Читать книгу The History of Medieval Monarchy in England (449 to 1485) - James Franck Bright - Страница 21

WILLIAM II
(1087–1100)

1087.

While the late King was on his deathbed, he had been induced to declare his wishes with regard to his kingdoms. In pursuance, perhaps, of a wise policy, and with the wish to keep up and increase the nationality of England, he gave his hereditary dominions to his son Robert, England to his second son William. He told his son Henry to bide his time, and gave him £5000 in money.

William is crowned by Lanfranc, and appeases the English.

Opposition of the Normans checked. 1088.

William at once hurried to England to secure his succession, and, winning the support of Lanfranc, was in less than three weeks crowned by him. At Winchester he found the King’s treasure, from which he distributed gifts among the churches in England, and a sum of money for the poor in every shire. A promise of laws more just and mild than their forefathers had known, attached the English to him for a time. Thus supported by the Church and by the conquered people, who could not but rejoice at the separation of England from Normandy, it was only the Norman Baronage he had to fear.

In Normandy the character of the new Duke Robert, who was a mere knight-errant, induced the great nobility to get rid of the royal garrisons from their castles, and otherwise to establish their feudal independence. A similar movement was begun in England, where Odo of Bayeux, liberated at the late King’s death, had returned to his county of Kent, and now found himself at the head of a strong party who disliked the separation of their conquered possessions from their hereditary property. Among the adherents of the party we find such names as the two great bishops, Geoffrey of Coutances and William of Durham, Robert, Count of Mortain, Roger of Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, his son Robert of Belesme, and Hugh of Grantmesnil, with others. Odo occupied the castle of Rochester, and against it William led a body of English, collected by a threat that all who had remained behind should be proclaimed “nithing,” or worthless. The efforts of the discontented barons in other parts of England were checked, and finally the castle of Rochester was captured. Odo of Bayeux and the Normans of the garrison were allowed to march out, which they did amid the revilings of the besiegers, and to retire to France. The King thus secured his position in England.

Lanfranc dies. Ralph Flambard succeeds him. 1089.

He had hitherto been kept in some restraint by the influence of Lanfranc; but when that prelate died in 1089, his coarse, licentious, sceptical and avaricious character began to display itself. His chief minister was Ralph Flambard, a Churchman, who, like many others, was of low parentage, but who seems to have recommended himself to William by his skill as a financier. One of the plans attributed to him was a more accurate completion of the Domesday survey, and the measurement of the hides of land there returned. This would have been harmless enough, but there must have been many other more flagrant exactions, though very likely covered by some form of law, to account for the hatred with which he was regarded. Although his office is not mentioned, he was probably justiciary.

William’s quarrels with his brothers in Normandy. 1090.

While England was groaning under the exactions of this man, so that “men would rather wish to die, than to live under his power,” the attention of the King was chiefly engaged in intrigues with the nobles of Normandy. The easy character of Duke Robert, and the rising anarchy among the nobles, afforded abundant opportunity. On one occasion it was the citizen Conan of Rouen with whom he was in correspondence; and when this plot was discovered, and Prince Henry, at that time acting with Duke Robert, had thrown the traitor from the cathedral tower, it was a quarrel between Grantmesnil and Curci on the one side, and Robert of Belesme on the other, which gave him an opportunity of mixing in the affairs of the duchy. In 1091, however, the brothers came to an agreement, and a treaty was made at Caen, by which they engaged that the survivor should succeed to the possessions of his brother; and meanwhile Eu, Fécamp, Mont S. Michel, Cherbourg, and some other territories, were given to William, who in return promised to conquer Maine for Robert. Twelve barons of either party swore to the observance of this treaty.

Feb. 1091.

Henry obtains Domfront.

Prince Henry, finding himself completely ignored by this arrangement, took possession of the rock of St. Michel, and bade defiance to his brothers. After a siege of some duration he was driven thence; but in the general anarchy of the duchy he found a home at Domfront, where the citizens begged him to be their lord, on the condition that he would not give them up to any other. It is doubtful whether he could have kept possession of this strong place, had not William’s attention been engaged by the affairs of Scotland.

War with Scotland. 1091.

1093.

Malcolm had renewed hostilities, and William found it necessary to march in person against him. His expedition was not successful. The weather destroyed a fleet which accompanied it, and, by its inclemency, caused much loss to his army. His presence, however, was sufficient in some degree to overawe Malcolm; a compromise was effected; Malcolm again did homage, and received back certain properties in England of which he had been deprived, and which were perhaps manors which had been given him as resting-places when he came to do homage to his suzerain. At the same time, William turned aside into the district of Cumberland, which was a dependency of the Scotch crown. He re-established Carlisle, and filled the county with peasants brought from the South of England from destroyed villages in the neighbourhood of Winchester. In this he disregarded the interests of the Scotch King, the immediate lord of the country, who therefore complained, and was invited to meet William at the next assembly at Gloucester. There, on the refusal of William to do him justice, a new quarrel broke out, and Malcolm was shortly afterwards killed, while invading England, at Alnwick, by Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland.

Continued war with Wales. 1094.

In the neighbourhood of Wales, too, fighting was almost perpetual. Not only did the great Earldoms of Shrewsbury and Chester increase their borders, but many knights took advantage of the frequent civil divisions of the Welsh to push westward and set up their castles. The course of the war had lately been in favour of the Welsh rather than of the Normans, and in 1095 William thought it necessary to lead an army against them. His attempt was not successful, nor was a repetition of it two years later more so. The nature of the ground was too difficult for the advance of a great army, and William, thus a second time repelled, had again to trust to the self-interest and courage of individual Norman settlers. This plan he strengthened by granting to Normans portions of land as yet unconquered. Thus two members of the house of Montgomery, brothers of Hugh, Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger and Arnulf, did homage for lands in Powys and Dyfed, and Hugh de Lacy for lands to the west of Herefordshire. This guerilla warfare was successful, and Hugh of Chester was just succeeding in winning back Anglesey, which had been taken from him, when an invasion of Magnus of Norway checked for the time the Norman success. The Earl of Shrewsbury, while assisting Hugh of Chester, lost his life, and was succeeded by Robert de Belesme, his brother. On the whole, the English frontier constantly advanced, and the border counties were thronged with castles either of the great Earls or of individual adventurers.

Troubles in Normandy. 1094.

Conspiracy of Mowbray crushed.

William obtains Normandy from Robert. 1096.

Size of his dominions at his death, 1100.

Intrigues and irregular fighting had meanwhile been constant in Normandy. In 1094 King Philip of France had been called in by Robert, but nothing of importance arose from this. But it gave rise to a curious act of extortion on the part of William, who summoned 20,000 men from England, evidently the old English County Militia, and on their arrival at the coast dismissed them, taking from them the ten shillings a head, viaticum, or journey-money, they had received from their counties. In 1095 a great conspiracy of the nobles in England, headed by Mowbray of Northumberland, came to light. Mowbray threw himself into Bamborough castle, which could not itself be taken, but immediately opposite to it another castle, called Malvoisin, was raised, and the garrison of this “ill-neighbour” found means to decoy Mowbray out of his stronghold and to take him prisoner. The danger which threatened William was thus got over; while the following year the object of his wishes came into his hands, when Robert, eager to join a crusade which had just been preached, pledged Normandy to him for the sum of £6,666. His new situation as ruler of Normandy brought William into hostility with the neighbouring countries, and especially with Maine, where Hélie de la Fléche made head against him, and, with the assistance of Fulk IV. of Anjou, succeeded in beating him off from Le Mans. William’s power was now, in spite of this repulse, very great, and the King of France, with whom he became involved in war in 1097 on the old subject of the Vexin, looked with anxiety at the growth of his great vassal, especially when a close friendship arose between him and the Duke of Poitiers and Guienne. This conjunction, giving the English King a grasp of France all round the seaboard, made men believe that his ambition reached to the throne of France, especially as Philip had but one son, Louis. The strange death of William put an end to all such thoughts. He was hunting in the New Forest, whither he had been warned not to go, and there met his death; whether by an accidental arrow from the bow of Walter Tyrrel, or falling forward upon the point of an arrow as he stooped over his prey, or slain by the hands of some of those whom his cruelty and avarice had made his implacable enemies, is uncertain. The flight of his attendants, and the unceremonious treatment of his corpse, seemed to favour the last supposition.

Causes of William’s inferiority to his father.

In spite then of his unamiable character; of the difficulties which had beset him from his somewhat questionable title; of the natural impulse towards feudal isolation of his barons; of troublesome neighbours; and occasional want of success in his expeditions; Rufus had on the whole succeeded in his plans, as far as his external circumstances were concerned. It was in his domestic government, especially with regard to the Church, that his inferiority to his great father is most obvious. Unlike the Conqueror, he was unable to see, or if he saw, to care for the national advantages which sprung from a well-organized Church. With a similar determination to be a perfect king in his own dominions, he asserted that opinion by violent acts against the Church itself, by appointments of the worst description, and by a life from which all show of decency was banished. As long as Lanfranc lived, he kept some restraint upon himself, but upon his death he began to show his real temper.

Disputes with the Church.

Bishoprics left vacant.

Repenting after illness, he makes Anselm Archbishop.

Anselm unwillingly accepts. 1093.

Anselm’s reforms.

William opposes him.

It was a critical time in the history of the Church. The quarrel about investitures was raging in Europe. The skill of Lanfranc and the power of the Conqueror had, as we have seen, prevented the quarrel from reaching England during that King’s reign; and to the end of Gregory’s life, 1085, he had kept up friendly, even flattering, relations with the English King. When Henry IV. had, in 1080, raised the Anti-Pope Guibert to the Papal throne under the name of Clement III., Lanfranc had contrived not to commit himself to either party, but, on the whole, it is probable, that during his life the regular Popes, Victor III. and Urban II., who succeeded him in 1088, were acknowledged in England. On his death advantage was taken of the Schism practically to acknowledge neither Pope, and to leave the abbeys and bishoprics vacant. Indeed, we are told that it was openly asserted that it was a privilege of the King of England to acknowledge the Pope or not as he pleased. Thus for four years the archbishopric was unfilled, along with several other important ecclesiastical preferments, and the want of discipline in the Church grew worse and worse. Ralph Flambard, as administrator of the diocese of Lincoln, was unlimited in his extortions. The Norman Church dignitaries marched between lines of armed men to church. The Bishop of Wells demolished the houses of the canons to build his own palace, and even the religious and moral scruples of the English monks were laughed at by their licentious superiors. In 1093 the King fell very ill, and for the time became repentant and religious; he proceeded to listen to the wishes of his people and fill up the vacant appointments. The most important of these was the archbishopric. For this post he selected Anselm of Aosta, Abbot of Bec. This man was a Piedmontese, who had been attracted to Normandy by the fame of Lanfranc, and had entered the Abbey of Bec under him. Upon Lanfranc’s removal to Caen he was made Prior, and afterwards Abbot. Both his character and attainments commanded the veneration of the age; and at the present time he had been invited by Hugh the Fat, Earl of Chester, to come over and assist him in establishing a Benedictine abbey at Chester. For this purpose, and charged with a mission from his monastery, he was induced much against his will to come to England. In the first access of the King’s repentance—after issuing a royal proclamation promising afresh the freedom of captives, the good laws of King Edward, and the punishment of evil-doers—he proceeded so far to action as to appoint Anselm Archbishop. It was not without something like actual violence that Anselm was forced to accept the Episcopal staff. The great importance of the primacy and Anselm’s view of the King’s character are well shown by some words that are attributed to him: “England’s plough is drawn by two supereminent oxen, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury.... Of these oxen one is dead, and the other, fierce as a savage bull, is yoked young to the plough, and in place of the dead ox you would yoke me a poor feeble old sheep with the wild bull.” The feeble old sheep, however, was a very decided ecclesiastic. He insisted at once upon the restoration of the whole of the lands of the See of Canterbury, more even than Lanfranc had held. He declared that he would publicly acknowledge Pope Urban. And when, after his consecration, on his presenting the King with £500 of silver, the King demanded £1000, he withdrew his intended present and distributed all to the poor. Nor was it as a defender of ecclesiastical rights that he was pre-eminent. He set himself to check as far as it was possible the shameless and abominable vice that was rampant in England. Among other signs of the degraded licentiousness of the times was the effeminate foppery of the courtiers. Against their long hair and sharp-peaked shoes the Archbishop was never weary of inveighing. The King’s absence from England put an end for a time to the disputes between the Archbishop and the King, but upon his return Anselm demanded leave to obtain his pall from Pope Urban. This open acknowledgment of the Pope William wished to avoid, and at a council, summoned to consider the matter, the deposition of Anselm appears to have been suggested. The bishops, creatures of the King, basely deserted their chief; and the wisdom of the Baronage of England, under the guidance of Robert, Count of Mellent, who throughout this and the preceding reign appears as the good adviser to the sons of the Conqueror, alone saved him from that disgrace. Unable to refuse Anselm’s wish absolutely, the King contrived to persuade the Pope to send him the pall, but Anselm stoutly refused to receive it from secular hands, and ultimately triumphed so far as to be allowed to take it himself from the high altar of the Cathedral of Canterbury. For the moment the primate was triumphant, the cowardly bishops sought his absolution. Bishoprics which fell vacant were at once filled up. The Irish and Scotch prelates acknowledged Anselm’s superiority. But William, cunning and implacable, was not to be thus foiled. If the churchman could not be touched, the feudal tenant could; and Anselm was accused of insufficient performance of his duty in supplying military followers for an expedition into Wales. In 1097, unable to withstand the royal violence, he left England, and made his way to Rome. He there was present at two great councils, that of Bari in 1098, where the orthodox doctrine as to the Holy Ghost was established; and one at Rome in 1099, where a curse was laid on all laymen who conferred ecclesiastical investitures and upon all churchmen who received them. Upon William’s death Anselm returned to England.

The History of Medieval Monarchy in England (449 to 1485)

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Читать книгу The History of Medieval Monarchy in England (449 to 1485) - James Franck Bright - Страница 21

WILLIAM II (1087–1100)

WILLIAM II
(1087–1100)