Enemy at the Gate (25 page)

The book is set during one of the most turbulent and complicated times in British history. Henry I of England and Normandy’s eldest son William died. The king named his daughter, the Empress Matilda as his heir.  However her husband, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire died and she remarried.  Her new husband was Geoffrey of Anjou and she had children by him. (The future Henry II of England and Normandy- The Lion in Winter!)

I have used the word Saxon many times both for the language and the people.  The invasion of the Normans had only taken place some fifty or sixty years before this book was set.  Both the language and the people would change and evolve.  The Normans tried to impose their language upon the Saxons who already lived there.  It did not work and Anglo-Saxon or English as it became known prevailed. Part of this was due to the fact that the Norman ladies used Saxon/English nannies to look after their babies and children.  As they spoke to them in their native tongue the young Normans grew up speaking English.  Of course many Norman words became part of English- honour, chivalry, ham, lake but it took another century, until after the time of Richard 1st, for one language to be used throughout the land. In my next book I will change the word Saxon for English.  By the time of Henry 1st's death the ordinary folk thought of themselves as English.

A cog was a small trading ship which developed from the Viking knarr.  It had high sides and a flat bottom.  There was one sail and steering oar on the starboard (steer board) side. By this time some had had small wooden castles built at the bow and stern and these were used to house archers.  These ships would be built bigger as the centuries wore on.  They had no deck save at the stern where the ship was conned. The holds were covered with canvas when they had goods to transport.

I have introduced Eleanor of Aquitaine in my books and she is an important figure.  She was about 8 in 1129 and her father was Duke William.  As she eventually marries Matilda's son I thought I would keep her in my books. The Empress Matilda did leave her husband in 1130.  It was not a happy marriage.

The Emperor John Komnenos fought against the Hungarians under King later Saint Stephen.  He lost and had to sue for peace.  The incident with our hero is purely fictional.

There was never an Earl of Cleveland although the area known as Cleveland did exist and was south of the river.  At this time the only northern earls were those of Northumberland.  The incumbent was Gospatric who rebelled against England when King Henry died.

The Scots were taking advantage of a power vacuum on their borders.  They did, according to chroniclers of the time behave particularly badly.

"an execrable army, more atrocious than the pagans, neither fearing God nor regarding man, spread desolation over the whole province and slaughtered everywhere people of either sex, of every age and rank, destroying, pillaging and burning towns, churches and houses"

"Then (horrible to relate) they carried off, like so much booty, the noble matrons and chaste virgins, together with other women. These naked, fettered, herded together; by whips and thongs they drove before them, goading them with their spears and other weapons. This took place in other wars, but in this to a far greater extent."

"For the sick on their couches, women pregnant and in childbed, infants in the womb, innocents at the breast, or on the mother's knee, with the mothers themselves, decrepit old men and worn-out old women, and persons debilitated from whatever cause, wherever they met with them, they put to the edge of the sword, and transfixed with their spears; and by how much more horrible a death they could dispatch them, so much the more did they rejoice."

Robert of Hexham

Following the birth of the second of Matilda and Geoffrey's two children relations between Matilda and her father became strained.  Many Normans disliked the idea of handing power to Anjou.  There were many minor incursions and rebellions, many of them supported by the French. It was following Stephen of Blois' sudden coronation that kingdom and dukedom  were divided.  Stephen controlled England and Matilda fought to claim Normandy. Matilda’s half brother, Robert of Gloucester (one of Henry’s bastards) declared for Matilda and a civil war ensued. The war went on until Stephen died and was called the anarchy because everyone was looking out for themselves.  There were no sides as such. Allies could become enemies overnight.  Murder, ambush and assassination became the order of the day. The only warriors who could be relied upon were the household knights of a lord- his oathsworn. The feudal system, which had been an ordered pyramid, was thrown into confusion by the civil war. Lords created their own conroi, or groups of knights and men at arms. Successful lords would ensure that they had a mixture of knights, archers and foot soldiers. The idea of knights at this time always fighting on horseback is not necessarily true.  There were many examples of knights dismounting to fight on foot and, frequently, this proved to be successful.

The word Fitz shows that the owner of the name is an illegitimate son of a knight or is used, with the lower case, to show the mother as in Henry fitz Empress.  As such they would not necessarily inherit when their father died. There were many such knights.  William himself was illegitimate. Robert of Gloucester was also known as Robert of Caen and Robert Fitzroy.

Ridley, the father of my hero, was in three earlier books.  There were two regiments of Varangians: one was English in character and one Scandinavian. As the bodyguards of the Emperor they were able to reap rich rewards for their service.

The Normans were formidable fighters. The conquest of England happened after a single battle.  They conquered southern Italy and Sicily with a handful of knights.  Strongbow, a Norman mercenary took a small mercenary force and dominated Ireland so much that as soon as a force of Normans, led by the king land, all defence on the island crumbled. In one of Strongbow's battles a force of 100 knights defeated 4000 Irish warriors!

The combination of heavy horse and archers working together became uniquely English.  The 12th century saw its genesis and it culminated in the army of Henry V which defeated a much larger army. To work properly the two arms had to work together.  When the Scottish light horse managed to get at the English archers at Bannockburn the English lost the battle.  Even Henry V's brother the Duke of Clarence made mistakes.  When  he left the safety of his archers he and his knights were easily defeated. The archers relied upon the huge number of arrows they could release.  Even when fighting at Agincourt where the plate armour could deflect most of the arrows the sheer number they used still managed to find cracks in the armour. They often used a flat trajectory to try to penetrate the tiny gaps in the helmet through which the men at arms peered.  Most importantly the English archer was unique in that he was a master light infantryman.  He could use a sword and a buckler and he knew how to kill.

Ranulf Flambard was the controversial Bishop of Durham who was imprisoned in the tower by Henry for supporting his brother.  Although reinstated the Bishop was viewed with suspicion by the king and did not enjoy as much power as either his predecessors or his successors. He had been something of a womaniser in his younger days and he tried to make up for that by giving to the poor when he was older. He was responsible for much of the defensive works of Durham Castle and was truly a Bishop Prince. He died around 1128. The incident with the Bishop being held captive is pure fiction.  However he died in 1128 and there was a great deal of unrest while King Henry was away in Normandy.  The Gospatric family did show their true colours when the Scottish king tried to take advantage of the internal strife between Stephen and Matilda and invade England.  A leopard does not change his spots. The land between the Tees and the Scottish lowlands was always fiercely contested by Scotland, England and those who lived there.

Geoffrey Rufus became Bishop of Durham and he had a clerk called William Cumin (Comyn).  Comyn became Bishop of Durham.  Geoffrey Rufus fell out of favour when he failed to support his castles.  Norham was left isolated and fell to the Scots giving them control over that corner of the Anglo-Scottish border.

Hartness (Hartlepool) was given to the De Brus family by Henry and the family played a power game siding with Henry and David depending upon what they had to gain. They were also given land around Guisborough in North Yorkshire.

Squires were not always the sons of nobles.  Often they were lowly born and would never aspire to knighthood. It was not only the king who could make knights.  Lords had that power too.  Normally a man would become a knight at the age of 21. Young landless knights would often leave home to find a master to serve in the hope of treasure or loot. The idea of chivalry was some way away.  The Norman knight wanted land, riches and power. Knights would have a palfrey or ordinary riding horse and a destrier or war horse.  Squires would ride either a palfrey, if they had a thoughtful knight or a rouncy (pack horse).  The squires carried all of the knight’s war gear on the pack horses.  Sometimes a knight would have a number of squires serving him. One of the squire’s tasks was to have a spare horse in case the knight’s destrier fell in battle. Another way for a knight to make money was to capture an enemy and ransom him. This even happened to Richard 1st of England who was captured in Austria and held to ransom.

At this time a penny was a valuable coin and often payment would be taken by ‘nicking’ pieces off it. Totally round copper and silver coins were not the norm in 12th Century Europe. Each local ruler would make his own small coins.  The whole country was run like a pyramid with the king at the top.  He took from those below him in the form of taxes and service and it cascaded down. There was a great deal of corruption as well as anarchy. The idea of a central army did not exist. King Henry had his household knights and would call upon his nobles to supply knights and men at arms when he needed to go to war.  The expense for that army would be borne by the noble.

The border between England and Scotland has always been a prickly one from the time of the Romans onward.  Before that time the border was along the line of Glasgow to Edinburgh.  The creation of an artificial frontier, Hadrian’s Wall, created an area of dispute for the people living on either side of it. William the Conqueror had the novel idea of slaughtering everyone who lived between the Tees and the Tyne/Tweed in an attempt to resolve the problem. It did not work and lords on both sides of the borders, as well as the monarchs used the dispute to switch sides as it suited them.

The manors I write about were around at the time the book is set. For a brief time a De Brus was lord of Normanby. It changed hands a number of times until it came under the control of the Percy family. This is a work of fiction but I have based events on the ones which occurred in the twelfth century.

I can find no evidence for a castle in Norton although it was second in importance only to Durham and I assume that there must have been a defensive structure of some kind there.  I suspect it was a wooden structure built to the north of the present church. The church in Norton is Norman but it is not my church.  Stockton Castle was pulled down in the Civil War of the 17th Century. It was put up in the early fourteenth century.  My castle is obviously earlier. As Stockton became a manor in the 12th century and the river crossing was important I am guessing that there would have been a castle there. There may have been an earlier castle on the site of Stockton Castle but until they pull down the hotel and shopping centre built on the site it is difficult to know for sure. The simple tower with a curtain wall was typical of late Norman castles. The river crossing was so important that I have to believe that there would have been some defensive structure there before the 1300s. The manor of Stockton was created in 1138. To avoid confusion in the later civil war I have moved it forward by a few years.

Vikings continued to raid the rivers and isolated villages of England for centuries. There are recorded raids as late as the sixteenth century along the coast south of the Fylde. These were not the huge raids of the ninth and tenth centuries but were pirates keen for slaves and treasure.  The Barbary Pirates also raided the southern coast.  Alfred’s navy had been a temporary measure to deal with the Danish threat.  A Royal Navy would have to wait until Henry VIII.

The Welsh did take advantage of the death of the master of Chester and rampaged through Cheshire.  King Henry and his knights defeated them although King Henry was wounded by an arrow.  The king’s punishment was the surrender of 10,000 cattle.  The Welsh did not attack England again until King Henry was dead!

Matilda was married to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry, in 1116 when she was 14. They had no children and the marriage was not a happy one. When William Adelin died in the White Ship disaster then Henry had no choice but to name his daughter as his heir. However, by that time she had been married to Geoffrey Count of Anjou, Fulk's son and King Henry was suspicious of his former enemy's heir.  His vacillation caused the civil war which was known as the Anarchy.  However those events are several books away. Stephen and Matilda are just cousins: soon they will become enemies.