invaders; and perhaps the dispossessed Franklins, on seeing the numbers whom their pride or ignorance had kept in this degradation so long, may have wished that they had had the wisdom, in the days of their prosperity, to raise so powerful a body to the condition of freemen, that they might have gained their assistance in the protection of their common country. But a slave has only injuries to avenge, and no country to defend. § 16. King William therefore looked over the pages of Doomsday Book, and saw the position in which he and his followers stood. His military array consisted of sixty thousand horsemen, bound to come forward at his call, and at the expense of the barons, on whom he had bestowed the knights'fees throughout the land. It was a military brotherhood, whose mutual aid was the duty of all. The thane in his reduced position of tenant-the sockman holding his few fields on binding covenants, which it was forfeiture of his land to break the villein in his scattered hamlet, unable to leave the scene of his daily labour, and the serf sunk out of the sphere of humanity altogether these could offer no opposition to the steel-clad warrior, even if they had had the inclination. But the capacity of resistance was destroyed in other respects. For stronger than the armed array, more fatal to the aspiration of freedom than the Norman castles which rose in every valley, was the enmity of the Norman clergy. The poor old English priests, who had been inspired by the love of country, and hated the thought of seeing their wives and children at the proud feet of a conqueror, had all either died or been dispossessed. Lanfranc had long been Archbishop of Canterbury, and used his great influence to strengthen the hands of a foreign priesthood, knowing that no national movement can be permanently successful if it does not enlist on its side the feelings of religion. Thus king and archbishop saw with equal satisfaction the subjugation of the AngloSaxon Church, and the confiscation of bishopric and monastery A.D. 1070-1087.] NORMAN TYRANNY. 117 for the benefit of alien ecclesiastics: the archbishop, because it advanced the authority of his spiritual chief at Rome; and the king, because it weakened the power of resistance to his tyranny in England. That tyranny had become nearly insupportable. He had devastated large tracts of country to turn them into harbourage for his deer-animals, the chronicler tells us, which "he loved as if he had been their father." He had burned down great numbers of villages and even churches in the district called the New Forest, and cleared out spaces for the convenience of the hunt at such an expense of human suffering, that the pardonable superstition of the peasantry saw an avenging providence in the death which befel his son and other descendants amid those blood-stained alleys. In other parts of the country he had pursued the same policy-whether entirely from the love of sport, or partly to open communication with the different hamlets studding the recesses of the jungle, may be doubted; but from whatever cause the action proceeded, the cruelty was the same. And having placed in this manner the whole nation at his feet-peers, barons, tenants, villeins, serfs, and clergy, he proceeded to show to other nations that a king of England was a greater man than a duke of Normandy had been, and in 1087 he crossed over with a large expedition to make war on his liege lord the King of France. § 17. By this time he was sixty years of age, fat and unwieldy, and more furiously passionate than even in his younger days. Fatigue and exposure brought on a fever, which kept him to his bed at Rouen. Philip the First insulted him by a jibe on his size, and compared him to a woman in childbirth. "By the splendour of God," cried the Conqueror, "I will hold my churching in Notre Dame with so many candles, that France will be on fire." He mounted his horse in fulfilment of this threat, and advanced towards the city of Mantes. He claimed the whole country of the Vexin, of which it was the capital, and, with the usual magnanimity of the time, determined, if he could not enjoy the territory himself, he would render it unfit for his rival's enjoyment. Frightful stories are told of the cruelty of his march-his plunder and devastation, and finally his conflagration of the fair city when it threw itself on his compassion. Amid the blazing buildings the fierce old man rode grimly on, when suddenly his horse stepped upon the embers, and in its struggles to maintain its footing, shook the rider so severely, that he was forced to dismount. He was with difficulty carried in a litter to Rouen, and soon it became evident his end was come. He retired to a monastery in the neighbourhood, and felt some compunctious visitings for the evils he had caused. He ordered large sums to be spent in the erection of churches in England and his other States; he pardoned his enemies, among whom it gives us a strange evidence of the rapidity of the changes which had taken place to observe the names of the Saxon earls, Morcar and Beorn, and the surviving brother of Harold. After generously delivering these warriors from their confinement, where they had lingered twenty years, he turned to his family arrangements. Of his three sons, Robert, the eldest, was the best in disposition, William was the highest in his father's favour, and Henry was the most educated and refined. To the hated heir he left the Dukedom of Normandy; to William he recommended an immediate journey to England, without publicly stating the reason of the advice; and to Henry he left five thousand pounds in silver, with an almost prophetical intimation that great things were in store for him. His sons took him at his word, and left him before he died. His attendants waited impatiently to follow the example, and when the Conqueror eventually expired, they hurried from the place, taking with them all the gold and valuables they could find, leaving the inanimate body unhouseled, unanointed, unaneled, and dependent for the decencies of burial on the Christian tenderness of a private man. Yet the decencies of the tomb were strangely interrupted even at A.D. 1070–1087.] DEATH AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM. 119 last. When they were about to lay him in the grave at Caen, Asselin, the son of Arthur, stood upon the soil, and said, "This is mine; the dead unjustly despoiled me of it, and I will not let him lie in the land he robbed me of." The abbot in attendance paid a small sum, and promised more; and when the dispute was settled, the opening was found too small to receive the coffin. Force was used to fit it in, and the man at whose name the world grew pale, lay exposed and mangled among the fragments of the broken wood which the attendants had pushed downward with their spears. A man of strong will and unbridled ambition was taken away. No little redeeming traits of tenderness in private life are related of this incarnation of cruelty and power. His sword seemed always in his hand, and his crown on his head, as if he were merely a warrior and ruler, with none of the lower and more attractive qualities which we meet with in other men. Can it be possible that in all his sixty years of work and will he never gave way to the free mirth which makes companionship delightful ?-did he never laugh, or jest, or dance, or feel happy he knew not why, or forget that he was a king? We are to remember that the accounts we have of him are principally from English sources; that the man of blood, who depopulated the country, and burnt down monasteries, and filled the bishoprics with foreigners, and impoverished the English people, and rode rough-shod over the laws of Alfred and the liberties of Edward the Confessor, was a kind of embodied evil whom it was impossible for his English describers to endow with. human feelings. Probably a companion of his relaxation might have told a different story-might have told of his generosity to poor Norman friends, of his kindness to his sons, his affection to his wife, his passion for architecture, and his liberality to the Church. His treasures were poured forth in the erection of abbeys and cathedrals, which continue the purest models of the combination of massiveness of effect with gracefulness of detail which architectural science has produced If it be true that these noble works, with which he supplied his native dukedom and his acquired dominion, were the results as much of penitence for crimes as of a taste for building, we can form some estimate of the variety and extent of his sins. Wholesale murders were commemorated and atoned for by many a long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, while an unjust sentence on an English Franklin was perhaps succeeded by a humble chantry or the enlargement of a village tower. We find, accordingly, that on his death-bed, near Rouen, one of his last orders was to restore the chapels and convents he had burned in France, and to build monasteries and churches with endowments for the poor in every county in England, "in compensation," says the English chronicler, "of the robberies he had committed." If allowance is made for the prejudices of his historians, and the general barbarism of the time, William will emerge as a man of a deeply-sagacious mind, working out a great object with not more unscrupulousness than any of his contemporaries; who, if gifted with few virtues that attract affection, had none of the littlenesses that excite contempt. A.D. LANDMARKS OF CHRONOLOGY. A.D. 1066. William Duke of Normandy 1067. William commits the care of 1068. The tax of Dane-gelt re-esta- 1069. The lands of England distributed among the Normans. Several insurrections thereby created. 1070. William compels all bishoprics and abbeys to hold them by 1077. military tenure. The feudal system first introduced. Surnames first used in England. Rebellion of Prince Robert in Normandy, who defeats his father. 1079. Courts of Exchequer and Chancery established; Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace; Norman laws and forms of pleading introduced. 1080. 1085. The general survey of England begun, called Doomsday-book. William dispeoples a great portion of Hampshire to enlarge the New Forest for hunting. 1087. Destructive fires in nearly all the cities of England, and the greatest part of London burnt. Death of William. Doomsdaybook finished. |