The Norman Conquest Read online

  Around the turn of the millennium then, power and authority in West Francia (which from now on we shall call France) was increasingly about the control of castles and the recruitment of knights. In each case, it is important to emphasize not only their novelty, but also their crudeness. Great and noble stone castles were very rare— the vast majority were rough and ready constructions of earth and timber. Great and noble knights were rarer still. Most were little better than peasants in terms of their social origins. Not only were they a long way from donning shining armour; chevaliers were also a long way from embracing a code of chivalry, with high ideals of justice and honour. These early knights did not see it as their responsibility to protect the poor and the weak. On the contrary, a large part of their job was to terrorize the lower orders, persuading them to accept the authority and the material demands of the new castellan lords. No sooner do we encounter castles and knights than we start to hear about ‘bad customs’— new tolls, new taxes, restrictions on movement and behaviour. To be a knight originally was to help discipline a peasantry that had hitherto enjoyed considerably greater freedom, coercing them into accepting the new order that was starting to emerge.12

  If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians. The problem with the word feudal, they will tell you, is that it is not actually a medieval word at all, but a coinage of sixteenth-century lawyers, while the abstraction ‘feudalism’ does not occur until as late as the nineteenth century. This is undeniably true, as is the more reasonable objection that both ‘feudal’ and ‘feudalism’ have been employed so loosely and so variously by historians in the past as to be all but meaningless to scholars working in the present. It is worth pointing out, however, that the term ‘feudal’ does derive from the medieval Latin word feodum, meaning fief, which was a parcel of land given to some knights in reward for their service. Since we first start to hear of fiefs in significant numbers from the start of the eleventh century, there are still good reasons for using the words ‘feudal’ and ‘feudalism’ to describe a society that was everywhere affected, if not yet entirely dominated, by the arrival of knights and castles.13

  How, then, does this generalized picture of society in France compare with what was happening in Normandy? Obviously, Normandy was very different in having been a Viking colony. The Norsemen had not merely raided here; they had settled and stayed to rule. We might expect, therefore, that the duchy would be different by virtue of its Norseness. It seems, however, that this was not the case. As we have already seen, the Normans had been quite quick to abandon much of their Scandinavian heritage, dropping Norse in favour of French, and converting—at least at the higher levels of society—from paganism to Christianity. More surprising still, they appear to have successfully maintained (or resurrected) many of the governmental structures of their Carolingian predecessors. They ruled, for example, from centres associated with the old Carolingian counts, and issued a Carolingian-style silver coinage. Normandy’s borders remained more or less where they had lain in earlier centuries. Far from demonstrating the kind of comprehensive disruption that one might expect from a violent takeover, the duchy exhibited notable administrative continuity. It was an exceptional region, but paradoxically this was because the Normans had preserved the public authority of the Carolingians that elsewhere had collapsed.14

  Consequently, if we look at Normandy around the turn of the millennium, we find that the rule of Duke Richard II (996–1026) was comparatively strong. If his predecessors had struggled to assert their authority over other Viking chieftains who had settled in Normandy, by Richard’s day that authority was uncontested. It is at this time, for instance, that we have the first evidence of a titled aristocracy beneath the duke himself. Richard conferred the title ‘count’ on his brothers and half-brothers, as well as on his uncle Rodulf (the earliest individual to use the title, in a charter of 1011). Around the same time, Richard appointed a number of ‘viscounts’, administrative officials for his own demesne. The significant point is that in each case the duke was in charge of appointments, and these titles remained revocable. They were not simply assumed by their holders, as was the case in other regions.15

  Nor is there any evidence in Normandy of the kind of fragmentation we see elsewhere in France. Take castles, for instance. We do see castles in the duchy by this date, but they are few in number, and either in the hands of the duke or his deputies. At Rouen, for example, we know that the dukes had a great stone tower from the time of Richard’s namesake father (now sadly vanished, but possibly depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry). Those castles entrusted to counts were seemingly to help them to defend difficult border regions. Count Rodulf, for example, had a mighty donjon at Ivry (substantial ruins of which still survive) on Normandy’s eastern frontier.16 We also see knights in Normandy, at least to the extent that we see men in mail shirts fighting on horseback. The Normans had long since abandoned the Viking practice of fighting on foot, and had quickly become adept at the Frankish art of mounted warfare. But the fighting they engaged in during the early years of the eleventh century was external; within the duchy itself there is no evidence of the proliferation of unlicensed castles, or the endemic violence associated with independent castellans and lawless gangs of knights.17

  One fact illustrates this better than any other. In southern France the collapse of public authority in the years immediately before the millennium had provoked a remarkable reaction. At the instigation of local religious leaders, but driven too by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm and indignation, large crowds had gathered in great open-air assemblies to decry the violence, and to call upon the power of the Almighty to bring it to an end. Armed with relics, penances and the power of excommunication, the Church aimed to impose a ‘Peace of God’ to protect the most vulnerable members of society. A little later, when lay rulers responded to the same imperative, they would declare a ‘Truce of God’, restricting feuds and fighting to certain days of the week.18

  In 1023, a council was convened at Compiègne, a town in the territory of the king of France, to discuss the introduction of the Peace of God, or the Truce, into northern France. Duke Richard attended the meeting, accompanied by his leading churchmen, as did the king of France and the count of Flanders. But while in other areas the Peace was proclaimed as a result of the meeting, in the end it was agreed that it would not be introduced into Normandy. Richard’s duchy had no need of such drastic measures. In Normandy, the duke’s own peace was enough.19

  This situation changed, however, after the old duke died in 1026, and the duchy was divided in the rancorous dispute between his two sons, Richard and Robert. While it remains unclear whether Robert had any direct hand in Richard’s death the following year, the fact that he had encouraged rebellion against ducal authority did him no favours when he himself took over as duke. The fallout from the feud between the two brothers may in itself explain why Robert soon clashed with two senior members of his own family. Hugh, bishop of Bayeux and son of the late Count Rodulf, was besieged in his father’s castle at Ivry and fled into exile. More serious still, Robert fell out with his namesake uncle, the archbishop of Rouen, who similarly fled after a siege and promptly laid Normandy under interdict. Since both of Robert’s opponents were leading churchmen, it is equally possible that they objected as much to his methods as to the man himself. In his bid for power, the new duke had built up a substantial military following on the promise of future reward, and once in power he made good that promise by plundering the lands of the Church. Estates that his predecessors had granted to monasteries for the good of their eternal souls Robert seized and turned into fiefs for his knights. Feudalism, it seems, was arriving in Normandy with a vengeance.

  And yet in the event the threat to ducal authority was arrested. Robert made peace with the Church, restoring the confiscated lands, and candidly admitting in his charters that he had been led astray by ‘th
e counsel of evil men’. He recalled the exiled archbishop, who not only lifted the interdict but became his most trusted counsellor, lending the administration a valuable air of continuity and stability. It was therefore obvious that the archbishop should be the principal prop of government when his nephew decided to head off to the Holy Land in 1035, and even more so when the duke failed to return, leaving the seven-year-old William as his heir. That there was some measure of stability in Normandy after William’s accession is suggested by the ongoing support that his government afforded to the English exiles, Edward and Alfred, in their bids to return home, and that stability doubtless owed much to the archbishop’s steady hand on the tiller. The problem was that by this time Archbishop Robert was already an elderly man. Not long afterwards, in March 1037, he died, and with him all sense of order in Normandy.20

  The clearest manifestation of the chaos that followed was the sudden emergence of unlicensed castles. ‘Lots of Normans, forgetful of their loyalties, built earthworks in many places’, explains William of Jumièges, ‘and erected fortified strongholds for their own purposes. Having dared to establish themselves securely in their own fortifications they immediately hatched plots and rebellions, and fierce fires were lit all over the country.’ The duchy rapidly descended into violence as magnates struggled to gain the upper hand against their rivals. A well-informed twelfth-century writer called Orderic Vitalis tells the story of the unfortunate William Giroie, who was seized by his enemies at a wedding feast, taken outside and horribly mutilated— his nose and ears cut off, his eyes gouged out. Normandy seems to have experienced a rash of mafioso-style killings, as powerful families used any methods against each other, knowing that the government of the young Duke William was powerless to protect or punish them.21

  During this dangerous time William was not without guardians. Besides the late archbishop, Duke Robert had arranged for a number of leading laymen to aid and protect his son. Alan, count of Brittany, and Gilbert, count of Brionne, both cousins to the late duke, were supposed to be William’s principal protectors. It soon became apparent, however, that these men could offer their young charge very little protection at all. Count Alan was the first to fall, killed in a siege at the start of October 1040; Count Gilbert followed soon afterwards, assassinated by his rivals while out riding one morning. With his most powerful guardians gone, the violence moved even closer to William. In 1041 his tutor, Turold, was murdered, and then Osbern, his household steward— the latter had his throat cut while he slept at the castle of Le Vaudreuil in the same chamber as the duke himself. Such well-attested atrocities later inspired Orderic Vitalis to put words into William’s own mouth. ‘Many times’, the future Conqueror says on his deathbed, ‘I was smuggled secretly out of the castle at night by my Uncle Walter and taken to the cottages and hiding places of the poor, to save me from discovery by traitors who sought my death.’22

  Despite the attention to detail— William did have an Uncle Walter on his mother’s side— this wonderfully evocative passage falls some way short of total conviction. Had the men who murdered his guardians really intended William’s death they could clearly have achieved it. Their intention was almost certainly not to do away with the duke but to control him, and by extension control Normandy’s government. What we appear to be witnessing, in other words, is not simply random acts of violence arising from private feuds, but a carefully orchestrated coup. William of Jumièges, writing shortly after these events took place, refused to name the murderers, for the good reason that ‘they are the very men who now surround the duke’. Orderic Vitalis, writing several generations later, could afford to be less cautious, and named one of them as Rodulf of Gacé—; a man who, when we next encounter him, is described as William’s guardian and ‘the leader of the Norman army’.23

  It is also apparent from the chroniclers’ accounts that this coup was supported by the king of France. As we have already noted, Henry I had regained the French throne in 1033 thanks in part to the help of Duke Robert, and soon afterwards had returned the favour by formally recognizing William as Robert’s heir. But support for William, it seems, did not necessarily translate into support for the guardians chosen by his father. ‘They scattered the firebrands of Henry, king of the French,’ says William of Jumièges of the plotters, ‘shamelessly inciting him to bring ruin on the country.’

  The problem was that, having involved Henry in their successful bid for power, Normandy’s new regents subsequently found it difficult to persuade him to bow out. Not long afterwards, the king demanded the surrender of Tillières, a Norman casde close to the French border— possibly because rebels from his own realm were sheltering inside. The regents agreed, and helped the king besiege the castle until its garrison surrendered. A year or so later, however, for reasons that are altogether unclear, Henry sponsored a rebellion right in the heart of Normandy, supplying soldiers to a viscount who had seized William’s birthplace of Falaise and invading the south of the duchy in support of the rebels. In the event this revolt was defeated; the viscount fled into exile and the king eventually withdrew. Even so, it illustrates how lightly some Norman lords wore their loyalty, and how vulnerable to invaders the duchy had become as a result.

  Significantly, these two episodes involving the king of France— tentatively dated by historians to the period 1041–3— seem also to locate an important milestone in the life of the young Duke William. In his account of the siege of Tillières, William of Jumièges describes the duke as a boy and attributes all the decision-making to his regents. By contrast, when Jumièges describes the decision to deal with the viscount who seized Falaise it is presented as William’s own. (‘As soon as the duke heard the plans of this spiteful character, he summoned troops and swiftly laid siege to him.’) William, in other words, seems to have come of age at some point between the two sieges. At this stage, of course, he would still have been quite young, probably no more than fifteen years old; but an early assumption of authority accords well with other evidence. To come of age in the warrior society of eleventh-century Francia meant, above all, to be invested with arms, and the chroniclers agree that in William’s case this happened when he was very young— ‘at the earliest possible age,’ according to the later writer William of Malmesbury, ‘in the hope of restoring peace in the provinces’. Malmesbury also tells us that the duke was invested with arms by the king of France, which would fit well with the collaboration of William’s guardians and Henry I in taking Tillières.24

  One writer who made much of the young duke’s assumption of arms was William of Poitiers, whose Gesta Guillelmi (‘Deeds of William’) is without doubt our most important source for the Conqueror’s career. Although he did not start writing it until the 1070s, Poitiers had lived through the earlier events he describes and had served since the 1050s as a chaplain in the duke’s own household. As such he is not only a contemporary witness but also the chronicler who stood closest to the man himself (as a household chaplain he would have heard William’s confession). Like all our sources, Poitiers is not without his problems. The fact that he was writing a history for consumption at the Conqueror’s own court means that we have to allow for a cloying degree of obsequiousness, and take much of what he says about William’s motives with a large pinch of salt. Despite this, however, he remains a uniquely valuable voice, not least because his own career had been so varied. Poitiers took his surname from the place he had studied; but by birth he was a Norman. Moreover, according to Orderic Vitalis, ‘he had been a brave soldier before entering the church, and had fought with warlike weapons for his earthly prince’. Unlike most learned men, therefore, Poitiers knew much of the practicalities of warfare and could empathize with warriors like William in a way that most cloistered monks could not.25

  Both his bias and his military experience are apparent when Poitiers describes William’s coming of age:

  At last a most joyful day dawned splendidly for all who desired and eagerly awaited peace and justice. Our duke, adult more in his
understanding of honourable things and in the strength of his body than in his age, was armed as a knight. The news of this spread fear throughout Francia; Gaul had not another man who was reputed to be such a knight in arms. It was a sight both delightful and terrible to see him hold the reins, girded honourably with his sword, his shield shining, formidable with his helmet and javelin.26

  Despite his insistence on the delight and terror that the newly armed adolescent inspired, even Poitiers admits that William faced an uphill struggle trying to govern Normandy, adding ‘there was too much licence everywhere for unlawful deeds’. Years of anarchy had led not only to the unauthorized construction of castles and the proliferation of murderous feuds; it had also led to the duke’s own officials— his counts and viscounts— going their own way. If such men did not openly rebel, as had been the case at Falaise, nor did they pay much heed to the authority of the young duke and his advisers. Around the time of William’s knighting, the situation was still sufficiently desperate that his government made a belated attempt to introduce the Peace of God into Normandy, effectively admitting that the duke’s own authority was inadequate. The move, however, proved a failure. The bishops of Normandy, who would have been expected to enforce a ban on violence, belonged to the same feuding aristocratic families.27

  Nevertheless, there is reason to think that William must have made some progress in combating disorder in the years that followed. According to William of Poitiers, the young duke ‘began to remove completely from his entourage those whom he knew to be incompetent or wicked, and to draw on the counsels of the wisest and best’. By the mid-1040s, the two new names which stand out in particular among the witness-lists to his charters are William fitz Osbern and Roger of Montgomery. On the face of it they were an unlikely pair, one being the son of Osbern, the murdered ducal steward, the other the son of the man who had arranged the murder. In all other respects, however, they were men of a similar stamp to the duke himself—young, ambitious and warlike—and together they would serve him faithfully for the rest of their lives.