The Norman Conquest (48 page)

One suspects that English laymen, by contrast, had rather less luck. Surrounded by land-hungry Norman neighbours and predatory sheriffs, the small English landholder had few remaining options. He might, perhaps, try to put himself and his lands under the protection of a sympathetic local abbot: the chronicler of Evesham Abbey recalled how, immediately after the Conquest, Abbot Æthelwig ‘attracted knights and men to him with their land … promising them protection against the Normans’. But protection, in this instance at least, lasted only as long as the abbot. When Æthelwig died in 1078 he was replaced by Abbot Walter, who (in addition to barbecuing the abbey’s relics) began to grant out estates entrusted to the abbey’s protection to his Norman friends and relatives.
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The only alternative open to the defenceless lay landowner, therefore, was to make the best of a bad deal – to approach the new lord or sheriff and try to secure the right to one’s own property, even it meant sacrificing a part of it, or holding it on unfavourable terms.

This is the darker side of the Norman settlement of England – not merely confused and chaotic, but violent, rapacious and in many cases unjust. It was, one might argue, an inevitable part of any military takeover, only to be expected in circumstances where aggressive men, expectant of reward and greedy for spoils, are unleashed on a vanquished people. Yet it cannot have helped matters that, in the late 1070s, the worst offender of all was the man in charge. Odo of Bayeux, it seems, was from the first a great believer in self-help:

He established himself in the county of Kent very strongly and exercised great power therein. Moreover, because in those days there was no one in that shire who could resist so powerful a magnate, he attached to himself many men of the archbishopric of Canterbury, and seized many of the customary rights which pertained to it.

So begins a report, written at Canterbury, of a great assembly held at Penenden Heath near Maidstone, probably in 1072. It goes on to explain how Archbishop Lanfranc, after his appointment in 1070, discovered the extent of Odo’s usurpations and complained to the
king, who in turn arranged the meeting at Penenden as a means of investigating the matter. So numerous were the lands in dispute, we are told, that the hearing went on for three days, by the end of which Canterbury’s rights were vindicated.
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But while the archbishop managed to reclaim some of his lost property from the earl, other churchmen were not so successful. ‘Holy monasteries had good cause to complain that Odo was doing them great harm,’ says Orderic Vitalis’, ‘violently and unjustly robbing them of ancient endowments made by pious Englishmen.’ This must have applied in particular to the period during the late 1070s when the bishop apparently governed England with unfettered power. At Evesham Abbey, for example, it was remembered that the bishop ‘ruled the country at that time under the king like some tyrant’. Odo, the abbey’s chronicler complained, preyed on Evesham’s estates ‘like a ravening wolf’, packing the courts with hostile witnesses to deprive the monks of no fewer than twenty-eight properties, ‘more by his own evil influence than by legitimate means’. Again, if the Church, which to some degree had the ability to resist such encroachments, suffered in this way, then the laymen who came up against Odo must surely have suffered more. Such indeed is the impression given on folio after folio in the Domesday Book, with jurors complaining time and again that the king’s half-brother had obtained lands to which he had no legal right.
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‘Read the scriptures, and see if there is any law to justify the forcible imposition on a people of God of a shepherd chosen from among its enemies.’ The words, if we believe Orderic Vitalis, of Guitmund, a pious and learned Norman monk, summoned to England by King William soon after the Conquest and offered a plum position in the English Church. ‘I deem all England to be the spoils of robbery, and shrink from it and its treasures as from consuming fire.’ Historians have been rightfully sceptical of this scene, pointing out that the opinions expressed in the speech are Orderic’s own, and that any monk who had actually been so frank before the Conqueror would most likely have been found hanging by his cowl from the nearest tree. At the same time, there may be a kernel of truth in the story. Guitmund was most certainly a real person, a noted theologian who for some reason felt compelled late in his career to leave Normandy and seek alternative employment at the papal court; he ended his days as bishop of the Italian city of Aversa.
Other evidence suggests that some Normans did have reservations about participating in what was descending into a colonial carve-up. But they were clearly outnumbered by the legions of other men, secular and religious, who were rushing across the Channel to join in the scramble for worldly goods and riches.
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17

The Edges of Empire

W
hile Odo lorded it over the English, William was still struggling to bring his errant eldest son to heel. The king of France had taken full advantage of his enemy’s discomfort, installing Robert in the castle of Gerberoy, a fortress close to Normandy’s eastern frontier, from where the frustrated young man and his followers – now supplemented, says Orderic Vitalis, by many common knights and mercenary French barons – made frequent raids into his father’s duchy. Finally, soon after Christmas 1078, William moved against him and a bitter stand-off ensued. As the various chronicle accounts make clear, it was yet another occasion where the once invincible warrior was worsted. After enduring a three-week siege, Robert led a sortie against his father, at one point fighting him in person and wounding him in the hand. The Conqueror’s other adult son, the loyal William Rufus, was also injured in the clash, while many other men were killed or taken prisoner. When the king’s horse was shot from under him, the man who tried to bring him a replacement was felled by a second bolt. According to John of Worcester, William escaped only because Robert recognized his voice and, giving up his own horse, commanded his father to ride away.
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Unsurprisingly, therefore, the wounds from this encounter took a long time to heal. William was evidently very sore, his humiliation compounded by the discovery that Matilda, ‘feeling a mother’s affection for her son’, had been secretly supporting Robert by sending him large sums of silver and gold. (Such as least is the story told by Orderic.) For most of 1079 there can have been little
movement in the direction of reconciliation, despite repeated efforts on the part of the queen, the bishops and the most senior Norman magnates to intercede with William on Robert’s behalf, hoping ‘by fair speech and pleading to soften his harshness’. It was not until the early months of the following year that a breakthrough was achieved:

Finally, the stern king yielded to the pressure of all these great persons, and, surrendering to paternal duty, became reconciled with his son and his son’s confederates. And by the advice of his chief men he again granted Robert the duchy of Normandy after his death, as he had once before granted it to him … The people of Normandy and Maine welcomed the restoration of peace with rejoicing, for they had been weakened and impoverished by several years of war.

This reconciliation must have happened shortly before Easter 1080, for that is the first occasion when we see William and Robert together again, witnessing a charter in the company of a great crowd of Norman magnates, in what was no doubt a deliberately contrived show of unity. At long last, the dispute that had threatened to tear the duchy apart was over. By 8 May the news had reached Rome, and the pope wrote a congratulatory letter to Robert, rejoicing that the rift had been repaired, and quoting him some choice passages from Scripture on the subject of filial duty.
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The end of the dispute meant that William could finally turn his attention to England. He did not return immediately, presumably because (as Orderic implies) there remained much work to be done in restoring peace to Maine and Normandy. But at some point after July, the Conqueror crossed the Channel once more, returning to his kingdom for the first time in over four years.
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Having been away for so long, William probably returned for no other reason than to make his presence felt, and to satisfy himself that affairs in England had been handled satisfactorily in his absence. Nevertheless, by the summer of 1080 there were at least two urgent items on the agenda, both of which concerned the north. The previous August King Malcolm of Scotland had raided into Northumbria, thus violating the peace agreed at Abernethy seven
years earlier. Meanwhile, as recently as May 1080, the bishop of Durham had been murdered. Possibly the two events were connected: Bishop Walcher had been de facto earl of Northumbria since the fall of Waltheof in 1075; it may be that the devastation of the region he was supposed to be defending exposed the weakness of his rule and provoked a plot to end it. According to a long and detailed account by John of Worcester, however, the bishop was brought down by a personal quarrel between two of his servants, one of whom killed the other, thus triggering a bloodfeud which ended badly for all involved. Walcher tried to negotiate with the dead man’s kin, but they opted instead for revenge, slaughtering him and a hundred of his followers at Gateshead as they tried to take refuge in a church. Thus what appears to have started as a feud ended up resembling an out-and-out rebellion, an impression the bishop’s killers reinforced when they went on to Durham and attempted, without success, to capture the city’s castle.
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Both the Scottish raid and Walcher’s murder cried out for reprisals, and William did not hesitate to inflict them. At some point after July 1080 he dispatched into Northumbria that altogether more strenuous prelate, Odo of Bayeux, who demonstrated what William of Poitiers would no doubt have called his skill in secular affairs by leading an army into the region and laying it to waste. According to Simeon of Durham, Odo killed, maimed and extorted money from the guilty and innocent alike, before helping himself to some of the cathedral’s treasures, including an ornate pastoral staff. Later in the same autumn Robert Curthose was sent on a similar mission into Scotland, as if to demonstrate to King Malcolm that his attempt to make hay during the recent father—son rift had been a shortsighted mistake. Simeon was dismissive of his efforts, but it seems that Robert succeeded in reimposing the terms of the earlier Anglo-Scottish peace. On his return journey he also gave additional substance to Norman rule in the north by establishing a permanent outpost near the site of Walcher’s murder at Gateshead – a ‘new castle’ upon the Tyne.
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William’s decision to delegate northern affairs to Odo and Robert may indicate that he did not actually return to England until late in the year – the first definite evidence of his having crossed the Channel comes at Christmas, when he appears at Gloucester. This
destination was partly traditional: Edward the Confessor had generally celebrated Christmas in the same city, drawn there by the hunting to be had in the nearby Forest of Dean, and the same attraction would have appealed to William, who was notoriously addicted to the joys of the chase. ‘He loved the stags as much as if he were their father’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
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Such, indeed, was William’s love of hunting that he imported the very concept of ‘the Forest’ into England – the word occurs for the first time in an English context in the Domesday Book. We tend to think of forests as heavily wooded areas, but originally the term could be applied to land of any sort. It probably derived from the Latin word
foris,
meaning ‘outside’, for the Forest’s defining aspect was that it was a jurisdiction apart: an expanse of land reserved for the king’s own recreation, with its own rigorously enforced law. ‘He set aside a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. ‘Whoever slew a hart or a hind / Should be made blind.’
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William caused forests to be made in many places, but the most famous was the one he established in Hampshire, appropriately still known as the New Forest. It was evidently created early in the reign, for the king’s second son, Richard, died there at some point in the late 1060s or early 1070s. Later chroniclers saw this death as divine retribution for the suffering that the forest’s creation had entailed. ‘In past times,’ says John of Worcester, ‘that area was fruitfully planted with churches and people who worshipped the lord. But on King William’s command, men were expelled, homes were cast down, and the land was made habitable only for wild beasts.’ In fact, as historians have long pointed out, the sandy soil of the New Forest could never have supported the kind of densely populated society that the chroniclers imply, and the Domesday Book shows that the greater part of the area – about 75,000 acres – had indeed been uncultivated before 1066. But Domesday also shows that William had added a further 15,000–20,000 acres, an extension which involved the clearance of some twenty villages and a dozen hamlets, containing approximately 2,000 people. The chronicles had exaggerated, but the essence of their story was true.
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Another reason for the king’s decision to keep Christmas at Gloucester in 1080 would have been the city’s proximity to Wales.
In general Wales had proved far less problematic for William than Scotland, largely thanks to the victories of his immediate predecessor. Although the Conqueror may not have cared to acknowledge it, Harold’s success in toppling the all-powerful Gruffudd ap Llywelyn in 1063 had returned Wales to its usual state of disarray, with multiple rulers vying against each other for supremacy. By the time the Normans arrived in the region soon after 1066, much of their work had already been done for them.