Soon after the battle of Tinchebray Henry I wrote exultingly to Anselm, announcing the great victory and boasting that he had captured four hundred knights and ten thousand foot soldiers, and that the number of slain was legion.[1] It was a pardonable exaggeration, for indeed the battle had ended all resistance and decided the fate of Normandy. The duke seems to have had no thought of a continuance of the struggle, and meekly submitted to his conqueror. Henry hastened to the great stronghold of Falaise, which had successfully defied him the year before, and at the duke’s own command it was promptly surrendered into his hands.[2] Then he pressed on with his captive to Rouen, where he received a cordial welcome from the burgesses, to whom he restored the laws of the Conqueror and all the honors which their city had previously enjoyed.[3] And, again at the duke’s command, Hugh de Nonant handed over the citadel to the king. The duke, too, formally absolved the fortified towns (municipia) throughout all Normandy from their allegiance, and their defenders hastened to make peace with the victor.[4] Even the king’s most bitter enemies sought a reconciliation. Ranulf Flambard, the exiled bishop of Durham, who had caused such a scandal in the see of Lisieux, and who was still residing there as lord of the city (princeps in urbe), humbly sent to seek peace, and, upon surrendering Lisieux, was restored to his bishopric of Durham.[5] The terrible Robert of BellÊme still boasted the possession of thirty-four strong castles, and for a moment he seems to have contemplated further resistance. But an appeal for aid to Helias of La FlÈche met with no encouragement; and at the advice and through the mediation of the latter, he chose the prudent course of making peace with Henry upon the best terms possible. By the surrender of all the ducal domain which he had occupied illegally, he managed to obtain Argentan and the vicomtÉ of Falaise, together with certain other possessions which had formerly been held by his father, Roger of Montgomery.[6] But these temporary concessions to Robert of BellÊme were almost the only ones which the king felt it necessary to make. For, while he favored the clergy and gave peace and protection to the humble and unarmed population, he made it his first business to curb the restless baronage. He ordered the destruction of adulterine castles throughout the duchy.[7] Summoning a council of magnates at Lisieux in the middle of October, he proclaimed a royal peace, asserted his title to all the ducal domain which Robert Curthose through extravagance or weakness had let slip from his hands, and guaranteed to the churches and other legitimate holders all the possessions which they had lawfully enjoyed at the time of the Conqueror’s death.[8] Such measures brought despair to outlaws and evil men, but they inaugurated a new era of vigorous and orderly government which was welcomed with the utmost gratitude by all peace-loving subjects, especially by the clergy.[9] Anselm wrote to the king, saluting him as ‘duke,’ to congratulate him upon his splendid victory, and to thank him for the promise of good and considerate government.[10]

Henry remained in Normandy during the autumn and winter to complete the organization of the new rÉgime. In January 1107 he called the nobles together at Falaise, and in March he held another council at Lisieux, and promulgated many important decrees for the administration of the duchy.[11] And then, in Lent, “when he had either destroyed his enemies or subdued them, and had disposed of Normandy according to his will,”[12] he returned to England, and held his Easter court at Windsor.[13] And there “both Norman and English barons were present with fear and trembling.”[14]

Apparently the king had sent his prisoners, including the duke, on before him to England, lest the turbulent Normans, under the guise of aiding Robert Curthose, should break the peace.[15] And once he had them safely across the Channel he took good care that they should never escape him. William of Mortain, at least, was placed in close confinement for the rest of his life; and, if Henry of Huntingdon can be trusted, he was blinded.[16] Robert Curthose, it seems, was kept in free custody and provided with certain comforts and even luxuries;[17] but his confinement was not made less secure for that. According to the Annals of Winchester, he was first imprisoned at Wareham;[18] but he was afterwards given into the custody of the great Bishop Roger of Salisbury, who kept him in his magnificent castle at Devizes.[19]

In 1107 King Henry’s triumph seemed complete. He was now master both in England and in Normandy as he had never been before.[20] His conquest of the duchy had been willingly accepted by both clergy and people. And even Louis, the king designate of France—contrary, it may be observed, to his father Philip’s advice—had officially ratified his action.[21] Yet Henry’s troubles in Normandy had hardly begun, and the following years were a period of almost incessant warfare for the maintenance of his conquest. Hostility between him and his continental neighbors was, indeed, inevitable. With the accession Louis VI (le Gros) to the throne of France in 1108, the Capetians entered upon an era of royal ascendancy which necessarily made them look with jealous eyes upon their great feudatories, particularly the dukes of Normandy. The union of England and Normandy brought an increase of strength and of ambition to Henry I which rendered him dangerous not only to his overlord, the king of France, but also to his neighbors on the north and south in Flanders and Anjou; while in Normandy itself, the turbulent baronage soon grew restive under the stern rule of the ‘Lion of Justice,’ and were ever ready to ally themselves with anyone who would make common cause with them against him. And, unfortunately for Henry, he had made one fatal mistake in his settlement of Normandy after Tinchebray, which left a standing temptation in the way of the disaffected Norman baronage and of his jealous neighbors beyond the frontier.

The son of Robert Curthose, William surnamed the Clito, had fallen into the king’s hands at the surrender of Falaise in 1106,[22] and it would have been possible for Henry to have made away with him or to have placed him in permanent confinement, just as he had imprisoned the duke. But William Clito was still a child of tender years, and Henry feared public sentiment. Rather than bear the responsibility if any evil should befall the lad while in his hands, he placed him in ward with Helias of Saint-SaËns, Duke Robert’s son-in-law, to be brought up and educated.[23] Henry soon repented of this indiscretion, however, and, at the advice of certain of his counsellors, he gave orders for the Clito to be taken into custody. But before Robert de Beauchamp, the vicomte of Arques, who was charged with the execution of the king’s command, could carry out his mission, friends of the child learned of the impending stroke, and carried him away sleeping from his bed and hid him; and soon after the stanch Helias of Saint-SaËns fled with him into exile.[24] Abandoning all that they had in Normandy,[25] Helias and the Clito’s tutor, Tirel de MainiÈres, devoted their lives to their charge,[26] finding a refuge now here, now there, among King Henry’s enemies in France and Flanders and Anjou.[27]

It would lead us too far afield to trace in detail the tragic career of William Clito. But its salient features may, at least, be indicated; for he was the last hope of the lost cause of Robert Curthose.

The Clito rapidly grew to be a youth of uncommon attractions—“mult fu amez de chevaliers”[28]—and his pathetic story made an irresistible appeal to the discontented and ambitious, both in Normandy and beyond the frontiers.[29] Robert of BellÊme, until he was captured in 1112 and sent to end his days in an English prison,[30] made himself in a special way the patron and supporter of the Clito;[31] and the cause of the injured exile, mere child that he was, undoubtedly lay back of much of the desultory warfare in which King Henry was involved in Normandy and on the French frontier between 1109 and 1113. Count Robert of Flanders lost his life fighting in Normandy in 1111,[32] and his successor, Baldwin VII, gave an asylum to the Clito and conferred on him the arms of knighthood in his fourteenth year.[33]

It was between the years 1117 and 1120, however, that the opponents of King Henry’s continental ambitions first organized themselves in support of William Clito upon a formidable scale. Louis VI had repented of his earlier friendship for Henry I,[34] and in 1117 he entered into a sworn alliance with Baldwin of Flanders and Fulk of Anjou to overthrow the English rule in Normandy and place the Clito on the ducal throne.[35] Simultaneously, a widespread revolt broke out among the Norman baronage, and for three years Henry was involved in a formidable war, which he conducted with characteristic vigor and success.[36] The death of Count Baldwin eliminated Flanders from the contest.[37] Henry succeeded in making peace and forming an alliance with Fulk of Anjou in June 1119.[38] And in the decisive battle of BrÉmule in the same year, the English overwhelmed the French, and Louis VI fled from the field.[39] But from arms the French king turned to diplomacy. He appeared with the Clito before the council of Rheims (October 1119), and laid the cause of Robert Curthose and of his exiled son before the assembled prelates with such telling effect[40] that Pope Calixtus set out for Normandy to deal in person with the English king. But Henry showed himself as apt at diplomacy as he had been successful in arms. Meeting the Pope at Gisors (November 1119), he welcomed him with the utmost courtesy and with an extraordinary show of humility.[41] He provided elaborately for his entertainment.[42] And when Calixtus arraigned him for his unjust conduct, and, in the name of the council, called upon him to release Robert Curthose from prison and to restore him and the Clito to the duchy,[43] Henry replied in an elaborate speech, placing the whole responsibility upon the duke. He declared that he had been obliged to conquer Normandy in order to rescue it from anarchy, and that he had offered to confer three English counties upon the Clito and to bring him up in all honor at his court.[44] Strange to say, the Pope professed himself entirely convinced by Henry’s assertions and declared that “nothing could be more just than the king of England’s cause.” But William of Malmesbury explains that the royal arguments were “well seasoned with rich gifts.”[45] Henry had won the Pope, and through the latter’s mediation a peace was soon arranged with Louis VI upon the basis of mutual restitutions; and William Atheling, Henry’s son, did homage to the king of France for Normandy (1120).[46] The Norman rebels, too, seeing that their cause was hopeless, hastily made peace with Henry, and at his command did homage and swore fealty to the Atheling.[47] William Clito was deserted on almost every hand, and his cause did indeed seem hopeless. If we can trust the chronicle of Hyde monastery, he sent messengers to King Henry and humbly besought him to release his father from captivity, and promised, if his request were granted, to depart with him for Jerusalem, abandoning Normandy to the king and his heirs forever, and never again to appear this side the Julian Alps.[48]

King Henry, we are told, treated these overtures with arrogant contempt, as well he might in view of his victory over all his enemies. Yet before the end of the year the loss of the Atheling on the White Ship put all his well laid plans awry, and left William Clito, his bitter enemy, as the most direct heir of all his dominions both in Normandy and England.[49] Soon his old enemies began to rally to the Clito’s cause; and he was again confronted with a formidable revolt of the Norman baronage (1123-25), which had at least the tacit support of the king of France.[50] Fulk of Anjou, in league with the rebels, abandoned the English alliance and conferred the county of Maine, together with the hand of his younger daughter Sibyl, upon the Clito.[51] Though Henry succeeded in having this marriage annulled by papal decree in 1124 upon the ground of consanguinity,[52] Louis VI continued to support the Clito. At his Christmas court in 1126 he called upon the assembled barons to assist the young prince.[53] Shortly thereafter he gave him the half-sister of his own queen in marriage and conferred upon him Pontoise, Chaumont, Mantes, and the whole of the Vexin. Before Lent 1127 the Clito appeared at Gisors at the head of an armed force, and laid claim to Normandy.[54] And soon afterwards the foul murder of Count Charles the Good opened the question of the Flemish succession, and gave the king of France, as overlord of the county, an opportunity to raise his protÉgÉ to the throne of Flanders, although the king of England was himself a candidate for the honor.[55] The fortunes of the Clito were now decidedly in the ascendant, and it behooved Henry I to bestir himself to check his progress. He crossed the Channel and began active military operations against the Franco-Flemish alliance.[56] He sent his agents into Flanders to distribute bribes and build up a combination against the new count. He freely subsidized the rival claimants to the county.[57] But Henry’s problem was soon solved for him by a civil war in which, so far as we know, he had no part or influence. William Clito had allied himself with the feudal aristocracy of Flanders, but he had failed to comprehend the spirit of the progressive bourgeoisie, to whom his predecessor, Charles the Good, had made important concessions.[58] Increasing friction with the burgesses soon led to an insurrection, and the Clito was wounded at the siege of Alost, late in July 1128, and died soon after.[59] That night, Robert Curthose, we are told, lying in his distant English prison, dreamed that he had himself been wounded in the right arm; and waking, “Alas!” he said, with telepathic vision, “my son is dead.”[60] It was, indeed, the end of all hope for the captive duke; and thereafter Henry I ruled in peace in Normandy as well as England.

Of the vicissitudes of Robert Curthose during the long years of his imprisonment we know almost nothing. A curious notice in the chronicle of Monte Cassino for the year 1117 styles him ‘king of the English,’ and avers that his ‘legates’ had visited the monastery, and, presenting the monks with a precious golden chalice, had besought their prayers for himself and his realm.[61] In 1126, upon his return from Normandy, Henry I transferred the duke from the custody of Bishop Roger of Salisbury to that of Earl Robert of Gloucester, who placed him in confinement at first in his great stronghold at Bristol.[62] But later he moved him to Cardiff castle in his Welsh lordship of Glamorgan;[63] and there, in this wild frontier stronghold, in full view of the ‘Severn Sea’ Robert Curthose ended his days. If we can rely upon our evidence, he took advantage of his long imprisonment to master the Welsh language, and amused himself with verse-making. And he appears to have left behind him a poem of no mean order. It was extracted by the Welsh bard, Edward Williams,[64] “from a MS. of Mr. Thomas Truman, of Pant Lliwydd (Dyer’s valley), near Cowbridge, Glamorgan, containing, in the Welsh language, ‘An Account of the Lords Marchers of Glamorgan from Robert Fitz Hamon down to Jasper, Duke of Bedford,’ and written about the year 1500,”[65] and was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1794, from which it seems worth while to quote it in full, together with the attribution of authorship:

In English thus:

Whether these lines be actually by Robert Curthose or not, they are in their tragic pathos no inapt epitome of his misdirected career, which had begun with such bright promise and ended in such signal disaster. ‘Woe to him that is in the power of his enemies,’ ‘woe to him that is not old enough to die’—often must these sentiments have haunted him during the long years of his captivity. But his melancholy longings at last found satisfaction. Early in February 1134 he died at Cardiff,[68] a venerable octogenarian, and was buried before the high altar in the abbey church of St. Peter at Gloucester.[69] Henry I piously made a donation to the abbey, in order that a light might be kept burning perpetually before the great altar for the good of the soul of the brother whom he had so deeply injured.[70]