CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY • '-^v. _3 1924 088 007 780 The original of tiiis book is in tile Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088007780 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS BY KATE NORGATE IN TWO VOLUMES— VOL. L WITH MAPS AND PLANS ILonUott MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1887 f All rights reserved ~x /'rORi^JELL^^ UNlVLRSrrY^I 'v L- BRARV THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR AND HONOURED MASTER JOHN RICHARD GREEN PREFACE This attempt to sketch the history of England under the Angevin kings owes its existence to the master whose name I have ventured to place at its beginning. It was undertaken at his suggestion ; its progress through those earliest stages which for an inexperienced writer are the hardest of all was directed by his counsels, aided by his criticisms, encouraged by his sympathy ; and every step in my work during the past eleven years has but led me to feel more deeply and to prize more highly the constant help of his teaching and his example. Of the book in its finished state he never saw a page. For its faults no one is answerable but myself I can only hope that, however great may be its errors and its defects, it may yet shew at least some traces of that influence which is so abidingly precious to me. I desire respectfully to express my gratitude to the Lord Bishop of Chester and to Mr. Freeman, who, for the sake of the friend who had commended me to their kindness, have been good enough to help me with information and advice on many occasions during my work. A word of acknowledgement is due for some of the maps and plans. The map of Gaul in the tenth century is founded upon one in Mr. Freeman's Norman Conquest. The vm PREFACE plans of Bristol and Lincoln are adapted from those in the Proceedings of the ArchcBological Institute ; for Lincoln I was further assisted by the local knowledge kindly placed at my disposal by the Rev. Precentor Venables. For Oxford I have followed the guidance of the Rev. Father F. Goldie, S.J. {A Bygone Oxford), and of Mr. J. Parker {Early History of Oxford) ; and for London, that of its historian the Rev. W. J. Loftie, whom I have especially to thank for his help on some points of London topography. My greatest help of all has been the constant personal kindness and ever-ready sympathy of Mrs. Green. To her, as to my dear master himself, I owe and feel a gratitude which cannot be put into words. KATE NORGATE. January 1887. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The England of Henry I., iioo-i 135 i CHAPTER II The Beginnings of Anjou, 843-987 . . . 97 Note A. — The Sources of Angevin History 126 Note B. — The Palace of the Counts at Angers . 132 Note C. — The Marriages of Geoffrey Greygown . . . 134 Note D. — The Breton and Poitevin Wars of Geoffrey Grey- gown . . . . . . . .136 Note E. — The Grant of Maine to Geoffi-ey Greygown 1 40 CHAPTER III Anjou AND Blois, 987-1044. 143 Note A. — The Siege of Melun . . . . 189 Note B. — The Parents of Queen Constance . 1 90 Note C. — The Pilgrimages of Fulk Nerra . 192 NoteD. — Geoffrey Martel and Poitou . 197 CHAPTER IV Anjou AND Normandy, 1044-1128 . . . 200 Note A. — The Houses of Anjou and Gitinais . 249 Note B. — The Heir of Geoffrey Martel . . 251 Note C. — The War of Saintonge . . 252 CONTENTS PAGE NoteD. — The Descendants of Herbert Wake-dog . .253 Note E. — The Siege of La Flfeche and Treaty of Blanche- lande ..... 256 Note F. — The Marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda . 258 CHAPTER V Geoffrey Plantagenet and Stephen of Blois, i 128-1 139 261 CHAPTER VI England AND THE Barons, 1 1 39-1 147 . . . 308 Note. — The Topography of the Battle of Lincoln . . 344 CHAPTER VII The English Church, 1 136-1 149 . 347 CHAPTER VIII Henry Duke of the Normans, 1149-1154 . . 372 CHAPTER IX Henry and England, 1154-1157 . . . 407 CHAPTER X Henry and France, 1156-1161 . 440 CHAPTER XI The Last Years of Archbishop Theobald, i i 56-1 161 . 474 LIST OF MAPS I. Gaul c. 909-94 1 ■ To face page \o^ II. Gaul c. 1027 „ i43 PLANS I. Winchester. II. Bristol To face page 31 III. Lincoln. IV. Oxford 40 V. London .... 44 VI. Angers 165 EH J-: ATA Page 50, line 8 from foot, insert "and" before ",bore." 158, „ S, for " in" read" hy." 268, ,, 18, i/«/c " the following." 274, „ 14 from foot, yo>- "two'' «a;(i "three.'' 282, ,, 14, z«i«-; "and" /^^/ore "made." 417, lines 3 and 4 from foot, for "husband . . . heiress" read "head. 438, note 5, line S,for "David" read "Henry of Scotland." CHAPTER I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 1100-1135. " When the green tree, cut asunder in the midst and severed by the space of three furlongs, shall be grafted in again and shall bring forth flowers and fruit, — then at last may England hope to see the end of her sorrows." ^ So closed the prophecy in which the dying king Eadward the Confessor foretold the destiny in store for his country after his departure. His words, mocked at by one of the listeners, incomprehensible to all, found an easy interpretation a hundred years later. The green tree of the West-Saxon monarchy had fallen beneath Duke William's battle-axe ; three alien reigns had parted its surviving branch from the stem ; the marriage of Henry I. with a princess of the old English blood-royal had grafted it in again.^ One flower sprung from that union had indeed bloomed only to die ere it reached its prime,^ but another had brought forth the promised fruit ; and the dim ideal of national prosperity and union which English and Normans alike associated with the revered name of the Confessor was growing at last into a real and living thing beneath the sceptre of Henry Fitz-Empress. There are, at first glance, few stranger things in history than the revival thus prefigured : — a national revival growing ^ Vita Edwardi (Luard), p. 431. 2 yEthelred of Rievaux, Vita S. Edw. Regis (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 401. 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652), notes that the fulfil- ment of the prophecy was looked for in William the /Etheling. VOL. L B 4 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. up, as it seems, in the most adverse circumstances, under the pressure of an alien government, of a race of kings who were strangers alike to the men of old English blood and to the descendants of those who had come over with the Conqueror : at a time when, in a merely political point of view, England seemed to be not only conquered but alto- gether swallowed up in the vast and varied dominions of the house of Anjou. It was indeed not the first time that the island had become an appendage to a foreign empire com- pared with which she was but a speck in the ocean. Cnut the Dane was, like Henry of Anjou, not only king of Eng- land but also ruler of a great continental monarchy far exceeding England in extent, and forming together with her a dominion only to be equalled, if equalled at all, by that of the Emperor. But the parallel goes no farther. Cnut's first kingdom, the prize of his youthful valour, was his centre and his home, of which his Scandinavian realms, even his native Denmark, were mere dependencies. Whatever he might be when he revisited them, in his island- kingdom he was an Englishman among Englishmen. The heir of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda of Normandy, on the other hand, was virtually of no nationality, no country ; but if he could be said to have a home at all, it was certainly not on this side of the sea — it was the little marchland of his fathers. In the case of his sons, the southern blood of their mother Eleanor added a yet more un-English element ; and of Richard, indeed, it might almost be said that the home of his choice was not in Europe at all, but in Holy Land. Alike to him and to his father, England was simply the possession which gave them their highest title, furnished them with resources for prosecuting their schemes of con- tinental policy, and secured to them a safe refuge on which to fall back in moments of difficulty or danger. It was not till the work of revival was completed, till it had resulted in the creation of the new England which comes to light with Edward I, that it could find a representative and a leader in the king himself The sovereign in whose reign the chief part of the work was done stood utterly aloof from it in sympathy ; yet he is in fact its central figure and its most THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. important actor. The story of England's developement from the break-down of the Norman system under Stephen to the consoHdation of a national monarchy under Edward I. is the story of Henry of Anjou, of his work and of its results. But as the story does not end with Henry, so neither does it begin with him. It is impossible to understand Henry himself without knowing something of the race from which he sprang ; of those wonderful Angevin counts who, begin- ning as rulers of a tiny under-fief of the duchy of France, grew into a sovereign house extending its sway from one end of Christendom to the other. It is impossible to understand his work without knowing something of what England was, and how she came to be what she was, when the young count of Anjou was called to wear her crown. The project of an empire such as that which Henry II. actually wielded had been the last dream of William Rufus. In the summer of iioo the duke of Aquitaine, about to join the Crusaders in Holy Land, offered his dominions in pledge to the king of England. Rufus clutched at the ofifer " like a lion at his prey." ^ Five years before he had received the Norman duchy on the same terms from his brother Robert ; he had bridled its restless people and brought them under control ; he had won back its southern dependency, his father's first conquest, the county of Maine. Had this new scheme been realized, nothing but the little Angevin march would have broken the continuity of a Norman dominion stretching from the Forth to the Pyrenees, and in all likelihood the story of the Angevin kings would never have had to be told. Jesting after his wont with his hunting-companions, William — so the story goes — declared that he would keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers, if he should live so long.^ But that same evening the Red King lay dead in the New Forest, and his territories fell asunder at once. Robert of Normandy came back from Palestine in triumph to resume possession of his duchy ; while the barons of England, without waiting for his return, chose his English-born brother Henry for their king. 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script.), p. 780. ■^ Geoff. Gaimar, w. 6296-6298 (Wright, p. 219). 4 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Thirteen years before, at his father's death, Henry, the only child of William and Matilda who was actually born in the purple — the child of a crowned king and queen, born on English soil, -and- thus by birth, though not by descent, entitled to rank as an English ^theling — had been launched into the world at the age of nineteen without a foot of land that he could call his own. The story went that he had complained bitterly to the dying Conqueror of his exclusion from all share in the family heritage. " Have patience, boy," was William's answer, " let thine elder brothers go before thee ; the day will come when thou shalt be greater than either of them." Henry was, however, not left a penniless adventurer dependent on the bounty of his brothers ; the Conqueror gave him a legacy of ten thousand pounds as a solid pro- vision wherewith to begin his career. A year had scarcely passed before Duke Robert, overwhelmed with troubles in Normandy, found himself at his wits' end with an empty treasury, and besought Henry to lend him some money. The .iEtheling, as cool and calculating as his brothers were impetuous, refused ; the duke in desperation offered to sell him any territory he chose, and a bargain was struck whereby Henry received, for the sum of three thousand pounds, the investiture of the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the Mont-St.-Michel — in a word, the whole western end of the Norman duchy.-' Next summer, while the duke was planning an attempt on the English crown and vainly awaiting a fair wind to enable him to cross the Channel, the count of the Cotentin managed to get across without one, to claim the estates in Gloucestershire formerly held by his mother and destined for him by his father's will. He was received by William Rufus only too graciously, for the con- sequence was that some mischief-makers, always specially plentiful at the Norman court, persuaded Duke Robert that his youngest brother was plotting against him with the second, and when Henry returned in the autumn he had no sooner landed than he was seized and cast into prison.^ Within a year he was free again, reinstated, if not in the " 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script. ), p. 665. = lb. p. 672. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 392 (Hardy, pp. 616, 617). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 5 Cotentin, at least in the Avranchin and the Mont-St.-Michel, and entrusted with the keeping of Rouen itself against the traitors stirred up by the Red King. William, while his young brother was safe in prison, had resumed the Gloucester- shire estates and made them over to his favourite Robert Fitz-Hamon. Henry in his natural resentment threw him- self with all his energies into the Cause of the duke of Nor- mandy, acted as his trustiest and bravest supporter through- out the war with Rufus which followed, and at the close of the year crowned his services by the promptitude and valour with which he defeated a conspiracy for betraying the Norman capital to the king of England.^ The struggle ended in a treaty between the elder brothers, in which neither of them forgot the youngest. Their remembrance of him took the shape of an agreement to drive him out of all his territories and divide the spoil between themselves. Their joint attack soon brought him to bay in his mightiest stronghold, the rock crowned by the abbey of S. Michael-in-Peril-of-the- Sea, commonly called Mont-Saint-Michel. Henry threw himself into the place with as many knights as were willing to share the adventure ; the brethren of the abbey did their utmost to help, and for fifteen days the little garrison, perched on their inaccessible rock, held out against their besiegers.^ Then hunger began to thin their ranks ; nothing but the inconsistent generosity of Robert saved them from the worse agonies of thirst f one by one they dropped away, till Henry saw that he must yield to fate, abide by his father's counsel, and wait patiently for better days. He surrendered ; he came down from the Mount, once again a landless and homeless man ; and save for one strange momentary appearance in England as a guest at the Red King's court,* he spent the greater part of the next two years in France and the Vexin, wandering from one refuge to another with a lowly train of one knight, three squires, 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 690. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. V. I,. 392 (Hardy, pp. 617, 618). 2 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 697. 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iv. c. 310 (Hardy, pp. 491, 492). * See Freeman, William Rufus, vol. i. pp. 293, 295, 305 ; vol. ii. pp. 535, 536. 6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. and one chaplain.^ He was at length recalled by the townsmen of Domfront, who, goaded to desperation by the oppressions of their lord Robert of Belleme, threw off his yoke and besought Henry to come and take upon himself the duty of defending them, their town and castle, against their former tyrant. " By the help of God and the suffrages of his friends," as his admiring historian says," Henry was thus placed in command of his father's earliest conquest, the key of Normandy and Maine, a fortress scarcely less mighty and of far greater political importance than that from which he had been driven. He naturally used his opportunity for reprisals, not only upon Robert of Belleme, but also upon his own brothers ; ^ and by the end of two years he had made himself of so much consequence in the duchy that William Rufus, again at war with the duke, thought it time to secure his alliance. The two younger brothers met in England, and when Henry returned in the spring of 1095 he came as the liegeman of the English king, sworn to fight his battles and further his interests in Normandy by every means in his power.* William and Henry had both learned by experience that to work with Robert for any political purpose was hopeless, and that their true interest was to support each other — William's, to enlist for his own service Henry's clear cool head and steady hand ; Henry's, to secure for himself some kind of footing in the land where his ultimate ambitions could not fail to be centred. He had learned in his wanderings to adapt himself to all circumstances and all kinds of society ; personally, he and Rufus can have had little in common except their passion for the chase. Lan- franc's teaching, moral and intellectual, had been all alike thrown away upon his pupil William the Red. Henry, carefully educated according to his father's special desire, had early shown a remarkable aptitude for study, was a scholar of very fair attainments as scholarship went among laymen in his day, and retained his literary tastes not only 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 697. ' lb. p. 698. 3 /^ pp 6gg^ ^jjg^ ^22. ^ Eng. Chron. a,. 1095. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. through all his youthful trials but also through the crowd of political and domestic cares which pressed upon his later life. Yet such tastes seem almost as strange in Henry as they would in William Rufus. The one prosaic element in the story of Henry's youth is the personality of its hero. No man had ever less of the romantic or poetic tempera- ment ; if he had none of the follies or the faults of chivalry, he had just as little of its nobler idealism. From his first bargain with Robert for the purchase of the Cotentin to his last bargain with Fulk of Anjou for the marriage of his heir, life was to him simply a matter of business. The strongest points in his character were precisely the two qualities which both his brothers utterly lacked — self-control, and that " capacity for taking trouble '' which is sometimes said to be the chief element of genius. But of the higher kind of genius, of the fire which kindles in the soul rather than merely in the brain, Henry had not a spark. He was essentially a man of business, in the widest and loftiest sense of the words. His self-control was not, like his father's, the curb forcibly put by a noble mind upon its own natural impetuosity ; it was the more easily-practised calmness of a perfectly cold nature which could always be reasonable because it had to fight with no impulse of passion, which was never tempted to " follow wandering fires " because they lit in it no responsive flame ; a nature in which the head had complete mastery over the heart, and that head was one which no misfortunes could disturb, no successes turn, and no perplexities confuse. The sudden vacancy of the English throne found every one else quite unprepared for such an emergency. Henry was never unprepared. His quickness and decision secured him the keys of the treasury and the formal election of those barons and prelates who had been members of the fatal hunting-party, or who hurried to Winchester at the tidings of its tragic issue ; and before opposition had time to come to a head, it was checked by the coronation and uriction which turned the king-elect into full king.-' Henry knew well, however, that opposition there was certain to be. ' Eng. Chron. a. iioo. 8 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Robert of Normandy, just returned from the Crusade and covered with glory, was sure to assert his claim, and as sure to be upheld by a strong party among the barons, to whom a fresh severance of England and Normandy was clearly not desirable. In anticipation of the coming struggle, Henry threw himself at once on the support of his subjects. In addition to the pledges of his coronation-oath — taken almost in the words of .^thelred to Dunstan^ — he issued on the same day a charter in which he solemnly and specifically promised the abolition of his brother's evil customs in Church and state, and a return to just government according to the law of the land. The details were drawn up so as to touch all classes. The Church, as including them all, of course stood first ; its freedom was restored and all sale or farming of benefices renounced by the king. The next clause ap- pealed specially to the feudal vassals : those who held their lands " by the hauberk " — the tenants by knight-service — were exempted from all other imposts on their demesne lands, that they might be the better abl6 to fulfil their own particular obligation. The tenants-in-chief were exempted from all the unjust exactions with regard to wardships, mar- riages, reliefs and forfeitures, which had been practised in the last reign ; but the redress was not confined to them ; they were distinctly required to exercise the same justice towards their own under-tenants. The last clause covered all the rest : by it Henry gave back to his people " the laws of King Eadward as amended by King William." ^ Like Cnut's renewal of the law of Eadgar — like Eadward's own renewal of the law of Cnut — the charter was a proclamation of general reunion and goodwill. As a pledge of its sincerity, the Red King's minister, Ralf Flambard, in popular estima- tion the author of all the late misdoings, was at once cast into the Tower f the exiled primate was fetched home as speedily as possible ; and in November the king identified himself still more closely with the land of his birth by taking to wife a maiden of the old English blood-royal, 1 Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 99 (3d ed. ). ^ Charter of Henry I., ib. pp. 100-102. ^ Eng. Chron. a. iioo. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. Eadgyth of Scotland, great-granddaughter of Eadmund Ironside.^ His precautions were soon justified. Robert had refused the thorny crown of Jerusalem, but the crown of England had far other charms ; and his movements were quickened by Ralf Flambard, who early in the spring made his escape to Normandy.^ It was probably through Ralf's manage- ment that the duke won over some of the sailors' who guarded the English coast and thus got ashore unexpectedly at Portsmouth while the king was keeping watch for him at the old landing-place, Pevensey.^ At the first tidings of the intended invasion Henry, like Rufus in the same case thirteen years before, had appealed to Witan and people, and by a renewal of his charter gained a renewal of their fealty. No sooner, however, was Robert actually in England than the great majority of the barons prepared to go over to him in a body. But the king born on English soil, married to a lady of the old kingly house, had a stronger hold than ever Rufus could have had upon the English people ; and they, headed by their natural leader and representative, the restored archbishop of Canterbury, clave to him with un- swerving loyalty.* The two armies met near Alton ;^ at the last moment, the wisdom either of Anselm, of the few loyal barons, or of Henry himself, turned the meeting into a peace- ful one. The brothers came to terms : Robert renounced his claim to the crown in consideration of a yearly pension from England ; Henry gave up all his Norman possessions except Domfront, whose people he refused to forsake ;® and, as in the treaty made at Caen ten years before between Robert and William, it was arranged that whichever brother lived longest should inherit the other's dominions, if the deceased left no lawful heirs.'^ The treaty was ratified at Winchester in the first days of August ;^ and thus, almost on the anniversary of the Red 1 Eng. Chron. a. IICX). = Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt. ), pp. 786, 787. * Eng. Chron. a. iioi. * Eadmer, Hist. Novorum (Rule), p. 127. '* See Freeman, William Rufus, vol. il. p. 408. 8 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 788. ' Eng. Chron. a. Iioi. ^ Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. iioi. lo ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. King's death, ended the last Norman invasion of England. But the treaty of Winchester, like that of Caen, failed to settle the real difficulty. That difficulty was, how to con- trol the barons. According to one version of the treaty, it was stipulated that those who had incurred forfeiture in England by their adherence to Robert and those who had done the same in Normandy in Henry's behalf should alike go unpunished ;^ according to another, perhaps a more prob- able account, the brothers agreed to co-operate in punishing traitors on both sides.^ Henry set to work to do his part methodically. One after another, at different times, in various ways, by regular process of law, the offenders were brought to justice in England : some heavily fined, some deprived of their honours and exiled. It was treason not so much against himself as against the peace and order of the realm that Henry was bent upon avenging ; Ivo of Grant- mesnil was fined to the verge of ruin for the crime of making war not upon the king in behalf of the duke, but upon his own neighbours for his own personal gratification — a crime which was part of the daily life of every baron in Normandy, but which had never been seen in England before,^ and never was seen there again as long as King Henry lived. The most formidable of all the troublers of the land was Henry's old enemy at Domfront — Robert, lord of Belleme in the border - land of Perche, earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel in England, count of Alengon and lord of Mont- gomery in Normandy, and now by his marriage count of Ponthieu. Robert was actually fortifying his castles of Bridgenorth and Arundel in preparation for open revolt when he was summoned to take his trial on forty-five charges of treason against the king of England and the duke of Normandy. As he failed to answer, Henry led his troops to the siege of Bridgenorth. In three weeks it sur- rendered ; Shrewsbury and Arundel did the same, and Robert of Belleme was glad to purchase safety for life and limb at the cost of all his English possessions.* ^ Eng. Chron. it. iioi. " Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scripit.), p. 788. ■* a. p. 805. « lb. pp. 807, 808. Eng. Chron. a. 1102. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. From that moment Henry's position in England was secured ; but all his remonstrances failed to make his indolent elder brother fulfil his part of their compact. The traitors whom Henry expelled from England only carried their treason over sea to a more congenial climate, and the helpless, heed- less duke looked passively on while Robert of Belleme, William of Mortain the banished earl of Cornwall, and their fellows slaked their thirst for vengeance upon King Henry by ravaging the Norman lands of those who were faithful to him in England.^ Their victims, as well as Henry himself, began to see that his personal intervention alone could re- establish order in the duchy. On his appearance there in 1 1 04 he was joined by all the more reasonable among the barons. For the moment he was pacified by fresh promises of amendment on Robert's part, and by the cession of the county of Evreux ; but he knew that all compromise had become vain ; and in the last week of Lent 1105 he landed again at Barfleur in the full determination of making himself master of Normandy. His Norman partisans rallied round him at once,^ and he was soon joined by two valu- able allies, Elias count of Maine and his intended son-in- law, the young count Geoffrey of Anjou.^ It was they who won for Henry his first success, the capture of Bayeux.* Warned by the fate of this unhappy city, which was burnt down, churches and all, Caen surrendered at once, and Henry thus came into possession of the Norman treasury. A siege of Falaise failed through the unexplained departure of Count Elias,^ and the war dragged slowly on till Henry, now busy in another quarter with negotiations for the return of S. Anselm, went back at Michaelmas to England. Thither he was followed first by Robert of Belleme, then by Robert of Normandy,^ both seeking for peace ; but peace had ' Eng. Chron. a. 1104. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 397 (Hardy, p. 623). 2 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. ScHptt.), p. 814. ^ Chron. S. Albin. a. 1105 (Marchegay, Eglises d'Anjou, p. 30). * Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1 105 (Marchegay, Eglises d' Anjozi, p. 30). * " Helias a Normannis rogatus discessit," says Orderic (as above). What can this mean? * Eng. Chron. a. 1106. 12 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. become impossible now. Next summer Henry was again in Normandy, reconciled to S. Anselm, released from anxi- eties at home, free to concentrate all his energies upon the final struggle. It was decided with one blow. As he was besieging the castle of Tinchebray on Michaelmas Eve Duke Robert at the head of all his forces approached and summoned him to raise the siege. He refused, " preferring,'' as he said, " to take the blame of a more than civil war for the sake of future peace." But when the two hosts were drawn up face to face, the prospect of a battle seemed too horrible to be endured, composed as they were of kinsmen and brothers, fathers and sons, arrayed against each other. The clergy besought Henry to stay his hand ; he listened, pondered, and at length sent a final message to his brother. He came, he said, not wishing to deprive Robert of his duchy or to win territories for himself, but to answer the cry of the distressed and deliver Normandy from the mis- rule of one who was duke only in name. Here then was his last proposition : " Give up to me half the land of Normandy, the castles and the administration of justice and government throughout the whole, and receive the value of the other half annually from my treasury in England. Thus you may enjoy pleasure and feasting to your heart's content, while I will take upon me the labours of government, and guarantee the fulfilment of my pledge, if you will but keep quiet." Foolish to the last, Robert declined the offer ; and the two armies made themselves ready for battle.^ In point of numbers they seem to have been not unequally matched, but they differed greatly in character. Robert was stronger in footsoldiers, Henry in knights ; the flower of the Norman nobility was on his side now, besides his Angevin, Cenomannian and Breton allies -^ while of those who followed Robert some, as the issue proved, were only half-hearted. Of Henry's genuine English troops there is no account, but the men of his own day looked upon his whole host as English in contra- distinction to Robert's Normans, and the tactics adopted 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 820. "- lb. p. 820. Hen. Huntingdon, 1. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 13 in the battle were thoroughly English. The king of England fought on foot with his whole army, and it seems that the duke of Normandy followed his example.^ The first line of the Norman or ducal host under William of Mortain charged the English front under Ralf of Bayeux, and by the fury of their onset compelled them to fall back, though without breaking their ranks. The issue was still doubtful, when the only mounted division of Henry's troops, the Bretons and Cenomannians under Count Elias, came up to the rescue, took the duke's army in flank, and cut down two hundred men in a single charge. Those Cenomannian swords which William the Conqueror was so proud to have overcome now carried the day for his youngest son. Robert of Belleme, as soon as he saw how matters were going, fled with all his followers, and the duke's army at once dissolved.^ In Henry's own words, "the Divine Mercy gave into my hands, without much slaughter on our side, the duke of Normandy, the count of Mortain, William Crispin, William Ferrers, Robert of Estouteville, some four hundred knights, ten thousand foot — and the duchy of Normandy." ^ Forty years before, on the very same day, William the Conqueror had landed at Pevensey to bring the English kingdom under the Norman yoke. The work of Michaelmas Eve, 1066, was reversed on Michaelmas Eve, 1106; the victory of Tinchebray made Normandy a dependency of England.* Such was the view taken by one of the most clear-sighted and unprejudiced historians of the time, a man of mingled Norman and English blood. Such was evidently the view instinctively taken by all parties, and the instinct was a true one, although at first glance it seems somewhat hard to account for. The reign of Henry I., if judged merely by the facts which strike the eye in the chronicles of the time, looks like one continued course of foreign policy and foreign warfare pursued by the king for his own per- 1 Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 25 (Arnold, p. 235). 2 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 821. Eng. Chron. a. 1106. Hen. Hunt., as above. 3 Letter of Henry to S. Anselm in Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 184. * WiU. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 625). 14 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. sonal ends at the expense of his English subjects. But the real meaning of the facts lies deeper. The comment of the archbishop of Rouen upon Henry's death — " Peace be to his soul, for he ever loved peace "^ — was neither sarcasm nor flattery. Henry did love peace, so well that he spent his life in fighting for it. His early Norman campaigns are enough to prove that without being a master of the art of war like his father, he was yet a brave soldier and a skilful commander ; and the complicated wars of his later years, when over and over again he had to struggle almost single- handed against France, Flanders and Anjou, amid the end- less treasons of his own barons, show still more clearly his superiority to nearly all the other generals of his time. But his ambitions were not those of the warrior. Some gleam of the old northman's joy of battle may have flashed across the wandering knight as he defied his besiegers from the summit of his rock " in Peril of the Sea," or swooped down upon the turbulent lords of the Cenomannian border, like an eagle upon lesser birds of prey, from his eyrie on the crest of Domfront ; but the victor of Tinchebray looked at his campaigns in another light. To him they were simply a part of his general business as a king ; they were means to an end, and that end was not glory, nor even gain, but the establishment of peace and order. In his thirteen years of wandering to and fro between England, Normandy and France he had probably studied all the phases of tyranny and anarchy which the three countries amply displayed, and matured his own theory of government, which he practised steadily to the end of his reign. That theory was not a very lofty or noble one ; the principle from which it started and the end at which it aimed was the interest of the ruler rather than of the ruled ; but the form in which Henry conceived that end and the means whereby he sought to compass it were at any rate more enlightened than those of his pre- decessor. The Red King had reigned wholly by terror- Henry did not aspire to rule by love ; but he saw that, in a merely selfish point of view, a sovereign gains nothing by making himself a terror to any except evil-doers, that the 1 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 9 (Hardy, p. 702). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. ij surest basis for his authority is the preservation of order, justice and peace, and that so far at least the interests of king and people must be one. It is difficult to get rid of a feeling that Henry enforced justice and order from motives of expediency rather than of abstract righteous- ness. But, as a matter of fact, he did enforce them all round, on earl and churl, clerk and layman, Norman and Englishman, without distinction. And this steady, equal government was rendered possible only by the determined struggle which he waged with the Norman barons and their French allies. His home policy and his foreign policy were inseparably connected ; and the lifelong battle which he fought with his continental foes was really the battle of England's freedom. From the year 1103 onward the battle was fought wholly on the other side of the Channel. In England Henry, as his English subjects joyfully told him, became a free king on the day when he drove out Robert of Belleme.^ One great hindrance indeed still remained, hanging upon him like a dead weight throughout his early struggles in Normandy ; the controversy concerning ecclesi- astical investitures, with which the rest of Europe had been aflame for a quarter of a century before it touched England at all. The decree of the Lateran Council of 1075 for- bidding lay sovereigns to grant the investiture of any spiritual office with ring and staff was completely ignored in practice by William the Conqueror and Lanfranc. Their position on this and all other matters of Church policy was summed up in their reply to Pope Gregory's demand of fealty : William would do what the English kings who went before him had done, neither more nor less.^ But the king and the primate were not without perceiving that, as a necessary consequence of their own acts, the English Church had entered upon a new and more complicated relation both to the state and to the Apostolic see, and that the day must shortly come when she would be dragged from her quiet anchorage into the whirlpool of 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriplt.), p. 808. ^ Lanfranc. Ep. x. (Giles, vol. i. p. 32). i6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. European controversies and strifes. Their forebodings found expression in the three famous rules of ecclesiastical policy which William laid down for the guidance of his successors rather than himself: — that no Pope should be acknow- ledged in England and no letter from him received there by any one without the king's consent ; — that no Church council should put forth decrees without his permission and approval ; — and that no baron or servant of the crown should be laid under ecclesiastical censure save at the king's own command.^ These rules, famous in the two succeeding reigns under the name of " paternal customs," were never put to the test of practice as long as William and Lanfranc lived. The Red King's abuse of the two first, by precipitat- ing the crisis and driving S. Anselm to throw himself into the arms of Rome, showed not so much their inadequacy as the justice of the misgivings from which they had sprung. Henry at his accession took his stand upon them in the true spirit of their author ; but the time was gone by ; Anselm too had taken his stand upon ground whence in honour and conscience , he could not recede, and the very first interview between king and primate threw open the whole question of the investitures. But in England and in the Empire the question wore two very different aspects. In England it never became a matter of active interest or violent partisanship in the Church and the nation at large. Only a few deep thinkers on either side — men such as Count Robert of Meulan among the advisers of the king, perhaps such as the devoted English secretary Eadmer among the intimate associates of Anselm — ever understood or considered the principles involved in the case, or its bear- ing upon the general system of Church and state. Anselm himself stood throughout not upon the abstract wrong- fulness of lay investiture, but upon his own duty of obedience to the decree of the Lateran Council ; he strove not for the privileges of his order, but for the duties of his conscience. The bishops who refused investiture at Henry's hands clearly acted in the same spirit ; what held them back was not so much loyalty to the Pope as loyalty to their own metro- 1 Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. lo. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 17 politan. The great mass of both clergy and laity cared nothing at all how the investitures were given, and very little for papal decrees ; all they cared about was that they should not be again deprived of their archbishop, and left, as they had already been left too long, like sheep without a shepherd. In their eyes the dispute was a personal one between king and primate, stirred up by Satan to keep the English Church in misery. In the manner in which it was conducted on both sides, the case compares no less favourably with its continental parallel and with the later contest in England of which it was the forerunner, and for which, in some respects, it un- questionably furnished a model, though that model was very ill followed. For two years the dispute made absolutely no difference in the general working of the Church ; Anselm was in full enjoyment of his canonical and constitutional rights as primate of all Britain ; he ruled his suffragans, held his councils, superintended the restoration of his cathedral church, and laboured at the reform of discipline, with Henry's full concurrence ; and the clergy, with the archbishop at their head, were the life and soul of the party whose loyalty saved the king in his struggle with the barons. Even when Anselm's position in England had become un- tenable, he went over sea in full possession of his property, as the king's honoured friend and spiritual father. Not till Henry was provoked by a papal excommunication of all the upholders of the obnoxious " paternal customs " except himself, did he seize the temporalities of the archbishopric ; and even then Anselm, from his Burgundian retreat, con- tinued in active and unrestrained correspondence with his chapter and suffragans, and in friendly communication not only with Queen Matilda, but even with the king himself And when at last the archbishop who had gone down on his knees to the Pope to save William Rufus from excom- munication threatened to put forth that very sentence against William's far less guilty brother, he was only, like Henry himself in Normandy at the same moment, preparing his most terrible weapon of war as the surest means of obtaining peace. Henry's tact warned him, too, that the time for a VOL. I. C 1 8 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. settlement was come, and the sincerity of his motives en- abled him to strike out a line of compromise which both parties could accept without sacrificing their own dignity or the principles for which they were contending. The English king and primate managed to attain in seven years of quiet decorous negotiation, without disturbing the peace or tarnish- ing the honour of either Church or crown, the end to which Pope and Emperor only came after half a century of tumult, bloodshed and disgrace; the island -pontiff who "loved righteousness and hated iniquity," instead of " dying in exile " like his Roman brother, came home to end his days in triumph on the chair of S. Augustine. The settlement made little or no practical difference as far as its immediate object was concerned. Henry ceased to confer the spiritual insignia ; but the elections, held as of old in the royal court, were as much under his control as before. He yielded the form and kept the substance ; the definite concession of the bishops' homage for their temporalities fully compensated for the renunciation of the ceremonial investiture. But the other side, too, had gained something more than a mere form. It had won a great victory for freedom by bringing Henry to admit that there were departments of national life which lay beyond the sphere of his kingly despotism. It had, moreover, gained a distinct practical acknowledgement of the right of the Apostolic Curia to act as the supreme court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes, like the Curia Regis in secular matters. In a word, the settlement indicated plainly that the system of William and Lanfranc was doomed to break down before long. It broke down utterly when Anselm and Henry were gone ; the complications of legatine intervention, avoided only by careful management in Henry's later years, led to the most important results in the next reign ; and when the slumbering feud of sceptre and crozier broke out again, the difference between the cool Norman temper and the fiery blood of Anjou, between the saintly self-effacement of Anselm and the lofty self- assertion of Thomas, was only one of the causes which gave it such an increase of virulence as brought to nought the endeavours of king and primate to tread in the steps THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. of those whom they professed to have taken for their examples. Of more direct and wide-reaching importance, but less easy to trace, is the working of Henry's policy in the temp- oral government of England. Like his Church policy, with which it was in strict accord, it was grounded upon definite and consistent principles. At the outset of his reign circumstances had at once compelled the king to throw himself upon the support of his English subjects and enabled him to find in them his surest source of strength. Personally, his sympathies were not a whit more English or less despotic than those of his predecessor ; but, unlike Rufus, he fairly accepted his position with all its con- sequences so far as he understood them, and throughout his reign he never altogether forsook the standpoint which he had taken at its beginning. That standpoint, as expressed in his coronation-charter, was " the law of King Eadward as amended by King William." In other words, Henry pledged himself to carry out his father's system of compro- mise and amalgamation, to take up and continue his father's work ; and as soon as his hands were free he set himself to fulfil the pledge. But the scheme whose first outlines had been sketched by the Conqueror's master-hand had to be wrought out under conditions which had changed considerably since his death and were changing yet farther every day. The great ecclesiastical question was only the first and most prominent among a crowd of social and political problems whose shadows William had at the utmost only seen dimly looming in the future, but which confronted Henry as present facts that he must grapple with as best he could. At their theoretical, systematic solution he made little or no attempt ; the time was not yet ripe, nor was he the man for such work. He was neither a great legislator nor an original political thinker, but a clear-headed, sagacious, practical man of business. Such a man was precisely the ruler needed at the moment. His reign is not one of the marked eras of English history ; compared with the age which had gone before and that which came after it, the age of Henry I. looks almost like a " day of small things." That very 20 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. phrase, which seems so aptly to describe its outward aspect, warns us not to despise or pass it over lightly. It is just one of those periods of transition without which the marked eras would never be. Henry's mission was to prepare the way for the work of his grandson by completing that of his father. The work was no longer where his father had left it. When the secular side of the Norman government in Eng- land, somewhat obscured for a while by the ecclesiastical conflict, comes into distinct view again after the settlement of 1 107, one is almost startled at the amount of develope- ment which has taken place in the twenty years since the Conqueror's death — a developement whose steps lie hidden beneath the shadows of the Red King's tyranny and of Henry's early struggles. The power of the crown had out- grown even the nominal restraints preserved from the older system : the king's authority was almost unlimited, even in theory ; the Great Council, the successor and representative of the Witenagemot, had lost all share in the real work of legislation and government ; of the old formula — " counsel and consent " — the first half had become an empty phrase and the second a mere matter of course. The assembly was a court rather than a council, the qualification of its members, whether earls, barons, or knights, being all alike dependent on their position as tenants-in-chief of the crown ; the bishops alone kept their unaltered dignity as lineal successors of the older spiritual Witan ; but even the bishops had been compelled by the compromise of 1107 to hold their temporalities on the baronial tenure of homage and fealty to the king, a step which involved the strict appli- cation of the same rule to the lay members of the assembly. Moreover, the Witenagemot was being gradually supplanted in all its more important functions by an inner circle of counsellors, forming a permanent ministerial body which gathered into its own hands the entire management of the financial and judicial administration of the state. In one aspect it was the "Curia Regis" or King's Court, the supreme court of judicature which appropriated alike the judicial powers of the Witenagemot, of the old court of the THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. king's thegns or theningmanna-gemot, and of the feudal court of the Norman tenants-in-chief. In another aspect it- was the Exchequer, the court which received the royal revenues from the sheriffs of the counties, arranged and reviewed the taxation, transacted the whole fiscal business of the crown, and in short had the supreme control and management of the '' ways and means " of the realm. The judicial, military and social organization under the Norman kings rests so completely on a fiscal basis that the working of the Exchequer furnishes the principal means of studying that of the whole system ; while the connexion between the functions of the Exchequer and those of the Curia Regis is so close that it is often difficult to draw a line accurately between them, and all the more so, that they were made up^ of nearly the same constituent elements. These were the great officers of the royal household : — the justiciar, the treasurer, the chancellor, the constable, the marshal, and their subordinates : — titles of various origin, some, as for example the chancellor, being of comparatively recent origin, while others seem to have existed almost from time imme- morial ; — but all titles whose holders, from being mere per- sonal attendants upon the sovereign, had now become im- portant officials of the state. Like a crowd of other matters which first come distinctly to light under Henry, the system seems to have grown up as it were in the dark during the reign of William Rufus, no doubt under the hands of Ralf- Flambard. At its head stood the justiciar ; — second in authority to the king in his presence, his representative and vicegerent in his absence, officially as well as actually his chief minister and the unquestioned executor of his will./ This office, of which the germs may perhaps be traced as far back as the time of .^Elfred, who acted as " secundarius " under his brother .^thelred I., was directly derived from that which .^Ethelred II. had instituted under the title of high-thegn or high -reeve, and which grew into a per- manent vice-royalty in the persons of Godwine and Harold under Cnut and Eadward, and of Ralf Flambard under William Rufus. Ralf himself, a clerk from Bayeux, who from the position of an obscure dependent in the Conqueror's 22 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. household had made his way by the intriguing, pushing, unscrupulous temper which had earned him his nickname of the " Firebrand," was an upstart whom the barons of the Conquest may well have despised as much as the native English feared and hated him. After an interval during which his office was held by Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln — a former chancellor of the Red King — it passed to a man who from beginnings almost as lowly as those of Ralf rose to yet loftier and, it is but fair to add, purer fame. Henry in his wandering youth, as he rode out from Caen one morning with a few young companions, stopped to hear mass at a little wayside chapel. The poor priest who served it, guess- ing by their looks the temper of his unexpected congrega- tion, rattled through the office with a speed which delighted them ; they all pronounced him just the man for a soldier's chaplain ; Henry enlisted him as such, and soon found that he had picked up a treasure. Roger became his steward, and discharged his functions with such care, fidelity and good management as earned him the entire confidence of his master.^ Soon after Henry's accession he was appointed chancellor, a post whose duties involved, besides the official custody of the royal seal, the superintendence of the clerks of the king's chapel or chancery, who were charged with the keeping of the royal accounts, the conducting of the royal correspondence, the drawing up of writs and other legal documents and records, and who were now formed into a trained and organized body serving as secretaries for all departments of state business. From iioi to 1106 this office seems to have been held successively by Roger, William Giffard, and Waldric ; Roger probably resumed it in 1 1 06 on Waldric's elevation to the bishopric of Laon, but if so he resigned it again next year, to become bishop of Salisbury and justiciar.^ Henry's justiciar-bishop was the type of a class. The impossibility of governing England securely by means of feudal machinery, even with all the checks and safeguards which could be drawn from the old English administrative 1 Will. Newburgh, 1. i. c. 6 (Hewlett, vol. i. p. 36). 2 Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 56. 1. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 23 system, had by this time become self-evident. The conduct of the barons had at once proved to Henry the necessity and given him the justification for superseding them in all the more important functions of government, by carrying out, with a free and strong hand, the scheme which ^thel- red II, had originated under less favourable circumstances — the organization of a distinct ministerial body, directly dependent upon the crown. Of this body the model, as well as the head, was the bishop of Salisbury. Under his direction there grew up a trained body of administrators, most of them clerks like himself, several being his own near relatives, and almost all upstarts — novi homines, " new men " in the phrase of the time — compared with the nobles whose fathers ha(^ come over with the Conqueror ; forming a sort of official caste, separate alike from the feudal nobility and from the mass of the people, and no doubt equally obnoxi- ous to both, but very much better fitted than any instru- ments which either could have furnished for managing the business of the state at that particular crisis. Over and above the obloquy which naturally fell upon them as the instruments of royal justice or royal extortion, there was, however, another cause for the jealousy with which they were generally regarded. Henry is charged with showing, more especially in his later years, a preference for foreigners which was equally galling to all his native subjects, whatever their descent might be.^ It was not that he set Normans over Englishmen, but that he set men of continental birth over both alike. The words " Norman " and " English " had in fact acquired a new meaning since the days of the Con- quest. The sons and grandsons of the men who had come over with Duke William never lost one spark of their Nor- man' pride of race ; but the land of their fathers was no longer their home ; most of them were born in England, some had English wives, and even English mothers ; to nearly all, the chief territorial, political and personal interests of their lives were centred in the island. The constant wars between the Conqueror's successors tended still further to sever the Normans of the duchy from those of the kingdom, ' Eadmer, ffist. Nov. (Rule), p. 224. 24 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. and to drive the latter to unite themselves, at least politi- cally, writh their English fellow-subjects. Already in the wars of Rufus and Robert the change of feeling shows itself in the altered use of names ; the appellations " Norman " and " French " are reserved exclusively for the duke and his allies, and the supporters of the king of England are all counted together indiscriminately as English. Tinchebray is distinctly reckoned as an English victory. From that moment Normandy was regarded, both by its conquerors and by its French neighbours, as a foreign dependency of the English crown. Historians on both sides of the sea, as they narrate the wars between Henry and Louis of France which arose out of that conquest, un- consciously shadow forth the truth that the reunion of England and Normandy really tended to widen the gulf between them. The greatest French statesman of the day, Suger, abbot of S. Denis, sets the relation between the two nationalities in the most striking light when he justifies the efforts of his own sovereign Louis to drive Henry out of the duchy on the express ground that "Englishmen ought not to rule over Frenchmen, nor French over English." ^ One of our best authorities on the other side, the son of a French- man from Orleans who had come in the train of Roger of Montgomery and married an English wife — though he spent his whole life, from the age of ten years, in the Norman monastery of Saint-Evroul, never ceased to regard his mother's country as his own, showed his love for it in the most touching expressions of remembrance, and took care to send forth his history to the world under the name of Ordeiic the Englishman. This last was no doubt a some- what extreme case. Still the fusion between the two races had clearly begun ; it was helped on directly by Henry's whole policy, by the impartial character of his internal administration, by the nature and circumstances of his relations with his chief continental neighbours, France and Anjou ; indirectly it was helped on by the sense of a common grievance in the promotion of "strangers" — men born beyond sea — over the heads of both alike. Slight as ^ Suger, Vita Ludovici Grossi, c. I {Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. xii. p. 12). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 25 were the bonds between them at present, they were the first links of a chain which grew stronger year by year ; and the king's last and grandest stroke of policy, the marriage of his daughter and destined successor with the count of Anjou, did more than anything else to quicken the fusion of the two races by driving them to unite against sovereigns who were equally aliens from both. Roger's great work as justiciar was the organization of the Exchequer. Twice every year the barons of the Ex- chequer met under his presidency around the chequered table whence they derived their name, and settled acounts with the sheriffs of the counties. As the sheriffs were answerable for the entire revenue due to the crown from their respective shires, the settlement amounted to a thorough review of the financial condition of the realm. The profits of the demesne lands and of the judicial pro- ceedings in the shire-court, now commuted at a fixed sum under the title of " ferm of the shire " ; the land-tax, or as it was still called, the Danegeld, also compounded for at a definite rate ; the so-called " aids " which in the case of the towns seem to have corresponded to the Danegeld in the rural districts ; the feudal sources of income, reliefs, wardships, marriage-dues, escheats ; the profits arising out of the strict and cruel forest-law, the one grievance of his predecessor's rule which Henry had from the beginning refused to redress ; all these and many other items found their places in the exhaustive proceedings of King Henry's court of Exchequer. Hand in hand with its financial work went the judicial work of the Curia Regis : a court in theory comprehending the whole body of tenants-in-chief, but in practice limited to the great officers of the house- hold and others specially appointed by the king, and acting under him, or under the chief justiciar as his representative, as a supreme tribunal of appeal, and also of first resort in suits between tenants- in -chief and in a variety of other cases called up by special writ for its immediate cognisance.^ It had moreover the power of acting directly upon the lower courts in another way. The assessment of taxes was still based upon the Domesday survey ; but transfers of land. 26 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. changes in cultivation, the reclaiming of wastes on the one hand and the creation of new forests on the other, necess- arily raised questions which called for an occasional revision and readjustment of taxation. This was effected by sending the judges of the King's Court — who were only the barons of the Exchequer in another capacity — on judicial circuits throughout the country, to hold the pleas of the crown and settle disputed points of assessment and tenure in the several shires. As the justices thus employed held their sittings in the shire-moot, the local and the central judicature were thus brought into immediate connexion with each other, and the first stepping-stone was laid towards bridging over the gap which severed the lower from the higher organization. ^ By the establishment of a careful and elaborate admini- strative routine Henry and Roger thus succeeded in binding together all branches of public business and all classes of society in intimate connexion with and entire dependence on the crown, through the medium of the Curia Regis and the Exchequer. The system stands portrayed at full length in the Dialogue in which Bishop Roger's great- nephew expounded the constitution and functions of the fully developed Court of Exchequer ; its working in Roger's own day is vividly illustrated in the one surviving record which has come down to us from that time, the earliest extant of the " Pipe Rolls " (so called from their shape) in which the annual statement of accounts was embodied by the treasurer. The value of this solitary roll of Henry I. — that of the year 1 1 30 — lies less in the dry bones of the actual financial statement than in the mass of personal detail with which they are clothed, and through which we get such an insight as nothing else can afford into the social condition of the time. The first impression likely to be produced by the document is that under Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury — " the Lion of Justice " and " the Sword of Righteousness" — every possible contingency of human life was somehow turned into a matter of money for the benefit of the royal treasury. It must, however, be remem- bered that except the Danegeld, there was no direct I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY 1. 27 taxation ; the only means, therefore, of making up a budget at all was by the feudal levies and miscellaneous incidents ; and these were no longer, as in the Red King's days, in- struments of unlimited extortion, but were calculated accord- ing to a regular and fairly equitable scale, subject to frequent modification under special circumstances. Still the items look strange enough. We see men paying to get into ofHce and paying to get out of it ; heirs paying for the right to enter upon their inheritance ; would-be guardians paying that they may administer the estates of minors ; suitors paying for leave to marry heiresses or dowered widows ; heiresses and widows paying for freedom to wed the man of their own choice. The remittances are not always in money ; several of the king's debtors sent coursing-dogs or destriers ; one has promised a number of falcons, and there are some amusingly minute stipulations as to their colour.^ There is an endless string of land-owners, great and small, paying for all sorts of privileges connected with their property ; some for leave to make an exchange of land with a neighbour, some to cancel an exchange already made ; some to procure the speedy determination of a suit with a rival claimant of their estates, some on the con- trary to delay or avoid answering such a claim, and some for having themselves put forth claims which they were unable to prove ; the winner pays for his success, the loser for failing to make good his case ; the treasury gains both ways. Jewish usurers pay for the king's help in recover- ing their debts from his Christian subjects.^ The citizens of Gloucester promise thirty marks of silver if the king's justice can get back for them a sum of money "which was taken away from them in Ireland.* This last-quoted entry brings us at once to another class of items, perhaps the most interesting of all ; those which relate to the growing liberties of the towns. The English towns differed completely in their origin and history from those of the states which had arisen out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. The great cities of Italy 1 Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. in. 2 Jb. pp. 147, 148, 149. ^ III. p. 77- 28 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. and Gaul were daughters of Rome ; they were the abiding depositaries of her social, municipal and political traditions ; as such, they had a vitality and a character which, like their great mistress and model, they were able to preserve through all the changes of barbarian conquest and feudal reorganiza- tion. The English towns had no such imperial past ; in their origin and earliest constitution they were absolutely un- distinguishable from the general crowd of little rural settle- ments throughout the country. Here and there, for one reason or another, some particular spot attracted an unusually large concourse of inhabitants ; but whether sheltered within the walls of a Roman military encampment like Winchester and York, or planted on the top of an almost immemorial hill -fort like Old Sarum, or gathered in later days round some fortress raised for defence against the Welsh or the Danes like Taunton or Warwick, or round some venerated shrine like Beverley or Malmesbury or Oxford, still the settlement differed in nothing but its size from the most insignificant little group of rustic homesteads which sent its reeve and four men to the court of the hundred and the shire. The borough was nothing more than an unusually large township, generally provided with a dyke and palisade, or sometimes even a wall, instead of the ordinary quickset hedge ; or it was a cluster of townships which had somehow coalesced, but without in any way forming an organic whole. Each unit of the group had its own parish church and parochial machinery for both spiritual and temporal pur- poses, its own assembly for transacting its own internal affairs ; while the general borough-moot, in a town of this kind, answered roughly to the hundred-court of the rural districts, and the character of the borough-constitution itself resembled that of the hundred rather than that of the single township. The earlier and greater towns must have been originally free ; a few still retain in their common lands a vestige of their early freedom. But the later towns which grew up around the hall of a powerful noble, or a great and wealthy monastery, were dependent from the first upon the lord of the soil on which they stood ; their inhabitants owed suit and service to the earl, the bishop, or the abbot, I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 29 whichever he might chance to be, and their reeve was appointed by him. On the other hand, when it became a recognized principle that everybody must have a lord, and that all folkland belonged to the king, it followed as a natural inference that all towns which had no other lord were counted as royal demesnes, and their chief magistrate was an officer of the crown. In the great cities he usually bore the title oi port-reeve, a word whose first syllable, though here used to represent the town in general, refers in strict etymology to the porta, or place where the market was held, and thus at once points to the element in the life of the towns which gave them their chief consequence and their most distinctive character. The Norman conquest had led to a great increase of their trading importance ; a sense of corporate life and unity grew up within them ; their political position became more clearly defined ; they began to re- cognize themselves, and to win their recognition at the hands of the ruling powers, as a separate element in the state. The distinction was definitely marked by the severance of their financial interests from those of the shires in which they stood ; a fixed " aid," varying according to their size and wealth, was substituted in their case for the theoretically even, but practically very unfair pressure of the Danegeld ; and to avoid all risk of extortion on the part of the sheriff, their contribution to the ferm of the shire was settled at a fixed round sum deducted from the total and accounted for as a separate item, under the name of firma burgi, either by the sheriff or, in some cases where the privilege had been specially conferred, by the towns themselves. At the same time the voluntary institution of the gilds, which had long acted as a supplement to the loose territorial and legal con- stitution of the boroughs, forced its way into greater promi- nence ; the merchant-gilds made their appearance no longer as mere private associations, but as legally organized bodies endowed with authority over all matters connected with trade in the great mercantile cities ; the recognition of their legal status — generally expressed by the confirmation of the right to possess a " gild-hall " (or, as it was called in the north, a "hans-house") — became a main point in the struggles 30 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of the towns for privileges and charters. The handicraftsmen, fired with the same spirit of association, banded themselves together in hl^e manner ; the weavers of London, Hunting- don and Lincoln, the leather -sellers and weavers of Oxford, bought of the crown in 1130a formal confirmation of the customs of their respective gilds.^ The lesser towns followed, as well as they could, the example of the great cities ; they too won from their lords a formal assurance of their privi- leges ; Archbishop Thurstan's charter to Beverley was expressly modelled on that granted by King Henry to York.2 We may glance at some of the towns of southern England in company with some travellers from Gaul who visited them in the later years of Henry's reign. The cathedral church of Laon had been burnt down and its bishop Waldric slain in a civic tumult in 1 1 1 2. Waldric had once been chancellor to King Henry ,^ and the reports which he and others had brought to Laon of the wealth and prosperity of the island* led some of the canons, after per- ambulating northern Gaul to collect donations for the restoration of their church, to venture beyond sea for the same object. They set sail from Wissant — seemingly in an English ship, for its captain bore the English-sounding name of Coldistan — in company with some Flemish merchants who were going to buy wool in England, and they landed at Dover after a narrow escape from some pirates who chased their vessel in the hope of seizing the money which it was known to contain.^ They naturally made their way to Canterbury first, to enlist the sympathies of the archbishop and his chapter, as well as those of the scarcely less wealthy and powerful abbey of S. Augustine.'' Thence they ap- ' Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), Oxford, pp. 2 and 5 ; Huntingdon, p. 48 ; Lincoln, pp. 109, 114; London, p. 144. ^ Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 109, no (3d ed.). 3 On Waldric (or Gualdric) and Laon see Guibert of Nogent, De Viid sud, 1. iii. c. 4, et seq. (D'Achery, Guib.Noviog. 0pp., p. 498, et seq.). Cf. above, p. 22. * " Qua: [sc. Anglia] tunc temporis magnet divitiarum florebat opulentii pro pace et justitia quam rex ejus Henricus. . . in ei faciebat." Hennan. Mon. De Mirac. S. Marice, 1. ii. c. I (D'Acheiy, Guib. Noviog. 0pp., p. 534). = lb. c. 4 (pp. 535, 536). 6 //,_ ^_ 5 (p_ ^26)_ Hbrg^e^^EnflMi^md^^i^^igerti^jii! Him 11,1 CHeST ER in. the ill centurj. ^f^AMil ^ II S T ^ L in tUe 311 centiiTy. Undosure^befiirelfamuui corufuest. Sndasitre afterSbmuuv coiupuest. Snj^suirA lZH-1, a a a OrigmxH ^kuuuI afffu Frome. "b Ti 1) Z^duumxLof^te,¥ro7nB (end, of IL centiLfy). C c t S^chtumeLoftht FroTTie. (m!7}. Trior^ of S.AugusUi TTagner ^ Eebes' Geo^ EsLaW leipsic. london , MacmlHaiL L Co . I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 31 parently proceeded to Winchester.^ The old West-Saxon capital had lost its ancient rank ; London, which had long surpassed it in commercial and political importance, had now superseded it as the crowning-place and abode of kings. But its connexion with the crown was far from being broken. Its proximity to the New Forest made it a favourite residence of the Conqueror and his sons ; William himself had built not only a castle on the high ground at the western end of the city, just below the west gate of the Roman enclosure, but also a palace in its south-eastern quarter, hard by the cathedral and the New Minster; it was here that he usually held his Easter court, and his successors continued the practice. One very important department of the royal administration, moreover, was still permanently centred at Winchester — the Treasury, which under its English title of the " Hoard " had been settled there by Eadward the Confessor, and which seems not to have been finally transferred to Westminster till late in the reign of Henry H.^ Of the two great religious foundations, one, the " Old Minster," or cathedral church of S. Swithun, the crowning-place and burial-place of our native kings, assumed under the hands of its first Norman bishop the aspect which, outwardly at least, it still retains. The other, the " New Minster," so strangely placed by .lElfred close beside the old one, had incurred William's wrath by the deeds of its abbot and some of its monks who fought and fell at Senlac ; to punish the brotherhood, he planted his palace close against the west front of their church ; and they found their posi- tion so intolerable that in 1 1 1 1, by Henry's leave, they migrated outside the northern boundary of Winchester to a new abode which grew into a wealthy and flourishing house under the name of Hyde Abbey, leaving their old home to fall into decay and to be represented in modern days by a ^ Herman. Mon., 1. ii. c. 7 (D'Ach^ry, Guib. Noviog. 0pp., p. 536). '^ At the date of the Dialogus de Scaccario (A.D. 1178) its headquarters seem to have fluctuated between London and Winchester, and to have been quite recently, if they were not even yet, most frequently at the latter place. See the payments to the accountants : " Quisque iii denarios si Londoni:e fuerint ; si Wintonite, quia inde solent assumi, duos quisque habet. " — Dial, de Scacc. , I. i. t. 3 (Stubbs, Se/eci CharUrs, p. 175, 3d ed.). 32 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. quiet graveyard.^ As a trading centre Winchester ranked in Henry's day, and long after, second to London alone; the yearly fair which within living memory was held on S. Giles's day upon the great hill to the east of the city^ pre- served a faint reminiscence of the vast crowds of buyers and sellers who flocked thither from all parts of the country throughout the middle ages. At the opposite end of the New Forest the little town of Twinham, or Christchurch as it was beginning to be called from its great ecclesiastical establishment, whose church had been rebuilt on a grand scale by Ralf Flambard, had, on the octave of Pentecost, a fair which the travellers took care to attend, much to the disgust of the dean, who was anxious to secure all the offerings of the assembled crowd for the improvement of his own church, and Had no mind to share them with our Lady of Laon.^ They met with a warmer welcome at Exeter at the hands of its arch- deacon and future bishop Robert.* In the next reign Exeter was counted as the fourth city in the kingdom.* Natural wealth of its own it had none ; the bare rocky soil of the south coast of Devon produced nothing but a few oats, and those of the poorest quality f but the mouth of the Exe furnished a safe and convenient anchorage for small merchant vessels either from Gaul or from Ireland, and though Bristol was fast drawing away this latter branch of her trade, Exeter could still boast of "such an abundance of merchandise that nothing required for the use of man could ever be asked for there in vain."'' It was far other- wise with Salisbury, to which the travellers were probably drawn chiefly by the fame of its bishop ;^ the Salisbury of those days was not the city in the plain which now spreads 1 Flor. Wore. (Thorpe) vol. ii. p. 64. Ann. Waverl. a., iiii. The king's charter confirming the removal is dated 1114; Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. ii. p. 444. ^ It is mentioned in Henry's charter to Hyde ; Dugdale, as above. 3 Herman. Mon., 1. ii. cc. 10, 11 (D'Achery, Guib. Noviog. 0pp., pp. 537, 538). * lb. 1. ii. c. 12 (p. 539). 6 Q^^i^ Stepkani (Sewell), p. 21. ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. u. 94 (Hamilton, p. 201). ' Ibid. ^ Herman. Mon., 1. ii. c. 13 (p. 539). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 33 itself around the most perfect of English Gothic minsters, but the city whose traces, in a very dry summer, may still now and then be seen in the fields which cover the hill of Old Sarum. Crowded as it was into that narrow circle — narrow, and without possibility of enlargement — ^Bishop Roger's Salisbury was an excellent post for military security, but it had no chance of attaining industrial or commercial importance, although he did not disdain to accept the grant of its market tolls, which till 1 130 formed part of the ferm of Wilton.^ Wilton was apparently still the chief town of the shire to which it had originally given its name ; like Christchurch it had its fair, but, like Christchurch too, its importance was mainly derived from its abbey, where the memory of S. Eadgyth or Edith, a daughter of Eadgar, was venerated by English and Normans alike, by none more than the queen who shared Eadgyth's royal blood and had once borne her name.^ The visitors from Laon, however, seem to have been more impressed by another name which one is somewhat startled to meet in this southern region — that of Baeda, whose tomb was shown them in the abbey church of Wilton, and was believed to be the scene of miraculous cures.^ They retraced their steps into Devon- shire, where they found the legends of Arthur as rife among the people as they were among the Bretons of Gaul ; they were shown the chair and oven of the " blameless king," and a tumult nearly arose at Bodmin out of a dispute between one of their party and a man who persisted in asserting that Arthur was still alive.* After visiting Barnstaple and Totnes^ they turned northward towards the greatest seaport of the west, and indeed, with one exception, of all England : Bristol. To trace out the Bristol of the twelfth century in the Bristol of to-day is a matter of difficulty not only from the enormous growth of the town, but from the changes which have taken place in the physical conformation of its site. Nominally, it still stands on the peninsula formed by the 1 Pipe RoU, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 13. ' Ibid. ^ Herman. Mon., 1. ii. c. 14 (D'AcWry, Guib. Noviog. 0pp., p. 539). ■■ lb. 1. ii. cc. IS, i6 (pp. 539, 540). » lb. 1. ii. cc. 17-19 (p. 540). VOL. I. D 34 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. junction of the Frome and the Avon ; but the courses of both rivers have been so altered and disguised that the earlier aspect of the place is very hard to realize. The original Bristol stood wholly upon the high ground which now forms the neck of the peninsula, then a small tongue of land surrounded on the south-east by the Avon, on the north, west and south by the Frome, which flowed round it almost in the form of a horse-shoe and fell into the Avon on the southern side of the town, just below the present Bristol Bridge.^ Before the Norman conquest, it seems, the lower course of the Frome had already been diverted from its natural bed f its present channel was not dug till the middle of the thirteenth century, across a wide expanse of marsh stretching all along the right bank of both rivers, and flooded every day by the tide which came rushing up the estuary of Severn almost to the walls of the town, and made it seem like an island in the sea.^ Within its comparatively narrow limits Bristol must have been in general character and aspect not unlike what it is to-day — a busy, bustling, closely-packed city, full of the eager, active, surging life of commercial enterprise. Ostmen from Waterford and Dublin, Northmen frorn the Western Isles and the more distant Orkneys, and even from Norway itself, had long ago learnt to avoid the shock of the " Higra," the mighty current which still kept its heathen name derived from the sea-god of their forefathers,* and make it serve to float them into the safe and commodious harbour of Bristol, where a thousand ships could ride at anchor.^ As the great trading centre of the west Bristol ranked as the third city in the kingdom,^ surpassed in importance only by Winchester and London. The most lucrative branch of its trade, however, reflects no 1 See the description of Bristol in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37. - Seyer, Memoirs of Bristol, vol. ii. pp. 18-27. s Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37. * See the description of the "Higra," and of Bristol, in Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. cc. 153, 154 (Hamilton, p. 292). 5 Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37. 8 In Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 21, Exeter is called the fourth city in the realm. As London and Winchester are always counted first and second, the third can only he Bristol. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 35 credit on its burghers. All the eloquence of S. Wulfstan and all the sternness of the Conqueror had barely availed to check for a while their practice of kidnapping men for the Irish slave-market ; and that the traffic was again in full career in the latter years of Henry I. we learn from the experiences of the canons of Laon. They eagerly went on board some of the vessels in the harbour to buy some clothes, and to inspect the strange wares brought from lands which can have had little or no intercourse with the inland cities of Gaul. On their return they were solemnly implored by their friends in the city not to run such a risk again, as they would most likely find the ships suddenly put to sea and themselves sold into bondage in a foreign land.^ No such dangers awaited them at Bath. With their reception there by the bishop^ — whom the healing virtues of its waters had induced first to remove his bishopstool thither from its lowlier seat at Wells, and then to buy the whole city of King Henry for the sum of five hundred pounds* — their itinerary comes to an abrupt end. If they penetrated no further up the Severn valley than Bristol they turned back from the gates of a region which was then reckoned the fairest and wealthiest in England. The vale of Gloucester is described as a sort of earthly paradise, where the soil brought forth of its own accord the most abundant and choicest fruits, where from one year's end to another the trees were never bare, where the apples hung within reach of the traveller's hand as he walked along the roads ; — above all, where the fruit of the vine, which in other parts of England was mostly sour, yielded a juice scarcely inferior to the wines of Gaul. Another source of wealth was supplied by the fisheries of the great river, the fertilizer as well as the highway of this favoured district. Religion and industry, abbeys and towns, grew and flourished by Severn -side.* Worcester was still the head of the diocese ; but in political rank it had had to give way to Gloucester. Standing lower ' Herman. Mon., 1. ii. c. 21 (D'Achery, Guib. Noviog. Opp,, p. 541). " lb. 1. ii. u. 22 (p. 541). ' Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. c. 90 (Hamilton, p. 194). The grant of the city is in Rymer, Fadera, vol. i. pt. i. p. 8 ; date, August nil. * Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. c. 153 (Hamilton, pp. 291, 292). 36 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. down the river, Gloucester was more accessible for trade, while its special importance as the key of the South- Welsh border had made it one of the recognized places for assem- blies of the court from the time of the Danish kings. The chief town of the neighbouring valley of the Wye, Hereford, had once been a border-post of yet greater importance ; but despite its castle and its bishop's see, it was now a city " of no great size," whose broken-down ramparts told the story of a greatness which had passed away.'' Far different was the case of Chester. What the estuary of the Severn was to the southern part of western England, that of the Dee was to its northern part ; Chester was at once the Bristol and the Gloucester of the north-west coast — the centre of its trade and its bulwark against the Welsh. Beyond the Dee there was as yet little sign of industrial life. Cultivation had made little or no progress among the moor- land and forest-tracts of western Yorkshire, and its eastern half had not yet recovered from the harrying with which the Conqueror had avenged its revolt in 1068. For more than sixty miles around York the ground still lay perfectly bare. " Cities whose walls once rose up to heaven — tracts that were once well watered, smiling meadows — if a stranger sees them now, he groans ; if a former inhabitant could see them, he would not recognize his home." The one thing which had survived this ruin was, as ever, the work of the Roman.^ York still kept its unbroken life, its ecclesiastical primacy, its commercial greatness ; the privileges of its merchants were secured by a charter from the king ; they had their gild with its " alderman " at its head,' their " hans-house " for the making of bye-laws and the transaction of all gild business ; and they were freed from all tolls throughout the shire.* Far to the north-west, on the Scottish border, Carlisle, after more than two centuries of ruin, had been restored and repeopled by William Rufus. The city had been destroyed by the Danes in 875, and its site remained utterly desolate 1 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. c. 163 (Hamilton, p. 298). ^ lb. 1. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, pp. 208, 209). ^ Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 34. * Charter of Beverley, Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 109, no (3d ed.). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 37 till in 1092 the Red King drove out an English thegn who occupied it under the protection of Malcolm of Scotland, and reunited it to the English realm.^ The place still kept some material relics of its earlier past ; fragments of its Roman walls were still there, to be used up again in the new fortifi- cations with which the Red King encircled his conquest ; and some years later \i\\&triclinium of one of its Roman houses called forth the admiring wonder of a southern visitor, William of Malmesbury." But the city and the surrounding country lay almost void of inhabitants, and only the expedient of a colony sent by Rufus from southern England, " to dwell in the land and till it,"^ brought the beginnings of a new life. Yet before the end of Henry's reign, that life had grown so vigorous that the archbishop of York found himself unable to make adequate provision for its spiritual needs, and was glad to sanction the formation of Carlisle and its district into a separate diocese. The chief importance of Carlisle was in its military character, as an outpost of defence against the Scots. On the opposite coast we see springing up, around a fortress originally built for the same purpose, the beginning of an industrial community at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The "cus- toms " of the town contain provisions for the regulation of both inland and outland trade ; if a merchant vessel put in at the mouth of the Tyne, the burghers may buy what they will ; if a dispute arise between one of them and a foreign merchant, it must be settled before the tide has ebbed thrice ; the foreign trader may carry his wares ashore for sale, except salt and herrings, which must be sold on board the ship. No merchant, save a burgher, may buy wool, hides, or any other merchandise outside the town, nor within it, except from burghers ; and no one but a burgher may buy, make, or cut cloth for dyeing.* Round the minster of S. John of Beverley, on the marshy flats of Holderness, there had grown up a town of sufficient consequence to win from the lord of 1 Eng. Chron. a. 1092. 2 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., L ii. i;. 99 (Hamilton, p. 208). ' Eng. Chron. a. 1092. * Customs of Newcastle, Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. Ill, 112. 38 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the soil, Archbishop Thurstan of York, a charter whose privi- leges were copied from those of the metropolitan city itself As a whole, however, the north was still a wild region, speaking a tongue of which, as William of Malmesbury com- plained, " we southrons could make nothing," and living a life so unconnected with that of southern England that even King Henry still thought it needful to reinforce his ordinary- body-guard with a troop of auxiliaries whenever he crossed the Humber.^ This isolation was in great part due to physical causes. What is now the busy West Riding was then mainly a vast tract of moor and woodland, stretching from Wakefield to the Peak and from the Westmoreland hills to the sources of the Don ; while further east, the district between the lower course of the Don and that of the Trent was one wide morass. Such obstacles were still strong enough to hinder, though not to bar, the intercourse of Yorkshire with mid- England. The only safe line of communication was the Fdss Way, which struck across the central plain and along the eastern side of the Trent valley to Lincoln, and thence turned north-westward to cross the Trent and wind round between forest and fen to York. Lincoln was thus the chief station on the highway between York and the south. Under the Norman rule the city had risen to a new im- portance. Two of its quarters had been entirely trans- formed ; the south-western was now covered by a castle, and the south-eastern by a cathedral church. Neither building was the first of its kind which had occupied the spot. Few sites in England could have been more attractive to a soldier's eye than the crest of the limestone ridge descend- ing abruptly to the south into a shallow sort of basin, watered by the little river Witham, and on the west sloping gradually down to a broad alluvial swamp extending as far as the bank of the Trent. The hundred and sixty-six houses which the Conqueror swept away to make room for his castle 2 were but encroachments on an earlier fortification, a " work " of mounds and earthen ramparts of the usual old ■1 Will. Malm. Gesta Poniif., 1. ii. c. 99 (Hamilton, p. 209). ^ Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 39 English type, which now served as a foundation for his walls of stone.^ To the ardent imagination of the medieval Church, on the other hand, the rocky brow of Lincoln might well seem to cry out for a holier crown, and a church of S. Mary was already in existence^ on the site where Bishop Remigius of Dorchester, forsaking his lowly home in the valley of the Thames, reared his bishopstool amid the foundations of that great minster of our Lady whose noble group of towers now rises on the crest of the hill as a beacon to all the country round.^ But there were other reasons for the translation of the bishopric than those of sentiment or of personal taste. Of the vast Mid-Anglian diocese, which stretched from the Thames to the Humber, Lincoln was beyond all comparison the most important town. Even in Roman times the original quadrangular enclosure of Lindum Colonia had been found too small, and a fortified suburb had spread down to the left bank of the Witham. During the years of peace which lasted from the accession of Cnut to that of William, the needs of an increasing population, as we have seen, covered the site of the older fortress with dwellings : when these were cleared away at William's bidding, their exiled inhabitants found a new home on a plot of hitherto waste ground beyond the river ; and a new town, untrammelled by the physical obstacles which had cramped the growth of the city on the hill, sprang up around the two churches of S. Mary-le-Wigford and S. Peter-at-Gowts.* Some fifty years later Lincoln was counted one of the most populous and flourishing cities in England.^ The roads which met on the crest of its hill to branch off again in all directions formed only one of the ways by which trade poured into its market. ' G. T. Clark, Lincoln Castle (Archceol. Journal, vol. xxxiii. pp. 215-217). ' " Sancta Maria de Lincolia in qu^ nunc est episcopatus," Domesijay, vol. i. p. 336. The patron saint of this older church, hovjrever, viss the Magdalene, not the Virgin. See John de Schalby's Life of Remigius, in Appendix E. to Gir. Cambr. (Dimock), vol. vii. p. 194, and Mr. Freeman's remarks in preface, ib. pp. Ixxx., Ixxxii. 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif, 1. iv. c. 17; (Hamilton, p. 312). Flor. V^Torc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 30. * See Domesday, vol. i. p. 336 b, and Mr. Freeman's remarks in Norm. Conq., vol. iv. pp. 218, 219. ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif, 1. iv. c. 177 (Hamilton, p. 312). 40 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Not only had the now dirty Httle stream of Witham a tide strong enough to bring the small merchant vessels of the day quite up to the bridge : it was connected with the Trent at Torksey by a canal, probably of Roman origin, known as the Foss Dyke ; this after centuries of neglect was cleared out and again made navigable by order of Henry I.,^ and through it there flowed into Lincoln a still more extensive trade from the lower Trent Valley and the Humber. The '' men of the city and the merchants of the shire " were already banded together in a merchant-gild f and it is doubtless this gild which is represented by the "citizens of Lincoln" who in 1130 paid two hundred marks of silver and four marks of gold for the privilege of holding their city in chief of the king.^ The removal of Bishop Remigius from Dorchester to Lincoln was in accordance with a new practice, which had come in since the Norman conquest, of placing the episcopal see in the chief town of the diocese. The same motive had prompted a translation of the old Mercian bishopric from Lichfield, now described as " a little town in the woodland, with a rivulet flowing by it, far away from the throng of cities,"* to Chester, whence, however, it was soon removed again to the great abbey of Coventry.^ The same reason, too, caused Norwich to succeed Thi. .ford as the seat of the bishopric of East-Anglia. It was but very recently that Lincoln had outstripped Norwich as the chief city of eastern England. The mouth of the Yare, which had a tideway navigation quite up to the point where the Wensum falls into it, was no less conveniently placed than that of the Witham for intercourse with northern Europe ; and the Scandinavian traders and settlers in the first half of the eleventh century had raised Norwich to such a pitch of prosperity that at the coming of the Norman it contained twenty-four churches, and its burghers seem to have been more numerous than those of any town in the realm 1 Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. 1121. ' Said to date from the time of Eadward ; Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 166. ^ Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 114. ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. c. 172 (Hamilton, p. 307). = lb. cc. 172-175 (pp. 307-311). WnTtate'ifEiiBlaiidunderthe.ti.^eTiivBii^s; L I H @ @ L in flie XKcentirp-v: SSeter-at-6owts in Uie JUI century. ^|ii^^DSes^eo^^sSE?T!c5si^^^^Tou^rar^a5l^n^^^T^ I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 41 except London and York.^ Twenty years later their number was indeed greatly diminished ; the consequences of Earl Ralf's rebellion had wrought havoc in the city. But if its native population had decreased, a colony of Norman burghers was growing up and flourishing in a " new borough," now represented by the parishes of S. Peter Mancroft and S. Giles ; the number of churches and chapels had risen to forty-four,^ and in the Red King's last years the foundations of the cathedral were laid by Bishop Herbert Lozinga, whose grave may still be seen before its high altar.* Once in the next reign Norwich supplanted Gloucester as the scene of the Midwinter Council ; King Henry kept Christmas there in 11 21.* It may have been on this occasion that the citizens won from him their first charter ; but the charter itself is lost, and we only learn the bare fact of its existence from the words of Henry H., confirming to the burghers of Norwich " all the customs, liberties and acquittances which they had in the time of my grandfather." ^ It was, however, in the valley of the Thames that English town-life was growing up most vigorously. Tried by the test of statistics, indeed, Oxford was still but a small place ; in the time of the Confessor it had only contained about a thousand dwellings, and before the Domesday survey was made the town had, through some unexplained cause, suffered such decay that more than half of these were waste.^ But the " waste " was quickly repaired under the wise government of Robert of Oilly, to whom the chief command at Oxford was entrusted by the Conqueror, and of his nephew and namesake who succeeded to his office. Before the close of Henry's reign every side of that marvellously varied life of Oxford which makes its history seem like an epitome of the history of all England was already in exist- ence, though only in germ. The military capabilities of ' Domesday, vol. ii. pp. 116, 117. ^ li. pp. 116-118. ' Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, p. 151). * Eng. Chron. a. 1 122. ■■ Charter printed in Blomefield, Hist, of Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 34. * Domesday, vol. i. p. 154. Mr. Parker, in his Early Hist, of Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc), pp. 200, 201, suggests that the damage was done by the army of Eadwlne and Morkere on their southward march in 1065. 42 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the site, recognized long ago by Eadward the Elder, had been carefully strengthened ; within the natural protection of its encircling rivers, the town was " closely girt about with rampart and ditch," ^ and the mound, raised probably by Eadward himself, at its western end had been made the nucleus of a mighty fortress which was soon to become famous in the struggle of Stephen and Matilda.^ Nor was fortifica- tion the sole care of the D'Oillys ; within .and without the city, works of piety and of public utility sprang up under their direction. The ancient ford which had given the town a name was no longer the sole means of crossing the network of streams which fenced it in on every side save one ; the High Bridge of our own day represents one built by the first Robert of Oilly.^* Of the sixteen churches and chapels which Oxford now contained,* S. George's-in-the- Castle was certainly and S. Peter's -in -the -East probably founded by him ;^ several of the older parish churches which had fallen into decay were restored at his expense ; ^ and those of S. Michael and S. Mary the Virgin, as well as that of S. Mary Magdalene without the walls, were all founded in his time or in that of his nephew, if not actually by their munificence.' One of these, S. Mary the Virgin, was to become famous in after-days as the University church. As yet, the centre of intellectual life at Oxford was the ancient monastery of S. Fritheswith or Frideswide, which after many vicissitudes had finally passed into the hands of the Austin canons,^ and entered upon a new career of prosperity under 1 Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 88. ^ The chief stronghold of the new fortress, however, was not on the mound ; it was a lofty tower — still standing — on the western side of the enclosure. It was built by the first Robert of Oilly, in 107 1 ; Ann. Osen. ad ann. See Parker, Early Hist. Ox/., pp. 202-204. ^ Hist. Monast. de Abingdon (Stevenson), vol. ii. pp. 15, 284. See also Parker, Early Hist. Oxf., p. 219. * See lists in Parker as above, pp. 284-286. ^ He founded S. George's in 1074 ; Ann. Osen. ad ann. On S. Peter's see Parker as above, pp. 250-254. ' Hist. Abingdon (Stevenson), vol. ii. p. 15. ' See the evidence in Parker's Early Hist, of Oxford, pp. 209, 223, 258-261. " Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif, 1. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton, pp. 315, 316). Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. ii. pp. 143, 144. The Augustinians came there in nil, according to the chronicle of Tynemouth, quoted in Monast. (as above), p. 143 ; but the local record in p. 144 gives 1 121. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 43 its learned prior Guimund, the builder of the beautiful church which now stands hidden away beneath the later splendours of Christ Church, like a buried and yet living relic of an earlier and simpler age. Even S. Frideswide's, however, had a formidable rival in the priory of Oseney which the younger Robert of Oilly founded, also for Austin canons, in the island-meadow overlooked by his castle-tower.^ The Augustinians were a new order whose rise was closely asso- ciated with the revival of intellectual and social culture ; their houses were the best schools of the time — schools in which the scholars were trained for secular no less than for clerical careers — and their presence at Oseney and S. Frides- wide's was already preparing the intellectual soil of Oxford to receive, at the close of Henry's reign, the seeds of the first English University in the divinity lectures of Robert Pulein.^ The burgher -life of the city had long gathered round the church of S. Martin ; in its churchyard was held the portmannimot or general assembly of the citizens ; they had their merchant-gild and their gild -hall ;^ they had their common pasture -land,* the wide green " Port -meadow" beyond the Isis ; and we see the growth of a local industry in the appearance of the leather-sellers' and weavers' gilds. Shortly before Henry's death, there were indications that Oxford was soon to regain the political position which it had held under the old English and Danish kings, but had entirely lost since their time. A strange legacy of awe had been left to the city by its virgin patroness. The story went that Fritheswith, flying from the pursuit of her royal lover, sank down exhausted at the gate, and, despairing of further escape, called upon Heaven itself to check him ; as he entered the town he was struck blind, and though her prayers afterwards restored his sight, no king after him dared set foot within the boundaries of Oxford for fear of incurring some similar punishment.^ It must be supposed that the councils held at Oxford under ^Ethelred and Cnut 1 Ann. Osen. a. 1 129. ^ H- a. "SS- 3 Charter of Henry II., Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 167. * Domesday, vol. i. p. 154. 5 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. c. 178 (Hamilton p. 315). 44 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. met outside the walls ; we cannot tell whether any coun- tenance was given to the legend by the circumstances of Harald Harefoot's death ; but from that time forth we hear of no more royal visits to Oxford till 1133 — the very year of Robert Pulein's lectures. Then we find that Henry I., whose favourite country residence was at Woodstock, had been so drawn to the neighbouring town as to build himself a " new hall " there/ just outside the northern wall, on the ground afterwards known as Beaumont-fields. He held but one festival there, the last Easter which he ever spent in England ; but each in turn of the rival candidates for the throne left vacant by his death found Oxford ready to be- come a political as well as a military centre of scarcely less importance than London itself Our great picture of medieval London belongs in all its completeness to a somewhat later date ; it was painted in the closing years of the twelfth century. But, as in the case of so many other things which only come out into full light under Henry H., although the colouring and the details may belong more especially to his time, the main features were already there in the time of his grandfather. The outline of the city was a sort of irregular half-ellipse, fenced in upon the northern or land side by a girdle of massive walls pierced with gates and fortified with lofty towers ; the wall on the south side, being built close upon the river bank, was gradually washed away by the ebb and flow of the tide con- stantly beating upon its foundations. On this side the river itself was an all-sufficient protection. The eastern extremity of the city, where the wall came down towards the water's edge, was guarded by a mighty fortress, founded by King William in the earliest days of his conquest to hold his newly-won capital in check, and always known by the emphatic name of " the Tower." The western end was protected by two lesser fortresses,^ — Castle Baynard and Montfichet, whose sokes filled up the space between the cathedral precincts and the city wall. Another, which must ' "Ad Pascha fait rex apud Oxineford in novi aula." Rob. of Torigni, a. "33- ^ Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Memorials of Becket, vol. iii.), p. 3. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 45 have stood in the same neighbourhood, seems to have been partly destroyed by the fire which ravaged London a few months before the Conqueror's death, and in which the cathedral of S. Paul entirely perished.^ Part of the ditch of this fortress was surrendered by King Henry to make room for a wall with which Bishop Richard was now enclosing his precincts ; ^ while within this enclosure a new church, gorgeous with all the latest developements of Norman archi- tectural skill, was now fast approaching completion.^ S. Paul's was the rallying-point, as it had been the nucleus, of municipal life in London. In time of peace the folkmoot assembled at the eastern end of its churchyard at the summons of its great bell ; in time of war the armed burghers gathered at its west door and beneath its banner, with the lord of Baynard's castle as their standard-bearer.* The internal constitution of London, however, was scarcely a town -constitution of any kind ; it was more like an epitome of the organization of all England. The ordinary system of the parish and the township, the special franchises and juris- dictions of the great individual landowners, of the churches, of the gilds — all these were loosely bundled together under the general headship of the bishop and the port-reeve, to whom King William addressed his one surviving English writ, just as he would have addressed the bishop and sheriff of a county. The writ itself merely confirmed to the citizens " all the law whereof they had been worthy in King Eadward's day";^ but by the end of Henry I.'s reign the Londoners had got far beyond this. By virtue of a royal charter, they had exchanged their regally -appointed port- reeve for a sheriff of their own choice, and this officer served ' Eng. Chron. a. 1087. 2 Dugdale, Hist, of S. Paul's, app. xxiv. (Ellis), p. 305. Stow (London, ed. Thorns, p. 26) says that this fortress "stood, as it may seem, where now standeth the house called Bridewell." But this is impossible ; for the later palace of Bride- well stood on the right bank of the Fleet, separated from S. Paul's by the course of that river and the whole width of the soke of Castle Baynard, so that the gift of the ditch of a castle on its site would have been perfectly useless for the enlarge- ment of the precincts. ' Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. c. 73 (Hamilton, p. 146). * Stow, London (Thorns, p. 121). For the rights and duties of the lord of Castle Baynard, see ib. p. 24. ' Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 82, 83. 46 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. at once for the city and for the shire of Middlesex, which was granted in ferm to the citizens for ever, as the other shires were granted year by year to their respective sheriffs ; they were exempted from all tolls and mercantile dues throughout the realm, and from suit and service to all courts outside their own walls, even the pleas of the crown being intrusted to a special justiciar elected by themselves. Yet there was no complete civic organization; the 'charter con- firmed all the old separate jurisdictions and franchises, the various " sokens " and " customs " of churches, barons and burghers, the wardmoots or assemblies of the different parishes or townships, as well as the busting or folkmoot in which all were gathered together,^ — and left London as it found it, not a compact, symmetrical municipality, but, as it has been truly called, simply " a shire covered with houses." This mass of growing life lay chiefly porth-east of S. Paul's, where a crowd of lesser churches, conventual and parochial, rose out of a network of close-packed streets and alleys thronged with busy craftsmen and noisy, chaffering traders. Through the heart of it flowed the " Wall-brook," on whose bank there lingered, long after the stream itself was buried and built over, a tradition of the barges laden with merchandise which were towed up from the Thames to a landing-place at the eastern end of the Cheap.^ Beyond the Walbrook lay the East-Cheap, almost busier and more crowded still ; while to the north, along the upper course of the Walbrook, was a thriving Jewish quarter.^ Population was spreading, too, beyond the walls. Many of the wealthier citizens dwelt in pleasant suburban houses, surrounded with bright gardens and shady trees.* Some two miles higher up the river, the populous suburb of Westminster clustered round the famous abbey built in honour of S. Peter by the last Old-English king, and the palace of William Rufus, a splendid edifice with a breast-work and bastion stretching 1 Stubbs, Select Charters, p. io8. "- Stow, London (Thorns), p. 97. 3 The only body of Jews who appear in the Pipe Roll of 31 Hen. I are those of London. * Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.) p. 3. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 47 down to the water's edge.'' North-west of the city, just out- side the wall, lay the plain of Smithfield, where a great horse-fair was held every Friday.^ Beyond was an expanse of fruitful tillage-lands and rich pastures, watered by running streams and made merry with the rush of countless water- mills f and this tract was sheltered by a wide belt of wood- land stretching away across the northern part of Middlesex to the foot of the Chiltern Hills. Here the stag and the fallow-deer, the boar and the wild bull, had their coverts, beside a multitude of lesser game ; all of which the citizens were by a special privilege entitled to hunt at their pleasure.* Such quasi-regal sport was doubtless only enjoyed by the greater and wealthier among them ; the mass of the young burghers were content, in the summer evenings when their day's work was done, with a saunter among the shady gardens and fresh springs which enlivened the northern suburbs ; while in winter their favourite resort was a tract of low-lying moor or marsh — the Moorfields of later times — on whose frozen surface they could enjoy to their heart's content the exercises of sliding, sledging and skating.^ Business, pleasure, piety, intellectual culture, all had their places in the vigorous life of the great city. Each of the two great minsters, S. Paul's and S. Peter's, had a school attached to it, and so had the abbey of our Lady at Ber- mondsey, just over the water.® Money-getting did not absorb all the energies of the burghers ; " they were respected and noted above all other citizens for their manners, dress, table and discourse."^ " Moreover, almost all the bishops, abbots and great men of England are, in a manner, citizens and freemen of London ; as they have magnificent houses there, to which they resort, spending large sums of money, whenever they are summoned thither to councils and assem- blies by the king or their metropolitan, or are compelled to go there by their own business."* And between these visitors and the resident citizens there was no hard and fast line of demarcation. Neither the knight-errant's blind contempt for practical industry nor the still blinder contempt of the ^ Will. Fitz-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii.) p. 3. = lb. p. 6. '/». p. 3. «/i5.p. 12. "A p. II. 6 7». p. 4. ''Ibid. ^/b.p.S. 48 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. merely practical man for everything which has not its value in hard cash had as yet come into existence. Under the old English system the merchant who had made three long voyages over sea on his own account was entitled to rank as a thegn, and to take his place among the nobles of the land. Under the Norman system a link between the two classes was supplied by the citizens of Norman origin, to whom London in no small measure owed the marked importance which it attained under Henry I. The Norman knights had no monopoly of the enter- prizing spirit of their race ; the victorious host had scarcely settled down upon the conquered soil when it was followed by a second invasion of a very different character. Merchants, traders, craftsmen of all sorts, came flocking to seek their fortunes in their sovereign's newly-acquired dominions, not by forcible spoliation of the native people, but by fair traffic and honest labour in their midst. The fusion of races in this class, the class of which the town population chiefly consisted, began almost from the first years of the conquest. The process was very likely more helped than hindered by the grinding tyranny which united all the Red King's victims in a community of suffering ; but its great working-out was in the reign of Henry I. His re- storation of law and order, his administrative and judicial reforms, gave scope for a great outburst of industrial and commercial energy. England under him had her heavy burthens and her cruel grievances ; they stand out plainly enough in the complaints of her native chronicler. But to men who lived amidst the endless strife of the French kingdom or the Flemish border-land, or of the Norman duchy under the nominal government of Robert Curthose, a country where " no man durst misdo with other," and where the sovereign " made peace for man and deer,"^ may well have looked like a sort of earthly paradise. It is no wonder that peaceable citizens who only wanted to be quiet and get an honest living came across the sea to find shelter and security in the rich and prosperous island. For settlers of this kind it was easy enough to make a home. No gulf of ^ Eng. Chron. a. 1 135. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 49 hatred and suspicion, no ever-present sense of wrong suifered and wrong done, stood iixed between them, and their English fellow-burghers. Even before the Conqueror's reign had closed, English and Normans were living con- tentedly side by side in all the chief cities of England : sometimes, as we have noticed in the case of Norwich, the new-comers dwelt apart in a suburb or quarter of their own, but the distinction was one of locality only ; the intercourse was perfectly free and perfectly amicable ; Norman refine- ment, Norman taste, Norman fashions, especially in dress, made their way rapidly among the English burghers ; and intermarriages soon became frequent.^ In the great cities, where the sight of foreign traders was nothing new or strange, and the barriers of prejudice and ignorance of each other's languages had been worn away by years of commercial intercourse, the fusion was naturally more easy ; in London, whither the " men of Rouen " had come in their " great ships," with their cargoes of wine or sturgeons,^ long before their countrymen came with bow and spear and sword, it was easiest of all. The great commercial centre to which the Norman merchants had long been attracted as visitors attracted them as settlers now that it had become the capital of their own sovereign ; and the attraction grew still stronger during the unquiet times in Normandy which followed the Conqueror's death. " Many natives of the chief Norman cities, Rouen and Caen, removed to London, and chose them out a dwelling there, because it was a fitter place for their trade, and better stored with the goods in which they were wont to deal." ^ That the influence of these Norman burghers was domi- nant in the city there can be little doubt ; but they seem to have won their predominance by fair means and to have used it fairly. If they, as individuals, prospered in the English capital, they contributed their full share to its corp- orate prosperity, and indirectly to that of the nation at large. They brought a great deal more than mere wealth ; > Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 520. 2 De Institutis Lundonia, Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 127 (folio ed.). 3 Vita S. Thomce, Anon. II. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.) p. 81. VOL. I. E 50 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. they brought enterprize, vigour, refinement, culture, social as well as political progress. In their pleasant, cheerful, well-ordered dwellings many a noble knight or baron may have been glad to accept a hospitality such as his own stately but comfortless and desolate castle could never afford ; many a learned and dignified ecclesiastic may have enjoyed a refinement of society such as he could rarely hope to meet among the rough and reckless swordsmen with whom the ranks of the high-born laity were filled. We are not dependent on mere general statements ; we can do as did these barons and prelates them- selves ; we can go with them to visit the home of a typical London citizen of the early twelfth century. In the heart of the busiest trading quarter, on the spot where Mercer's Hall now stands in Cheapside, under the shadow of S. Mary Colechurch, and well within sound of the bells of the more famous S. Mary-at-Bow, was the house of Gilbert Becket and Rohesia his wife. When their son, grown to manhood and high in office, was asked of his origin and extraction, he answered simply that his parents were citizens of London, dwelling blameless and respected among their fellow- burghers.-' Had not the inquisitive zeal of his biographers led them to search more closely into his pedigree, we might never have known that his father and mother were foreigners — Gilbert, born at Rouen, of a respectable burgher family ; Rohesia, sprung from the same rank of life at Caen.^ Gilbert once filled the office of port-reeve of London,^ bore a high character for intelligence, industry and upright dealing. Rohesia was the pattern of wives and mothers. Her domestic affections and her wider Christian sympathies, her motherly love and her charity to the needy, are seen exqui- sitely blended together in her habit of weighing her little son at stated intervals against money, clothes and food which she gave to the poor, trusting thereby to bring a ^ S. Thomcs Ep. cxxiv. (Robertson, Becket, vol. v. p. 515). ^ Anon. II. Vita S. Tkomce (ib. vol. Iv.), p. 81. ^ Will. Fitz-Steph. {ib. vol iii. p. 14) calls him mcecomes, which in relation to London at this period can only mean port-reeve ; and a constant tradition of later days pointed to the father of S. Thomas as the most venerated predecessor of the mayor. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 51 blessing on the child.^ As soon as he was old enough, he was sent to school at Merton Priory in Surrey,^ where his father seems to have been treated as a friend by the prior ; and when the boy came home for his holidays, it was to spend them in riding and hawking with Richer de L'Aigle, a young knight sprung from one of the noblest families of Normandy, and a constant visitor and intimate friend of the little household in Cheapside.^ It is plain from the simple, matter-of-fact way in which that household is described that it in nowise differed from the generality of burgher-house- holds around it. Its head was wealthy, but not to such a degree as to excite special notice or envy ; he and his wife lived in comfort and affluence, but only such as befitted their station ; they seem to have been in no way distinguished from the bulk of respectable, well-to-do, middle-class citizens of their day. The one peculiarity of their home was the cir- cumstance to which we owe our knowledge of its character and its history : — that in it had been born a child who was to begin his career as Thomas of London the burgher's son, and to end it as Thomas of Canterbury, archbishop, saint and martyr. The Norman settlers were not the only new element in the population of the English towns. Flanders, the border- land of Normandy, France and the Empire, the immediate neighbour of the Norman dukes, the ally of the English kings, had been for ages associated with the destinies of England. The relation between the two countries was primarily a political one ; but kindred blood, kindred speech and kindred temper drew Fleming and Englishman together in the bonds of a natural sympathy which grew with the growth of both nations. The merchants of Bruges were even more familiar visitors in London than those of Rouen and Caen. The trade with Flanders was the most im- portant part of the trade of eastern England. Not only was the estuary of the Scheld a high-way of communication with ^ Anon. I. Vita S. Thoma (Robertson, Becket, vol. iv.), p. 7. " Will. Fitz-Steph. (ib. vol. iii.), p. 14. ' E. Grim (ib. vol. ii.), p. 359. Anon. I. [ib. vol. iv.), p. 6. Gamier, Vie de S. Thomas (Hippeau), p. 3. 52 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the more distant regions of central Europe, but Flanders herself was the head-quarters of a flourishing industry for which the raw material was in great part furnished by Eng- land. The cloth which all Europe flocked to buy at the great yearly fairs of Bruges and Ghent was made chiefly from the wool of English sheep. Dover was the chief mart for this export ; in the itinerary of the canons of Laon we see Flemish merchants dispersing to buy wool all over the country and bringing it up to Dover in great bales, which were deposited in a warehouse built for that special purpose till they could be shipped over sea.^ As yet the Flemings had almost a monopoly of this weaving trade, although the appearance of weavers' gilds at Huntingdon, Lincoln, Oxford and London may show that Englishmen were already beginning to emulate their example ; it may, on the other hand, point to a Flemish element in the population of these towns. In the time of William the Conqueror some fellow-countrymen of his Flemish queen had come not merely to traffic but to dwell in England ; in the time of Henry I. they seem to have become numerous and prosperous enough to excite the jealousy of both Nor- mans and English. It may have been partly to allay this jealousy, but it was surely, nevertheless, a marked testimony to their character as active and trustworthy members of the state, that in 1 1 1 1 Henry, casting about for a means of holding in check the turbulent Welsh whose restlessness was the one remaining element of disturbance in his realm, planted a colony of these Flemings in the extremity of South Wales, the southern part of our Pembrokeshire.^ The experiment was a daring one ; cut off" as they were from all direct communication with England, there must have seemed little chance that these colonists could hold their own against the Welsh. The success of the experiment is matter not of history but of present fact ; South Pem- brokeshire remains to this day a Teutonic land, a "little England beyond Wales." But the true significance of the 1 Herman. Mon., 1. ii. c. s (D'Achery, Cuib. Noviog. 0pp., p. 536). 2 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 401 (Hardy, p. 628). Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 64. ; Ann. Camb. a. 1 107; Brut y Tywysogion, a. 1105. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 53 Flemish settlements under Henry I. is for England rather than for Wales. They are the first links of a social and industrial, as distinguished from a merely political, connexion between England and the Low Countries, which in later days was to exercise an important influence on the life of both peoples. They are the forerunners of two greater settlements — one under Edward III. and one under Eliza- beth — which were to work a revolution in English industry. A third class of foreign settlers stood in a totally dif- ferent position from both the Fleming and the Norman. These were the Jews. Their first appearance in England is said to have been due to the Conqueror, who brought over a Jewish colony from Rouen to London.^ They were special favourites of William Rufus ; under Henry they play a less conspicuous part ; but in the next reign we find them at Lincoln, Oxford, and elsewhere, and there can be no doubt that they were already established in most of the chief English towns. They formed, however, no part of the townsfolk. The Jew was not a member of the state ; he was the king's chattel, not to be meddled with, for good or for evil, save at the king's own bidding. Exempt from toll and tax and from the fines of justice, he had the means of accumulating a hoard of wealth which might indeed be seized at any moment by an arbitrary act of the king, but which the king's protection guarded with jealous care against all other interference. The capacity in which the Jew usually appears is that of a money-lender — an occupation in which the scruples of the Church forbade Christians to en- gage, lest they should be contaminated with the sin of usury. Fettered by no such scruples, the Hebrew money-lenders drove a thriving trade ; and their loans doubtless contributed to the material benefit of the country, by furnishing means for a greater extension of commercial enterprize than would have been -possible without such aid. But, except in this indirect way, their presence contributed nothing to the political developement of the towns ; and in their social developement the Jewry, a distinct quarter exempt from the jurisdiction of merchant-gild or port-reeve as well as from 1 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iv. c. 317 (Hardy, p. $00, note). 54 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. that of sheriff or bishop, shut off by impassable barriers from the Christian community around it, had no part at all. Outside this little separate world of the Jewry the general manner of life was much the same in all ranks of society. The domestic arrangements of the castle or manor- house differed little from those of the citizen's dwelling. In both the accommodation usually consisted merely of a hall, a "solar" or upper chamber raised on a substructure of cellars, and a kitchen with its appendant offices.^ The hall was the general living, eating, and sleeping-apartment for the whole household. Its floor was of wood, strewn with hay or rushes ;^ a fire blazed upon a great stone hearth in its centre, or in a wide recess at one end ; and round the fire were ranged in due order the tables and benches at which the family, guests and servants all assembled for meals. In the higher ranks of society the king's friend Count Robert of Meulan had set a fashion of taking but one daily repast — the mid-day dinner — and those who wished to ape courtly manners followed his example ; the practice, however, found little favour with the mass of the people, who attributed it to aristocratic stinginess, and pre- ferred their four meals a day according to ancient English custom.^ It was in the hall that noble or merchant trans- acted his business or conversed with his friends ; and it was in the hall too that at nightfall, when the tables were cleared and the wooden shutters which closed the unglazed windows safely barred,* guests and servants, divided at most by a curtain drawn across the room, lay down to sleep in the glow of the dying fire.** The solar was used at once as bed- room and private sitting-room by the master and mistress of the house ;^ a curtainless bed and an oaken chest,' serving as a wardrobe and fastened with lock and hinges often of elabor- ate ironwork,^ made up its ordinary furniture ; in the story of S. Thomas we catch a glimpse, too, of the cradle in which a burgher-mother rocked her baby to sleep, wrapped in a ^ Turner, Domestic Architecture, vol. i. pp. 2, 5. 2 il_ p. ig. 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 407 (Hardy, p. 636). ^ Turner, Domestic Architecture, vol. i. p. 13. = lb. pp. 2, 15. 6 xb. p. S. J lb. p. 16. 8 lb. p. 10. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 55 dainty silken coverlet.'- The whole house, whether in town or country, was commonly of wood.^ With open hearths and chimneys ill-constructed, or more probably altogether lacking, the natural Consequence was that fires in towns were of constant occurrence and disastrous extent ; Gilbert Becket's house was burnt over his head several times, and in each case a large part of London shared in the destruc- tion.^ But the buildings thus easily destroyed were as easily replaced ; while the cost of a stone house was beyond the means of any but the great nobles, unless it were here and there some exceptionally wealthy Jew ; and there was no other building material to be had except wood or rubble, for the nearest approach to a brick which had yet come into general use was a tile ;* and although these were sometimes used for roofing, the majority of houses, even in great cities like London, were covered with thatch.^ All the architect- ural energy of the time spent itself in two channels — military and ecclesiastical ; and even the castle was as yet a very simple edifice. The various buildings which occupied its outer ward were mere huts of wood or rubble ; and the stone wall of the keep itself, though of enormous thickness and solidity, was often nothing more than a shell, the space inside it being divided by wooden partitions into rooms covered with lean-to roofs of thatch. Even where the keep was entirely of stone, all thought of accommodation or ele- gance was completely subordinated to the one simple, all- important purpose of defence. It is this stern simplicity which gives to the remains of our early castles a grandeur of their own, and strikes the imagination far more impressively than the elaborate fortifications of later times. But it left no scope to the finer fancies of the architect. His feeling for artistic decoration, his love of beauty, of harmonious light and shade, had free play only in his work for the Church ; while the more general taste for personal luxury and elegance had to find expression chiefly in minor matters, ^ Ed. Grim (Robertson, Becket, vol. ii.), p. 357. Anon. I. {ib. vol. iv.), p. 4. ^ Turner, Domestic Architecture, pp. 8, 17, 18. ' According to Will. Fitr-Steph. (Robertson, Becket, vol. iii. p. 8), fires and drunkenness were the two plagues of London. * Turner, Domestic Architecture, p. xxvii. (introduction). " lb. p. 18. 56 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. and especially in dress. During the last reign the extrava- gance of attire among the 'nobles had been carried to a pitch which called forth the energetic remonstrances of seri- ous men ; prelate after prelate thundered against the un- seemly fashions — the long hair curled and scented like a woman's, the feminine ornaments, the long pointed shoes and loose flowing garments which rendered all manly exer- cises impossible.^ After the Red King's death a reforming party, headed by the new sovereign and his friend Robert of Meulan,^ succeeded in effecting a return to the more rational attire of the ordinary Norman knighthood ; a close- fitting tunic with a long cloak, reaching almost to the feet, thrown over it for riding or walking.' The English towns- folk, then as now, endeavoured to copy the dress of their neighbours from beyond the Channel. Among the rural population, however, foreign fashions were slow to pene- trate ; and the English countryman went on tilling his fields clad in the linen smock-frock which had once been the ordinary costume of all classes of men among his forefathers, and which has scarcely yet gone out of use among his descendants. The life of the English country folk had changed since the first days of the Norman settlement almost as little as their dress. The final transformation, now everywhere com- plete, of the ancient township into the feudal manor was but the last step in a process which had begun at least as far back as the time of Eadgar. The castle or manor-house of the baron or lord, into which the thegn's hall had now developed, was the centre of rural life. Around it lay the home-farm, the lord's demesne land, cultivated partly by free tenants, partly by the customary labour due from the villeins whose cottages clustered on its border, and whose holdings, with a tract of common pasture and common woodland, made up the remainder of the estate. In the 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. ScripiL), p. 8i6. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iv. c. 314 (Hardy, p. 498). 2 Will. Malm, as above, and 1. v. t. 407 (p. 636). ' We see this long cloak in a story of Robert of Belleme (Hen. Hunt. De Con- teniptu Mundi, ed. Arnold, p. 310), and in that of Henry "Curt-Mantel" (Gir. Cambr. De Instr. Princ., dist. iii. v,. 28., ed. Angl. Christ. Soc, p. 157). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 57 portion thus held in- villenage, the arable land was distri- buted in large open fields in strips of an acre or half an acre in extent, each man holding a certain number of strips scattered one in one field and one in another ; while in pro- portion to the total amount of land which he thus held he contributed one ox or more to the team that drew the heavy- plough wherewith each whole field was ploughed in common. On the estates of the great abbey of Peterborough the hold- ings were mostly of virgates or half-virgates — that is, land to the extent of some thirty or fifteen acres, and furnishing in the former case two oxen, in the latter one ox, to the common plough team, which usually consisted of four ; those belonging to the demesne were usually of six or eight. Each tenant had, besides his land, a right to his share of the common pasture and the common hay-meadow, as well as of the common woodland where he fed his pigs on the oak-mast, and cut turf and brushwood for fuel and other household uses. Some of the lesser tenants had no land, but were merely " cottiers," occupying their little cottage with or without a garden. Whatever the extent and character of their holding, they held it in consideration of certain services due to the lord, discharged partly by labour upon his demesne land, partly by customary payments in money or in kind, partly in work for specified purposes on particular occasions, known as "boon" or " bene-work." ^ The superintendence of all these matters was in the hands of the reeve or bailiff of the manor, who was charged with the regulation of its labour, the maintenance of its farming- stock, the ingathering of its dues, the letting of its un- occupied land, and the general account of its revenues. Under his orders every villein was bound to do a certain amount of " week-work " — to plough, sow, or reap, or other- wise labour on the demesne land a certain number of days every week ; generally the obligation, on every virgate held in villenage, was for two or three days a week throughout the year, sometimes with an extra day at harvest-tide. The customary dues and services varied with the special custom of each manor ; they consisted partly of payments either in 1 " Praecaria " or " praecationes. " 58 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. kind or money, or both, and partly of services such as hewing, carting, and drying wood, cutting turf, making thatch, making malt, mowing and carrying hay, putting up fences, providing ploughs and labour for a specified length of time at particular seasons, ploughing, sowing, harrowing and reaping a given extent of the demesne land. Some of the rents were paid by the discharge of a special duty ; the cowherds, oxherds, shepherds, swineherds, usually held a piece of land "by their service," that is, in consideration of their charge over the flocks and herds of the lord ; some- times we find a further labour-rent paid by their wives, who winnow and reap so much corn on the demesne.^ Many of the cotters doubtless held their little dwellings on a similar tenure, by virtue of their offices as the indispensable craftsmen of the village community, such as the black- smith, the carpenter, or the wheelwright. The mill, too, an important institution on every large manor, paid a fixed money rent, and sometimes a tribute of fish from the mill- stream.^ We may draw some illustrations of the life of these rural communities from the " Black Book " of Peterborough, in which the manors belonging to the abbey were described about the year 1 125. On the manor of Thorp there were twelve " full villeins " holding eleven acres each, and working on the demesne three days a week ; there were also six half villeins who did the like in proportion to their holdings. All these paid of custom ten shillings annually, besides five sheep for eating, ten ells of linen cloth, ten porringers, and two hundred loaves for the love-feast of S. Peter ; moreover they all ploughed sixteen acres and a half for their lord. Six bordarii paid seven shillings a year ; and they all rendered twenty-two bushels of oats for their share of the dead wood, twenty-two loaves, sixty-four hens, and one hundred and sixty eggs.^ At Colingham twenty villeins worked each one day a week, and three boon-days in 1 Liber Niger (App. to Chron. Petroburgense, ed. Stapleton, Camden Soc), pp. 158, 163, 164, 165. 2 Liber Niger Peirob. (Stapleton), p. 158, "i molendinus cum i virga teme reddit xl solidos et cc anguillas." ' Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), pp. 158, 159. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 59 August ; they brought sixty waggon-loads of wood to the manor-house, dug and carried twenty loads of turf and twenty of thatch, harrowed all the winter-ploughing, and paid annually four pounds in money. There were also fifty sokemen who paid twelve pounds a year, ploughed, harrowed and reaped eighteen acres, besides ploughing with their own ploughs three times in Lent ; each of them worked three days in August, and served of custom six times a year in driving the deer for the abbot's hunting.^ At Easton twenty-one villeins holding a virgate each worked twice a week throughout the year and three boon-days in August ; they had twelve ploughs with which they worked once in winter and once in spring, and then harrowed ; they ploughed fifteen acres and three roods, whereof five acres and one rood were to be sown with their own seed ; in spring they had to plough ten acres and a half and sow twenty and a half with their own seed ; in summer, for fifteen days, they had to do whatsoever the lord commanded. They also made seventy-three bushels of malt from the lord's barley ; and they paid seventeen shilUngs and sixpence a year. A man named Toll held one virgate at a rent of five shillings a year ; and eleven sokemen held thirteen virgates and a half by a payment of twelve shillings, two days' work in summer and winter, and fifteen days in summer at the lord's bidding. The miller, with a holding of six acres of arable land and two of meadow, rendered one mark of silver to the lord.^ Fisherton, again, supplies illustrations of a great variety of services. On this manor there were twenty-six " full villeins," twelve " half villeins," one "cotsetus" and three "bordarii." The full villeins worked two days a week, the half villeins one day, throughout the year ; the four cottagers worked one day a week in August, their food being supplied by the lord. The villeins had among them nine ploughs, which were all brought into requisition once in winter and three times in spring. The full villeins carted a load of wood, the half villeins in proportion ; the full villeins moreover ploughed and harrowed of custom an acre in spring, and half an acre 1 Liber Niger Peirob. (Stapleton), p. 159. ^ lb. pp. 159, 160. 6o ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. in winter ; they also lent their ploughs once in summer for fallowing. At Pentecost the lord received one penny for every villein plough-ox. Each full villein paid twopence at Martinmas and thirty-two pence on the four quarter-days ; the half villeins paid half the sum. Every one of them gave a hen at Christmas. The mill brought three shillings a year, the fishing five shillings. Land enough for twelve full villeins lay unoccupied ; the reeve had to discharge its dues out of his own purse, and hire it out at the best rent he could get There were twenty sokemen, holding three ploughlands, and lending their ploughs once in winter, twice in spring, and once for fallowing ; each of them reaped one acre, and did two days bene-work in August ; at hay- harvest they gave of custom three days' work, one for mowing, one for turning the hay, and one for carrying it ; each gave a hen at Christmas, and they all paid four pounds a quarter. On the demesne were three ploughs, each with a team of eight oxen ; these were under the care of five ox-herds, who held five acres each, and whose wives reaped one day a week in August, the lord supplying their food.^ At Oundle we get a glimpse not only of the rural township, but of the little dependent town growing up on it. " In Oundle are four hides paying geld to the king. Of these hides, twenty-five men hold twenty virgates, and pay of custom twenty shillings a year, forty hens, and two hundred eggs. The men of the township have nine ploughs ; from Michaelmas to Martinmas they find ploughs for the lord's use once a week, and from Martinmas to Easter once a fortnight, and ten acres fallow. Each virgate owes three days' work a week. There are ten bordarii, who work one day a week ; and fifteen burghers, who pay thirty shillings. The market of the township renders four pounds and three shillings. A mill with one virgate renders forty shillings and two hundred eels. The abbot holds the wood in his own hand. The men of the township, with six herdsmen, pay five shillings a year poll-tax. The church of this township belongs to the altar of the abbey of Borough."^ Services such as these were doubtless an irksome and a ■^ Liber Niger Petrob. (Stapleton), p. 164. ^ Ih. p. 158. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 6i heavy burthen ; to modern ideas of independence, the life of the rural population was the degraded life of serfdom. But there was another side to the system. The lord had his duties as well as the villein ; the villein had his rights as well as the lord. When their work for the lord was done and their customary dues were paid, the villagers were free to make their own arrangements one with another for the yoking of their oxen to the common ploughs and the tillage of the common fields ; and the rest of their time and pro- duce of their labour was theirs to do with as they would, subject merely to such restrictions as to grinding at the lord's mill, or obtaining his license for the sale of cattle, as were necessary for maintaining the integrity of the estate. While they owed suit and service to their lord, he was bound by his own interest as well as by law and duty to guard them against external interference, oppression, or injury ; the extent of his rights over them, no less than of their duties to him, was defined by a strict and minute code of custom to which long prescription gave all and more than all the force of law, and law itself could occasionally step in to avenge the wronged villein even upon his lord ; Alfred of Cheafifword is recorded in the Pipe Roll as having paid a fine of forty shillings for scourging a rustic of his own.^ The villein's life was not harder than that of the poor free man ; it was quite as secure from wrong, and far more secure from want. The majority of the cultivators were indeed tied to their land ; but their land was equally tied to them ; the lord was bound to furnish each little bundle of acre-strips with its proper outfit of plough-oxen, to pro- vide each tenant with his little cottage, and to see that the heritage passed on to the next generation, just as the manor itself, and with it the tenants and their services, passed from father to son in the case of a lay proprietor, or from one generation of monks to another in a case like that of Peterborough. Even if a villein failed in his dues, the worst punishment that could befall him was the seizure of his little household goods ; eviction was out of the question. The serfdom of the villein was after all only the lowest 1 Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter), p. 55. 62 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. link in a chain of feudal interdependence which ended only with the king himself If the "rustics" possessed their homesteads only on condition of work done at the lord's bidding and for his benefit, the knight held his " fee " and the baron his "honour" only on condition of a service to the king, less laborious indeed, but more dangerous, and in reality not a whit more morally elevating. If they had to ask their lord's leave for giving a daughter in marriage, the first baron of the realm had to ask a like permission of the king, and to pay for it too. If their persons and their services could be transferred by the lord to another owner together with the soil which they tilled, the same principle really applied to every grade of feudal society ; Count William of Evreux only stated a simple fact in grotesque language when he complained that his homage and his services had been made over together with the overlordship of his county by Robert Curthose to Henry I., with no more regard to his own will than if he had been a horse or an ox.^ The mere gift of personal freedom, when it meant the uprooting of all local and social ties and the withdrawal of all accustomed means of sustenance, would have been in itself but a doubtful boon. There were, however, at least three ways in which freedom might be attained. Sometimes the lord on his death-bed, or in penance for some great sin, would be moved by the Church's influence to enfranchise some of his serfs. Sometimes a rustic might flee to one of the chartered towns, and if for the space of a year and a day he could find shelter under its protecting customs from the pursuit of his lord's justice, he was thence- forth a free burgher. And there was a greater city of refuge whose protection was readier and surer still. The Church had but to lay her consecrating hands upon a man, and he was free at once. To ordain a villein or admit him as a monk without his lord's consent was indeed forbidden ; but the consecration once bestowed was valid nevertheless ; and the storm of indignation which met the endeavour of Henry II. to enforce the prohibition shows that it had long been almost a dead letter. ^ Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 814. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 63 If the spiritual life of the English Church in the time of Henry I. were to be judged solely from her highest official representatives, it would certainly appear to have been at a low ebb. S. Anselm had lived just long enough to accom- plish the settlement of the investitures, but not to direct its working or experience its results. On his death early in 1 109 Henry so far fell back into his brother's evil ways as to keep the metropolitan see vacant for five years. The supreme direction of affairs in the Church as well as in the state was thus left in the hands of the party represented by Roger of Salisbury. Roger's policy and that of his master was indeed less flagrantly insulting to religion than that of Rufus and Flambard ; but it was hardly less injurious in a moral and spiritual point of view. The most important sees were no longer farmed by Jewish usurers for the king's benefit ; the most sacred offices of the Church were no longer openly sold to the highest bidder ; but they were made appendages to the great offices of the state ; the Church herself was practically turned into a mere handmaid of the state, and her ministers into tools for the purposes of secular government. The system had undoubted advantages in a worldly point of view. A great deal of the most im- portant political and administrative work was of a nature which, in the condition of society then existing, required the services of a clerk rather than of a layman ; moreover, a man in holy orders, incapable of founding a family, and standing, so to say, alone in the world, was less exposed to the temptations and corruptions of place and power than a layman surrounded with personal and social ties and open to all sorts of personal and social ambitions, and could thus be safely intrusted with a freedom of action and authority such as in the hands of a lay baron with territorial and family influence might have led to the most dangerous results. On these and similar grounds Henry made a practice of choosing his chief ministers from the ranks of the clergy, and bestowing vacant bishoprics upon them, by way either of rewarding their past labours or of insuring a continuance of their zeal and devotion in the discharge of their temporal functions. Thereby he undoubtedly secured to 64 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the state the services of a more able, vigorous and honest set of administrators than could have been obtained by any- other means ; but from another side the system lay open to grave objection. The men whom it set over the dioceses of England vi^ere, beyond all question, men of very superior intelligence and energy, and, on the whole, of fair moral character, men whom it would be most unjust to compare for a moment with the hirelings who bought their sees of William Rufus. But they were essentially of the world, worldly ; their minds and their hearts were both alike iixed on their thoroughly well fulfilled duties as treasurer or justiciar, not on their too often neglected duties as bishop of Ely or Salisbury. And as were the bishops, so were the priests. When once it became clear that the main road to ecclesiastical preferment lay through the temporal service of the crown, the whole body of secular clergy turned into a nursery of statesmen, and while they rose to their highest point of worldly importance the little spiritual influence which they still retained passed altogether away. But the Church's life was not in her bishops and her priests ; it was in her humble, faithful laity. Down below the dull utilitarianism, the " faithless coldness of the times," the finer sympathies and higher instincts of the soul lay buried but not dead ; ready to spring to the surface with a burst of enthusiasm at the touch first of the Austin canons, and then of the monks of Citeaux. Of the two religious movements which at this time stirred the depths of English society, the earlier, that of the Austin canons, was in its origin not monastic but secular. It arose, in fact, out of a protest against monasticism. About the middle of the eleventh century an attempt had been made to redress the balance between the regular and secular clergy, and restore to the latter the influence and consideration in spiritual matters which they had, partly by their own fault, already to a great extent lost. Some earnest and thoughtful spirits, distressed at once by the abuse of monastic privileges and by the general decay of ecclesiastical order, sought to effect a reform by the establish- ment of a stricter and better organized discipline in those I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 65 cathedral and other churches which were served by colleges of secular priests. For this end a rule composed in the eighth century by Archbishop Chrodegang of Metz for the members of his own chapter, and generally followed in the collegiate churches of Gaul, was the model adopted by cathedral reformers in England in the reigns of Eadward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. Bishops Gisa of Wells and Leofric of Exeter under the former king, Arch- bishop Thomas of York under the latter, severally attempted to enforce it upon their canons, but without success. The English clergy were accustomed to the full enjoyment not only of their separate property but of their separate houses ; many were even yet, in spite of Pope Gregory, married men and fathers of families ; and the new rule, which required them to break up their homes and submit to community of table and dwelling, was naturally resented as an attempt to curtail their liberty and bring them under monastic restraint. Lanfranc soon found that the only way to get rid of the old lax system was to get rid of the canons altogether ; accord- ingly, from some few cathedrals the secular clerks were once again, as in Eadgar's days, driven out and replaced by monks, this time to return no more till the great seculariza- tion in the sixteenth century. But in the greater number of churches the canons were influential enough to resist expul- sion as well as reform, and to maintain the old fashion with its merits and its abuses, its good and evil sides, all alike undisturbed and unrestrained. On the Continent, too, the rule of Chrodegang proved unequal to the needs of the time. Those who had the attainment of its object really at heart ended by taking a lesson from their rivals and challeng- ing the monks with their own weapons. Towards the beginning of the twelfth century the attempts at canonical reform issued in the foundation of what was virtually a new religious order, that of the Augustinians or Canons Regular of the order of S. Augustine. Like the monks and unlike the secular canons, from whom they were carefully distin- guished, they had not only their table and dwelling but all things in common, and were bound by a vow to the observ- ance of their rule, grounded upon a passage in one of the VOL. I. F 66 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. letters of that great father of the Latin Church from whom they took their name.^ Their scheme was a compromise between the old-fashioned system of canons and that of the monastic confraternities ; but a compromise leaning strongly towards the monastic side, tending more and more towards it with every fresh developement, and distinguished from it chiefly by a certain simplicity and elasticity of organization which gave scope for an almost unlimited variety in the adjustment of the relations between the active and the con- templative life of the members of the order, thus enabling it to adapt itself to the most dissimilar temperaments and to the most diverse spheres of religious activity. The Austin canons, as they were commonly called, made their way across the Channel at the beginning of Henry's reign. The circumstances of their earliest settle- ment illustrate the intimate connexion between the religious and the national revival in England. Their first priory was founded in 1108 by the English queen Matilda — "Maude the good queen," as they gratefully called her — in the soke of Aldgate, just within the eastern wall of London. Part of its endowment was furnished by the estates of an old English cnihtengild whose members surrendered their property for the benefit of the new community. The house was dedi- cated to the Holy Trinity ; its first prior, Norman by name, was a native of Kent who had studied in Gaul under S. Anselm ; through Anselm he was enabled to bring the Augustinian order under the notice of Matilda, whose con- fessor he afterwards became. How he lavished all his funds on the furnishing of his church and the stocking of his library ; how the starving brotherhood set out a row of empty plates in the refectory to attract the sympathy of the citizens who were taking their Sunday stroll round the suburb and peeping curiously in at the windows of the new building; how the pitying burgher-wives vowed each to bring a loaf every Sunday ; and how the plates in the refec- 1 On Austin canons see Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. (Eng. trans, ed. Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 47 ; on canons in general, ib. vol. i. pp. 494, 495, 538 . Stubbs, pref. to Tract, de Inv. S. Crucis ; and Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. ii. pp. 84, 85, 452, 453, and vol. iv. p. 374. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 67 tory were never empty again' — is a story which need not be repeated in detail. Some fifteen years later Rahere the king's minstrel threw up his post at court to become the head of an Austin priory which he built on a plot of waste marshy ground along the eastern border of Smithfield. He dedicated his establishment to S. Bartholomew and attached to it an hospital for the relief of the sick and needy. Every day — so tradition told — Alfhun, the master of the hospital, went about the city as the Little Sisters of the Poor do to this day, begging in the shops and markets for help towards the support of the sick folk under his care. Most likely he was himself a London citizen ; his name is enough to prove him of genuine English birth.^ Another famous Augustinian house was that of Merton in Surrey. There the brotherhood devoted themselves to educational work. Their most illus- trious scholar — born in the very year in which their house was founded, 1 1 1 7 — is known to us already as Thomas the son of Gilbert Becket. At the other end of England, Walter Lespec, the noblest character among the lay barons of the time, found comfort for the loss of an only son in "making Christ his heir" — devoting to God's service the heritage which had been destined for his boy, and founding the priory of Kirkham in Yorkshire on the spot where the lad had expired.^ Before the close of Henry's reign the Austin canons had acquired such importance that two of their order were raised to the episcopate, one even to the primacy of all Britain. After five years of vacancy the metropolitan chair of Canterbury was still too vividly haunted by memories of S. Anselm for Henry and Roger to venture on trying to fill it from the ranks of the latter's party ; they ' The history of H. Trinity, Aldgate, is printed in the appendix to Hearne's edition ofWilliam of Newburgh, vol. iii. pp. 688-709. ' The story of S. Bartholomew's and its founder comes from "Liber fundaci- onis ecclesiae S. Bartholomjei Londoniarum," a MS. of Henry II. 's time, part of which is printed in Dugdale's Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 292-295. The remainder is as yet unprinted ; but Dr. Norman Moore has published in the 5'. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, vol. xxi. pp. xxxix.-cix., a translation made about A.D. 1400 ; the 22d chapter of this (pp. Ixix., Ixx.) contains the account of Alfhun. ^ The stories of all these Austin priories are in Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pts. i. and ii. Merton is in pt. i. pp. 245-247 ; Kirkham, ib. pp. 207-209. 68 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. gave it to Anselm's old friend and suffragan, Ralf, bishop of Rochester.'^ But when Ralf, who at the time of his election was already an aged man, died in 1122, the seculars, headed by Roger of Salisbury, made a successful effort to secure a non-monastic primate. Not daring, however, to go the full length of appointing one of themselves, they took a middle course and chose a canon regular, William of Corbeil, prior of S. Osyth's at Chiche in Essex.^ The strict monastic party counted the new sort of canons very little better than the" old ones. William himself, however, was a perfectly blameless churchman, whose worst fault was a constitutional timidity and shrinking from political responsibilities which made him powerless to stem the tide of worldliness among his suifragans, though he at least kept the metropolitan chair itself safe from contaminating influences. The case of the other Augustinian prelate is a specially interesting one. Henry, who so irritated both his English and Norman sub- jects by his general preference for foreign churchmen, had nevertheless chosen for his own spiritual adviser a priest whose name, Eadwulf, shows him to have been of English origin, and who was prior of an Augustinian house at Nostell in Yorkshire. The king's last act before he left England in 1133, never to return, was to promote his con- fessor to a bishopric. Twenty-three years before, following out a cherished plan of S. Anselm's, he had caused the over- worked bishop of Lincoln to be relieved of part of his enor- mous diocese by the establishment of a new see with the great abbey of Ely for its cathedral and the monks for its chapter.' He now lightened the cares of the archbishop of 1 Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 221-223 ; Will. Malm., Gesta Poniif., 1. i. c. 67 (Hamilton, p. 126). The king wanted to appoint Faricius, abbot of Abingdon ; his choice was opposed by the seculars, who wanted one of their own party. This the monks of Christ Church resisted, but, as Faricius was obnoxious because he was an ItaUan, they finally all agreed upon Ralf, and the king confirmed their choice. ~ Eng. Chron. a. 1 123; Flor.'jWorc. Contin. (Thoq^e), vol. ii. p. 77; Gerv. Cant., Actus Pontif. (Stubbs, vol. ii.), p. 380. On S. Osyth's see Will. Malm., Gesta Pontif., 1. ii, 1,. 731 (Hamilton, p. 146). 2 Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 195, 211 ; Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 60; Will. Malm., Gesta Reg., I. v. c. 445 (Hardy, p. 680) ; Gesta Pontif., 1. iv. c. 185 (Hamilton, p. 325). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 69 York in like manner by giving him a new suffragan whose see was fixed at Carlisle. Eadwulf was appointed bishop ; naturally enough he constituted his chapter on the principles of his own order ; and Carlisle, the last English bishopric founded before the Reformation, was also the only one whose cathedral church was served by canons regular of the order of S. Augustine.^ Meanwhile a mightier influence than theirs was regene- rating all the Churches of the West — our own among the number. Its root was in a Burgundian wilderness ; but the seed from which it sprang was of English birth. Harding was an Englishman who spent his boyhood in the monastery of Sherborne in Dorset, till he was seized with a passion for wandering and for study which led him first to Scotland, then to Gaul, and at last to Rome. It chanced that on his return thence, passing through the duchy of Burgundy, he stopped at the abbey of Molemes. As he saw the ways and habits familiar to his childhood reproduced in those of the monks, the wanderer's heart yearned for the peaceful life which he had forsaken ; he took the vows, and became a brother of the house. But when, with the zeal of a con- vert, he began to look more closely into his monastic obliga- tions, he perceived that the practice of Molemes, and indeed of most other monasteries, fell very far short of the strict rule of S. Benedict. He remonstrated with his brethren till they had no rest in their minds. At last, after long and anxious debates in the chapter, the abbot determined to go to the root of the matter, and appointed two brethren, whose learning was equalled by their piety, to examine diligently the original rule and declare what they found in it. The result of their investigations justified Harding's reproaches and caused a schism in the convent. The majority refused to alter their accustomed ways ; finding they were not to be reformed, the zealous minority, consisting of Robert the abbot, Harding himself (or Stephen, as he was called in religion), and sixteen others equally "stiff-necked in their holy obstinacy," left Molemes, and sought a new abode in 1 On Carlisle and Eadwulf (or jEthelwulf) see Joh. Hexham, a. 1133 (Raine, vol. i. pp. 109, no) ; and Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. vi. pt. i. pp. 141-145. 70 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the wilderness. The site which they chose — -in the diocese of Chalon-sur-Saone, not far from Dijon — was no happy valley, no " green retreat " such as the earlier Benedictine founders had been wont to select. It was a dismal swamp overgrown with brushwood, a forlorn, dreary, unhealthy spot, from whose marshy character the new house took its name of "the Cistern" — Cistellum, commonly called Citeaux. There the little band set to work in 1098 to carry into practice their views of monastic duty. The brotherhood of Molemes, left without a head by their abbot's desertion, pre- sently appealed to the archbishop of Lyons and the Pope, and after some negotiation Robert, willingly or unwillingly, returned to his former post. His departure gave a shock to the foundations of the new community ; zeal was already growing cold, and of those who had followed him out from Molemes all save eight followed him back again. Those eight — -" few in number, but a host in merit " — at once chose their prior Alberic to be abbot in Robert's stead, while the true founder, Stephen Harding, undertook the duties of prior. Upon Alberic's death in 1 1 1 o Stephen became abbot in his turn, and under him the little cistern in the wilderness became a fountain whose waters flowed out far and wide through the land. Three-and-twenty daughter- houses were brought to completion during his life-time. One of the earliest was Pontigny, founded in 11 14, and destined in after-days to become inseparably associated with the name of another English saint. Next year there went forth another Cistercian colony, whose glory was soon to eclipse that of the mother-house itself Its leader was a young monk called Bernard, and the place of its settlement was named Clairvaux.^ From Burgundy and Champagne the " White Monks," as the Cistercians were called from the colour of their habit, soon spread over France and Normandy. In 1128 they crossed the sea and made an entrance into their founder's 1 For the Life of S. Stephen Harding, and the early history of Citeaux and its order, see WiU. Malm. Gesta. Reg., 1. iv. cc. 334-337 (Hardy, pp. 511-517); Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, HUt. Norm. Script.), pp. 711-714 ; and Gallia Christiana, vol. iv. pp. 980-984. I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 71 native land ; William Giffard, bishop of Winchester, founded the abbey of Waverley in Surrey for twelve monks from the Cistercian house of Aum6ne in Normandy.^ The movement spread rapidly in all directions. In 1 1 3 1 Walter Lespec the founder of Kirkham, zealous in every good work, estab- lished in the heart of the Yorkshire wolds a " daughter of S. Bernard," the abbey of Rievaux ;^ far away on the Welsh border, in the valley of the Wye, Tintern was founded in the same year by Walter de Clare.^ The story of another famous Yorkshire house, Fountains, is a curious repetition of that of Citeaux itself Thirteen monks of the Benedict- ine convent of S. Mary at York, fired by the example of the newly-established brotherhood at Rievaux, determined, like Stephen Harding and his friends at Molemes, to go forth into the wilderness where they might follow the Cis- tercian rule in freedom. But when they asked their abbot's leave to depart it was sternly refused. Archbishop Thurstan, to whom they appealed for support, came in person to plead their cause with the abbot, and was so insolently received that after a stormy scene in the chapter-house he laid the convent under interdict, and walked out followed by the zealous thirteen " with nothing but the clothes on their backs." The warmly-sympathizing primate gave them a temporary shelter in his own home ; at Christmas he bestowed upon them for their dwelling a lonely valley called Skeldale, near Ripon, " full of thorns and enclosed by rocks," and for their maintenance the little township of Sutton. They at once chose one of their number, Richard by name, as abbot, and went forth under his guidance to settle in their new abode, although the cold of a Yorkshire winter was at its bitterest, and they had not where to lay their heads. In the middle of the valley stood a great elm — "thick and leafy as elms are wont to be."* That tree was the original abbey of our Lady of Fountains. Its spreading branches formed a roof to shelter the little band of monks ; ' Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 237, 241. 2 lb. pp. 274, 280, 281. s lb. pp. 265, 267, 270. ■• So says the historian of Fountains. How this can have been, in Yorkshire and at Christmas-time, I cannot pretend to explain. 72 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. " their bread was supplied to them by the archbishop, their drink by the streamlet which ran through the valley," and which, as in the case of Citeaux, suggested a name for the future house. In this primitive dwelling they fulfilled their religious exercises in peace and contentment till the winter was past, when they began to think of constructing a more substantial abode. They had no mind to follow their own inspirations and set up an independent rule of their own ; in all humility they wrote to S. Bernard (who since the death of S. Stephen Harding was universally looked up to as the head of the Cistercian order), telling him all their story, and beseeching him to receive them as his children. Bernard answered by sending to them, with a letter full of joyous welcome and hearty sympathy, his friend and con- fidant, Godfrey, to instruct them in the Cistercian rule. They had now been joined by ten more brethren. But the elm-tree was still their only shelter, and their means of sub- sistence were as slender as at the first. Presently there came a famine in the land ; they were reduced to eke out their scanty store of bread with leaves and stewed herbs. When they had just given away their two last loaves — one to the workmen engaged on the building, the other to a passing pilgrim — this supreme act of charity and faith was rewarded with a supply sent them by the lord of Knares- borough, Eustace Fitz-John. At last, after struggling on bravely for two years, they found it impossible to continue where they were, with numbers constantly increasing and means at a standstill ; so the abbot went to Clairvaux and begged that some place might be assigned to them there. S. Bernard granted the request ; but when Abbot Richard came back to fetch the rest of the brotherhood he found that all was changed. Hugh, dean of York, had just made over himself and all his property to Fountains. It was the turn of the tide ; other donations began to flow in ; soon they poured. Five years after its own rise the " Fountain " sent out a rivulet to Newminster; after that her descendants speedily covered the land. Justly did the brotherhood cherish their beloved elm-tree as a witness to the lowly beginnings whence had sprung the mightiest Cistercian THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 73 house in England. It bore a yet more touching witness four centuries later, when it still stood in its green old age, the one remnant of the glory of Fountains which the sacri- legious spoiler had not thought it worth his while to touch.-' The influence of the Cistercians was different in kind from that of the earlier monasticism. The life of the Benedictines was, so to say, in the world though not of it. They sought tranquillity and retirement, but not solitude ; the site of an abbey was chosen with a careful eye to the natural resources of the place, its accessibility, and the advantages which it offered for cultivation and production of all kinds. A Benedictine house almost invariably became, and indeed was intended to become, the nucleus of a flourishing lay population, either a cluster of rural settlements, or, not unfrequently, a busy, thriving town. But by the close of the tenth century, although the palmy days of the Benedict- ine fathers as the guardians of art and literature were in part still to come, the work in which they had been un- rivalled for five hundred years, as the missionaries, cultiva- tors and civilizers of Europe, was well-nigh accomplished ; and the position into which they had unavoidably drifted as owners of vast landed property protected by special privileges was beginning to show its dangerous side. On the one hand, the secularizing spirit which had made such in- roads upon the Church in general was creeping even into the cloister. On the other, the monasteries were growing rich and powerful at the expense of the parochial and diocesan organization. The laity were too apt, while showering their pious gifts upon the altars of the religious houses, to leave those of their own parish churches naked and uncared-for ; and the growing habit of diverting the tithes of various estates and districts to the endowment of some abbey with which they were quite unconnected was already becoming a distinct abuse. Against all this the scheme of the Cister- cians was a direct protest. They refused to have anything ' The story of Fountains is in the Narratio of Hugh of Kirkstall, in Memorials of Fountains (Walbran, Surtees Soc), and Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 292 et seq. See also Will. Newb., 1. i. c. 14 (Howlett, vol. i, p. 50). The elm vfas standing in Leland's day. 74 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. to do with tithes in any shape, saying that monks had no right to them ; their houses were of the plainest possible construction : even in their churches scarcely an ornament was admitted to soften the stern grandeur of the architec- ture ; there were no broidered hangings, no delicate paint- ings, no gold and silver vessels, no crucifixes glittering with enamel and precious gems ; they hardly allowed, even for the most solemn rite, the use of any vestment more ornate than the simple white surplice or alb ; and their ordinary habit, made from the wool of their flocks, was not black like like that of the Benedictines, but the natural white or gray, for they looked upon dyeing as a refinement useless to men who had renounced the cares and pleasures of this life as well as the deceitfulness of riches.^ Their aim was to be simply voices crying in the wilderness — a wilderness wherein they were resolved to dwell, as much as possible, alone. Their rule absolutely forbade the erection of a house even of their own order within a certain distance of another. But the cry that came forth from the depth of their solitude thrilled through the very hearts of men, and their influence spread far beyond the number of those who actually joined the order. It was the leaven of that influence, more than all others, which worked on and on through the nineteen years of anarchy that followed Henry's death till it had leavened the whole lump, regenerated the Church, and made her ready to become in her turn the regenerator of the state and the nation. Already, before the order of Citeaux had been half a century in existence, William of Malmesbury, himself a member of one of the most ancient and famous of English Benedictine abbeys, could describe it as the unani- mously acknowledged type of the monastic profession, the ideal which served as a mirror to the diligent, a goad to the negligent, and a model to all.^ How deeply the spirit of religious enthusiasm had penetrated among the people we see in the story of S. Godric. Godric was born in the last years of the Conqueror or the earliest years of the Red King at Walpole, a village in 1 See abstract of rule in Dugdale, Monast. Angl., vol. v. pp. 224, 225. 2 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iv. c. 337 (Hardy, p. 517). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 75 the north-western marshlands of Norfolk ; thence his parents, ^Iward and ^dwen, seem to have removed to a place on the river Welland, near Spalding in Lincolnshire. They were apparently free rustics of the poorest class, simple, un- learned, upright folk, who taught their three children to say the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and brought them up in the fear of God ; other education they could give them none, and of worldly goods just as little. In the dreary fenland round the shores of the Wash agriculture and in- dustry were almost unknown, and the population subsisted chiefly on whatever they found left behind by the waves on the long reaches of shining sand that lay exposed when- ever the tide was out. As a boy Godric once wandered thus nearly three miles out to sea in search of food for himself and his parents ; as he was retracing his steps, laden with part of a large fish which he had at length found dead upon the sand, he was overtaken by the returning tide ; press onward as he might, the waves came surging higher and higher, first to his knees, then to his waist, then to his shoulders, till to the boy's excited fancy their gurgling rose even above his head, and when at last he struggled to land with his burthen, it seemed to him that only a miracle had brought, him through the waters in safety. Presently he began an independent life as a wandering chapman, trudging from village to village and selling small wares to country- folk as poor as himself The lad was gifted with a wisdom and seriousness beyond his age ; after some four years of this life he became associated with some merchants in the neighbouring towns ; with them he visited the castles of the local nobles, the markets and fairs of the local trading centres, and at length made his way as far as S. Andrews in Scotland, and after that to Rome. He next, entering into partnership with some other young men, acquired a fourth share in the profits of one trading-vessel and half the ownership of another. Very soon his partners made him captain of the ship. In the long, blank days of his boyhood by the shore of the Wash he had learned to discern the face of both sea and sky ; and his sturdy frame, steady hand, and keen observant eye, as well as his stedfast thoughtful temper. 76 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. fitted him for a skilful seaman no less than for a successful merchant. The young sailor's heart, however, was not wholly set upon money-getting. As he tramped over the fens with his pack upon his back he had been wont to soothe his weariness with the holy words of prayer and creed learnt at his mother's knee ; as he guided his bark through the storm, or outran the pirates who were ever on the look-out for such prey, he did not miss the lesson specially addressed to those who "go down to the sea in ships." Wherever his business took him — Scotland, Britanny, Flanders, Den- mark — he sought out the holy places of the land and made his offerings there. One of the places he visited most frequently was S. Andrews ; and on his way back from thence he rarely failed to turn aside to S. Cuthbert's old home at Holy Isle and his yet more lonely retreat at Fame, there to spend hours in ecstatic meditation upon the hermit- life which he was already longing to imitate. At last he took the cross and went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return, weary of independence, he became steward to a rich man who intrusted him with the whole management of his household ; soon, however, he grew so disgusted with the thievery among the servants, which he saw but could not prevent, and with the master's indifference to it, that he threw up his situation and went off on another pilgrimage, first to S. Gilles in Provence and then to Rome. He came home to his parents, but he could not stay ; he must go back yet a third time, he told them, to the threshold of the Apostles ; and this time his mother accompanied him. At a period when religious men of greater experience in this world's affairs were pouring out heart-rending lamentations over the corruptions of Rome, it is touching to see that she still cast over this simple English rustic the spell which she had cast of old over Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop. It was in the land of Wilfrid and Benedict, in the wild Northumbria, with its long reaches of trackless moor and its mighty forests, scarcely penetrated save by the wild beasts, that Godric at last found refuge from the world. He sought it first at Carlisle, then a lonely outpost on the western borders of the moors, just beginning a new life after its THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. -j-j conquest by William Rufus. His hopes of remaining there in obscurity were, however, defeated by the recognition of a kinsman, doubtless one of the Red King's colonists, and he fled yet further into the wilderness. Weeks and months of lonely wandering through the forest brought him unex- pectedly to an aged hermit at Wolsingham ; there he remained nearly three years, tending the old man until his death ; then a vision of S. Cuthbert sent Godric off again, first on another journey to Holy Land, and then to a hermitage in Eskdale near Whitby. Thence the persecution of the lord of the soil drove him to a surer refuge in the territory of S. Cuthbert. He settled for a while in Durham and there gave himself up to practical works of piety, fre- quenting the offices of devotion, giving alms out of his penury to those who were yet poorer than himself, and con- stantly sitting as a scholar among the children in the church of S. Mary. His kinsman at Carlisle had given him a Psalm-book ; whether he ever learned actually to read it is not clear ; but he already knew by heart a considerable part of the Psalter ; at Durham he learned the whole ; and the little book, which he had carried in all his wanderings, was to the end of his life his most cherished possession. When asked in later years how one of his fingers had grown crooked, he answered with a smile that it had become cramped ..with constantly grasping this book. Meanwhile he was seeking a place of retirement within easy distance of the chief object of his devotion — S. Cuthbert's shrine. His choice was decided by the chance words of a shepherd to his comrade : " Let us go water our flocks at Finchale ! " Godric offered the man his sole remaining coin — a farthing — to lead him to the spot, and saw at once that he had reached the end of his wanderings. Even to-day the scene is wild and solemn enough, to the traveller who, making his way from Durham over the lonely country-side, suddenly dips down into a secluded hollow where the ruins of Finchale Priory stand on a low grassy ledge pressed close between the rushing stream of Wear and the dark wooded hills which, owing to the sharp bend made by the river, seem to close round it on every side. But in 78 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Godric's day the place was wilder still. The road which now leads through the wood was a mere sheep-track worn by the feet of the flocks as they made their way down to the river ; the site of the priory was a thicket of briars, thorns and nettles, and it was only on a narrow strip of rocky soil hanging over the water's edge and thinly covered with scant herbage that the sheep could find a foothold and the hermit a place for his dwelling. His first abode was a cave scooped in the rock ; later on he seems to have built himself a little hut with an oratory attached. A large stone served him at once for table and pillow ; but only when utterly worn out with a long day's toil in clearing away the thickets and pre- paring the soil for cultivation would he lie down for a few hours of quiet vigil rather than of sleep ; and on moonlight nights the rustics of the country-side woke with a start at the ring of the hermit's axe, echoing for miles through the woodland. The spirit of the earlier Northumbrian saints seems to breathe again in Godric's ceaseless labour, his stern self-mortification, his rigid fasts, his nightly plunges into the Wear, where he would stand in the hollow of the rocks, up to his neck in the stream, singing Psalms all through the winter nights, while the snow fell thick on his head or the waters froze around him. With the fervour of the older asceticism he had caught too its poetic tenderness. As he wandered through forest after forest from Carlisle to the Tees he had found like S. Guthlac of old that " he who denies himself the converse of men wins the converse of birds and beasts and the company of angels." Noxious reptiles lay passive beneath his feet as he walked along and crawled harmlessly about him as he lay on the bare ground at night ; " the hissing of a viper scared him no more than the crowing of a cock." The woods of Finchale were thronged with wild beasts of every kind ; on his first arrival he was confronted by a wolf of such enormous size that he took it for a fiend in wolfs shape, and the impression was confirmed when at the sign of the Cross the animal lay down for a moment at his feet and then slunk quietly away. The toads and vipers which swarmed along the river-side played harmlessly about the floor of his hut, and basked in the glow THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 79 of his fire or nestled between his feet, till finding that they disturbed his devotions he gently bade them depart, and was at once obeyed. A stag browsing upon the young shoots of the trees in his little orchard suffered him to put a halter about its neck and lead it away into the forest. In the long hard frosts of the northern winter he would roam about seeking for frozen or starving animals, carry them home in his arms and restore them to warmth and anima- tion at his fire. Bird and beast sought shelter from the huntsman in the hermit's cell ; one stag which he had hidden from the followers of Bishop Ralf came back day after day to be petted and caressed. Amid the silence of the valley, broken only by the rustling of the wind through the trees, the ripple of the stream over its rocky bed, and the chirping of the birds who had probably given their name to the " Finches-haugh," strains of angel-harps and angel- voices sounded in the hermit's ears ; and the Virgin-Mother came down to teach him how to sing to her in his own English tongue. As the years went on Godric ceased to shrink from his fellow-men ; his mother, his sister, came to dwell near him in religious retirement ; a little nephew was admitted to tend his cow. Some of the younger monks of Durham, among them the one to whom we owe the record of Godric's life, were the devoted attendants of his extreme age ; while from the most distant quarters men of all ranks flocked to seek counsel and guidance in every variety of circumstances, temporal and spiritual, from one whom not only all Durham but almost all England looked upon as a saint and a prophet.^ It was in 1 122 — two years after the wreck of the White Ship — that Godric settled at Finchale, and he dwelt there sixty years. He is the last of the old English saints ; his long life, beginning probably before the Conqueror's death and ending only seven years before that of Henry II., is a link between the religious life of the earlier England which had passed away and that of the newer England which was arising in its place. The spiritual side of the revival was in truth closely connected with its national side. ' The story of S. Godric is in Libellus de Vitd S. Godrici, by Reginald of Durham (Surtees Society). So ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. All the foreign influences which the Norman conquest had brought to bear upon the English Church had failed to stamp out her intensely national character ; nay, rather, she was already beginning to lead captive her conquerors. One of the most striking signs of the times was the renewal of reverence for those older English saints whose latest successor was striving to bury himself in the woodlands of S. Cuthbert's patrimony. Normans and English hushed their differences before the grave of the Confessor ; Lanfranc was forced to acknowledge the sanctity of ^Ifheah. At Canterbury itself the memory not only of Lanfranc but even of Anselm was still eclipsed by that of Dunstan. The very changes intro- duced by Norman prelates or Norman patrons, their zeal for discipline or their passion for architectural display, worked in the same direction. It was in the old minster of S. Werburg that Earl Hugh of Chester had placed the Bene- dictine colony whose settlement helped to bring about the appointment of Anselm as primate ; it was in honour of another early Mercian saint, Milburg, that Roger of Shrews- bury reared his abbey at Wenlock. Bishop Richard of London planted the Austin canons at Chiche over the shrine of S. Osyth ; Bishop Roger of Salisbury planted them at Oxford over that of S. Frideswide. The foundation of a bishop's see at Ely brought a fresh lustre to the glory of S. Etheldreda; and the matchless church at Durham on which two of the very worldliest and worst of Norman prelates, William of S. Calais and Ralf Flambard, lavished all the splendour that art could devise or wealth procure, was one vast monu- ment to the honour of S. Cuthbert. Literary activity was re-awakened by a like impulse. Two successive precentors of Canterbury, Osbern and Eadmer, had already worked up into more elaborate biographies the early memorials of S. Dunstan. Eadmer's best inspiration came to him indeed from a nearer source ; his most valuable work is the history of his own time, which he grouped, as in a picture, around the central figure of his own master, Anselm. It was doubtless from that master that he had learnt a breadth of sympathy which extended far beyond his local associations at Canterbury. The saints of the rival archbishopric, Wil- I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 8i frid and Oswald, found in him a new biographer. In the northern province, Simeon and his fellow-monks were busy at Durham with the story of their own church and its patron, Cuthbert. In the south, again, Faricius, the Italian abbot of Abingdon, was writing a life of S. Ealdhelm; while almost every church of importance in central and southern England was throwing open its archives to the eager researches, and contributing its memorials of early Mercian and West-Saxon saints to swell the hagiological collections of a young monk at Ealdhelm's own Malmesbury. There was one cathedral monastery in the west of England where the traditions of a larger historical sentiment had never died out. The scriptorium at Worcester had been for more than a century the depository of the sole contemporary edition of the English Chronicle ;^ and there alone the national history continued to be recorded in the national tongue down to the early years of Henry I. In the middle of his reign the monks of Peterborough, probably in consequence of the loss of their own records in a fire which destroyed their abbey in 1 1 1 6, borrowed a copy of the Chronicle from Worcester, and wrote it out afresh for their own use, with additions from local history and other sources. It is only in their version that the earliest Chronicle of Worcester has been preserved to us. But they did more than transcribe the story of the past. When the copyist had brought his work down to the latest event of his own day — the sinking of the White Ship in 1 1 20 — another scribe carried on the annals of Peterborough and of England for ten more years, in the native speech of the land ; and when he laid down his pen it was taken up by yet another English writer whose notices of contemporary history, irregular and fragmentary though they are, still cast a gleam of light across the dark- ness of the " nineteen winters " which He between the death of the first King Henry and the coming of the second.^ Precious as it is to us, however, this English chronicle- 1 In strictness, we must except the years 1043-1066, when the Abingdon Chronicle is also contemporary. 2 On the school of Worcester and its later influence, and the relations between the Chronicles of Worcester and Peterborough, see Green, Conquest of England, pp. 341, 342 and notes, and p. 370, note 2 ; and Earle, Parallel Chronicles, Introd. VOL. I. G 82 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. work at Peterborough was a mere survival. Half its pathetic interest indeed springs from the fact that it stands utterly alone ; save in that one abbey in the Fens, English had ceased to be a written tongue ; the vernacular literature of England was dead. If the reviving national sentiment was to find a literary expression which could exercise any lasting and widespread influence, the vehicle must be not English but Latin. This was the work now taken up by the his- torical school of Worcester. Early in the twelfth century a Worcester monk named Florence made a Latin version of the Chronicle. Unhappily, he infused into his work a violent party spirit, and overlaid the plain brief statements of the annals with a mass of interpolations, additions and altera- tions, whose source it is impossible to trace, and which, adopted only too readily by later writers, have gone far to bring our early history into what until a very recent time seemed well- nigh hopeless confusion. But the very extent of his influence proves how true was the instinct which led him — patriot of the most narrow, insular, exaggerated type, as the whole tone of his work shows him to have been — to clothe the ancient vernacular annals in a Latin dress, in the hope of increasing their popularity. If English history has in one way suffered severely at his hands, it owes him a debt of gratitude nevertheless upon another ground. While the last English chronicle lay isolated and buried in the scriptorium at Peterborough, it was through the Latin version of Florence that the national and literary tradition of the school of Worcester made its way throughout the length and breadth of the land, and inspired a new generation of English historians. Simeon of Durham, copying out and piecing together the old Northumbrian annals which had gone on growing ever since Baeda's death, no sooner met with the chronicle of Florence than he made it the foundation of his own work for the whole space of time between Alfred's birth in 848 and Florence's own death in 1 1 1 8 ; and from Simeon it was handed down, through the work of another local historian, to be incorporated in the great compilation of Roger of Howden.^ Henry of Huntingdon, who soon after 1 On Simeon, see Bishop Stubbs's preface to Roger of Howden, vol. i. (Rolls THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 1 1 2 5, at the instigation of Bisiiop Alexander of Lincoln, began to collect materials for a history of the English, may have learnt from the same source his method of dealing with the English Chronicle, though he seems, naturally enough, to have chiefly used the copy which lay nearest to his own hand at Peter- borough. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of England, a finer and subtler intellect than that of either Florence or Simeon or Henry had caught the historical impulse in an old West-Saxon monastery. William of Malmesbury was born some three or four years before the Conqueror's death,^ in or near the little town in Wiltshire from which his surname was derived. One of his parents seems to have been Norman, the other English.^ They early destined their son to a literary career ; " My father," he says, "impressed upon me that if I turned aside to other pursuits, I should but waste my life and imperil my good name. So, remembering the recommendation to make a virtue of necessity, I persuaded myself, young as I was, to acquire a willing taste for that to which I could not in honour show myself disinclined." It is plain that sub- mission to the father's wishes cost no great effort to the boy. As he tells us himself, "Reading was the pleasure whose charms won me in my boyhood and grew with my growing years." ^ His lot was cast in a pleasant place for one of such a disposition. Fallen though it was from its ancient greatness, some remnants of its earlier culture still hung about Malmesbury abbey. The place owed its rise to an Irish recluse, Maidulf, who, in the seventh century sought retirement from the world in the forest which at that time covered all the northern part of Wiltshire. Maidulf, however, was a scholar as well as a saint ; and in those days, when Ireland was the light of the whole western world, no forest, were it never so gloomy and impenetrable, ed.) ; Mr. Arnold's prefaces to Simeon, vol. i., and Henry of Huntingdon {ibid.) ; and Mr. Hodgson Hinde's preface to Simeon (Surtees Soc). ' This conclusion, which seems the only one possible, as to the date of William's birth is that of Mr. W. de Gray Birch, On the Life and Writings of Will, of Malmesbury, pp. 3, 4 (from Trans. R. Soc. of Lit., vol. x., new series). ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. 1. iii. (Hardy, p. 389). ' lb. prolog. 1. ii. (Hardy, p. 143). 84 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. could long hide an Irish scholar from the eagerness of the disciples who flocked to profit by his teaching. The hermit- age grew into a school, and the school into a religious community. Its second abbot, Ealdhelm, is one of the most brilliant figures in the history of early West-Saxon learning and culture. The architecture of Wessex owed its birth to the churches which he reared along the edge of the forest-tract of Dorset and Wiltshire, from the seat of his later bishopric at Sherborne to his early home at Malmes- bury ; its Latin literature was moulded by the learning which he brought back from Archbishop Theodore's school at Canterbury ; and the whole ballad literature of southern England sprang from his English songs. The West-Saxon kings, from Ine to Eadgar, showered their benefactions upon the house of one whom they were proud to call their kins- man. It escaped as by a miracle from the destruction of the Danish wars ; and in the Confessor's reign its wealth and fame were great enough to tempt the diocesan bishop, Herman of Ramsbury, into a project for making it the seat of his bishopric. Darker times began with the coming of the first Norman abbot, Turold, whose stern and warlike character, more befitting a soldier than a monk, soon induced the king to transfer him to Peterborough, as a check upon the English outlaws and their Danish allies in the camp of refuge at Ely. His successor at Malmesbury, Warin, alienated for his own profit the lands and the treasures which earlier benefactors had lavished upon the abbey, and showed his contempt for the old English abbots by turning the bones of every one of them, except Ealdhelm, out of their resting-places on either side the high altar, and thrusting them into a corner of one of the lesser churches of the town, with the mocking comment: "Whosoever is mightiest among them may help the rest ! " William's boyhood, however, fell in happier days. About the time of his birth Warin died, and the next abbot, Godfrey, set himself to a vigorous work of material, moral and intellectual reform which must have been in full career when William entered the abbey-school.^ ^ The history of Malmesbury is in Will. Malm.'s Vita S. Aldhelmi, i.e. Gesta Pontif., 1. V. (Hamilton, pp. 332 et seq.) I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 85 The bent of the lad's mind showed itself in the subjects which he chose for special study out of the general course taught in the school. " Logic, which serves to give point to our discourse, I tasted only with my ears ; to physic, which cures the diseases of our bodies, I paid somewhat closer heed. But I searched deeply into the various branches of moral philosophy, whose dignity I hold in reverence, because it is self-evident to those who study it, and disposes our minds to virtuous living ; — and especially into history, which, preserving in a pleasing record the manners of times gone by, by example excites its readers to follow that which is good and shun that which is evil." ^ Young as he was, his studious habits gained him the confidence of the abbot. Godfrey's darling scheme was the formation of a library ; and when at length he found time and means to attempt its execution, it was William who became his most energetic assistant. " Methinks I have a right to speak of this work," he tells us with pardonable pride, " for herein I came behind none of my elders, nay, if it be not boastful to say so, I far outstripped them all. I rivalled the good abbot's own diligence in collecting that pile of books ; I did my utmost to help in his praiseworthy undertaking. May those who now enter into our labours duly cherish their fruits ! " ^ It is not diiificult to guess in what department of the library William took the deepest interest. Half Norman as he was by descent, the chosen literary assistant of a Norman abbot,* it was natural that his first endeavour should be to "collect, at his own expense, some histories of foreign nations." As he pondered over them in the quiet cloisters of the old English monastery which by this time had become his home, the question arose — could nothing be found among our own people worthy of the remembrance of posterity?* He had but to look around him, and the question answered itself To the antiquary and the scholar Malmesbury was already classic ground, where every step ' Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. 1. ii. (Hardy, p. 143). ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. v. t. 271 (Hamilton, p. 431). ' Godfrey was a monk of Jumi^ges ; Will. Malm. Gesla Pontif., 1. v. c. 271 (Hamilton, p. 431). * Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. 1. ii. (Hardy, p. 142). 86 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. brought him face to face with some memory of the glories of Wessex under the old royal house from which Ealdhelm sprang. To Ealdhelm's own fame indeed even the prejudices of Abbot Warin had been forced to yield, and a ^ew trans- lation of the saint's relics in 1078 had been followed by a fresh outburst of popular devotion and a fresh influx of pilgrims to his shrine. Every year his festival brought together a crowd of devotees, of sick folk seeking the aid of his miraculous powers, and — as generally happened in such cases — of low jesters seeking only to make their profit out of the amusement which they afforded to the gaping multi- tude. The punishment of one of these, who was smitten with frenzy and only cured after three days' intercession on the part of the monks, during which he lay chained before the shrine, was one of the most vivid recollections of William's childhood.^ In the vestiary of the abbey-church he beheld with wonder and awe the chasuble which, as a quaint legend told, the saint in his pious abstraction of mind had once hung upon a sunbeam, and whose unusual length helped to furnish a mental picture of his tall stately form.^ Among the older literary treasures which served as a nucleus for the new library, he gazed with scarcely less reverence on a Bible which Ealdhelm had bought of some foreign merchants at Dover when he visited Kent for his consecration.^ The muniment-chest was full of charters granted by famous kings of old, Ceadwalla and Ine, .Alfred and Eadward, .^thelstan and Eadgar. In the churchy itself a golden crucifix, a fragment of the wood of the Cross, and several reliquaries containing the bones of early Gaulish saints were shown as ^thelstan's gifts, and the king himself lay buried beneath the tower.* On the left of the high altar, facing S. Ealdhelm's shrine, stood a tomb which in William's day was believed to cover the remains of a scholar of wider though less happy fame than Ealdhelm himself — John Scotus, who, flying from his persecutors in Gaul, was said to have established a school under .iElfred's protection at Mal- 1 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. v. c. 275 (Hamilton, pp. 438, 439). 2 lb. c. 218 (p. 365). 3 lb. c. 224 (pp. 376-378). * lb. c. 246 (p. 397). I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 87 mesbury, and to have been there pricked to death by his pupils with their styles in the little church of S. Laurence.^ The scanty traces of a vineyard on the hill-side which sheltered the abbey to the north were associated with a visitor from a yet more distant land. In the time of the Danish kings there came seeking for admission at Malmes- bury a stranger of whom' the brotherhood knew no more than that he was a Greek and a monk, and that his name was Constantine. His gentle disposition, abstemious habits, and quiet retiring ways won him general esteem and love ; his whole time was spent in prayer and in the cultivation of the vineyard which he' planted with his own hands for the benefit of the community; and only when at the point of death he arrayed himself in a pallium drawn from the scrip which he always carried at his side, was it revealed to the astonished Englishmen that he had been an archbishop in his Eastern home.^ Under the influence of surroundings such as these William began his studies in English history. But he was brought to a standstill at the very threshold for lack of a guide. From the death of Bseda to his own day, he could not by the most diligent researches discover a single English writer worthy of the name of historian. " There are indeed certain records of antiquity in the native tongue, arranged according to the years of our Lord after the manner of a chronicle, whereby the times which have gone by since that great man (Baeda) have been rescued from complete oblivion. For of .^thelweard, a noble and illustrious man who set himself to expound those chronicles in Latin, it is better to say nothing ; his aim indeed would be quite to my mind, if his style were not unbearable to my taste."' The work 1 Will. Malm. GestaPontif., 1. v. c. 240 (Hamilton, p. 394), and Gesta Reg., 1. ii. c. 122 (Hardy, p. 190). The story seems however to be false. It pro- bably originated in a confusion, first between John Scotus and John the Old- Saxon, who was nearly murdered by the monks of Athelney ; and secondly, between both these Johns and a third scholar bearing the same name, who is mentioned by Gotselin of Canterbury as buried at Malmesbury, but whose real history seems to be lost. See Lanigan, Eccles. Hist, of Ireland, vol. iii. pp. 300, 301, 315, 316, 318-320. 2 Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. v. c. 260 (Hamilton, p. 415). ' Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. 1. i. (Hardy, pp. I, 2). 88 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of Florence was probably as yet altogether unpublished ; it was certainly not yet finished, nor does it appear to have been heard of at Malmesbury. That of Eadmer, whose first edition — ending at the death of Anselm — must have been the last new book of the day, received from William a just tribute of praise, both as to its subject-matter and its style ; but it was essentially what its title imported, a History of Recent Events ; the introductory sketch prefixed to it was a mere outline, and, starting as it did only from Eadgar's accession, still left between its beginim% and Baeda's death a yawning chasm of more thai|^ two centuries which the young student at Malmesbury s^ no means of bridging over save by his own labour.^ "So, as I could not be satisfied with what I found written of old, I began to scribble myself"^ Such, as related by the author himself, was the origin of William's first historical work, the Gesta Regum Anglorum or Acts of the English Kings, followed a few years later by a companion volume devoted to the acts of the bishops. He was stirred by the same impulse of revived national senti- ment which stirred Florence of Worcester to undertake his version of the Chronicle. But the impulse acted very differently on two different minds. William's Gesta Regum were first published in 1120, two years after the death of Florence. The work of Florence, although he never men- tions it, had doubtless reached him by this time, and must certainly have been well known to him before he issued his revised edition in 11 28. To William, indeed, the Chronicle had no need of a Latin interpreter ; and he probably looked upon Florence in no other light. He set before himself a loftier aim. In his own acceptation of the word, he is the first English historian since Bseda ; he is in truth the founder of a new school of historical composition. William's temper, as displayed in his works, might form the subject of a curious psychological study. It is a temper which, in many respects, seems to belong rather to a man of the world in our own day than to a monk of the twelfth cen- 1 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., prolog. 1. i. (Hardy, p. 2). ^ li. prolog. 1. ii. (Hardy, pp. 143, 144). THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. tury. He has none of the narrowness of the cloister ; he has little of the prejudices common to his profession or his age ; he has still less prejudice of race. The Norman and the English blood in his veins seem completely to neutralize each other ; while Florence colours the whole story not only of the Norman but even of the Danish conquest with his violent English sympathies, William calmly balances the one side against the other, and criticizes them both with the judicial impartiality of a spectator to whom the matter has a purely philosophical interest. The whole bent of his mind indeed is philosophical, literary, artistic, rather than political. With him the study of hiwory is a scientific study, and its composition a work of art. His' aim is to entertain his readers quite as much as to instruct them. He utterly dis- cards the old arrangement of events " by the years of our Lord," and groups his materials in defiance of chronology on whatever plan seems to him best adapted to set them in the most striking and effective light. He never loses sight of his reader ; he is always in dread of wearying him with dry political details, always seizing an opportunity to break in upon their monotony with some curious illustration, some romantic episode, some quaint legend, or — when he reaches his own time — some personal scandal which he tells with all the zest of a modern newspaper-writer. His love of story-telling, his habit of flying off at a tangent in the midst of his narrative and dragging in a string of irrelevant tales, sometimes of the most frivolous kind, is positively irritating to a student bent only upon following the main thread of the history. But in William of Malmesbury the main thread is often of less real value than the mass of varied adornment and illustration with which it is overlaid. William is no Baeda ; but, Baeda excepted, there are few of our medieval historians who can vie with him in. the telling of a story. His long and frequent digressions into foreign affairs are often of great intrinsic value, and they show a depth of insight into the history of other nations and a cosmo- politan breadth of thought and feeling quite without parallel in his time. His penetration into individual characters, his power of seizing upon their main features 90 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. and sketching them to the life in a few rapid skilful strokes — as in his pictures of the Norman kings or of the Angevin counts — has perhaps not many rivals at any time. Even when his stories are most utterly worthless in them- selves, there is a value in the light which they throw upon the writer's own temper or on that of the age in which he lived. Not a few of them have a further interest as fragments saved from the wreck of a popular literature whose very existence, but for William and his fellow- historians, we might never have known. The Norman conquest had doomed to gradual extinction a vast growth of unwritten popular verse which, making its way with the wandering gleeman into palace and minster, hall and cottage, had coloured the whole social life and thought of England for four hundred years. The gleeman's days were numbered. He had managed to hold his ground against the growing hostility of the Church ; but the coming of the stranger had fatally narrowed his sphere of influence. His very language was unintelligible to the nobles who sat in the seat of his former patrons ; jongleur and m^nestrel from over sea had taken in the king's court and the baron's castle the place which the gleeman had once filled in the halls of ealdorman and thegn, and only the common people still hailed his appearance as a welcome break in the monotonous drudgery of their daily life. Before his day was quite over, however, the new school of patriotic historians had arisen ; and they plunged into the mass of traditional and romantic lore of which he was the depositary as into a treasure-house from whose stores they might fill up the gaps and deck the bare out- Hnes of the structure which they were building up on the meagre foundations of the Chronicle. Florence was the first to enter upon this somewhat dangerous process. William drank more deeply of a stream whose source lay at his own door : a simple English ballad which the country-folk around Malmesbury in his day still chanted as they went about their work was the spell by which S. Ealdhelm had drawn their forefathers to listen, first to his singing and then to his preaching, four hundred 1. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. gi years before.^ The same spell of song, handed on from generation to generation, and passing from the gleeman's lips into the pages of the twelfth century historians with William at their head, has transformed the story of the later royal house of Wessex into a romance that too often only serves to darken the true character of the period which it professes to illustrate. What it does illustrate is not the tenth century but the twelfth. It helps us to learn something of the attitude of the national revival towards the national past, by showing us the England of .lEthelstan and Eadmund, of Eadgar and Dunstan, not as it actually was, but as it appeared to the England of Henry I. and Roger of Sarum, — to the England of Flor- ence of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury. We must not take William as an average specimen of the monastic culture and intelligence of his day. In any age and in any circumstances he would probably have been a man of exceptional genius. But his outward life and sur- roundings were those of the ordinary monk of his time ; and those surroundings are set in a very striking light by the fact, abundantly evident from his writings, that such a man as William could feel himself thoroughly at home in them, and could find in them full scope for the developement of his powers. It was in truth precisely his monastic profession which gave him opportunities of acquiring by personal experience, even more than by wide reading, such a varied and extensive knowledge of the world as could hardly be obtained in any other circumstances. A very slight acquaint- ance with William is enough to dispel all notions of the medieval monk as a solitary student, a mere bookworm, knowing no more of the world and of mankind than he could learn from the beatings of his own heart and within the narrow circle of the brotherhood among whom he dwelt. A community like that of Malmesbury was in active and con- stant relations with every rank and class of society all over the kingdom. Its guest-hall stood open alike to king and bishop, to Norman baron or English yeoman, to the high- ' Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. v. c. 190 (Hamilton, p. 336). 92 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. born pilgrim who came back from a distant shore laden with relics and with tales of the splendours of Byzantium or the marvels of Holy Land, to the merchant who came to sell his curious foreign wares at the local fair and to pay his devo- tions, like S. Godric, at the local shrine, as well as to the monk of another house who came, perhaps, to borrow a book from the library, to compare notes with the local history, or to submit some literary question to the judgement of the great local scholar, whoever he might happen to be. All the political news, all the latest intellectual speculations, all the social gossip of the day, found its way thither by one or other of these channels, and was discussed within the safe shelter of the inviolable convent-walls with a boldness and freedom impossible amid the society of the outside world, fettered by countless bonds of custom, interest, and mutual dependence. The abbot ranked as a great noble who sat among earls and bishops in the meetings of the Great Coun- cil, whom they treated almost as an equal, and whom they came, with a train of secular clerks and lay followers, to visit and consult on matters of Church or state or of their own personal interests. If the king himself chanced to pass that way, it was matter of course that he should lodge in the monastery. William's vivid portraits of all the three Norman kings were doubtless drawn, if not from the observation of his own eyes, at any rate from that of his friend Abbot Godfrey ; his portrait of Henry I. was in all likelihood painted from life as the king paid his devotions before S. Ealdhelm's shrine or feasted at the abbot's table in the refectory, or — quite as probably — as William, in his turn, sat in the royal hall discussing some literary question with his friend and patron, the king's son Earl Robert of Gloucester, if not actually with the king himself The hospitality of the abbey was repaid by that which greeted its brethren wherever they went, on business for their house or for them- selves. The monk went in and out of castle or town, court or camp, as a privileged person. Such a man as William, indeed, might be sure of a welcome anywhere ; and William, indefatigable as a student, was almost equally so as a traveller. The little sketches of town and country which I. THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 93 illustrate his survey of the dioceses of England in the Gesta Pontificum must have been made on the spot. He had seen the marvels of Glastonbury -^ he had probably taken down the legend of S. Eadmund of East-Anglia on the very site of the martyrdom f he had seen with his own eyes the Roman walls of Carlisle, and heard with his own ears the rough Yorkshire speech, of which, puzzling as it was to a southerner, he yet learned enough to catch from some northern glee- man the echo of Northumbria's last heroic lay, the lay of Waltheof at the gate of York ;' he had, we cannot doubt, wandered with delight up that vale of Severn which he paints in such glowing colours, and been drawn to write the life of S. Wulfstan by a sight of his church and his tomb at Worcester. His own cell at Malmesbury was the garner in which treasures new and old, of every kind, gathered from one end of England to the other, were stored up to be sifted and set in order at leisure amid that perfect tranquillity, that absolute security from outward disturbance and worldly care, which to the modern student is but a hopeless dream. The new intellectual movement, however, was by no means confined to the cloister. Clerk and layman had their share in it ; king and queen encouraged it warmly, and their sympathy with the patriotic revival which animated it was marked enough to excite the mockery of their Norman courtiers, who nicknamed them " Godric and Godgifu." * Learning and culture of every kind found a ready welcome at the court ; Henry never forgot the favourite maxim of his youth, that " an unlettered king is but a crowned ass." ° His tastes were shared by his good queen Maude, who had received in her aunt's convent at Romsey such an education as was probably given to few women of her time ; and in her later years, when the king's manifold occupations beyond sea left her alone in her palace at Westminster, the crowd of poor and sick folk on whom she bestowed her boundless > Will. Malm. Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. c. 91 (Hamilton, pp. 196-198) ; Gesta Reg., 1. i. c. 20 (Hardy, pp. 32-34); Antiq. Glaston., passhii. 2 Gesta Pontif., 1. ii. c. 74 (Hamilton, pp. 152-155) ; Gesta Reg., 1. ii. c. 213 (Hardy, p. 366). ' Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 253 (Hardy, p. 427). < lb. 1. v. c. 394 (p. 620). ° lb. t. 390 (p. 616). 94 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. charities was almost equalled by that of the scholars and poets who vied with each other to gain her ear by some new feat of melody or of rime.-^ Her stepson Earl Robert of Gloucester was renowned as a scholar no less than as a warrior and a statesman ; to him William of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works, as to a comrade and an equal in the world of letters ; it may even be that the " Robert " of whom we once catch a glimpse, sitting in the library at Malmesbury, eagerly turning over its treasures, and suggesting plans of work to the willing friend at his side, is no other than the king's son.^ The secular clergy had no mind to be outstripped by the regulars in literary activity ; Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, a nephew of the justiciar, urged his archdeacon Henry of Huntingdon to compose a History of the English in emulation of the Gesta Regum. Nor did history alone absorb the intellectual energy of the time. Natural science had its followers, among them the king himself, who studied it in characteristically practical fashion at Woodstock, where he kept a menagerie full of lions, leopards, camels, lynxes and other strange beasts collected from all parts of the world ;^ and the "Bestiary " of an Anglo-Norman poet, Philip de Thaun, found a patroness in his second queen, Adeliza of Louvain. A scholar of old English race, Adelard of Bath, carried his researches into a wider field. Towards the close of the eleventh century he had crossed the sea to study in the schools of Tours and Laon. At the latter place he set up a school of his own, but he soon quitted it to enter upon a long course of wan- dering in distant lands. He crossed the Alps, made his way 1 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 418 (Hardy, p. 650). ^ " In historicis nos narrationibus occupatos detorsit a proposito tua, Rodberte, voluntas. Nuper enim cum in bibliotheca nostra sederemus, et quisque pro suo studio libros evolveret, impegisti in Amalarium de Ecclesiasticis Officiis. Cujus cum materiam ex prima statim tituli fronte cognosceris, amplexus es occasionem qua rudimenta novK professionis animares. Sed quia confestim animi tui alacri- tatem turbavit testimoniorum perplexitas et sermonum asperitas, rogasti ut eum abbreviarem. Ego autem . . . munus injunctum non aspernanter accepi." . . (Will. Malm. Abbreviatio Amalarii, prolog.) Mr. Birch (Will. Mmlm., p. 43) takes this Robert to be the earl. But does not the phrase about " nova professio " rather suggest a new-made monk of the house ? 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg. , 1. v. c. 409 (Hardy, p. 638). THE ENGLAND OF HENRY I. 95 to the great medical school at Salerno, thence into Greece and Asia Minor, and finally, it seems, to the great centre of Arab culture and learning at Bagdad, or what we now call Cairo. Thence, after seven years' absence, he returned to England soon after the accession of Henry I., and published his first book, a philosophical allegory dedicated to Bishop William of Syracuse, whose acquaintance he had made in his travels. He next opened a school, apparently in Normandy, for the diffusion of the scientific lore which he had acquired in the East. He had picked up, among other things, an Arabic version of Euclid, and the Latin translation which he made of this became the text-book of all succeeding mathematicians for centuries after. But his teaching of the physical science of the East was vehemently opposed by western scholars ; his own nephew, who had been one of his pupils at Laon, was among his opponents, and it was in the shape of a discussion with this nephew that Adelard put forth, under the title of QucBstiones Naturales, a plea, for a more free inquiry into the principles of natural science, instead of the blind following of old authorities which had hitherto contented the scholars of the West.^ In the last years of Henry's reign he seems to have returned once more to settle in his native land.^ His career shows how daring was the spirit of enterprize now stirring among Englishmen, and how vast was the range of study and experience now thrown open to English scholars. We see that England was already within reach of that wider world of which her Angevin kings were soon to make her a part. What gave scope for all this social, moral and intel- lectual developement was, to borrow a phrase from' the Peterborough Chronicler, " the good peace " that Henry, like his father, " made in this land."^ The foundations of the political and administrative system by which that peace was preserved inviolate to the end of his reign were laid in the three years succeeding the battle of Tinchebray- — the ' On Adelard, see Wright, Biog. Britt. Lift., vol. ii. pp. 94-100. 2 "In Pardonis . . . Adelardo de Bada, 4s. et 6d." Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. (Hunter) p. 22 — among the " Nova placita et novse conventiones " of Wilt- shire. Mr. Hunter (zVi., pref. p. xxi.) takes this to be the traveller, but Mr. Wright doubts it. ' Eng. Chron. a. 1087. *#■ 95 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. i. brightest period of Henry's prosperity, and the only time in his life when he himself could enjoy, on both sides of the sea, the tranquillity which he fought to secure. In England, indeed, from the day when he drove out Robert of Belleme in 1 103 to his own death in 11 35, the peace was never broken save by an occasional disturbance on the Welsh border. Even in Wales, however, the settlement of the Flemings and the appointment of a " Saxon " bishop to the see of St. David's^ were doing their work ; and though in Henry's later years the restlessness of the Welsh princes and people twice provoked him to march into their country, the danger from them was never great enough to mar the general security of the realm. From Scotland there was still less to fear ; its three successive kings, Eadgar, Alex- ander and David, were the brothers of the good queen Maude and the faithful allies of her husband. But in Henry's dominions beyond the sea, the state of things was very different. In the duchy of Normandy the year 1 1 1 saw the opening of a new phase of politics, the beginning of a train of complications in which England seemed at the moment less directly concerned than in the earlier struggles between the king and the barons, but which in the end exercised an important influence on the course of her after history by bringing her into contact with the power of Anjou. Before we can trace the steps whereby this came to pass, we must change our line of thought and study. We must turn aside from the well-worn track of English history to travel awhile in less familiar paths ; we must leave our own land and make our way into the depths of Gaul ; we must go back from the broad daylight of the twelfth century into the dim dawn of the ninth, there to seek out the beginnings and thence to follow the romantic story of the house of Anjou. 1 Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 68. CHAPTER II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU. 843-987. The cradle-land of our Angevin kings, the original county of Anjou, was a small territory in central Gaul, lying about the lower course of the river Loire and that of its affluent the Mayenne^ or Maine. Its chief portion con- sisted of a wedge-shaped tract hemmed in between the right bank of the Loire, which bounded it on the south, and the streams of Loir, Sarthe and Mayenne, which flowed round it on the north and west ; along its southern border stretched a belt of alluvial soil which in winter and in rainy seasons became a vast flood-drowned fen, swallowed up by the over- flowing waters of the Loire ; to the northward, the country consisted chiefly of level uplands broken here and there by patches of forest and tiny river-valleys, and rising in the west into a range of low hills, which again died down into a fringe of swampy meadow-land along the eastern bank of the Mayenne. A narrow strip of ground on the southern bank of the Loire, with a somewhat wider strip of hilly and wooded country beyond the Mayenne, completed the district to which its earliest known inhabitants, a Gallic tribe called Andes or Andegavi, have left their name. A few miles above the angle formed by the confluence of the two rivers, a lofty mass of black slate rock thrown out from the upland ' From the point where the Sarthe joins it, this river is now called the Maine. In the middle ages it had but one name, Meduana, from its source to its junction with the Loire. The old nomenclature is far more convenient for historical purposes. VOL. I. H 98 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. furnished a ready-made fortress, important alike by its natural strength and by its geographical position, com- manding the main lines of communication with central, northern and southern Gaul through the valleys of the Loire and its tributaries. Under the Roman conquerors of Gaul the place was called Juliomagus ; the hill was crowned by a lofty citadel, and strengthened by a circuit of rampart walls ; while from its crest a road struck eastward along Loire-side into the heart of central Gaul, another followed the west- ward course of the river to its junction with the sea, and others struck southward and northward into Aquitania and across the upland into the basin of the Seine. In the middle of the fourth century a Christian bishop, probably one of a band of mission-preachers who shared with the famous S. Martin of Tours the work of evangelizing central Gaul, laid beside the citadel of Juliomagus the foundations of a church, which in after-time grew into the cathedral of S. Maurice ; and it is from the extent of the diocese over which his successors ruled that we learn the extent of the civil jurisdiction of Juliomagus. A later bishop, Albinus, left his name to the great abbey of S. Aubin, founded in Merovingian days on the slope of the hill just outside the city wall ; a monastery dedicated to S. Sergius grew up to the north, in a low-lying marshy meadow by the river-side ; while the place of the Roman prefects was taken by a suc- cession of Prankish counts, the delegates first of the Mero- vingian kings of Neustria and then of the Karolingian emperors ; and the Roman name of Juliomagus itself gave way to a native appellation cognate with that of the district of which it was the head — " Andegavis," Angers.^ City and county acquired a new importance through the political arrangements by which the Karolingian realms were divided between the three sons of the Emperor Louis the Gentle. By a treaty made at Verdun in 843, the original Prankish kingdom and its Saxon dependencies, answering roughly to what we call Germany now-a-days, fell to the second brother Louis ; the Gallic conquests of the Pranks, '^ The ecclesiastical history of Angers is in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv, col. 543 et seq. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 99 between the Moselle, the Rhone, the Pyrenees and the ocean, were the share of the youngest, Charles the Bald ; while the necessity that the eldest brother Lothar, as Em- peror, should hold the two capitals, Rome and Aachen, involved the creation in his favour of a middle kingdom consisting of a long narrow string of countries reaching from the Frisian to the Pontine marshes. Although the limits thus fixed were afterwards altered more than once, the main lines of this treaty left indelible traces, and from that day we may date the beginning of modern France and modern Germany. The tripartite division, however, was soon over- thrown by the extinction of the elder or Lotharingian line ; the incongruous middle kingdom fell asunder and became a bone of furious contention between its two neighbours, and the imperial crown itself was soon an object of rivalry no less fierce. On the other hand, the extent of territory actually subject to Charles the Bald fell far short of the limits assigned to him by the treaty. Even Charles the Great had scarcely been able to maintain more than a nominal sway over the vast region which stretched from the southern shores of the Loire to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea, and was known by the general name of Aquitania ; its princes and its people, wrapped in the traditions of Roman culture and Roman greatness, held disdainfully aloof from the barbarian conquerors of the north, and remained utterly indifferent to claims of supremacy which each succeeding Karolingian found it more and more hopeless to enforce. To the west, again, in the peninsula of Britanny or Armorica, the ancient Celtic race preserved, as in the Welsh hills of our own island, its native tongue, its primitive laws and customs, and its separate political organization under a dynasty of native princes who owed, indeed, a nominal alle- giance to the West-Frankish overlord at Laon, but whose subjection to him was scarcely more real than that of the princes of Aquitania, while their disaffection was far more active and far more threatening ; for the pirate fleets of the northmen were now hovering about the coast of Gaul as about that of Britain ; and the Celts of the Breton peninsula, like the West- Welsh of Cornwall, were ever ready to make loo ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. common cause with these marauders against the Teutonic conquerors of the land. The work of the northmen in West-Frankland was a work both of union and disunion. There, as in England, the need for organization and defence against their attacks produced a new upgrowth of national life ; but while in Eng- land this life was moulded by the consolidation of the earlier Engle and Saxon realms into a single state under the leader- ship of the West-Saxon kings, in Frankland it was created through the forcible breaking-up of an outward unity already threatened with the doom which never fails sooner or later to overtake a kingdom divided against itself The West- Frankish king was not, like the king of Wessex, the leader, the natural exponent, the impersonation almost, of the dawn- ing national consciousness ; it was not he who led and or- ganized the struggle for existence against the northern foe ; the nation had to fight for itself, with but little help from its sovereign. This difference was caused partly by the political circumstances of the Karolingian realms, partly by geo- graphical conditions. The brunt of the battle necessarily fell, not upon the royal domains lying far from the sea around the inland fortress of Laon, but on the coast, and especially on the districts around the great river-inlets by which the pirates made their entrance into the country. Of these, the estuary of the Seine lay nearest to them, and was their first point of attack. Between it and the other great inlet, the mouth of the Loire, lay the Breton peninsula ; once round that, and the broad lands of Aquitania, rich with the natural wealth of a southern soil and with the remains of a luxury and splendour in which its cities had almost out- done Rome herself, would tempt the northmen with a fairer harvest of spoil than they could find on the shores of the Channel. The desolate rocky coast and barren moorlands of the intervening peninsula offered little chance of booty ; but if the pirates could secure the alliance or even the neutrality of the Bretons, they had but to force an entrance into the Loire, and not only Aquitaine, but the inmost heart of the West -Prankish realm would be laid open to their attacks. Two barriers, however, would have to be overcome THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU before such an entrance could be gained. The first was the city of Nantes, which stood on the northern bank of the Loire, some thirty miles above its mouth. Politically, Nantes was the extreme western outpost of the Karolingian power, for its count held his fief directly of the king at Laon, not of the nearer Breton under-king at Rennes ; but by its geogra- phical position and the character of its people it was far more Breton than Prankish. The true corner-stone of the West-Frankish realm lay on the other side of the Mayenne. The county of Anjou or " Angevin march," the border-land of Neustria and Aquitaine, was for all practical purposes the border-land also of Neustria and of Britanny. Angers, with its Roman citadel and its Roman walls, perched on the crest of its black slate-rock, at once guarding and guarded by the two rivers which flowed round its foot, was a far mightier fortress than Nantes ; Angers, rather than Nantes, was the true key of the Loire valley, and the stronghold of the Neustrian border against all attacks from the west, whether by land or by sea. In the first days of Charles the Bald, when the new king was struggling with his brothers, and the pirate ships were beginning again to strike terror into the coasts of Gaul, Lambert, a Breton-born count of the Angevin march, sought from Charles the investiture of the neighbouring and re- cently-vacated county of Nantes. On the refusal of his demand, he threw off his allegiance, offered his services to the Breton king Nomenoe, and on failing to obtain the coveted prize by his help, called in that of a pirate fleet which was cruising about the shores of Britanny. It was thus at the invitation and under the guidance of a man who had been specially intrusted with its defence that the northmen made their first entrance into the hitherto peaceful estuary of the Loire. Nantes was stormed and sacked ;^ the desolate city was left in the hands of Lambert and the Bretons, and the ravagers sailed away, probably to swell the forces and share the spoil of a fleet which in the following year made ' Chron. Namnet. in Rer. Gall. Script., vol. vii. pp. 217, 218 ; Chronn. Rainald. Andeg., S. Serg., Vindoc, n. 843 (Marchegay, Eglises d' Anjou, pp. 5, 129-132, 158). 102 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. its way to the estuary of the Garonne, and pushed inland as far as Toulouse. Nearly ten years passed away before the northmen repeated their dash upon central Gaul. The valley of the Seine and the city of Paris were the victims of their next great expedition, in 845 ; and a series of plunder- ing raids upon the Aquitanian coast were crowned in 848 by the conquest of Bordeaux. For a moment, in 851, the fury of the pirates' attack seemed to be turning away from Gaul to spend itself on Britain ; but a great victory of the West- Saxons under .^thelwulf at Aclea threw them back upon their old field of operations across the Channel, and in the terror of their threatened onset Charles sought to detach the Bretons from their alliance by a formal cession of the counties of Rennes and Nantes and the district west of the Mayenne, which had passed into Breton hands by the treason of Count Lambert.^ His precautions failed to avert the blow which he dreaded. Next year the pirates made their way back again round the Armorican coast, up the mouth of the Loire, past Nantes, and through the Angevin march — now shrunk to a little corner of territory wedged in between the Mayenne and the Loire — as far inland as Tours, where they sacked and burned the abbey of S. Martin and drove its canons into exile with the hardly-rescued body of their patron saint.^ In a breathing-space which followed upon this last attack, Charles received from .(Ethelwulf of Wessex a personal visit and an overture of mutual alliance against the common foe. The scheme was shattered by a political revolution in Wessex which followed .^.thelwulf s return ; and meanwhile a new danger to the Karolingian power arose in the threatening attitude of Robert the Brave, a warrior of obscure birth who was now count of the Angevin march. Under pretext, as it seems, of securing their aid against the 1 Ann. Berlin, a. 851 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 68) mention the cession of Nantes, etc. That the Mayenne was made the boundary of the two king- doms appears from a charter of the Breton king Herispoe, dated August 23, 852 ; " Erispoe priuceps Britanniae provincis et usque ad Medanum fluvium. . . . Dominante Erispoe. ... in totam Britaimiam et usque ad Medanum fluvium. " Lobineau, Hist, de Bretagne, vol. ii. p. 55. 2 Ann. Berlin, a. 853 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 70). II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 103 northmen, Robert leagued himself with the foes of the monarchy beyond his two frontier rivers, and made a triple alliance with the revolted Bretons and the king's rebel nephew, Pepin of Aquitaine.^ Charles, more and more hard pressed every year by domestic and political difficulties, and haunted by the perpetual horror of the pirate ships always in the background, felt that this second wavering lord of the marchland must be won back at any cost. Two years later, therefore, the count of the Angevin march was invested with a vast duchy comprising the whole territory between Seine and Loire as far as the sea and the Breton border ; and with this grant the special work of keeping out both Bretons and northmen was distinctly laid upon his shoulders.^ Robert fulfilled his trust gallantly and successfully till he fell in a Scandinavian ambush at Brissarthe in 866.^ His territories were given to a cousin of the king, Hugh of Burgundy, who was either so incapable or so careless of their defence that before six years had passed he suffered the very corner-stone of his duchy, the most important point in the whole scheme of operations against the northmen in central Gaul, to fall into the enemies' hands. A band of pirates, sailing unopposed up the Loire and the Mayenne after Robert's death, found Angers deserted and defenceless, and settling there with their families, used it as a centre from which they could securely harry all the country round. The bulk of the pirate forces, however, was now concentrated upon a great effort for the conquest of Britain, and while the invaders of Angers lay thus isolated from their brethren across the Channel, Charles the Bald seized his opportunity to attempt the recovery of the city. In concert with the Breton king, Solomon, he gathered his forces for a siege ; the Franks encamped on the eastern side of the Mayenne, the Bretons on the opposite shore. Their joint blockade proved unavailing, till one of the Bretons conceived the bold idea of turning the course of the Mayenne, so as to leave the pirate ^ Ann. Berlin, a. 859 [Rer. Gall. ScripU. vol. vii. p. 75). 2 Regino a. 861 (Pertz, Man. Germ. Hist., vol. i. p. 571). Ann. Mettens. a. 861 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 190). ' Ann. Berlin, a. 866 ^^Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 94). I04 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. ships stranded and useless. The whole Breton army at once set to work and dug such an enormous trench that the northmen saw their retreat would be hopelessly cut off. In dismay they offered to purchase, at a heavy price, a free withdrawal from Angers and its district ; their offer was accepted, and Angers was evacuated accordingly.^ But the long keels sailed away only to return again. Amid the gathering troubles of the Karolingian house, as years passed on, the cry rose up ever louder and louder from the desolated banks of Seine, and at last even from the inland cities of Reims and Soissons, perilously near the royal abode at Laon itself: " From the fury of the northmen, good Lord, deliver us !" It was not from Laon that deliverance was to come. The success of Charles the Bald at Angers, the more brilliant victory of his grandson Louis III. over Guthrum at Saucourt, were but isolated triumphs which pro- duced no lasting results. At the very moment when the Karolingian empire was reunited under the sceptre of Charles the Fat came the crisis of the struggle with the northmen in West-Frankland ; and the true national leader shewed him- self not in the heir of Charles the Great, but in Count Odo of Paris, the son of Robert the Brave. It was Odo who saved Paris from the northmen when they besieged it with all their forces throughout the winter of 885 ; and by saving Paris he saved the kingdom. Before the siege was raised the possessions which his father had held as duke of the French were restored to him by the death of Hugh of Burgundy. A few months later the common consent of all the Karolingian realms deposed their unworthy Emperor, and the acclamations of a grateful people raised their de- liverer Odo to the West-Frankish throne. The times, however, were not yet ripe for a change of dynasty, and the revolution was followed by a reaction which on Odo's death in 898 again set a Karolingian, Charles the Simple, upon the throne ; but though the monarchy of Laon ' Regino, a. 873 (Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist.,vo\. i. pp. 585, 586). Ann. Berlin, and Mettens. and Chron. Namnet. u. 873 {Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. vii. pp. 117, 200, 220, 221). Chron. Sigebert. a. 875 (ib. p. 252). Chron. S. Serg., a. 873. (JIarchegay, Eglises, pp. 132, 133). II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 105 lingered on till the race of Charles the Great became extinct, it was being gradually undermined and supplanted by the dukes of the French, the rulers of the great duchy between Seine and Loire. Paris was now, since the siege of 885, the chief seat of the ducal power ; and in the new feudal organization which grew up around this centre, the cradle of the ducal house, the border-stronghold of Angers, sank to a secondary position. The fiefs which the dukes parcelled out among their followers fell to the share of men of the most diverse origin and condition. In some cases, as at Chartres and Tours, the Scandinavian settler was turned into a peace- ful lieutenant of the Prankish chief against whom he had fought. In others the reward of valour was justly bestowed on men who had earned it by their prowess against the invaders. It may be that the old alliance of Count Robert the Brave with the Bretons had sowed the seeds of a mighty tree. In the depths of a gloomy forest-belt which ran along the Breton border at the foot of a range of hills that shelter the western side of the valley of the Mayenne, there dwelt in Robert's day — so the story went — a valiant forester, Tortulf. He quitted the hardy, hazardous borderer's life — half hunter, half bandit — to throw himself into the struggle of Charles the Bald and Robert the Brave against the north- men : Charles set him to keep the pirates out of Touraine, and gave him a congenial post as forester of a wooded dis- trict known as the " Nid-de-Merle " — the Blackbird's Nest. In its wild fastnesses Tortulf lay in wait for the approach of the marauders, and sprang forth to meet them with a daring and a success which earned him his sovereign's favour and the alliance of the duke of the French. His son, Ingelger, followed in his steps ; marriage came to the help of arms, and with the hand of ^lendis, niece of the archbishop of Tours, Ingelger acquired her lands at Amboise. The dowry was a valuable one ; Amboise stood in the midst of one of the most rich and fertile districts of central France, half way between Tours and Blois, on the south bank of the Loire, which was spanned at this point by a bridge said to have been built by Julius Caesar; two centuries later tradition still pointed out the site of Caesar's palace on the banks of io6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the little river Amasse, at the western end of the town ; while opposite the bridge a rocky brow, crowned to-day by the shell of a magnificent castle of the Renascence, probably still kept in Ingelger's days some traces of a fortress built there by a Roman governor in the reign of the Emperor Valens. A mightier stronghold than Amboise, however, was to be the home of Ingelger's race. His son, a ruddy youth named Fulk, early entered the service of Count Odo of Paris and remained firmly attached to him and his house ; and one of the earliest acts of Odo's brother Robert, who succeeded him as duke of the French — if indeed it was not rather one of the last acts of King Odo himself — was to intrust the city of Angers to Fulk the Red as viscount.^ The choice was a wise one ; for Fulk was gifted with a sound political instinct which found and kept the clue to guide him through all the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the next forty years. He never swerved from his adher- ence to the dukes of the French ; and by his quiet tenacity he, like them, laid the foundation of his house's greatness. Preferments civil and ecclesiastical — the abbacies of S. Aubin and S. Licinius at Angers, the viscounty of Tours, though this was but a momentary honour — were all so many stepping- stones to his final investiture, shortly before the death of Charles the Simple, as count of the Angevin March. This little county of Anjou, of which Fulk thus became the first hereditary count, ended by overshadowing in political importance all the other divisions which made up the duchy of France. In point of territorial extent Anjou, at its pre- sent stage, was one of the smallest of the under-fiefs of the duchy. The dominions of Theobald the Trickster, the first count of Blois and Chartres, were far larger than those of Fulk ; and so was the county of Maine or Cenomannia, which lay to the north of Anjou on the right bank of the Loire. Yet in a few generations Blois and Maine were both alike outstripped by the little Angevin march. The proud independence of Maine proved her ruin as well as her glory. She too was a border -land ; her western frontier marched with that of Britanny, her northern with that of a great ^ On the whole story of Tortulf, Ingelger and Fulk, see note A at end of chapter. !yorgate's"Er^laiiAimder the Angevin Kngs! "Wagner iiUelJCrf Geog^ Estab*Ie^sic. Xoiulmi, Ma rmjIlaTi L^ Co . n. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 107 Scandinavian settlement which was growing into the duchy of Normandy. But her political status was altogether un- defined and insecure. France and Normandy alike claimed the overlordship of Maine ; Maine herself acknowledged the claims of neither ; and this uncertain condition placed her at the mercy of her neighbours to north and south, and made her a bone of contention between them and a battle-ground for their quarrels till the day when all three were united. Blois and Chartres, on the other hand, with their dependency Touraine, stood like Anjou on a perfectly definite footing as recognised under-fiefs of the duchy of France. In the ex- tent of their territory, and in the natural resources derived from the fertility of its soil and the number and wealth of its towns, the counts of Blois had at starting a very consider- able advantage over the Angevins. But this seeming advan- tage proved in a few years to be a disadvantage. The house of Blois grew too fast, and soon outgrew its strength ; its dominions became straggling ; and when they straggled out eastward into Champagne, what was gained at one end was lost at the other, and Touraine, the most precious possession of the counts of Blois, was absorbed in the gradual steady advance of the Angevins. Anjou's position as a marchland marked her out for a special career. Forming the extreme south-western comer of France properly so called, divided from Aquitania by the Loire, from Britanny by the Mayenne, she had the advantage of a strong and compact geographical situation to start with. Her political position was equally favourable ; she was neither hindered and isolated like Maine by a desperate endeavour to reclaim a lost independence, nor led astray by a multiplicity of scattered interests like Blois. She had simply to take her choice between the two alternatives which lie before every marchland. Such a land must either submit to be swallowed up piecemeal by its neighbours, or it must in sheer self-defence swallow up some of them ; to keep what it has got, it must get more. Anjou, as represented by Fulk the Red and his successors, strongly embraced this latter alternative. The growth of the Angevin power during the next two centuries was due chiefly to the character of io8 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. its rulers, working in a sphere which gave exceptional scope for the exercise of their peculiar gifts. Whoever Fulk's real ancestors may have been, there can be no question that his descendants were a very remarkable race. From first to last there is a strong family likeness among them all. The first thing that strikes one about them is their thoroughness ; whatsoever their hands found to do, whether it were good or evil, they did it with all their might. Nearly all of them were men of great and varied natural powers, gifted with a lofty military capacity and a deep political insight, and with a taste and a talent for all kinds of pursuits, into which they threw themselves with the full ardour of their stirring, rest- less temper. Daring, but not rash ; persevering, watchful, tenacious ; sometimes seeming utterly unscrupulous, yet with an odd vein of irregular piety running through the characters of many of them, and coming to light in the strangest shapes and at the most unexpected moments ; passionate almost as madmen, but with a method in their madness — the Angevin counts were patriots in their way ; for their chief aim was aggrandizement, but it was the aggrandize- ment of Anjou as well as of themselves. They were not to be led away, like their rivals of Blois, by visionary schemes of merely personal promotion involving neglect of their own little home-county ; they were proud and fond of their " black Angers " on its steep above the Mayenne, and never forgot that there was the centre whence their power was to spread to the ends of the earth. It is easy to see how exactly such a race as this was fitted for its post in Anjou. Given such men in such a place, we can scarcely wonder at what they made of it. / The Angers in which Fulk came to rule as count, about the time when ^thelstan succeeded Eadward the Elder as king of Wessex, was a town not of dark slate walls as it is chiefly now, but of red flintstone and redder brick, such as the medieval builders long copied from the works of their Roman masters, and such as may still be found embedded in the outer walls of the bishop's palace and half hidden behind the mighty black bastions of the later castle. That castle covers, or rather encloses, the site of a hall which II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 109 Count Odo, the successor of the traitor Lambert, had built about the year 8 S i on ground acquired by exchange with Bishop Dodo. For some time after Prankish counts had been substituted for Roman prefects, the spiritual and temporal rulers of Angers had continued to dwell side by side on the hill-top ; Odo, however, instead of again occupy- ing the palace which Lambert had deserted, made it over to the bishop in return for a plot of ground lying just outside the south-west corner of the city wall. There he built himself a house, with the river at its feet and a vine- clad hill at its back ; and there from that time forth was the dwelling-place of the Angevin counts.^ Fulk the Red took up his abode there in the early days of a great political transition which was to change the kingdom of the West- Franks into a kingdom of Parisian France. Half a century ^ had yet to elapse before the transition was accomplished ; at its present stage indeed few could foresee its ultimate issue. If the ducal house of Paris had many friends, it had also many foes. The old Karolingian nobility was slowly dying out or sinking into the background before the new nobility of the sword ; the great house of Vermandois had thrown its weight into the scale with the advancing power ; but there were still many who looked with contempt and disgust on the new order of things, on the house of Paris and all its connexions. The count of Anjou was wedged in between powers anything but favourably disposed towards him and his patrons. The princes of Aquitania looked scornfully across the Loire at the upstarts on its northern bank ; little as they recked of any authority beyond their river-barrier, the only one which they acknowledged at all was that of the Karolingian king at Laon. The Bretons beyond the Mayenne were as far from being subdued as ever. Within the duchy of France itself, one little corner was equally scornful of the dukes and of their partisans ; Maine, although from its geographical position necessarily reckoned part of the duchy " between Seine and Loire," still refused to acknowledge any such reckoning ; its ruling house, as well as the great nobles of the South, claimed to have ' See note B at end of chapter. no ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. inherited the traditions of the Roman Empire and the blood of its Prankish conquerors. In the eyes of the Cenomannian counts, who traced their pedigree from a nephew of Charles the Great, the heirs of Tortulf the Forester were nothing but upstart barbarians. Their disdain, however, mattered little to Fulk. In those critical times, he who had the keenest sword, the strongest arm, the clearest head and the boldest heart, had the best title to nobility — a title whose validity all were sooner or later compelled to acknowledge. Fulk held Anjou by the grace of God, the favour of his lord the duke, and the might of his own good sword. He was, however, no mere man of war ; he was quite willing to strengthen his position by peaceful means. One method of so doing was suggested by his father's example ; it was one which in all ages finds favour with ambitious men of obscure origin, and which was to be specially characteristic of the Angevin house. As Ingelger had married .^lendis of Amboise, so Fulk sought and won the hand of another maiden of Touraine, Roscilla, the daughter of Warner, lord of Loches, Villentras and Haye. It can only have been as the dowry of his wife that Fulk came into possession of the most valuable portion of her father's lands, the township of Loches.^ It lay some twenty miles south of Amboise, on the left bank of the Indre, a little river which takes its rise in the plains of Berry and winds along a wooded valley, through some of the most romantic scenery of southern Touraine, to fall into the Loire about half way between Amboise and Angers. In a loop of the river, sheltered on the south and west by a belt of woodland which for centuries to come was a favourite hunting-ground of Roscilla's descendants, rose a pyramidal height of rock on whose steep sides the houses of the little township clustered round a church said to have been built in the sixth century by a holy man from southern Gaul, named Ursus, the " S. Ours '' whom Loches still venerates as its patron saint. ^ By the acquisition of Loches Fulk had ^ Gesta Cons. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes d' Anjou), pp. 65, 66. The pedigree there given to Roscilla is impossible. 2 The life of S. Ours is in Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum, u. xviii. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU gained in the heart of southern Touraine a foot-hold which, coupled with that which he already possessed at Amboise, might one day serve as a basis for the conquest of the whole district. A few years before Fulk's investiture as count of Anjou, the relations between the West-Frankish kingdom and its northern foes had entered upon a new phase. In 912 King Charles the Simple and Duke Hugh of Paris, finding themselves unable to wrest back from a pirate leader called Hrolf the Ganger the lands which he had won around the mouth of the Seine, made a virtue of necessity, and by a treaty concluded at St.-Clair-sur-Epte granted to Hrolf a formal investiture of his conquest, on condition of homage to the king and conversion to the Christian faith. Tradition told how a rough Danish soldier, bidden to perform the homage in Hrolf's stead, kissed indeed the foot of Charles the Simple, but upset him and his throne in doing so ; and although to the declining Karolingian monarchy the new power thus established at the mouth of the Seine was useful as a counterpoise to that of the Parisian dukes, yet the story is not altogether an inapt parable of the relations between the duchy of Normandy and its royal overlord during several generations. The homage and the conversion of Hrolf and his comrades were alike little more than nominal. His son, William Longsword, strove hard to force upon his people the manners, the tongue, the outward civilization of their French neighbours ; but to those neighbours even he was still only a " leader of the pirates." The plundering, burning, slaughtering raids did indeed become less frequent and less horrible under him than they had been in his father's heathen days ; but they were far from having ceased. Politically indeed it was William's support alone that enabled Charles the Simple to carry on to his life's end a fairly successful struggle with a rival claimant of his crown, Rudolf of Burgundy, a brother- in-law of Hugh, duke of the French. No sooner was Charles dead and Rudolf seated on his throne than the hostility of the northmen to the new king broke out afresh in a pirate- raid which swept across the Norman border, past Orleans and through the Gitinais, into the very heart of the kingdom, 112 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. to the abbey of S. Benedict at Fleury on the Loire. It was not the first time the monastery had been ravaged by pirates ; the abbot was now evidently expecting their attack, for he had called to his aid Count Gilbald of Auxerre and Ingelger of Anjou, Fulk's eldest son, who, young as he was, had already made himself a name in battle with the north- men. The fight was a stubborn one ; the defenders of Fleuiy had resolved to maintain it to their last gasp, and when at length all was over there was scarcely a man of them left to tell the tale. The young heir of Anjou, taken prisoner by the pirates, was slaughtered beneath the shadow of S. Benet's abbey as Count Robert the Brave had been slaughtered long ago at the bridge of Sarthe.-^ Fortunately, however, the future of the Angevin house did not depend solely on the life thus cut off in its promise. Two sons yet remained to Fulk. The duty of stepping into Ingelger's place fell upon the youngest, for the second, Guy, was already in holy orders. Eight years later, in 937, Duke Hugh of Paris, the great maker of kings and bishops, who had just restored Louis From-over-sea to the throne of his father Charles the Simple, procured Guy's elevation to the see of Soissons.^ The son's promotion was doubtless owed to the long and steady service of the father ; but the young bishop soon shewed himself worthy of consideration on his own account. He played a conspicuous part in the politics of his time, both ecclesiastical and secular ; he adhered firmly to the party of Duke Hugh and his brother-in-law Herbert of Vermandois, and even carried his devotion to them so far as to consecrate Herbert's little son Hugh, a child six years old, to the archbishopric of Reims in 940 ; ^ and through all the scandals and censures which naturally resulted from this glaringly uncanonical appointment Guy stuck to his boy-archbishop with a courage worthy of a better cause. He could, however, shew zeal for the Karol- ingian king as well as for the Parisian duke. When in 945 1 Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 239. The trae date is shewn by a charter of Fulk, in Mabille's Introd. to Comtes d' Anjou, pihes justif. no. vi., p. ci. 2 Chron. Frodoard, a. 937 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 192). ^ Richer, 1. ii. c. 82. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 113 Louis From-beyond-sea fell a prisoner into the hands of the Normans, they demanded as the condition of his release that his two sons should be given them as hostages. On Queen Gerberga's refusal to trust them with her eldest boy, the bishop of Soissons offered himself in the child's stead, and the Normans, well knowing his importance in the realm, willingly accepted the substitution.^ The dauntless Angevin was possibly more at home in the custody of valiant enemies than amid the ecclesiastical censures which fell thick upon him for his proceedings in connexion with Hugh of Reims, and from which he was only absolved in 948 by the synod of Trier.^ His father was then no longer count of Anjou. A year after Hugh's consecration, in the winter of 941 or the early spring of 942, Fulk the Red died " in a good old age," leaving the marchland which his sword had won and ^ gjuarded so well to his youngest son, Fulk the Good.* The reign of the second Count Fulk is the traditional golden age of Anjou. Under him, she is the proverbially happy land which has no history. While the name of the bishop of Soissons is conspicuous in court and camp, that of his brother the count is never once heard ; he waged no wars,* he took no share in politics ; the annalists of the time find nothing to record of him. But if there is no history, there is plenty of tradition and legend to set before us a charming picture of the Good Count's manner of life. The arts he cultivated were those of peace ; his gentle disposition and refined taste led him to pursuits and habits which in those rough days were almost wholly associated with the clerical profession. His favourite place of retirement, the special object of his reverence and care, was the church of S. Martin at Chiteauneuf by Tours. There were enshrined the relics of the "Apostle of the Gauls"; after many a ' Richer, 1. ii. u. 48 ; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comies), p. 66, where the king is miscalled Charles the Simple. '' Chron. Frodoard, a. 948 (Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. viii. p. 204). Richer, 1. ii. c. 82. ' Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 67. The date is proved by two charters, one dated August 941, signed by " Fulco comes " and " Fulco filius ejus " (Mabille, ibid., introd., piices justif., no. viii. p. cv) ; the other, dated May 942, and signed by one FuUc only (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 723). < "Iste Fulco nulla bella gessit." Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 69. VOL. I. I 114 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. journey to and fro, many a narrow escape from the sacrileg- ious hands of the northmen, they had been finally brought back to their home, so local tradition said, under the care of Fulk's grandfather Ingelger. The church was now a colleg- iate foundation, served by a body of secular canons under the joint control of a dean and — according to an evil usage of the period — a lay -abbot who had only to enjoy his revenues on pretence of watching over the temporal interests of the church. Since the time of Hugh of Burgundy the abbacy of S. Martin's had always been held by the head of the ducal house of France ; and it was doubtless their in- fluence which procured a canonry in their church for Fulk of Anjou. His greatest delight was to escape from the cares of government and go to keep the festival of S. Martin with the chapter of Chateauneuf ; there he would lodge in the house of one or other of the clergy, living in every respect just as they did, and refusing to be called by his worldly title ; not till after he was gone did the count take care to make up for whatever little expense his host might have incurred in receiving the honorary canon.^ While there he diligently fulfilled the duties of his office, never failing to take his part in the sacred services. He was not only a scholar, he was a poet, and had himself composed anthems in honour of S. Martin.^ One Martinmas eve King Louis From-beyond-sea came to pay his devotions at the shrine of the patron saint of Tours. As he and his suite entered the church at evensong, there they saw Fulk, in his canon's robe, sitting in his usual place next the dean, and chanting the Psalms, book in hand. The courtiers pointed at him mockingly — "See, the count of Anjou has turned clerk!" and the king joined in their mockery. The letter which the " clerk " wrote to Louis, when their jesting came round to his ears, has passed into a proverb : " Know, my lord, that an unlettered king is but a crowned ass."^ Fulk was indeed 1 Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Covites), p. 70. ^ lb. pp. 71, 72. ^ "Scitote, domine, quod rex illitteratus est asinus coronatus." Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 71. It is curious that John of Salisbury, -writing at the court of Henry of Anjou some years before the compilation of the Gesta Consulum, quotes the saying as coming from " literis quas Regem Romanorum ad Francorum regem transmisisse recolo " {Polycraticiis, 1. iv. c. 6 ; Giles, vol. iii. p. 237). The II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 115 a living proof that it is possible to make the contemplative life of the scholar a help and not a hindrance to the active life of the statesman. The poet-canon was no mere dreamer ; he was a practical, energetic ruler, who worked hard at the improvement and cultivation, material as well as intellectual, of his little marchland, rebuilding the churches and the towns that had been laid waste by the northmen, and striving to make up for the losses sustained during the long years of war. The struggle was completely over now ; a great victory of King Rudolf, in the year after Ingelger's death,^ had finally driven the pirates from the Loire ; and there was nothing to hinder Fulk's work of peace. The soil had grown rich during the years it had lain fallow, and now repaid with an abundant harvest the labours of the husbandman ; the report of its fertility and the fame of Fulk's wise government soon spread into the neighbouring districts ; and settlers from all the country round came to help in re-peopling and cultivating the marchland.^ This idyl of peace lasted for twenty years, and ended only with the life of Fulk. In his last years he became involved in the intricacies of Breton politics, and storm-clouds began to gather on his western border ; but they never broke over Anjou itself till the Good Count was gone. ' The old Breton kingdom had now sunk into a duchy which was constantly a. prey to civil war. The ruling house of the counts of Nantes were at perpetual strife with their rivals of Rennes. Alan Barbetorte, count of Nantes, had been compelled to flee the country and take shelter in England, at the general refuge of all exiles, the court of iEthelstan, till a treaty between .^thelstan's successor Eadmund and Louis From-over-sea restored him to the dukedom of Britanny for the rest of his life. He died in 952, leaving his duchy and his infant son Drogo to the care of his wife's brother, Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres, a wily, unscrupulous politician known by the well-deserved proverb was well known in the time of Henry I. ; see Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. V. c. 390 (Hardy, p. 616). ^ Fragm. Hist. Franc, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 298. ^ Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comfes), pp. 74, 75. ii6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. epithet of " the Trickster," who at once resolved to turn his brother-in-law's dying charge to account for purposes of his own. But between his own territories and the Breton duchy lay the Angevin march ; his first step therefore must be to make a friend of its ruler. For this end a very simple means presented itself Fulk's wife had left him a widower with one son ;^ Theobald offered him the hand of his sister, the widow of Alan, and with it half the city and county of Nantes, to have and to hold during Drogo's minority ; while he gave the other half to the rival claimant of the duchy, Juhel Berenger of Rennes, under promise of obedience to himself as overlord.^ Unhappily, the re-marriage of Alan's widow was soon followed by the death of her child. In later days Breton suspicion laid the blame upon his step- father ; but the story has come down to us in a shape so extremely improbable that it can leave no stain on the memory of the Good Count.^ Two sons of Alan, both much older than Drogo, still remained. But they were not sons of Drogo's mother ; Fulk therefore might justly think him- self entitled to dispute their claims to the succession, and hold that, in default of lawful heirs, the heritage of Duke Alan should pass, as the dowry of the widow, to her second husband — a practice very common in that age. And Fulk would naturally feel his case strengthened by the fact that part at least of the debateable land-:-that is, nearly half the ^ Her name was Gerberga, as appears by a charter of her son, Geoffrey Grey- gown, quoted in Art de vlrifar les Dates, vol. xiii. p. 47. ^ Chron. Brioc. in Morice, Hist. Bret. , preuves, vol. i. cols. 29, 30. Chron. Namnet., Rer. Gall. Script., vol. viii. p. 277. 5 The Chron. Brioc. [(Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. 1. col. 30) tells how "ille comes Fulco Andegavensis, vir diabolicus et maledictus," bribed the child's nurse to kill him by pouring boiHng water on his head when she was giving him a bath. The fact that the Angevin count is further described as " Fulco Rufus " {ib. col. 29), would alone throw some doubt on the accuracy of the writer. Moreover, this Chronicle of S. Brieuc is a late compilation, and such a circum- stantial account of a matter which, if it really happened, must have been carefully hushed up at the time, is open to grave suspicion when unconfirmed by any other testimony. The Angevin accounts of Fulk's character may fairly be set against it : they rest on quite as good authority. But the sequel of the story furnishes a yet stronger argument, for it shows that the murder would have been what most of the Angevin counts looked upon as much worse than a crime — a great blunder for Fulk's own interest. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 117 territory between the Mayenne and Nantes itself — had once been Angevin ground. Just at this crisis the Normans made a raid upon Britanny, of which their dukes claimed the overlordship. They captured the bishop of Nantes, and the citizens, thus left without a leader of any kind, and in hourly fear of being attacked by the " pirates," sent an urgent appeal to Fulk for help. Fulk promised to send them succour, but some delay occurred ; at the end of a week's waiting the people of Nantes acted for themselves, and succeeded in putting the invaders to flight. Indignant at the Angevin count's failure to help, they threw off all allegiance to him and chose for their ruler Hoel, one of the sons of Alan Barbetorte.^ These clouds on the western horizon did not trouble the peace of Fulk's last hour. As he knelt to receive the holy communion in S. Martin's church on one of the feasts of the patron saint, a slight feeling of illness came over him ; he returned to his place in the choir, and there, in the arms of his brother -canons, passed quietly away.^ We cannot doubt that they laid him to rest in the church he had loved so well' With him was buried the peace of the Marchland. Never again was it to have a ruler who " waged no wars " ; never again, till the title of count of Anjou was on the eve of being merged in loftier appellations, was that title to be borne by one whose character might give him some claim to share the epithet of "the Good," although circumstances caused him to lead a very different life. Fulk the Second stands all alone as the ideal Angevin count, and it is in this point of view that the legends of his life — for we cannot call them history — have a value of their own. The most famous ' Chron. Brioc, Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. cols. 30, 31. Chron. Namnet., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 277. ^ Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 75. According to Gallia Christiana (vol. xiv. col. 808) the Norman attack on Nantes took place about 960. It is probable that Fulk died soon after ; but no charters of his successor are forth- coming until 966. ' The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 67, 7S) say that Ingelger, Fulk the Red and Fulk the Good were all buried in S. Martin's. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376) says the place of their burial is unknovm to him. The statement of the later writers therefore is mere guess-work or invention ; but in the case of Fulk the Good it is probably right. ii8 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of them all is, in its original shape, a charming bit of pure J Christian poetry. One day — so the tradition ran — the count, on his way to Tours, was accosted by a leper desiring to be carried to S. Martin's. All shrank in horror from the wretched being except Fulk, who at once took him on his shoulders and carried him to the church-door. There his burthen suddenly vanished ; and at the midnight service, as the count-canon sat in his stall, he beheld in a trance S. Martin, who told him that in his charity he had, like another \ S. Christopher, unwittingly carried the Lord Himself.'' Later generations added a sequel to the story. Fulk, they said, after his return to Angers, was further rewarded by a second vision ; an angel came to him and foretold that his successors to the ninth generation should extend their power even to the ends of the earth.^ At the time when this prophecy appears in history, it had already reached its fulfilment. In all likelihood it was then a recent invention ; in the legend to which it was attached it has obviously no natural place. But its introduction into the story of Fulk the Good was prompted by a significant instinct. At the height of their power and their glory, the reckless, ruthless house of Anjou still did not scorn to believe that their greatness had been foretold not to the warrior-founder, not to the bravest of his descendants, but to the good count who sought after righteousness and peace. Even they were willing, in theory at least, to accept the dominion of the earth as the promised reward not of valour but of charity. Whatever may be the origin of the prophecy, however, it was in the reign of Fulk's son and successor Geoffrey Greygown that the first steps were taken towards its realiza- tion. Legend has been as busy with the first Geoffrey of Anjou as with his father ; but it is legend of a very different kind. The epic bards of the marchland singled out Geoffrey for their special favourite; in their hands he became the hero of marvellous combats, of impossible deeds of knightly prowess and strategical skill, of marvellous stories utterly unhistoric in form, but significant as indications of the char- 1 Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Cotntes), pp. 73, 74. ^ R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 149. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 119 acter popularly attributed to him — a character quite borne out by those parts of his career which are attested by authentic history. Whatever share of Fulk's more refined tastes may have been inherited by either of his sons seems to have fallen to the second, Guy, who early passed into the quiet life of the monk in the abbey of S. Paul at Corm^ri in Touraine.^ The elder was little more than a rough, dashing soldier, whose careless temper shewed itself in his very dress. Clad in the coarse grey woollen tunic of the Angevin peasantry,^ Geoffrey Greygown made himself alike by his simple attire and by his daring valour a conspicuous figure in the courts and camps of King Lothar and Duke Hugh. The receiver of Fulk's famous letter had gone before him to the grave ; Louis From-over-sea, the grandson of Eadward the Elder, the last Karolingian worthy of his race, had died in 954. His death brought the house of France a step nearer to the throne ; but it was still only one step. Lothar, the son of Louis, was crowned in his father's stead ; two years later the king-maker followed the king ; and thence- forth his son, the new duke of the French, Hugh Capet, steadily prepared to exchange his ducal cap for a crown which nevertheless he was too prudent to seize before the time. In the face of countless difficulties, Louis in his eighteen years' reign had contrived to restore the monarchy of Laon to a very real kingship. His greatest support in this task had been his wife's brother, the Emperor Otto the Great. The two brothers-in-law, who had come to their thrones in the same year, were fast friends in life and death ; and Otto remained the faithful guardian of his widowed sister and her son. So long as he lived, Hugh's best policy was peace ; and while Hugh remained quiet, there was little scope for military or political action on the part of his adherent Geoffrey of Anjou. In 973, however, the great Emperor died ; and soon after he was gone the alliance between the Eastern and Western Franks began to shew signs of breaking. Lothar and Otto II. were brothers-in- ' Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 258. ^ "Indutus tunic^ illius panni quern Franci Grisetum vocant, nos Andegavi Buretum." Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 81. 120 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. law as well as cousins, but they were not friends as their fathers had been. In an evil hour Lothar was seized with a wild longing to regain the land which bore his name, — that fragment of the old " Middle Kingdom," known as the duchy of Lotharingia or Lorraine, which after long fluctuating between its attachment to the imperial crown and its loyalty to the Karolingian house had finally cast in its lot with the Empire, with the full assent of Louis From-over-sea. Lothar brooded over its loss till in 978, when Otto and his queen were holding their court at Aachen, his jealousy could no longer endure the sight of his rival so near the border, and he summoned the nobles of his realm to an expedition into Lorraine.^ Nothing could better fall in with the plans of Hugh Capet than a breach between Lothar and Otto ; the call to arms was readily answered by the duke and his followers, and the grey tunic of the Angevin count was con- spicuous at the muster.^ The suddenness of Lothar's march compelled Otto to make a hasty retreat from Aachen ; but all that the West-Franks gained was a mass of plunder, and the vain glory of turning the great bronze eagle on the palace of Charles the Great towards the east instead of the west.^ While they were plundering Aachen Otto was pre- paring a counter-invasion.* Bursting upon the western realm, he drove the king to cross the Seine and seek help of the duke, and before Hugh could gather troops enough to stop him he had made his way to the gates of Paris. For a while the French and the Germans lay encamped on opposite banks of the river, the duke waiting till his troops came up, and beguiling the time with skirmishes and trials of individual valour.^ But as soon as Otto perceived that 1 Richer, 1. iii. c. 68. ^ Chron. Vindoc. a. 954 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 163). ' Richer, 1. iii. c. 71. * The exact date of Lothar's attack on Lotharingia seems to be nowhere stated. That of Otto's invasion of Gaul, however, which clearly followed it immediately, is variously given as 977 (Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc, Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 21, 163) and 978 (Chronn. S. Flor. Salm. and S. Maxent., ib. pp. 186, 381). The later date is adopted by Mr. Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. i. p. 264. ^ Among these the Angevin writers [Gesta Cons., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 79, 80) introduce Geoffrey Greygovm's fight with a gigantic Dane, .lEthelwulf. It seems to be only another version, adorned with reminiscences of David and THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU his adversaries were becoming dangerous he struck his tents and marched rapidly homewards, satisfied with having in- flicted on his rash cousin a far greater alarm and more serious damage than he had himself suffered from Lothar's wild raid.^ From that time forth, at least, Geoffrey Greygown's life was a busy and a stirring one. It seems to have been in the year of the Lotharingian raid that he married his second wife, Adela, countess in her own right of Chalon-sur-Saone, and now the widow of Count Lambert of Autun.^ By his first marriage, with another Adela, he seems to have had only a daughter, Hermengard, who had been married as early as 970* to Conan the Crooked, count of Rennes. There can be little doubt that this marriage was a stroke of policy on Geoffrey's part, intended to pave the way for Angevin intervention in the affairs of Britanny. The claims of Fulk the Good to the overlordship of Nantes had of course expired with him ; whatever rights the widow of Duke Alan might carry to her second husband, they could not pass to her stepson. Still Geoffrey could hardly fail to cherish designs upon, at least, the debateable ground which lay between the Mayenne and the original county of Nantes. Meanwhile the house of Rennes had managed to establish, by the right of the stronger, its claim to the dukedom of Britanny. Hoel, a son of Alan Barbetorte, remained count of Nantes for nearly twenty years after Fulk's death ; his career was ended at last by the hand of an assassin ;* and as his only child was an infant, his brother Guerech, already bishop of Nantes, was called upon to succeed him, as the only surviving descendant of Alan who was capable of defending the state. Guerech was far better fitted for a secular than for an ecclesiastical ruler ; as bishop, his chief care was to restore or rebuild his cathedral, and for this Goliath, of Richer's account (1. iii. c. 76) of a fight between a German champion and a man named Ivo ; and the whole story of this war in the Gesta is full of hopeless confusions and anachronisms. ' Richer, 1. iii. cc. 72-77. ^ See note C at end of chapter. ' Morice, Hist. Bret., vol. i. p. 63. See note C at end of chapter. * Chron. Brioc, Movice, preaves, vol. i., p. 31. Chron. Namnet., Her. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 278. "C, 980," notes the editor in the margin. 122 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. object he was so eager in collecting contributions that he made a journey to the court of Lothar to ask help of the king in person. His way home lay directly through Anjou. Geoffrey felt that his opportunity had come ; and he set the first example of a mode of action which thenceforth became a settled practice of the Angevin counts. He laid traps in all directions to catch the unwary traveller, took him captive, and only let him go after extorting homage not merely for the debateable land, but also for Nantes itself; in a word, for all that part of Britanny which had been held or claimed by Fulk as Drogo's guardian.^ Geoffrey had gained his hold over Nantes ; but in so doing he had brought upon himself the wrath of his son-in- law. Conan, as duke of Britanny, claimed for himself the overlordship of Nantes, and regarded Guerech's enforced homage to Geoffrey as an infringement of his own rights. His elder sons set out to attack their step-mother's father, made a raid upon Anjou, and were only turned back from the very gates of Angers by a vigorous sally of Geoffrey himself^ Conan next turned his vengeance upon the un- lucky count-bishop of Nantes. The Angevin and his un- willing vassal made common cause against their common enemy, who marched against their united forces, bringing with him a contingent of the old ravagers of Nantes — the Normans.^ The rivals met not far from Nantes, on the lande of Conquereux, one of those soft, boggy heaths so common in Britanny ; and the issue of the fight was recorded in an Angevin proverb — " Like the battle of Con- quereux, where the crooked overcame the straight."* Conan was, however, severely wounded, and does not appear to have followed up his victory ; and the Nantes question was left to be fought out ten years later, on the very same ground, by Geoffrey's youthful successor. The death of Lothar, early in March 986, brought Hugh Capet within one step of the throne. The king's last years had been spent in endeavouring to secure the succession to 1 Chron. Brioc, Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 32. 2 See note D at end of chapter. 3 Chron. Brioc, as above. * See note D at end of chapter. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 123 his son by obtaining for him the homage of the princes of Aquitaine and the support of the duke of the French — two objects not very easy to combine, for the great duchies north and south of the Loire were divided by an irreconcileable antipathy. In 9 5 6 William " T^te-d'Etoupe," or the " Shock- head," strong in his triple power as count of Poitou, count of Auvergne and duke of Aquitaine — strong, too, in his alliance with Normandy, for he had married a sister of his namesake of the Long Sword — had bidden defiance not unsuccessfully to Lothar and Hugh the Great both at once.^ In 961 Lothar granted the county of Poitiers to Hugh ;^ but all he could give was an empty title ; when William Shockhead died in 963,^ his son William Fierabras stepped into his place as count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine, and leader of the opposition to Hugh Capet. It was now evident that the line of Charles the Great was about to expire in a worthless boy. While the young King Louis, as the chroniclers say, " did nothing,"* the duke of the French and his followers were almost openly preparing for the last step of all. The count of Anjou, following as ever closely in the wake of his overlord, now ventured on a bold aggression. Half by force, half by fraud, he had already carried his power beyond the Mayenne ; he now crossed the Loire and attacked his southern neighbour the count of Poitou. Marching boldly down the road which led from Angers to Poitiers, he took Loudun, and was met at Les Roches by William Fierabras, whom he defeated in a pitched battle and pursued as far as a place which in the next generation was marked by the castle of Mirebeau. Of the subsequent details of the war we know nothing ; it ended however in a compromise ; Geoffrey kept the lands which he had won, but he kept them as the " man " of Duke William.^ They seem to have consisted of a series of small fiefs scattered along the valleys of the little rivers Layon, Argen- ton, Thouet and Dive, which furrow the surface of northern 1 Richer, I. iii. cc. 3-5. ^ lb. c. 13. ' Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 381). * "Ludovicus qui nihil fecit" is the original form of the nickname usually rendered by " le Faineant. " "See note D at end of chapter. 124 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Poitou.^ The most important was Loudun, a little town some eighteen miles north-west of Poitiers. Even to-day its gloomy, crooked, rough-paved streets, its curious old houses, its quaintly-attired people, have a strangely old-world look ; lines within lines of broken wall wind round the hill on whose slope the town is built, and in their midst stands a great square keep, the work of Geoffrey's successors. He had won a footing in Poitou ; they learned to use it for ends of which, perhaps, he could as yet scarcely dream. Loudun looked southward to Poitiers, but it looked northward and eastward too, up the valley of the Thouet which led straight up to Saumur, the border -fortress of Touraine and Anjou, and across the valley of the Vienne which led from the An- gevin frontier into the heart of southern Touraine. Precious as it might be in itself, Loudun was soon to be far more precious as a point of vantage not so much against the lord of Poitiers as against the lord of Chinon, Saumur and Tours. The little marchland had thus openly begun her career of aggression on the west and on the south. It seems that a further promise of extension to the northward was now held by Hugh Capet before the eyes of his faithful Angevin friend. Geoffrey's northern neighbour was as little disposed as the southern to welcome the coming king. The overlord- ship of Maine was claimed by the duke of the Normans on the strength of a grant made to Hrolf in 924 by King Rudolf; it was claimed by the duke of the French on the strength of another grant made earlier in the same year by Charles the Simple to Hugh the Great,^ as well as in virtue of the original definition of their duchy " between Seine and Loire"; but the Cenomannian counts owned no allegiance save to the heirs of Charles the Great, and firmly refused all obedience to the house of France. Hugh Capet, now king in all but name, laid upon the lord of the Angevin march the task of reducing them to submission. He granted Maine to Geoffrey Greygown^ — a merely nominal gift at the moment, for Hugh (or David) of Maine was in full and inde- ^ Fulk Nerra's Poitevin castles, Mauleviier, Thouars, etc., must have been built on the ground won by Geoffrey. ^ Chron. Frodoard, a. 924 [Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 181). * See note E at end of chapter. II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 125 pendent possession of his county ; and generation after gene- ration had to pass away before the remote consequences of that grant were fully worked out to their wonderful end. Geoffrey himself had no time to take any steps towards en- forcing his claim. Events came thick and fast in the early summer of 987. King Louis V. was seized at Senlis with one of those sudden and violent sicknesses so common in that age, and died on May 22. The last Karolingian king was laid in his grave at Compiegne ; the nobles of the realm came together in a hurried meeting ; on the proposal of the archbishop of Reims they swore to the duke of the French a solemn oath that they would take no steps towards choosing a ruler till a second assembly should be held, for which a day was fixed.''^ Hugh knew now that he had only a few days more to wait. He spent the interval in besieging a certain Odo, called " Rufinus " — in all likelihood a rebellious vassal — who was holding out against him at Marson in Cham- pagne ; and with him went his constant adherent Geoffrey of Anjou. At the end of the month the appointed assembly was held at Senlis. Passing over the claims of Charles of Lorraine, the only surviving descendant of the great Em- peror, the nobles with one consent offered the crown to the duke of the French. From his camp before Marson Hugh went to receive, at Noyon on the i st of June,^ the crown for which he had been waiting all his life. Geoffrey, whom he had left to finish the siege, fell sick and died before the ' Richer, 1. iv. cc. 5 and 8. ' Richer, 1. iv. c. 12. On this Kalckstein {Geschichte des franzosischen Konig- thums unter den ersien Capetingem, vol. i. p. 3S0, note 2), remarks : " Aus Rich. iv. 12 ware zu schliessen, dass Hugo in Noyon gekront wurde . . . aber eine gleichzeitige Urkunde von Fleury entscheidet fiir Reims. Richer gibt wohl in Folge eines Gedachtnissfehlers den I Juli (wie fur Juni zu verbessern seine wird) als Krbnungstag. Hist. Francica um 1108 verfasst, Aimoin Mirac. S. Bened. ii. 2 (Bouq., X. 210 u. 341)." The Hist. Franc. Fragm. here referred to places the crowning at Reims on July 3. Aimoin, however, places it at Noyon and gives no date. The question therefore lies really between Richer and the Fleury record referred to, but not quoted, by Kalckstein; for the two twelfth century writers are of no authority at all in comparison with contemporaries. We must suppose that the Fleury charter gives the same date as the Hist. Franc. Fragm. But is it not possible that Hugh was really crovmed first at Noyon on 1st June, and afterwards recrowned with fuller state at Reims a month later ? 126 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. place, seven weeks after his patron's coronation ;^ and his body was carried back from distant Champagne to be laid by his father's side in the church of S. Martin at Tours.^ The century of preparation and transition was over ; the great change was accomplished, not to be undone again for eight hundred years. The first period of strictly French history and the first period of Angevin history close together. The rulers of the marchland had begun to shew that they were not to be confined within the limits which nature itself might seem to have fixed for them ; they had stretched a hand beyond their two river-boundaries, and they had begun to cast their eyes northward and dream of a claim which was to have yet more momentous results. In the last years of Geoffrey Greygown we trace a foreshadowing of the wonderful career which his successor is to begin. From the shadow we pass to its realization ; with the new king and the new count we enter upon a new era. Note A. ON THE sources AND AUTHENTICITY OF EARLY ANGEVIN HISTORY. Our only detailed account of the early Angevins, down to Geoffrey Greygown, is contained in two books : the Gesta Consulum Andegavensium, by John, monk of Marmoutier, and the Historia Comitum Andegavensium, which goes under the name of Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches. Both these works were written in the latter part of the twelfth century ; and they may be practically regarded as one, for the latter is in reality only an abridgement of the former, with a few slight variations. The Gesta Consulum is avowedly a piece of patchwork. The author in his " Prooemium " tells us that it is founded on the work of a certain Abbot Odo which had been recast by Thomas Pactius, prior of Loches, and to which 1 Chronn. S. Albin., S. Serg., and Vindoc, a. 987; Rain. Andeg. a. 985; S. Maxent. a. 986 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 21, 134, 164, 9, 382). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 376. ^ Fulk Rechin, as above, and Gesta Cons, {id.), p. 89, say he was buried in S. Martin's. R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 165) buries him in S. Aubin's at Angers. n. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 127 he himself, John of Marmoutier, had made further additions from sundry other sources which he enumerates (Marchegay, Comtes cdAnjou, p. 353. This "Prooemium" is there printed at the head of the Historia Abbreviata instead of the Gesta Consulum, to which, however, it really belongs ; see M. Mabille's introduction, ib. p. xxxL). The Historia Comitum Andegavensium {ib. p. 320) bears the name of Thomas of Loches, and thus professes to be the earlier version on which John worked. But it is now known that the work of Thomas, which still exists in MS., is totally distinct from that published under his name (see M. Mabille's introduction to Comtes dAnjou, pp. xviii., xix.), and, moreover, that the printed Historia Comitum is really a copy of a series of extracts from Ralf de Diceto's Abbreviationes Chronicorum — extracts which Ralf him- self had taken from the Gesta Consulum (see Bishop Stubbs' preface to R. Diceto, vol. ii. pp. xxiii.-xxix). There is, however, one other source of information about the early Angevins which, if its author was really what he professed to be, is of somewhat earlier date and far higher value, although of very small extent. This is the frag- ment of the Angevin History which goes under the name of Count Fulk Rechin. Its authorship has been questioned, but it has never been disproved ; and one thing at least is certain — the writer, who- ever he may have been, had some notion of historical and chrono- logical possibilities, whereas John of Marmoutier had none. Fulk Rechin (as we must for the present call him, without stopping to decide whether he has a right to the name) gives a negative testimony against all John's stories about the earlier members of the Angevin house. He pointedly states that he knows nothing about the first three counts (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376), and he makes no mention of anybody before Ingelger. Now, supposing he really was Count Fulk IV. of Anjou, it is fairly safe to assume that if anything had been known about his own forefathers he would have been more likely to know it than a monk who wrote nearly a hundred years later. On the other hand, if he was a twelfth-century forger, such a daring avowal of ignorance, put into the mouth of such a personage, shews the writer's disregard of the tales told by the monk, and can only have been intended to give them the lie direct The two first members of the Angevin house, then — Tortulf of Rennes and his son Tertullus — rest solely on the evidence of these two late writers. Their accounts are not recommended by intrinsic probability. We are roused to suspicion by the very first sentence of the Gesta Consulum : — " Fuit vir quidam de Armorica Gallia, nomine Torquatius. Iste a Britonibus, proprietatem vetusti ac Romani nominis ignorantibus, corrupto vocabulo Tortulfus dictus fuit" (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 35). When one finds that his son is 128 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. called Tertullus, it is impossible not to suspect that "Torquatius" and "Tertullus" are only two different attempts to Latinize a genuine Teutonic "Tortulf." For the lives of these personages John of Marmoutier gives no distinct dates ; but he tells us that Torquatius was made Forester of Nid-de-Merle by Charles the Bald, " eo anno quo ab Andegavis et a toto suo regno Normannos ex- pulit " (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 35). Now this is rather vague, but it looks as if the date intended were 873. We are next told that Tertullus went to seek his fortune in France " circa id temporis quo Karolus Calvus ... ex triarcho monarchus factus, non longo regnavit spatio" {ib. pp. 36, 37), whatever that may mean. The next chronological landmark is that of the "reversion" of S. Martin, which John copies from the Cluny treatise De Reversione B. Martini, and copies wrong. Then comes Fulk the Red, on whom he says the whole county of Anjou was conferred by Duke Hugh of Bur- gundy, guardian of Charles the Simple, the county having until then been divided in two parts ; and he also says that Fulk was related to Hugh through his grandmother {ib. pp. 64, 65). There are several unmanageable points in this story, i. The pedigree cannot be right. It is clear that John took Hugh the Great (" Hugh of Burgundy," as he calls him) to be a son of the earlier Hugh of Burgundy (one copy of the Gesta, that printed by D'Achdry in his Spicilegium, vol. iii. p. 243, actually adds "filius alterius Hugonis "), and this latter to have been the father of Petronilla, wife of Tertullus. The chronology of the life of Fulk the Red, long a matter of mingled tradition and guess-work, has now been fairly established by the investigations of M. E. Mabille. This gentleman has examined the subject in his introduction to MM. Marchegay and Salmon's edition of the Chroniques des Comtes d^ Anjou, and in an article entitled " Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire," in the Bibliotheque de PEcole des Chartes, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149-194; to each of these works is appended by way of pieces justificatives a series of charters of the highest importance for establishing the facts of the early history of Anjou and Touraine. The first appearance of Fulk is as witness to a charter given at Tours by Odo, as abbot of S. Martin's, in April 886. (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. Ixix. note). Now if Fulk the Red was old enough to be signing charters in 886, his parents must have been married long before the days of Louis the Stammerer — in 870 at the very latest, and more likely several years earlier still. His grandparents therefore (i.e. Tertullus and Petronilla) must have been married before 850. It is possible that Hugh the Abbot who died in 887 may have had a daughter married as early as this ; but it does not seem very likely. 2. The story of Ingelger's investiture with Orleans and the II. , THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 129 Gatinais is suspicious. His championship of the slandered countess of Gitinais (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 40-45) is one of those ubiquitous tales which are past confuting. Still the statement that he somehow acquired lands in the Gatinais is in itself not impossible. But the coupling together of Gatinais and Orleans is very suspicious. Not one of the historical descendants of Ingelger had, as far as is known, anything to do with either place for nearly two hundred years. There is documentary proof (see the signatures to a charter printed in Mabille's introd. Comtes, p. Ixiv, note i ; the reference there given to Salmon is wrong) that in 942, the year after the death of Fulk the Red, the viscount of Orl&ns was one Geoffrey ; and he belonged to a totally different family — but a family which, it seems, did in time acquire the county of Gatinais, and in the end became merged in the house of Anjou, when the son of Geoffrey of Gatinais and Hermengard of Anjou succeeded his uncle Geoffrey Martel in 106 1. It is impossible not to suspect that the late Angevin writers took up this story at the wrong end and moved it back two hundred years. 3. Comes the great question of Ingelger's investiture with half the county of Anjou. In not one of the known documents of the period does Ingelger's name appear. The only persons who do appear as rulers of the Angevin march are Hugh the Abbot and his successor Odo, till we get to Fulk the Viscount. Fulk's first appearance in this capacity is in September 898, when " Fulco vicecomes " signs a charter of Ardradus, brotherofAtto, viscount of Tours (Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. xciii). He witnesses, by the same title, several charters of Robert the Abbot-Count during the next two years. In July 905 we have " signum Fulconis Turonorum et Andecavorum vicecomitis '' (ib. p. xcv) ; in October 909 " signum domni Fulconis Andecavorum comitis " {ib. p. xcviii) ; and in October 912 he again signs among the counts {ib. p. Ixi, note 4). But in May 914, and again as late as August 924, he resumes the title of viscount {ib. pp. c and Ixii, note 2). Five years later, in the seventh year of King Rudolf, we find a charter granted by Fulk himself, " count of the Angevins and abbot of S. Aubin and S. Licinius " {ib. p. ci) ; and thenceforth this is his established title. These dates at once dispose of R. Diceto's statement (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 143) that Fulk succeeded his father Ingelger as second count in 912. They leave us in doubt as to the real date of his appointment as count ; but whether we adopt the earlier date, in or before 909, or the later one, between 924 and 929, as that of his definite investiture, we cannot accept the Gestds story that it was granted by Hugh the Great on behalf of Charles the Simple. For in 909 the duke of the French was not Hugh, but his father Robert; and in 924-929 the king was not Charles, but Rudolf of Burgundy. VOL. I. K I30 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. But the chronology is not the only difficulty in the tale of Count Ingelger. The Gesta-wiA'sxs admit that " another count " {i.e. the former count, Duke Hugh) went on ruling beyond the Mayenne. This at once raises a question, very important yet very simple — Did the Angevin March, the March of Robert the Brave and his successors, extend on both sides of the Mayenne ? For the assumption that it did is the ground of the whole argument for the " bipartite " county. The old territory of the Andes certainly spread on both sides of the river. So also, it seems, did the march of Count Lambert. The commission of a lord marcher is of necessity indefinite ; it implies holding the border-land and extending it into the enemy's country if possible. It appears to me that when Lambert turned traitor he carried out this principle from the other side ; when Nantes became Breton, the whole land up to the Mayenne became Breton too. This view is distinctly supported by a charter in which Herispoe, in August 852, styles himself ruler of Britanny and up to the river Mayenne (Lobineau, Hist. Bretagne, vol. ii. col. 55) ; and it gives the most rational explanation of the Breton wars of Fulk the Good, . Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk Nerra, which ended in Anjou's re- covery of the debateable ground. If it is correct, there is an end at once of the "bipartite county" and of Count Ingelger; "the other count " cannot have ruled west of the Mayenne, therefore he must have ruled east of it, and there is no room for any one else. The one writer whose testimony seems to lend some countenance to that of the Gesta need not trouble us much. Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 374) does call Ingelger the first count; but his own confession that he knew nothing about his first five ances- tors beyond their names gives us a right to think, in the absence of confirmatory evidence, that he may have been mistaken in using the title. He says nothing about the county having ever been bipartite, and his statement that his forefathers received their honours from Charles the Bald, not from the house of Paris {ib. p. 376), may be due to the same misconception, strengthened by a desire, which in Fulk Rechin would be extremely natural, to disclaim all connexion with the " genus impii Philippi," or even by an indistinct idea of the investiture of Fulk L For, if this is regarded as having taken place between 905 and 909, it must fall in the reign of Charles the Simple, and might be technically ascribed to him, though there can be no doubt that it was really owing to the duke of the French. Every step of Fulk's life, as we can trace it in the charters, shows him following closely in the wake of Odo, Robert and Hugh ; and the dependance of Anjou on the duchy of France is distinctly acknowledged by his grandson. The latter part of the account of Ingelger in the Gesta II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 131 (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 47-62) is copied bodily from the Tractatus de reversione B. Martini a Burgundia, which professes to have been written by S. Odo of Cluny at the request of his foster-brother, Count Fulk the Good. The wild anachronisms of this treatise have been thoroughly exposed by its latest editor, M. A. Salmon {Supple- ment au Recueil des Chroniques de Touraine, pp. xi-xxviii), and M. Mabille (" Les Invasions normandes dans la Loire et les p&e'- grinations du corps de S. Martin," in Bibl. de I'Ecole des Chartes, ser. vi. vol. v. pp. 149-194). It is certain, from the statement of S. Odo's own biographer John, that the saint was born in 879 and entered religion in 898 ; at which time it is evident that Fulk the Good, the Red Count's youngest son, must have been quite a child, if even he was in existence at all. The letters in which he and the abbot address each other as foster-brothers are therefore forgeries ; and the treatise which these letters introduce is no better. The only part of it which directly concerns our present subject is the end, recounting how the body of the Apostle of the Gauls, after a thirty years' exile at Auxerre, whither it had been carried to keep it safe from the sacrilegious hands of Hrolf and his northmen when they were ravaging Touraine, was brought back in triumph to its home at Tours on December 13, 887, by Ingelger, count of G3.tinais and Anjou, and grandson of Hugh, duke of Burgundy. Now there is no doubt at all that the relics of S. Martin were carried into Burgundy and afterwards brought back again, and that the feast of the Rever- sion of S. Martin on December 13 was regularly celebrated at Tours in commemoration of the event; but the whole history of the adven- tures of the relics as given in this treatise is manifestly wrong in its details ; e.g. the statements about Hrolf are ludicrous — the " rever- sion " is said to have taken place after his conversion. M. Salmon has gone carefully through the whole story : M. Mabille has sifted it still more thoroughly. These two writers have shewn that the body of S. Martin really went through a great many more "pere- grinations " than those recounted in the Cluny treatise, that the real date of the reversion is 885, and in short that the treatise is wrong in every one of its dates and every one of the names of the bishops whom it mentions as concerned in the reversion, save those of Archbishop Adaland of Tours and his brother Raino, who, however, was bishop of Angers, not of Orleans as the treatise says. The passages in the Tours chronicle where Ingelger is described as count of Anjou are all derived from this source, and therefore prove nothing, except the writer's ignorance about counts and bishops alike. The mention of Archbishop Adaland brings us to another sub- ject — Ingelger's marriage. Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 139) says that he married .^lendis, niece of Archbishop Adaland and of Raino, bishop of Angers, and that these two prelates gave to the 132 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. young couple their own hereditary estates at Amboise, in Touraine and in the Orldanais. The Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 45) say the same, but afterwards make Raino bishop of Orleans. This story seems to be a bit of truth which has found its way into a mass of fiction ; at any rate it is neither impossible nor improbable. The author of the De Reversiom is quite right in saying that Archbishop Adaland died shortly after the return of the reUcs ; his statement, and those of the Tours Chronicle, that Adaland was consecrated in 870 and died in 887, are borne out by the same charters which enable us to track the career of Fulk the Red. As to Raino — there was a Raino ordained bishop of Angers in 881 (Chron. Vindoc. ad ann. in Marchegay, Eglises d'Anjou, p. 160). The version which makes Orleans his see is derived from the false Cluny treatise. Fulk the Red was witnessing charters in 886 and died in 941 or 942. He must have been born somewhere between 865 and 870 ; as the traditional -ivriters say he died " senex et plenus dierum, in bona senectute," it may have been nearer the earlier date. There is thus no chronological reason why these two prelates should not have been his mother's uncles ; and as the house of Anjou certainly acquired Amboise somehow, it may just as well have been in this way as in any other. Note B. the palace of the counts at angers. Not only ordinary English tourists, but English historical scholars have been led astray in the topography of early Angers by an obstinate local tradition which long persisted in asserting that the counts and the bishops of Angers had at some time or other made an exchange of dwellings ; that the old ruined hall within the castle enclosure was a piece of Roman work, and had served, before this exchange, as the synodal hall of the bishops. The date adopted for this exchange, when I visited Angers in 1877 (I have no know- ledge of the place since that time) was "the ninth century"; some years before it was the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the synodal hall of the present bishop's palace, with its undercroft, was shown and accepted as the home of all the Angevin counts down to Geoffrey Plantagenet at least. The whole history of the two palaces — that ol the counts and that of the bishops — has, however, been cleared up by two local archaeologists, M. de Beauregard (" Le Palais Episcopal et I'Eglise cath^drale d' Angers," in Revue de V Anjou et de Maine-et- Loire, 1855, vol. i. pp. 246-256), and M. d'Espinay, president of the Archffiological Commission of Maine-et-Loire (" Le Palais des Comtes 11. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 133 d'Anjou," Revue historique de I'Anjou, 1872, voL viii. pp. 153-170; " L'Evech^ d'Angers," ?i5. pp. 185-201). The foundation and result of their arguments may be briefly summed up. The first bit of evi- dence on the subject is a charter (printed by M. de Beauregard, Revue de VAnjou et de Maine-et-Loire, as above, vol i. pp. 248, 249 ; also in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. instr. cols. 145, 146) of Charles the Bald, dated July 2, 851, and ratifying an exchange of lands between " Dodo venerabilis Andegavorum Episcopus et Odo illustris comes." The exchange is thus described : — " Dedit itaque prgefatus Dodo episcopus antedicto Odoni comiti, ex rebus matris ecclesiae S. Mauricii, aequis mensuris funibusque determinatam paginam terrae juxta murum civitatis Andegavensis, in qua opportunitas jam dicti comitis mansuras sedis suorumque successorum esse cognoscitur. Et, e contra, in compensatione hujus rei, dedit idem Odo comes ex comitatu suo terram S. Mauricio aequis mensuris similiter funibus determinatam prsenominato Dodoni episcopo successoribusque suis habendam in qui predecessorum suorum comitum sedes fuisse memoratur." As M. de Beauregard points out, the traditionary version — whether placing the exchange in the ninth century or in the twelfth — is based on a misunderstanding of this charter. The charter says not a word of the bishop giving up his own actual abode to the count ; it says he gave a plot of ground near the city wall, and suitable for the count to build himself a house upon. Moreover the words "sedes fuisse memoratur" seem to imply that what the count gave was not his own present dwelling either, but only that which had been occupied by his predecessors. There can be little doubt that the Merovingian counts dwelt on the site of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus ; and this was unquestionably where the bishop's palace now stands. That it already stood there in the closing years of the eleventh century is proved by a charter, quoted by M. d'Espinay (Revue historique de TAnjou, vol. viii. p. 200, note 2) from the cartulary of S. Aubin's Abbey, giving an account of a meeting held "in domibus episcopalibus juxta S. Mauricium Andegavoi-um matrem ecclesiam," in a.d. 1098. So much for the position of the bishop's dwelling from 851 downwards. Of the position of the count's palace — the abode of Odo and his successors, built on the piece of land near the city wall — the first indication is in an account of a great fire at Angers in 1132 : "Flante Aquilone, accensus est in media civitate ignis, videlicet apud S. Anianum ; et tanto incendio grassatus est ut eccle- siam S. Laudi et omnes officinas, deinde comitis aulam et omnes cameras miserabiliter combureret et in cinerem redigeret. Sicque per Aquariam descendens," etc. (Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 144). The church of S. Laud was the old chapel of S. Genevifeve, — "capella B. Genovefse virginis, infra muros civitatis 134 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Andegavse, ante forum videlicet comitalis aulas posita," as it is de- scribed in a charter of Geoffrey Martel {Revue Hist. dePAnjou, 1872, vol. viii. p. 161) — the exact position of a ruined chapel which was still visible, some twenty years ago, within the castle enclosure, not far from the hall which still remains. A fire beginning in the middle of the city and carried by a north-east wind down to S. Laud and the Evifere would not touch the present bishop's palace, but could not fail to pass over the site of the castle. The last witness is Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 291, 292), who distinctly places the palace of the counts in his own day — the day of Count Henry Fitz- Empress — in the south-west corner of the city, with the river at its feet and the vine-clad hills at its back ; and his description of the "thalami noviter constructi " just fits in with the account of the fire, the destruction thereby wrought having doubtless been followed by a rebuilding on a more regal scale. It seems impossible to doubt the conclusion of these Angevin archaeologists, that the dwelling of the bishops and the palace of the counts have occupied their present sites ever since the ninth century. In that case the present synodal hall, an undoubted work of the early twelfth century, must have been originally built for none other than its present use ; and to a student of the history of the Angevin counts and kings the most precious relic in all Angers is the ruined hall looking out upon the Mayenne from over the castle ramparts. M. d'Espinay denies its Roman origin ; he considers it to be a work of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh — the one fragment, in fact, of the dwelling-place of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black which has survived, not only the fire of 1132, but also the later destruction in which the apart- ments built by Henry have perished. Note C. the marriages of geoffrey greygown. The marriages of Geoffrey Greygown form a subject at once of some importance and of considerable difficulty. It seems plain that Geoffrey was twice married, that both his wives bore the same name, Adela or Adelaide, and that the second was in her own right countess of Chalon-sur-Saone, and widow of Lambert, count of Autun. There is no doubt about this second marriage, for we have documentary evidence that a certain Count Maurice (about whom the Angevin writers make great blunders, and of whom we shall hear more later on) was brother at once to Hugh of Chalon, son of Lam- bert and Adela, and to Fulk, son of Geoffrey Greygown, and must therefore have been a son of Geoffrey and Adela. A charter, dated II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 135 between 992 and 998 (see Mabille, Introd. Comtes, pp. bcx-lxxi), wherein Hugh, count of Chalon, describes himself as "son of Adelaide and Lambert who was count of Chalon in right of his wife," is approved by " Adelaide his mother and Maurice his brother." Now as R. Glaber (L iii. c. 2 ; Her. Gall. Scriptt, vol. x. p. 27). declares that Hugh had no brother, Maurice must have been his half-brother, i.e. son of his mother and her second husband; and that that second husband was Geoffrey Greygown appears by several charters in which Maurice is named as brother of Fulk Nerra. It is by no means clear who this Adela or Adelaide of Chalon was. Perry (Hist de Chalon-sur-Saone, p. 86) and Arbois de Jubain- ville (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 140) say she was daughter of Robert of Vermandois, count of Troyes, and Vera, daughter of Gilbert of Burgundy and heiress of Chalon, which at her death passed to Adela as her only child. But the only authority for this Vera, Odorannus the monk of S. Peter of Sens, says she was married in 956, and Lambert called himself count of Chalon in 960 (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 35. See also Arbois de Jubainville as above), so that if he married Vera's daughter he must have married a child only three years old. And to add to the confusion, Robert of Troyes's wife in 959 signs a charter by the name of "Adelais" (Duchesne, Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 36). What concerns us most, however, is not Adela's parentage, but the date of her marriage with Geoffrey Greygown ; or, which comes to much the same thing, the date of her first husband's death. The cartulary of Paray-le- Monial (Lambert's foundation) gives the date of his death as February 22, 988. If that were correct, Geoffrey, who died in July 987, could not have married Adela at all, unless she was divorced and remarried during Lambert's life. This idea is excluded by a charter of her grandson Theobald, which distinctly says that Geoffrey married her after Lambert's death (Perry, Hist. Chalon, preuves, p. 39) ; therefore the Art de verifier les Dates (vol. xi. p. 129) proposes to omit an x and read 978. Adela and Geoffrey, then, cannot have married earlier than the end of 978. Geoffrey, however, must have been married long before this, if his daughter Hermengard was married in 970 to Conan of Britanny (Morice, Hist. Bret., vol. i. p. 63. His authority seems to be a passage in the Chron. S. Michael, a. 970, printed in Labbe's Bibl. Nova MSS. Librorum, vol. i. p. 350, where, however, the bride is absurdly made a daughter of Fulk Nerra instead of Geoffrey Grey- gown). And in Duchesne's Maison de Vergy, preuves, p. 39, is the will, dated March 6, 974, of a Countess Adela, wife of a Count Geoffrey, whereby she bequeathes some lands to S. Aubin's Abbey at Angers; and as the Chron. S. Albin. a. 974 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 20) also mentions these donations, there can be little doubt that 136 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. she was the wife of Geoffrey of Anjou. M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. Ixx) asserts that this Adela, Geoffrey Greygown's first wife, was Adela of Vermandois, sister of Robert of Troyes, and appeals to the will above referred to in proof of his assertion ; the will, however, says nothing of the sort. He also makes the second Adela sister-in-law instead of daughter to Robert {ib. p. Ixxi). It seems indeed hope- less to decide on the parentage of either of these ladies ; that of their children is, however, the only question really important for us. Hermengard, married in 970 to the duke of Britanny, was clearly a child of Geoffrey's first wife; Maurice was as clearly a child of the second ; but whose child was Fulk the Black ? Not only is it a matter of some interest to know who was the mother of the greatest of the Angevins, but it is a question on whose solution may depend the solution of another difficulty : — the supposed, but as yet unascertained, kindred between Fulk's son Geoffrey Martel and his wife Agnes of Burgundy. If Fulk was the son of Geoffrey Greygown and Adela of Chalon, the whole pedigree is clear, and stands thus : I 2 Lambert = Adela = Geoffrey I I Adalbert = Gerberga Fulk of Lombardy I Otto William I Agnes = Geoffrey. The two last would thus be cousins in the third degree of kindred according to the canon law. The only apparent difficulty of this theory is that it makes Fulk so very young. The first child of Adela of Chalon and Geoffrey cannot have been born earlier than 979, even if Adela remarried before her first year of widowhood was out ; and we find Fulk Nerra heading his troops in 992, if not before. But the thing is not impossible. Such precocity would not be much greater than that of Richard the Fearless, or of Fulk's own rival Odo of Blois ; and such a wonderful man as Fulk the Black may well have been a wonderful boy. Note D. the breton and poitevin wars of geoffrey greygovifn. The acts of Geoffrey Greygown in the Gesta Consulicm are a mass of fable. The fight with the Dane .^thelwulf and that with the Saxon ^thelred are mythical on the face of them, and the writer's habitual defiance of chronology is carried to its highest 11. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 137 point in this chapter. From him we turn to the story of Fulk Rechin. " Ille igitur Gosfridus Grisa Gonella, pater avi mei Fulconis, cujus probitates enumerare non possumus, excussit Laudunum de manu Pictavensis comitis, et in prceHo superavit eum super Rupes, et persecutus est eum usque ad Mirebellum. Et fugavit Britones, qui venerant Andegavim cum prsedatorio exercitu, quorum duces erant filii Isoani (Conani). Et postea fuit cum duce Hugone in obsidione apud Marsonum, ubi arripuit eum infirmitas qui exspiravit ; et corpus illius allatum est Turonum et sepultum in ecclesia B. Martini" (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376). Whoever was the author of this account, he clearly knew or cared nothing about the stories of the monkish writers, but had a perfectly distinct source of information unknown to them. For their legends he substitutes two things : a war with the count of Poitou, and a war with the duke of Britanny. On each of these wars we get some information from one other authority ; the question is how to make this other authority tally with Fulk. I. As to the Breton war, which seems to be the earlier in date. No one but Fulk mentions the raid of Conan's sons upon Angers ; and M. Mabille (Introd. Comtes, p. xlviii) objects to it on the ground that Conan's sons were not contemporaries of Geoffrey. Conan of Rennes was killed in 992 in a battle with Geoffrey's son. He had been married in 970 to Geoffrey's daughter Hermen- gard (see above, pp. 121, 135). Now a daughter of Geoffrey in 970 must have been almost a child, but it by no means follows that her husband was equally young. On the contrary, he seems to have been sufficiently grown up to take a part in politics twenty years before (Morice, Hist. Bret. vol. i. p. 62). It is certain that he had several sons ; it is certain that two at least of them were not Hermengard's ; it is likely that none of them were, except his successor Geoffrey. Supposing Conan was somewhat over fifty when killed (and he may have been older still) that would make him about thirty when he married Hermengard ; he might have had sons ten years before that, and those sons might very easily head an attack upon their stepmother's father in 980 or thereabouts. Surely M. Mabille here makes a needless stumbling-block of the chronology. If no other writer confirms Fulk's story, neither does any con- tradict it. But in the Gesta Consulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 91- 93) an exactly similar tale is told, only in much more detail and with this one difference, that Fulk Nerra is substituted for Geoffrey Greygown, and the raid is made to take place just before that other battle of Conquereux, in 992, in which Conan perished. The only question now is, which date is the likeliest, Fulk's or John's ? in other words, which of these two writers is the better to be trusted ? Surely there can be no doubt about the choice, and we must con- 138 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. dude that, for once, the monk who credits Greygown with so many exploits that he never performed has denied him the honour of one to which he is really entitled. Fulk Rechin's account of Geoffrey's Breton war ends here. The Breton chroniclers ignore this part of the affair altogether; they seem to take up the thread of the story where the Angevin drops it. It is they who tell us of the homage of Guerech, and of the battle of Conquereux ; and their accounts of the latter are somewhat puzzling. The Chron. Britann. in Lobineau {Hist. Bret., vol. ii. col. 32) says : " 982. Primum bellum Britannorum et Andegavorum in Concruz." The Chron. S. Michael. (Labbe, BiU. Nova, vol. i. p. 350; Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 98) says: "981. Conanus Curvus contra Andegavenses in Concurrum optime pugnavit." But in the other two Breton chronicles the Angevins do not appear. The Chron. Namnetense {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. 278) describes the battle as one between Conan and Guerech; the Chron. Briocense (Morice, Hist. Bret., pretwes, vol. i. col. 32) does the same, and moreover adds that Conan was severely wounded in the right arm and fled defeated. This last is the only distinct record of the issue of the battle ; nevertheless there are some little indica- tions which, taken together, give some ground for thinking its record is wrong. I St. There is the negative evidence of the silence of the An- gevin writers about the whole affair ; they ignore the first battle of Conquereux as completely as the Bretons ignore the unsuccessful raid of Conan's sons. This looks as if each party chronicled its own successes, and carefully avoided mentioning those of its adversaries. 2d. In the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 260) is a proverb " Bellum Conquerentium quo tortum superavit rectum " — an obvious pun on Conan's nickname, " Tortus " or " Curvus." It is there quoted as having arisen from the battle of Con- quereux in 992 — the only one which it suits the Angevin writers to admit. But this is nonsense, for the writer has himself just told us that in that battle Conan was defeated and slain. There- fore "the crooked overcame the straight," i.e. Conan won the victory, in an earlier battle of Conquereux. But how then are we to account for the Chronicle of St. Brieuc's very circumstantial statement of Conan's defeat? This chronicle — a late compilation — is our only authority for all the details of the war; for Guerech's capture and homage, and in short for all matters specially relating to Nantes. The tone of all this part of it shews plainly that its compiler, or more likely the earUer writer whom he was here copying, was a violently patriotic man of Nantes, who hated the Rennes party and the Angevins about equally, and whose chief aim was to depreciate them both and exalt the house of Nantes in the person of II. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 139 Guerech. So great is his spite against the Angevins that he will not even allow them the credit of having slain Conan at the second battle of Conquereux, but says Conan fell in a fight with some rebel subjects of his own ! He therefore still more naturally ignores the Angevin share in the first battle of Conquereux, and makes his hero Guerech into a triumphant victor. The cause of his hatred to Anjou is of course the mean trick whereby Geoffrey obtained Guerech's homage There can be little doubt that the battle was after this homage — was in fact caused by it ; but the facts are quite enough to account for the Nantes writer putting, as he does, the battle first, before he brings the Angevins in at all, and giving all the glory to Guerech. 2. As to the Poitevin war. " Excussit Laudunum,'' etc. (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 376. See above, p. 137). The only other mention of this war is in the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 384), which says : " Eo tempore gravissimum bellum inter Willelmum ducem et Gofridum Andegavensem comitem peractum est. Sed Gaufridus, necessitatibus actus, Willelmo duci se subdidit seque in manibus prsebuit, et ab eo Lausdunum castrum cum nonnuUis aliis in Pictavensi pago beneficio accepit." M. Mabille pronounces these two accounts incompatible ; but are they ? The Poitevin account, taken literally and alone, looks rather odd. William and Geoffrey fight ; Geoffrey is " compelled by necessity " to make submission to William — but he is invested by his con- queror with Loudun and other fiefs. That is, the practical gain is on the side of the beaten party. On the other hand, Fulk Rechin, taken literally and alone, gives no hint of any submission on Geoffrey's part. But why cannot the. two accounts be made to supplement and correct each other, as in the case of the Breton war ? The story would then stand thus : Geoffrey takes Loudun and defeats William at Les Roches, as Fulk says. Subsequent reverses compel him to agree to terms so far that he holds his con- quests as fiefs of the count of Poitou. The case is nearly parallel to that of the Breton war ; again the Angevin count and the hostile chronicler tell the story between them, each telling the half most agreeable to himself, and the two halves fit into a whole. M. Mabille's last objection is that the real Fulk Rechin would have known better than to say that Geoffrey pursued William as far as Mirebeau, a place which had no existence till the castle was built by Fulk Nerra in 1000. Why should he not have meant simply " the place where Mirebeau now stands "? And even if he did think the name existed in Greygown's day, what does that prove against his identity ? Why should not Count Fulk makes slips as well as other people ? I40 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. The date of the war is matter of guess-work. The S. Maxentiah chronicler's " eo tempore " comes between 989 and 996, i.e. after Geoffrey's death. One can only conjecture that it should have come just at the close of his life. Note E. the grant of maine to geoffrey greygown. That a grant of the county of Maine was made by Hugh Capet to a count of Anjou is pretty clear from the later history ; that the grant was made to Geoffrey Greygown is not so certain. The story comes only from the Angevin historians ; and they seem to have systematically carried back to the time of Greygown all the claims afterwards put forth by the counts of Anjou to what did not belong to them. They evidently knew nothing of his real history, so they used him as a convenient lay figure on which to hang all pretensions that wanted a foundation and all stories that wanted a hero, in total defiance of facts and dates. They have transferred to him one exploit whose hero, if he was an Angevin count at all, could only have been Fulk Nerra — the capture of Melun in 999. An examination of this story will be more in place when we come to the next count ; but it rouses a suspicion that after all Geoffrey may have had no more to do with Maine than with Melun. — The story of the grant of Maine in the Gesta Con- sulum (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 77, 78) stands thus: David, count of Maine, and Geoffrey, count of Corbon, refuse homage to king Robert. The king summons his barons to help him, among them the count of Anjou. The loyal Geoffrey takes his rebel namesake's castle of Mortagne and compels him to submit to the king ; David still holds out, whereupon Robert makes a formal grant of " him and his Cenomannia " to Greygown and his heirs for ever. On this M. I'abb^ Voisin (Les Cenomans anciens et modernes, P- 337) remarks: " Cette chronique renferme avec un fonds de verity des details evidemment ^rrones ; le Geoffroy d' Anjou, dont il est ici question, n'est pas sufifisamment connu. C'est k lui que Guillaume de Normandie fait rendre hommage par son fils Robert ; c'est lui, sans doute, qui, suivant les historiens de Mayenne, fut seigneur de cette ville et commanda quelque temps dans le Maine et I'Anjou, sous Louis d'Outremer ; an milieu d'une assemblee des comtes et des barons de son parti, Robert I'aurait investi de ce qu'il possedait alors dans ces deux provinces." The Abbe's story is quite as puzzling as the monk's. His men- tion of Robert of Normandy is inexplicable, for it can refer to n. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANJOU 141 nothing but the homage of Robert Curthose to Geoffrey the Bearded in 1063. His meaning, however, seems to be that the Geoffrey in question was not Greygown at all, but another Geoffrey of whom he says in p. 353 that he was son of Aubert of Lesser Maine, and "gouverneur d'Anjou et du Maine, sous Louis IV. roi de France ; il avait dpousd une dame de la maison de Bretagne, dont on ignore le nom ; il eu eut trois fils ; Juhel, Aubert et Gu^rin ; il mourut I'an 890." This passage M. Voisin gives as a quotation, but without a reference. He then goes on : " Nous avons cherchd prdcddemment k expliquer de quelle manibre ce Geoffroi se serait pose en rival de Hugues- David ;" and he adds a note : " D'autres aimeront peut-etre mieux supposer une erreur de nom et de date dans la Chronique " [what chronicle ?] "et dire qu'il s'agit de Foulques-le-Bon." There is no need to "suppose"; a man who died in 890 could not be count of anything under Louis IV. But where did M. Voisin find this other Geoffrey, and how does his appearance mend the matter ? He seems to think the Gesta-writers have transferred this man's doings to their own hero Greygown, by restoring them to what he considers their rightful owner he finds no diflSculty in accepting the date, temp. King Robert. But the Abbd's King Robert is not the Gesta-writers' King Robert. He means Robert I., in 923 ; they mean Robert IL, though no doubt they have confused the two. In default of evidence for M. Voisin's story we must take that of the Gesta as it stands and see what can be made of it. In 923, the time of Robert I., Geoffrey Greygown was not born, and Anjou was held by his grandfather Fulk the Red. In 996- 103 1, the time of Robert IL, Geoffrey was dead, and Anjou was held by his son Fulk the Black. Moreover, according to M. Voisin, David of Maine died at latest in 970, and Geoffrey of Corbon lived 1026-1040. From all this it results : 1. If Maine was granted to a count of Anjou by Robert I., it was not to Geoffrey Greygown. 2. If it was granted by Robert IL, it was also not to Geoffrey. 3. If it was granted to Geoffrey, it can only have been by Hugh Capet There is one writer who does bring Hugh into the affair : " Electo autem a Francis communi consilio, post obitum Lotharii, Hugone Capet in regem . . . cum regnum suum circuiret, Turon- isque descendens Cenomannensibusque consulem imponeret" etc. {Gesta Ambaz. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, p. 160). He does not say who this new count was, but there can be little doubt it was the reign- ing count of Anjou ; and this, just after Hugh's accession, would be Fulk Nerra. On the other hand, the writer ignores Louis V. 142 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. ii. and makes Hugh succeed Lothar. Did he mean to place these events in that year, 986-7, when Hugh was king de facto but not de jure i In that case the count would be Geoffrey Greygown. The compilers of the Gesta, however, simplify all these old claims by stating that the king (i.e. the duke) gave Geoffrey a sort of carte-blanche to take and keep anything he could get : '' dedit Gosfrido comiti quidquid Rex Lotarius in episcopatibus suis habuerat, Andegavensi scilicet et Cenomannensi. Si qua vero alia ipse vel successores sui adquirere poterant, ei libertate qua ipse tenebat sibi commendata concessit." Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 76. gorgate'staglandmiJer the Angevin Bn^s." Map I. ■w^neri^Be^es' Geog^Establleipsic, Ioiiflrai,MaciniIlaii i Co. CHAPTER III. ANJOU AND BLOIS. 987-1044. One of the wildest of the legends which have gathered round the Angevin house tells how a count of Anjou had wedded a lady of unknown origin and more than earthly- beauty, who excited the suspicions of those around her by her marked dislike to entering a church, and her absolute refusal to be present at the consecration of the Host. At last her husband, urged by his friends, resolved to compel her to stay. By his order, when the Gospel was ended and she was about to leave 'the church as usual, she was stopped by four armed men. As they laid hold of her mantle she shook it from her shoulders ; two of her little children stood beneath its folds at her right hand, two at her left. The two former she left behind, the latter she caught up in her arms, and, floating away through a window of the church, she was seen on earth no more. " What wonder,'' was the comment of Richard Coeur-de-Lion upon this story ; " what wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind — we who come from the devil, and must needs go back to the devil ? " 1 One is tempted to think that the excited brains of the closing tenth century, filled with dim presages of horror that were floating about in expectation of the speedy end of the world, must have wrought out this strange tale by way of explaining the career of Fulk the Black.^ His contemp- ^ Girald. Cambr. De Jnstr. Princ, dist. iii. c. 27 (Angl. Christ. Soc, p. 154). ^ "Fulco Nerra" or "Niger," "Palmerius" and " Hierosolymitanus " are / 144 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. oraries may well have reckoned him among the phenomena of the time ; they may well have had recourse to a theory of supernatural agency or demoniac possession to account for the rapid developement of talents and passions which both 7 alike seemed almost more than human. When the county of Anjou was left to him by the death of his father Geoffrey Greygown, Fulk was a child scarce eight years old.^ Sur- rounded by powerful foes whom Geoffrey's aggressions had provoked rather than checked — without an ally or protector unless it were the new king — Fulk began life with every- thing against him. Yet before he has reached the years of manhood the young count meets us at every turn, and always in triumph. Throughout the fifty-three years of his reign Fulk is one of the most conspicuous and brilliant figures in French history. His character seems at times strangely self-contradictory. Mad bursts of passion, which would have been the ruin of an ordinary man, but which seem scarcely to have made a break in his cool, calculating, far-seeing policy ; a rapid and unerring perception of his own ends, a relentless obstinacy in pursuing them, an utter disregard of the wrong and suffering which their pursuit might involve ; and then ever and 'anon fits of vehement repentance, ignorant, blind, fruitless as far as any lasting amendment was concerned, yet at once awe-striking and touching in its short-lived, wrong-headed earnestness — all these seeming contradictions yet make up, not a puzzling abstraction, but an intensely living character — the character, \ in a word, of the typical Angevin count. For more than a hundred years after the accession of Hugh Capet, the history of the kingdom which he founded consists chiefly of the struggles of the great feudataries among themselves to get and to keep control over the, action of the crown. The duke of the French had gained little save in name by his royal coronation and unction. He was his historical surnames. I can find no hint whether the first was derived from his complexion or from the colour of the armour which he usually wore (as in the case of the " Black Prince ") ; the origin of the two last will be seen later. 1 This is on the supposition that Adela of Chalon was his mother ; see note C to chap. ii. above. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 145 no nearer than his Karolingian predecessors had been to actual supremacy over the Norman duchy, the Breton peninsula, and the whole of southern Gaul. Aquitaine indeed passed from cold contempt to open aggression. When one of her princes, the count of Poitou, had at length made unwilling submission to the northern king, a champion of southern independence issued from far P^rigord to punish him, stormed Poitiers, marched up to the Loire, and sat down in triumph before Tours, whose count, Odo of Blois, was powerless to relieve it. The king himself could find no more practical remonstrance than the indignant question, " Who made thee count ? " and the sole reply vouchsafed by Adalbert of Perigord was the fair retort, " Who made thee king ? " Tours fell into his hands, and was made over, per- haps in mockery, to the youthful count of Anjou. The loyalty of its governor and citizens, however, soon restored it to its lawful owner, and Adalbert's dreams of conquest ended in failure and retreat.^ Still, Aquitaine remained in- dependent as of old ; Hugh's real kingdom took in little more than the old duchy of France "between Seine and Loire"; and even within these limits it almost seemed that in grasping at the shadow of the crown he had loosened his hold on the substance of his ducal power. The regal authority was virtually a tool in the hands of whichever feudatary could secure its exercise for his own ends. As yet Aquitaine and Britanny stood aloof from the struggle ; Normandy had not yet entered upon it ; at present therefore it lay between the vassals of the duchy of France. Fore- most among them in power, wealth, and extent of territory was the count of Blois, Chartres and Tours. His dominions pressed close against the eastern border of Anjou, and it was on her ability to cope with him that her fate chiefly de- . pended. Was the house of Anjou or the house of Blois to \^ win the pre-eminence in central Gaul ? This was the pro- blem which confronted Fulk the Black, and to whose solu- tion he devoted his life. His whole course was governed by > Ademar of Chabanais, Her. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 146. The date seems to be about 990 ; but Ademar has confused Odo I. of Blois with his son Odo of CUamp^ne. VOL. I. L 146 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. one fixed principle and directed to one paramount object — the consolidation of his marchland. To that object every- thing else was made subservient. Every advantage thrown in his way by circumstances, by the misfortunes, mistakes or weaknesses of foes or friends — for he used the one as unscrupulously as the other — was caught up and pursued with relentless vigour. One thread of settled policy ran through the seemingly tangled skein of his life, a thread never broken even by the wildest outbursts of his almost demoniac temper or his superstitious alarms. While he seemed to be throwing his whole energies into the occupa- tion of the moment — whether it were the building or the besieging of a fortress, the browbeating of bishop or king, the cajoling of an ally or the crushing of a rival on the battle-field — that work was in reality only a part of a much greater work. Every town mirrored in the clear streams that water the "garden of France" — as the people of Touraine call their beautiful country — has its tale of the Black Count, the " great builder " beneath whose hands the whole lower course of the Loire gradually came to bristle with fortresses ; but far above all his castles of stone and mortar there towered a castle in the air, the plan of a mighty political edifice. Every act of his life was a step towards its realization ; every fresh success in his long career of triumph was another stone added to the gradual building up of Angevin dominion and greatness. Fulk's first victory was won before he was fourteen, over a veteran commander who had been more than a match for his father ten years earlier. The death of Geoffrey Grey- gown was soon followed by that of Count Guerech of Nantes ; he, too, left only a young son, Alan ; and when Alan also died in 990, Conan of Rennes, already master of all the rest of Britanny, seized his opportunity to take forcible possession of Nantes,^ little dreaming of a possible rival in his young brother-in-law beyond the Mayenne. While his back was turned and he was busy assembling troops at Bruerech, at the other end of Britanny, the 1 Morice, Hist, de Bret., vol. i. p. 64 (from a seemingly lost bit of the Chron. Namnet. ). III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 147 Angevin worked upon the old hatred of the Nantes people to the house of Rennes ; with the craft of his race he won over some of the guards, by fair words and solid bribes, till he gained admittance into the city and received oaths and hostages from its inhabitants. He then returned home to collect troops for an attack upon the citadel, which was held by Conan's men. Conan, as soon as he heard the tid- ings, marched upon Nantes with all his forces ; as before, he brought with him a body of Norman auxiliaries, likely to be of no small use in assaulting a place such as Nantes, whose best defence is its broad river — for the " Pirates " had not yet forgotten the days when the water was their natural element and the long keels were their most familiar home. While the Norman ships blocked the river, Conan's troops beset the town by land, and thus, with the garrison shooting down at them from the citadel, the townsfolk of Nantes were between three fires when Fulk advanced to their rescue.^ Conan at once sent the audacious boy a challenge to meet him, on such a day, in a pitched battle on the field of Con- quereux, where ten years before a doubtful fight had been waged between Conan and Fulk's father. This time the Bretons trusted to lure their enemies to complete destruction by a device which, in days long after, was successfully employed by Robert Bruce against the English army at Bannockburn ; they dug a series of trenches right across the swampy moor, covered them with bushes, branches, leaves and thatch, supported by uprights stuck into the ditches, and strewed the surface with ferns till it was indistinguish- able from the surrounding moorland. Behind this line of hidden pitfalls Conan drew up his host, making a feint of unwillingness to begin the attack. Fulk, panting for his first battle with all the ardour of youth, urged his men to the onset ; the flower of the Angevin troops charged right into the Breton pitfalls ; men and horses became hopelessly entangled ; two thousand went down in the swampy abyss and were drowned, slaughtered or crushed to death.^ The ^ Richer, 1. iv. c. 81. " lb. cc. 82-85. Rudolf Glaber, 1. ii. c. 3 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. P- IS)- 148 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. rest fled in disorder ; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and fell to the ground, weighed down by his armour, perhaps too heavy for his boyish frame. In an instant he was up again, wild with rage, burning to avenge his over- throw, calling furiously upon his troops. The clear, young voice of their leader revived the courage of the Angevins ; " as the storm -wind sweeps down upon the thick corn-rigs "^ — so their historian tells — they rushed upon the foe ; and their momentary panic was avenged by the death of Conan and the almost total destruction of his host.^ The blow over- threw the power of Rennes ; the new duke Geoffrey, the son of Conan and Hermengard, was far indeed from being a match for his young uncle. In the flush of victory Fulk marched into Nantes ; the citizens received him with open arms ; the dismayed garrison speedily surrendered, and swore fealty to the conqueror; the titular bishop, Judicael, a young son of Count Hoel, was set up as count under the guardianship of Aimeric of Thouars, a kinsman of the An- gevin house, who ruled solely in Fulk's interest ;^ while the territory on the right bank of the Mayenne, lost a century and a half before by the treason of Count Lambert, seems to have been reunited to the Angevin dominions. The boy count had well won his spurs on the field of Conquereux. With the control over Nantes he had secured the control over the whole course of the Loire from his own capital down to the sea — a most important advantage in an age when the water-ways were the principal channels of communication, whether for peace or war. The upper part of the Loire valley, its richest and most fertile part, was in the hands of the count of Blois. But his sway was not un- broken. Midway between his two capitals, Blois and Tours, ■^ R. Glaber, 1. ii. c. 3 f^Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. a. p. 15). ^ Richer, 1. iv. c. 86. R. Glaber (as above) says that Conan was not slain, but only taken prisoner with the loss of his right hand — a confusion with the first battle of Conquereux. Conan's death appears in all the chief Breton chron- icles, especially Chron. S. Michael, a.. 992 [Rer. Gall. Scriftt., vol. x. p. 175), etc. See also Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377. The Gesta Cons, copy R. Glaber. ^ Richer, 1. iv. c. 86. The first viscount of Thouars, a brother of Ebles, count of Poitou, had married Roscilla, daughter of Fulk the Red. Chron. Com. Pictavise in Rer. Call. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 294, 295. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 149 stood Amboise, the heritage of the Red Count's mother ; farther south, in the valley of the Indre, stood Loches, the heritage of his wife. It was not in human nature — certainly not in Angevin nature — that the owner of Amboise and Loches should not seek to extend his power a little further at the expense of his neighbour in Touraine ; and no great provocation on the part of Odo of Blois was needed to make the fiery young Angevin dash into his territories, and ride plundering, wasting and burning to the outskirts of Blois itself.^ Raid and counter-raid went on almost without ceas- ing, and once it seems that King Hugh himself came to help his Angevin ally.^ In 995 Odo died, and his widow. Bertha, shortly afterwards married Robert of France, who next year became king on the death of his father Hugh Capet. Robert and Bertha were cousins ; the Church pronounced their marriage illegal, and punished it with an interdict on the realm ; amid the general confusion which followed, Fulk carried on a desultory warfare with Odo's two elder sons, Thierry and Theobald, till the death of the latter in 1004 brought him face to face with his lifelong antagonist, Odo II. The contest made inevitable by circumstances was to be rendered all the more bitter by the character of the two men who were now to engage in it. Odo, indeed, was even yet scarcely more than a boy ;^ but, like Fulk, he had begun his public career at a very early age. His beginning was as characteristic as Fulk's beginning at Conquereux. In 999 he openly insulted his royal step-father by wresting the castle of Melun from Robert's most trusty counsellor. Count Bur- chard of Vendome ; and no might short of that of the Norman duke, who had now grown from a " leader of the Pirates " into the king's most valued supporter, sufficed to avenge the ' Richer, 1. iv. u. 79. ^ Richer, 1. iv. cc. 90-94. His account of the war, and indeed his whole account of Fulk and of Odo, is extremely strange and confused ; it has been examined by M. Leon Aubineau in a " Notice sur Thibaut-le-Tricheur et Eudes I." in the Mem. de la Soc. Archiol. de Touraine, vol. iii. (1845-1847), pp. 41-94, but the result is far from convincing. ^ He is called " puerulus " at the time of his mother's second marriage, i.e. in 995-996. ffist. Franc. Fragm. in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 211. But considering the date of the Melun affair, this can hardly be taken literally. ISO ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. outrage.^ The boy's hasty, unprovoked spoliation of Bur- chard, his insolent defiance of the king, his overweening self- confidence, ending suddenly in ignominious flight, were typi- cal of his whole after-career. Odo's life was as busy and active as Fulk's, but his activity produced no lasting effects. His insatiable ambition lacked the restraint and regulation of the Angevin practical sagacity, and ran hopelessly to seed without bringing forth any lasting fruit. There was no fixed purpose in his life. New ideas, daring schemes, sprang up in his brain almost as quickly as in that of Fulk ; but he never waited till they were matured ; he never stopped to count their cost ; and instead of working together to one common end, they only drove him into a multiplicity of irreconcileable and often visionary undertakings which never came to perfection. He was entirely a creature of impulse ; always ready to throw himself into a new pro- ject, but generally lacking patience and perseverance enough to carry it through ; harassed by numberless conflicting cares ;^ breaking every engagement as soon as made, not from any deep-laid policy, but simply from sheer inability to keep long to anything. " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," might have been the burthen of Odo and of Odo's whole race. The house of Blois failed through their utter lack of the quality which was the main strength of their rivals : thoroughness. The rivalry and the characters of the two houses have a bearing upon English history ; for the quarrel that began between them for the possession of Touraine was to be fought out at last on English ground, and for no less a stake than the crown of England. The rivalry of Odo and Fulk was a foreshadowing of the rivalry between Stephen of Blois and Henry of Anjou. The end was the same in both cases. With every advantage on their side, in the eleventh century as in the twelfth, in Gaul as in England, the aimless activity of the house of Blois only spent itself against the indomitable steadiness, determination ■' Vita Burchardi, in Rer. Gall. Script. , vol. x. pp. 354, 355. Will. Jumiiges, 1. V. c. 14 {ik p. 189 ; Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script., p. 255). Richer, 1. iv. cc. 74-78. See note A at the end of chapter. ^ See the character given of him by R. Glaber, 1. iii. cc. 2, 9 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. A. pp. 27, 40). HI. ANJOU AND BLOTS 151 and persistency of the Angevins, as vainly as the storm-wind might beat upon the rocky foundations of Black Angers. In the ten years of misery and confusion which followed the death of Odo I. and the re-marriage of his widow, Fulk had time nearly to complete a chain of fortresses which, starting from Angers and sweeping along the line of Geoffrey Greygown's Poitevin conquests in a wide irregular half-circle up again to Amboise, served the double purpose of linking his own outlying possessions in Touraine with his head- quarters in Anjou, and of cutting in halves the dominions of his neighbour. The towers of Montreuil, Passavant and Maulevrier, of Loudun and the more remote Mirebeau, were a standing menace to Saumur and Chinon. S'^- - Maure was an eyesore to the garrison of Ile-Bouchard.^ Farther east, on a pile of rock with the little blue Indre winding round its foot, rose, as it rises still in ruined majesty, the mighty keep of Loches ; and on the banks of the Indrois that of Mon- tr^sor, whose lord, Roger, rejoiced in the surname of " the devil." ^ To Roger Fulk also intrusted the command of another great fortress, Montrichard, whose dark donjon frowned down upon the Cher from a plot of ground stolen from the metropolitan see of Tours.^ At Amboise itself, the site of the Roman governor's palace — now crowned by the modern castle — was occupied by a strong domicilium of the Angevin count,* and the place was a perpetual obstacle between the archiepiscopal city of S. Martin and the secular capital of its rulers. Langeais and Montbazon, which for a while threatened Tours more closely still, were soon wrested from their daring builder ; ^ but the whole course of the Indre above Montbazon was none the less in Fulk's hands, for either by force or guile, the lords of all the castles on its ' Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377. ^ Gesta Cons. (ibid.),'p. 107; Gesta Amb. Domin. (ibid.), p. 167. ' Gesta Cons., as above. * Gesta Amb. Domin. (as above), p. 175. ' That Montbazon was built by Fulk appears by a charter of King Robert (Rer. Gall. Scriftt., vol. x. pp. 577, 578), date seemingly about A.D. 1000. It had, however, passed into Odo's hands. Langeais, whose building is recorded by Fulk Rechin (as above), was probably taken by Odo I. in 995 ; there is a charter of his dated "at the siege of Langeais" in that year. Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 96. 152 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. banks had been won over to his cause ; he had gained a foothold on every one of the affluents of the Loire upon its southern side ; while on the north, in the valley of the Loir, Hugh of Alluye, the lord of Chateau-la- Valli^re and St.- Christophe, was so devoted to the Angevin interest that the count's usual route to and from Amboise lay through his lands.^ The early part of the eleventh century was an age of castle-building ; Fulk, however, had begun his line of forti- fications before the century dawned, in those gloomy years of interdict when the royal power was at its lowest ebb, when the people, cut off from the helps and comforts of religion, lay in hopeless anarchy and misery, and half in terror, half in longing, men whispered to each other that the end of the world was near. The superstitious terrors which paralyzed gentler souls only goaded Fulk into more restless activity and inflamed his fierce temper almost to madness. He had married the heiress of Vendome, the daughter of Count Burchard ;^ but this union came to a terrible end while its only child was still in her cradle. In the very dawn of the dreaded year looo Countess Elizabeth expiated her real or supposed sins as a wife by death at the stake ; and a conflagration which destroyed a large part of the city of Angers immediately after her execution may well have caused the horror-stricken subjects of her husband to deem that judgement was indeed at their gates.^ After the paroxysm came the reaction. When the dreaded year had passed over and the world found itself 1 Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 91. Cesta Amb. Dotnin. (ibid.), p. 164. = They were already married in 990 ; see a charter in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 59. 2 This, or something like it, must be the meaning of the not very intelligible accounts given in the Angevin chronicles of the death of Elizabeth and the fire which followed it. " Incensa est urbs Andegavensis post incensionem (Comitissse Elizabeth." Chron. S. Michael, in Peric. Maris, a. 1000 (Xer. Call. Script., vol. X. p. 175). " Prima incensio urbis Andegavee, qus evenit paucis diebus post combustionem comitissffi Helisabeth." Chron. S. Albin., a. 1000 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 22). "Urbs Andecava incensa est post combustionem comitissK Elisabeth." Breve Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 999 {ib. p. 187). " Fulco cum Elysabeth conjugem suam Andegavis, post immane prsecipitium salvatam, occidisset, ipsamque urbem paucis defendentibus flammarum incendiis concre- masset." Hist. S. Flor. Salm. {ibid.), p. 273. Cf. ib. p. 260. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 153 still alive ; when the king had at last consented to purchase relief from the interdict by parting from his beloved Bertha, and the nation was rousing itself to welcome the new queen who stepped into Bertha's place ; then the blood which he had shed at Conquereux and elsewhere — one may surely add, the ashes of his wife — began to weigh heavily on the Black Count's soul ; " the fear of Gehenna " took possession of him, and leaving the marchland to the care of his brother \ Maurice he set out for the Holy Sepulchre.^ This journey was the first link in a chain which, through the later pilgrim- ages of Fulk Nerra himself and those of his great-grandson Fulk v., brought the counts of Anjou into a specially intimate relation with the Holy Land and led to the establishment of an Angevin dynasty upon its throne. Legend has not been slack to furnish Fulk the Palmer with characteristic adven- tures, to tell how his craft outwitted that of the Turks who tried to exclude him from the Sepulchre, and how he not only procured a piece of the true Cross, but while kissing the sacred stone in the fervour of his devotion, detected a loose fragment which he managed to bite off and bring home as the most precious trophy of his journey.^ His first care on his return was to build an abbey for the reception of this relic. From the rocky angle by the winding Indre where the great " Square Tower " — as the natives emphatically call the keep of Loches — was rising in picturesque contrast to a church reared by Geoffrey Greygown in honour of our Lady,^ the land which the wife of the first count of Anjou had transmitted to her descendants stretched a mile eastward beyond the river in a broad expanse of green meadow to a waste plot of ground full of broom, belonging to a man 1 R. Glaber, 1. ii. c. 3 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 15). On the regency of Maurice see note C at end of chapter, and Mabille, Introd. Comtes (f Anjou, p. Ixxvi. - Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 102, 103. There is a versified account \ of the pious theft in the Beaulieu office of the Holy Sepulchre, Salies, Hist, de I Foulques-Nerra, p. 529. ' In 963 ; Chron. Turon. Abbrev. ad ann. (Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 185). From the foundation-charter, cited by M. I'abb^ Bardet (La Collegiale de Loches, p. 8), it seems that Geoffrey founded the church on his return from a pil- grimage to Rome. A fragment of his work possibly remains in the present church (now called S. Ours), which was built by the historian-prior, Thomas Pactius, in the time of Henry II. 1 54 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. named Ingelger. From its original Latin name, Belli-locus, now corrupted into Beaulieu, it seems possible that the place was set apart for trials by ordeal of battle.^ This field Fulk determined to purchase for the site of his abbey. A bargain was struck ; the count paid down the stipulated sum, carried the former owner on his shoulders from the middle of the field to the foot of the bridge, and there set him down, saying, "A man without wit his free- hold must quit " — by which ceremony the contract was completed.^ Despite his fiery haste, Fulk did all things with due method,' and his next anxiety was to decide upon the dedication of his intended minster. He found his best counsellor in his newly-married wife, the Lady Hildegard, and by her advice the church was placed under the direct invocation, not of saint or angel, but of the most Holy Trinity Itself.* By the time it stood ready for consecration the son of Fulk and Hildegard was nearly three years old :^ he had been nursed by a blacksmith's wife at Loches ;^ and many a time, as the count and countess went to inspect the progress of architect and builder in the meadow beyond the river, they must have lingered beside the forge to mark the growth of their little Geoffrey, the future conqueror of Tours. The consecration of the church proved a difficulty ; the arch- bishop of Tours refused to perform it unless Fulk would restore to his see the stolen land of Montrichard.^ Fulk ^ This is a remark quoted by M. de Salies {Foulques-Nerra, pp. 115, 361) from Dufour, "Diet. hist, de I'arrond. de Loches," and grounded on the fact that while the many other Beaulieus, in France and in England, all appear in Latin as ' ' BellusAozvs,, " this one is " Belli-locas " in its foundation charter. See a similar case of verbal corruption below, p. 187. 2 nth lesson of the Beaulieu Office, Salies, Foulques-Nerra, p. 528. " Stultus a proprio expellitur alodo." 3 "Ut semper curiose agebat," R. Glaber, 1. ii. c. 4 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. '" P- IS)- ^ Ibid. (pp. 15, 16). 5 He was bom October 14, 1006, according to Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, -pp. 164, 187). The Chron. S. Serg. {ib. p. 134) gives the same day, but makes the year 1007 ; the Chron. S. Maxent. \ib. p. 387) places the event on April 12, 1005. The Chron. S. Albin. [ib. p. 22) gives no day, but confirms the two first-named authorities for the year, 1006. ^ Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 260. ' R. Glaber, as above {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 16). Cf. Gesta. Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 107). m. ANJOU AND BLOTS 155 swore — doubtless his customary oath, " by God's souls " ^ — that he would get the better of the primate, and went straight off to Rome to lay his case before the Pope. After several years' wrangling it was decided in his favour,^ and one morning in May 1012 the abbey-church of the Holy Trinity at Beaulieu was hallowed with all due pomp and solemnity by a Roman cardinal-legate. But though Rome had spoken, the case was not ended yet. That very after- noon a sudden storm of wind blew up from the south, whirled round the church, and swept the whole roof completely off. Clergy and laity alike seized on the prodigy as an evident token of Heaven's wrath against the insolence and pre- sumption of Fulk ;^ not so the Black Count himself, who simply replaced the roof and pushed on the completion of the monastic buildings as if nothing had happened.* He had successfully defied the Church ; he next ventured to defy the king and tlie count of Blois both at once. The divorced queen Bertha, mother of young Odo of Blois, still lived and was still loved by the king ; Fulk, if he was not actually, as tradition relates, a kinsman of the new Queen Constance,^ was at any rate fully alive to the policy of mak- ing common cause with her against their common rivals of Blois. He crushed King Robert's last hope of reunion with Bertha by sending twelve armed men to assassinate at a hunting-party, before his royal master's eyes, the king's seneschal or comes palatii Hugh of Beauvais who was the confidant of his cherished scheme.* It is a striking proof not only of the royal helplessness but also of the independ- ence and security which Fulk had already attained that his crime went altogether unpunished and even uncensured save ^ " Fulco Nerra, cui consuetude fuit Animas Dei jurare," begins his history in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 89. " R. Glaber, 1. ii. c. 4 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 17). See also a bull of Pope John XVIII. in Migne's Patrologia, vol. cxxxix., cols. 1491, 1492 ; and two of Sergius IV., ib. cols. 1525-1527. ^ R. Glaber, as above (p. 16). * Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 99. This writer copies the whole story of Beaulieu from R. Glaber. ° See note B at end of chapter. " R. Glaber, 1. iii. u. 2 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27). iS6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. by one bishop,^ and almost immediately after its commission he could again venture on leaving his dominions under the regency of his brother Maurice, while he set off upon another long journey which the legendary writers of Anjou, by some strange confusion between their own hero and the Emperor Otto III., make into a mission of knight-errantry to deliver the Pope from a tyrant named Crescentius, but which seems really to have been a second pilgrimage to Holy Land.^ He came back to find the storm which had so long been gathering on his eastern border on the point of breaking at last. The adherents of the count of Blois, headed by Landry of Chateaudun, had profited by Fulk's absence to concert a scheme for the expulsion of the Angevins from Touraine. In spite of a vigorous resistance made by Fulk's lieutenant at Amboise, Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin's at Tours, they seemed in a fair way to succeed, when Fulk himself dropped like a thunderbolt in their midst, dashed right through the county of Blois into that of Chartres, punished Landry by sacking Chateaudun and harrying the surrounding district, and marched home in triumph to Amboise.^ A raid such as this was a distinct declaration of war, not upon Landry, but upon Landry's lord. Fulk had intended it as such, and he went home to set in action every possible means that could gain him help and support in a fight to the uttermost with Odo for the possession of Touraine. At that very moment the county of Maine was thrown virtually into his hands by the death of its aged count Hugh ; with the alli- ance of Hugh's youthful successor he secured the northern frontier of Touraine and the support of a body of valiant fighting-men whose co-operation soon proved to be of the highest value and importance. The rapid insight which singled out at a glance the most fitting instruments for his purpose, the gifts of attraction and persuasion by which he knew how to attach men to his service, and seemed almost to inspire them with some faint reflex of his own spirit, ' Fulbert of Chartres ; see his letter to Fulk, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 476, 477- ^ See note C at end of chapter. ^ Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 88, 89-91. in. ANJOU AND BLOIS 157 while making them devoted creatures of his will, were all brought into play as he cast about in all directions for aid in the coming struggle, and were strikingly shown in his choice of a lieutenant. The instinct of genius told him that he had found the man he wanted in young Lisoy, lord of the castle of Bazogers, in Maine. As prudent in counsel as he was daring in fight, Lisoy was a man after Fulk's own heart ; they understood each other at once ; Lisoy was ap- pointed to share with the now aged Sulpice the supreme command of Loches and Amboise ; and while Sulpice pro- vided for the defence of Amboise by building on his own land there a lofty tower of stone,^ the burned and plundered districts of St.-Aignan, Chaumont and Blois soon had cause to know that the " pride of Cenomannian knighthood " had thrown himself heart and soul into the service of the count of Anjou.^ The crisis came in the summer of 1016, when Odo of Blois gathered all his forces for an attack upon Montrichard. His rival was fully prepared to meet him. Before he set out from Blois, the allied hosts of Anjou and Maine had assembled at Amboise, and thence separated again to post themselves in such a manner as to render a battle unavoidable. Fulk turned eastward, and took up a position close to Pontlevoy, seemingly in a wood now known as the Bois-Royal, which in that day was skirted by the high road from Blois to Montrichard. Herbert of Maine rode down to the banks of the Cher, and pitched his camp just above Montrichard, at Bourre.' If Odo followed the high road he would be met by the Angevins ; if he .contrived to turn their position by taking a less direct route to the eastward, he must en- counter the Cenomannians, with the garrison of Montrichard at their back ; while whichever engaged him first, the distance between the two bodies of troops was so slight that either could easily come to the other's assistance. It was well for Anjou and for her count that his strategical arrangements were so perfect, and so faithfully carried out by his young ' Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 169. " li. pp. 160-164. ' Gesta Com. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 107. The topography of the battle of Pontlevoy is cleared up by Salies, Foulques-Nerra, p. 175 et seq. 158 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. ally ; for never in all his long life, save in the panic at Con- quereux, was Fulk the Black so near to complete overthrow as on that Friday morning in July 1016, when he met Odo of Blois face to face in the battle-field. Odo, who always trusted to be saved in the multitude of an host,^ was greatly astonished, on arriving with all his forces opposite Pontlevoy, to find the Angevins drawn up against him in battle array. With a few hurried words he urged his men to the onset. Fortune seemed for a while to favour the stronger side ; Fulk and his troops were sore bested ; Fulk himself was thrown from his horse and severely stunned, and the fate of Anjou hung trembling in the balance, when the scale was turned by the sword of Herbert of Maine. A messenger hurried off to tell the Cenomannian count that his friend was defeated, nay, captured. Herbert and his knights flew to the rescue ; they charged the left wing of the enemies with a vigour which changed the whole position of affairs, and snatched from the count of Blois the victory he had all but won ; the chivalry of Blois fled in confusion, leaving the foot to be cut to pieces at will, and their camp to be plundered by the victorious allies, who returned in triumph to Amboise, laden with rich spoils and valuable prisoners.^ The victory of Pontlevoy was the turning-point of Fulk's career. Nine years passed away before Odo recovered from the check enough to make any attempt to avenge it. It seems at first glance strange that Fulk did not employ the interval in pushing forward his conquest of Touraine. But in the eyes of both Fulk and Odo the possession of Touraine was in reality a means rather than an end ; and a sort of armed truce, so long as Odo did not provoke him to break it, suited Fulk's purpose better than a continued war. His western frontier had been secured by his first victory at Conquereux ; his eastern frontier was now secured, at any rate for a time, by his victory at Pontlevoy ; from the south 1 "More suo, nimia multitudine confisus." Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 107. = lb. pp. 107, 108. The date— July 6— is given in Chronn. S. Serg., Vindoc. and S. Flor. Salm., ii. 1016 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 134, 164, 187). There is an account of the battle in Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (ib.), p. 274, but it has a very impossible look. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 159 there was nothing to fear, for the duke of Aquitaine, to whom he owed homage for Loudun, was his staunch friend, and presently gave proof of his friendship by bestowing on him the city of Saintes.^ Fulk at once made use of the gift as a means of extorting something yet more valuable from a neighbour to whom he owed a far deeper obligation — Herbert of Maine. It may be that they had quarrelled since the days of Pontlevoy; it may be that Herbert had begun that career of nocturnal raids against the fortified towns of Anjou which scared men and beasts from their rest, and gained him his unclassical but expressive sur- name of " Wake-the-dog."^ If so, the wily Angevin took effectual measures to stop them. He enticed the count of Maine to pay him a visit at Saintes, proposing to grant him the investiture of that city. Suddenly, in the midst of con- versation, Herbert was seized by Fulk's servants and flung into prison, whence he was only released at the end of two years, and on submission to such conditions as Fulk chose to dictate.* What those conditions were history does not tell ; but there can be little doubt that they included some acknowledgment of the suzerain rights of Anjou over Maine, with which Geoffrey Greygown had been invested by Hugh Capet, but which he had not had time to make good, and which Fulk had only enforced for a moment, at the sword's point, when the aged count Hugh was dying.* Fulk's deal- 1 Ademar of Chabanais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt. , vol. *. p. 149. 2 " Vulgo, sed parum Latine, cognorainari Evigilans-canem pro ingenti probitate piomeruit. Nam ... in eundem [sc. Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebro agebat, et Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsS urbe, vel in munitioribus oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare cogebat." Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.) p. 532. It is however only fair to add that in another place (ib. p. 487) Orderic says Herbert "vulgo Evigilans-canem cog- nominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes quas a perfidis afifinibus suis Ande- gavensibus incessanter patiebatur " — as if he kept the Cenomannian dogs awake to give notice of the enemy's approach, we must suppose. ' Ademar of Chabanais {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x.), p. 161 ; Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 189; Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, p. 401). Ademar says Herbert's imprisonment lasted two years ; and the Chronn. S. Albin. and Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 22, 167), give us the date of his release, by giving that of the Breton invasion which fol- lowed it. * "Hugonis . . . quem Fulco senior sibi violentur subjugSrat." Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 532. The terms of Herbert's submission to i6o ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. ings with Maine are only an episode in his Hfe ; but they led even more directly than his struggle with the house of Blois to consequences of the utmost importance. They paved the way for an Angevin conquest of Maine which extended the Angevin power to the Norman border, brought it into contact and collision with the Norman ducal house, and originated the long wars which were ended at last by the marriage of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda. The imprisonment of Herbert is really the first step in the path which leads from Anjou to England. But the step could never have been followed up as it was by Fulk's successor had not Fulk himself at once turned back to his special work of clearing away the obstacle to Angevin progress formed by the rivalry of Blois, which once again threatened to become a serious danger in the very year of Herbert's capture. Odo had lately^ succeeded to the in- heritance of his cousin Stephen, count of Champagne, an acquisition which doubled his wealth and power, and gave him a position of such importance in the French kingdom as enabled him to overawe the crown and cause a complete change in its policy. In 1025 King Robert, "or rather his queen Constance," as the chroniclers significantly add, made peace with Count Odo who had hitherto been their enemy, and left their old friend Fulk of Anjou to carry on alone Fulk are matter of inference from what followed his release. He at once began to quarrel with Avesgaud, the bishop of Le Mans, and being by him defied and excommunicated, called in the help of Duke Alan of Britanny i^Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 30, in Mabillon, Vet. Analecta, p. 304). Alan, when he had helped to defeat the bishop, marched down to besiege Le Lude, one of the chief Angevin fortresses on the Cenomannian border, and only desisted when he had extorted from Fulk the hostages given him by Herbert on his release ; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1027 (Marchegay, EgUses, p. 166). It is not hard to see why the rival overlord of Nantes should be ready to make war, on any pretext, upon the count of Anjou; but, making due allowance for Fulk's possible difficulties — Odo's last attack occurred in this year — still it is very hard to see why Fulk, " the ingenious Fulk," as the writer of the Gesta Amb. Domin. calls him (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 165), could find no better way of raising the siege of a petty border-fortress than by making restitution to Herbert at the bidding of Alan, unless he felt so sure of his hold over Herbert as not to think the hostages worth keeping. The striking resemblance between Fulk's treatment of Herbert and his father's treatment of Guerech also suggests that there was probably a like resemblance in the terms of release. ^ Stephen seems to have died in 1019 ; Artde verifier les dates, vol. xi. p. 347. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS i6i the struggle which he had begun with their good will, and, ostensibly at least, partly in their interest.^ Odo thought his hour was come ; " with all his might he set upon " Fulk ;^ and his might now included all the forces of Touraine, Blois, Chartres and Champagne, aided, it seems, by a contingent from the Royal Domain itself.^ With this formidable host Odo laid siege to a great fortified camp known as the Mont- boyau, which Fulk had reared some ten years before on the northern bank of the Loire almost opposite Tours, as a standing menace to the city and a standing defiance to its ruler.* Fulk, to whom the besieged garrison appealed for succour, had advanced* as far as Brain-sur-Alonnes when he was met by tidings which induced him to change his course.^ Nearly over against the spot where he stood, a ridge of white chalk-cliff rising sheer above the southern bank of the Loire was crowned by the fortress of Saumur, the south-western key of Touraine, close to the Angevin border. It had belonged to the counts of Tours since the days of Theobald the Trickster at least ; but in an earlier time it had probably formed a part of the Angevin March, as it still formed a part of the diocese of Angers. Its lord, Gelduin, was the sole human being whom the Black Count feared ; " Let us flee that devil of Saumur !" was his cry, " I seem always to see him before me." ^ But now he learned that Gelduin had joined his count at the siege of the Montboyau. A hurried ' Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 10) ; Chron. Vindoc. a. 1025 {ib. p. 165). This last is probably the right date, as the Angevin capture of Saumur, which follows, is dated in 1026 by the Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. (ib. pp. 22, 134), and in 1025 by the Chronn. S. Flor. Salm. and S. Maxent. {ib. pp. 187, 388). "^ " Totis nisibus adorsus est. " Chronn. Rain. Andeg. and Vindoc. as above. ' "Cum Francis,'" says the //is/. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 276). This writer afterwards speaks of Odo's whole host as "Franci." He has already done the same at Pontlevoy [ib. p. 274) ; but surely there cannot have been any royal vassals fighting under Odo there. What can be the writer's real meaning ? * Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 108. Gesta Amb. Dotnin. [ibid.), p. 165. See, for dates, Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 10). ° The Gesta Amb. Domin. (as above), p. 165, say that Fulk was accompanied by Herbert of Maine. But, on calculating dates, it seems that Herbert must have been by this time in prison. It is however highly probable that Cenomannian troops would be supplied to Fulk by Bishop Avesgaud. ^ //ist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 276. '' /b. p. 275. VOL. I. M i62 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. night-ride across Loire and Vienne brought Fulk at break of day to the gates of Saumur/ and before sunset he was master of the place, although its inhabitants, with a spirit worthy of their absent leader, fired the town before they surrendered, and only admitted the victors into a heap of / ashes. Not the least valiant of its defenders had been the monks of S. Florence, a little community who dwelt within the castle-enclosure, keeping guard over the relics of a famous local saint. As they came forth with their patron's body from the blazing ruins, the Black Count's voice rose above the din : " Let the fire burn, holy Florence ! I will build \ thee a better dwelling at Angers." The relics were placed in a boat and rowed down the stream till they reached the limit of the lands of Saumur, at Treves. Once the boundary had been further west, at Gennes ; till Fulk, despite his terror of the "devil," had taken courage to march against him, doubtless at a moment when Gelduin was unprepared for defence, for he at once asked a truce. It was granted, but not exactly as he desired ; on the spot where Gelduin's envoy met him Fulk planted a castle and called it mockingly " " Treva," truce. Opposite this alien fortress the boat which carried the relics of S. Florence now stuck fast in one of the sandbanks of treacherous Loire, and all the efforts of the rowers failed to move it. The saint — said the monks — was evidently determined not to be carried beyond his own territory. Fulk, who was superintending the voyage in person, began to rail at him as " an impious rustic who would not allow himself to be well treated": but there was a grain of humour in the Black Count's composition, and he was probably as much amused as angered at the saint's obstinacy; at any rate he suffered the monks to push off in the opposite direction — which they did without difificulty — and deposit their charge in the church of S. Hilary, an old dependency of their house, till he should find them a suitable place for a 1 ffist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 276.— " Ligerique ac Vigennd transvadatis." The writer, living close to the spot, can hardly have mistaken its topography ; but unless he has done so, the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire must at that time have been considerably farther west than at present ; it is now at Candes, some distance to the east of Saumur and Brain. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 163 new monastery.^ Thus far Odo's grand expedition had/ brought him nothing but the loss of the best stronghold he possessed on the Angevin border. There was apparently nothing to prevent Fulk from marching in triumph up the valley of theVienne, where Chinon and Ile-Bouchard now held out alone for the count of Blois amid a ring of Angevin fortresses. His present object, however, was to relieve the Montboyau ; and turning northward he laid siege to a castle of his own building which had somehow passed into the. enemy's hands, Montbazon^ on the Indre, only three leagues distant from Tours. Odo, whose siege operations had proved a most disastrous failure,^ at once broke up his camp and marched to the relief of Montbazon. To dislodge him from the siege of Montboyau was all that Fulk wanted ; simulating flight, he retreated up the valley to Loches and thence retired gradually upon Amboise.* A month later Odo made an ineffectual attempt to regain Saumur. Some time afterwards he tried again, pitching his tents among the vineyards on the banks of the Thouet, hard by the rising walls of the new abbey of S. Florence ; the monks acted as mediators between their former lord and their new patron, and peace was made, Odo definitely re- linquishing Saumur, and Fulk agreeing to raze the Mont- boyau* — that is, to raze the keep on its summit ; for the white chalky slopes of the mighty earthwork itself rise gleaming above the river to this day. The struggle between Fulk and Odo was virtually over. Once again? in the follow- ing year, the count of Blois attempted to surprise Amboise, in company with the young King Henry, Robert's son and recently crowned colleague. The attack failed ;* it was Odo's last effort to stem the tide of Angevin progress. Fulk had done more than beat his rival in the battle-field ; ' 1 Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), pp. 276-278. "- Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 109. Gesta Amb. Domin. {ibid.), p. 165. 3 Chron. Rain. Andeg. a. 1026 (Marchegay, Egltses, p. 10). ■* Gesta Cons, and Gesta Amb. Domin. as above. ' Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises), p. 280. ° Chron. Vindoc. ii. 1027 [ib. p. 165). Cf. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1027 {ib. p. 22). i64 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. he had out-generalled him in every way, and won a triumph which made the final issue of their rivalry a foregone con- clusion. That issue he never sought to hasten, for with all his fiery vehemence Fulk knew how to wait ; unlike Odo, he could look beyond the immediate future, beyond the horizon of his own life, and having sown and watered his seed he could be content to leave others to gather its fruit, rather than risk the frustration of his labours by plucking at it before the time. Fulk was now at the height of his prosperity. He had been count of Anjou for forty years, and his reign had been one of unbroken success. Each in turn of the greater neigh- bours who had stood, a threatening ring, around Geoffrey Greygown's boy-heir had been successfully dealt with in some way or other, till the little Marchland had grown to be a power in the realm second only to Normandy and perhaps to Aquitaine ; and before Fulk's reign closed, even Aquitaine, the only one of Anjou's immediate neighbours which had not had to bow before him, fell prostrate at the feet of his son. Fulk's last years were to be years of peace. Only once again did he take part in the general affairs of the French kingdom ; and then, as ever, his action was in strict accord with the policy which he had begun and which his descend- ants followed consistently down to the time of Henry Fitz- I Empress : a policy of steady loyalty to the lawful authority of the French Crown, against which the counts of Blois lived in perpetual opposition. After Robert's death, in 103 1, Fulk appeared in the unexpected character of peace-maker between Queen Constance and her son, the young King Henry, whom she was trying to oust from his throne ;^ and he afterwards accompanied Henry on an expedition to dis- lodge Odo of Champagne from Sens, which however suc- ceeded no better than the attempt once made by Odo and Henry to dislodge Fulk himself from Amboise.^ But peace 1 R. Glaber, 1. iii. c. 9 {Rer. Gall. Scripa., vol. x. p. 40). Fulk's mediation was done in characteristic fashion ; he asked Constance " cur bestialem vesaniam erga filios exerceret." It took effect, however. 2 Chron. S. Petr. Senon. and Chronolog. S. Marian. Autissiod. a. 1032 {Rer. Gall. Scriftt., vol. xi. pp. 196, 308). in. ANJOU AND BLOIS 165 or war, it mattered not to the Black Count ; he was never at a loss for work. When there was no enemy to fight or to outwit, his versatile energies flung themselves just as readily into the encouragement of piety or the improvement and embellishment of his capital. Over the black bastions of the castle with which the French King Philip Augustus, when he had wrested Angers from a degenerate descendant of its ancient counts, found it needful to secure his hold on " this contemptuous city," there still looks out upon the river a fragment of a ruined hall, chiefly of red flintstone ; it is the sole remains of the dwelling-place of Fulk Nerra — in all likelihood, his own work.^ A poetic legend shows him to us for once quietly at home, standing in that hall and gazing at the view from its windows. At his feet flowed the purple Mayenne between its flat but green meadows — for the great suburb beyond the river did not yet exist — winding down beneath a bridge of his own building to join the Loire beyond the rising hills to the south-west. His eyes, keen as those of the " Falcon " whose name he bore, reached across river and meadow to the slope of a hill directly opposite him, where he descried a dove flying to and fro, picking up fragments of earth and depositing them in a cavity which it seemed to be trying to fill. Struck by the bird's action, he carefully marked the spot, and the work of the dove was made the foundation-stone of a great abbey in honour of S. Nicolas, which he had vowed to build as a thank-offering for deliverance from a storm at sea on his return from his second pilgrimage.^ This abbey, with a nunnery founded near it eight years later — in 11 28 — by his countess Hildegard, on the site of an ancient church dedicated to our Lady of Charity,^ became the nucleus round which gathered in after- ^ See note B to chapter ii. above. ^ Hist. S. Flor. Salin. (Marchegay, Eglises) p. 275. The church was consecrated December I,'i020; Chronn. S. Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 134.) The foundation-charter is in Le Pelletier's Breviculum S. Nicolai, p. 4. ^ The foundation -charter, dated July 14, 1128, is in Hiret, Antiquitez cHAnjou, pp. TOO, loi. The whole histoiy of the church is fully discussed by M. d'Espinay, in the Revue Historique de VAnjou, vol. xii. (1874), pp. 49-64, 143-155. A grotesque legend, which yet has a somewhat characteristic ring, was told of the origin of this nunnery. Fulk one day, watching =< potter at his work, was i66 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. years a suburb known as Ronceray, scarcely less important than the city itself. These tranquil home-occupations, how- ever, could not long satisfy the restless temper of Fulk. The irresistible charm exercised by the Holy Land over so many of the more imaginative spirits of the age drew him to revisit it in 1035. One interesting event of the journey is recorded : his meeting at Constantinople with Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror.^ The old and the young penitent completed their pilgrimage together ; but only the former lived to see his home again ; and when he reached it, he found the gates of Angers shut in his face by his own son. The rebellion was soon quelled. Saddled and bridled like a beast of burthen, Geoffrey came crawling to his father's feet. " Conquered art thou — conquered, con- quered ! " shouted the old count, kicking his prostrate son. " Aye, conquered by thee, for thou art my father ; but unconquered by all beside ! " The spirited answer touched Fulk's paternal pride, and Geoffrey arose forgiven.^ The power which he had thus undutifully tried to usurp was soon to be his by right ; not, however, till the Black Count had given one last proof that neither his hand nor his brain had yet forgotten its cunning. Odo of Champagne had long ago left Touraine to its fate, and for the last four years he had been absorbed in a visionary attempt to wrest from the Emperor Conrad II., first the kingdom of Burgundy, then that of Italy, and at last the imperial crown itself; while Fulk's conquests of the valleys of the Indre and the Cher had been completed by the acquisition of Montbazon and seized with a desire to try his hand. He succeeded in producing a well-shaped pan, which he carried home in triumph and gave to his wife, telling her that it was made by the man whom she loved best. Hildegard, mistaking the jest for a serious charge, vowed to disprove it at once by undergoing the ordeal of water, and flung herself out of the window and into the river, before her husband could stop her. The spot where she came to land was marked by the abbey of our Lady {.Revue hist, de PAnjou, as above, pp. 54, 55, and note l; Marchegay, Eglises, p. 279 note.) Its later name of "Ronceray" was derived from a bramble-bysh {ronce) which forced its way through the pavement of the choir, despite all attempts to uproot it. This however was in the six- teenth century. 1 Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comies), p. loi. See note C at end of chapter. " Will. Malm. Gesfa Reg., 1. iii. c. 235 (Hardy, pp. 401, 402). III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 167 St.-Aignan.^ When at the close of 1037 tidings came that Odo had been defeated and slain in a battle with the imperial forces at Bar, the Angevin at once laid siege to Langeais, and took it.^ One more stronghold still remained to be won in the valley of the Vienne. From the right bank of the little river, winding down silvery-blue between soft green meadows to join the Loire beyond the circle of the distant hills to the north-west, the mighty steep of Chinon rises abruptly, as an old writer says, " straight up to heaven"; range upon range of narrow streets climb like the steps of a terrace up its rocky sides ; acacias wave their bright foliage from every nook ; and on the crest of the ridge a long line of white ruins, the remains of a stately castle, stand out against the sky. A dense woodland of oaks and larches and firs, stretching north-eastward almost to the valley of the Indre, and crowded with game of every kind, formed probably no small part of the attractions which were to make Chinon the favourite retreat of Fulk Nerra's greatest descendant. In those ruined halls, where a rich growth of moss and creepers has replaced the tapestried hangings, earlier and later memories — memories of the Black Count or of the Maid of Orleans — seem to an English visitor only to flit like shadows around the death-bed of Henry Fitz-Empress. But it was Fulk who won Chinon for the Angevins. The persuasion of his tongue, as keen as his sword, sufficed now to gain its surrender.^ The Great Builder's work was all but finished ; only the keystone remained to be dropped into its place. Tours itself stood out alone against the conqueror of Touraine. One more blow, and the count of Anjou would be master of the whole valley of the Loire from Amboise to the sea. Strangely, yet characteristically, that final blow Fulk left to be struck by his successor. As his life drew to its close the ghostly terrors of his youth came back to him with redoubled force ; and the world which had marvelled at his exploits and his crimes marvelled no less at his last penance. , For the fourth time he went out to Jerusalem, and there ^ ' Gesta Cans. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 116. 2 Gesta Ami. Domin. [ibid.], p. 168. ^ H'id. i68 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. caused two servants, bound by an oath to do whatsoever he should bid them, to drag him round the Holy City in the sight of all the Turks, one holding him by a halter round his neck, the other scourging his naked back, while he cried aloud for Heaven's mercy on his soul as a perjured and miserable sinner.^ He made his way homeward as far as Metz.^ There, on June 21st, 1040, the Black Count's soul passed away;^ and his body was embalmed, carried home to Beaulieu, and buried in the chapter-house of the abbey which had been the monument of his earliest pilgrimage, the first-fruits of his youthful devotion and daring.* From Beaulieu, at least, he had deserved nothing but gratitude, and Beaulieu never forgot the debt. For seven centuries the anniversary of his death was solemnly ob- served in the abbey ; so was that of his widow, who as a bride had helped to the dedication of the church, and who now, following her husband's last steps, went out to die at Jerusalem.* For seven centuries, as the monks gathered in the church to keep their yearly festival in honour of his gift, the fragment of sacred stone, they read over in the office of the day the story of his pilgrimage, and chanted the praise of his pious theft.8 Next to that trophy, his tomb was their pride; it vanished in the general wreck of 1793 ; but re- search within the last few years has happily succeeded in ^ Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. u. 235 (Hardy, p. 402). ^ " Metensem urbem," Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comies) p. 117. From the last word one would imagine this could only mean Metz in Lorraine ; but there is another Metz in the Gatinais ; and although it is, and clearly always has been, an insignificant little town, quite undeserving the title of " urbs," it seems more likely than its greater namesake to be the place really meant. For Metz in Lorraine would be completely out of the way of a traveller from Palestine to Anjou, while Metz in the Gatinais was not merely close to Fulk's home, but was actually in the territory of his own son-in-law (of whom we shall hear again later). It would be as natural for him to stop there on his way as it would be unnatural for him to fetch a compass through the remote dominions of the duke of Lorraine ; and, on the other hand, the place is so insignificant that a careless and ignorant writer, such as John of Marmoutier, even though dwelling at no great distance, might easily forget its existence. ^ Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1040 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 24, 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 377. Gesta Cons, {ibid.), p. 117. ^ Fulk Rechin and Gesta Cons., as above. ° See extract from Martyrology of Ronceray in Marchegay, Eglises, p. 395, note 3- ' See the office in Salies, Foulques-Nen-a, pp. 499 et seq. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 169 bringing the Black Count's earthly resting-place to light once more.^ But it was not Beaulieu alone that kept his memory- green. His own little Angevin marchland, his fairer conquest Touraine, are sown thick with memorials of him. So strong was the impression made by his activity in one direction that after-generations have persisted in attributing to him almost every important architectural work in his dominions, and transferred the credit of several constructions even of Henry Fitz-Empress to the first " great builder " of Anjou, who was believed to have had command over more than mortal artificers. Popular imagination, with its unerring instinct, rightly seized upon the Black Count as the embodiment of Angevin glory and greatness. The credit of the astute politician, the valiant warrior, the consummate general, the strenuous ruler — all this is his due, and something more ; the credit of having, by the initiative force of genius, launched Anjou upon her career with an impetus such as no opposing power could thenceforth avail to check. One is tempted to wonder how far into the future of his house those keen eyes of the Black Falcon really saw ; whether he saw it or not, that future was in a great measure of his own making ; for his fifty-three years of work and warfare had been spent in settling the question on which that future depended — the question whether Anjou or Blois was to be the chief power of central Gaul. When his place was taken by Geoffrey Martel, there could no longer be any doubt of the answer. The new count of Anjou began his reign in circum- stances very unlike those of his father half a century before. Not only had Fulk wholly changed the political position of Anjou, but Geoffrey's own position as an individual was totally different. He was no untried boy, left to fight his own way with no weapons save the endowments which nature had given him ; he was a full-grown man, trained in the school of Fulk Nerra, and already experienced in politics and war. In his own day Geoffrey Martel was looked up to with as much respect as his father, and with even more dread. His career is an illustration of the saying that nothing succeeds like success. Till he came into collision 1 See Salies, Foulques-Nerra, pp. 456 et seq. 170 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. with the duke of Normandy, he carried all before him like chaff before the wind. He crushed Aquitaine ; he won Tours ; he won Le Mans. It was no wonder if he delighted to com- memorate in the surname of Martel,"the Hammer," the victor- ious blows which laid opponent after opponent at the feet of the blacksmith's foster-son.^ But Geoffrey was not the artificer of his own fortune. He owed his pre-eminence among the great vassals of the Crown to his extended possessions and his military reputation ; he owed his extended possessions more to his father's labours and to a series of favourable accidents than to his own qualities as a statesman ; and he owed his military reputation — as one writer who understood the Angevins thoroughly has very plainly hinted — more to luck than to real generalship.^ Geoffrey stands at a disad- vantage thus far, that in contemplating him one cannot avoid two very trying comparisons. It was as unlucky for his after-fame as it was lucky for his material prosperity that he was the son of Fulk the Black ; it was unlucky for him in every way that he was the rival of William the Conqueror. Neither as a statesman, a ruler, a strategist, or a man was Geoffrey equal to his father. As a statesman he showed no very lofty capacity ; his designs on Aquitaine, sweeping but pointless, came to nothing in the end : and with regard to Touraine and Maine, politically, he had little to do but to reap the fruit of Fulk's labours and use the advantages which the favour of the king in one case, the rashness of the bishop in the other, and the weakness of the rival count in both, threw absolutely into his hands. As a ruler he seems to have been looked up to with simple dread ; there is little trace of the intense personal following which others of his race knew so well how to inspire f the first time he was in- trusted with the government of Anjou his harshness and oppression roused the indignation alike of his subjects and of 1 Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes) p. 379 ; cf. Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Mar- chegay, Eglises), p. 260, and Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. ^. 231 (Hardy, P- 395)- - " Gaufredus cognomento Martellus, quod ipse sibi usurpaverat, quia videbatur %-AA felicitate quddam omnes obsistentes contundere." Will. Malm, as above. ^ Even the devotion of Lisoy of Amboise seems to have been given to Geoffrey chiefly because he was his father's son. Fulk was its real object. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 171 his father ; his neighbours looked on him to the last as a tyrant/ and his own people seem to have feared far more than they loved him. As a strategist there is really no proof that he possessed any such overwhelming superiority as he himself boasted, and as others were led to believe. His two great victories, at Montcontour and Montlouis, dazzled the world because the one was gained over a prince who by the tradition of ages counted as the first potentate in the realm after the duke of Normandy, and the other led to the acquisition of Tours ; but the capture of William of Aquitaine was really nothing more than the fortune of war ; while in the case of the victory over Theobald of Blois at Montlouis, a considerable part of the credit is due to Geoffrey's lieutenant Lisoy of Amboise ; and moreover, to have beaten the successor of Odo II. is after all no very wonderful achievement for the successor of Fulk the Black. Twice in his life Geoffrey met his master. The first time he owned it himself as he lay at his father's feet. The second time he evaded the risk of open defeat by a tacit withdrawal far more shameful in a moral point of view. It is small blame to Geoffrey Martel that he was no match for William the Conqueror. Had he, in honest con- sciousness of his inferiority, done his best to avoid a collision, and when it became inevitable stood to face the conse- quences like a man, it would have been small shame to him to be defeated by the future victor of Senlac. The real shame is that after courting an encounter and loudly boasting of his desire to break a lance with William, when the oppor- tunity was given him he silently declined to use it. It was but a mean pride and a poor courage that looked upon defeat in fair fight as an unbearable humiliation, and could not feel the deeper moral humiliation of shrinking from the mere chance of that defeat. And it is just this bluntness of feeling, this callousness to everything not visible and tangible to outward sense, which sets Geoffrey as a man far below his father. There is in Fulk a living warmth, a quickness of susceptibility, which breaks out in all sorts of shapes, good and bad, in all the stories of the Black Count, but which 1 See the Norman writers, Orderic and William of Poitiers. 172 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. seems wholly lacking in Geoffrey. Fulk " sinned bravely," ardently, impulsively ; Geoffrey sinned meanly, coldly, heartlessly. His was altogether a coarser, lower nature. Fulk was truly the falcon that wheels its swift and lofty flight ever closer and closer above the doomed quarry till it strikes it down irresistibly with one unerring swoop. Geoffrey rightly thought himself better represented by the crashing blows of the insensible sledge-hammer. Geoffrey had been an independent ruler in a small sphere for nearly ten years before his father's death. In 1030 or 1 03 I he became master of the little county of Vendome by purchase from his half-sister Adela, the only child of Fulk's ill-starred first marriage, and the heiress of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. After doing homage to King Henry for the fief, Geoffrey's first act was to found in the capital of his new dominions an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity.-' The appointment of an abbot proved the occasion for the first recorded outbreak of that latent discord between Fulk and his heir which, as we have seen, cul- minated at last in open war. A monk named Reginald had just been sent at Fulk's request from the great abbey of Marmoutier near Tours, to take the place of Baldwin, abbot of S. Nicolas at Angers, who had fled to bury himself in a hermitage. Before the day came for Reginald's ordination, however, he deserted to a younger patron, and accepted the abbotship of Geoffrey's newly-founded abbey at Vendome. Fulk, thus disappointed by two abbots in succession, " flew," as he himself said, " into a mighty rage," summarily ordered the whole colony of monks whom he had brought from Marmoutier to S. Nicolas back to their parent monastery, and replaced them with some of the brethren of S. Aubin's at Angers, with Hilduin, prior of that convent, as their head.^ Fulk's wrath seems to have been directed against the monks rather than against his son ; but the incident serves as an illustration of the tendency to opposition that 1 Origo Com. Vindoc, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 31. See also Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. pp. 378, 379. 2 The whole story is told only by Fulk himself, in a charter to the abbey of S. Nicolas ; Brevicuhmi S. Nicolai (Le Pelletier), quoted in Mabillon, Ann. Bened.., vol. iv. p. 379. m. ANJOU AND BLOIS 173 was springing up in Geoffrey's mind. The quiet, waiting policy of Fulk's latter years was evidently irksome to the young man's impatient spirit, and he chose to strike out a path for himself in a direction which, it is not surprising to learn, did not please the old count. The only one of his neighbours with whom Fulk seems to have been always on peaceable terms was the count of Poitou. William Fierabras, the count from whom Geoffrey Greygown had wrested Loudun, died about two years after the second battle of Conquereux.^ His wife was a daughter of Theobald the Trickster,^ and his son and successor was therefore first cousin to Odo II. of Blois ; but William IV. — whom Aquitaine reckoned as her " William the Great " — seems to ■ have had little in common with his erratic kinsman, and to have always, on the other hand, maintained a friendly under- standing with Anjou. Like Odo, he once received an offer of the crown of Italy ; Fulk appears in the negotiations as the friendly advocate of the duke's interests with King Robert,^ and though the project came to nothing, it may have been in return for Fulk's good ofifices on this occasion that WilUam bestowed on him the investiture of Saintes, a gift which was to form the pretext for more than one war between their descendants. On January 31st, 1029, William died,* leaving as his successor a son who bore the same name, and whose mother seems to have been a sister of Queen Constance.^ It was this new duke of Aquitaine, known as William the Fat, whom Geoffrey Martel selected as the first victim of his heavy hand. An Angevin story attributes the origin of the war to a dispute about Saintes or Saintonge,® but it will not bear examination. Geoffrey Martel simply trod in the steps of Geoffrey Greygown, and ' See editor's note to Peter of Maillezais, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. a. p. 183, note g. ^ Chron. S. Maxent. a. 972 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 380). ' Adem. Chabanais, Rcr. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 161. Letters of William of Poitou, ib. pp. 483, 484 ; of Fulk to Robert, ib. pp. 500, 501. '' Chron. S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 390). * She was Adelmodia, widow of Boso, count of La Marche, and daughter of William count of Aries and " Candida," otherwise Adelaide the White ; see Pet. Maillezais, 1. i. c. 6 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. a. p. 182), and note B at end of chapter. ^ See note C at end of chapter iv. below. 174 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. with more marked success. In the autumn of 1033 he started on an expedition against the duke of Aquitaine ; William encountered him on September 20th in a pitched battle near the abbey of S. Jouin-de-Marne, not far from Alontcontour in Poitou ; the Poitevins were defeated, partly, it seems, through treason in their own ranks, and their duke was taken prisoner.^ For three years the duke of Aquitaine, the second great feudatary of the realm, was kept in a dungeon by the count of Venddme f not till the whole district of Saintonge' and several important towns were ceded to Geoffrey, and an annual tribute promised, would he release his captive. From the execution of the last humiliating condition William was delivered by death ; the cruel treatment he had suffered in prison had done its work ; Geoffrey had exacted the ransom for his prisoner just in time, and sent him home only to die three days after his liberation.* Then Geoffrey threw off the mask. William had no children ; his next heir was his half-brother Odo, the son of his father's second marriage with Brisca, heiress of Gascony.* But after Brisca's death, William the Great had married a third wife, whom he had left a still young widow with three little children. Before William the Fat had been many months dead, his stepmother the widowed Countess Agnes gave her hand to Geoffrey of Vendome.® Geoffrey's motive ' Chronn. S. Maxent. a. 1032, S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. a. 1033 (Marche- gay, Eglises, pp. 391, 392, 23, 188); S. Serg. a. 1028 {ib. p. 135). Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 378. Cf. Gesta Cons, (ibid.), pp. 128-130, and note C to chapter iv. below. ^ Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1036 (as above, p. 392). 2 " Sanctonas cum toto pago." Chron. Tur. Magn., Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 122. (The date, " anno Henrici Imperatoris iv et Henrici regis xiii," is of course absurd, like most of the dates in the Tours chronicle at this period, except those which relate to local matters). Cf. Gesta Cons. (Maschegay, Comtes), p. 126, and note C to chapter iv. below. ■» Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Cf. Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. ^ Chron. S. Maxent. a. loio (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 387, 388). ^ Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1037 (as above, pp. 392. 393); Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 {ib. pp. 23, 135). On the date see note D at end of chapter. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 175 is plain ; he sought to prevent the union of Poitou and Gascony and to get the former practically into his own hands as stepfather and guardian to the young sons of Agnes. But in Anjou the wedding gave great scandal ; Geoffrey and Agnes were denounced in the harshest terms as too near akin to marry. ^ They seem in fact to have been, by the reckoning of the canon law, cousins in the third degree, as being, one a grandson, the other a great-grand- daughter of Adela of Chalon, the second wife of Geoffrey Greygown.^ At any rate they were looked upon as sinners, and by no one more than the bridegroom's father. The whole scheme of Geoffrey's meddlings in Aquitaine was repugnant to Fulk Nerra's policy ; he looked to his son to complete his own labours in Touraine and Maine, and it was no good omen for the fulfilment of his hopes when Geoffrey thus turned his back upon his appointed work for the love of Countess Agnes or of her late husband's possessions. The capture of William the Fat had been the signal for the first outbreak of a " more than civil war " between father and son ;' Geoffrey's misconduct during his regency in Anjou brought matters to the crisis which ended in his first and last public defeat. Nevertheless he obstinately pursued his projects. The Poitevins, by the death of their count, were left, as their own chronicler says, " as sheep having no shepherd"; there was a party among them ready to sup- port the claims of Agnes's sons against their elder half- brother Odo of Gascony ; and one of the leaders of this party, William of Parthenay, built with Angevin help a fortress at Germont in which he held out successfully against the besieging forces of Oda The count of Gascony then proceeded to Mause, another stronghold of his enemies, and in assaulting this place he was slain.* He left no children ; 1 Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1032 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 23, 135). ' See note D at end of chapter. ' Chronn. S. Albin. a. 1032, 1033 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 23) ; S. Serg. a. 1028 (jA p. 135); Rain. Andeg. a. 1036, 1037 [ih. p. 11). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1033, says : " Gaufridus . . . Willelmum comitem Pictavorum sumpsit in bello ; quare orta est discordia inter patrem et filium." Labbe in his Bibl. MSS. Librorum printed this " patrem et matrem," and thereby originated a per- fectly groundless story of a quarrel between Fulk and Hildegard. ■■ Chron. S. Maxent. u. 1037 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 392, 393). 176 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the elder of Geoffrey Martel's stepsons was now therefore heir to Poitou. The boys were twins ; the third child of Agnes was a girl, who bore her mother's name, and for whom her mother and stepfather contrived in IO43 to arrange a marriage with no less important a personage than the Emperor Henry 1 11.,^ whose first wife had been a daughter of Cnut, It was not till the year after this imperial wedding that the troubled affairs of Aquitaine were definitely settled. In 1044 Countess Agnes came to Poitiers accompanied by her two sons, Peter and Geoffrey, and her husband, their stepfather, Geoffrey Martel ; there they held with the chief nobles of Poitou a cduncil at which Peter, or William as he was thenceforth called, was solemnly ordained as duke of Aquitaine, and his brother sent into Gascony to become its count.^ Agnes at least must now have attained her object ; whether Geoffrey Martel was equally satisfied with the result of his schemes may be a question, for we do not clearly know how wide the range of those schemes really was. If, as seems likely, they included the hope of acquir- ing a lasting hold over Aquitaine, then their issue was a failure. By the victory of Montcontour Geoffrey had gained for himself at one blow a great military reputation ; but for Anjou the only solid gain was the acquisition of Saintonge, and this, like some of the outlying possessions of the house of Blois, soon proved more trouble than profit. If Martel expected that his stepsons would hold themselves indebted to him for their coronets and remain his grateful and dutiful 1 Hermann. Contract., a. 1043 (R^^- Gall. Scriftt., vol. xi. p. 19). Chronn. S. Albin. and S. . Serg. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 24, 135, 136). The Chron. S. Maxent. {ib. p. 398) dates the marriage vaguely "per hsec tempera" under 1049. - Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1044 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 394, 395). It seems quite plain that the elder boy's baptismal name was Peter, but he signs his charters "William" (see Besly, Comies de Poitou, preuves, pp. 314, 317). The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (as above, p. 400) calls him " Willelmus qui et Petrus, cogno- mento Acer." In recording the birth of the two boys (a. 1023, ib. p. 388) the same writer calls them " Petrum cognomine Acerrimum, et Gaufredum qui et Wido vocatus est"; and he afterwards speaks of the latter by both names in- differently. It seems however to have been an established rule that the reigning duke of Aquitaine must be officially called WilUam ; for Guy-Geoffrey also assumed the name when he succeeded his brother in 1058. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 177 adherents, he was doomed to find that he had made a grave miscalculation. The marriage of a duchess-dowager of Aquitaine with Geoffrey Martel naturally suggests thoughts of the marriage of a duchess-regnant with a later count of Anjou ; but the resemblance between the two cases is of the most superficial kind ; the earlier connexion between Anjou and Aquitaine did little or nothing to pave the way for their later union. Geoffrey himself, indeed, had already discovered that although the count of Venddme might go seeking adventures in the south, the duties and the interests of the count of Anjou still lay to the north, or at the utmost no farther away than the banks of the great frontier- river. The visions of empire to which Odo of Champagne had sacrificed the latter years of his life had perished with him on the field of Bar. Not a foot of land outside the limits of the kingdom of France had he left to his heirs. He had two sons, Theobald and Stephen, whose very names seemed to mark out their destined shares in his dominions. Stephen, the younger, became count of Champagne ; to Theobald, the elder, fell the original territories of his house — Blois, Chartres and Tours.-' Theobald's heritage however was shorn of its fairest portion. The county of Tours now com- prised little more than the capital ; all Touraine south of the Loire — by far the most fertile and valuable half — was in the power of the Angevin ; Tours itself, once a secure central post, had become a closely threatened border-city. Theo- bald's first duty was to protect it, but it seems to have been the last thing he thought of Odo's sons had inherited all his wrongheadedness without his quickness of thought and action. Shut in as they were on all sides by powerful foes, the two young men began their career by rebelling after the manner of their forefathers ;2 and the king's youngest brother Odo was lured, by a promise of dethroning Henry in his favour, into joining in their rebellion. Odo, a youth 1 Hugh of Fleury, Rer. Gall. ScHpit., vol. xi. p. 159. Chron. Fr. Andres, ib. p. 364. 2 Hugh of Fleury and Chron. Fr. Andres, as above, ffist. Franc. Fragm. (ibid.), p. 160. VOL. I. N 178 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of weak intellect, was in himself no very formidable person, but he might for the very same reason become a dangerous tool in the hands of his fellow-conspirators ; and a rebellious coalition of Blois and Champagne threatened to be a serious difficulty for the king at a moment when there was scarcely one of the great feudataries on whom he could reckon for support. The death of Duke Robert of Normandy had plunged his duchy into confusion and deprived Henry of all chance of help in the quarter which had hitherto been his chief source of strength. The county of Burgundy was governed by the king's brother Robert, who had with diffi- culty been induced to accept it as compensation for the failure of his hopes of the crown. Flanders and Britanny were always indifferent to the troubles and necessities of the king ; the count of Vermandois was a kinsman and ally of Champagne ; Aquitaine was as powerless as Normandy. The one vassal to whom Henry could look for aid was the count of Anjou. Had the rebels possessed sense and spirit they might have given Henry quite as much trouble as their father had given Robert ; but they seem to have had no well-concerted plan ; each acted independently, and each was crushed singly. Young Odo, their puppet pretender, was easily caught and imprisoned at Orleans ; Stephen of Champagne was defeated in a pitched battle by the king himself;! Theobald of Blois was left to be dealt with by other hands. With a master-stroke of policy, Henry proclaimed the city of Tours forfeit by Theobald's rebellion, and granted its investiture to the count of Anjou.^ To understand the full importance of this grant and of the war which followed it, we must know something of the history of Tours and of the peculiar feelings and interests attached to it. The origin of Tours as a city dates from the time of the Roman empire, when it appears under the 1 Hist. Franc. Fragm. [Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi.), p. i6o. Hugh of Fleury (ibid.), -p. 159. 2 Chron. Virdun. a. 1039 (Rey. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 144). R. Glaber, 1. V. c. 2 (ib. vol. X. p. 60), copied in Gesia Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 122, 123. Fulk Rechin (ibid.), p. 378. III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 179 name of Csesarodunum.^ The Roman castricm was built in a broad, shallow sort of basin, watered on the north by the Loire, on the south by the Cher ; it probably occupied the site of some village of those Turones or Turoni, who play a part in the Gallic wars of Csesar,^ and whose name in the end superseded that which the place received from its con- queror. The " city of the Turones " became the central point of a network of roads connecting it with Poitiers, Chartres, Bourges, Orleans, Le Mans and Angers;^ and owing to the convenience of its situation for military and administrative purposes it was made the capital of the Third Lyonnese province.* But its hold on the minds of men was due to another gift of Rome, more precious than roads or fortifications or even political traditions. It was the holy city of Gaul, the cradle of Gaulish Christianity. Its first bishop, Gatian, was one of seven missionaries sent out from Rome to evangelize the Gallic provinces in the days of the Decian persecution.^ S. Gatian's episcopate of half a cent- ury fell in one of the most distracted periods of the Em- pire ; after his death the Church which he had planted remained untended for nearly forty years, and it was not till after the death of Constantine that Tours received her second bishop in the person of Lidorius, one of her own sons, who laid the foundations of a cathedral church.® But the fame of the two first bishops of Tours was completely overshadowed by that of the third. The work of S. Gatian and S. Lidorius was confined to their own immediate flock ; S. Martin was the apostle not only of Touraine but of all central Gaul. Born at Sabaria'' in the Upper Pannonia, in the reign of the first Christian Emperor, but of heathen parents, Martin rose to high military distinction under the Csesar Julian, accompanied him into Gaul, and enjoyed his ^ Ptolem., 1. ii. c. 8. ^ Caesar, De Bella Gallico, I. ii. c. 35 ; 1. vii. c. 75 ; I. viii. c. 46. ' Article by M. E. Mabille on "Topographic de la Touraine," in Bibl. de tEcole des Chartes, series v. vol. iv. pp. 413, 414. ^ Nolitia Provinciarum Gallia, Rer. Gall. Script., vol. i. p. 122. ° Greg, of Tours, Hist. Franc, 1. i. c. 28. ' Chron. Archiep. Turon., Salmon, Chron. de Touraitie, p. 201. ' Now Stein-am -Angern. i8o ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Utmost esteem and regard till he forfeited them by renounc- ing the standard of the eagles for that of the Cross. Neither the wrath of his commander nor the entreaties of his fellow- soldiers, by whom he was greatly beloved, availed to shake his resolution ; he fled to Poitiers, and there found a friend and counsellor in the holy bishop Hilary, from whom he received the minor orders. After braving toil and peril by land and sea in a journey to his native country for the con- version of his family, he returned to a life of seclusion in Gaul, and acquired such a reputation for holiness that on the death of Lidorius in 371 the people of Tours, in spite of his. strenuous resistance, actually forced him to become their bishop.^ From that moment Tours became a mission-centre whence the light of the faith spread with marvellous rapidity over all the surrounding country. Anjou and all the neigh- bouring lands owed their conversion to S. Martin and the missionaries sent out by him ; everywhere paganism gave way before his eloquent preaching, his dauntless courage, his almost apostolic endowments — above all, perhaps, his good example. He was looked upon as the Thaumaturgus of Gaul, and countless legends were told of his wonder-working powers ; more famous than all of them is a story of the saint in his soldier-days, when. Christian already in feeling though not yet in profession, he stopped his horse one cold winter's night, drew his sword and cut his military cloak in halves to share it with one whose necessity was greater than his own. That night he dreamed that the Lord whom, not knowing, he yet instinctively served, appeared to him wearing the half cloak which he had thus given away ; and it was this vision which determined him to receive baptism.^ Amid all his busy, active life he never lost the love of solitary contempla- tion so characteristic of the early Christian missionaries. His episcopal city lay on the south side of the Loire, but had on the north or right bank a large suburb afterwards known by the name of S. Symphorian ; beyond this, farther to the eastward, the bishop found for himself a "green 1 Sulpitius Severus, Vita B. Martini, cc. 2-9. Greg. Toms., Hist. Franc.,\. i. cc. 34, 36, 43. - Sulp. Severus, Vita B. Martini, c. 3. in. ANJOU AND BLOIS i8i retreat," which has scarcely yet lost its air of peaceful lone- liness, and which, before the suburb had spread to its present extent, must have been an ideal spot for monastic retire- ment. A little wooden cell with its back against the white limestone rock which shelters the northern side of the basin of Tours — an expanse of green solitude in front, stretching down to the broad calm river — such was the nest which S. Martin built him in the wilderness ; gathering round him a little band of men likeminded with himself, he snatched every spare moment from his episcopal cares to flee away thither and be at rest ;^ and the rock-hewn cells of the brotherhood became the nucleus of a famous abbey, the " Great Monastery," as it was emphatically called — Majus Monasterium, Marmoutier. Another minster, of almost greater fame, grew up over the saint's burial place outside the western wall of the city, on low-lying ground which, before it was reclaimed by the energetic dyke-makers of the ninth and tenth centuries, must have been not unfrequently under water. It is within the episcopal city of S. Martin, in the writings of Bishop Gregory of Tours, that West- Frankish history begins. An English student feels a nearer interest in the abbey without the walls, remembering that the abbot under whom it reached its highest glory and became the very fount and source of all contemporary learn- ing, human and divine, was Alcuin of York. When the great English scholar and the great Emperor who had brought him into Gaul were gone. Tours underwent her full share of suffering in the invasions of the nprthmen. City and abbey became to the valley of the Loire something like what Paris and S. Denis were to that of the Seine, the chief bulwark against the fresh tide of heathen force which threatened to sweep away the footsteps of saints and scholars. Once, indeed. Tours had been in danger from heathens of another sort, and a body of Saracens had been turned back from her gates and destroyed by Charles Martel.^ There was no Martel to save her from the northmen ; her only ■■ Sulp. Severus, Vita B. Martini, c. lo. ^ Fredegar. Contin., 1. ii. u. lo8 {Rer. Gall. Sa-iptt., vol. ii. p. 454) 5 Chron. Fontanell. a. 732 (ib. p. 660), etc. 1 82 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. defence consisted in the valour of her citizens, and the fortifi- cations left to her by her Roman governors and carefully strengthened by her Karolingian sovereigns.^ Over and over again the pirates were driven back from the walls of Caesarodunum ; over and over again S. Martin's Abbey was burnt to the ground. For years the canons, who in Alcuin's days had taken the place of the original monks,^ lived in constant fear of desecration befalling their patron's body, and carried it from place to place, like the body of our own S. Cuthbert, sometimes depositing it within the city walls, sometimes removing it farther inland — once even to the far- off Burgundian duchy — bringing it home whenever they dared, or whenever they had a church fit to contain it. Two of these "reversions" — one on December 13, 885, the other on May 12, 919 — were annually celebrated at Tours, in addition to two other feasts of S. Martin, his ordination on July 4 and his "deposition" on November 11.^ In the first reversion Ingelger, the founder of the Angevin house, was said to have borne a prominent part. The story of the second was afterwards superseded by a famous legend known as that of the " subvention of S. Martin." Once, it was said, when the citizens of Tours were sore pressed by the besieging hosts of the northmen, they resolved to intrust their cause to a heavenly champion, and brought out upon the walls the corpse of the saint, which had been deposited for safety within the city. The living heathen fled at once before the dead saint ; they were pursued by the triumphant citizens, still carrying their patron in their midst, and utterly routed at a spot which thence received the name of " S. Martin of the Battle." * This story seems to belong to the ' See Ann. Bertin., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 107. ^ Chron. Petr. Fil. Bechin., in Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 40. Chron. Tur. Magn. a. 991 (ib. p. 93). See Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 154. 3 For the whole history of the vi'anderings and the festivals of S. Martin, and of the sieges of Tours by the northmen, see an article by M. Mabille, " Les Inva- sions normandes dans la Loire et les peregrinations du corps de S. Martin," in Bihl. de TEcole des Charles, series vi. vol. v. pp. 149-194. * Tract, de Revers. B. Mariini, in Salmon, Supf lenient aux Chron. de Touraine, pp. 14-34 ; copied in Gesta Cons, (see note A to chapter ii. above). On the date, see Mabille, "Inv. Norm." {Bibl. de I'Ecole des Charles, series vi. vol. v. p. 190). This device of the citizens of Tours was several times imitated elsewhere; ANJOU AND BLOIS 183 siege of 903, when Marmoutier was destroyed, and the abbey of S. Martin burnt to the ground for the third time. When the canons again rebuilt it, they took the precaution of encircHng it with a wall, and procured from Charles the Simple a charter which resulted in the creation of a new fortified borough, exempt from the jurisdiction of both bishop and count, and subject only to its own abbot — in other words, to the duke of the French, who from the middle of the eighth century always held in commendam the abbey of S. Martin at Tours, as he did that of S. Denis at Paris.^ Thus, side by side with the old city of the Turones, Caesarodunum with its Roman walls, its count, its cathedral and its archbishop, there arose the " Castrum Novum," ChMeauneuf, " Castellum S. Martini," Martinopolis as it is sometimes called, with its own walled enclosure, its collegiate church and its abbot -duke. The counts of Anjou, who followed so steadily in the train of the ducal house, were not blind to the means of gaining a footing in such tempting neighbourhood to the walls of Tours ; from an early period they took care to connect themselves with the abbey of which their patron was the head. The first count of Anjou and his father play an important part in the legendary history of the two great " reversions " ; Fulk the Good is almost more familiar to us as canon than as count, and the stall next to that of the dean of S. Martin's, which he so loved to occupy, whence he wrote his famous letter, and where he saw his vision of the saint, seems to have become hereditary among his descendants like the abbotship among those of Hugh the Great. Good Canon Fulk prized it as a e.g. by the monks of Saumur with the body of S. Docelinus, when Fulk Nena besieged the place in 1025 {.Hist. S. Flor. Salm., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 277) ; and by the monks of S. Peter at Sens, against the same opponent, in 1032 (Chron. S. Petr. Senon. ad ann., Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 196). The former failed, the latter succeeded. 1 Charter of Charles the Simple, a. 918, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. ix. p. 540. For the history of the " Castellum S. Martini," and the topography of Tours and Chiteauneuf, see " Topographie de la Touraine," by M. E. Mabille, in Bibl. de VEcole des Charles, series v. vol. v. pp. 321-366; and for the topography and history of the whole district from the earliest times see previous articles under the same title, series v. vol. iii. pp. 309-332, vol. iv. pp. 388-428, and vol. v. pp. 233-258- 1 84 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. spiritual privilege; his successors probably looked upon it rather in the light of a political wedge whereby they might some day force an entrance into the greedily-coveted city itself. Tours was the point towards which Fulk the Black had worked steadily all his life long ; and when he left his son to complete his labours, that point was almost reached. But, with her broad river and her Roman walls, Tours was still hard to win. To block the river was impossible ; to break down the walls would need nothing less than a regular siege, and one which could not fail to be long, tedious and costly. Geoffrey seems to have delayed the task until by the king's grant of the investiture it became a point of honour as well as a matter of the most pressing interest to make good the claim thus placed in his hands. He woke at once from his Aquitanian dreams, gathered his forces, and led them out, probably not by the old Roman road from Juliomagus to Caesarodunum past the white steeps of his father's Montboyau, but by a safer though longer route, passing along the southern bank of the Loire and across the valleys of the Vienne and the Indre, to lay siege to Tours. With the royal sanction to his enterprise he had the great advantage of being able to use Ch^teauneuf as a basis of operations. The monastery of S. Julian, at the north-east corner of the town, close against the city wall, was especially convenient for attacking the latter ; Geoffrey took possession of it and used it accordingly.^ The city, however, held out against him for a whole year, during which its in- habitants seem to have been left by their count to defend themselves as best they could. At last, in August 1044, Theobald collected an army for its relief, in union with the forces of Champagne under his brother Stephen.^ Geoffrey, in expectation of this, had detached from his main force a body of two hundred knights and fifteen hundred foot, whom he posted at Amboise under Lisoy, to guard the road against Theobald.^ The services of Lisoy were a special legacy from Fulk the Black to his son. Of all Fulk's adherents, none ^ See Gall. Christ., vol. xiv. col. 243. 2 R. Glaber, 1. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 60). ' Cesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 118. HI. ANJOU AND BLOIS 185 had served him so intelligently and so devotedly as this Cenomannian knight whom he had chosen to be the colleague of the aged Sulpice in the defence of Amboise and Loches. Fulk, when he felt his end approaching, had striven hard to impress on his son the value of such a true and tried friend, and at the same time to bind Lisoy yet more closely to him by arranging his marriage with Hersendis, the niece and heiress of Sulpice, whereby Lisoy came into possession of all Sulpice's estates at Loches and Amboise, including the famous tower of stone.'' Lisoy proved as true to the new count as to the old one. Theobald, not daring to come within reach of Amboise, avoided the direct route from Blois to Tours along the Loire,^ and took the road by Pontlevoy to Mont- richard. The chief force of Montrichard, with its commander Roger, was no doubt with Geoffrey before Tours, so the count of Blois pursued his way unmolested, plundering as he went, down the valley of the Cher, till he pitched his tents in the meadows of St.-Quentin opposite Bldr^, and there stayed a day and a night to rest.^ All his movements were known to the watchful lord of Amboise ; and as soon as Lisoy had fully ascertained the numbers and plans of the enemy, he hurried off to seek his count in the army before Tours, and offer him some sound military advice. He re- presented that it would be far better to raise the siege, join the whole Angevin force with that which was already at Amboise, and stake everything on a pitched battle. The enemy might beat either Geoffrey or his lieutenant singly, but united they would be irresistible ; and whereas the siege must be long and tedious, and its result uncertain, one victory in the field would lay all Touraine at the victor's feet. Only let the count be quick and not suffer his foe to catch him at unawares.* Geoffrey, as he listened to this bold counsel, must have been reminded of his father's warning, that a true friend like Lisoy was a surer source of strength than either hosts or treasures.* He took the advice, and while Lisoy returned 1 Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Cotntes), pp. 168, 169. 2 lb. p. 170. ' Gesta Cons, {ibid.), p. 119. * lb. pp. 118, 119. " Gesta Amb. Domin. {ibid.), p. 168. 1 86 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. to Amboise to bring up his little force to the trysting-place agreed upon between them, his count, after diligent prayers and vows to S. Martin, took the consecrated banner of the abbey from its place above the shrine, affixed it to his own spear, and rode forth with it at the head of all his troops to do battle with Theobald.^ On the same day when Theobald encamped opposite Bl^re Geoffrey reached Montlouis, a hill on the south bank of the Loire, about half way between Tours and Amboise. Next morning the men of Blois resumed their march ; turning in a north-westerly direction they were met at a place called Noit by the Angevins coming down from Montlouis. The Hammer of Anjou, ever foremost in fight, headed the attack on the enemy's centre ; his faithful Lisoy came up, as he had promised, at the head of his contingent, and threw himself on their right wing.^ What followed scarcely deserved the name of a battle. The army of the brother-counts seemed spell-bound, and made no resistance at all ; Stephen took to flight at once and escaped with a few knights ;^ the rest of the troops of Blois and Champagne were utterly defeated and taken prisoners almost in a body. The men of Amboise were hottest in pursuit of the fugitives, and they won the great prize of the day. They drove Theobald with some five or six hundred knights into a wood called Braye, whence it was impossible for horsemen to extricate themselves ; and thus Lisoy had the honour of bringing the count of Blois a captive to the feet of Geoffrey Martel.* No one at the time doubted that the Angevins owed their easy victory to the saint whose standard they were following. The few soldiers of Theobald who escaped declared that they had seen Geoffrey's troops all clad in shining white raiment, and fled in horror, believing themselves to be fighting against the hosts of Heaven.^ The village near which the fight took place was called ' R. Glaber, 1. v. u. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. a. p. 6o); copied in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Co?iiies), p. 122. ^ Gesta Cons, (as above), p. 120. ^ R. Glaber, 1. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 61) ; copied in Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 122. ^ Gesta Cons, (as above), p. 121 ; Gesta Anib. Domin. {ibid.), p. 170. ^ R. Glaber, as above ; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comles), p. 123. III. ANJOU AND BLOTS 187 "burgum S. Martini Belli "^ — S. Martin of the Battle, a name derived from the "subvention of S. Martin," supposed to have occurred at the same place two hundred years before. Most curiously, neither the well-known legend of the saint's triumph over the northmen nor the fame of Geoffrey's triumph over the count of Blois availed to fix in popular memory the true meaning of the name. While the English " Place of Battle " at Senlac has long forgotten its dedication to S. Martin, its namesake in Touraine has forgotten both its battles and become " St.-Martin-le-Beau." With very little bloodshed, the Angevins had gained over a thousand prisoners.^ The most valuable of them all was put in ward at Loches ;^ but he took care not to stay there long. Theobald took warning by the fate of William of Aquitaine ;* he had no mind to run the risk of dying in prison, and held his person far dearer than his property.* Three da3'S after his capture, finding that no amount of silver or gold would avail to purchase his release, he yielded the only ransom which Geoffrey would accept : the city of Tours and the whole county of Touraine.^ A nominal overlordship over the ceded territory was reserved to Theo- bald, and Geoffrey had to go through the formality of doing homage for it to him.^ When the substance was securely his own, the count of Anjou could well afford to leave to his vanquished rival the shadowy consolation of an empty ceremony. Moreover, the circumstances of the whole trans- action and the account of King Henry's grant to Geoffrey clearly imply that Theobald's rights over the most important ' Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 120. 2 Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 378 ; R. Glaber, 1. v. c. 2 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. X. p. 61 ). For the date of the battle — August 21, 1044 — see Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc, S. Flor. Salm., and S. Maxent. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 11, 24, 136, 166, 188, 395). The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 121, and Gesta Amb. Domin. {ibid.), p. 170, make it 1042, but they cannot possibly be right. ^ Gesta Amb. Domin. as above. » Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. ° Gesta Cons., as above. See the comment of Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. u. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). ^ Will. Jumi^ges, 1. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276) ; Gesta Cons, (as above), pp. 121, 122 ; the details of the treaty are in pp. 123, 124. ' Gesta Amb. Domin. as above. 1 88 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. point of all, the capital itself, were considered as entirely forfeited by his rebellion, so that with regard to the city of Tours Geoffrey stepped into the exact place of its former counts, holding it directly of the king alone. The acquisition of Tours closes the second stage in the career of the house of Anjou. Looked at from a strictly Angevin point of view, the period just passed through, although in one sense only preliminary, is the most important of all, for it is that on which depended all the later growth, nay, almost the very existence of Anjou. Had the counts of Blois proved too strong for her in these her early years, she would have been swallowed up altogether ; had they merely proved themselves her equals, the two states so closely bound together would have neutralized each other so that neither of them could have risen to any commanding eminence ; till one or the other should sweep its rival out of its path, both must be impeded in their developement. At the opening of the struggle, in Fulk Nerra's youth, Blois was distinctly in the ascendant, and the chances of independent existence for the little Marchland hung solely on the cour- age and statesmanship of its count. His dauntless genius, helped by Odo's folly, saved Anjou and turned the tide completely in its favour. The treaty sworn, four years after Fulk's death, in his great castle by the Indre, was the crowning of his life's work, and left his son absolutely with- out a rival till he chose to seek one beyond the debateable ground of Maine. The long struggle of Fulk and Odo, completed by Geoffrey and Theobald, had made a clear field for the future struggles of Geoffrey and William, of Fulk V. and Henry I., and at last — by a strange turn of fate — for a renewal of the old feud with the house of Blois itself, in a new form and for a far higher stake, in the struggle of Stephen and Henry Fitz-Empress for the English crown. in. ANJOU AND BLOIS 189 Note A. THE SIEGE OF MELUN. The fullest account of this Melun affair is in Richer, 1. iv. cc. 74- 78. Briefly, it comes to this : Odo (described simply by his name, without title of any kind) "rerum suarum augmentum querebat," and especially the castle of Melun, partly for the convenience of getting troops across the Seine, and partly because it had formerly belonged to his grandfather and was now in the hands, not of the king, but of " another " (not named). He managed to corrupt the officer in command and to obtain possession of the place. As soon as the kings (regei) heard of it, they gathered their forces to besiege him there : " et quia castrum circumfluente Sequana ambiebatur, ipsi in litore primo castra disponunt ; in ulteriore, accitas piratarum acies ordinant." These " pirates " furnished a fleet which blockaded the place, and finally discovered a secret entrance whereby they got into the town, surprised the castle, and compelled it to surrender to the king (r^gz'). 2. William of Jumifeges (1. v. c. 14, Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Serif tt, p. 25s) tells the story more briefly, but to exactly the same effect. He mentions however only one king : he supplies the name of the " other man " who held Melun — viz. Burchard : he clearly implies that " Odo " is Odo II. of Blois (of whose doings with Nor- mandy he has just given an account in c. 12, ib. p. 254); and, of course, he gives the " pirates " their proper name of Normans, and puts them under their proper leader, Duke Richard [the Good]. 3. Hugh of Fleury tells the same tale very concisely, but with all the names, and gives a date, a. 999 {Eer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. pp. 220, 221). (He is copied by the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., ib. p. 222.) 4. The Abbreviatio Gestorum Francia Regum tells the same, but gives no date beyond " eo tempore," coming just after Hugh Capet's death (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 227). 5. The Vita Burchardi Comitis gives no dates, does not identify Odo, and does not mention the Normans, but makes Burchard him- self the chief actor in the regaining of the place {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. X. pp. 354, 355. In p. 350, note a, the editor makes Burchard a son of Fulk the Good ; but he gives no authority, and I can find none). 6. The Angevins have a version of their own. In the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 76, 77) the captor of Melun is "Herbert count of Troyes"; in Hugh of Clferes {ib. p. 388) he has the same title but no name, and neither has the king, who in the Gesta is called Robert. The victim is not named at all ; but the 190 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. hero who plays a part equivalent to that of the Normans in the other versions is Geoffrey Greygown. The main question is the date. One authority — Hugh of Fleury — gives it distinctly as 999. Will. Jumifeges clearly identifies the Odo in question as Odo II. Now Odo II. was not count till 1004; but his father died in 995, so William may have given him the title by anticipation at any time after that date. The Abbr. Gest. Franc. Reg. would seem to place it thereabouts, as its note of time is "eo tempore " in reference to Hugh Capet's death (which occurred in October 996). On the other hand, Richer speaks of "the kings" in the plural ; from which Kalckstein, Waitz and Luchaire {Hist, des Institutions monarchiques de la France., vol. ii. p. 7, note i) conclude that it is Odo I. who is concerned, and they date the affair 991. Why they fix upon this year, in defiance of both William of Jumifeges and Hugh of Fleury, I cannot see. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville (Co7ntes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 196) adopts Hugh's date, 999. Is it not possible, however, from a comparison of the other authorities, that the right year is 996, just before Hugh's death, or even that he died while the siege was in progress ? for it is to be noticed that Richer mentions only one king at the surrender. Richer has made such a confusion about these Odos and their doings that it is hardly fair to set him up as an infallible authority on the subject against such writers as Hugh of Fleury and William of Jumifeges. Anyhow, the Angevin story cannot stand against any of them. Note B. the parents of queen constance. The parentage of Constance requires some notice here, as she is usually called either a niece or a cousin of Fulk Nerra. The one point on which all authorities are agreed is that her father's name was William. It was long disputed whether he was William III. (Taillefer) count of Toulouse or William I. count of Aries and Pro- vence. M. Mabille, in a note to the latest edition of Vic and Vaissete's Hist, du Languedoc (Toulouse, 1872), vol. iv. pp. 157-161, has made it clear that he was William of Aries ; this conclusion is adopted by M. Luchaire {Hist, des Inst it. Monarch., vol. ii. p. 211, note i). M. Mabille however does not attempt to decide who was Constance's mother, through whom her kindred with the Angevins is said to have come ; and this is the question which we now have to investigate. The evidence at present known is as follows : — I. An unprinted MS. of R. Glaber's history, 1. iii. c. 2 (quoted by Mabille, note to Vic and Vaissfete, as above, p. 158 ; Marchegay, III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 191 Comtes d'Anjou, Introd., p. Ixxiii. note 2), describes Constance as " neptem praedicti Fulconis . . . natam de Blanca sorore ejus." This is the version adopted in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 1 1 o). 2. A letter of Bishop Ivo of Chartres (Ep. ccxi., Migne, Patro- logia, vol. 162, cols. 215, 216), written about a.d. mo, makes Constance's mother sister, not of Fulk, but of his father Geoffrey Greygown. So does an anonymous chronicle ending in 1109, printed in Duchesne's Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. iv. p. 96. 3. The Chron. S. Albin. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 21) has under date 987 : " Hlotharius rex obiit. ... In isto reges Francorum defecerunt. Hie accepit uxorem Blanchiam filiam Fulconis Boni comitis Andegavensium, patris Gaufredi Grisegonellae, et habuit ex ea filiam, Constantiam nomine, quae fuit data cum regno Roberti regis filio, scilicet Hugonis Magni." Wildly confused as this passage is, I believe that it really contains a clue to the identity of Con- stance's mother. Whoever she was, she certainly must, at the time of Constance's birth, have been wife not of Louis the Lazy (who is evidently meant, instead of Lothar), but of Count William I. of Aries. Now it is plain (see Vic and Vaissfete as above, pp. 62, 63) that William was twice married ; first to Arsindis, who was living 968-979; and secondly, to Adelaide, who appears in 986, was mother of his successor William IL, and apparently still living in 1026. Of Arsindis nothing further is known ; but with Adelaide the case is otherwise. King Louis the Lazy, at some time between 978 and 981, married a lady "ab Aquitanis partibus" (R. Glaber, 1. i. c 3, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 5), whose name was Adelaide according to Richer (1. iii. c. 92), but whom the Chron. S. Albin. (as we have already seen) and the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 986, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 382) call Blanche. After two years of marriage with the young king she divorced him, or was divorced by him, and married William of Aries (Richer, 1. iii. cc. 94, 95). This is clearly the lady of whom we are in search. The dates fit ex- actly ; William's first wife, Arsindis, is dead ; he marries the divorced queen, probably about 982-983, and they have a daughter who in 1000 will be, as Constance evidently was at her marriage, in the prime of girlish beauty. The probability is strengthened by the fact that Adelaide's first husband actually was what R. Glaber (1. iii. c. 2, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 27) mistakenly calls Constance's father, count of the " First Aquitaine," or Toulouse ; for Richer (1. iii. c. 92) says she was widow of Raymond "duke of the Goths," i.e. of Septimania or Toulouse : — by the name of " Candida," the Latin equivalent for " Blanche," given to the wife of William of Aries by Peter of Maillezais (1. i. c. 6, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 182 ; see above, p. 173, note 5); — and even by the blundering Angevin chronicle which makes Constance a daughter of " Blanche " and 192 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. " Lothar," meaning of course Blanche the wife of Lothar's son, and her third husband. This same Chron. S. Albin., however, adds that the said " Blanche " was a daughter of Fulk the Good. No- body else seems to have known her origin, and this very " perplexed and perplexing " chronicler is a doubtful authority to build upon ; but as there is no intrinsic impossibility in this part of his statement, and as there evidently was in the early twelfth century a tradition that Constance was akin to the house of Anjou, he may be right. From the dates, one would think she was more likely to have been Greygown's daughter than his sister. If she was his sister, it must surely have been by the half-blood. She might be a daughter of Fulk the Good by his second marriage with the widow of Alan Barbetorte. Note C. the pilgrimages of fulk nerra. Of all the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated of Fulk Nerra, scarcely any two are wholly agreed as to the number and dates of his journeys to Holy Land. Some make out four journeys; some three; one, his own grandson, makes only two (Fulk Rechin, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 377). It is, however, abund- antly evident that there were at least three — one before the found- ation of Beauheu {Gesta Cons., ib. p. 117; Hist. S. Flor. Salm., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 273); one after the foundation of Beauheu, and before that of S. Nicolas {Hist S. Flor. Salm. as above, p. 275) ; and one in returning from which he died (see above, p. 168). It is admitted on all hands that his death took place at Metz on June 2 1 St, 1040 ; the date of the last pilgrimage is therefore undis- puted. That of the first is now fixed by a charter quoted by M. Mabille (Marchegay, Comtes, Introd. p. Ixxix) to 1003. The points still remaining to be decided therefore are (i) the date of the second journey; (2) the reality of the third. The only real clue which our original authorities give us to the date of the second journey is the statement of Hist. S. Flor. that it was after the foundation of Beaulieu and before that of S. Nicolas (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 275). Now S. Nicolas was founded in 1020 {ibid). Beaulieu was consecrated in 1012, but all we know of its foundation is that it cannot have been before Fulk's return from his first journey in 1004. Modern writers have proposed three different dates for this second pilgrimage. The Art de verifier les dates (vol. xiii. p. 50) places it in 1028; M. d'Arbois de Jubainville {Hist, des Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 245) in 1019-20; M. Mabille (Introd. Cojntes, pp. Ixxviii, Ixxx) and M. de Salies {Foulques- Nerra, pref. pp. xxxii, xxxiii, 143) in loio-ii. The first date, founded on in. ANJOU AND BLOIS 193 a too literal reading of Ademar of Chabanais {Rer. Gall. Scripti., vol. X. p. 164), is disposed of at once by the History of S. Florence. The theory of M. de Jubainville has a good deal of plausibility, but there is no documentary evidence for it. M. Mabille quotes in sup- port of his date, 10 10, a charter of S. Maur-sur-Loire, setting forth how Fulk, Hildegard and Geoffrey visited that abbey on the eve of Fulk's departure for Holy Land. This charter is in Marchegay's Archives d'Anjou, vol. i. p. 356 ; it has no date of any sort ; and it does not specify whether Fulk's intended journey was his second or third. The presence of Geoffrey proves it was not the first, but nothing more. M. Mabille pronounces for the second, and dates it "vers 1 010"; but the editor of the Archives, M. Marchegay, says in a note "vers I'an 1030." This charter therefore does not help at all. M. de Salies {Foulques-Nerra, p. 143, and pref ib. p. xxxii) appeals in support of the same date, i o i o, to the Chronicle of Tours, whose chronology throughout the century is so wild as to have no weight at all, except in strictly local matters ; to the Chron. S. Petr. Senon., where I can find nothing about the question at issue ; — and above all, to a charter in Baluze's collections which says : " In natali S. Barnabas Apostoli, qui est in Idibus Junii, Rainaldus . . . Andecavensium Episcopus rebus terrenis exemptus est . . . Ad sepulchrum Domini Hierosolymam comitante Fulcone vicecomite tendebat, progressusque usque Ebredunum" . . . died and was there buried "anno ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi loio." In the first place, this charter is suspicious as to date, for the Chronn. S. Albin. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 22), Vindoc. {ib. p. 164), S. Flor. Salm. (ib. p. 187), all date Bishop Rainald's death 1005, and so, according to Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. col. 558, does the Obituary of S. Maurice ; and the Chron. S. Serg. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 134) dates the consecration of his successor Hubert 1007. In the next place, what ground has M. de Salies for assuming that " Fulco OTf^comes " is Fulk Nerra count of Anjou ? The authors of Gallia Christiana quote this same charter, and their comment on it is this : " Fulco sedenim comes " [it is wV^comes in the charter] "quocum Rainaldus Hierosolymitanum iter aggressus supra memo- ratur, Andegavensis rei curam annum circa 10 10, teste non uno, suscepit." And as they have been describing various dealings of the bishop with Fulk the Black long before loio, it is quite clear they take this Fulk to be some one else ; though one would like to see their witnesses and know who he really was. There is however another clue which may suggest a different date for this second pilgrimage. There are only two ways of making sense of the account given in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 88-91) of "the wicked Landry's" attack on Anjou and the war of Chdteaudun. In that account the first misdoings of Landry and VOL. I. O 194 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. his aggressions against Sulpice and Archambald of Amboise are put in the reign of Count Maurice ; then Maurice dies and his son Fulk succeeds him, and the raid upon Chateaudun follows as the first exploit of " juvenis haud modici pectoris." Now we have seen that Maurice was not Fulk's father but his younger brother, and never was count of Anjou at all. We must therefore either regard the introduction of Maurice as a complete myth and delusion, or inter- pret the tale as a distorted account of a regency undertaken by Maurice during his brother's absence. It is hard to see why the chroniclers should have gratuitously dragged in Maurice without any reason. Moreover the charter which establishes the date of Fulk's first pilgrimage informs us that he left his brother as regent of Anjou on that occasion (Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. Ixxvi) ; it is therefore quite possible that he may have done the same thing a second time. On this theory, to ascertain the date of the war with Landry would be equivalent to ascertaining the date of Fulk's second pilgrimage. If we take the Gesta's account of Landry just as it stands, Landry's attack on Anjou must have been made at the close of 1014 or in 1015 ; for he was resisted (say they) by Sulpice, treasurer of S. Martin's, and his brother Archambald. Now Sulpice could not be treasurer of S. Martin's before 10 14, as his predecessor Hervey died in that year (Chron. Tur. Magn. ad ann., Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 119; Chronol. S. Mar. Autiss. ad ana, Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. X. p. 275); and on the other hand, Archambald must have died in 1015 or very early in 10 16, for the Chron. Tur. Magn. (as above) — which is likely to be right in its dating of local matters, though hopelessly confused in its general chronology — places in 10 16 the building of Sulpice's stone tower at Amboise, which the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 88, 89) tell us took place after his brother's death ; and the whole affair was certainly over some time before July 10 16, the date of the battle of Pontlevoy. According to the Gesta (as above, pp. 89, 90), Landry makes another attack on Sulpice, after his brother's death, just when Maurice has also died and Fulk succeeded him \i.e. Fulk has come home and resumed the reins of government] ; and the raid on Chateaudun follows immediately. Here comes in a new difficulty; Odo of Blois is now brought in with a minute list of his possessions in Champagne, which he only acquired in 1019 at earliest, so that if this part of the story is also to be taken literally, Landry's war with Sulpice and Fulk's raid on Chateaudun must be separated by nearly four years. Maurice cannot possibly have been regent all that time, so we must either give him up entirely, or conclude that some of the details are wrong. And the one most Ukely to be wrong is certainly the des- cription of Odo, whom almost all the old writers call " Campanensis " long before he had any right to the epithet. This is the view of m. ANJOU AND BLOIS 195 M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, who dates the whole affair of Landry and ChS.teaudun in 1012-1014 (Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. pp. 227, 228), but ignores Maurice and puts Fulk's second journey in 10 1 9, without giving any reason. It seems to me that this strange Angevin hallucination about Count Maurice, so utterly inexplicable in any other way, becomes intelligible if we believe that he was regent of Anjou in 1014-1015 during a second journey of his brother to Holy Land ; a theory which, if it has no positive evidence to support it, seems at least to have none to contradict it, and is not :cendered improbable by the general condition of Angevin affairs at the time. 2. As to the third journey. The Gesta Cons, state that Fulk, on one of his pilgrimages, went in company with Robert the Devil. Now as Robert died at Nikaia in July 1035 Fulk cannot have met him on either of his iirst two journeys, nor on his last ; therefore, if this incident be true, we must insert another pilgrimage in 1034- 103 5- The story appears only in the Gesta Cons, and is there- fore open to suspicion, as the whole account of Fulk's travels there given is a ludicrous tissue of anachronisms (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 100-103). Fulk first goes to Rome and promises to deliver Pope Sergius IV. (who reigned 1009-1012) from Crescentius (who was killed in 997); then he goes to Constantinople, and thence in company with Robert to Jerusalem ; Robert dies on the way home (1035) and Fulk on his return founds Beaulieu Abbey (consecrated 1012.) The monk has confounded at least two journeys, together with other things which had nothing to do with either. The idea of a journey intermediate between the second and the last is however supported by the story of R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 164; Marchegay, Comtes, p. 329) that Geoffrey Martel having been left regent while his father was on pilgrimage kept him out on his return. Now at the time of Fulk's first pilgrimage Geoffrey was not born ; at the time of the second he was a mere child ; and from the last Fulk came home only in his coffin. Consequently this story implies another journey ; and we seem to get its date at last on no less authority than that of Fulk's own hand. The charter in Epitome S. Nicolai (quoted in Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 386), after relating Fulk's application to Abbot Walter of S. Aubin's to find him an abbot for S. Nicolas, and the consequent appointment of Hilduin in 1033, ends thus : "Res autem prsescriptas a domno Beringario atque domno Reginaldo scribere jussi, et priusquam ad Jerusalem ultimd, vice perrexissem manu mea roboravi.' The Chron. S. Albin. says Walter was not abbot till 1036 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 23 ; the extract in note 3, ibid., makes it 1038), and if so the date of Hilduin's consecration is wrong. But the authors of Gallia 196 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Christiana think it more likely that the abbot's name is wrong and the date right. Now by " ultima vice " Fulk must have meant " the journey whence I last returned." Before starting for that of 1040 he might hope, but he could not know, that it would be his last. So here we have, apparently, his own authority for a third pilgrimage soon after Hilduin's consecration — i.e. in 1034 or 1035. The worst stumbling-block, however, in the way of our chrono- logy of Fulk's last years is William of Malmesbury. He gives a much fuller account than any one else of Geoffrey's rebellion and Fulk's last pilgrimage, and his account, taken alone, is so thoroughly self-consistent and reasonable, and withal so graphic, that it is hard not to be carried away by it. But it utterly contradicts the date which the sources above examined assign to the third journey, as well as that which all other authorities agree in assigning to the last, and also the universally-received account of Fulk's death. William (1. iii. c. 235 ; Hardy, pp. 401, 402) says nothing about Geoffrey having rebelled during his father's absence. He tells us that Fulk in his last years ceded his county to his son ; that Geoffrey mis- conducted himself, and was brought to submission (here comes in the story of the saddle) ; that Fulk in the same year went out to Palestine (here follows the story of the penance) ; that he came quietly home, and died a few years after. This account of William's is entitled to very much more respect- ful handling than those of the Gesta Consilium and Ralf de Diceto. William's statements about the counts of Anjou are of special value, because they are thoroughly independent ; where they come from is a mystery, but they certainly come from some source perfectly distinct from those known to us through the Angevin writers. Moreover William shews a wonderfully accurate appreciation of the Angevins' characters and a strong liking for them — above all for Fulk Nerra, whom he seems to have taken special pains to paint in the most striking colours. His version therefore is not to be lightly treated ; nevertheless it seems clear that he is not altogether correct. His omitting all mention of the pilgrimage which immediately pre- ceded Geoffrey's rebellion is no proof of its non-reality. His account of the last journey of all is a graver matter. According to him, it must have taken place about 1036-1037, and Fulk died, not at Metz, but at home. There is only one other writer who counten- ances this version, and that is the chronicler of S. Maxentius (a. 1040, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 393), who says that Fulk died in his own abbey of S. Nicolas at Angers. But this very same chronicle gives also an alternative statement — the usual one of the death on pilgrimage which is given by the Gesta, R. Diceto and Fulk Rechin. Against either of the two former witnesses singly William's solitary word might stand, but not against them with Fulk Rechin to support III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 197 them. The pilgrimages therefore stand thus: i. in 1003; 2. in 1014-1015; 3. in 1034-1035; 4. in 1040. Note D. geoffrey martel and poitou. The whole story of Geoffrey Martel's doings in Poitou — his wars and his marriage — is involved in the greatest perplexity. There is no lack of information, but it is a mass of contradictions. The only writer who professes to account for the origin of the war is the author of the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 126), and his story, so far as it can apply to anything at all, certainly applies to the battle of Chef-Boutonne between Geoffrey the Bearded and William VII. (Guy-Geoffrey) in 1062. All other authorities are agreed that the battle was fought at S. Jouin-de-Marne, or Mont- contour, on September 20, 1033, that William was captured and kept in prison three years, and that he died immediately after his release. As to the marriage of Geoffrey and Agnes, there is a question whether it took place before William's capture or immedi- ately after his death. 1. The Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg., a. 1032 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 23, 13s) say positively that Geoffrey and Agnes were married on January i in that year. The Chron. S. Michael, in Per. Maris ad ann. also gives the date 1032 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt, vol. X. p. 176). 2. Will. Poitiers and Will. Malm, say they married after William's death. "Porro ipsius defuncti . . . novercam . . . thoro suo [Gaufridus] sociavit." Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt), p. 182. "Tunc Martellus, ne quid deesset impu- dentis, novercam defuncti matrimonio sibi copulavit." Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 395). These five are the only writers who directly mention the marriage, except the Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, -e^zj-fx, p. 392), which says under date 1037 : "Per haec tempora Gaufredus Mar- tellus duxerat uxorem supradictam," etc. " Per haec tempora " with the chronicler of S. Maxentius is a phrase so frequent and so elastic that this passage cannot be used to support either of the above dates. There are therefore three witnesses for 1032, and two for 1036. The chroniclers of S. Aubin and S. Sergius are both Angevin witnesses, and both nearly contemporary; but the S. Sergian writer's authority is damaged by his having confused the whole story, for he dates the capture of the duke of Aquitame m 1028, thus evidently mistaking Agnes's step-son for her husband. 198 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. William of Poitiers is in some sense a Poitevin witness, and is also nearly contemporary. William of Malmesbury is further from the source, and in this passage seems to have been chiefly following his Poitevin namesake, but his whole treatment of the Angevin counts shews such clear signs of special study and understanding that he is entitled to be regarded as in some degree an independent authority. That the marriage was not later than 1036 is certain from several charters of that year, in which Agnes appears as Geoffrey's wife (Marchegay, Archives d'Anjou, vol. i. pp. 377, 4°2)- But the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 131, 132) tell a story of Geoffrey having founded his abbey at Vendome in consequence of a shower of stars which he saw when standing at his palace window with " his wife, Agnes by name." As the first abbot of Holy Trinity at Vendome was appointed in 1033 (Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 379), if this story is true, Agnes must have been married to Geoffrey in 1032. But unluckily, the foundation - charter of the abbey is missing. The only documentary evidence connected with the ques- tion consists of two charters. One of these is printed in Besly, Comtes de Poitou, preuves, p. 304. It has no date, and simply conveys some lands for the site of the abbey to Count Geoffrey and Agnes his wife. Of course if this is the deed of sale for the land on which the original buildings were begun in 1032, it settles the question as to the previous marriage ; but as the abbey was not consecrated till 1040, it is quite possible that its building was a slow process, and more ground was required as it proceeded. The endowment-charter (dated 1040, Mabillon, Ann. Bened., vol. iv. p. 732) says: "Ego Goffredus comes et uxor mea Agnes . . . monasterium . . . a novo fundaremus." Does the solution lie in those words, "a novo"? Did Geoffrey found his abbey alone in 1032 ; stop the work for a while on account of the Poitevin war and his quarrel with his father ; and then, having married Agnes and acquired means by her step-son's ransom, set to work in earnest con- jointly with her and found the abbey anew ? It is hard to throw over the distinct statements of two such writers as William of Poitiers and William of Malmesbury for the sake of three not very accurate chronicles and a late twelfth century romancer, doubtfully supported by a very vague charter. As to the crime of the marriage, it is only the Angevin chroni- clers who are so shocked at it. The S. Sergian writer's mistake between Agnes's first husband and her step-son might account for his horror, but not for the word he uses ; and the Hist. S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 282) which uses the same, says dis- tinctly that her husband was dead. The two Williams seem to see nothing worse in it than some " impudence " in the count of Ven- dome daring to take a wife of such high birth and position. The III. ANJOU AND BLOIS 199 Chron. S. Maxent. makes no remark on the subject ; the chronicler of S. Sergius seems to have thought that Geoffrey's kinship was not with Agnes herself, but with her former husband, for he says that Geoffrey married her "quae fuerat consobrini sui Willelmi . . . uxor." The canon law forbade marriages within the seventh degree of kindred ; and as the pedigrees of none of the three persons con- cerned in this case can be traced back with certainty in all their branches up to the seventh generation, it is quite impossible to say what consanguinity there may or may not have been among them. The strong language of the Angevin chroniclers, however, seems to indicate no obscure and remote connexion, but a close and obvious one. There are two possibilities which present themselves at once. 1. We do not know at all who Geoffrey's mother Hildegard was. 2. We are not perfectly sure who his grandmother Adela was. Hildegard may have been a daughter of Poitou, in which case her son would be akin to William ; or a daughter of Burgundy, and then he would be akin to Agnes. Or again, if Adela of Chalon really was daughter to Robert of Troyes, and if she was also really Geoffrey's grandmother, then William, Agnes and Geoffrey would be all cousins to each other — Agnes and William in the fifth degree, Geoffrey and William in the fourth, Geoffrey and Agnes in the third. The pedigree stands as follows : — Herbert of Vermandois. \ Liutgard= Theobald the Trickster Robert of Troyes 1 (I) I (2) Emma = William Fierabras Lambert = Adela = Geoffrey Greygown of Autun I I I I William the Great, Gerberga= Adalbert of Fulk Nerra 3d from Herbert. I Lombardy 1 Otto William. Geoffrey Martel, I 4th from Herbert, 2d from Adela. 5th from Herbert, 3d from Adela. Strictly speaking, this would make both Agnes's marriages wrong ; but the kindred in the case of the second would be much closer, and aggravated by that between Geoffrey and William ; and a dis- pensation might very probably have been obtained for the first marriage, while for the second it is plain that none was even sought. 20O ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. hi. It is just possible that there was also a spiritual affinity. Agnes's younger son bore the two names of Guy and Geoffrey; it is not clear which was his baptismal name ; but the idea suggests itself that it may have been Geoffrey, and that he may have been godson to the Hammer of Anjou. The case would then be something like that of Robert and Bertha. CHAPTER IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY. 1044-1128. The history of Anjou during the sixty years comprised in our Icist chapter groups itself around the figure of Fulk the Black. The period on which we are now to enter has no such personal centre of unity ; its interest and its significance lie in the drama itself rather than in its actors ; yet the drama has a centre which is living to this day. The city of Le Mans still stands, as it stood in Geoffrey Martel's day and had stood for a thousand years before him, on the long narrow brow of a red sandstone rock which rises abruptly from the left bank of the Sarthe and widens out into the higher ground to the north and east : — a situation not unlike that of Angers on its black rock above the Mayenne. The city itself and the county of Maine, of which it was the capital, both took their names from a tribe known to the Romans as Aulerci Cenomanni, a branch of the great race of the Aulerci who occupied central Gaul in its earliest recorded days. Alike in legend and in history the Ceno- manni are closely linked to Rome. One branch of them formed, according to Roman tradition, a portion of a band of Gallic emigrants who in the mythical days of the Tarquins wandered down through the Alpine passes into the valleys and plains of northern Italy, made themselves a new home on the banks of Padus, where afterwards grew up the towns of Brixia and Verona,^ and became devoted allies of Rome.^ ' Tit. Liv., 1. V. c. 35; Polyb., 1. ii. c. 17. ^ Polyb., 1. ii. cc. 23, 24, 32. 202 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. When the last struggle for freedom was over in Gaul, few spots took the impress of Rome more deeply or kept it more abidingly than the home of their Transalpine brethren, the "Aulerci Cenomanni whose city to the east is Vin- dinum." ^ The remains of the walls and gates of a Roman castrimi which succeeded the primeval hill -fortress of Vindinum or Le Mans are only now at last giving way to the destruction, not of time, but of modern utilitarianism. Far into the middle ages, long after Le Mans had outgrown its narrow Roman limits and spread down to a second line of fortifications close to the water's edge, one part of the city on the height still kept the name of " Ancient Rome." ^ The wondrous cathedral which now rises in the north-eastern corner of the city, towering high above the river and the double line of walls, stands, if we may trust its foundation- legend, on the very site of the prcetorium ; when the Cross followed in the train of the eagles. Defensor, the governor of the city, gave up his palace for the site of a church whose original dedication to the Blessed Virgin and S. Peter has long been superseded by the name of its founder S. Julian, a missionary bishop ordained and sent to Gaul by S. Clement of Rome.^ Defensor is probably only a personification of the official defensor dvitatis, the local tribune of the people under the later Roman Empire ; but the state of things of which the legend is an idealized picture left its traces on the real relations of Church and state at Le Mans. After the Prankish conquest bishop and people together formed a power which more than matched that of the local lieutenant of the Merovingian kings ; a decree of Clovis, confirmed by his grandson Childebert IIL, enacted that no count of Le Mans should be appointed without their consent* Under the early Karolingians Le Mans seems to have held for a short time the rank afterwards taken by Angers as the chief stronghold of the Breton border ; local tradition claims as its 1 Ptolem., 1. ii. ,;. 7. On the Peutinger Table, however," the name is Sub- dinnum. 2 "Ex parte vici de veteri Roma" is quoted by M. Voisin {Us Cinomans anciens et modernes, p. 86, note 3) from a document in the city archives. 5 Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. i, in Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, pp. 239-241. * Charter of Childebert III. a. 698, in Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 283. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 203 first hereditary count that " Roland, prefect of the Breton march," who is more generally known as the hero of Ronce- vaux.^ However this may be, the " duchy of Cenomannia " figures prominently in various grants of territory on the western border made to members of the Imperial house.^ In the civil wars which followed the death of Louis the Gentle it suffered much from the ravages of Lothar f and it underwent a far worse ordeal a i&w years later, when the traitor count Lambert of Anjou led both Bretons and northmen into the heart of central Gaul. The sack of Le Mans by Lambert and Nomenoe in 850* was avenged some years later when the traitor fell by the sword of Count Gauzbert of Maine ;^ but in 851 Charles the Bald was com- pelled to cede the western part of the Cenomannian duchy to the Breton king Herispoe f the northern foes who had first come in the train of the Bretons swept over Maine again and again ; and it was in making their way back to the sea after one of these raids by the old Roman road from Le Mans to Nantes that they entrapped Robert the Brave to his death at the bridge of Sarthe. The treaty of Clair-sur- Epte left Maine face to face with the northman settled upon her northern border ; and in 924 a grant of the overlordship of the county was extorted by Hrolf from King Rudolf of Burgundy. In the hands of Hrolf's most famous descendant the claim thus given was to become a formidable reality ; at the moment however its force was neutralized by another grant made in the same year by Charles the Simple, which ' Eginhard, Vita Car. Magni, c. 9 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. v. p. 93). ' Charles the Great granted " ducatum Cenomannicum " to his son Charles in 790 ; Ann. Mettens. ad ann. {Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. v. pp. 346, 347). " Ducatus Cenomannicus, omnisque occiduae Galliae ora inter Ligerim et Sequanam consti- tuta," formed the share of Charles the Bald in 838 ; Ann. Berlin, ad ann. {ib. vol. vi. p. 199). ' Ann. Bertin. a. 841 [ib. vol. vii. p. 60). * Chron. Fontanel!, a. 850 {ib. p. 42). ° The Chron. S. Maxent. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 366), two Aquitanian chronicles (in Labbe, Nova Bibl., vol. i. pp. 291, 324) and Ademar of Chabanais {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 226) date this 852 ; Regino and the Ann. Mettens. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 190) place it in 860. * Above, p. 102. Part at least of this ceded territory must have been soon regained ; for it extended " usque ad viam quas a Lotitia Parisiorum Csesarodunum Turonum ducit." Ann. Bertin. a. 856 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. vii. p. 71). 204 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. placed Maine together with the rest of Neustria under the jurisdiction of Hugh the Great^ In vain the counts of Le Mans strove to ignore or defy the house of France and that of Anjou, to which, as we have seen, the ducal claims over Maine were soon delegated. All their efforts were paralyzed by the opposing influence of that other officer in their state whose authority was of older date as well as loftier char- acter than theirs, who held his commission by unbroken descent alike from the Caesars and from the Apostles, and who had once at least been distinctly acknowledged as the equal, if not the superior, of his temporal colleague. The bishops were the nominees of the king, and therefore the champions of French and Angevin interests at Le Mans. In the last years of the tenth century and the early part of the eleventh, two of them in succession, an uncle and nephew named Sainfred and Avesgaud, were members of the house of Belleme who owned the borderlands of Perche, S^ez and Alengon, between France and Normandy, who were never loyal to either neighbour, and whose name, as we have already seen, was one day to become a by-word for tur- bulent wickedness both in Normandy and in England. Sainfred was said to have owed his bishopric to Fulk Nerra's influence with the king ;2 Avesgaud's life was passed between building, hunting, and quarrelling with Count Her- bert Wake-dog. Herbert's military capacities, proved on the field of Pontlevoy, enabled him to stand his ground f but very soon after his death Fulk's dealings with Maine and its bishop began to bear fruit. Fulk survived both Herbert and Avesgaud. The count of Maine died in the prime of life in 1036,* leaviitg as his heir a son named Hugh, who, on pretext of his extreme youth, was set aside by a great-uncle, Herbert surnamed Bacco. Bishop Aves- 1 Frodoard. Chron. a. 924 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. viii. p. iSi). See above, p. 124. 2 Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 29 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 303). ' See the story of his struggles with Avesgaud in Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 30 (as above, pp. 303, 304). * Necrol. S. Pet. de Cultura (Le Mans), quoted in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 632. Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 161) seems to imply that he had contracted a mortal disease in his Angevin dungeon. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 205 gaud, too, had died a few months before, and his office passed a second time from uncle to nephew in the person of his sister's son, Gervase of Chateau-du-Loir.^ The selection of a third prelate from the hated house of Belleme was in itself enough to excite the count's wrath ; Herbert Bacco moreover had a special reason for jealousy — the young nephew whose rights he had usurped was a godson of Gervase. For two years Herbert contrived to keep the new bishop out of Le Mans altogether ; at the end of that time he admitted him, but no sooner were the rival rulers estab- lished side by side than their strife became as bitter and ceaseless as that of Herbert Wake -dog and Avesgaud. Gervase looked for help to the king, who, whether as king or as duke of the French, was patron and advocate of the see ; but there was no help to be got from the feeble, selfish Henry I. of France. Despair hurried the bishop into a rasher step than any that his uncle had ever taken. Think- ing that a less exalted protector, and one nearer to the spot and more directly interested, would be of more practical use, he besought King Henry to grant the patronage and advo- cacy of the see of Le Mans to Count Geoffrey of Anjou for his life.^ As soon as the grant was made, Gervase " took counsel with the people of the diocese and the brave men of the land,"^ and headed a revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in his place. The bishop's next step was to seek a wife for his godson. Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh's father to aid him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon Blois and carried gff Count Odo's daughter Bertha to become the wife of Duke Alan of Britanny.* It was this Bertha, now a widow and a fugitive from Rennes, whence 1 Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., pp. 305, 306). From the dates there given, Avesgaud must have died in October 1035, about five months before Herbert Wake-dog. ^ Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above (p. 305). ' " Concilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terrse." Ibid. See Mr. Free- man's note, Norm. Conq., vol. iii. p. 194, note 3. * Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1008 {Rer. Gall. Serif tt.,\o\. a. p. 294). For the real date see above, p. 159, note 4. 2o6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. she was driven by her brother-in-law after her husband's death,! whom Gervase now wedded to Hugh. Such a choice was not likely to conciliate Geoffrey Martel ; all the less if — as some words of a local historian seem to imply — the daughter of Odo of Blois was gifted with all the courage and energy that were lacking in her brothers.^ By some of the usual Angevin arts Geoffrey entrapped Gervase into his power and cast him into prison,^ where for the next seven years the luckless bishop was left to reflect upon the conse- quences of his short-sighted policy and to perceive that in striving to secure a protector against Herbert Bacco he had placed himself and his country at the mercy of an unscrupulous tyrant. During those years Maine, nominally ruled by the young Count Hugh, was really in the power of Geoffrey Martel, and it became the scene of a fierce warfare between Anjou and Normandy. In 1049 the Council of Reims threatened Geoffrey with excommuni- cation unless he released the captive prelate,* and next year the excommunication was actually pronounced by the Pope ;^ but neither Council nor Pope could turn the Angevin from his prey. About 1051 Hugh died, and his death sealed the fate of Le Mans. Its count's son was an infant, its bishop a captive in an Angevin dungeon ; its citizens had no choice but to submit. The twice-widowed countess and her children were driven out at one gate as the Hammer of Anjou knocked at the other, and without striking a blow Geoffrey became acknowledged master of Maine from thenceforth till the day of his death." Ger- vase, his spirit broken at last, purchased his release by the surrender of Chateau-du-Loir, and by a solemn oath never again to set foot in Le Mans so long as Geoffrey lived. He found a refuge at the court of Duke William of Normandy, till in 1057 he was raised to the metropolitan ^ See below, p. 211. 2 The author of the Acta Potttif. Cenoman., u. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal. p. 305), calls her " nobilissimam foeminam " and "uxorem fortissimam." ^ Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above. * Concil. Rem. in Labbe, Concilia (ed. Cossart), vol. xix. col. 742. ^ Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 398). ^ Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above, pp. 305, 306). IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 207 chair of Reims.^ In his former episcopal city the oppressor triumphed undisturbed ; but the day of retribution had already dawned. The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward mark of his success ; the height of his real security had been passed three years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey's life was the year 1044. The settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop Gervase, all followed close upon each other ; and for the next four years the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in the kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on a level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge, the step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual master of Maine. It was with the duke of Nor- mandy that Geoffrey's last conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition to Apulia in company with his wife's son-in-law the Emperor,^ he set himself up against King Henry with a boastful in- solence which threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.' Five years earlier, Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to win Geoffrey's help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald ; now he profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was just be- ginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of the Norman Duke William in putting down the re- bellion of Geoffrey. The king's own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further than a successful siege of the castle of Moulini^res;* after this his conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his parents towards 1 Acta Pontif. Cenoman., <.. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 306). ° See Art de virifier les dates, vol. xiii. p. 54. ' Henry was " conturaeliosis Gaufredi Martelli verbis irritatus." Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. " Vexavit idem [sc. Gaufredus] Franciam universam regi rebellans." lb. p. 182. * Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. Will. Malm. Cesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 230 (Hardy, p. 394). 2o8 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William, like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed ; and to William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth less the king's than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his heart, had openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous triumphs by an encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to regard as a foeman worthy of his steel,^ and had diligently used all the opportu- nities for provoking a quarrel with the Norman which the dependent position of Maine furnished but too readily. Either by force or guile, or that judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin house excelled, he had managed to get into his own hands the two keys of Normandy's southern frontier, the castles of Alengon and Domfront, which guarded the valleys of the Sarthe and the Mayenne ;^ and thence, across the debateable lands of Belleme, he was now carry- ing his raids into undisputed Norman territory.^ In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of grey rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the east, with the town and the dark woods at its back and the little stream of Varenne winding close round its foot, may tell something of what the castle was when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the builder's hand, and manned by the fierce moss- troopers of Belleme, reinforced by a band of picked soldiers from Anjou.* The rock itself was an impregnable fortress of nature's own making. To horsemen it was totally inaccess- ' Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. i8i. 2 lb. p. 182. Wace, Roman de Rou, w. 9380-9383 (Pluquet, vol. ii. p. 47). 3 WiU. Jumieges, 1. vii. c. 18. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276). Cf. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. ^. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). These two writers ignore the king's share in the quarrel, and make it arise solely from Geoffrey's raids upon Normandy ("Brachium levabat in nos quo non leviter sese vulnerabat," remarks W. Poitiers, as above). The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131) reverse the whole situation and assert that William attacked the count of Maine, whereupon Geoffrey, as the latter's " auxiliator et tutor," took up the quarrel, and did William a great deal of damage ! Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378) wisely limits himself to the statement that his uncle "had a war with William, duke of the ^°™^°=-" * Will. Poitiers (as above), p. 182. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 209 ible ; foot-soldiers could only scale it by two narrow and difficult paths. Assault was hopeless ; William's only chance lay in a blockade, and even this was an enterprise of danger as well as difficulty, for Domfront stood in the heart of a dense woodland amid which the Normans were continually exposed to the ambushes and surprises of the foe. To William however the forest was simply a hunting-ground through which he rode day after day, with hawk on wrist, in scornful defiance of its hidden perils, while the siege was pressed closer and closer all through the winter's snows, till at last the garrison were driven to call upon Geoffi-ey Martel for relief.^ What followed reads like an anticipation of the story of Prestonpans as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman tale, Geoffrey not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a formal challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the morrow at break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun rose on that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.^ Duke William's chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious explanation of their departure ; and it is im- possible to contradict him, for the whole campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin chroniclers. The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having challenged Duke William at eventide and run away from him before sunrise, and no Angevin voice seems ever to have been lifted to deny or palliate the charge. He had scarcely turned his back when Alengon fell ; and its fall was quickly followed by that of Domfront. William carried away his engines of war to set them up again on undisputed Ceno- mannian ground, at Ambri^res on the Mayenne: still Geoffi-ey made no movement ; William laid the foundations of a castle on the river-bank at Ambri^res, and leaving it securely guarded marched home unmolested to Rouen.^ ' Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). 2 WiU. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 183. Cf. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. t. 231 (Hardy, pp. 396, 397). ' Will. Poitiers, as above. WiU. Jumi^ges, 1. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276). Wace, Roman de Rott, vv. 9430-963S (Pluquet, vol. ii. PP- 49-58)- VOL. I. P 2IO ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. So began the most momentous feud ever waged by the counts of Anjou. After the first burst of the storm came a lull of nearly seven years, one of which was marked, as we have seen, by Geoffrey's final acquisition of Le Mans ; but his power had sustained a shock from which it never wholly recovered. In the struggles with Normandy which fill the latter years of Henry I. of France, the king and the count of Anjou play an almost equally ignoble part. Henry, who had once courted the friendship of William to ward off the blows of the Angevin Hammer, no sooner perceived which was really the mightier of the two princes than he com- pletely reversed his policy, gave an almost open support to the treasons in William's duchy, and at length, in 1054, when these indirect attacks had failed, summoned all the princes of his realm to join him in a great expedition for the ruin of the duke of Normandy. They flocked to the muster at Mantes from all quarters save one ; strangely enough, the count of Anjou was missing.^ Only a few months ago the terror which clung around Martel's name and the number of troops at his command had sufficed to make his stepson William of Aquitaine disband an army with which he was preparing to encounter him, and sue for peace at his mere approach -^ yet it seems that not even with all the forces of king and kingdom at his side would Geoffrey risk an encounter with the man whom he had challenged and fled from at Domfront. By thus deserting the king at a moment when Henry had every reason to count upon his support, Geoffrey escaped all part in the rout of Mortemer ; but the consequence was that when peace was made next year between the king and the duke, one of its clauses authorized William to make any conquests he could at the expense of the count of Anjou.^ 1 Will. Jumieges, 1. viL c. 24 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 281) says he was there ; but see Mr Freeman's remarks. Norm. Conq., vol. iii., p. 144. 2 Charter of William of Passavant, dated MontiUiers, 1053, in Archives d Anjou (Marchegay), vol. i. p. 271. Besly {Comtes de Poitou, preuves, p. 327) printed it with the date 1043, and it is apparently on this that the Art de vlrifier les dates founds a war between Geoffrey and Peter- William in that year — an almost impossible thing. ' Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 187. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iii. c. 233 (Hardy, p. 399). ANJOU AND NORMANDY William at once sent warning to Geoffrey to expect him and all his forces at Ambrieres within forty days. South of Ambri^res, lower down in the valley of the Mayenne, stands the town which bears the same name as the river ; its lord, Geoffrey, was the chief man of the district. He went in haste to his namesake and overlord and bitterly complained to him that if these Normans were left unhindered to work their will at Ambrieres, the whole land would be at their mercy. " Cast me off as a vile and unworthy lord," was Martel's reply, " if thou seest me tamely suffer that which thou fearest !" But the boast was as vain as the challenge before Domfront. William completed without hindrance his fortifications at Ambrieres; as soon as his back was turned Geoffrey laid siege to the place, in company with the duke of Aquitaine and Odo, uncle and guardian of the young duke of Britanny ; but the mere rumour of William's approach sufficed to make all three withdraw their troops " with wonderful speed, not to say in trembling flight." Geoffrey of Mayenne, made prisoner and left to bear alone the whole weight of William's wrath, took the count of Anjou at his word, and casting off the " vile and unworthy lord " whose desertion had brought him to this strait, owned himself the " man " of the Norman duke.-' Two castles in the heart of Maine thus acknowledged William for their lord. Three years passed away without further advance from either side ; Geoffrey's energies were frittered away in minor disputes which brought him neither gain nor honour. The old quarrel about Nantes woke up once more and was once more settled in 1057 under circum- stances very discreditable to the count of Anjou. Duke Alan of Britanny died in 1040, leaving as his heir a boy three months old. The child was at once snatched from the care of his mother — Bertha of Blois — by his uncle Odo, who set himself up as duke of Britanny in his stead. ^ The duchy split up into factions, and for sixteen years all was con- fusion, aggravated, there can be little doubt, by the meddle- someness of Geoffrey of Anjou, who seems to have taken 1 Will, Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp, 187, 188, ^ Chron. Brioc, ad ann. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol, i. col, 35), ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the opportunity thus offered him for picking a quarrel with count Hoel of Nantes.^ In 1056 or 1057, however, a party among the Breton nobles succeeded in freeing the young Conan, by whom Odo was shortly afterwards made prisoner in his turn.^ On this Geoffrey, it seems, following the traditional policy of the Angevin house in Britanny, made alliance with his late enemy the count of Nantes ; and Hoel, on some occasion which is not explained, actually ventured to intrust his capital to Geoffrey's keeping, where- upon Geoffrey at once laid a plot for taking possession of it altogether. His treachery however met the reward which it deserved ; he held Nantes for barely forty days, and then lost it for ever. ^ Troubles were springing up too in another quarter. Geoffrey's marriage with the widowed countess of Poitou had failed to bring him the advantages for which he doubtless hoped when he carried it through in defiance of public opinion and his father's will. He had been unable to keep any hold over his stepsons. Guy-Geoffrey fought and bargained with the rival claimant of Gascony till he had made himself sole master of the county : Peter- William, though he bears the surname of " the Bold," seems to have kept his land in peace, for his reign is a blank in which the only break is caused by his quarrels with Anjou. The first of these, in 1053, came as we have seen to no practical consequence, and two years later William is found by Geoffrey's side at Ambrieres. But the tie between them was broken ; Geoffrey and Agnes were no longer husband and wife,* and Geoffrey was married to Grecia of Montreuil. 1 Fulk Rechin mentions among his uncle's wars one ' ' cum Hoello comite Nannetensi." Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378. 2 Chron. S. Michael, a. 1056 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 29). Chron. Kemperleg. - V- 822. ^ Chron. Turon. Magii. a. 1098 (Salmon, Ckron. Touraim, p. 130). 228 ENGLAND UNDER THE -ANGEVIN KINGS chap. a lifetime of captivity ; and a touching story relates how the imprisoned count in a lucid interval expressed his admiration for his nephew's character, and voluntarily renounced in his favour the rights which he still persisted in maintaining against Fulk.^ On the strength of this renunciation Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban, at length extorted his father's consent to the liberation of the captive. It was, however, too late to be of much avail ; reason and health were both alike gone, and all that the victim gained by his nephew's care was that, when he died shortly after, he at least died a free man.^ His bequest availed as little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly announced his in- tention of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of Bertrada's child. A brief struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the duke of Aquitaine and Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk's abdication. For three years Geoffrey ruled well and pros- perously,* till in May 1 106, as he was besieging a rebellious vassal in the castle of Cande on the Loire, he was struck by a poisoned arrow and died next morning.* The bitter regrets of his people, as they laid him to sleep beside his great-uncle in the church of S. Nicolas at Angers,^ were intensified by a horrible suspicion that his death had been contrived by Ber- trada, and that Fulk himself condoned her crime.^ It is doubtful whether her child, who now had to take his brother's place, had even grown up among his own people ; she had ^ Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 141. 2 Ibid. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 128), Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Serif tt.), p. 723. ' Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1103-1105 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 30). * Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc, S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 15, 16, 30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three first-named chronicles give the day as May 19, the Chron. S. Maxent. makes it May 26, and according to M. Marchegay's note (as above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June i. This, how- ever, might be owing to an accidental omission of the "xiv." (or "vii.") before Kal. Junii. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142, places the death a year later. ' Ord. Vit. and Gesta Cons, as above. » Gesta Cms. as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108 (Salmon, Chron. Tourai7ie, p. 130). See also a quotation from Le Pelletier's Epitome S. Nicolai, in Rer. Gall. Script., vol. xii. p. 486, note. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 229 perhaps carried her baby with her, or persuaded the weak count to let her have him and bring him up at court ; there, at any rate, he was at the time of Geoffrey's death. Philip granted him the investiture of Anjou in Geoff'rey's stead, and commissioned Duke William of Aquitaine, who happened to be at court, to escort him safe home to his father. The Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into his own territories, and there put him in prison. Philip's threats, Bertrada's persuasions, alike proved unavailing, till the boy's own father purchased his release by giving up some border- towns to Poitou, and after a year's captivity young Fulk at last came home.^ Two years later, on April 14, 1109, he was left sole count of Anjou by the death of Fulk Rechin.^ " 111 he began ; worse he lived ; worst of all he ended."^ Such is the verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we should have been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history. Fulk Rechin's utter worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of Geoffrey Martel and Fulk the Black ; amid the wreck of the Angevin power in his hands, the only result of their labours which seemed still to remain was the mere territorial advantage involved in the possession of Touraine. Politically, Anjou had sunk far below the position which she had held in the Black Count's earliest days ; she had not merely ceased to be a match for the greatest princes of the realm, she had ceased to be a power in the realm at all. The title of count of Anjou, for nearly a hundred years a very synonym of energy and progress, had become identified with weakness and disgrace. The black cloud of ruin seemed to be settling down over the marchland, only waiting its appointed time to burst and pour upon her its torrent of destruction. It proved to be only the dark hour before the dawn of the brightest day that Anjou had seen since her great Count Fulk was laid in his grave at 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Will. Tyr., 1. xiv. c. I, has a different version, which does not look authentic. 2 Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc, S. P"lor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The Chronn. S. Serg. and S. Maxent. {ib. pp. 143, 424), date it 1108. ' Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 360. 230 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Beaulieu — perhaps even since her good Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Tours. Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had succeeded his father Philip as king of France.^ His accession marks an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-point in the struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with each other for control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the rivalry between Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the whole history of the first three generations of the kingly house founded by Hugh Capet. The royal authority was a mere name ; but that name was still the centre round which the whole complicated system of French feudalism revolved ; it was the one point of cohesion among the various and ill- assorted members which made up the realm of France, in the wider sense which that word was now beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any one of the great fiefs — Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine — was far more really powerful and independent than the king, who was nominally the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of each in turn. In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there was, however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled it to swallow up and out- live all its rivals. The end was as yet far distant ; but the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was crowned at Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty- two he ascended the throne with a fixed determination to secure such an absolute authority within the immediate domains of the Crown as should enable him to become the master instead of the servant of his feudataries. This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry of England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry's homage for the duchy ;2 and it may have been to avoid the necessity of performing this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems, refrained from formally assuming the ducal title, at least so long as his ^ Hist. Franc. Fragm. [Her. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.), p. 7. ''■ See Freeman, Norm, Conq., vol. v. p. 193. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 231 captive brother Hved.^ Whatever may have been his motive, the fact aptly typifies his political position. Alike in French and English eyes, he was a king of England ruling Normandy as a dependency of the English Crown. Such a personage was far more obnoxious to Louis and his projects than a mere duke of the Normans, or even a duke of the Normans ruling England as a dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand, Henry, in the new position given him by his conquest, had every reason to look with jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France. The uncertain relations between the two kings therefore soon took an openly hostile turn. In 1 1 1 o a quarrel arose between them con- cerning the ownership of the great border-fortress of Gisors. They met near the spot, each at the head of an army; but they parted again after wasting a day in fruitless re- criminations and empty challenges.^ Their jealousy was quickened by a dispute, also connected with the possession of a castle, between Louis and Henry's nephew Theobald count of Blois.^ Uncle and nephew made common cause against their common enemy ; but the strife had scarcely begun when a further complication destined to be of far weightier consequence, if not to France at least to England, arose out of the position and policy of the young count of Anjou. The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a new era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not unlike each other : each stands out in marked contrast to his predecessor, and in Fulk's case the contrast is even more striking than in that of Louis, for if little good was to be expected of the son of Philip I., there might well be even less hope of the child of Fulk Rechin and Bertrada. As a ruler and as a man, however, young Fulk turned utterly aside from the evil ways of both his parents.* Yet he was an Angevin of the Angevins ; physically, he had the ruddy complexion inherited from the first of his race and name ;^ while in his restless, adventurous 1 Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 180 and note 2. 2 Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 15 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 27, 28). 2 lb. c. 18 (pp. 35, 36). " Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143. 5 "Vir rufus, sed instar David." Will. Tyr. 1. xiv. c. i. 232 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. temper, at once impetuous and wary, daring and discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-grandfather Fulk the Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk V. only as if to remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-blood of Anjou still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept under subjection to higher influences ; the sense of right that only woke now and then to torture the conscience of the Black Count seems to be the guiding principle of his great-grandson's life. The evil influences which must have surrounded his boyhood, whether it had been passed in his father's house, or, as seems more probable, in the court of Philip and Bertrada, seem, instead of develop- ing the worse tendencies of his nature, only to have brought out the better ones into more active working by sheer force of opposition. Politically, however, there can be no doubt that the peculiar circumstances of his early life led to im- portant results, by reviving and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown which had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin's days. The most trusted counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not unfrequently the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression, was Almeric of Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after persecuting Louis by every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an ally as she had been a dangerous enemy. Almeric's influence, won by his own talents, seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king ; over the count of Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk's own mother. Their policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of the French crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I. The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed ; Fulk, by his mother's counsel, sought and won her for his wife.i Her marriage crowned the work of Elias. The patriot-count's mission was fulfilled, his task was done ; 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 7S5, 818. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143. Will. Tyr., 1. xiv. c. 1.. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 233 and in that very summer he passed to his well-earned rest.^ Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became count of Maine, and the immediate consequence was a breach with Henry on the long-vexed question of the overlordship of the county. Whether Elias had or had not recognized any right of overlordship in Fulk Rechin or Geoffrey Martel II. is not clear ; he certainly seems to have done homage to Henry,^ and their mutual relations as lord and vassal were highly honourable to both ; but it was hardly to be expected that Fulk, whose predecessors had twice received the homage of Henry's elder brother for that very county, should yield up without a struggle the rights of the count of Anjou. He refused all submission to Henry, and at once formed a league with the French Crown in active opposition to the lord of England and Normandy. The war began in nil, and the danger was great enough to call Henry himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for nearly two years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou, whose marriage enabled him to add the famous " Cenomannian swords " to the forces of Touraine and the Angevin March.^ Moreover, treason was, as usual, rife among the Norman barons ; and the worst of all the traitors was Robert of Belldme. One after another the lesser offenders were brought to justice ; at last, in November 1 1 1 2, Robert himself fell into the hands of his outraged sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both sides of the sea, was flung into a lifelong captivity.* Then at last Henry felt secure in Normandy ; the capture of Robert was followed by the surrender of his fortress of Alengon, and the tide of fortune turned so rapidly that Fulk and Louis were soon compelled to sue for peace. Early in 1 Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. liio (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 31, 143). Eng. Chron. a. mo. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 839. 2 " Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie of tham cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow." Eng. Chron. a, 1 1 10. Nobody seems to know what "on cweow" means; Mr. Thorpe (Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211) suggests that it may stand for '"Angeow." 3 Eng. Chron. a. Iiii, 11 12. « Eng. Chron. a. 11 12. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 841, 858. Will. Malm. Gesia Reg., 1. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 626). 234 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Lent 1 1 1 3 Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-P^coulde near Alengon; the count submitted to perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant daughter was betrothed to Henry's son, the Httle ^theling William. In March the treaty was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors ; and as the first-fruits of their new alliance there was seen the strange spectacle of a count of Anjou and a count of Blois fighting side by side to help the lord of Normandy in subduing the rebels who still held out in the castle of Belleme.^ Henry's next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.^ This ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was himself the aggressor ; Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not clearly ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against their lord had probably something to do with it ; but there seems also to have been another and a far more interesting element at work. " There arose a grave dissension between Count Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers."^ In this provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which was just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI. and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias of Le Mans ; but the 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt), p. 841. "^ Eng. Chron. a. 1 1 15. Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 69. Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 237. ^ " Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem Juniorem et burgenses Andecavenses. " Chron. S. Serg. a. 1 1 16 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 143). The Chron. S. Albin. a.. 1114 (ib. p. 32) has " Guerra burgensium contra comitem"; but M. Marchegay says in a note that two MSS. read "baronum" for "bur- gensium. " IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 235 faint echo of the dispute between count and citizens is drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with Theobald himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1 1 1 6. Louis retaliated by a raid upon Nor- mandy; the Norman barons recommenced their old intrigues ;i and they were soon furnished with an excellent pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert's infant son William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle to the care of his half-sister's husband, Elias of Saint-Saens. Elias presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the child ; at once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry's wrath, he fled with his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands, seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of Flanders.^ At last the faithful guardian's zeal was rewarded by seeing the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and Louis. In 1 1 1 7 they leagued themselves together with the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son in the duchy of Normandy ; and their league was at once joined by the count of Anjou.' The quarrel had now assumed an aspect far more threatening to Henry ; but it was not till the middle of the following summer that the war began in earnest. Its first honours were won by the count of Anjou, in the capture of La Motte-Gautier, a fortress on the Cenomannian border.* In September the count of Flanders was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Eu ;^ Louis and Fulk had however more useful allies in the Norman baronage, whose chiefs were ' See details in Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 {Rer. Gall. Script., vol. xii. p, 43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 843. "- Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 837, 838. ^ Eng. Chron. a. 1 1 17. Hen. Huntingdon, 1. vii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 239). * Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 844. His chronology is all wrong. " lb. p. 843. Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 {Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. xii. p. 45). Eng. Chron. a. 1118. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 403 (Hardy, pp. 630, 631) substitutes Arques for Eu. 236 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. nearly all either openly or secretly in league with them. Almeric of Montfort, who claimed the county of Evreux, was the life and soul of all their schemes. In October the city of Evreux was betrayed into his hands ;^ and this disaster was followed by another at Alengon. Henry had granted the lands of Robert of Belleme to Theobald of Blois ; Theobald, with his uncle's permission, made them over to his brother Stephen ; and Stephen at once began to shew in his small dominions the same incapacity for keeping order which he shewed afterwards on a larger scale in England. His negligence brought matters at Alencon to such a pass that the outraged citizens called in the help of the count of Anjou, admitted him and his troops by night into the town, and joined with him in blockading the castle.^ Stephen meanwhile had joined his uncle and brother at Seez. On receipt of the evil tidings, the two young counts hurried back to Alengon, made an unsuccessful attempt to revictual the garrison, and then tried to surround the Angevin camp, which had been pitched in a place called " the Park." A long day's fighting, in which the tide seems to have been turned at last chiefly by the valour of Fulk himself, ended in an Angevin victory and won him the surrender of Alengon.^ The following year was for Henry an almost unbroken series of reverses and misfortunes, and in 1 1 19 he was com- pelled to seek peace with Fulk. Their treaty was ratified in June by the marriage of William the ^theling and Matilda of Anjou ; Fulk made an attempt to end the Cenomannian difficulty by settling Maine upon his daughter as a marriage- portion, * and gave up Alencon on condition that Henry should restore it to the dispossessed heir, William Talvas.^ Henry had now to face only the French king and the traitor barons. With the latter he began at once by firing the town ^ Old. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 843, 846. - lb. p. 847. ^ The details of this story — in a very apocryphal-looking shape — are in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 145-150. The Angevin victory, however, comes out clearly in Ord. Vit. (as above). * Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 851. Eng. Chron. a. 11 19. Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 45). Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 652). s Ord. Vit. as above. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 237 of Evreux. ^ Louis, on receiving these tidings from Almeric of Montfort, assembled his troops at Etampes and marched upon Normandy. In the plain of Brenneville, between Noyon and Andely, he was met by Henry with the flower of his English and Norman forces. Louis, in the insane bravado of chivalry, disdained to get his men into order before beginning the attack, and he thereby lost the day. The first charge, made by eighty French knights under a Norman traitor, William Crispin, broke against the serried ranks of the English fighting on foot around their king ; all the eighty were surrounded and made prisoners ; and the rest of the French army was put to such headlong flight that, if the Norman tale can be true, out of nine hundred knights only three were found dead on the field. Louis him- self, unhorsed in the confusion, escaped alone into a wood where he lost his way, and was finally led back to Andely by a peasant ignorant of his rank.^ In bitter shame he went home to Paris to seek comfort and counsel of Almeric, who, luckily for both, had had no share in this disastrous expedition. By Almeric's advice a summons was issued to all bishops, counts, and other persons in authority throughout the realm, bidding them stir up their people, on pain of anathema, to come and help the king. The plan seems to have had much the same result as a calling-out of the " fyrd " in England, and the host which it brought together inflicted terrible ravages upon Normandy. In October Louis sought help in another quarter. Pope Calixtus had come to hold a council at Reims ; the ecclesiastical business ended, he had to listen to a string of appeals in all sorts of causes, and the first appellant was the king of France, who came before the Pope in person and set forth a detailed list of complaints against Henry. The archbishop of Rouen rose to defend his sovereign, but the council refused to hear him. Calixtus, however, was on too dangerous terms with Henry of Germany to venture upon anathematizing his father-in-law, Henry of England ; and in a personal interview 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 852. 2 lb. pp. 853-855. See also Eng. Chron. a. 1119, Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 31 Arnold, p. 241), and Sugar, Vita Ludov., t. 21 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 45). 23S ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. at Gisors, in November, the English king vindicated himself to the Pope's complete satisfaction. The tide had turned once more. Almeric had been won over by a grant of the coveted honour of Evreux ; and his defection from Louis was followed by that of all the other rebel Normans in rapid succession. William the Clito — as Duke Robert's son is called, to distinguish him from his cousin William the .(Etheling — was again driven into exile, with his faithful brother-in-law still at his side ; a treaty was arranged be- tween Henry and Louis ; all castles were to be restored, all captives freed, and all wrongs forgiven and forgotten.^ We seem to be reading the story of Fulk Nerra over again as we are told how his great-grandson, as soon as peace seemed assured and he was reconciled to all his neighbours, desired also by penance for his sins to become reconciled to God, and leaving his dominions in charge of his wife and their two little sons, set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.^ The " lord of three cities," ' however, could not leave his terri- tories to take care of themselves as the Black Count seems to have done ; the regency of his boys was merely nominal, for the eldest of them was but seven years old ; and though their mother, the daughter of Elias, may well have been a wise and courageous woman, it was no light matter thus to leave her alone with the rival kings on each side of her. To guard against all dangers, therefore, Fulk again formally commended the county of Maine to King Henry as over- lord during his own life, and bequeathed it to his son-in-law the Jitheling in case he should not return.* Two months before his departure, the cathedral of Le Mans, which had just been rebuilt, was consecrated in his presence and that of his wife. At the close of the ceremony he took up his little son Geoffrey in his arms and placed him on the altar, saying 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. AWm. Script.), pp. 858, 859, 863-866. Cf. Eng. Chron. a. 1120. 2 Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 871. 2 "Triumurbium dominus." I think it is Orderic who somewhere thus ex- pressively designates the lord of Angers and Le Mans and Tours. ^ This seems to be the meaning ofWill. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. u. 419 (Hardy, p. 652); " Quin et lerosolymam Fulco ire contendens, comitatum commendavit regi suum, si viveret ; futurum profecto generi, si non rediret." The " county " in question can only be Maine, of the gift of which to the ^theling at his marriage William has just been speaking. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 239 with tears : " O holy Julian, to thee I commend my child and my land, that thou mayest be the defender and protector of both ! " ^ The yearning which drew him literally to tread in his great-grandfather's steps was too strong to be repressed ; but he went,^ it is clear, with anxious and gloomy forebodings ; and before he reached his home again those forebodings were fulfilled. The treaty that had promised so well was scattered to the winds on November 25, 1 120, by the death of William the .^theling in the wreck of the White Ship.^ In that wreck perished not merely Fulk's hopes for the settlement of Maine, but Henry's hopes for the settlement of England and Normandy. Setting aside the father's personal grief for the loss of his favourite child, the .^theling's death was the most terrible political blow that could have fallen upon Henry. All his hopes for the continuance of his work were bound up in the life of his son. The toils and struggles of twenty years would be little more than lost labour unless he could guard against two dangers which had been the bane of both England and Normandy ever since the Conqueror's death : — a disputed succession to the English throne, and a separation between the insular and the continental dominions of the ducal house. In the person of William the .^Etheling both dangers seemed provided against ; if Henry lived but a few years more, there was every reason to expect that William, and William alone among the Conqueror's surviving descendants, would be able to mount the English throne with- out opposition. On any accepted principle, his only possible competitor would have been his cousin and namesake the Clito. Neither people nor barons would have been likely to think for a moment of setting aside the son of their crowned king and queen — a king born in the land and a queen who represented the ancient blood-royal of England — for a land- less, homeless stranger whose sole claim rested on the fact that by strict rule of primogeniture he was the heir male of " Ada Pontif. Cenovian. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 318). ^ In company with Rainald, bishop of Angers, in 1 1 20. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 32, 190). ' Eng. Chron. a. 1120; Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. v. c. 419 (Hardy, pp. 6531 654) ; Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 32 (Arnold, p. 242) ; Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), pp. 288, 289; Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script.), pp. 868, 869, etc. 240 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. the Conqueror ; and, once master of England, William might fairly be expected to keep his hold upon Normandy as his father had done. The shipwreck of November 1 120, how- ever, left Henry suddenly face to face with the almost certain prospect of f being succeeded in all his dominions by his brother's son, his enemy, the rival of his lost boy, the one person of all others whose succession would be most repug- nant alike to his feelings and to his policy. As soon as Henry himself was gone, the Clito would have positively no competitor ; for of all Henry's surviving children, the only one who had any legal rights was a daughter. The future of Henry's policy had hung upon the thread of a single life, and now the silver cord was loosed. The ^theling's child-widow was in England : on that sad night she had crossed with her father-in-law instead of her husband, and thus escaped sharing the latter's fate. Fulk at once sent to demand his daughter back ;^ but Henry was unwilling to part from her, and kept her con- stantly with him as if she were his own child, till the little girl herself begged to see her own parents again, and was allowed to return to Angers.^ Henry seems really to have clung to her as a sort of legacy from his dead son ; but, to Fulk's great indignation, he kept her dowry as well as her- self^ An embassy sent to England at Christmas 11 22 — apparently after her return to Anjou — came back without success after a delay of several months and a stormy parting from the king.* The most important part of the dowry however was still in Fulk's own hands. His settlement of Maine upon William and Matilda and their possible posterity was annulled by William's death ; Fulk was once more free to dispose of the county as he would. Regarding all ties with Henry as broken, and urged at once by Almeric of Montfort and Louis of France, he offered it, with the hand of his second daughter Sibyl, to William the Clito.^ To the threatening attitude of France and Anjou was 1 Eng. Chron. a. 1 121. = Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 875. 3 Will. Malm. Gesta Reg. , 1. v. c. 419 (Hardy, p. 655). * Eng. Chron. a. 1 123. = Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 838, 876. Eng. Chron. a. 1124. Will. Malm, as above (p. 654). IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 241 added, as a natural consequence, a conspiracy among the Norman barons, headed by the arch-plotter Almeric and the young Count Waleran of Meulan, a son of Henry's own familiar friend. Their scheme, planned at a meeting held in September at the Croix-Saint-Leuffroy, was discovered by the king ; he marched at once upon Waleran's castle of Pontaudemer, and took it after a six weeks' siege, during which he worked in the trenches as hard as any young soldier. This success was counterbalanced by the loss of Gisors, which was taken and sacked by Almeric ; Henry retaliated by seizing Evreux. Advent and a stormy winter checked the strife ; one battle in the spring put an end to it. On March 25, 1 124, the rebels were met at Bourgth^roulde by Ralf of Bayeux, who commanded at Evreux for King Henry; despite their superior numbers, they were completely defeated, and Waleran was taken prisoner.^ His capture was followed by the surrender of his castles ; Almeric, who had as usual escaped, again made his peace with Henry; and the Clito's cause, forsaken by his Norman partizans, was left almost wholly dependent on the support of Anjou.^ Mean- while Henry had found an ally in his son-in-law and name- sake the Emperor, and in August France was threatened with a German invasion. Louis seized the consecrated banner — the famous Oriflamme — which hung above the high altar in the abbey of S. Denis, and hurried off with it, as Geoffrey Martel had once ridden forth with the standard of S. Martin of Tours, to meet the foe. But the invasion came to an unexpected end. For some reason which is not explained, the Emperor turned suddenly homeward without striking a blow.* The English king found a more useful friend in the Pope than in the Emperor. By dint of threats, promises and bribes, he persuaded the court of Rome to annul the marriage of Sibyl and the Clito on the ground of con- ^ Eng. Chron. a. 1 124. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script.), pp. 876- 880. Will. Jumi^ges Contin., 1. viii. c. 21 (ib. p. 302). The date comes from the Chronicle ; the continuator of Will. Jumieges makes it a day later. 2 Ord, Vit. (as above), pp. 880-882. ' Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 49, 50). VOL. I. R 342 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. sanguinity.^ Of their kinship there is no doubt ;" but it was in exactly the same degree as the kinship between Henry's own son and Sibyl's sister, to whose marriage no objection had ever been raised. The Clito refused to give up his bride, and was thereupon excommunicated by the Pope \^ Fulk publicly burnt the letter in which the legate insisted upon the dissolution of the marriage, singed the beards of the envoys who carried it, and put them in prison for a fortnight. The consequence was an interdict* which com- pelled him to submit ; the new-married couple parted, and William the Clito became a wanderer once more.^ Next Christmas Henry struck his final blow at his nephew's hopes of the succession. An old tradition which declared that whatsoever disturber of the realm of France was brought face to face with the might of S. Denis would die within a twelvemonth was fulfilled in the person of the Emperor Henry V.° His widow, the only surviving child of Henry of England and the " Good Queen Maude,'' was summoned back to her father's court.'' She came not without regret, for she had dwelt from childhood among her husband's people, and was held by them in great esteem. The dying Emperor had no child to take his place. He had com- mitted his sceptre to his consort f and some of the princes of Lombardy and Lorraine took this symbolical bequest in such earnest that they actually followed Matilda over sea to demand her back as their sovereign.' But King Henry had other plans for his daughter. At the midwinter assembly 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script.), p. 838. ^ They were descended, one in the fifth, the other in the sixth degree, from Richard the Fearless ; Ord. Vit. as above, giving details of the pedigree. 3 Brief of Calixtus II., August 26 [1124], in D'Achery, Spicilegium, vol. iii. P- 479- * Brief of Honorius II., April 12 [1125], ibid. " Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 882. « Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 [/ier. Call. Scripti., vol. xii. p. 52). Henry \. died in "Whit-week, 11 25; Ord. Vit. (as above). ' Will. Jumieges Contin., 1. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt p 304) Will. Mahn. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. i (Hardy, p. 689). She went to England with her father m September 1126. Eng. Chron. ad ann. * Ord. Vit. as above. ^ Will. Jumieges Contin. and Will. Malm, as above. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 243 of 1 1 26-1 127 he made the barons and prelates of England swear that in case of his death without lawful son they would acknowledge her as Lady of England and Normandy.' The first result of this unprecedented step was that the king of France set himself to thwart it by again taking up the cause of William the Clito, offering him, as compensation for the loss of Sibyl and Maine, a grant of the French Vexin and a bride whom not even Rome could make out to be his cousin — Jane of Montferrat, half-sister to Louis's own queen.^ Two months later the count of Flanders was murdered at Bruges. He was childless ; the king of France adjudged his fief to William the Clito as great-grandson of Count Baldwin V., and speedily put him in possession of the greater part of the county.^ Henry's daring scheme now seemed all but hopeless. His only chance was to make peace with some one at least of his adversaries ; and the one whom he chose was not the king of France, but the count of Anjou. He saw — and Fulk saw it too — that until the question about Maine was settled there could be no lasting security, and that it could only be settled effectually by the union of all conflicting claims in a single hand. For such an union the way was now clear. The heir of Anjou was growing up to manhood ; the chosen successor of Henry was a childless widow. Regardless of his promise not to give his daughter in marriage to any one out of the realm* — regardless of the scorn of both Normans and English,^ of the Empress's own reluctance,^ and also of the kindred between the houses of Normandy and Anjou — Henry sent Matilda over sea shortly after Pentecost 1 127 under the care of her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester and Count Brian of Britanny, who were '' Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Jumieges Contin., 1. viii. c. 25 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Script., p. 304). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. cc. 2, 3 (Hardy, pp. 690-692). 2 Eng. Chron. a. 1 127. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Serif tt.), p. 884. Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 151. ' Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 884, 885. See the Flemish Chronicles in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xiii. * Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 693). ' Eng. Chron. a. 1127. "Hit ofthute nathema ealle Frencisc and Englisc.'' ^ Will. Jumieges Contin. as above. 244 ENGLAND UNDER THE AXGEVIX KINGS chap. charged with instructions to the archbishop of Rouen to make arrangements for her marriage with Geoffrey Planta- genet, eldest son of the count of Anjou. In the last week of August the king himself followed them ;^ at the following Whitsuntide he knighted Geoffrey at Rouen with his own hand ;^ and eight days later Geoffrey and Matilda were wedded by the bishop of Avranches in the cathedral church of S. Julian at Le Mans.^ It was a triumphant day for Fulk ; but more triumphant still was the day when he and Geoffrey brought the new countess home to Angers. A large part of the barons and prelates who filled S. Julian's minster on the wedding-day were Normans who in their inmost souls viewed with mingled rage and shame what they held to be the degradation of the Norman ducal house ; a large part of the crowd who with their lips cheered the bridal procession as it passed through the streets of Le Mans were all the while cursing in their hearts the Angevin foe of Normandy.* But in Fulk's own capital the rejoicings were universal and un- alloyed. Many a brilliant match had been made by the house of Anjou, from that wedding with the heiress of Amboise which had been the beginning of its founder's fortunes, down to Fulk's own marriage, only seventeen years ago, with Aremburg of Maine ; but never before had Black Angers welcomed such a bride as King Henry's daughter. A writer of the next generation has left us a picture of Angers as it was in his days — days when the son of Geoffrey and Matilda was king of England and count of Anjou. In its main features that picture is almost as true a likeness ' Eng. Chron. a. 1127. Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. u. 3 (Hardy, p. 692). Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247). - Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 234-236. 2 //'. p. 236. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt.), p. 889. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 36 (MabiUon, Vet. Anal., p. 321). On the date see note F at end of chapter. * I think this may be safely inferred from the English Chronicler's words a. 1 127 (above, p. 243, note 5), and from a singularly suggestive passage in the account of the weddmg festivities in Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (as above), p. 237 : "Clamatum est voce praeconis ne quis indigena vel advena, dives, mediocris vel pauper, nobilis vel plebeius, miles vel colonus ex hac regali tetitiS se subtraheret ; qui autem gaudiis nuptiahbus minime interesset, regise procul dubio majestatis reus esset " IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 245 now as it can have been seven hundred years ago, and by its help we can easily recall the scene of the bride's home- coming. We can see the eager citizens swarming along the narrow, crooked streets that furrow the steep hill-side ; — the clergy in their richest vestments assembling from every church in what is still, as it was then, emphatically a city of churches, and mustering probably on the very summit of the hill, in the open space before the cathedral — not the cathedral whose white twin spires now soar above all things around, the centre and the crown of Angers, but its Roman- esque predecessor, crowned doubtless by a companion rather than a rival to the neighbouring dark tower of S. Aubin's abbey, which now contrasts so vividly with the light pinnacles of S. Maurice. Thence, at a given signal, the procession streamed down with lighted tapers and waving banners to the northern gate of the city, and with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, half drowned in the shouting of the people and the clang of the bells overhead, led the new countess to her dwelling in the hall of Fulk the Black. It was Fulk who had made the first rude plans for the edifice of statesmanship which had now all but reached its last and loftiest stage. The unconscious praise of the Black Count was in every shout which beneath his palace-windows hailed in the person of his worthiest namesake and descendant the triumph of the house of Anjou. There was no mother to welcome Geoffrey and his bride ; Aremburg had not lived to see the marriage of her son ; ^ and now the shadow of another coming separation fell over the mutual congratulations of Fulk and of his people. Another royal father besides Henry was seeking an Angevin bride- groom for his daughter and an Angevin successor to his throne. It was now just thirty years since the acclamations of the crusading host had chosen Godfrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem. The crown, which he in his humility declined 1 She died in 1126 ; Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm.ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 190). A story of her last illness, in Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 320), is very characteristic of Fulk, and indicates, too, that whether or not his marriage with her began in policy alone, it ended in real affection. 246 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. to wear, passed after his death to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, and then to another Baldwin, of the noble family of R^hel in Champagne. After a busy reign of ten years, Baldwin II., having no son, grew anxious to find a suitable husband for his eldest daughter and destined heiress, Melisenda. In the spring of 1128, with the unanimous approval of his subjects, he offered her hand, together with his crown, to Count Fulk of Anjou.^ He could not have chosen a fitter man. Fulk was in the prime of life,^ young enough to bring to his task all the vigour and energy need- ful to withstand the ever-encroaching Infidels, yet old enough to have learned political caution and experience ; and if the one qualification was needed for defence against external foes, the other was no less so for steering a safe course amid the endless jealousies of the Frank princes in Palestine. Moreover, Fulk was known in the East by something more than reputation. Free of all connexion with the internal disputes of the realm, he was yet no utter stranger who would come thither as a mere foreign interloper. He had dwelt there for a whole year as a guest and a friend, and the memory of his visit had been kept alive in the minds of the people of the land, as well as in his own, by a yearly con- tribution which, amid all his cares and necessities at home, he had never failed to send to the Knights of the Temple for the defence of the Holy City.^ Baldwin had thus every inducement to make the offer ; and Fulk had equally good reasons for accepting it. His was clearly no case of mere vulgar longing after a crown. There may have been a natural feeling that it would be well to put Geoffrey's father on a titular level with Matilda's ; if the prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was already in circulation, there may have been also a feeling that it was rapidly approaching its fulfilment. But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in temper to be dazzled ■■ Will. Tyr., 1. xiv. c. i. Acta Pontif. Cetwman., t. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.) p. 321. ^ He cannot have been more than thirty-eight ; he may have been only thirty- six. ' Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 871). Will. Tyr. as above. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 247 by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and Aquitaine had ever been ; he must have known that the consort of the queen of Jeru- salem would find little rest upon her throne. But this second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It was work that he longed for : and work at home was at an end for him. The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished ; when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence. Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin's proposal come a year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and duty ; coming as it did just after Henry's, it extricated all parties from their last difficulty. Fulk could not, however, accept the proposal without the consent of his overlord King Louis and that of his own subjects.^ Both were granted ; his people had prospered under him, but they, too, doubtless saw that alike for him and for them it was time to part. On that same Whit- Sunday when young Geoffrey was knighted at Rouen by King Henry, his father, prostrate before the high altar in the cathedral church of Tours, took the cross at the hands of Archbishop Hildebert.^ From the wedding festivities at Le Mans he came home to make his preparations for departure. It may be that once more in the old hall overlooking the Mayenne the barons of Anjou and Touraine gathered round the last Count Fulk, to be solemnly released from their allegiance to him, and to perform their homage to his suc- cessor. A more secluded spot was chosen for the last family meeting. A few miles south-east of Saumur, in the midst of dark woods and fruitful apple-orchards, a pious and noble , ' Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 205. 2 Gesta Cons, (ibid.), p. 152. 248 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. crusader, Robert of Arbrissel, had founded in the early years of Fulk's reign the abbey of Fontevraud, whose church has counted ever since among the architectural marvels of western Europe. An English visitor now-a-days feels as if some prophetic instinct must have guided its architect and given to his work that peculiar awe-striking character which so exactly fits it for the burial-place of the two Angevin kings of England whose sculptured effigies still remain in its south transept. The first of their race who wore a crown, however, came thither not for his last sleep, but only for a few hours of rest ere he started on his eastward journey. The monastery was a double one — half for men and half for women ; in the latter Fulk's eldest daughter, the widow of William the ^theling, had lately taken the veil. The cloisters of Fontevraud offered a quiet refuge where father and children could all meet undisturbed to exchange their last farewells.-' Before Whitsuntide came round again Fulk and Anjou had parted for ever.^ It is not for us to follow him on his lifelong crusade.^ The Angevin spirit of restless activity and sleepless vigilance, of hard-working thoroughness and indomitable perseverance, never, perhaps, shewed to better advantage than in this second half of the eventful life of Fulk of Jerusalem ; but we have to trace its workings only as they influenced the history of our own land. Our place is not with the devoted personal followers who went with Fulk across land and sea, but with those who stayed to share the fortunes of his successor in Anjou. Our concern is with the father of the Angevin kings, not of Jerusalem, but of England. ^ " Ego Fulco junior Andegavensium comes, Fulconis comitis filius, ire volens Hierusalem, conventum sanctimonialium Fontis-Evraudi expetii. Adfuerunt etiam ibi filii mei Gaufridus et Helias, et filia; mese Mathildis et Sibylla, quarum una, id est Mathildis, paulo ante pro Dei amore se velari fecerat, etc. Acta charta apud Fontem-Ebraudi anno ab Incarnat. Dom. 1129" {Rer. Gall. Script., vol. xii. p. 736 note, from "Clypeum nascentis Fontis-Ebraldi "). "- Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 153. Gesta Amb. Domin. {ibid.), p. 205. Will. Tyr., 1. xiii. c. 24, 1. xiv. c. I. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1 1 29 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 144). ^ Its history is in Will. Tyr., 1. xiv. cc. 1-27. IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 249 Note A. THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GATINAIS. All historians are agreed that Geoffrey the Bearded and Fulk Rechin were sons of Geoffrey Martel's sister and of a count (or vis- count) of Gatinais, or Chateaulandon, which is the same thing — the Gatinais being a district on the north-eastern border of the Orl^anais whereof Chateaulandon was the capital. But the names of both husband and wife differ in different accounts. Fulk Rechin (Mar- chegay, Comtes, p. 375) calls his mother Hermengard ; R. Diceto (ib. p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) calls her Adela ; in the Gesta Cons, no names are given. If we could be sure that Fulk really wrote the fragment which bears his name, his testimony would of course be decisive ; as it is, we are left in doubt. The point is one of trifling importance, for whatever the lady's name may have been, there is no doubt that she was the daughter of Fulk the Black and Hildegard. But who was her husband ? First, as to his name. The Gesta Cons, do not mention it. The Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1060 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 402), Hugh of Fleury {Rer. Gall. Sa-iptt.,\o\. xii. p. 797), and R. Diceto (Marche- gay, Comtes, p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) call him Alberia Fulk Rechin (as above) calls him Geoffrey. None of them tell us any- thing about him. It seems in fact to be the aim of the Angevin writers to keep us in the dark as to the descent of the later counts of Anjou from the house of Gatinais through the husband of Hermengard -Adela; but they try to make out a connexion between the two families six generations further back. One of the earliest legends in the Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 39-45) tells how Chateaulandon and the Gatinais were given to Ingelger as a reward for his defence of his slandered godmother, the daughter and heiress of a Count Geoffrey of Gatinais, and the alleged gift is coupled with a grant from the king of the viscounty of Orleans. What Ingelger may or may not have held it is impossible to say, as we really know nothing about him. But there is proof that the viscounty of Orleans at least did not pass to his descendants. The very first known charter of Fulk the Good, one dated May 942, is witnessed by Geoffrey viscount of Origans ; and Geoffrey Greygown's charter for the reform of S. Aubin's in 966 is witnessed by Alberic viscount of Gatinais, whose signature has already appeared in 957, attached to a charter of Theobald the Trickster. This Alberic may very likely have been the son of his predecessor Geoffrey, but he cannot well have been the father of Fulk Nerra's son-in-law ; there is a generation dropped out, and of the man who should fill it the 250 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. only trace is in Menage {Hist, de Sable), who says that Fulk Rechin's father, Geoffrey count of Gatinais, was the son of another Geoffrey and Beatrice, daughter of Alberic II. of Micon (Mabille, introd. Comtes, pp. Ixxxv-lxxxvi). It seems probable that Orleans and Chateaulandon went together in fact as well as in Angevin legend. Assuming therefore that Manage was copying a document now lost, the pedigree would stand thus : Geoffrey, viscount of Orleans 942 I Alberic, viscount in 957 and 966 Geoffrey, viscount of Orleans and count of Gatinais Alberic or Geoffrey = Hermengard or Adela, I daughter of Fulk Nerra I I Geoffrey the Bearded. Fulk Rechm. If we might assume also, with M. Mabille, that the " Alberic " whose signature appears beside that of Fulk the Red in 886 (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. lix, note i) was the father of the first Geoffrey of Orleans, then the two names would stand alternate till we come to Hermengard's husband. Is it just possible that (on a principle somewhat like that which made all the dukes of Aquitaine assume the name of William) this alternation of names grew into a family tradition, so that the son of Geoffrey II. and Beatrice having by some accident been christened by his father's instead of his grandfather's name, assumed the latter officially on succeeding to the title, and thus became known to outsiders as " Alberic," while his own son (Fulk Rechin) spoke of him by his original and real name? However this may be, he was most probably descended from the family who became viscounts of Orleans at about the same time that the house of Anjou was being founded. They make no figure in history, and the Angevin writers do their best to efface them al- together. Ralf de Diceto just names the father of the two young counts, and that is all ; in the Gesta Cons, his very name is dropped, and the reader is left in utter darkness as to who and what Martel's nephews were. They were Martel's nephews, and that was all that anybody was intended to know about them. Fulk Rechin himself, or his representative, merges the Chateaulandon connexion almost completely in the Angevin, and regards himself simply as the grand- son of Fulk Nerra. After all, they are right ; it was Fulk Nerra's blood that made his grandsons what they were ; their father might IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 251 have been anybody, or, as he almost appears, nobody, for all the influence he had on their characters or their destinies. Note B. the heir of geoffrey martel. Of the disposal of his territories made by Geoffrey Martel there are three versions. 1. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131), R. Diceto {ib. p. 333; Stubbs, vol. i. p. 185) and Chron. Tur. Magn. (Salmon, Chron. Touraitie, pp. 122, 123) say that Anjou and Saintonge were left to Fulk, Touraine and Gatinais to Geoffrey. 2. A MS. representing the earliest form of the Gesta Cons. (ending in 1106) says just the opposite: Anjou and Saintonge to Geoffrey, Touraine and Gatinais to Fulk (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131, note I. See Mabille, introd. Comtes, ib. pp. iv-viii). 3. Orderic (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 532) and Will. Poitiers {ib. pp. 188, 189) ignore Fulk and make Geoffrey sole heir. The first version is easily disposed of. In three charters of S. Florence of Saumur, one of 1061 (Marchegay, Archives d' Anjou, vol. i. p. 259) and two whose dates must be between 1062 and 1066 (ib. p. 278), and in one of S. Maur, 1066 [ib. pp. 358-360), Geoffrey the Bearded is formally described as count of Anjou. The strongest proof of all is a charter of Fulk Rechin himself, March 11, 1068, setting forth how Geoffrey, nephew and Juir of Geoffrey Martel, had made certain promises to S. Florence, which he, Fulk, having now got possession of Anjou, fulfilled {ib. p. 260). The second version, though apparently not contradicted by any documentary proof, has nothing to support it, and contains an internal difficulty. For how could Martel leave the Gatinais to Fulk ? Surely it was not his to leave at all, but would pass as a matter of course to Geoffrey as Alberic's (Geoffrey's ?) eldest son. The old confusion of the relations of the Gatinais to Anjou peeps out again here. The third account is that of foreign writers ; but those writers are Orderic and William of Poitiers. And they are not unsupported. Geoffrey Martel's last act, a charter granted to Marmoutier on his deathbed, is signed by his nephew and successor-designate Geoffrey, and by Fulk, who is described simply as the latter's brother (Mabille, introd. Comtes, p. Ixxxiv). The conclusion to which all this leads is that Martel bequeathed the whole of his dominions to his elder nephew Geoffrey, and that all the conflicting stories of a division of territory were inventions to save the character of Fulk Rechin. It is possible that Martel did, 252 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. as Fulk says, invest him with Saintonge, but even here it is evident that the elder brother's rights were reserved, for it is Geoffrey, not Fulk, who fights for Saintonge with the duke of Aquitaine. One portion of Martel's dominions is named in none of these accounts, except Fulk's ; and that is Maine. Fulk coolly puts it into the list of his own possessions, and M. Mabille regards this as a blunder proving that the author of the Fragment was not what he professes to be. May it not rather tell the other way ? A forger would have remembered that Maine was lost and not risked such a glaring falsehood ; the count ignores its de facto loss because he holds himself its overlord de jure. We shall find Geoffrey the Bearded making his appearance as titular overlord of Maine in 1063. Did Martel feel about Maine as William the Conqueror seems to have felt about England ? Note C. the war of saintonge. The account of this war between Geoffrey the Bearded and Guy-Geoffrey, alias William VII., of Aquitaine, has to be made out from one direct source and one indirect one. The first is the Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 402, 403): " Goffredus et Fulco habentes certamen cum Gaufredo duce propter Sanctonas, venientes cum magno exercitu, pugnaverunt cum eo in bello etiam in Aquitania, ubi e contrario Pictavorum exercitus adunatus est ; et ab utrisque partibus magnis animositatibus pugnatum est, sed traditores belli et ceteri signiferi, vexillis projectis, exercitum Pictavensium in fugam verterunt. Quapropter vulnerati multi sunt et plurimi occisi atque nonnulli capti ; unde quidam versibus eam confusionem ita describit, dicens : Cum de Pictavis bellum sit et Andegavinis, Inque die Martis fuit et Sancti Benedicti, Circa forte Caput Wultonnse contigit esse. Annus millenus tunc sexagesimus unus." That entry comprises all the direct information on the subject. The Angevin monastic chronicles and Fulk Rechin do not mention it at all. Neither do the Gesta Co7is. in the right place ; but they mix it up with the war between Geoffrey Martel and William the Fat in 1033. By the light of the Chron. S. Maxent, it seems possible to disentangle the two stories. It even seems possible to make sense of a passage in the Gesta which never can be sense as it stands, by understanding it as referring to Geoffrey the Bearded instead of his uncle : " Willelmus Pictavensium comes consulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi preoccupatum tenebat, quia IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 253 patrui sui fuerat. Martellus eumdem consulatum reclamabat quia avi sui fuerat, cujus heredes absque liberis mortui erant; et ideo ad heredes sororis avi sui debere reverti affirmabat " (Gesia Cons., Mar- chegay, Comtes, p. 126). This is the story by which the Gesta- writer professes to explain the cause of the war of Geoffrey Martel and Wilham the Fat, of which he then gives an elaborate account, ending with William's capture and the consequent surrender of Saintes to Geoffrey. But the story is utterly senseless ; the claims of William and Martel as therein stated are alike devoid of all show of reason. In the account of the war itself, too, there are strong traces of confusion ; Saintes is assumed to have passed back into the duke's hands, of which there is no sign elsewhere ; and to crown all, the scene of the battle in which William is taken is laid, not as by the Chron. S. Maxent. (a. 1032, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 392) and Fulk Rechin {Comtes, p. 378), at S. Jouin-de-Marne or Montcontour, but at Chef-Boutonne. The question then arises : Can this wild tale in the Gesta, which is quite impossible as an explanation of Martel's war with William V., be interpreted so as to explain his successor's war with William VII. ? "Willelmus [VII., alias Guy-Geoffrey] Pictavensium comes con- sulatum Sanctonicum suum esse volebat et vi praeoccupatum tenebat [having presumably seized it on Martel's death], quia patrui sui [for patrui rt&d fratris — William the Fat — or patris, WiUiam the Great] fuerat. Martellus [Barbatus] eumdem consulatum reclamabat, quia avi sui [Fulconis Nerrae] fuerat, cujus haeredes [i.e. G. Martellus] absque liberis mortui essent ; et ideo ad hseredes sororis avi sui [read avunculi sui — Martel's sister, the Bearded one's mother] debere reverti affirmabat." Read in this way, the story is quite reasonable and intelligible, and the rest of the Gesta's account might stand almost intact, except the capture of the duke, which of course is dragged in from the earlier war. The confusion between the Williams of Aquitaine is easily accounted for, and so is that between the Geoffreys of Anjou, especially as all the Geoffreys after Martel occasionally took to them- selves his cognomen. Note D. the descendants of herbert wake-dog. Not the least puzzling matter connected with the Cenomannian wars is the genealogy of the sovereign house of Maine. The succession of the counts themselves — Hugh I. (or David), Herbert I. (Wake-dog), Hugh II., Herbert II. — is plain enough, as also that each was the son of his predecessor. But the filiation of the women 254 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of the family — Margaret, Gersendis, Paula and Biota — is far from being equally clear. 1. As to Margaret, there is no real doubt. Orderic does once (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 683) call her a daughter of Herbert [II.] ; but his own statements in two other places (ib. pp. 487 and 532), as well as Will. Poitiers iib. p. 190), shew that this is a mere slip. Margaret was clearly a daughter of Hugh II. and sister of Herbert II. 2. As to Biota. Orderic (as above, p. 487) calls her "Hugonis Cenomannensium comitis filiam " ; in Will. Poitiers ifb. p. 189) she is " soror Hugonis"; and Mr. Freeman {Norm. Conq., 3d ed., vol. iii. p. 200, and note T, p. 676) adopts the latter version. Biota, then, was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog and sister of Hugh II. But were Gersendis and Paula her sisters or her nieces ? 3. The fullest and most distinct statement of the Cenomannian pedigree is that of Orderic in Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 532 : " Hugo filius Herberti . . . Bertam ... in conjugium accepit ; quae filium nomine Herbertum et tres filias ei peperit. Una earum data est Azsoni Marchiso Ligurige. Alia nomine Margarita Rodberto filio Guillelmi Ducis Neustrise desponsata est . . . Tertia vero Joanni domino castri quod Flecchia dicitur nupsit." With regard to this last marriage, it is to be observed that in the speech which Orderic puts into the mouth of Elias of La Flfeche, addressing Hugh of Este (ib. p. 684), he says nothing about his mother at all, but makes him trace his descent from Herbert Wake- dog through his grandmother, whom he calls Herbert's daughter : " Filia Herberti comitis Lancelino de Balgenceio nupsit, eique . . . Joannem meum genitorem peperit." The name of John's wife, Paula, comes from another passage of Orderic (ib. p. 768); but he there says nothing about her parentage, merely calling her son Elias " Hugonis Cenomannorum consulis consobrinus." The houses of Le Mans and La Fl^che cannot have intermarried twice in two suc- ceeding generations ; one of Orderic's statements must be wrong ; but which, I cannot decide. The last point is the parentage of Gersendis, the wife of Azzo of Este ; and as the whole tone of Elias's speech (as above) implies that he and her son were related to the counts of Le Mans in the same degree, the solution of this question might almost be held to decide the previous one also. This seems to be Mr. Freeman's opinion, and he regards Orderic's statement quoted above as conclusive that Gersendis and Paula were both daughters of Hugh II., and sisters therefore of Margaret and Herbert II., in spite of the biographer of the bishops of Le Mans (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 308), who ex- pressly says that Gersendis was a daughter of Herbert Wake-dog, and the continuator of Will. Jumieges, who says : — " Cenomannenses IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 255 . . . consilium ineunt cum Helii filio Joannis de FlecS, . . . ut filiam cujusdam comitis LangobardicR, neptem videlicet Hereberti quon- dam Cenomannensis comitis ex primogenitA fili&, in matrimonium ducat." Will. Jumibges, 1. viii. c. 5 (Duchesne, Hist Norm. Scriptt., p. 294). This re-appears in R. Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 183, 184; Marchegay, Comtes, p. 334) in the following form: — " Helias, filius Johannis de Fleca, Sibillam, filiam cujusdam comitis Longobardise, neptem scilicet Hereberti quondam Cenomannorum comitis, duxit uxorem, et cum eS. comitatum Cenomannise suscepit." But this is certainly wrong ; for the first wife of Elias was Matilda of Chateau-du-Loir, and the second was Agnes of Perche. What Elias could have had to gain by the marriage thus pro- posed for him it is impossible to guess, as he himself certainly was quite as nearly related to the counts of Maine as this oddly-described bride could have been. Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq., 3d ed., vol. iii., note T, p. 676), takes the description as favouring Orderic's theory, and remarks : " The words could only have been written by one who looked on Gersendis as a sister of Herbert." " Neptem Hereberti," then, he interprets, "niece of Herbert [II]." But is it not a much simpler interpretation of the whole phrase — " 7ieptem Hereberti ex primogenita filid." — to read it " granddaughter of Herbert [I.] through his eldest daughter" ? In that case, we should have another witness on the side of the bishops' biographer. There is another curious bit of evidence which at first glance seems also to tell in his favour. I do not think that it really proves anything about the matter; but it is worth examining for other reasons. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville {Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 392, note 5), declares it proved on documentary evidence that Stephen-Henry of Blois, the father of our King Stephen, was the son of Theobald III. by his first marriage with Gersendis of Maine. About the marriage itself there is no doubt, nor about the divorce which followed it; and the latter had taken place in 1049 at latest, for Theobald was excommunicated for that very cause by the Council of Reims. Most historians seem however to have sup- posed that Gersendis was then a mere child, and that the mother of Stephen, as well as of Theobald's other children, was his second wife, Adela of Valois. M. de Jubainville, in support of his opinion, refers especially to two charters. One is in Gallia Christiana, vol. viii., instr. col. 548. It has no date, and says nothing about Stephen's mother or his stepmother; I therefore cannot see its bearing on the question. The other is in Bernier, Histoire de Blois, preuves, pp. xiii-xiv. In it Stephen-Henry, in the year 1089, grants certain lands to Pontlevoy "pro animse me» et uxoris et Theobald! patris mei et matris mece Gandree . . . remedio"; and has the grant confirmed " nomine . . . Ate uxoris mese. Alee uxoris 2S6 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Thebaudi comitis," etc. This certainly seems to shew that Adela was not his mother, though it does not necessarily follow that " Gandree " represents Gersendis. If it does, Stephen-Henry must have been born in 1049 at latest, and therefore Gersendis cannot possibly have been a daughter of Hugh II., who was not married till 1040 at the very earliest. The greatest puzzle in the whole matter, however, is this : If Stephen-Henry was really the eldest son of Gersendis of Maine, how does it happen that neither in 1073, nor in 1089, nor in any of the Cenomannian revolutions and wars, do we hear a single word about his claims upon the county ? M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's suggest- ion in fact opens a question much more important and much more obscure than that of the age and parentage of Gersendis.. He certainly seems to have proved that Adela of Valois was not Stephen's mother ; but has he proved that Gersendis was ? The only bit of evidence, direct or indirect, which it seems possible to bring to bear upon this matter is a passage in the Historia Fontificalis (Pertz, Moil. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 531) where it is said that the cause of our King Stephen was upheld by some of the Roman cardinals who claimed kindred with him " eo quod avia ejus Lumbarda fuerit." Now, as the second husband of Gersendis was a Lombard, this may come from some confused idea about her. But it also suggests another possible solution of the whole question about Stephen- Henry's mother. Theobald and Gersendis were divorced in 1049 at latest ; the first record in which Adela appears as Theobald's wife is dated 1061 (Jubainville, Comtes de Champagne, vol. i. p. 393, note 3). May not the mysterious "Gandrea" of the charter of 10S9 have been an Italian lady who was married to Theobald, became the mother of his heir, and died, between those two dates ? Note E. the siege of la flfcche and treaty of blanchelande. There are two questionable points connected with these matters : I. the date ; 2. the geography. I. The only original writer who gives a detailed account of both siege and treaty is Orderic, who carries his story straight on from the quelling of the revolt of Maine in 1073 to the siege of La Fleche, as if it had all happened in the same year, before William returned to England with his troops. On the other hand, none of the Angevin writers mention La Flfeche under date 1073 ; but the Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 26, 189) have "Exercitus de Fissa," the former in 1077, the latter in IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 257 1078; and in the Art de verifier les Dates these entries are inter- preted as referring to the siege which was followed by the treaty of Blanchelande. M. Voisin (Les Cenomans, p. 414) dates the whole affair 1085 ; he gives no reason and seems to be quite unsupported. The choice lies therefore between Orderic's date and that of the Angevin chronicles. Mr. Freeman {Norm. Conq., vol. iv. pp. 560- 563) follows Orderic, and I have done the same. 2. As to the geography. Orderic (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 533) says that to meet William the Angevin and Breton host, leaving La Flfeche, " Ligerim fluvium audacter pertransierunt." Now this must be wrong, as the Loire is a long way south of La Flfeche. It is clear that for Ligerim, " Loire," we must read Liderim, "Loir," as Mr. Freeman says {Norm. Conq., vol. iv. p. 562, note 2). Even crossing the Loir seems rather a strange proceeding ; for La Flfeche being on the right or north bank of that river, they must have crossed it to the southward — i.e. away from Normandy. How came it that William, marching against them out of Normandy, had gone so far down to the south of them ? There is however a further question as to the actual place of the treaty, which Mr. Freeman (as above, p. 562) places at Brufere in the Passais. If such was the case, Orderic's story of the crossing of the river becomes quite hopeless, as Brufere is a long way north- west of La Flfeche. But there is another version. J. Pesche in his Dictionnaire historique de la Sarthe, vol. i. p. 168, under " Blanchelande pu Blanche-bruyire," says : " Vaste espace de terrain infertile, ou croit abondamment le lichen des rennes, dont la blancheur lui aura fait donner son nom ; situd entre La Flhhe et Le Lude, c6toy6 par la route qui conduit de Tune \ I'autre de ces deux villes." It is this which Pesche and, following him, M. Voisin {Les Cinomans, p. 414, note i) mark as the scene of the treaty. So does M. Provost in a note to Orderic, vol. ii. p. 258, and he adds that a farm there still in 1840 bore the name of Blanchelande. If this theory is correct, Orderic's geography is quite right and clear ; the besiegers of La Flfeche, on the north side of the Loir, crossing over to its southern bank, would march straight upon the "white moor." William must then have crossed higher up and made a circuit to the south-east of them. The only question remaining would be, what was his reason for this movement ? To which there was doubtless a good military answer. With regard to the second siege of La Flfeche by Fulk Rechin, in 1 08 1, there is a very strange story in the Chron. Rain. Andeg. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 13). We are there told that Fulk not only took and burned the castle (as the Chron. S. Albin., ib. p. 26, also states under the same year) in revenge for John's rebellion against him, but also punished King William for his previous relief VOL. I. S 258 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of the castle, by so worsting him in battle that he retreated after giving hostages for peace, among whom were his brother the count of Mortain and his own son ! Mr. Freeman says nothing of this very apocryphal-looking story. Is it anything more than an Angevin travesty of Robert's homage to Fulk at Blanchelande ? Note F. the marriage of geoffrey and matilda. The date of this marriage is commonly given as ii 2 7. A com- parison of evidence seems however to lead to the conclusion that its true date is 1128. 1. The Angevin chronicles never mention the marriage at all. The Gesta Cons., Will. Jumifeges and several other writers mention it without any kind of date. The English Chronicle, Sim. Durh., Will. Malm, and Hen. Hunt, give no distinct date, but imply that the proposal was immediately followed by the wedding. They speak as if Robert and Brian had taken Matilda over sea and married her to Geoffrey without more ado. 2. Orderic mentions the marriage in two places. In the first (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt, p. 763) he gives no clue to the date; in the second (ib. p. 889) he dates it 1129. 3. The Chron. Fiscannense {Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 778) dates it 1127. 4. A charter of agreement between the bishop of S6ez and the convent of Marmoutier (printed in Gilles Bry's Hist de Perche, p. 106) has " signum Henrici Regis quando dedit filiam suam Gaufredo comiti Andegavensi juniori." It is dated "anno ab Inc. Dom. 1127, Indictione VI." 5. The last witness is John of Marmoutier, the author of the Historia Gaufredi Duds. From him we might have expected a distinct and authentic statement ; but he does not mention the year at all. He says that Geoffrey was knighted on Whit-Sunday and married on its octave, and that he was then fifteen years of age {Hist Gaufr. Duds, Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 236, 233). After- wards, in speaking of the birth of Henry Fitz-Empress, he says that it took place in the fourth year of his parents' marriage {ib. pp. 277, 278). Henry was born on Mid-Lent Sunday, March 5, II 33; if therefore the writer reckoned backwards from the Whitsuntide of that year, his words ought to mean that the marriage was in 11 29. But as he goes on to state that Matilda's third son was born in the sixth year of her marriage, and that Henry I. died "anno eodem, ab Incarnatione videlicet Domini 113 7," it is IV. ANJOU AND NORMANDY 259 impossible to say what he did mean. Whether he is collecting the traditions of the ancient counts or writing the life of his own con- temporary sovereign, John's chronology is pursued by the same fate ; whenever he mentions a date by the year, he is almost certain to make it wrong. But that he should have done the like in his reckoning of days, or even of his hero's age, by no means follows. To consider the latter point first : Geoffrey the Handsome was born on August 24, 1 1 13 (Chron. S. Albin. ad ann., Marchegay, Eglises, p. 32). Therefore, if John meant that he was past fifteen at his marriage, it must have been in 11 29. But if he only meant "in his fifteenth year," it would be 11 28. In that year the octave of Pentecost fell on June 1 7 ; Geoffrey then lacked but two months to the completion of his fifteenth year ; and considering Matilda's age, it is no wonder that the panegyrist tried to make her husband out as old as possible. It is in fact plain that such was his intention, for though he places Geoifrey's death in the right year, 1151, he gives his age as forty-one instead of thirty-eight {Hist. Gaufr. Duds, Marchegay, Comtes, p. 292). The most important matter, however, is John's statement that the wedding took place on the octave of Pentecost. The date in this case is not one casually slipped in by the writer in passing ; it comes in a detailed account of the festivities at Rouen on the oc- casion of Geoffrey's knighting, which is expressly said to have occurred at Pentecost, and to have been followed by his marriage on the octave. Now this leaves us on the horns of a dilemma fatal alike to the date in the Chron. Fiscann., 11 27, and to that of Orderic, II 2 9. For, on the one hand. Will. Malm. {Hist Nov., 1. i. c. 3, Hardy, p. 692) says that Matilda did not go to Normandy till after Whitsuntide [11 27]; and Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 37 (Arnold, p. 247), adds that the king followed her in August (Sim. Durh., ed. Arnold, vol. ii. pp. 281, 282, really witnesses to the same effect; for. his chronology of the whole story is a year in advance). Consequently, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks, " the union could not have taken place before the spring of the following year, 1128" {Princesses of England, vol. i. pp. 107, 108). On the other hand, it is plain that Fulk was present at his son's wedding; but before Whitsuntide 11 29 Fulk was himself married to the princess of Jerusalem (WilL Tyr., L xiii. c. 24). From all this it results: i. If Geoffrey and Matilda were married in 1 1 27, it cannot have been earlier than September, i.e. at least three months after Whitsuntide. 2. If they were married in 11 29, it must have been quite at the beginning of the year, and Orderic must, on this occasion at least, have made his year begin in English fashion, at Christmas. 3. If they were married at Whitsuntide, it can only have been in 11 28. 26o ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. iv. We have in short to choose one out of three authorities : the Chronicle of Fecamp, Orderic and John of Marmoutier — for the Sdez charter, as Mrs. Everett Green remarks {Princesses, vol. i. p. 1 08), proves nothing more than that the betrothal had taken place in II 27. Of these three, the first is certainly of least account. Orderic, on the other hand, is on most other subjects a far better authority than John. But his chronology is very little better than John's, at any rate towards the close of his work ; his whole account of Henry's later years is sketchy and confused ; while John is Geoffrey Plantagenet's own special biographer, writing within sixty years of the event, from materials furnished by personal followers of his hero. I cannot but regard him as our primary authority on this subject, and believe on his testimony that the real wedding-day of Geoffrey and Matilda was the octave of Pentecost, June 17, 11 28. CHAPTER V. GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS. 1128-1139. All the mental and bodily gifts wherewith nature had endowed the most favoured members of the Angevin house seemed to have been showered upon the eldest son of Fulk V. and Aremburg of Maine. The surname by which he is most generally known, and which an inveterate usage has attached to his descendants as well as to himself, is in its origin and meaning curiously unlike most historical surnames ; it seems to have been derived simply from his boyish habit of adorning his cap with a sprig of "planta- genista," the broom which in early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold. With a fair and ruddy countenance, lit up by the lightning- glance of a pair of brilliant eyes ; a tall, slender, sinewy frame, made for grace no less than , for strength and activity: — ^ in the unanimous opinion of his contemp- oraries, he was emphatically " Geoffrey the Handsome." To this prepossessing appearance were added the charms of a gracious manner and a ready, pleasant speech ; ^ and beneath this winning exterior there lay a considerable share of the quick wits of his race, sharpened and developed by such a careful education as was given to very few princes of the time. The intellectual soil was worthy of the pains bestowed upon it, and brought forth a harvest of, perhaps, somewhat too precocious scholarship and sagacity. 1 Hist. Gaufr. Ducis. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 233. 2 lb. pp. 232, 233. 262 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Geoffrey's fondness for the study of the past seems to have been an inheritance from Fulk Rechin ; the historian-count might have been proud of a grandson who carried in his memory all the battles fought, all the great deeds done, not only by his own people but also in foreign lands.'- Even Fulk the Good might have approved a descendant who when still a mere boy could shine in serious conversation with such a " lettered king " as Henry I. ; ^ and Fulk the Black might not have been ashamed of one who in early youth felt the " demon-blood " within him too hot to rest content in luxury and idleness, avoided the corrupting influences of mere revelry, gave himself up to the active exercises of military life,^ and, while so devoted to letters that he would not even go to war without a learned teacher by his side,* turned his book-learning to account in ways at which ruder warriors and more unworldly scholars were evidently somewhat astonished.' Like his ancestor the Black Count, Geoffrey was one of those men about whom their intimate associates have a fund of anecdotes to tell. The " History " of his life put together from their information, a few years after his death, is chiefly made up of these stories ; and through the mass of trite moralizing and pedantic verbiage in which the compiler has imbedded them there still peeps out unmistakeably the peculiar temper of his hero. Geoffrey's readiness to forgive those who threw themselves upon his mercy is a favourite theme of his biographer's praise ; but the instances given of this clemency indicate more of the vanity and display of cljivalry in its narrower sense than of real tenderness of heart or generosity of soul. Such is the story of a discon- tented knight whose ill-will against his sovereign took the grotesque form of a wish that he had the neck of " that red- head Geoffrey '' fast between the two hot iron plates used for making a wafer-cake called oublie. It chanced that the man whose making of oublies — then, as now, a separate trade — had suggested the wish of this knight at St.-Aignan shortly ' Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 232. ' ^^- P- 235- ^ lb. p. 233. 4 ji, p_ 276. 5 See the story of the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Mar- chegay, Comtes), p. 286. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 263 afterwards made some for the eating and in the presence of Count Geoffrey himself, to whom he related what he had heard. The knight and his comrades were presently caught harrying the count's lands ; and the biographer is lost in ad- miration at Geoffrey's generosity in forgiving not only their depredations, but the more heinous crime of having, in a fit of ill-temper after dinner, expressed a desire to make a wafer of him.^ On another occasion we find the count's wrath averted by the charms of music and verse, enhanced no doubt by the further charm of a little flattery. Four Poitevin knights who had been taken captive in one of the skirmishes so common on the Aquitanian border won their release by the truly southern expedient of singing in Geoffrey's hearing a rime which they had composed in his praise.^ A touch of truer poetry comes out in another story. Geoffrey, with a great train of attendants and noble guests, was once keeping Christmas at Le Mans. From his private chapel, where he had been attending the nocturnal services of the vigil, he set out at daybreak at the head of a procession to celebrate in the cathedral church the holy mysteries of the festival. At the cathedral door he met a poorly-dressed young clerk, whom he flippantly saluted: "Any news, sir clerkling?" — "Ay, my lord, the best of good news ! " — " What ? " cried Geoffrey, all his curiosity aroused — " tell me quick ! " — " ' Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given ! ' " Abashed, Geoffrey asked the youth his name, bade him join the other clergy in the choir, and as soon as mass was over went straight to the bishop : " For the love of Him Who was born this day, give me a prebend in your church.'' It was no sooner granted than taking his new acquaintance by the hand, he begged leave to make him his substitute, and added the further gift of a stall in his own chapel, as a token of gratitude to the poor clerk whose answer to his thoughtless question had brought home to him, perhaps more deeply than he had ever felt them before, the glad tidings of Christmas morning.^ From another of these anecdotes Geoffrey seems, as far as we can make out, to have been the original hero of an 1 Hist. Gaufr. Ducts (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 257-260. ^ lb. pp. 253-256. ' lb- pp. 274-276. 264 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. adventure which has since, in slightly varying forms, been attributed to several other princes, from Charles the Great down to James the Fifth of Scotland, and which indeed may easily have happened more than once. Led away by his ardour in pursuit of the chase — next to literature, his favourite recreation — the count one day outstripped all his followers, and lost his way alone in the forest of Loches. At last he fell in with a charcoal-burner, who undertook to conduct him back to the castle. Geoffrey mounted his guide behind him ; and as they rode along, the peasant, ignorant of his companion's rank, and taking him for a simple knight, let himself be drawn into conversation on sundry matters, including a free criticism on the government of the reigning count, and the oppressions suffered by the people at the hands of his household officers. When they reached the gates of Loches, the burst of joy which greeted the wanderer's return revealed to the poor man that he had been talking to the count himself. Overwhelmed with dis- may, he tried to slip off the horse's back ; but Geoffrey held him fast, gave him the place of honour at the evening banquet, sent him home next day with a grant of freedom and a liberal gift of money, and profited by the information acquired from him to institute a thorough reform in the ad- ministration of his own household.^ Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious one ; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feel- ing. The imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined characters of his race lay in him very near the surface, but it did not go very deep. His imagin- ation was sensitive, but his heart was cold ; his impulses sprang from the play of a quick fancy, not from the passion of an ardent soul. One more story may furnish a slight, but significant, illustration of his temper. For some wrong 1 Hist. Gatifr. Duels (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 240-250. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 265 done to the see of Tours Geoffrey was once threatened by the archbishop with excommunication. Either the earlier or the later Fulk of Jerusalem would have almost certainly begun by a reckless defiance of the threat, and the later one, at least, would almost as surely have ended by hearty penance. Geoffrey began and ended with a jest : " Your threats are vain, most reverend father ; you know that the archbishop of Tours has no jurisdiction over the patrimony of S. Martin, and that I am one of his canons!"^ In all the sterling qualities of a ruler and a man, the hasty, rest- less, downright Fulk V. was as superior to his clever charm- ing son as Fulk the Black was superior to Geoffrey Martel. But it is only fair to bear in mind that Geoffrey Planta- genet's life was to a great extent spoilt by his marriage. The yoke which bound together a lad of fifteen and a woman of twenty-five — especially such a woman as the Empress Matilda — could not fail to press heavily on both parties ; but the one most seriously injured by it was prob- ably the young husband. Even in a political point of view, to him personally his marriage was more of a hindrance than an advantage ; it cut him off from all chance of strik- ing out an independent career. The man himself was in fact sacrificed to his posterity. Chained down while his character was yet undeveloped to the irksome position of a mere appendage to King Henry's heiress ; — plunged sud- denly, and for life, into a sphere of interests and duties alien from his own natural temper and inclinations : — weak, self- ish, unprincipled as Geoffrey too plainly shewed himself to be, still it was well not only for him but for others that he had enough of the dogged Angevin thoroughness to carry him safely and successfully, if not always gloriously, through his somewhat dreary task till he could make it over to the freer, as well as stronger, hands of his son. The hope which inspired both the king of England and the count of Anjou when they planned their children's mar- riage can only have been the hope of a grandson in whom the blood of both would be united, who would gather into his own person all conflicting claims, and in whom all feuds ^ Hist. Gaufr. Dticis (Marchegay, Conites), p. 252. 266 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. would have an end. On this depended all King Henry's schemes for the future ; on this were concentrated all his desires, on this were founded all his plans and arrangements during the last seven years of his reign. In the internal history of England those years are an almost complete blank ; they are in fact simply seven more years of the administration of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, for Henry himself spent almost the whole of them upon the continent. His work was finished, and all that remained to do was to maintain the order of things which he had established so as to hand it on in full working to his successor. He must, however, have begun to doubt the success of his schemes when Geoffrey and Matilda separated little more than twelve months after their marriage. At first, everything had seemed to be turning in favour of Henry's arrange- ments. Six weeks after the wedding, the death of William the Clito, wounded in a skirmish' with a rival claimant of the county of Flanders,^ removed the only competitor whom the king could deem likely to stand in the way of his plans for the descent of the crown. In the spring Fulk's departure for Holy Land left the young couple sole masters at Angers. All things looked tranquil and secure when Henry returned to England in July 1129. He had, however, been there only a few days when he learned, to his great indignation, that his daughter had been sent away with scorn by her husband, and had betaken herself with a few attendants to Rouen.^ There she remained for nearly two years, while Geoffrey was busy with a general revolt among his barons. East and west and south and north had all risen at once ; the list of rebels includes the chief landowners in all parts of the Angevin dominions, from the old eastern outpost Amboise to Laval on the Breton border, and from Sabl6 on the confines of Anjou and Maine to Montreuil - Bellay, Thouars and Mirebeau in the Aquitanian territory of Lou- dun, and the yet more remote fief of Parthenay in Poitou.* It seems as if the disaffected barons, worsted in their struggle 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. ScHptt. ), pp. 886, 887. ^ Sim. Durh. Gesta Reg. a. 1129. ^ Hist. Gaufr. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 263. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 267 with Fulk, had only been waiting till he was out of the country, and now, when Geoffrey by his quarrel with his wife had deprived himself of all chance of help from his father-in-law, they closed in upon the boy-count with one consent, thinking to get him into their power and wring from him any concessions they pleased. They unintention- ally did him an immense service, for by thus suddenly throwing him upon his own resources they made a man of him at once. No one knew better than Geoffrey Planta- genet that he was not the first count of Anjou who had been left to shift for himself in difficult circumstances at the age of fifteen ; and he faced the danger with a promptitude and energy not unworthy of Fulk Nerra's representative. One after another he besieged the rebel leaders in their strongholds ; one after another was forced, tricked or fright- ened into submission. Once, while besieging Theobald of Blazon in the great fortress of Mirebeau, Geoffrey was block- aded in his turn by the count of Poitou, whom the traitors had called to their aid ; even from this peril, however, his quick wit and youthful energy extricated him in triumph ; and the revolt was finally crushed by a severe punishment inflicted on its most powerful leader, Lisiard of Sabld Geoffrey ravaged the whole of Lisiard's estates, razed his castle of Briolet, seized that of Suze and kept it in his own hands for the rest of its owner's life ; while to guard against further dangers from the same quarter, by the advice of his faithful barons he reared, for the express purpose of defence against incursions from Sabl4 a fortress to which he gave the name of Chateauneuf, on the left bank of the Sarthe, just below the bridge made famous by the death of Count Robert the Brave.^ King Henry had joined his daughter in Normandy in 1 For the barons' revolt, see Hist. Gattfi: Ducis (Marchegay, Conites), pp. 263-268. The strange and not very clear story of the double siege of Mirebeau is in pp. 265, 266. " Exercitus de Mirebello" is recorded in Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Flor. Salm. a. 1 130 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 191). The Chron. S. Albin. also records the building of Chateauneuf, a. 1131 ; the Hist. Gaufr. Ducis, p. 270, connects it with the revolt of a lord of Sable, but apparently with the later revolt of Lisiard's son Robert — which, however, the date in the chronicle shows to be a mistake. 268 ENGLAXD UNDER THE AXGEVIN KINGS chap. the summer of 1 130; in July of the next year they returned to England together. They were soon followed by a message from Geoffrey, who was now becoming awake to his rights and duties as husband of King Henry's heiress, and having made himself thoroughly master in his own dominions felt it time to demand the return of his wife. A great council held at Northampton on September 8 decided that his request should be granted ;^ and the assembled prelates and barons repeated their homage to Matilda as her father's destined successor.^ She then went back to her husband, by whom she was, if not warmly welcomed, at least received with all due courtesy and honour.^ Fortunately for the ill-matched couple, they were both of that cold-blooded temperament to which intense personal affection is not a necessary of life. Henceforth they were content to work together as partners in political enterprise, and to find in community of worldly interests a sufficient bond of union. On the following Mid-Lent Sunday — March 5, 11 33 — the bond was made indissoluble by the birth of their son and heir. Most fittingly, the child to whom so many diverse nationalities looked as to their future sovereign* was born not in the actual home of either of his parents, but in that city of Le Mans which lay midway between Normandy and Anjou, which had so long been the ground of their strife, and had at last been made the scene of their union.^ He was baptized in the cathedral church by the bishop of the diocese on Easter Eve, receiving the name of his grandfather Henry, and was then, by his mother's special desire, solemnly placed under the protection of the local patron saint on the same altar where his father had been dedicated in like manner thirteen years before.^ ■^ Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 41 (Arnold, p. 252). ^ Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. u. 6 (Hardy, p. 698). ' Hen. Hunt, as above. * "Quern multi populi dominum expectant." Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 763. 5 Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 36 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal, p. 322). Cf. Clironn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 11 33 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 33, 144, 145), Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 1133 (ib. p. 191, giving a wrong day), Hist. Gaufy. Ducis (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 277, 278, also wrongly dated. * Acta Pontif. Cenoman. as above. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 269 To King Henry the birth of his grandson was the crowning of all his hopes. The greatest difficulty which had hitherto stood in the way of his scheme for the descent of the crown — the objection which was sure to be made against Matilda on account of her sex — would lose more than half its force now that she could be regarded as regent for her infant son ; and Henry at once summoned another great council at which he again made the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons of his realm swear fealty to the Empress "' and also to her little son whom he appointed to be king after him."^ All things seemed as safe as human foresight could make them when in the beginning of August he crossed over to Normandy.^ Signs and wonders in earth and sky, related afterwards as tokens of coming evil, accompanied his voyage ;^ but nearly two years passed away before the portents were fulfilled. In the spring Matilda joined her father at Rouen, and there, shortly before Whitsuntide, her second son was born.* The old king's pleasure in his two little grandchildren was great enough to keep him lingering on in Normandy with them and their mother, leaving England to the care of Bishop Roger, till the middle of the following year,^ when there came tidings of disturbance on the Welsh border which made him feel it was time he should return.^ His daughter however set herself against his departure. Her policy is not very clear ; but it seems impossible to acquit her of playing a double game and secretly instigating her husband to attack her father while the latter was living with her in unsus- pecting intimacy and confidence. Geoffrey now suddenly put forth a claim to certain castles in Normandy which he asserted had been promised to him at his marriage." 1 Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 187. 2 Will. Malm. Bist. Nov., 1. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700). ' Eng. Chron. a. 1135. * Chron. S. Albin. and Rob. Torigni, a. 11 34. * Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 253). ' Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 900. ' This is the version of Orderic (as above); according to Rob. Torigni (a. 1135) the claim included a good deal more : " Erat et alia causa ipsius discordi^ major, quia rex nolebat facere fidelitatem filise SUK et marito ejus de omnibus firmitatibus Normanniae et Anglise." 270 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Henry denied the claim ; the Angevin temper burst forth at once ; Geoffrey attacked and burned the castle of Beaumont, whose lord was like himself a son-in-law of Henry, and altogether behaved with such insulting violence that the king in his wrath was on the point of taking Matilda, who was with him at Rouen all the while, back with him to England. But he now found it im- possible to leave Normandy. The land was full of treason ; many barons who only disguised their real feelings from awe of the stern old king had been gained over in secret to the Angevin cause ; among those whose fidelity was most suspected were Roger of Toeny and William Talvas the lord of Alengon, who had been restored to the forfeited estates of his family at the intercession of Geoffrey's father in 1 1 1 9. Roger's castle of Conches was garrisoned by the king ; William Talvas was summoned to Rouen more than once, but the conscious traitor dared not shew his face ; at last Henry again seized his estates, and then, in September, Talvas fled across the border to be received with open arms by the count of Anjou.^ The countess pleaded warmly with her father for the traitor's pardon, but in vain. When she found him inexorable, she suddenly threw off the mask and shewed on which side her real sympathies lay by parting from the king in anger and going home to her husband at Angers.^ Father and daughter never met again. In the last week of November Henry fell sick while hunting in the Forest of Lions ; feeling his end near, he sent for his old friend Arch- bishop Hugh of Rouen to receive his confession and give him the last sacraments. His son Earl Robert of Gloucester hurried to the spot at the first tidings of his illness ; his daughter made no sign of a wish for reconciliation ; yet when the earl and the primate asked for his final instruct- ions concerning the succession to the crown, he remained true to his cherished purpose and once more bequeathed all his dominions on both sides of the sea to Matilda and her ■" Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Serif ti.), p. 900. ^ Rob. Torigni, a. 1133. Will. Jumieges Contin., 1. viii. c. 34 (Duchesne, Hist. Norfii. Script., p. 310). V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 271 heirs for ever.' He died on the night of December i, II35-' With him expired the direct male line of the Conqueror ; for Duke Robert's long captivity had ended a year before.^ Of the nine children of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, the youngest and the last survivor was now gone, leaving as his sole representatives his daughter the countess of Anjou and her infant boys. By a thrice-repeated oath the barons of Normandy and England stood pledged to acknowledge her as their sovereign. Suddenly there sprang forth an unexpected competitor. A rivalry which had seemed dead for nearly a hundred years revived in a new form ; and the house of Anjou, on the very eve of its triumph, found itself once more face to face with the deadliest of its early foes — the house of Blois. Since Geoffrey Martel's victory over Theobald III. in 1044 the counts of Blois have ceased to play a prominent part in our story. Theobald himself accepted his defeat as final ; he seems indeed to have been almost crushed by it, for he scarcely makes any further appearance in history, save at his brother Stephen's death in 1047, when he requited the help which Stephen had given him against Anjou by turning his son out of Champagne and appro- priating all his possessions. The injured heir took refuge in Normandy, married the Conqueror's sister, and afterwards found in England such ample compensation for what he had lost that neither he nor his posterity ever made any attempt to regain their continental heritage. The reunion of Champagne thus helped to repair the fortunes of the elder line of Blois, so severely shattered by the blows of the Angevin Hammer ; and the ill-gotten gain prospered so far that some thirty-five years later Theobald's son and successor — the young Count Stephen - Henry who in 1069 received ^ So says Will. Malm: Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 701). We shall see however that there were other versions of Henry's final testamentary dispositions. 2 Will. Malm. Bist. Nov., 1. 1. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700). Flor. Wore. Contin. a. 1 135 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95). Hen. Hunt., 1. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 254). Will. Jumieges Contin., 1. viii. c. 33 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Serif tt., p. 309). Ord. Vit. (ibid.), p. 901. ' Flor. Wore. Contin. a. 11 34 (Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 94, 95). 272 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. Fulk Rechin's homage for Touraine — could venture on aspiring to the hand of King William's daughter Adela.^ In winning her he won a prize of which he was scarcely- worthy. Stephen-Henry was indeed, in every way, a better man than either his father or his grandfather ; but he had the nerveless, unstable temper which was the curse of his race. He went on the Crusade, and deserted before Antioch was won. He came home to bury his shame ; his wife sent him out again to expiate it. Her burning words changed the coward into a martyr, and the stain was washed out in his life-blood beneath the walls of Ramah.^ In the ordinary course of things, his successor in the counties of Blois, Chartres and Champagne would have been his eldest son William. But Stephen had left the entire control of ' The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the " devil of Saumur," when Odo's mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely asked him for a certain "bare hill" on the south bank of the Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise, till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy. Geoffrey's delicate beauty won him the surname of "the Maiden," but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally ; and it was Geoffrey's well-earned influence with the Conqueror which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of his former lord and the daughter of his present one [Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 573. After the Conqueror's death Geoffirey found the state of things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father's side in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy {Gesta Amb. Domin.., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 185, 197. 198). - On the flight from Antioch see Will. Tyr., 1. v. c. 10, and all the historians of the first crusade. On Stephen's second expedition and death see Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 789 et seq. ; Will. Tyr., 1. x. c. 20; and Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., 1. iv. ^. 384 (Hardy, pp. 593, 594). V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 273 his affairs, including the disposal of his territories, to his wife ; and Adela knew that her firstborn was a youth of slow wit, quite unfit for public life. She therefore dis- inherited him, to his own complete satisfaction ; for he had sense enough to be conscious of his incapacity for government, and gladly withdrew to the more congenial life of a simple country gentleman on the estates of his wife, the lady of Sully in Champagne, while the duties and responsibilities of the head of the family were laid on the abler shoulders of his next brother, Theobald. Of the two remaining brothers, the youngest had been from his infancy dedicated to the Church ; the third, who bore his father's name of Stephen, had been intrusted for education to his uncle the king of England.^ Adela seems to have been Henry's favourite sister ; she was certainly, in all qualities both of heart and head, well worthy of his confidence and esteem ; and she once at least did him a service which deserved his utmost gratitude, for it was she who contrived the opportunity for his reconciliation with S. Anselm. She was moreover the only one of his sisters who had children ; and the relation between a man and his sister's son was in the Middle Ages held as a specially dear and sacred tie. Its force was fully acknowledged by Henry in the case of the little Stephen. He had the child carefully brought up at his court with his own son ; he knighted him with his own hand, and bestowed on him, in addition to ample estates in England, the Norman county of Mortain, which had been for several generations held by a near connexion of the ducal house, and entitled its possessor to rank as the first baron of the duchy. Finally, some few years before the second marriage of the Empress, he arranged a match between Stephen and another Matilda of scarcely less illustrious descent — the only daughter and heiress of Count Eustace of Boulogne and Mary of Scotland, sister to Henry's own queen.^ Stephen seems in fact to have been, ' "Nutriendum promo vendumque." Will. Newb., 1. i. c. 4 (Hewlett, vol. i. P- 31)- ^ Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 811. "Will. Jumiiges Contm., 1. viii. c. 34 {ib. p. 310). Will. Newb., 1. i. c. 4 (Hewlett, vol. i. p. 31). Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750). 1 VOL. I. T 274 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. next to William the ^theling, the person for whom Henry- cared most ; and after the disaster of the White Ship — in which a lucky attack of illness saved him from sharing — he became virtually the king's adoptive son, and the first layman in the kingdom. His position is illustrated by a dispute which occurred when the barons took the oath of homage and fealty to Matilda in the Christmas council of 1 126. They swore in order of precedence. The first place among the lay peers belonged as an unquestioned right to the king of Scots ; the second was claimed at once by Stephen and by the king's son Earl Robert of Gloucester ; the dignity of the nephew was held to outweigh the privilege of the son ; and the second layman who swore on bended knee to acknowledge the Empress Matilda as her father's successor was her cousin Count Stephen of Mortain and Boulogne.^ But for that council and its oath, the succession both to the English crown and to the Norman ducal coronet would have been at Henry's death an open question. Had Matilda's child been old enough to step at once into the place destined for him by his grandfather, there would most likely have been no question at all ; Henry H. would have succeeded Henry I. without opposition, and England would have been spared nineteen years of anarchy. But Henry Fitz-Empress was not yet two years old. The practical choice at the moment lay between the surviving adult de- scendants of the Conqueror ; and of these there were, besides the Empress, at least two others who might be considered quite as well quahfied to represent him as she was. Inde- pendently of any special engagement, the barons would be fully entitled to choose between the daughter of William's son and the sons of his daughter — between Matilda of Anjou, Theobald of Blois, and Stephen of Boulogne. Of the three, Matilda was on the whole the one who had least to recommend her. Her great personal advantage was that she, and she alone, was the child of a crowned king and queen, of the " good Queen Maude " in whose veins flowed the ancient royal blood of Wessex, and the king whom his ' Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692). y. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 275 English subjects revered after he was gone as " a good man," who " made peace for men and deer."^ Matilda's birth would be a valuable qualification in English eyes ; but it would carry very little weight in Normandy. Old-English blood- royal went for nothing there ; and King Henry's good peace had been much less successfully enforced, and when enforced much less appreciated, in the duchy than in the kingdom. Personally, Matilda was almost a stranger in both countries. She had left her own people and her father's house at the age of eight years, to be educated not as the daughter of the English king but as the child-wife of the Emperor. All her associations, all her interests, were in Germany ; there she was known and respected, there she was at home. She had only returned to England very unwillingly for a couple of years, and then left it again to become the wife of a man known there only as the son of that " earl of Anjou " who had been King Henry's most troublesome foe ; while in Normandy the Angevin was known but too well, and hated with a mingled hate and scorn which had grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of both county and duchy ever since the days of Geoffrey Martel. If the principle of female succession was to be admitted at all — if the Conqueror's throne was to be filled by a stranger — one of his daughter's sons might fill it at least as worthily as his son's daughter and her Angevin husband. And if a sove- reign was to be chosen for his personal qualifications, it would have been hard to find a better choice than Theobald the Great, count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne. He did not owe his historical epithet solely to his vast possess- ions ; he was almost the only member of the house of Blois who shewed any trace of intellectual or moral great- ness. His public life was one long series of vexations and disappointments ; the misfortunes which his race were so apt to bring upon themselves by their own unsteadiness and self-will seemed to fall upon him without provocation on his part ; it was as if his heritage had come to him charged with the penalties of all his forefathers' errors. But it had not come to him charged with the heavier burthen of their fatal ^ Eng. Chron. a. U35. 276 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. intellectual perversity and moral weakness. In its place he had the tact, the dignity, the stedfastness of his Norman mother ; and the whole of his after-career fully justified the esteem of the Norman barons, grounded upon their acquaint- ance with his person and character during those wars against the king of France in which his cause had been inseparably bound up with that of his uncle Henry. In England, how- ever, he could only be known by report, as the nephew and ally of the king, and the elder brother of Stephen. It was Stephen, not Theobald, who had been the king's favourite and constant companion, lacking nothing of the rank of an adoptive son save the avowed prospect of the crown. Stephen had lived in England from his childhood ; his terri- torial possessions, his personal interests, lay wholly in England and Normandy ; his name and his face were almost as familiar there as those of Henry himself; he was the first baron of the duchy, the first layman of the kingdom ; more- over, he was the husband of a lady who stood as near to the Old-English royal line and represented it, to say the least, as worthily as her imperial cousin and namesake. Lastly, his marriage gave him yet one more advantage, slight in itself, but of no small practical use at the moment. As count of Boulogne, he had immediate command of the shortest passage from the Continent to England. The tidings of Henry's death soon reached Angers ; and before the first week of December was out, Matilda presented herself in Normandy to take possession of her inheritance. The officer in charge of the border-territories, comprising the forfeited lands of William Talvas and the county of Hiesmes, at once surrendered them to her and received her as his liege lady ;^ but before she had time to secure the duchy, the kingdom was snatched from her grasp. Stephen set out at once from Wissant and crossed the Channel amid a storm so terrific that men on shore deemed it could bode 1 Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norvi. Scriptt.), p. 903. The places specified, besides Hiesmes, are Argentan and Domfront. See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1 135 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 34), and Hist. Gaufr. Duds (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 294, where Geoffrey gets the credit of winning them. Rob. Torigni,' a. 1135! adds Ambrieres, " Gorra " and Coulommiers. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 277 nothing less than the end of the world.^ It only boded the arrival at Dover of a candidate for the English crown. Stephen's promptitude served him as well as the prompt- itude of William Rufus and Henry had served them in a like case. But this time the part which had been played in 1087 by the primate and in iioo by "the Witan who were there nigh at hand " was to be played by the citizens of London. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury^ — for the men of Kent had an hereditary grudge against any one coming from Boulogne — Stephen pushed on to London, where the well-known face of King Henry's favourite nephew was hailed with delight by the citizens, vehemently declaring that they would have no stranger to rule over them.^ They claimed to have inherited the right to a voice in the election of the sovereign which had once, in theory at least, belonged to the whole nation, and accordingly the " aldermen and wise folk "* came together to consider what provision should be made for the safety of the realm, and, for that end, to choose a king. A kingless land, said they, was exposed to countless perils ; the first thing needful was to make a king as speedily as possible.^ Of Matilda and her claims not a word seems to have been said ; if any of the leading bur- gesses, as tenants-in-chief of the crown, had sworn fealty to her, they were in no humour to regard it now ; and the citizens in general would doubtless not hold themselves bound by an oath which they had not personally taken. They claimed the right of election as their special prerog- ative, and exercising it without more ado in favour of the only person then at hand whose birth and character fitted him to undertake the defence of the kingdom, and who seemed to have been sent to them as by a special providence in their hour of need, they by common consent acknowledged Stephen as king. He hurried to Winchester to get possession of the treasury ; the bishop — his own brother — came forth with the chief citizens to meet him ; and the treasurer, who had 1 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. II (Hardy, p. 703). '■= Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. 3 Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 3, 4. ^ "Majores . . . natu, consultuque quique provectiores. " Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 3. " /*• PP- 3, 4- 278 EXGLAXD UNDER THE AXGEVIX KINGS chap. refused to give up his keys to tiie bishop, surrendered them at once to the king-elect.^ Thus far the two men who ought to have taken the lead in the national counsels — the primate and the justiciar — had stood looking passively on. Both now joined Stephen.^ He lacked nothing to make him full king but the rite of coronation. This however depended on the primate, and when called upon to perform it William of Canterbury again drew back. He had scruples, first, about the oath which he himself, as well as Stephen and all the barons, had sworn to the Empress Matilda ; and secondly, about the validity of an election so hastily made by a small part only of the nation. The second objection passed unheeded ; to the first Stephen's adherents answered that the oath had been extorted and was therefore not binding, and that several persons who were with Henry at his death had heard him openly express repentance for having forced it upon the barons.^ Roger of Salisbury affirmed that it was annulled in another way ; it had been sworn, by him at least, on con- dition of a promise from Henry that he would not give his daughter in marriage out of the realm without the consent of the Great Council — a promise which had been immediately broken.* Hugh Bigod, too, the late king's seneschal, declared upon oath that Henry had in his presence solemnly absolved the barons from their engagement,^ and had even formally disinherited Matilda and designated Stephen as his suc- cessor." The argument which really prevailed, however, was the objection to a woman's rule, and the urgent need of having a man to take the government, and to take it at once.'' Henry had not yet been three weeks dead, and ^ Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 4-6. 2 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 11 (Hardy, pp. 703, 704). Gcsta Steph. (Sewell), p. 6. s Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 6, 7. * Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 3 (Hardy, pp. 692, 693). ^ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. - Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217. Cf. the speeches before the battle of Lincoln in Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 270), and that of Stephen's advocates at Rome in 1 151, in Hist. Pontif. (Pertz, Mo7i. Germ. Hist., vol. xx. p. 543). Gerv. Cant, (as above) does not name Hugh, but merely says "quidara ex potentissimis Anglise." ' Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 8. R. Wend, as above. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 279 already England was in confusion. The first outcome of the reaction against his stern control had been a general raid upon the forests ; and when men in their frantic vehemence had left themselves no more game to hunt, they turned their arms against each other and trampled all law and order under foot.^ Such a state of things, resulting solely from the fact that England had been three weeks without a king, spoke more in Stephen's favour than any amount of legal reasonings. The archbishop gave way ; all that he demanded from Stephen was a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of the Church. Bishop Henry of Winchester offered himself as surety in his brother's behalf, and thereby won him the crown.^ He received it at West- minster,^ probably either on the last Sunday in Advent or on Christmas day,* and he issued at the same time, by way of coronation-charter, a promise at once comprehensive and vague, to maintain the laws established by his predecessor.* Thus the two great feuds which had hitherto influenced the political career of the Angevin house — the feud with Blois and the feud with Normandy — merged at last into one. ' Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. I, 2. 2 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. t. II (Hardy, p. 704). ' Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. P- 95)- * The date is variously given, as follows : December 15, Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 902. — December 20, Flor. Wore. Contin. (as above). — December 21, Ann. Waverl. a. 1 136 (Luard, Ann. Monast., vol. ii. p. 225). — December 22, Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704); Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94; and Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 113S (Liebermann, Uti- gedruckte Anglo-Norman. Geschichtsquellen, p. 79). — December 23, Ann. Cantuar. a. 1 135 (Liebermann, as above, p. 5). — December 24, Ann. Margam, a. 1 135 (Luard, as above, vol. i. p. 13). — December 25, Eng. Chron. a. 1135 ; Ric. Hexh. (Raine, Priory of Hexham, vol. i.) p. 70; Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 156; and Chron. Mort.-Mar. a. 1135 (.Per. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 7S2).— December 26, Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 189; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217.— January I, Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 113.— Will. Malm., the Contin. Flor. Wore, and the Ann. Margam all add that the day was a Sunday. This in 11 35 would be right for William's date, December 22 ; nothing can make it agree with that of Florence's continuator, "xiii. kal. Jan."; but the Margam annalist may very possibly have substituted ix. for xi., really meaning the same as William. The two extreme dates — Orderic's and John of Hexham's— seem equally impossible ; unless we may take Orderic's "xviii. kal. Jan." to have simply an x too much, and then there would be another witness for Christmas-day. ° Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 119. 28o ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. The successors of Odo of Blois and those of William the Conqueror were now both represented, as against the successors of Folk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel, by one and the same man, who yet was not, in strict law, the nearest repre- sentative of either. We shall see hereafter that some of the Normans entertained a project of making Theobald their duke ; had they succeeded, the older quarrel would have revived almost in its original form, as a direct conflict between the heads of the two rival houses, only with Normandy instead of Touraine for its object and its battle- ground. Its original spirit was, however, more likely to be revived, on one side at least, by the substitution of Stephen for Theobald. Stephen had renounced all share in his father's territories ; but there was one paternal heir-loom which he could not renounce, and which descended to him, and him alone, among the sons of Stephen-Henry and Adela. This was the peculiar mental and moral constitution which the house of Blois inherited from Odo II. as surely as the Angevins inherited theirs from Fulk the Black. In the reigning Count Theobald, indeed, the type was fortunately almost lost, and in his youngest brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, it was very greatly modified by the infusion of Norman blood derived from their mother. In Stephen, however, the Norman blood had but little influence on a nature which in its essence was that of the old counts of Blois. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race were there, just as deeply rooted as in Odo of Champagne himself; the whole difference lay in this, that in Stephen the qualities lay uppermost and shewed themselves in their most attractive aspect, while the defects took a form so mild that till their fatal consequences were seen they appeared hardly more than amiable weaknesses. Gallant knight and courteous gentleman ; warm-hearted, high-spirited, throwing himself eagerly into every enterprise ; all reckless valour in the battle-field, all gentleness and mercy as soon as the fight was over ; open-handed, generous, gracious to all, and appar- ently unstained by any personal vices : — it is easy to under- stand Henry's affection for him, and the high hopes with which at the opening of his career he was regarded by all GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN classes in the realm.^ His good qualities were plainly visible ; time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect which vitiated them all. That defect was simply the old curse of his race — lack of stedfastness ; and it ruined Stephen as surely as it had ruined Odo. It was ingrained in every fibre of his nature ; it acted like an incurable moral disease, mingling its subtle poison with his every thought and act, and turning his very virtues into weaknesses ; it reduced his whole kingly career to a mere string of political inconsistencies and blunders ; and it wrecked him at last, as it had wrecked his great-grandfather, on the rock of the Angevin thoroughness. For the moment, however, Stephen had outstripped his rival. The Angevin sagacity had been for once at fault. Steeped as were both Geoffrey and his wife in continental ideas and feelings, their first thought was of Normandy, and they had failed to see that in order to secure it their true policy was to secure England first ; or rather, perhaps, they had failed to see that the mere will of the late king was not sufficient to give them undisputed possession of both. Stephen's bold stroke, whether it resulted from a closer acquaintance with the relation between the two countries, or simply from a characteristic impulse to dash straight at the highest object in view, gained him kingdom and duchy at one blow. Geoffrey had followed his wife into Normandy at the head of an armed force, and accompanied by William Talvas, whose influence secured him a welcome at Seez and in all the territories of the house of Alengon. But the rival races were no sooner in actual contact than their old hatred burst uncontrollably forth. The Angevins, though they ostensibly came only to put their countess in peaceful possession of her heritage, could not yet bring themselves to look upon the Normans in any light but that of natural enemies ; they treated the districts which had submitted to them as a conquered land, and went about harrying and plundering till the people rose and attacked them with such fury that they were compelled to evacuate the country.^ ^ See sketches of his character in Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704), and Gesta Sleph. (Sewell), p. 3. * Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 903. ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. The Norman barons now held at Neubourg a meeting at which they decided to invite Count Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of the duchy. Theobald came to Rouen, and thence to Lisieux, where on December 2 1 he had an interview with Matilda's half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester. They were interrupted by a messenger from England with the tidings of Stephen's election as king.^ The Norman barons then felt that the decision was taken out of their hands ; since Stephen and England had been too quick for them, their best course now was to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledged the king-elect as duke of Normandy." To this Robert of Gloucester assented.^ Theobald, despite his natural vexation, at once withdrew his claim, made in his brother's name a truce with Geoffrey to last from Christmas till the octave of Pentecost ; and having thus done his best to secure the peace of the duchy till its own duke could come to it, he quietly returned to his own dominions.* In England, meanwhile, Stephen was carrying all before him. The first public act in which he had to take part as king was the burial of his predecessor at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany ;^ the next was the defence of his realm against a danger which it had not known for more than forty years — a Scottish invasion. King David of Scotland, true to the oath which every one else seemed to have forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda's rights, led his troops into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her behalf Stephen met him near Durham, pacified him by a grant of the earldoms of Carlisle, Huntingdon and Doncaster to his son Henry,^ and came back in peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the crown- ' Rob. Torigni, a. 1135. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 902, 903. 2 Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 903. ^ ]^ob_ Torigni, a. 1135. ■* Ord. Vit. as above. Cf. Hist. Gaufr. Diicis (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 294. = Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 901, 902. Hen. Hunt. , I. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, pp. 257, 258). Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 95. Will. Malm. Hist. Noz'., 1. i. i;. 13 (Hardy, p. 705). ^ For the details of this Scottish expedition and treaty see Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. i;. 4 (.\rnold, pp. 258, 289), Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 72, and Joh. Hexh. {iUd.), p. 114. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 283 ing of his queen.^ Adherents now came flocking in ; the splendour of the Easter court made up for the meagreness of the Christmas meeting.^ Baron and knight, clerk and layman, rallied round the winning young sovereign who was ready to promise anything, to undertake anything, to please anybody. The only class who still held aloof were the " new men " of the last reign, men like Payne Fitz-John and Miles the sheriff of Gloucester, who owed everything to Henry, and who were bound alike by gratitude and by policy to uphold his daughter's cause. But the chief of them all. Bishop Roger of Salisbury, had already joined Stephen, and the rest were soon persuaded to follow his example.^ Shortly after Easter there came in a yet more important personage. Earl Robert of Gloucester, the eldest son of the late king, influential alike on both sides of the sea by his rank, his wealth and his character, was looked upon both in Nor- mandy and in England as the natural leader of the baronage. The suddenness of Stephen's accession had snatched the leadership out of his hands, and he lingered on in Nor- mandy, watching the course of events without sharing in them, and meditating how to reconcile his own interest with his duty to his sister. Stephen, anxious to win him over, sent him repeated invitations to England ; till at last he decided to let himself be won, at least in appearance, if only for the sake of gaining a footing in England which might enable him afterwards to work there in Matilda's favour. The king's son, however, made terms for himself more like a king ^than a mere earl. He came to Stephen's court and did homage for his English estates ; but he did it only on the express condition of being bound by it only so long as Stephen's own promises to him were kept, and he himself was maintained in all his honours and dignities.* The first result of his submission — if submission it can be called — was seen in a great council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king, and the vague promise to ' Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol i. p. 96. - Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, p. 259). 3 Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 14-16. *■ Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 705-707)- Cf. Gesta Steph (Sewell), p. 9. 284 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. maintain the " Laws of King Henry," which Stephen had issued on his coronation-day, was ampHfied into a more detailed and definite charter.^ Suddenly, a few weeks later, there went forth a rumour that the king was dead, and the barons .at once broke into revolt. Baldwin of Redvers threw himself into Exeter ; Hugh Bigod, who but a few months ago had been foremost among the supporters of Stephen, seized Norwich castle, and was only dislodged by the king in person.^ He was apparently forgiven ; another rebel, Robert of Bathenton,^ was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to surrender. The great castle of Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself up with his family and a picked band of young knights, all sworn never to yield, cost a long and troublesome siege ; but the agonies of thirst at length drove the garrison to break their vow and ask for terms. Stephen let them all go out free ; Baldwin requited his leniency by hastening to a castle which he possessed in the Isle of Wight, and there setting himself up as a sort of pirate-chief at the head of a band of men as reckless as himself But when Stephen hurried to Southampton and began to collect a fleet, Baldwin suddenly took fright and surrendered. His lands were confiscated, and he went into exile in Anjou, where he was eagerly welcomed by the count, and added one more to the elements of strife already working in Normandy.* In England his defeat put an end to the revolt, and the Christmas court at Dunstable brought the first year of King Stephen to a tranquil close.^ Yet already there were signs that those who had thought to find in Henry's nephew such another king as Henry ^ Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. u. 15 (Hardy, pp. 707-709). Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 119-121. ^ Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 259). ' Or Bakington. In the Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 18, the name of the place is Batthentona, which Lappenberg and Mr. Freeman render by Bathenton in Devon. (Mr. Sewell, the editor of the Gesta Steph., rendered it Bath.) But while two MSS. of Hen. Hunt, have " Bathentun," three others have " Bachen- tun "or " Bakentun " (Arnold, p. 259, note 6. In the index Mr. Arnold suggests " Bagington ? Bathampton ? "). * Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. iS-29. Hen. Hunt, as above. Eng. Chron. a. 1 135. Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 96, 97. ^ Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 285 himself^ were doomed to disappointment. It was no good omen for the fulfilment of the pledges embodied in his charters when Stephen broke the one which appealed most strongly to popular feeling — the promise to mitigate the severe forest laws — by holding a forest assize at Brampton after his triumph over Baldwin of Red vers in 1136.^ Neither was it satisfactory that the accession of a king specially bound by the circumstances of his election to rule as a national sovereign proved to be the signal for a great influx of foreigners — not as in Henry's time, honest indus- trious settlers who fled from their own unquiet homes to share " the good peace that he made in this land " and to become an useful element in the growing prosperity of the nation ; but as in the Red King's time, a rapacious and violent race of mercenary adventurers, chiefly from Britanny and Flanders ; men to whom nothing was sacred, and who flocked to Stephen as they had flocked to Rufus, attracted by the report of his prodigality and the hope, only too well founded, of growing rich upon the spoils of England.* However much Henry may have provoked his subjects by his preference for ministers of continental birth, he had at least never insulted them by taking for his chief counsellor and confidant a mere foreign soldier of fortune like that William of Ypres who acted as the leader of Stephen's Flemish mercenaries and whose influence over him excited the wrath of both the English and the Norman barons.* The peace of the country was probably all the better kept ' "Hi uuendon thset he sculde ben alsuic alse the eom wsss." Eng. Chion. a. 1137. ^ Hen. Hunt., Iviii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 260). ' "Sub Henrico rege multi ahenigense, qui genialis humi inquietationibus exagitabantur, Angliam adnavigabant, et sub ejus alis quietum otium agebant ; sub Stephano plures ex Flandria et Britannia, rapto vivere assueti, spe magnarum praedarum Angliam involabant." Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. ii. c. 34. Cf. 1. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 731, 706). * Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. William of Ypres was son of Philip of Flanders, second son of Count Robert the Frisian. Although he had no legal place in the house of Flanders, he was one of the claimants of the county after the death of Charles of Denmark, against William the Clito and Theodoric of Alsace. After being the torment of his own country for nearly ten years, he was compelled to fly, and took service in England under Stephen. See Walter of Terouanne, Vita B. Caroli Com., in Rer. Gall. Serif tt., vol. xiii. pp. 336, 286 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. during the year 1 137 because its preservation was left wholly to Bishop Roger and his nephews, while Stephen, accompanied by his Flemish friend, was well out of the way in Normandy, where he spent the year in concerting an alliance with his brother,^ obtaining the French king's sanction to his tenure of the duchy, for which his eldest son did homage in his stead,^ and vainly endeavouring to secure it from the combined dangers of internal treason and Angevin intermeddling. No disturbance occurred in Eng- land during his absence; a Scottish invasion, threatened soon after Easter, was averted by Archbishop Thurstan of York, who persuaded the Scot king to accept a truce till Advent,^ when Stephen was expected to return. He was no sooner back than David sent to demand for his son the earldom of Northumberland,* which had been, it was said, half promised to him a year before ;^ on the refusal of his demand," early in January he led an army into England. An unsuccessful siege of the border fortress of Carham or 342-347; Galbert of Bruges, Vita B. Car. {ibid.), pp. 354, 355, 359 et seq.; Geneal. Com. Flandr. {ibid.), pp. 412, 413; Joh. Ypr. Chron. Sitli. {ibid.), 466, 468. The people's hatred of "William was justifiable enough ; but it ill became the barons to cast stones at him. His evil-doings were not a whit greater than theirs, and the changeless devotion with which he — a mere hireling, bound to Stephen by no tie but that of a bargain which Stephen certainly cannot long have had means to fulfil — stuck to the king in adversity as firmly as in prosperity, might have put them all to shame. ^ Theobald renounced all claims upon kingdom and duchy for two thousand marks of silver to be paid him annually by Stephen. Rob. Torigni, Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 77-80. Joh. Hexh. (iHd.), pp. 115, 116. Hen. Hunt., l.'viii. c. 6 (Arnold, pp. 260, 261). The Scottish host was " coadunatus de Normannis, Germanis, Anglis, de Northanhymbranis et Cumbris, de Teswetadala, de Lodonea, de Pictis, qui vulgo Galleweienses dicuntur, et Scottis, nee erat qui eorumnumerum sciret." Ric. Hexh., p. 79. 2 Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 79. Joh. Hexh. (Hid.), p. 1 1 6. 3 Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 81. Joh. Hexh. {Hid.), p. 117- " Joh. Hexh. as above. 5 Ric. Hexh. and Joh. Hexh., as above. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p. 261), and Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 102. 6 Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 81-84. Joh. Hexh. (Hid.), p. 117. The record of Waleran's exploit is in Flor. Wore. Contin. (as above), p. 112. 288 EXGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. him with entreaties for support, both by her own letters and through her friends in the north, chief among whom was her father's old minister Eustace Fitz-John,^ lord of the mighty castles of Bamborough, Knaresborough, Malton and Alnwick. Eustace had already forfeited his best stronghold, Bam- borough, through his plottings against Stephen ;^ in May 1 138 he openly placed himself, his remaining castles and his men at the disposal of the Scot king. David hesitated no longer. Gathering up all the forces of his kingdom,^ he joined Eustace in an unsuccessful attempt to regain Bam- borough ; thence the united host marched burning and harrying through the already thrice-wasted Patrimony of S. Cuthbert, crossed the Tees, and in the middle of August made its appearance in Yorkshire.* There was no help to be looked for from the king. All through that summer the whole south and west of England had been in a blaze of revolt which was still unsubdued, and Stephen had neither time, thought, nor troops to spare for the defence of the north. But in face of such a danger as this the men of the north needed no help from him. When their own hearths and altars were threatened by the hereditary Scottish foe, resistance was a matter not of loyalty but of patriotism. The barons and great men of the shire at once organized their plans under the guidance of Archbishop Thurstan, whose lightest word carried more weight in Yorkshire than anything that Stephen could have said or done. Inspired by him, the forces of the diocese met at York in the temper of crusaders. Three days of fasting, almsgiving and penance, concluding with a solemn absolu- tion and benediction from their primate, prepared them for their task. Worn out as he was with years and labours — so ^ Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 35. - Joh. Hexh. (Raine),|p. 117. " De magnis proceribus Anglice, regi quondam Henrico familiarissimus, vir summse prudentis et in secularibus negotiis magni consilii, qui a rege Anglorum ideo recesserat quod ab eo in curiS contra patrium morem captus, castra quse ei Rex Henricus commiserat reddere compulsus est." .^ithelred Riev. De Bella Staiidardi (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 343. On Eustace Fitz-John see also Walbran, Memor. of Fountains, p. 50, note ii. ^ The Hexham chroniclers reckon them at something over twenty thousand. ■* Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 84, 85, 89. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. n8. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 289 feeble that he could neither walk nor ride — Thurstan would yet have gone forth in his litter at the head of his men to encourage the host with his presence and his eloquence ; but the barons shrank from such a risk. To them he was the Moses on whose uplifted hands depended their success in the coming battle ; so they sent him back to wrestle in prayer for them within his own cathedral church, while they went forth to their earthly warfare against the Scot.^ Early in the morning of Tuesday, August 22, the English forces drew up in battle array upon Cowton Moor, two miles from Northallerton. In their midst was the " Standard " from which the fight afterwards took its name : — a cart into which was fixed a pole surmounted by a silver pyx containing the Host, and hung round with the con- secrated banners of the local churches, S. Peter of York, S. John of Beverley, S. Wilfrid of Ripon.^ Thurstan's place as chief spiritual adviser of the army was filled by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys ; ^ their chief military adviser was Walter Lespec, the pious and noble founder of Kirkham and Rievaux — the very type and model of a Christian knight of the time. Standing upon the cart, with the sacred banners waving round his head, in a voice like a trumpet he addressed his comrades.* He appealed to the barons to prove themselves worthy of their race ; he appealed to the English shire-levies to prove themselves worthy of their country ; he pictured in glowing colours the wrongs which they all had to avenge, and the worse they would have to suffer if they survived a defeat ; then, grasping the hand of William of Aumale, the new-made earl of York,° he swore aloud to conquer or die.^ The unanimous " Amen ! " of the ^ Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 86, 87. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), pp. 118, 119. " Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 90, 91. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 119. Cf. the de- scription of the Milanese carroccio — " quod apud nos standard dicitur " as the German writer remarks — in 1 162 (Ep. Burchard. Notar. Imp. deExcidio Mediolan., in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Scriptt., vol. vi. p. 917). ^ On Ralf see Dixon and Raine, Fasti Eborac., vol. i. p. 168. ^ So says ^thelred of Rievaux (De Bella Standardi, Twysden, X. Scriptt., cols. 338, 339), giving a charming portrait of Walter and a vivid picture of the scene. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 262), attributes the speech to Bishop Ralf. " " The the king adde beteht Euorwic." Eng. Chron. a. 1138. ' ^thelred Riev., De Bella Standardi (as above), cols. 339-342. VOL. I. U 290 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. English host was answered by shrill cries of " Albin ! Albin ! " as the Scots came charging on.^ The glory of the first onset was snatched, much against David's will, by the men of Galloway, who claimed it as their hereditary right.^ The second division of the Scottish host comprised the Cumbrians and the men of Teviotdale, and the followers of Eustace Fitz-John. A third body was formed by the men of Lothian and of the western islands, and a fourth by the king's house- hold troops, a picked band of English and Norman knights commanded by David in person.^ The English array was simple enough ; the whole host stood in one compact mass clustered around the Standard, — the barons and their followers occupying the centre, the archers intermingled with them in front, and the general mass of less well-armed troops of the shire in the rear, with a small detachment of horse posted at a little distance; the main body of both armies fought on foot in the old English fashion. The wild Celts of Galloway dashed headlong upon the English front, only to find their spears and javelins glance off from the helmets and shields of the knights as from an iron wall, while their own half-naked bodies were riddled with a shower of arrows ; their leader fell, and they fled in confusion.* The second line under the king's son, Henry, charged with better success ; but an Englishman lifted up a gory head upon a pole crying out that it was David's ; and like the English long ago in a like case at Assandun, the Scottish centre at once fled almost without waiting to be attacked.' David himself fought on well-nigh alone, till the few who stood around him dragged him off the field, lifted him on horse- ^ Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 263). 2 ^thelred Riev. De Bella Stand. (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 342. His account of the quarrel for precedence and its consequences makes one think of the Macdonalds at CuUoden. Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 92), says the " Picti " were in the van; Joh. Hexh. {ib. p. 119), calls them " Scotti "— both meaning simply what at a later time would have been called "wild Highlanders," i.e. in this case men of Galloway. Hen. Hunt, puts the Lothian men in front, but he is clearly vnrong. '^ ^thelred Riev. (as above), cols. 342, 343. "■ Ib. col. 345. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, pp. 263, 264), who, however, turns the Galwegians into men of Lothian ; see above, note 2. ^ j5;thelred Riev. as above. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 291 back, and fairly compelled him to retreat.^ His scattered troops caught sight of the dragon on his standard,^ and dis- covering that he was still alive, rallied enough to enable him to retreat in good order. Henry gathered up the remnants of the royal body-guard — the only mounted division of the army — and with them made a gallant effort to retrieve the day ; but the horsemen charged in vain against the English shield-wall, and falling back with shattered spears and wounded horses they were compelled to fling away their accoutrements and escape as best they could.^ Three days elapsed before Henry himself could rejoin his father at Carlisle.* Eleven hundred Scots were said to have been slain in the battle or caught in their flight through the woods and marshes and there despatched.' Out of two hundred armed knights only nineteen carried their mail-coats home again ; ^ such of the rest as escaped at all escaped only with their lives ; and the field was so strewn with baggage, pro- visions and arms, left behind by the fugitives, that the victors gave it the nickname of Baggamore.'' The enthusiasm which had carried the Yorkshiremen through the hour of danger » ^thelred Riev. De Bella Stand. (Twysden, X. Scriptt.), col. 346. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 264). 2 " Regale vexillum, quod ad similitudinem draconis figuratum facile agnosce- batur." .(Ethelred Riev. as above. Had S. Margaret's son adopted the old royal standard of her West-Saxon forefathers ? ' jEthelred Riev. and Hen. Hunt. , as above. The two accounts do not seem to tally at first sight, but they are easily reconciled. * ^Ethelred Riev. as above. Cf. Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 112. " Hen. Hunt, as above. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93. ' Flor. Wore. Contin. as above. ' Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 120. Serlo (Twysden, X. Script), cols. 331, 332. According to this last, the scattered eatables consisted chiefly of bread, cheese and horseflesh, which, as well as other flesh, the Scots ate indifferently raw or cooked. — There is yet one other curious version of the Scottish rout and its cause : " Archiepiscopus cum militibus regis latenter occurrens super Cotowne more juxta Northallerton, fieri jussit in viis subterraneis quaedam instrumenta sonos horribiles reddentia, quse Anglic^ iicyxatat petronces ; quibus resonantibus, ferae et cjetera armenta quae procedebant exercitum prsedicti David regis in adjutorium, timore strepitfls perterriti, in exercitum David ferociter resiliebant. " (MS. Life of Abp. Thurstan, quoted by Mr. Raine, Priory of Hexh., vol. i. p. 92, note /). The primate's share in the victory was so strongly felt at the time that in the Ann. Cicestr. a. 1138 (Liebermann, Geschichtsqiiellen, p. 95), the battle appears as "Bellum inter archiepiscopum Eboracensem et David." 292 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. carried them also through the temptation of the hour of triumph. They sullied their victory by no attempt at pursuit or retaliation, but simply returned as they had come, in solemn procession, and having restored the holy banners to their several places with joy and thanksgiving, went quietly back every man to his own home.^ Some three months later the garrison of Carham, having salted their last horse save one, were driven to surrender ; but their stubborn defence had won them the right to march out free with the honours of war, and all that David gained was the satisfaction of razing the empty fortress.^ The defeat .of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of danger and dis- ruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.^ Be- tween the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of confidence. It could not be otherwise ; for their mutual obligations were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress, so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was the king not sure of his subjects ; he was not sure of himself How far Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in one way : by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken. What he proved ^ Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 120. ^ Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. lOO. Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 118. 3 " Hi igitur duo anni [i.e. 1136 and 1137] Stephani regis prosperrimi fuerunt, lertius vero . . . mediocris et intercisus fuit ; duo vero ultimi exitiales fuerunt et prjerupti." Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). By this reckoning it seems that after Stephen's capture at the battle of Lincoln Henry does not count him king at all. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 293 was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones, without first counting the cost ; and it was no sooner done than he found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero, a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant ; he was " a mild man, soft and good — and did no justice."^ His weakness shewed itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness and increased his difficulties. His first ex- pedient to strengthen his position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries ; his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he re- garded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking the resentment and contempt of the older nobility ; while to indemnify his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them some means of sup- porting their titular dignity, he was obliged to provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.^ But his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for his own needs ;^ and the next steps were the debasement of the coinage* and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted for the benefit of his. insatiable favourites.^ They grew greedier in asking, and he more lavish in giving ; castles, lands, anything and everything, were demanded of him without scruple ; and if their demands were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.^ He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless activity;" ' Eng. Chron. a. 1137. 2 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. l. 18 (Hardy, p. 712). * "He hadde get his [Henry's] tresor, ac he todeld it and scatered sotlice. " Eng. Chron. a. 1 137. * Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. ii. c. 34 (Hardy, p. 732). " See the first and fullest example in the story of the siege of Bedford, De- cember 1138-January 1139; Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 30-32. Cf. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p. 260). The sequel of the story is in Gesta Steph., p. 74. « Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 711)- ' " Mode hie, modo illic suhitus aderat," ibid. " Raptabatur enim nunc hue nunc illuc, et adeo vix aliquid perficiebat." Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. Cf R. Glaber's description of Stephen's ancestor Odo H. (above, p. 150). 294 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. he did more harm to himself than to his enemies, giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow peace,^ and then, when he found every man's hand against him and his hand against every man, bitterly com- plaining, " Why have they made me king, only to leave me thus destitute ? By our Lord's Nativity, I will not be a king thus disgraced ! "^ Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of Gloucester. As son of the late king and half- brother of the Empress ; as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England — earl of Gloucester by his father's grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon — all-powerful throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march — Robert was the one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to set them at variance ; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was a mere form ; ^ and a few months after Stephen's return to England he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl's English and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.* The consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England instructions to prepare for war.^ This message proved the signal for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Here- ford castle;^ in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have 1 Will. Malm. Hist. Nov., 1. i. i;. i8 (Hardy, pp. 711, 712). = /*. u. 17 (p. 711). 3 /^. (p. 710). * 7(5. c. 18 (p. 713). ^ 16. p. 712; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. The grounds of the defiance were— I, the unlawfulness of Stephen's accession ; 2, his breach of his engage- ments towards Robert ; 3, the unlawfulness of Robert's own oath to him as being invalidated, like Stephen's claim to the crown, by the previous oath to Matilda. ( Will. Malm, as above. ) « At Ascension-tide. Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). There is also an account of the seizure of Hereford by Geoffrey Talbot in Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 69, where it seems to be placed in 1140. The writer has apparently confused the seizure by Geoffrey in 1 138 with that by Miles of Gloucester in December 1139, and misdated both. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 295 seen, joined hands with the Scot king ; while throughout the south and west the barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert's decision. Bristol under Robert's own son ;^ Harptree under William Fitz- John f Castle Gary under Ralf Lovel ; Dunster under William of Mohun ; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan f Dudley under Ralf Paganel ;* Burne, EUesmere, Whitting- ton and Overton under William Peverel :^ on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of Earl Robert's, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn Maminot^ : — all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made ready for defence or defiance ; and Stephen's own constable Miles, who as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into that city with regal honours,^ now followed the earl's example and formally renounced his allegiance.* The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five weeks' duration the town caught fire below the bridge ; the alarmed rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them to depart free.' ' Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 917. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 36. " Ord. Vit. as above. Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 43. ^ Hen. Hunt, and Ord. Vit. as above. * "Paganellus [tenuit] castellum de Ltidelaue,'' says Hen. Hunt, (as above). But we shortly afterwards find Stephen, according to Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. no), marching against " castellum de i?«(/i;/i?&^e, quod Radulf Paignel contra ilium munierat." As Henry makes no mention of Dudley at all, and the continuator of Florence makes no mention of Ludlow till 1 139, when he says nothing of its commander, it seems plain that there has been some mistake between the two names, which indeed might easily get confounded. Mr. Eyton (Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. v. pp. 244, 245) rules that the Continuator is right, as there is no trace of any connexion between Ralf Paganel and Ludlow, which indeed he shews to have been in other hands at this time. See below, p. 301- ° Ord. Vit. as above. ' Hen. Hunt, and Ord. Vit. as above. ' Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 105. ' Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. ' Flor. Wore. Contin. (as above), p. 106. The writer adds that on the very day of Stephen's departure (June 15) Geoffrey set fire to everything beyond the Wye ; seven or eight Welshmen perished, but no English {ib. p. 107) — an indication that the part of Hereford beyond the Wye was then a Welsh quarter. 296 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly, and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,^ he seems to have returned to London ° and there collected his forces for an attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his prize ; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring and staff — a statement which tells something of the way in which the king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of Bristol.^ A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a natural stronghold of no common order ; and on the one side where nature had left it unpro- tected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town stood — the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the water — was in the Conqueror's last days occupied by a castle which in the Red King's reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan ; in those of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,* it grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,^ and surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined those of the Avon on the south." 1 Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. io6. ^ Gesta Stefh. (SeweU), p. 36. » Flor. Wore. Contin. (as above), pp. 108, 109. In Gesta Steph. (SeweU), PP- 37-39. 41, 42, the story is told at greater length, and the writer seems to de- fend the bishop and to eonsider his own hero rather ungrateful. *■ Will. Malm. HUt. Nirv., 1. i. u. 3 (Hardy, p. 692). = Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 37. * See plans and description in Beyer, Mem. of Bristol, vol. i. pp. 373 et seq. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 297 Bristol was in fact Robert's military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now become the chief muster- place of all his dispossessed partizans and followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth and renown of its lord.^ From this stronghold they sallied forth in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds ; wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds ; every wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till he had given up his uttermost farthing.^ One Philip Gay, a kinsman of Earl Robert, specially distinguished him- self in the contrivance of new methods of torture.* In his hands, and those of men like him, Bristol acquired the title of " the stepmother of all England."* If Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen's work would be more than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Mean- while, added the supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges, while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret sympathies were with the besieged, argued that what- ever material, wood or stone, was used for the construction 1 Gesta Stefh. (Sewell), p. 37. 2 lb. p. 40, 41. Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 109. Both writers, however, seem to lay to the sole account of the Bristol garrison all the horrors which in the Eng. Chron. a. 1137, are attributed to the barons and soldiers in general throughout the civil war. ^ Flor. Wore. Contin. as above. * "Ad totius Angliae novercam, Bristoam." Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 41. 298 ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. of the dam would be either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its current ; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,i ^ fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds, still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place yielded to Stephen ;2 according to another,^ he built over against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained by a stratagem somewhat later on ;* for the present Stephen left it to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the neighbour- hood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrews- bury.^ The old " town in the scrub," or bush, as its first English conquerors had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl, Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason of Robert of Belleme, had been granted by Henry I. to his second queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress ; and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda's interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert of Gloucester.^ William himself, with his wife and children, 1 Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 43. Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 1 10. ^ Gesta Steph. (Sewell), pp. 43, 44. ^ Flor. Wore. Contin. as above. ^ Gesta Steph. (Sewell), p. 44. ^ Flor. Wore. Contin. as above. On Dudley see above, p. 295, note 4. " Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Nortn. Scriptt.), p. 917. V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 299 slipped out at the king's approach, leaving the garrison sworn never to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with wood, set it on fire, and literally- smoked them out.i The noblest were hanged ; the rest escaped as best they could,^ while Stephen followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged to Fitz-Alan's uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with ninety-three of his comrades.* This unwonted Severity acted as a salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom. Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the tidings of her husband's victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to surrender.* This was in August.^ -When a truce had been patched up with Ralf Paganel,^ the west of England might be considered fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against Earl Robert's southernmost fortress, Wareham.'' Nothing, how- ever, seems to have come of this expedition ; and Robert himself was still out of reach beyond sea. In the mid- land shires William Peverel, the lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the king. Stephen's successes in the west, his wife's success at Dover, were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor ; and meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene. In the spring of 1 1 3 8 a schism which had rent the Western Church asunder for seven years was ended by the death of the anti-pope Anacletus, and Pope Innocent II. profited by the occasion to send Alberic bishop of Ostia as legate into England — Archbishop William of Canterbury, who had held a legatine commission together with the prim- ' "Omnes infumigat et exfumigat." Flor. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. no. 2 Ibid. ' Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 917. * Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). ^ Ord. Vit. as above. ' Flor. Wore. Contin. as above. ' Ibid. 30O ENGLAND UNDER THE ANGEVIN KINGS chap. acy, having died in November 1136.^ Alberic landed just as the revolt broke out, and Stephen had therefore no choice but to accept his credentials and let him pursue his mission, whatever it might be." It proved to be wholly a mission of peace. Alberic made a visitation-tour throughout England,' ending with a council at Carlisle, whither the king of Scots, who had adhered to Anacletus, now came to welcome Innocent's representative. There, on the neutral ground of young Henry's English fief, the legate made an attempt to mediate between David and Stephen ; but all that the former would grant was a truce until Martinmas, and a promise to bring to Carlisle and there set free all the captive Englishwomen who could be collected before that time, as well as to enforce more Christian-like behaviour among his soldiers for the future.* On the third Sunday in Advent the legate held a council at Westminster, when Theobald, abbot of Bee, was elected archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and certain delegates of the convent, in presence of the king and the legate.^ Theobald's con- secration, two days after Epiphany, brought Alberic's mission to a satisfactory close." In the work of mediation he had soon found that there was one who had the matter more nearly at heart, and who had a much better chance of success than himself. Queen Matilda was warmly attached to her Scottish relatives, and lost no opportunity of urging her husband to reconciliation with them. At last, on April 9, she and her cousin Henry met at Durham ; David and Henry gave hostages for their pacific conduct in the future, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted to Henry.'^ The 1 rior. Wore. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. On Alberic see Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 96, 97. - rior. Wore. Contin. (as above), p. lo5. ^ Ibid. The details of his movements in the north are in Rie. Hexh. (Raine), p. 98, and Joh. Hexh. (ibid.), p. 121. * Ric. Hex. (Raine), pp. 99, 100. Joh. Hexh. as above. ' Hen. Hunt., 1. viii. e. 9 (Arnold, p. 265). Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 101-103. Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107-109, and vol. ii. p. 384. Chron. Becc, in Giles, Lanfram, vol. i. p. 207. Vita Theobaldi (ibid.), PP- 337, 338. ^ Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 109. '' With the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, and on condition that V. GEOFFREY AND STEPHEN 301 treaty was ratified by Stephen at Nottingham ;^ the Scottish prince stayed to keep Easter with his cousins, and afterwards accompanied the l