William’s father was the fifth Duke of Normandy, and if the story of how he attained that dignity be true, certain it is that his nickname “Le Diable” was more fitting than the other, “Magnifique,” which he earned by his lavishness. His elder brother, Richard, was Duke of Normandy when Robert set up the standard of rebellion at Falaise. But Richard was no weakling, and did not suffer the disaffection to spread; he appeared before the walls with all the forces at his disposal, and soon compelled his younger brother to sue for peace. Then an arrangement was made by which a certain grant of land was conferred on the rebel, while the castle of Falaise, a powerful stronghold, was recognised as the property of the reigning duke. To celebrate the occasion the two brothers repaired in amity to Rouen, and there in the castle fortress, then standing on the site of the markets near the river, a banquet was held, to cement the new friendship and understanding. But suddenly Richard turned pale and sickened, and before nightfall he was dead. There was little doubt that poison had been in his cup; put there by whom but the man who was now duke, and held the power of life and death in his hands! None dare speak to accuse him, and, like many another in the Dark Ages, he reaped the full reward of his crime in perfect security. There were others of his family alive, uncles as powerful, and, had occasion arisen, doubtless as unscrupulous as himself; but Robert was on the spot, he held possession, and apparently without a word being raised in protest, he occupied his murdered brother’s place. An illegitimate son of his brother’s, named Nicholas, he placed in the abbey at FÉcamp to be trained as a monk, a method often made use of by half savage kings to soften youthful rivals, still susceptible of being taught the hollowness of worldly ambition and the wickedness of rebellion against authority. It may be thought that this youth can hardly have been regarded as a serious rival, but in those days the marriage-tie was not deemed essential to inheritance. From William Longsword every Norman duke so far had been born out of wedlock, and though they had been legitimatised afterwards by some ceremony between their parents, this was rather a concession than a necessity. It is said that Nicholas entered with zest into his holy vocation, and was himself the architect of the first church of St Ouen at Rouen, of which there remains only the beautiful apse, known as the Tour aux Clercs. He was fourth abbot, and was buried in the church.

What always strikes one as remarkable in reading history, is the youth of the principal actors. Robert was but twenty-two when he murdered his brother for the ducal crown. Falaise was one of his favourite seats, the hunting was good, the country pleasant, and the security of the stronghold reassuring. Once, as he returned from hunting, he had espied a tanner’s daughter, of rare beauty, washing clothes in the little stream that runs beneath the mighty rock; when he looked out of the high narrow window the next day, he had no difficulty in recognising the same girl again; and subsequently he introduced himself to her in the guise of a lover. Tanning was looked upon by the Normans as being a very low trade indeed, and though Fulbert, the Conqueror’s grandsire, added to it the avocation of brewing, he could never shake off the odium which clung to his name on account of his principal business. The base-born brat of the tanner’s daughter would hardly be considered at first as even a pawn in the great game of statecraft. But the boy was dear to his father’s heart. His mother, Arlotta, was taken into the castle, and there was none to rival her, for Robert was not married. Yet strangely enough he did not make her his wife, and so render brighter the prospects of the sturdy boy, whom he regarded with much affection. He could not bring himself to recognise Arlotta even by the sort of ceremony his ancestors had considered sufficient; his pride was too great to give the tanner’s daughter a right to share his throne, and he preferred that his son should start more heavily weighted for the race than he need have been. When Robert made up his mind to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, the position became one of great difficulty; he was worse than childless, and men began dimly to foresee that this only son of his would prove a heavy stumbling-block in the way of any other succession. But Robert’s selfishness being immeasurably stronger than his paternal love, he departed, leaving it to be well understood that in case of accidents William was to be his heir. But there were a number of the descendants of the great Rollo still alive, strong men, soldiers, nobles with retinues of their own, and each and all put his own claim prior to that of this nameless boy. Looked at thus, it seems little short of miraculous that William should ever have raised himself to the throne at all, a more wonderful feat than even his conquest of England in later years. The boy was but eight when, after various warning rumours of failing health, the news came definitely that his father was dead. Duke Robert had left him in charge of Alain, Count of Brittany, who, though a relative, could not himself hope to ascend the throne, and the choice was wise. Alain fulfilled his trust loyally, and the exceptional talent and courage of the young duke seem from the first to have attached to him a number of nobles, so that his position gradually gained solidarity, though the marvel that he should have escaped knife or poison in an age where such means of riddance were frequently employed remains the same. Full credit for his safety at this dangerous time must be given to the nobles of the CÔtentin, especially to Neel of St Sauveur, who is mentioned again in the chapter on that district. The bitterness of the stain upon his birth was early felt by William, and there are instances in his career which point to the smarting of a hidden sore shown by a man ordinarily self-possessed. His treatment of the burghers of AlenÇon, because they had openly taunted him with his birth, is one case in point; the other is his own unexampled domestic life, which stands out in strong contrast with those of his predecessors; he seems early to have made up his mind with iron will that what he had suffered through his father, none should suffer through him.

At thirteen he took upon himself responsibility, and really began to rule. His mother had been separated from him, and had no share in the government. She had married a knight named Herlouin, by whom she had two children, of both of whom we hear much in history. The elder, Odo, became Bishop of Bayeux. He it was who encouraged his half-brother’s troops at Hastings, going before and calling them on. As Odo’s dealings had more to do with England than Normandy, we may dispose of him here in a few words. After the Conquest, vast wealth and many estates were bestowed upon him; he was viceroy in William’s absence, and second in power to the king himself. His overweening pride made him overbearing; he aspired to sit on the papal throne. William, discovering in him many treasonable practices, kept him prisoner at Rouen. On his half-brother’s death, however, he once more became prominent, led insurrections against his nephew William the Red, and joined with Duke Robert in his fraternal wars. At last this turbulent, vigorous, astute man went crusading with Robert, and died at Palermo in 1097.

Arlotta’s other son, Robert of Mortain, was a loyal brother; he prepared a hundred and twenty ships for the great flotilla, and lived peaceably during the Conqueror’s lifetime, though he too warred against William the Red. He is mentioned again in connection with Mortain.

The generally received opinion of William the Conqueror in England is, that he was a stern and cruel man; stern he certainly was, stern with the sternness of strength which serves as a shield against familiarity, and enables its possessor to go straight on his own way, regardless of unfavourable opinions or specious arguments.

“This King William that we speak about,” says the chronicler, “was a very wise man, and very rich; more worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers were. He was mild to the good men that loved God, and beyond all metes stark to them who withstood his will. Else, he was very worshipful.” This is the testimony of one who was almost his contemporary, and who had nothing to fear from him, nor aught to gain by praising him.

The idea of William’s cruelty is based on his harrying of Northumberland, an act that could never have originated in the mind of a soft-hearted or imaginative man; but William’s bent was not toward cruelty, and considering the age in which he lived, the well-authenticated cases which we have of his clemency are remarkable. When he was only twenty, an age when if there be any hardness in a man’s nature it is at its worst, unsoftened by personal experience of sorrow, he spared the lives of those of his vassals who had risen against him not openly but with treachery. The manner of it was thus. Guy of Burgundy, William’s first cousin, entered into a conspiracy with many of the most powerful nobles of Normandy to assassinate the duke. It is easy to be seen what was Guy’s motive; though he could only claim through his mother, he meant to make himself Duke of Normandy; but it is more difficult to see what the others expected to gain by a move which proposed to substitute one duke for another. It was not the first time that rebellion and revolt against the duke had risen, but it was the most serious plot, and the turning-point of William’s career. So secretly had the conspiracy been planned that he was all unaware of it. He was at this time in his twentieth year, and, as Wace tells us, “the barons’ feuds continued; they had no regard for him; everyone according to his means made castles and fortresses.” Up till now William had lived, but he had not been master. “Affrays and jealousies, maraudings and challengings” had continued in spite of him, but this deadly conspiracy was to bring matters to a head in a way its projectors little thought. William was in the castle of Alleaumes close to Valognes; he had retired for the night, when he was awakened by the agonised entreaties of the court fool, who told him that the nobles were even now on the point of arriving in order to seize him unprepared, and murder him. William must have had great confidence in his jester, for he rose straightway, and apparently without waiting for attendants saddled his horse, and rode off into the dark night. The whole story is mysterious; were there then no men-at-arms to guard the duke, no attendant to go with him? would it not have been safer to barricade the castle rather than to have fled alone? Whatever the cause, William’s midnight ride is a matter of history. There were no smooth, easy roads then; the country, from various accounts in charters and deeds of the tenth century, was covered with woods, and much waste ground; and, as we know, wolves abounded, for much later (1326), forty-five wolves were taken in the district of Coutances, twenty-two in that of Carentan, and nineteen in that of Valognes, in the Easter term alone. The young duke could only have had the stars to guide him, and safety was far off. He meant to get to Falaise, where he could feel tolerably secure; but even as the crow flies Falaise is over seventy miles from Valognes, and the way would be difficult to find. The account of this dramatic episode is circumstantially given by the old chronicler, who tells us that even as William left the town he heard the clatter of the enemies’ horses entering it. The enemy, finding he had fled, and knowing they had implicated themselves far too deeply to think of pardon, set off in hot pursuit, and the duke was only saved by hiding in a thicket, whence he saw them go by. He did not follow the direct route, but kept along by the sea-coast, until the next morning on a worn and jaded steed he found himself at Ryes, between Bayeux and the coast, where he revealed himself to the lord of the manor-house, a man named Hubert. Hubert promptly rehorsed him, and sent him on his way with two of his own sons as guides. Thus the duke managed to reach the stronghold of Falaise in safety.

Later on William constructed a raised road, running through the country in the direction of his flight; it ran from Valognes to Bayeux and thence to Falaise, part of it may still be seen between Quilly-le-Tessin, Caitheoux, and Fresni-le-Pucceux. It is said that it was the forced task of the very conspirators who had compelled the fight, an instance of grim justice! The malcontents must have trembled when they knew that their powerful overlord was free, and fully aware of their guilt; there was no escape now, open revolt was their only chance, so they gathered their forces and attacked Caen.

William, for his part, collected his men, and leaving a garrison in Falaise, marched to Rouen; but too much depended on a battle, to risk it against a greatly superior and better prepared force. He resolved on a stroke of policy, no less than to call for protection from his own overlord the King of France, who had formerly been his invader and enemy. King Henry responded to the appeal, possibly feeling that Normandy might slip from him altogether, and France itself be menaced, were the handful of nobles to win power by their swords.

Then was fought, at Val-Ès-dunes, about nine miles from Caen, one of the most memorable battles in the history of Normandy.

A picturesque incident marked the beginning of the battle. A splendid company of knights, carrying devices on their lances, were seen in the forefront of the nobles’ ranks, and William, advancing, cried out that they were his friends. The leader, De Gesson, was so much touched by this, that though he had banded himself with the insurgents, and taken a fearful oath to be the first to strike William in the mÊlÉe, he satisfied his conscience by one of those transparent evasions common to superstitious ages, and considered he had redeemed his word by striking William gently on the shoulder with his gauntlet, and then immediately transferring himself and his followers to the side against which he had come out to fight.

It is said the army of the nobles numbered 20,000, but figures seen through such a distance of time have generally suffered from a little extension. The fight was fierce, and hand to hand; battle-axes and swords played greater part than arrows. It is impossible to better the picturesque account given by Wace. “There was great stir over the field, horses were to be seen curvetting, the pikes were raised, the lances brandished, and shields and helmets glistened. As they gallop they cry their various war-cries: those of France cry ‘Montjoie!’ the sound whereof is pleasant to them. William cries ‘Dex Aie!’ the swords are drawn, the lances clash. Many were the vassals to be seen there fighting, serjeants and knights overthrowing one another. The king himself was struck and beat down off his horse.”

But in the end William and his ally triumphed, and the nobles fled in confusion from the field. Yet, when he seized the arch-traitor Guy of Burgundy, he treated him as we have said with extraordinary leniency, and except for taking from him the territory which had enabled him to play such a part, he suffered him to go unpunished, and even provided for him otherwise. This treatment bore fruit, for Guy became a good subject, and led troops at Hastings with distinction. The other leaders were deprived of their estates, and one was imprisoned, but none were executed, while the smaller men escaped scot-free. When the duke had come to his full stature he was a mighty man, some say seven feet in height, and unwieldy in bulk; none could wield his axe; in battle, horse and man went down before him, cloven by the strength of his mighty arm. And not alone in strength was he more than a match for his fellows, but let a man as much as whisper treason, and he heard of it; those who plotted were reached surely by that penetrating power, and lived to rue their folly. He was a kingly man, born to rule.

But though the victory at Val-Ès-dunes made him duke de facto, his work was far from being done, insurrection continued in other parts of the duchy, and shortly after he was called to subdue AlenÇon, which held out against him. “He found the inhabitants all ready to greet him: calthrops sown, fosses deepened, walls heightened, palisades bristling all around ... to spite the Tanner’s grandson, the walls were tapestried with raw hides, the filthy gore-besmeared skins hung out, and as he drew nigh, they whacked them and they thwacked them; ‘plenty of work for the tanner,’ they sang out, shouting and hooting, mocking their enemies” (Palgrave).

Then in an ineffectual sortie some of the townsmen fell into William’s hands, and terrible was the vengeance which fell on them for their savage joke. Their eyes were spiked out, their hands and feet chopped off, and the mangled limbs were flung into the town. Soon after, no doubt awed by an anger so much fiercer than they had reckoned on, a cruelty so merciless when aroused, the people made terms, and William, victorious, once again returned to Rouen.

The next rebel was William’s own uncle, of the same name as himself, his father’s half-brother. He trusted to the strength of the castle of Arques, near Dieppe, which had been given him by his nephew. But the young duke was in the heyday of his vigour. The news was brought to him at Valognes at midday one Thursday, and by Friday evening he was before the gates of Arques, having come by way of Bayeux, Caen, and Pont-Audemer. The castle was stoutly defended, and so impregnable by position, that the only method was to sit down before it and wait; a method adopted with complete success, though the arch-traitor himself managed to escape and fly. Many other smaller risings occurred which kept the great Conqueror in practice, and then came the second great battle in Normandy, that of MortÈmer, at which he was not present himself. He had shown his diplomacy in using the King of France as an ally against the men of the CÔtentin, now it was the same King of France, Henry, who, being jealous of the power of this great vassal, fomented insurrection among his subjects and entered that part of the duchy known as the Vexin, in a hostile spirit. To the French, the Normans were even yet pirates, and pirates they continued to be called until the end. Wace says that the Frenchmen would call the Normans “Bigoz,” a corruption of their war-cry, “By God,” from which comes our word bigot; and they would ask the king, “Sire, why do you not chase the Bigoz out of the country? Their ancestors were robbers, who came by sea, and stole the land from our forefathers and us.”

So the French marched as far as MortÈmer, and began to pillage. But after pillage came revelry, as it so frequently does, and the Normans, who had been watchful but unseen, fell upon the French and routed them hip and thigh. With the blithe exaggeration of days before statistics were known, the old chronicler says, “nor was there a prison in all Normandy which was not full of the Frenchmen. They were to be seen fleeing around, skulking in the woods and bushes, and the dead and wounded lay amid the burning ruins, and upon the dunghills, and about the fields, and in the bye-paths.”

As we have said, at this battle William personally was not present, and the French king was not taken prisoner.

Record states that William broke into poetry, apparently the only time he was so seized: the very words of his poem are preserved; here is a verse of it:—

After this, negotiations were concluded, and the French prisoners restored; nevertheless the French again soon after entered Normandy, and ravaged the country, even so far as the coast. The River Dive, lying to the east of Caen, is considered the dividing line between Upper and Lower Normandy, and it was at this river that William came up with the main body of the French, including the king himself. William’s strokes generally owed as much to their policy as their strength, and this time was no exception. He waited in ambush until half the French had crossed the stream, and then falling suddenly on the remainder, cut them off, and totally routed them. Those in advance, taken in the rear, fled in confusion, and vast quantities of spoil fell into the duke’s hands, though the French king himself escaped. After this, peace was concluded at FÉcamp.

But still fighting did not cease. The Counts of Anjou had been a perpetual thorn in William’s side, and the most formidable of all was Geoffrey Martel, who seized Maine, and held it as well as his own territory; but buoyant with victory, the Norman troops advanced upon the principal city, Le Mans, and took it without difficulty, and Geoffrey Martel was quieted for a while; he died four years before the Conquest of England.

But now we must turn for a moment from William’s battles to his domestic life. His romantic marriage is an outstanding incident in his career. He did not marry until he was twenty-six, a considerable age for a king. But in that as in other matters he had a mind of his own, and one lady and one only would satisfy him, and she kept him waiting for seven years. She was his own first cousin, Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Baldwin V., Earl of Flanders, but neither she nor her relatives cared for the match. There are various tales concerning her, one of which says she was already a widow when William expressed his preference, and had two children of her own. Another story says she favoured another suitor, who, however, was perhaps well advised in declining the perilous position of husband to the lady of William’s choice, however flattering that lady’s preference for himself. After waiting with more or less patience for seven years, William took summary methods. He went to Bruges, where his ladylove lived, and meeting her as she returned from church, rolled her in the mud of the street, humiliating her in the eyes of all, and ruining her gay and beautiful clothes. This Petruchio-like method served the purpose. In a very short time Matilda consented to marry the man who had shown her his determination in so unequivocal a manner. This particular marriage seems to have been a brilliant exception in an age when marriage vows were held in scant respect. Yet, when he won Matilda’s consent, all William’s troubles, in regard to the alliance, were by no means at an end. By the tenets of the Church to which he and his bride belonged, they were within the prohibited degree of consanguinity. This difficulty was surmounted by their gaining absolution on the condition that they erected two religious houses at Caen, houses which stand to this day, and are mentioned more particularly in the chapter on that city.

It was two years before his marriage that William had paid that celebrated visit to England in which had probably originated his intention to become lord of that country in due time. But it was not until he was thirty-six that he received the return visit from Harold, when he extorted from his unwilling guest the oath on which he based his right to the English throne. The story of Harold and of the Conquest is told in connection with the famous tapestry, one of the most marvellous contemporary records ever a nation possessed. We resume the narrative here when William, as King of England, in March 1067 returned to Normandy, bringing with him the harmless Edgar Atheling, also the earls Edwin and Morcar, and the archbishop Stigand, probably less with the intention of treating them as guests than with the idea of leaving no head for a revolt behind him in his new country. He held festivals at Rouen, Caen, FÉcamp, and Falaise, a kind of triumphal progress in fact; and then returning to quell the revolts which had broken out in England in his absence, he took with him Matilda, and they were jointly crowned at Westminster. But his triumphs were soon to be dimmed by sore domestic worry. During his frequent absences in England he left Matilda in charge of Normandy, and with her he associated his son Robert. But Robert was rude and unfilial; he grasped at power on his own account, and his mother, with that weak affection so often shown in a mother toward her first-born son, aided and sympathised with him. One great source of quarrel between the young prince and his father was the government of the country of Maine. Robert had been affianced to the young Countess of Maine, who had died before the marriage; he held, therefore, that he ought now to rule there independently, while William, who had subdued the country by his sword before he took possession of the young heiress and betrothed her to his son, held it for himself, and the subject was the cause of endless recrimination between the king and his eldest son. Besides Robert, he had had three other sons, but the next, Richard, “had been killed in some mysterious manner, which seemed to make people loath to speak even of the circumstance” (Palgrave). He seems to have met his death in the New Forest, where also were killed William the Red and one of Robert’s sons. William, afterwards known as Rufus, was six years his eldest brother’s junior, and Henry was several years younger still. There were also, at ages varying between the brothers, five daughters. Cecily, of whom we hear at Caen, as first abbess of her mother’s foundation; she became eventually Abbess of FÉcamp. Constance, married to the Duke of Brittany. Adeliza or Agatha, first betrothed to Harold, and afterwards, much against her will, to the King of Galicia; but she was never married to him, dying on the journey to Spain. Adela, who married Stephen of Blois, and whose son afterwards became king of England; and Alice, who died young. Others add Constance and Adelaide, but five daughters and four sons are enough for any man, and the existence of the other two seems mythical. Various insurrections and petty wars vexed William’s later days, but still his hand was strong, his courage unfailing. He forgave his eldest son’s disloyalty more than once, only to find it break out again. At last, after wandering in exile for several years, Robert fixed himself in the castle of Gerberoi, on French soil, whence William assailed him, having his two younger sons with him. In one of the desperate sallies of the besieged, father and son engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, and being disguised by heavy armour, neither knew the other. At length William, being wounded, cried out, and in a moment his son, struck by remorse, raised his visor and fell on his knees asking forgiveness, sobered by the thought of the terrible crime of patricide of which he had nearly been guilty. Yet the reconciliation was hollow, and the father and son were never at heart friends. It was nine years after this that the end came. Philip, now King of France, seized an opportunity to make inroads on Normandy, and a mocking speech of his about William, who had grown corpulent and unwieldy, was repeated to the English king. But his spirit was the same; embittered by personal troubles, lonely in the estrangement and loss of her who had been his faithful companion through life, though not old in years—for he was only sixty—yet old with the turmoil of a fierce, hard life lived from the cradle, he still had the fire of youth, and he returned a furious answer to Philip’s taunt.

“The harvest was ripening, the grape swelling on the stem, the fruit reddening on the bough,” when William entered the fertile land where he was to meet with death. He seized the town of Mantes, belonging to the French king, and soon the place was in red ruin. A mass of flames mounted high in the sky, the inhabitants lay wounded to death or fled in terror, and the king himself, in spite of his great bulk and increasing infirmity, superintended the work of destruction; then suddenly—one has heard the story from earliest childhood—his fine charger, treading unexpectedly on a hot cinder, started violently, and flung its rider violently against the high-peaked saddle of the country—William had received his death-blow. There was little left to follow. He was carried by easy stages to his capital city, Rouen, and there laid in the abbey of St Gervais. And we may read of his lonely end in the account of the city of Rouen. But even after his death, the solitude which had attended the end did not desert him; of all historical funerals ever recorded, that of this great man is the most terrible.

The body was conveyed at the cost of a private citizen on its journey to Caen. Some say that his youngest son Henry followed it to Caen, but it seems hardly likely, for in that case there would have been no need for a subject to defray the expenses, as he undoubtedly did. The corpse was taken to the church in the abbey of St Etienne—the abbey that, so light-heartedly years before, William had erected in penance for his marriage. Yet the mischances were not at an end. As the procession passed along the narrow street, a cry arose that the town was on fire. Down went the bier, and off went the crowd in search of this new sensation. It was not until the fire was quenched that the funeral was resumed. As they prepared with all due solemnity to lower the body into the grave, one stepped forward, crying, “I adjure ye that ye inter not William in the spot where ye are about to lay him. He shall not commit trespass on what is my right, for the greater part of this church is my right and of my fee, and I have no greater right in any of my lands.... By force he took it from me, and never afterwards offered to do me right.” He who had never dared to rebuke William publicly for “offering that which cost him nothing,” after his death was very bold. “All marvelled that this great king, who had conquered so much, and won so many cities and so many castles, could not call so much land his own as his body might lie within after death.”

The claimant was appeased by money, and after a further mishap too terrible to relate, those who had fulfilled their duty left the body of the king.

But even then his dust was not suffered to rest in peace, for in 1562 his tomb was broken into by the Huguenots, and again by the mob in 1793, and the remains disturbed. All that was preserved was a thigh-bone, a mighty bone, showing by its measurements the size and strength of the man, and this was reburied, and now lies before the altar, where a long inscription records the burial-place. It is the same as the original epitaph, though new cut:

“Hic Sepultus est invictissimus Guillelemus Conquestor Normanniae Dux, et Anglae Rex Hujus ce domus conditor qui obiit Anno MLXXXVII.”