of Flavigny (Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptores, vol. VIII, p. 407).
30 John Hayward, The Lives of the III Normans, Kings of England (1613), p. 122.