Part I
Chapter 1
William the Conqueror – Duke William II of Normandy, King William I of England – was born at Falaise in 1027 or 1028, and probably during the autumn of the latter year.1 He was the bastard son of Robert I, sixth duke of Normandy, by Herleve, a girl of that town. His parentage was thus remarkable. Little is known about his mother, for contemporary writers are discreetly silent about her origins. Later testimony, however, indicates that her father's name was probably Fulbert, and there is substantial evidence to suggest that this ‘Fulbert’ was a tanner.2 Herleve's connexion with the duke was none the less to advance not only her own fortunes but those of her kinsfolk. Fulbert was apparently given a subordinate office at the ducal court, and Herleve's brothers, Osbert and Walter, appear as witnesses to important charters.3 Herleve, herself, shortly after the Conqueror's birth, was married off to Herluin, vicomte of Conteville, and to him she was to bear two very distinguished sons, namely Odo, the famous bishop of Bayeux and subsequently earl of Kent, and Robert, count of Mortain, later one of the largest landowners in eleventh-century England. The whole subsequent history of north-western Europe was thus to be influenced by the offspring of this obscure but remarkable girl, who died it would seem in or about 1050.4 Students of genetics, and of ‘hereditary genius’, may, moreover, be tempted to comment on the youth of William's parents. Robert cannot have been more than twenty-one at the time of his connexion with Herleve, and in all likelihood he was younger, possibly in his seventeenth year.5 The girl herself was probably no older.
If, however, William's mother was of humble stock, his father belonged to one of the most interesting families of Europe. For he was the direct descendant of Rolf the Viking, who, after a career of depredation, had, in or about 911, been recognized as a legitimate ruler in Neustria by the emperor, Charles III (‘the Simple’), and had thereafter passed on his power in an unbroken succession to his son William, nicknamed ‘Longsword’ (died 942), to his grandson Duke Richard I (942–996), and to his great-grandson Duke Richard II, the Conqueror's grandfather, who was to survive until within three years of William's birth. Little more than a century thus separated the establishment in Gaul of the Viking Rolf from the birth of his most illustrious descendant, and William's inheritance, which he was so signally to enlarge, derived in large measure from the position acquired in the Viking dynasty in Gaul, and from the manner in which their power had been developed.6
Rolf,7 known to his Frankish posterity as Rollo, was probably of Norwegian stock, being the son of Rögnvald, earl of Möre, and before his formal establishment in Gaul he had a long career as a Viking, raiding not only in France but also, as it seems, in Scotland and Ireland. In 911, having entered Gaul afresh, perhaps by way of the Loire valley, he was defeated in a pitched battle outside the walls of Chartres, and it was after this that he and his followers were given lands by the emperor in the valley of the lower Seine. Whether this famous grant of lands and recognition was made (as tradition later asserted) after a formal interview between Charles and Rolf at Sainte-Clair-sur-Epte is questionable, and the application of the term ‘treaty’ to these arrangements is undoubtedly too precise. What, however, is certain is that before 918 Rolf and his followers already held considerable lands in this region, and that they had been formally confirmed in possession of them by the emperor.8 Equally certain is that in token of the new position he was henceforth to occupy in Gaul, Rolf accepted baptism at the hands of the archbishop of Rouen.9
His power was steadily to grow. The muniments of Jumièges, Saint-Ouen and Le Mont-Saint-Michel, taken in conjunction with the narrative of Flodoard of Rheims, indicate that the earliest demesne of the dynasty was confined to an area bounded by the Epte, the Orne, and the sea: it was concentrated in the district lying on both sides of the Seine between Les Andelys and Vernon, and stretched to the west nearly as far as Évreux, and to the east along the Epte towards Gisors. Between 911 and 918 Rolf was also in possession of Rouen itself and of certain districts on the sea-coast dependent on that city, and by 925 he was apparently established as far to the east as Eu. Westward, however, the progress was to be much more gradual. Not until 924 was the rule of the new family extended from the Orne to the Vire, and only in 933 (after the death of Rolf) was it carried by his son William Longsword as far west as the Couesnon.10
These frontiers (which were to endure) are of the highest interest. For they were not imposed by Nature. Indeed, the Normandy over which William was eventually to rule may be regarded as an expression of history rather than as a product of geographical conditions. Its physical structure was diversified, and it possessed on the landward side no clearly defined natural boundaries.11 The Bresle and the Epte on the east, the Sélune and the Couesnon on the west, are small streams, and in the south the Avre, marked as it was to be by the strongholds of Nonancourt, Tillières and Verneuil, was a strategic line rather than a natural frontier. By contrast, the great valley of the Seine running through the midst of the province, and dividing it, led past the debatable land of the Vexin into the very heart of France. Up and down that waterway there was always constant passage which linked Normandy to Burgundy, and Rouen to Paris. Even between Rouen and Orléans is no great distance, and the rivers which lie in between are neither large nor formidable. Thus, though eleventh-century Normandy was a highly individual land, it was always linked to France. Two of the ancient road systems of Gaul passed across it.12 The route from Marseilles and Lyons to the English Channel, by way of Paris and Mantes, followed the Seine valley to meet the sea at Lillebonne and Harfleur. Similarly, the road which united the Channel with the valley of the Loire proceeded from Tours to Le Mans, and then on to Sées and Bayeux. To and fro along these roads, as up and down the valley of the Seine, there passed a commerce of merchandise and ideas which flowed across the frontiers which were the product of historical circumstance.
Not only were the land frontiers of Normandy insubstantial, but the region they enclosed was geographically divided. The distinction between Upper and Lower Normandy is, in this respect, well marked. The east of the province is grouped naturally round the reaches of the lower Seine, for the wide district bounded by the Bresle and Epte, the Avre, the uplands of Perche, and those of the upper Vire is all dominated by the great river which flows through its midst. Within these areas there are defined regions marked by their own peculiarities, but all are united in a common territorial structure which has produced an open countryside of cornfields, orchards, and of farm life. This land makes a contrast with the country which lies to the west, which forms, geologically, the eastern bastion of the Breton massif. Here the fertile plain gives place to moorlands, and to the south of the Bessin, the Bocage normand resembles the Breton Vendé more closely than it does the country of the Seine valley. Lower Normandy looks westward and feels the western sea. Its maritime connexions link it with Brittany rather than to the Seine basin. The western seaboard of the Cotentin, rocky and forbidding, here meets the north shore of Brittany, and, with it, encloses a bay which might serve as the frontier of a single province, while the point at which the coasts intersect might appear the natural site for a provincial capital. Attempts were, indeed, actually made in the eighth century to give political expression to this geographical demand.13 They were not to endure. None the less, if today the estuary of the Couesnon marks the western boundary of the Norman land, this is due, not to Nature, but to the historical process which created medieval Normandy. And, even so, the distinction between Upper and Lower Normandy was long to persist. It substantially modified the heritage of William the Conqueror, and at one point in his career was nearly to bring destruction upon him.
The duchy to which William succeeded in 1035 thus owed its political definition not to Nature but to an historical development which in the eleventh century was already of long duration. It was the Roman administrators who perhaps first realized that the great coastal curve which stretches from Eu to Barfleur (and which, unlike the coast of Picardy, faces north) might impart a special identity to the lands it bounds. At all events, they established here the administrative province of Lugdunensis Secunda, which about the year 400, according to the Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum, comprised the territory appurtenant to the seven cities of Rouen (the provincial capital), Bayeux, Avranches, Évreux, Sées, Lisieux, and Coutances.14 This, as might be said, was the first political definition of medieval Normandy, and here as elsewhere in Gaul the permanence of the Roman arrangements was to be assured by the Church. The provincial organization, as described in the time of Honorius, was coeval with the introduction of Christianity into this region. Rouen had become a Christian metropolis by the close of the fourth century, and there are reasons for believing that the bishopric of Bayeux, where Christianity was preached at a very early date, was established shortly after 400. Bishops from Avranches, Évreux, and Coutances took part in the council of Orléans in 511, whilst in 533 there is specific reference to a bishop of Sées, and in 538 to a bishop of Lisieux.15 Before the end of the sixth century, therefore, the Norman bishoprics had been firmly established in the ancient Roman civitates, and thus it was that the traditions of the Second Lyonnaise were to be carried into Merovingian Neustria and beyond. The results were to influence the whole subsequent history of Normandy. The identity of the province was to survive even the Viking devastations of the ninth century. And in the eleventh century, Normandy could still be defined as roughly coincident not only with Lugdunensis Secunda but also, and more particularly, with the ecclesiastical province of Rouen and its six dependent bishoprics.
By 933, therefore, the conquests of the new Viking dynasty had been made to stretch over an ancient administrative province, but they had not overpassed its bounds. Their limitations were thus as remarkable as their extent. Less than a hundred years before the birth of William the Conqueror, the rule of the Scandinavian family to which he belonged had been halted at frontiers which were indicated not by physical conditions but by a long process of earlier history. The crucial question thus arises as to how far his political inheritance – how far the character of the Normandy which he came to rule – had been modified during the ninth and tenth centuries by the Scandinavian settlements in Neustria.16
It is generally agreed that Normandy in 1066 was an exceptional province, and it is both plausible and very usual to account for its individuality by reference to the intrusion of a Scandinavian population into this area of Gaul. Nor is evidence wanting to support this suggestion. The number of Rolf's followers who were given land in Neustria is not known, but the region in which they were settled had then been subject to continuous visitations from Scandinavia for nearly a hundred years. The exceptional violence of the Viking attack in the valley of the lower Seine is well attested, and Norman chroniclers of a later date are unanimous in asserting that considerable depopulation then took place. Due allowance must here be made for exaggeration, but the testimony albeit late is not to be wholly set aside easily. The process, moreover, did not end with the coming of Rolf. It is known that considerable migration into this region took place during the central decades of the tenth century and the agrarian revolt in Normandy which marked its close was so remarkable both for its date and for its organization that it might be tempting to explain it by the survival among a newly settled warrior peasantry of traditions of personal freedom comparable to those which the peasantry of the North Mercian Danelaw retained until the time of Domesday Book.17
A similar conclusion might be suggested by reference to the Church in Neustria. Later writers were naturally prone to magnify the devastation caused by the pagan adversaries of Christendom, but there is no doubt that during the earlier half of the tenth century the ecclesiastical life which had formerly distinguished the province of Rouen had been disrupted. The surviving lists of Norman bishops show gaps at this time which are eloquent testimony to what had occurred. In the tenth century the see of Coutances-Saint-Lô seems to have lost all connexion with a district that had lapsed into paganism, and no less than five successive bishops of Coutances resided at Rouen.18 In the Avranchin conditions were equally bad, and late in the tenth century a bishop of Sées is to be found using stones from the city wall to rebuild his cathedral.19 The monastic collapse was even more pronounced, and it is probable that in the third decade of the tenth century not a single monastery remained in the Norman land.
It would appear, also, that despite the baptism of Rolf, the Viking dynasty itself only slowly renounced the traditions of its pagan past. It is not impossible that Rolf reverted to paganism before his death, and it is certain that a pagan reaction swept through the province after the murder of his son William Longsword in 942. In the ensuing years the whole province was given over to warfare between rival Viking bands, and during the early reign of Rolf's grandson, Richard I, the chief supporter of settled order appears to have been not the duke but the French king, Louis d'Outre-Mer, who in 942 overthrew the pagan Sihtric, and who in 945 suffered defeat at the hands of the Viking Harald.20 Sixteen years later a veritable crisis developed, and the terrible war which ravaged the province between 961 and 965 reproduced many of the worst features of the ninth century.21 The settlement which marked its close was, however, to prove decisive. In 965 Duke Richard I made a pact with Lothair at Gisors, and in the following year he was to restore the monastery of Le Mont-Saint-Michel with the king's approval.22 It was an arrangement comparable with that of 911, and, as marking a stage in the development of Normandy, it was to prove scarcely less important.
From this time forward the position of the Viking dynasty was rapidly to change. It entered into closer relations with the political and ecclesiastical authorities of Gaul, and at the same time Normandy itself became ever more susceptible to Latin and Christian influences. But, even so, the Scandinavian affinities of the province endured, and Normandy continued to be in one sense a peripheral part of the Scandinavian world, sharing in its commerce and its interests, and to some extent participating also in its Viking adventures. In the closing decades of the tenth century, Ethelred II of England was moved to protest that Viking raiders of England were receiving hospitality and assistance in the Norman ports, and it was not for nothing that as late as 996 Richer, the chronicler of Rheims, could refer to a Norman duke as the Viking leader, pyratarum dux.23 Even more striking perhaps is the fact that in 1014, within fifteen years of the birth of William the Conqueror – his grandfather, Duke Richard II, could welcome in his Christian capital of Rouen a pagan host from Scandinavia which under the leadership of Olaf and Lacman had recently spread devastation over a considerable area of north-western Gaul.24
In face of such evidence it would be rash to minimize the Scandinavian factor in the making of Normandy. None the less, it might be easy to overestimate its importance. It is becoming increasingly open to question whether Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries could have produced such a large surplus population as to account for such extensive migrations as are currently postulated.25 And apart from this general question, the particular conditions in Neustria might merit closer consideration. The exhaustive examination which has recently been undertaken of Norman place-names as they are revealed in texts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, has displayed a surprising number of Latin-Scandinavian hybrids, and this has been held to indicate that the settlement of large groups of peasant warriors from Scandinavia in Neustria was, to say the least, exceptional.26 Still more significant is it that on many large estates in the province, the events of the early tenth century do not seem to have interrupted a tenurial continuity which here proceeded with scarcely less modification than elsewhere in northern Gaul.27 Doubtless Scandinavian influence varied from district to district in Neustria, and certainly it was stronger in the west than in the east. But already by the second quarter of the tenth century, Scandinavian speech had become generally obsolete in Rouen, though it persisted in Bayeux,28 and the later assimilation of Normandy into the culture of France was eventually to be so rapid, and finally to be so complete, that of itself it might suggest an administrative and political continuity between Carolingian Neustria and ducal Normandy.
There is, moreover, positive evidence to show that such continuity did in fact take place. It is inevitable in this matter to turn first to the Church, which was the natural repository of the traditions of Christian Neustria. The baptism of Rolf had been the cardinal feature of the arrangements of 911–912, and it imposed upon the new ruler ecclesiastical obligations which he may not wholly have evaded. His reputed attempt to resuscitate the earlier religious life of Neustria must be regarded as an exaggeration of later writers, but some concessions may have been exacted from the newly converted Viking, and some of his alleged benefactions, particularly those to Saint-Ouen in Rouen, may in fact have been made. The reputation of his son William Longsword as a friend of the Church, though likewise unduly magnified by his posterity, rests, however, on surer foundations. The evidence of the charters of three religious houses gives at least some support to later legends that he was interested in the re-foundation of the Neustrian monasteries, and that he was particularly associated with the re-establishment of Jumièges.29
Not, however, until after 965 did the process gather momentum. The pact between Richard I and Lothair marked the beginning of a period wherein Norman monasticism became, under ducal initiative, subjected to the influence of great monastic reformers from outside the province. Thus late in the tenth century, Mainard was to introduce into Normandy the ideas of Saint Gérard de Broigne from Ghent, and early in the eleventh, a more fundamental inspiration came with the advent, by ducal invitation, of William of Volpiano who brought to the duchy the full force of Cluniac teaching from Dijon. As a result, through the agency of the Viking dynasty, four of the greatest monasteries of Carolingian Neustria had been re-established before the accession of Duke William,30 and other new foundations had been made.31 At the same time the organization of the province of Rouen was being reconstituted. A famous charter of Duke Richard I in 990 displayed the Norman bishoprics once more in full action.32 The manner in which this ecclesiastical revival was begun, and how it was extended and developed in the time of William the Conqueror, will be considered in some detail later in this book, for it conditioned his personal achievement, and it substantially affected the character of the Norman impact upon England. Here it must suffice to note that the duchy to which Duke William succeeded in 1035 might already be regarded as an ecclesiastical unit fortified by ancient traditions that had been revived by the ducal house.
The same continuity between Carolingian Neustria and ducal Normandy is suggested by many features of the political structure of the duchy at the time of the Conqueror, and by reference to the manner in which it had been developed. There can be little doubt, for instance, that the grant by Charles the Simple to Rolf vested the Viking leader with some at least of the rights and responsibilities of a Carolingian count,33 and it is certain that ‘count’ was a title much favoured by early members of his family. What was the formal practice of Rolf and William Longsword in this matter is not known, since apparently they did not normally issue written instruments to confirm their gifts.34 But the Icelandic writer, Ari the Learned, could in the eleventh century refer to Rolf as Ruðu jar
, and a charter for Jumièges which passed in 1012 could describe his son as count of Rouen.35 In like manner the Latin Lament for William Longsword, which was composed about the end of the tenth century, saluted Richard I as count of Rouen,36 and the usage was thereafter very frequently followed in official documents. In a charter given to Fécamp in 990 Richard I styled himself ‘count and consul’, and between 1006 and 1026 not less than nine charters of the time of Richard II spoke of him as count.37 Other titles were used alongside this, and with the advance of the eleventh century that of ‘duke’ came to predominate. But in many of his charters William's father, Robert I, is styled count, and the practice was kept up by the Conqueror himself.38
Much more was here involved than merely formal usage. By acquiring the traditional title of count, the Viking dynasty not only vested itself with the sanctions of legitimacy, but it could in consequence lay claims to important privileges and powers. The Carolingian count by virtue of his office had wide rights to the profits of public justice, and fiscal rights also over the imperial estates which lay within his jurisdiction.39 All these advantages seem to have accrued to the new rulers of Neustria, and they did so, moreover, at a time, and in conditions, when they might be especially valuable. With the decline of the central authority, the counts everywhere gained more independence, and they could in addition now exploit to their own benefit the imperial estates which had been entrusted to their administration. This process, as is well known, took place throughout northern Gaul. But in tenth-century Neustria the situation was particularly favourable to the ruling family. For owing to the prolonged Viking wars, and owing to the rapid expansion of the power of the new dynasty between 919 and 933, there had survived in the whole wide region between the Bresle and the Couesnon, between the Avre and the sea, no rival count who could dispute power with the newly established counts of Rouen.40 The significance of this fact to the growth of ducal authority in Normandy was certainly very considerable, and its consequences were to be seen in the political structure of the duchy in the time of the Conqueror. Duke William II after his accession was to find himself surrounded by counts. But the comital houses to which they belonged were all then of a very recent establishment, and all of them without exception were closely connected with the ducal dynasty itself.
The process by which this had taken place was to entail results of such importance to the future that it deserves some illustration.41 The first private individual to be styled count in Normandy was Rodulf of Ivry, half-brother of Duke Richard I, who assumed the title between 1006 and 1011, and thereafter several of the sons of that duke were similarly designated, perhaps by reason of their birth. Archbishop Robert of Rouen, for instance, claimed to be also count of Évreux, and in 1037 he was to pass on the dignity to his eldest son Richard. Again, about 1015 two illegitimate sons of Duke Richard I, Godfrey and William, became counts, the latter being certainly count of Eu; and after their deaths, Gilbert of Brionne, the son of Godfrey, was a count, whilst William's son, Robert, was before 1047 recognized as count of Eu. In Lower Normandy a similar development occurred. About 1027, there was established in the extreme west of the province a certain Count Robert, who was very probably one of Duke Richard I's bastards: he may well have been count of Mortain as was certainly William Werlenc, who was possibly his son and who survived until after 1050. Apart from the Conqueror's father, who may have been count of the Hiémois before he became duke, no other count can be discovered in Normandy before 1050 with the exception of William, son of Duke Richard II, who very early in the Conqueror's reign was made count of Arques.42
Here may be found a further indication of the manner in which the Viking dynasty had been enabled to extend and make effective over the whole of Neustria the comital powers which it had itself inherited from the Carolingian past. Indeed, the appearance as count of cadet members of the reigning family may well have been connected with some scheme of defence for the Viking province as a whole. The earliest Norman counts appear to have been established at Ivry, Eu, and Mortain. The first faced the count of Chartres, the second guarded the eastern border of Normandy, whilst Mortain lay across the line of Breton advance by way of Pontorson. These were frontier districts even as were the principal earldoms over which at a later date the Conqueror was to set hiscomitesin England.43 There is thus no reason to suppose that the advancement to comital status of members of the ducal family during the earlier half of the eleventh century indicated any diminution of the ducal authority. Rather, it may be considered as part of a settled policy by which the Viking dynasty, relying on earlier traditions, had extended its own administrative power.
The same conclusion could be reinforced by reference to the vicomtes who were likewise a characteristic feature of eleventh-century Normandy. Even as the duke had for long been the sole count in Normandy so also had vicomtes been established in the province before the local counts. A vicomte of Arques can, for instance, be found in that district before a count was set over it,44 and those regions of Normandy such as the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the Bessin which were to produce the greatest families ofvicomtes never in this period possessed a count of their own. The early development of the office is also noteworthy. Not less than twenty vicomtes can be personally identified in Normandy between 1015 and 1035, and the number was soon to be increased.45Equally significant is it that the vicomtes seem from their first appearance in ducal Normandy to have been agents of the ducal administration, and regular suitors to the ducal court where they performed many of the functions later discharged by the household officials. It is in fact impossible to escape the conclusion that the vicomte in eleventh-century Normandy was not simply (as his title implies) the deputy of a count: he was more specifically the deputy of the count of Rouen who had become duke of Normandy.
Both the Norman comtés and the Norman vicomtés which had come into existence by the time of Duke William II thus derived much of their special character from an earlier process of history. They were based, moreover, not upon new territorial units but upon the administrative divisions of Carolingian Neustria which had themselves survived the Viking wars.46 If the Conqueror's father was count of the Hiémois he presided over a district whose earlier identity is illustrated in a long series of Merovingian and Carolingian texts; and the count of Évreux exercised jurisdiction over the ancient Evreçin which had enjoyed an individual life in the eighth and ninth centuries. The comté of Eu likewise represented a territory which was distinct in the time of Rolf. And it was the same with thevicomtés. The Cotentin is mentioned, for instance, in a sixth-century Life of Saint Marculf; the Avranchin was similarly defined at an early date; and the Bessin was of very ancient origin. A similar development might be detected in the church. In the reconstruction of the Norman church which was characteristic of the eleventh century, many of the dioceses which were then reconstituted, and many of the archdeaconries which were then established, were based, albeit with considerable modification, on the ancient territorial units.
The continuity here revealed deserves comment. The characteristic subdivision of Carolingian Neustria had been the pagus. But at the time when Rolf was established in Gaul, the pagi within the western empire were everywhere beginning to disintegrate, though their disruption was not to become general before the end of the tenth century.47 Rolf and his immediate successors, therefore, possessed of special powers through their unique comital status in Neustria, were here given the special opportunity to arrest, or to postpone, a disintegration which was taking place with great rapidity elsewhere. It would seem that they seized it, and continued for some time to preserve the pagi as units of their own administration. At the beginning of the second quarter of the eleventh century, for example, the pagi of Saire, Hague, and Bauptois in the extreme north of the Cotentin were given in their entirety by the Conqueror's uncle Duke Richard III to his wife Adela, and about 1040 a charter could correctly describe the newly constitutedcomté of Arques as the Pays de Talou.48 The growth of a new feudal order based upon tenure and service was soon to mask the earlier growth. Nevertheless, the conformity of eleventh-century Normandy, as a whole, and in its parts, to ancient areas and institutions of government merits full emphasis. The Viking dynasty had thus acquired through special circumstances a special authority. Its very survival during the tumultuous years of William's minority was, as will be seen, to depend in no small measure on this fact.
The debt of ducal Normandy to older political and ecclesiastical institutions lends a special interest to the relationship which at the time of William's birth had been established between the Norman dynasty and the ruling house of France. For this too is only to be explained by reference to an earlier development. Whatever may have been the precise terms on which the grant of land was made to Rolf by Charles III – and these are open to dispute49 – there is no doubt that vassalage was claimed, and if its practical implications were often ignored by Rolf and his immediate successors, it seems also that they were sometimes acknowledged. The solemn reception of Louis d'Outre Mer at Rouen by William Longsword in 942 was probably a recognition of this relationship, and the subsequent murder of the duke later in that year may not have been unconnected with it. Again, if the famous story of the abduction of the young Duke Richard I by the French king undoubtedly contains legendary elements, it may well represent the assertion of an overlord of his right to bring up the infant son of a defunct vassal at his own court.50
What, however, is more relevant to the Conqueror's inheritance is that this vassalage, always claimed and sometimes recognized, was in due course to be transferred to the rising house of Capet, and in this development, too (though there were earlier connexions between the two families), the period following the settlement of 965 was to prove decisive. In 968 Richard I formally recognized Hugh the Great as his overlord, and after the royal coronation of Hugh Capet in 987, the French kings of the new family consistently regarded the Norman dukes as their vassals.51 Moreover, throughout his long reign, the Conqueror's grandfather, Duke Richard II, repeatedly discharged the duties which such vassalage implied.52 The consequences to the future were to be profound. Indeed, the relationship was in due course to prove an important factor in the survival of both the dynasties concerned. In 1031 – some three years after the birth of William – the young King Henry I of France, flying from the wrath of his mother, Constance, took refuge in Rouen, and calling on the Norman duke for support was thereby enabled to regain his kingdom.53 Correspondingly, in 1047, it was the intervention of Henry I on behalf of his Norman vassal which then rescued the young Duke William from destruction.54
Of less intrinsic interest, but equally indicative of the increasing participation of the Norman dynasty in the affairs of Gaul, were the relations which had developed about the same time between the ducal house and Brittany. The future pattern of these relations was in fact set during the first decade of the eleventh century by two notable marriages.55 The former of these was a union between Hawisa, daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy, and Geoffrey of Rennes, who was subsequently count of Brittany. The latter was a marriage between Duke Richard II of Normandy and Judith of Brittany who was Geoffrey's sister. These two marriages followed closely upon each other, and there is reason to suppose that they were also connected as part of a common design to safeguard the welfare of the two families. Such, at all events, was the result. On Geoffrey's departure in 1008 on the pilgrimage during which he died, his two sons Alan III and Eudo, then of tender age, were left under the tutelage of their Norman mother, and in consequence Richard II, who was both brother and brother-in-law to Hawisa, immediately began to play a dominant part in the government of Brittany.56 Similarly, after Richard II's death, and particularly after William's succession as duke in 1035, Alan III of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey, was to find himself deeply involved, and highly influential, in Norman affairs.57
The Norman inheritance of William the Conqueror was thus made up of many diverse elements, and in particular it derived from two contrasted traditions. The extent of Scandinavian influence upon the growth of Normandy has perhaps sometimes been overestimated, but its consequences were none the less considerable, and it helped to distinguish the province over which William came to rule from its neighbours in Gaul. On the other hand, the family to which William's father belonged, and which was itself a characteristic product of Scandinavian expansion, had from the start rested its power on other and more ancient foundations which it sought to strengthen rather than to destroy. It had been established by imperial grant; it had utilized and vitalized the administrative institutions of the Carolingian age; it had associated itself with the Capetian rulers of France; and it had linked its fortunes with those of the Church in the province of Rouen. The process by which this had been achieved was gradual. Before the pact of Gisors in 965 the Scandinavian affinities of Normandy, though weakening, remained strong. Between 965 and 1028 they became subordinate, as the duchy became increasingly absorbed in the surrounding Latin and Christian civilization of France. As a result, the Normandy, which under the leadership of William the Conqueror was in the third quarter of the eleventh century to reorientate the history of England, was French in its speech, in its culture, and in its political ideas.
Such was the heritage to which William the Conqueror was eventually to succeed. But would the bastard boy at Falaise ever be permitted to grasp it? And, if seized, could he retain it? And how might it be so exploited as to deflect the future development of western Christendom?
1 Below, Appendix A.
2 Other occupations have been suggested; e.g. that he was a man who prepared corpses for burial. The tradition that he was a tanner is, however, strong, and the tanneries at Falaise were famous.
3 Ord. Vit., interp. Will. Jum., p. 157; R.A.D.N., no. 102, and perhaps Lot, Saint-Wandrille, no. 20.
4 Below, Appendix A.
5 This may be inferred from the date of the marriage of Robert's parents. The traditional date for the marriage of Richard II and Judith, namely 1008, can hardly be accepted, but even if the marriage be placed five years earlier, the implications are remarkable. In that case, allowing for the normal periods of pregnancy, Robert, who was junior to his brother Richard III, could not, at the earliest, have been born before 1005. But to place his birth as early as this it is necessary to stretch all the evidence to the limit of possibility, by assuming that among the six children of Richard II by Judith the two elder sons were before any of the three girls – a fact for which there is no evidence. See Douglas, inEng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXV (1950), pp. 289–303.
6 Douglas, Rise of Normandy (1949); published separately, and also in the Proceedings of the British Academy for that year.
7 The controversial literature concerning him is considered by Douglas, in Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LVII (1942), pp. 417–436. The name may represent O. Norse Hraithulfr; or O. Swed. Hrithulf.
8 Rec. Actes – Charles III (ed. Lauer), no. XCII.
9 Prentout Étude sur Dudon, pp. 250–259.
10 Douglas, Rise of Normandy, pp. 7–9.
11 Vidal de la Blache, Tableau de la géographie de la France (Lavisse, Histoire de France, vol. I, part I, pp. 171–183).
12 Powicke, Loss of Normandy (1913), pp. 14 and 15.
13 Solomon of Brittany thus included the Cotentin in his dominion, and an attempt was made to erect Dol into a metropolitan see (Chronique de Nantes (ed. Merlet), pp. 26–28).
14 Stapleton, Rot. Scacc. Norm., vol. I, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii.
15 Gall. Christ., vol. XI, p. 136; Prentout, La Normandie (1910), p. 33.
16 On this much debated question, see M. de Bouard, ‘De la Neustrie carolingien à la Normandie féodale’ (Bull. Inst. Historical Research, vol. XXVIII (1955), pp. 1–14); J. Yver, ‘Le développement du pouvoir ducale en Normandie’ (Atti del Congresso di Studi Ruggierani, Palermo, 1955); and L. Musset, ‘Les domaines de l'époque franque et les destinées du régime domainiale du IXe au XIe siècle’ (Bull. Soc. Antiq. Norm., vol. XLIX (1942), pp. 9–98).
17 Dudo (ed. Lair), pp. 129–131; Will. Jum., pp. 7–13; F. Lot, ‘La grande invasion normande 856–861’ (Bibliothèque de l'École de Chartes, vol. LXIX, pp. 5–62).
18 L. B. de Glanville, Prieuré de Saint-L6, vol. I (1890), pp. 21–24.
19 Ord. Vit., interp. Will. Jum., pp. 165–168.
20 Flodoard, Annales (ed. Lauer), p. 63; Lauer, Louis d'Outre Mer, pp. 100, 287.
21 F. Lot, Les derniers Carolingiens (1891), pp. 346–357.
22 Rec. Actes Lothaire et Louis V (ed. Halphen), no. XXIV; Prentout, Étude sur Dodon, pp. 447–451.
23 Ed. Waitz (1877), p. 180.
24 Will. Jum., pp. 85–87; Translatio S. Maglorii (Bibliothèque de l'École de Chartes, vol. LVI, pp. 247, 248).
25 Cf. P. H. Sawyer, in Birmingham Univ. Hist. Journal, vol. VI (1958), pp. 1–17.
26 See the notable series of articles by J. Adigard des Gautries in Annales de Normandie (1947), et sqq. Cf. Stenton, in R. Hist. Soc., Transactions, series 4, vol. XXVII, p. 6.
27 Musset, op. cit.
28 Dudo (ed. Lair), p. 221. Cf. Adémar de Chabannes (ed. Chavanon (1897)), p. 148: ‘Many of them received the Christian faith, and forsaking the language of their fathers accustomed themselves to Latin speech.’
29 Douglas, Rise of Normandy, p. 13; J. G. Philpot, Maistre Wace, a Pioneer in Two Literatures (1925), pp. 85–127.
30 Jumièges; Saint Wandrille; Le Mont-Saint-Michel; Saint-Ouen.
31 e.g. Fécamp; Bernay; Holy Trinity, Rouen; Cerisy-la-Forêt.
32 R.A.D.N., no. 4.
33 J. Yver, op. cit., p. 186.
34 R.A.D.N., nos. 36, 53.
35 Ibid., no. 14, bis; Origines Islandicae (ed. Vigfusson and York Powell), vol. I, p. 187.
36 Lair, Guillaume Longue-Epée (1893), pp. 66–68. Cf. Adémar de Chabannes (1897), p. 189: ‘Ricardus Rothomagensis comes.’
37 R.A.D.N., no. 4 and nos. 9, 17, 18, 22, 23, 29, 32, 44, and 46.
38 Ibid., nos. 64, 65, 73, 80, and pp. 239–454.
39 Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Transformations de la royauté (1922), pp. 421–434.
40 Yver, op. cit., p. 186.
41 For what here follows, see the evidence given in Douglas, ‘The Earliest Norman Counts’ (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXI (1946), pp. 129–156).
42 Will Jum., p. 119.
43 Below, pp. 294–296.
44 Rainald was vicomte of Arques before 1026 (Chevreux et Vernier, Archives de Normandie, plate IX). William was not made count of Arques until after 1035.
45 I have noted the following among those named as vicomtes in charters between 1015 and 1035: Nigel; Tescelin (and Richard his son); Thurstan (Goz); Alfred the Giant; Richard; Wimund; Odo; Siric; Geoffrey; Rainald; Goscelin (son of Hedo); Ersio; Aymon; Hugh; Rodulf; Anschetil; Gilbert; Erchembald; Gerard. The careers of many of them, or of their descendants in the reign of Duke William II, will be illustrated below.
46 Le Prévost, ‘Les anciennes divisions territoriales de la Normandie’ (Soc. Antiq. Norm., Mémoires, vol. XI (1840), pp. 1–19). What follows in this paragraph is derived from that remarkable article.
47 J.-F. Lemariginer, in Mélanges – Halphen (1951), pp. 401–410.
48 R.A.D.N., no. 58; Chartes de Jumièges, vol. I, no. XX; Musset, op. cit., p. 96.
49 Flodoard (Annales (ed. Lauer), pp. 39. 55, 75), three times seems to speak of formal commendation, and Charles's diploma of 918 (Rec. Actes Charles III (ed. Lauer), no. XCII) states that the grant was made for the defence of the kingdom (pro tutela regii). On the other hand, the same charter speaks of the grants as being made to ‘the Normans of the Seine’ – Nortmannis sequanensibus – a plural form of words inappropriate to a feudal grant as later understood.
50 Flodoard, Annales, p. 84; Richer (ed. Waitz), p. 53; Dudo (ed. Lair), p. 209.
51 R.A.D.N., no. 3; Lot, Fidèles ou Vassaux? pp. 177–192.
52 Douglas, Rise of Normandy, p. 12.
53 Will. Jum., p. 105; Lot, Saint-Wandrille, no. 13.
54 Below, pp. 48–50.
55 Will. Jum., p. 88; Ann. S. Michel (Delisle, Robert de Torigni, vol. II, p. 231); Douglas, Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXV (1950), pp. 289–291.
56 La Borderie, Historie de Bretagne, vol. III, pp. 8–10.
57 Below, pp. 36–38.