Читать книгу The Conquerors: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 15

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To say that so many hundreds of Saxons were killed in this county or so many thousands in that shire conveys no idea of the tragic conditions which prevailed or of the bitterness of the struggle between the two races. The Normans, contemptuous of the English and impatient of any obstacles to the taking of what they wanted, did not spare the conquered people. If a Norman bishop needed materials for a new chantry, he tore down whole sections of a town to provide them and laughed at the clamor of the unhappy owners. If any part of the country showed itself mutinous, the troops sent in to restore order never made an effort to obtain the facts. They killed or mutilated every man they could catch, innocent or guilty, and they burned every house to the ground.

Of all the terrible things which happened, nothing is more tragic than the fate of the monks of Glastonbury. It might have seemed that Glastonbury, the most historic of all ecclesiastical institutions in England, would have been left alone. Here Joseph of Arimathaea, the rich merchant who befriended Christ and the Disciples, was supposed to have come in his old age, bringing the Holy Grail with him; here he had planted the Glastonbury thorn. Here Dunstan, first of the kingmakers, had lived and ruled and, presumably, it was in one of the cells that he caught the nose of the devil in a pair of red-hot pincers and twisted it until the cloistered arches of the chapel reverberated with the agonized screams of His Satanic Majesty. Sanctity brooded over its long halls; tradition set it apart.

But it was not to be exempt from the general upheaval. The native head of the monastery was removed and a Norman named Toustain was put in his place. Toustain proved himself an aggressive tyrant. It was clear that he wanted to be rid of the English monks and to fill the abbey with men of his own country, for his first step was to reduce the amount of food allowed them (it was meager enough to begin with) so that they would become more amenable to discipline. The poor fellows bore everything in silence until Toustain insisted that Norman music be used. The love they had for the old Gregorian chants led them to refuse. He insisted. They continued, respectfully but firmly, to refuse. One day in full chapter they declared that they would rather die than use the new music.

Toustain, white with rage, rose from his seat and left. When he returned he had a file of armed soldiers with him. “You have made your choice!” he declared, motioning the soldiers to follow out the orders he had given them.

The terrified monks fled to the church and took possession of the choir, locking the gates after them. The troops were on their heels, shouting and laughing, their armed feet ringing loudly on the flagged floor. Finding it impossible to get through the gates, some of them climbed the pillars, wriggling their way up even to the clerestory. From this point of vantage they began to shoot arrows into the choir, roaring boisterously over the results of their marksmanship. The monks skurried to the altar, where they huddled together in a frightened group. If they believed they would be safe there, they had no true conception of the temper of their tormentors. The bowmen might have been practicing at the targets for all the concern they showed. Their arrows pierced the crucifix above the altar and destroyed the monstrance and played havoc with the altar cloths. Some found human marks, and blood began to run in red streams down the steps into the nave.

In the meantime the rest of the soldiers had succeeded in breaking the gates. They poured into the choir with drawn swords, shouting as gleefully as spectators at a bear-baiting. The monks, realizing that their lives were at stake, ripped the backs off the choir seats and fought stoutly with them. One of them betrayed his Danish blood by chanting Yuch-hey-saa-saa, the war song of the vikings, as he swung an oak plank as effectively as though it were a battle-ax. But the poor fellows could offer little real resistance. Eighteen of them were butchered before the attacking party desisted.

The English people did not accept such treatment without any effort at retaliation. It became unsafe for Normans to go out alone; they were likely to be found with their throats cut if they did. There were so many killings of this kind that William finally passed a law which read in part, “When a Frenchman is killed, the men of the hundred shall seize and bring up the murderer within eight days; otherwise they shall pay, at their common cost, a fine of forty-seven marks.”

It is not on record that the people of any section produced an assassin as stipulated in this law. At the same time, however, they found the fines too great a burden to bear. They were so poor to begin with and so ground down by excessive taxes that a single fine was enough to reduce a whole community to penury. In cases where bodies were discovered, therefore, it became the custom to remove all marks of identification and to mutilate the body so that the nationality of the victim could not be determined.

This worked for a short time only. William was too shrewd to be balked and he promptly passed another law. It was now assumed that every victim of murder was French and that the community fine must be collected unless the people could prove the dead man to be of native birth. It was stipulated that four relatives should be produced to swear to the identity of the victim.

It was never possible to outwit William the Conqueror. His keen mind was equal to any situation which might arise, as surely as his heart was hard enough to stamp out any form of opposition without mercy.

It should be added that this ingenious and cruel law continued in force for centuries. At murder inquests the first step was to prove the victim English. In legal parlance this was called Presentment of Englishry.