The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

  The council lasted two days, dealing with the peace of Normandy. Persons who profited through disorders opposed the proceedings; but the other side won and the oath was taken. We are not told if the dissenters were forced to take it, as often happened at such gatherings. Fulbert mentions no lay lords; but the duke was there and the main opponents must surely have been laity, though doubtless aided by some bishops. And even here, in the midst of the discussion about peace, some usurpations were attempted. A Préaux cartulary remarked with irony, ‘The same year, when was held for the first time a Council of Peace at Caen, in presence of the Relics, the bishop Hugues of Bayeux made an attempt on the lands of the abbey St Pierre of Préaux...’

  The later tradition, probably correct, was that William initiated the movement; the choice of Caen also suggests his hand.[141] The texts make the Truce run from Wednesday to Monday, and define the forbidden acts in terms of individuals and groups, with penalties for offenders or accomplices. The sanctity applied to both moveable and immoveable goods, with less severe penalties for offences against them. A reservation was made in favour of the king or of a territorial prince, who was free to carry on war at any times. Then came a brief clause bidding diocesans assure peace to traders and strangers. A fifth article came back to the days when fighting was to cease. Priests should pray on Sundays and feast days for men who kept the Truce, and should curse the breakers. Any persons who pleaded that they broke the Truce involuntarily must justify themselves by oath and the ordeal of hot iron. (One manuscript differentiates between freemen and serfs.)[142] The reservation about king and prince is not found elsewhere in France at this time. A synod of 1080, presided over by William, confirmed the rulings about the Truce; and in the Coutumier of Bec, in the early thirteenth century, it is mentioned that at the end of the liturgic periods ‘Peace was sounded’. In general by the mid-eleventh century the idea of the Truce was well established; and in 1054 the great council of Narbonne tried to link it with that of the Peace of God, the protection of the church and the poor, and to lay down that no Christian should kill another, ‘for he that kills a Christian sheds the blood of Christ’.[143] At the council of Clermont in November 1095, which was concerned with the Truce of God, Pope Urban II launched the idea of the crusade to free the Holy Land.

  We thus see an interesting sequence: a popular movement against feudal barbarity, which in a severely modified form is taken over by rulers as an instrument against feuds and violences that disrupt feudal order. To the extent that it helps to promote order at home, it ends by diverting and directing many of the impulses of greed, hatred and envy into war abroad against the infidels — or against Christian groups which can be construed as heretical or refractory to papal controls. Now the land and loot are to come from the alien or denounced groups.[144] William had used the Truce to assert ducal power over the church and the nobles, and to build ducal control of criminal justice. Other rulers of comital or ducal standing followed his example, as in the Spanish March of Catalonia; then in the twelth century the Capetians of France and Henry VI of Germany. We may note also that Roger I established a peace of his own just before he assumed the Sicilian crown in 1130.

  The princes had no intention of obeying the Truce themselves. William fought Harold on a Saturday. Anna Comnena noted that the Byzantine church did its best to halt warfare on holy days; but the western knights attacked Byzantion itself in Holy Week, with their contingents full of armed and fighting priests, and with no attention paid to the ban on looting churches.[145] England, whose system of law and order was so much in advance of the continent, never knew the Truce. The difference between the two societies is shown by the comparison of the Truce with the peaceguild set up at London under Aethelstane; member bishops and reeves were to carry out previously issued royal decrees. Its members were divided into groups of ten, each of which had a headman; and these groups were linked in sections of a hundred. The group-headman and the headman of the hundred formed a committee administering the common fund to which each member contributed. Once a month the committee met to take account of the guild’s affairs, then to feast. This was no merchant guild but a voluntary association to maintain peace and security in daily life by catching thieves and recovering stolen goods, while, like all organizations of the time, providing religious services.[146]

  The episodes of the Peace and the Truce of God give us much insight into the minds and hearts of men of the eleventh century. Old sanctions and systems that held men together were breaking down under the feudalizing movement which involved both anarchy and a struggle for centralization. Men turned to the religion which was said to hold the key to salvation and a good life; they sought to find new forms of organization defined in religious terms which seemed to promise a way out, a new basis of harmony. But the great men of the world, lay and ecclesiastical, struck them down in the name of the religion invoked; and tried to use for their own benefit some of the very terms thrown up by the commoners. In a dark and desperate way the terms of protest, seeking a new unity, and the terms used for the consolidation of power, came together in the transports and exaltations, in the brutal self-seeking of the Crusades. Uprooted or fettered peasants, and landless younger sons of the nobility contributed their contradictory hopes and fears to the total situation. Dreams of a more fraternal system merged with a ruthless determination to gain land and property by any means from the enemy: the alien who exists outside the Christian comity. And the ways in which wild dream and ruthless quest combined in any individual were endlessly varied.

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  Now the question of William and the English crown, his relations with Edward and Harold, son of Godwin. We possess only the Norman version of much of these matters, together with some hints from works like the Encomium of Emma. The Norman version was worked up with the utmost care to make William appear the champion of feudal ethics against the perjurer Harold. A tractate was probably compiled in 1066 to impress the pope and other princes with his claim and to blacken Harold as a disloyal usurper; William of Poitiers and others used this work. The thesis ran that the childless Edward appointed William as his heir because of kinship, gratitude for benefits that he and his family had received, and recognition of William’s suitable qualities as ally and successor. The English Council or Witan had agreed and sworn to support William; the earl of Wessex, Godwin, had given William hostages as the final ratification. Robert of Jumièges, the Norman who became archbishop of Canterbury, was named as Edward’s representative in the affair; so the date must have been 1051-2. Robert had been translated to the see in early 1051; and he visited Normandy on his way to get the pallium at Rome — some time before 21 June. One text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions that after the discord between Godwin and Edward in 1051:

  Then soon came duke William from beyond the sea with a great retinue of Frenchmen, and the king received him and as many of his companions as it pleased him, and let him go again. In the same year William the priest was given the bishopric of London, which had been given to Spearhafoc.

  We can disregard this statement, which has no support from the other texts or from other sources; it probably represents some confused account of Robert’s journeys, which may in turn have been conflated with accounts of the visit paid by Eustace of Boulogne in 1051. Godwin’s third son, Tostig, about this time married Baldwin’s sister.[147]

  The improbability of a visit by William is increased by the fact that at this time he was taken up with the siege of Domfront. But it is quite likely that Edward, in the midst of his conflict with Godwin, did agree to suggestions made by Robert of Jumièges and came to some agreement about accepting William as his heir. He would thus have gained Normandy as an ally if he were driven to a prolonged war with Godwin. William’s attempts to build up a sort of northern maritime league fits in with such a conjecture. The emperor had won English naval aid against Flanders in 1049; and though William may not have had any clear hopes at this date of winning the English throne, he may well have hoped to get much benefi
t for himself from an accord between Normandy, Boulogne, Flanders, and England, which would have freed him for his self-aggrandizing policy on the continent.

  Edward owed Normandy a debt of gratitude for having been allowed to use it as a refuge; but in early years his hope of becoming king must have seemed slender, and the Normans seem to have made no serious attempt to back him. The rapid breakdown of the Danish line in Harold and Harthacnut must have come as a surprise. While the two Danish claimants were quarrelling in Denmark and then diverted by the invasion under Magnus of Norway, Edward was elected in London as the result of a strong sudden movement in favour of the ancient native dynasty; he was elected by acclamation even before Harthacnut was buried. He owed nothing for his accession to William, who was a boy of about fourteen at the time, though his long stay at Rouen had made him feel at home with Normans. Whether or not he dangled before William the bait of the English throne in the early lops for diplomatic reasons, he certainly did not hold to the plan of a Norman succession; for after 1054 he took strong steps in Germany and Hungary for the return of the English princes exiled by Cnut. It would indeed have been odd if a man carried to the throne on a wave of English feeling had not wanted to perpetuate the English line. As he seems to have been too ascetic to beget a son, he had no choice but to turn to the exiles.

  In the early 1050s, moreover, William was too entangled in local politics to have given much thought to what was then so remote a possibility as the English throne. But it is very likely that the suggestions made at this time planted the seed which lay quiet in his mind for some years, then germinated in the early 1060s as his power increased and the uncertainties of the situation in England grew more obvious. Edward had no right in any event to will his kingdom away, however important his wishes might have been in affecting his council and the people. But it seems highly probable that what turned William’s thoughts firmly towards England was the remarkable chance that put Harold in his control in 1064.

  For this event an important early testimony is that of the Bayeux Tapestry. The traditional view that it was made for Odo bishop of Bayeux is probably correct in view of its connection with Bayeux cathedral and Odo’s prominence in its scenes; even the three insignificant persons mentioned on it (Vital, Wadard and Thorold) all seem to be retainers from the Bayeux area.[148] Further it is the only document which sets Harold’s oath-taking at Bayeux. In addition, the existence of an earlier tapestry in Bayeux cathedral suggests that Odo probably had the tapestry made for one of his residences; we hear that the palace he built in Rome was remarkable for its luxury and splendid decorations.[149]

  The designer seems to have been of the fine Canterbury school, with a keen interest in factual detail; the needlewomen are far more likely to have been English than French. For fifteen years Odo was Earl of Kent and gave lands near Canterbury to the three vassals mentioned above. William of Poitiers, telling of the spoils of the Conquest, mentions how William’s new robes excited wonder in Normandy. William of Malmesbury knew of a long line of famous needlewomen, which included King Edward’s wife and Margaret, sister of Edgar the Aetheling. Matilda of Flanders employed English seamstresses and Domesday Book says that in Edward’s time Alwid or Aelfgyth the Maid held two hides in the hundred of Ashendon (Bucks), ‘which Godric the sheriff granted her as long as he was sheriff, on condition of her teaching his daughter embroidery work’. She may have been the widow Leviet of Leofgyth, who held land in Wiltshire in 1086; she ‘made and still makes the gold fringe for the King and Queen’.[150] The English character of the Tapestry is put beyond doubt by the form used for Hastings: at Hestenga Caestra — by the crossed D (turning d into th), and by the dot over the y in the name Gyrd.

  On the Tapestry we see Edward speaking with his attendants, one of whom is probably Harold. Harold then rides with his knights to Bosham, prays and feasts, and goes aboard ship. Reaching the land of Count Gui of Ponthieu, he is held in prison at Beaurain. He confers with Gui till messengers come from William of Normandy. Another messenger, perhaps an Englishman asking for help, is received by William, and Gui conducts Harold to the latter. William leads Harold to the palace (where an English lady Aegifu gestures towards a clerk, who has been taken as her accomplice in some scandal). The next scenes show William marching with Harold against Conan in Brittany. They reach Mont St Michel, and cross to Dol, where Harold uses his strength to pull two Norman soldiers out of the quicksands. Conan flees; his castle of Dinan is invested until he offers up the keys on his lance-point. Harold, who has been shown, it seems, rendering the two primary services of a vassal, consilium and auxilium, receives arms from William as a sign of knighthood. (He must in fact have laughed at William’s inconclusive campaign and compared it with his own efficient wars in Wales.) William and Harold leave for Bayeux. There Harold, laying his hands on some sacred relics, takes an oath before William. The text runs: ‘William came to Bayeux where Harold took an oath to duke William.’ We see Harold standing in William’s presence between two reliquaries, with an outstretched hand on each. He then sails back to England and gloomily approaches Edward.[151]

  On the tapestry the reasons for the departure and the capture by Gui — crucial points for the interpretation of the voyage — are not explained. We merely see Harold going off with hounds and falcons; and they stay with him till he reaches Rouen, where he gives them to William, so that it appears these highly valued gifts were intended for the duke. (They are common as costly gifts in the chansons de geste; Wace mentions in another context that Edward gave William dogs and birds and ‘whatever other good and fair gifts’ he could find that suited a man of high degree.)[152] No writer gives a plausible reason for the voyage; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is unaware that it happened at all. Eadmer, an Englishman devoted to Anselm, who should have known the English tradition, says that Harold asked for leave ‘to go to Normandy and set free his brother and his nephew who were being held there as hostages’. Edward agreed, though with forebodings of disaster. Harold, trusting his own judgment, put to sea with ‘a lordly provision of gold and silver, and costly raiment’. A storm came up and the ship was driven into the river Maye of Ponthieu, where Harold was arrested. He bribed a man to report the event to William, who then demanded the prisoner under threat of war. Harold was received in Normandy ‘with all honour’. After a while William asked him to support his claim to the English throne, saying that Edward had promised it when they were both young. Harold in fear swore on relics to support William if he were still alive. On his return Edward reminded him of the prophecy that the journey ‘might bring untold calamity upon this kingdom’.[153]

  A son and a grandson of Godwin, Wulfnoth and Hakon, had indeed been brought up at the Norman court. How they got there is an enigma. It is hard to find any moment when Godwin might have agreed to let William have them as hostages. In 1051 he was at loggerheads with Edward and Robert of Jumièges; after his return from exile he would certainly not have sent them to Normandy. We may conjecture that the pair had been left behind in England during the exile of Godwin and his sons, and that Edward had handed them over during his year of independence. Their existence is by far the strongest point in the case for some deal having been made between Edward and William in 1051-2. But no writer of the period or later on gives any explanation; and there may have been reasons quite unknown to us for their presence in Normandy. Eadmer’s statement that Harold’s voyage was connected with them has however a certain plausibility.

  William of Malmesbury makes the whole thing an accident. ‘Harold was at his country-seat of Bosham; he went for sport aboard a fishing-boat, and to prolong the entertainment put out to sea. A sudden storm came up and drove him and his companions on to the Ponthieu coast.’ Then he was captured by a crowd that gathered from all quarters, ‘as was their native custom’ — presumably to repel sea-raiders. Harold craftily pretended that he had been sent with a message for William. In Brittany, ‘Harold, well proved in both ability and courage, won the Norman’s heart, and, still more to
ingratiate himself, of his own accord, confirmed to him by oath the Coast of Dover, which was under his jurisdiction, and the Kingdom of England on Edward’s death.’[154] Henry of Huntingdon declares, ‘Harold was crossing the sea to Flanders when he was driven by storm on the Ponthieu coast.’ Brought to William, he ‘took a solemn oath on the most holy relics of the saints that he would marry his daughter and King Edward’s death would aid his designs upon England’. But how confused traditions could become is shown by the tales Henry then proceeds to tell of the next year:

  In the royal palace at Winchester Tostig seized his brother Harold by the hair in the king’s presence while he was serving the king with wine. It had been a source of envy and hatred that the king showed a higher regard for Harold though Tostig was the elder brother. So, in a sudden paroxysm of passion, he could not hold back from this sudden attack on his brother. But the king predicted that their ruin was at hand and the Almighty’s vengeance would no longer be deferred. Such was the cruelty of these brothers that on seeing a well-ordered farm they ordered the owner and all his family to be killed in the night and took possession of the dead man’s property. And these were the justiciars of the realm.