William had a reputation for being cruel to his prisoners, but the records are silent on Odo’s time in incarceration. It is unlikely that he was treated with the same consideration that Henry I is said to have extended to his brother Robert after he was imprisoned in 1106. According to Orderic Vitalis, the king described the conditions of his brother’s captivity:
I have not kept my brother in fetters like a captured enemy, but have placed him as a noble pilgrim … in a royal castle [Devizes, Bristol and Cardiff], and have kept him well supplied with abundance of food and other comforts and furnishing of all kinds.
(OV, vi, 286–7)
Such imprisonment was known as ‘free custody’ or ‘honourable captivity’ and it seems unlikely that Odo did not buy himself preferred treatment whilst he was detained. We do know about one earlier event at the Tower which occurred c. 1000 – William of Hiémois, Duke Richard II’s half-brother, escaped from here by climbing down a very long rope, hung from the highest window (van Houts 2000, 67).
There was no attempt to deprive Odo of his bishopric, although Bayeux Cathedral, the abbey of St Vigor and many of his diocesan parish churches were subject to attack and some were badly damaged. In Normandy, although some land was forcibly taken from the cathedral’s estates, it seems to have been the bishop’s own tenants, such as the vicomte of the Bessin, who were largely responsible for such actions. The bishop regained most of the land after his permanent return to Normandy in 1088. In England, however, William the Conqueror stripped Odo of his earldom and had started dismantling his massive English estates by the time Domesday Book was compiled in around 1086. It appears that the task of redistributing the bishop’s enormous landholdings had only just begun as for the most part Domesday records Odo’s estates as still intact and in his hands. It is possible that there remained doubts about the regularity of the procedure by which Odo was seized and tried; consequently, the royal court may have been reluctant to convict ‘the bishop’. According to Domesday Book, Odo remained the largest single landholder in England after the king. Nevertheless, Odo’s demesne lands in Kent had already been passed to royal administrators and were being farmed by Robert Latimer, while in Sussex and Gloucestershire his manors were listed along with those belonging to the king (Bates 1975, 17).
Some of Odo’s principal vassals were also stripped of their English estates at the time of the bishop’s imprisonment. For example, Wadard, who held land in several counties, was deprived of his holdings. However, his son Rainald was able to retain his Oxfordshire estates. William’s anger towards Odo was extended even to those who had been helped by the bishop before his imprisonment. Abingdon Abbey felt the king’s displeasure when he revoked a charter which had been signed by Odo, acting as regent while the king was in France, which confirmed the abbey’s purchase of the manor of Nuneham Courtenay (Oxon). William deprived the abbey of the manor and gave it ‘to an unknown person’ (Cownie 1998, 41–2).
• Odo the Pontiff •
In Rome, the power struggle between the pope and the emperor continued, and in March 1084 the majority of Pope Gregory’s supporters unwisely decided to surrender to the emperor, Henry. On Palm Sunday Gregory was formally deposed by Lombard bishops and the anti-pope Clement was consecrated as his successor. Although Henry did not have complete control of Rome, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Easter Day 1084. On hearing the news from Rome, Robert Guiscard marched on the Holy City and on 24 May he set up camp outside the walls with a large army, which included a sizeable Muslim element. Henry did not stay to fight; he left the city with Clement three days before the Normans arrived, claiming urgent business in the north. Unwisely, the Romans did not surrender immediately and when Guiscard’s troops did break into the city they resisted. As a result, the Norman army sacked Rome; there was a frenzy of murder, rape and pillage and much of the ancient city was destroyed by fire. Robert Guiscard had saved the papacy temporarily for Gregory, but it was impossible for the pope to remain in Rome, where the surviving citizens blamed him for the disaster that had fallen upon them (Brown 2003, 172).
The Normans left Rome at the beginning of July, taking Gregory with them. The pope moved to Salerno, within territory safely under Norman control, where he died in May 1085. His rather wistful epitaph was well chosen, ‘I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore, I [now] die in exile.’ His champion, Robert Guiscard, died just two months later of a fever on campaign on the island of Cephalonia. Gregory was succeeded reluctantly by Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, who took the name Victor III. Victor’s three-year reign as pope was neither a happy nor a successful one. He only spent short periods of time in Rome, alternating with the ever-present anti-pope Clement, and when he died in 1087 he was succeeded by the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Otho de Lagery (Champagne). The soothsayer’s prophecy had proved correct: the new pope took the title of Urban II, and there was indeed a pope called Odo in Rome.
• The Death of the Conqueror •
William the Conqueror died on 9 September 1087. The custom was for the dying king to release prisoners who had offended against him. William followed the convention but specified that Odo should remain a prisoner, thus confirming his life sentence. Orderic Vitalis used his record of this occasion to air many of the negative opinions about Odo which have been repeated in order to portray the bishop as a thoroughly unsavoury character. Even though Orderic had a more balanced opinion of Odo than appears from this episode, in this instance the chronicler put words into William’s mouth that were to blacken the bishop’s name over the centuries. Orderic’s account relates that when Odo’s other brother, Robert, heard that the bishop was ‘to suffer perpetual imprisonment by royal decree, he was sad at heart’. Robert then ‘begged for mercy for his brother … and wearied the dying man with his entreaties’. After several others present joined with Robert in begging for Odo’s release, the king replied:
I am amazed that you do not appreciate what kind of man this is for whom you plead. Are you not interceding for a man who has long been an enemy of the church and a cunning instigator of treacherous rebellion? Have I not kept under restraint for four years this bishop who, when he should have been a most just viceroy in England, became the worst oppressor of the people and destroyer of monasteries?
The king went on to prophesy trouble if Odo were to be released, saying, ‘I have imprisoned not a bishop but a tyrant. If he goes free, without doubt he will disturb the whole kingdom and bring thousands to destruction.’ Interestingly, Orderic records no reference to Odo’s attempt to gain the papacy or any other specific misdeeds, just the king’s overwhelming sense of betrayal. Eventually, the exhausted king reluctantly relented, as all those around his bed had offered security for the bishop’s future good conduct, but with one last expression of his deep misgivings, ‘Unwillingly I grant that my brother may be released from prison, but I warn you that he will be the cause of death and grievous harm to many’ (OV, vii, 99–101).
It was left to the poet Serlo to celebrate Odo’s release from prison with a characteristically unctuous poem:
While Odo had been in prison the flock had been without a shepherd, but with his release the sun had come out from behind the clouds. The cruelty and barbarity of the world no longer matter and the clergy need no longer fear its oppressions, for the storm has ended and the ship has its pilot again. The mother church is no longer a widow and the father’s return has put all her enemies to flight. Nature is rejoicing, the clergy sing the praises of their great bishop and poets applaud their father in magnificent verses. Like Joseph Odo has returned from prison, the deliverer of this country and saviour of his church.
(Bates 1975, 44–5)
• Odo and Duke Robert •
The death of Queen Matilda on 2 November 1083 had marked the beginning of a further deterioration in relations between the king and his eldest son, Robert. Matilda had acted as a buffer between the two and Robert may have felt unable to face his father by himself. Certainly, Odo in prison had been in no po
sition to support the young prince, with whom he seemed to enjoy amicable relations.
The peace between the king and his son which had taken so long to achieve was soon clouded. The stubborn young man contemptuously refused to follow or obey his father; the quick-tempered king continually poured abuse and reproach on him in public for his failings (OV, iv, 44).
Robert had left Normandy early in 1084 and never saw his father alive again. He spent almost four years in exile, only to return on his father’s death to find that William had split his realm and that he was to inherit the lesser part – Normandy.
Odo was released in time to attend his brother’s funeral at St Étienne in Caen. He would have been there both as the king’s half-brother and as the bishop of the diocese in which this important event took place. It turned out to be an undignified occasion, interrupted by a man claiming that William had stolen his land to build the abbey church and culminating in William’s corpse bursting and creating such a foul stench that the proceedings were rapidly brought to a conclusion. Odo made his peace with Duke Robert, who restored his Norman lands. The new duke appreciated that Odo’s support in the Bessin would be important, as it had been to his father before the Conquest. Orderic Vitalis used this occasion to praise the bishop, perhaps to balance the damning opinions he had given to the Conqueror to express, ‘He was a man of eloquence and statesmanship, bountiful and most active in worldly business.’
44 The tomb of Duke Curthose in Gloucester Cathedral. He died in 1134, having spent almost thirty years in prison in England.
Soon after William’s funeral Odo returned to England, apparently without visiting Bayeux, such was his preoccupation with securing his vast estates on the other side of the Channel. It is not known if he was back in time to attend William II’s coronation on 26 September 1087 as no record of that event survives, but he was in Canterbury in December. There, he ostensibly made peace with his old rival, Lanfranc, whom he assisted in the installation of a new abbot of St Augustine’s. Abbot Scotland, who died in September 1087, had been an energetic leader who had encouraged Saxon artistic and literary traditions and probably provided Odo with the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry. St Augustine’s had traditionally claimed a degree of independence from the metropolitan See and Lanfranc used the opportunity to bring them to heel by imposing Guy, a monk from Christ Church, as the new abbot. The monks of St Augustine’s ‘unanimously and with fervour’ declared that they ‘would neither obey him or receive him’. Despite these objections, Lanfranc still consecrated and enthroned Guy and ordered the arrest of ‘those who were more vehement and had been ringleaders’. The archbishop deported some of the monks to other monasteries, imprisoned others and, reputedly, had one of their number who had threatened to kill Guy flogged at the abbey gates and driven from the city (Gem 1997, 54).
Odo seems to have been present in his capacity as Earl of Kent, representing the secular authority in the shire. Traditionally, the bishop had been a protector of St Augustine’s, and was remembered as a friend and benefactor. The abbey had in the past called on Odo to advise on the translation of the relics of St Adrian and the bishop had seen the abbey as an ecclesiastical balance to Lanfranc’s powers in Canterbury (Cownie 1998, 102). His presence alongside Lanfranc may have been an attempt to seek reconciliation with the archbishop and demonstrate his good intentions to the new king. Perhaps even at this stage he was not fully committed to rebellion and was keeping his options open. A few days later, Odo was present at the new king’s Christmas court held at Westminster, along with most of the English bishops and many of the Anglo-Norman magnates. It was here that he seems to have started sounding out those who were most likely to ally themselves with Duke Robert against the new king.
45 The great seal of Henry I, from the foundation charter of Reading Abbey 1125.
Initially, Robert may have been reasonably content with Normandy as his part of his father’s bequest, but this was before he became aware that his father’s prosperity had flowed from his English possessions. William Rufus had inherited the Treasury at Winchester, which, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was overflowing with riches and ‘it was impossible for any man to say how much was gathered there in gold, and in silver, and in vessels and in purple cloth and in gems and in many other precious things which are difficult to recount’ (Aird, 110). In order to fulfil his father’s deathbed wishes, Robert was obliged to dispense treasure to monasteries, churches and the poor, and he began to appreciate that a Norman duke without English financial support was not particularly wealthy. He also had to pay for the lavish celebrations marking his accession as duke and reward mercenary soldiers and his own backers; as a result, the Treasury at Rouen was soon exhausted. The duke was obliged to approach his younger brother Henry for money. Henry, who had been left no land but £5,000, struck a hard bargain – he would give £3,000 to Robert in return for a stake in Normandy, namely, the Cotentin.
Henry became Count of the Cotentin, a position that gave him possession of ducal lands and rights including castles; thus, the ducal administration of the Cotentin peninsula now functioned under his authority (Le Patourel 1976, 342). The sale of the most remote western part of the duchy might have seemed like a good deal to Robert at the time, as he could now concentrate his efforts on consolidating Upper Normandy and there was always the possibility that he would gain England – but he would come to regret allowing his brother a foothold within the duchy.
8
• ‘The Bishop Abandoned the Dignity
That He Had in This Land’ •
The Conqueror’s reluctance to release Odo was partly because he realised that the bishop would take advantage of his decision to divide the realm by fermenting division between the two brothers, William Rufus and Robert Curthose. His instincts were right; Odo, who appeared on the face of it like the Bourbons to ‘have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing’ (Talleyrand), wasted little time in resuming his career as a rebel leader. He would have calculated that once the initial enthusiasm had worn off, Robert would resent the crown of England passing to his younger brother, when according to natural justice it should have been his. The bishop also knew that he would not be able to regain his former positions as chief adviser and regent to the king – these positions were now occupied by Lanfranc and the Bishop of Durham, William de St Calais. Odo’s best hope of re-establishing his former strength was by initiating a rebellion which would put Robert Curthose on the throne of England.
• Rebellion •
The Christmas court in 1087 had provided Odo with an opportunity to canvass support for a baronial uprising. Those barons who had land on both sides of the English Channel were worried by the prospect of having to serve two masters. ‘How can we provide adequate service to two lords who are so different and live so far apart’ (OV, 1968–80, VIII, 123). They argued that if they satisfied one it would probably be at the expense of upsetting the other; they would much prefer to have a ruler who was both King of England and Duke of Normandy. Orderic Vitalis articulated their thoughts:
Then let us make Duke Robert ruler over England and Normandy to preserve the union of the two realms, for he is older by birth and of a more tractable character, and we have already sworn fealty to him during the lifetime of the father of both men. (OV, iv, 122–5)
It was the concerns of Bishop Odo and these powerful noblemen rather than Robert’s ambition that fuelled the uprising. Indeed, it is not clear if Duke Robert was even aware of the plot being hatched on his behalf during the early part of 1088.
In addition to Odo, the list of conspirators included some of the most influential men in the Anglo-Norman world, such as his brother Count Robert of Mortain and Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances. Others, such as Roger de Montgomery, were ambivalent, although his son Robert de Bellême sided firmly with the rebels. Odo was said to have had a force of 500 men, but these did not include many of his Kentish vassals, who were loyal to their land and not to the bishop who, after all, had been in prison for four years
. The plan was that the rebellion would break out simultaneously in different parts of the kingdom, but the heart of the rising would be in the south-east where Odo, Eustace III of Boulogne and Robert de Bellême were operating. The rebellion started at Easter 1088 and the absence of many of the conspirators from the king’s Easter court would have indicated to William Rufus that he had a major problem on his hands. Odo is reported as having ‘severely injured’ his own earldom of Kent and ‘utterly laid waste the king’s land and the archbishop’s, and he carried all the goods into his castle at Rochester’ (Sharpe 2004, 139–57). Odo took advantage of the situation to settle some old grievances and is reported to have ravaged the lands of Lanfranc in particular. Over the next few weeks regional uprisings broke out at Bristol and Bath, at Berkeley in Gloucestershire, and in Worcestershire, Norfolk, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. In response, at the end of April the king called an assembly to raise an army to suppress the rebellion; it was at this point that the Bishop of Durham, who up until then had been loyal to William Rufus, curiously chose to desert the king and flee to the north.
The Man Behind the Bayeux Tapestry Page 15
