Foundation

by Peter Ackroyd

  The manor was itself established upon the ancient customs and obligations that bound together a small community. A manor might consist of a village with scattered hamlets, all the inhabitants of which did service to the lord. It might consist of several villages. Whatever its form, it was the linchpin of the social order of England. The local court of justice was the manor court, where every aspect of life was ordered and scrutinized. The paths and hedges had to be maintained, and the rights of cultivation or inheritance supported.

  The origins of the manor are still a matter of debate. Was a manorial system imposed upon what was once a freer communal system of agriculture? It is more likely that there were always lords, and that their control over the centuries became more rigorous. Yet no certainty is possible. We must accustom our eyes to the twilight.

  Domesday did not of course describe the conditions of actual life in late eleventh-century England. The summer of 1086 was the worst in living memory; the harvest failed and some malignant fever affected half of the English population. ‘The wretched victims had nearly perished by the fever,’ the Chronicle wrote of that year, ‘then came the sharp hunger, and destroyed them outright.’

  William himself died in the autumn of 1087. He had been campaigning on the borders of Normandy, during one of his frequent visits to his duchy, where he became gravely ill from heat and exhaustion; when his horse jumped a ditch, his internal organs were in some way ruptured. He was carried to a priory at Rouen, where he lingered for three weeks. When his body was taken to the monastery of St Stephen at Caen for burial the body burst, exuding a foul stench that sent the mourners running from the building. It was, perhaps, a fitting end for one who was already swollen with greed and cruelty. He had a cold heart and a bloody hand.

  He bestowed the duchy of Normandy upon his eldest son, Robert; Robert had asked him for it before, but William had replied that it was not his custom to take off his clothes until he went to bed. The dying king left England to God’s mercy and to the care of his second son, William Rufus. To his youngest son, Henry, William left £5,000 of silver as a consolation; Henry carefully weighed it before taking it away. The threefold disposition was a source of much strife and disquiet in subsequent years; the three brothers quarrelled over Normandy, in particular, like children fighting over a piece of pie.

  William Rufus held England. William the Red, of red face, of red beard and of red temper, was almost a comic-book version of his father. He was short and thickset, with a protruding stomach; he was very strong but, unlike his father, he was not of forceful address. A medieval proverb might suit some of William’s characteristics. Who ever knew a tall man who was clever, a red-head who was faithful, or a short man who was humble?

  When in a passion or in a rage, he stammered or spoke in short sentences. But he possessed more attractive characteristics. He soothed difficult situations with a joke, and liked to outrage the more serious-minded of his clerical advisers with a scandalous or blasphemous remark. This amused his courtiers. His most famous oath was ‘by the face of Lucca’; this was the face of a wooden image of Christ in the church of St Martin in Lucca. He was boastful and ebullient, extravagant and bold; he always appeared to be greater than he was.

  In his youth William had been devoted to the interests of his father, believing that this was where his own advantage lay. He stayed in Normandy until he was in his twenties, and so it is very unlikely that he was fluent in English. We may prefer to call him Guillaume le Rouge. He had left his dying father’s side at Rouen, and crossed the Channel in order to claim his kingdom. At the age of thirty-one he was crowned in Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Lanfranc as William II, apparently on Lanfranc’s own initiative; the archbishop was the most powerful man in England and, as it were, was standing in for God. The coronation liturgy was Anglo-Saxon, but the languages of the service were French and Latin.

  The king’s skills were soon tested. He put down a rebellion by some of the Norman magnates of England in favour of his older brother, Robert, by using what was essentially an English army; one chronicler suggests that 30,000 men flocked to his standard, but that may just be a device to convey a large number. Nevertheless Englishmen fought against the rebellious Norman magnates on behalf of their king. National feeling was coming forward once more, and this resurgence of national consciousness is plain in the soldiers’ call on William to win the whole ‘Empire of Albion’.

  He answered this call by marching north. In the spring of 1091 Malcolm of Scotland had invaded northern England, hoping to advance his claims to a large part of that territory. As the leader of the southern part of Scotland, Malcolm Canmore, or Malcolm Big Head, had already provoked William I with raids and alarms; eventually he had submitted to the stronger power. Now he was testing his son.

  William Rufus moved against him by taking Cumbria, then under the overlordship of Scotland. He captured and refounded Carlisle, settling it with English farming families, and effectively redrew the north-western frontier of England. It remains the frontier to this day. He found the English settlers among the workers on the royal lands in the south and, unfree as they undoubtedly were, they could only obey the summons. Yet they represent the beginning of English colonialism. In pursuit of the ‘Empire of Albion’, William Rufus had invoked the spirit of English imperialism. He also began the work of conquering Wales that until this time was comprised of warring principalities. That land was planted with castles, as the English moved slowly forward. But they were beset by Welsh rebellion, and in the end William held only Glamorgan and one castle in Pembroke. On the battlefield he never completely failed and never wholly succeeded; but his bravado kept him going.

  The king always needed more money, too. He was constantly battling against his enemies – in Scotland, in Wales, in Northumberland and in Normandy. He was most alive in the preparation and prosecution of wars. That was what a king did. When he was about to set sail for Normandy, for another assault upon Duke Robert, a great tempest threatened. But he jumped upon his boat. ‘I never heard of a king being drowned,’ he cried. ‘Make haste. Loose your cables. You will see the elements join to obey me.’

  He fell dangerously ill in the early months of 1093 and, in peril of his life, his thoughts turned to God. His religious advisers urged him to repent of, and amend, his sins; it must have been difficult for him to know where to start. He could at least rectify one grave fault at once. After the death of Lanfranc, three years before, he had left vacant the archbishopric of Canterbury so that he himself could enjoy its revenues. With the prospect of hellfire before him, he acted. One outstanding candidate was, fortunately, close to hand. The abbot of Bec, Anselm, was in England on a fraternal visit. He was known throughout Normandy for his piety and learning, albeit disguised by genuine humility.

  William summoned him to his bed of illness, and offered Canterbury to him. Anselm refused, on the very good grounds that he did not trust the king and foresaw great difficulties in working with him. William then cried out, according to a monk in the surrounding company, ‘Oh Anselm what are you doing? Why are you delivering me to crucifixion and eternal punishment?’ More was said in that vein. Anselm was still unmoved, and so the king ordered everyone in the chamber to prostrate themselves before the holy man. Anselm in turn fell upon his knees, and begged them to find another candidate for the office.

  It was time to resort to force, in a thoroughly medieval way. The courtiers pulled him to the bedside, and gave the king the pastoral staff that was the symbol of office. When Anselm refused to take it, they tried to prise open his fingers. They managed to bend the forefinger, at which he cried out in pain. They placed the staff against his clenched hand, and the office of investiture was read out in haste. Then they all cried out, ‘Long live the bishop!’ Anselm was carried protesting to the nearest church, where what the monk called the ‘appropriate ceremonies’ were performed. It was an unedifying start to what proved to be an unpleasant relationship between the king and the archbishop. As Anselm said at the time
, an old sheep was being yoked to an unbroken bull. The king recovered from his illness, and promptly reneged on all the sacred pledges he had made on what he had believed to be his deathbed. What man, he asked, can keep all of his promises?

  Anselm had a deep respect for the office of archbishop, which he deemed to be equal in authority to that of the sovereign. Where Lanfranc had believed it to be prudent to avoid antagonizing the king, Anselm had a more delicate conscience. He was also a trained logician, with the habit of rigour and persistence. He lectured the king on his duties, to which William replied in his usual forceful and impetuous manner. ‘I will see to this matter when I think good,’ the king once said to him. ‘I will act, not after your pleasure, but my own.’ On being told that he must rid the nation of sin the king asked him, with a sneer, ‘And what may come of this matter for you?’

  ‘For me, nothing,’ Anselm replied. ‘For you and for God I hope much.’

  ‘That’s enough of that.’ The king had spoken.

  When the archbishop implored him to fill the vacancies among the abbots, he became very angry. ‘Are not the abbeys mine? You do as you choose with your manors. Shall I not do as I choose with my abbeys?’ When the final parting came, and Anselm was about to leave England as a virtual exile and retire to Rome, the king was still vengeful. ‘Tell the archbishop,’ he said, ‘that I hated him yesterday and that I hate him even more today. Tell him that I will hate him more and more tomorrow and every day. As for his prayers and benedictions, I spit them back in his face.’

  The problem was that William would have no rival authority in his kingdom. He spoke disparagingly of the pope as well as the archbishop. It was the endless dilemma of church and state. Clerical rights and royal authority were on occasion opposed one to another. The decrees of the pope were sometimes at variance with the customs of the realm. Did the king have the right to nominate bishops and abbots? Could he dispose of church property if he so wished? Could he refuse a papal legate entry into the country? A further difficulty arose. The archbishop, technically, was a vassal of the king to whom he pledged loyalty; but he was also a servant of the pope. It is sometimes impossible to serve two masters, as the later career of Thomas Becket will reveal.

  William Rufus was continually on the move, taking his court with him. The equipment of the larder, the pantry and the buttery was packed into carts and transported wherever the king wished; the hounds were leashed and led forward; the members of the court rode on horseback, followed by ‘parasites’ and prostitutes. It resembled a small army on the march, and was as much feared as an army. The courtiers took, or stole, whatever they needed. They devastated small towns and villages with their exactions. This was the real nature of power in England at this time. It was based on violence and greed.

  That court itself was an object of scandal in another sense since it was rumoured that the king’s closest companions were sodomites. It is a practice not altogether unknown among warrior elites; the Spartans are a prime example. So it was not wholly against the Norman ethos. William never married, and had no illegitimate children; it seems likely, in fact, that he was a practising homosexual. He was surrounded by what the chroniclers called ‘effeminates’ with mincing step and extravagant costume; they wore their hair long like women, letting it tumble down in ringlets that had been curled by crisping-irons; the lamps of the court were put out at night so that unnatural sins might be committed under cover of darkness.

  William II died in 1100, in as swift and sudden a fashion as he had lived. The story goes that, on the night before his death, he had a dream in which he was being bled by his leeches; his blood surged upwards and covered the sky, turning day into night. He woke up in great fear, and called out to the Virgin Mary; then he ordered lights to be brought into his chamber. There is another story of his last night on earth. The account of a dream or vision, granted to a monk from the abbey at Gloucester, was brought to him. In the monk’s dream the king was seen to attack the crucifix, and gnaw at the arm of Christ; but Christ kicked out at him, and left him sprawling on the ground. It is a vivid image, but not so vivid as to overawe William Rufus. He is reported to have laughed, and ordered that the monk be given 100 shillings.

  Another source records that it was the abbot of Gloucester who sent news of the monk’s vision in a letter to the king. William’s response is interesting. ‘Does he think that I act like the English,’ the king is supposed to have asked, ‘postponing their travels and business because of the snores and dreams of little old women?’ The English were indeed noted for their superstitious credulity as well as their piety; William might very well have made a remark of that kind, with its implicit contempt for his subjects.

  He had decided to spend the day of 2 August 1100 hunting in the New Forest, one of the large stretches of land devoted to the king’s sport. As he prepared himself for the hunt, a blacksmith presented him with six arrows; the king kept two for himself and gave four to a companion, by the name of Walter Tirel. He sat down to eat before riding out, and drank more than was good for him. Then he and Tirel set off, separating from the others so that they could shoot at the deer that were being driven towards them. The king shot first, and wounded a stag. Walter Tirel then aimed at a second stag, but by accident hit the king in the chest. William staggered forward, and then fell on the arrow. Tirel, in panic fear, fled from the scene of the king’s death.

  That is the accepted version of William’s end. In truth there is no reason to question it. None of the chroniclers seems to doubt that the death was accidental. Hunting accidents happen. Many of the great events of history are simply accidents. But the death of a king arouses suspicions. His younger brother, Henry, was a member of the hunting party. Could he have hoped to succeed to the throne? Or could a foreign court have been at work, using a Norman accomplice? Or was there perhaps some private enemy, taking advantage of the king’s presence in the forest? The ancient philosophers have said that truth lies at the bottom of a well.

  There is another, kinder, story about his death. It has been reported that in his final agony he called out for the Eucharist to be administered to him. No cleric, or communion bread, could be found in the forest. So one of the hunting party put flowers and herbs into his mouth, as a form of natural communion.

  William’s end forcibly impressed his contemporaries. It made such a deep impression, in fact, that his death is the only event of his reign that has stayed in the consciousness of the English. He had come and gone like the lightning flash. He had behaved as a king. He had exploited the realm entirely for his own benefit, and had attempted to extend it as a measure of his own power. He pushed the boundaries further back. He had achieved very little else but, in a period of factional violence, it was perhaps enough that he had kept the country united – even if it was only united in suffering.

  His body, bleeding profusely, was taken in a horse-drawn wagon to Winchester, where the canons of the Old Minster took charge of the proceedings. It was said that his corpse resembled that of a wild boar pierced by a hunter. William Rufus was buried, without much ostentation or show of grief, under the tower. The tower crumbled and collapsed a few years later. A black pillar, known as the Rufus Stone, marked the place in the New Forest where he fell. It still stands.

  Some of William’s own monuments also survive him. He completed the White Tower and built Westminster Hall, largely with gangs of pressed labour groaning under the exaction. He rebuilt London Bridge, but a flood washed away much of its structure. Westminster Hall survives, albeit in altered form, as the most appropriate token of William’s might. This dark and solemn building, of thick walls and huge pillars, was unimaginably large to the people of the time. But it was not vast enough for William. When it was finished, he declared that it was not half as great as he had intended. ‘It is’, he said, ‘big enough to be one of my bedchambers.’ Listen to the indomitable arrogance of the Norman kings of England.

  The last of them, Henry, came down quickly like a wolf on the fold. As soon
as he heard the news of his elder brother’s death, he rode to Winchester and seized the treasury there. Three days later, on 5 August 1100 at the age of thirty-two, he was crowned as Henry I at Westminster. He had been alternately bribed and bullied by his two elder brothers, as they all fought over lordship of Normandy, but the possession of England was a greater benefit. He was more reserved and cautious than William Rufus, and proceeded to handle his prize with circumspection. He was called ‘Beauclerc’ or ‘the good scholar’; he was literate, and spoke Latin. But he also had other accomplishments; he fathered over twenty bastards.

  In his coronation charter he promised to undo the wrongs committed by his predecessor. He invited Anselm to return to Canterbury, a polite request that the cleric accepted. He gained the loyalty of the principal magnates by the judicious use of patronage. He extinguished private wars between barons. And he married Edith, the niece of the new king of Scotland; more importantly, perhaps, she was linked by blood with the line of Anglo-Saxon kings and was a direct descendant of Alfred the Great. The Norman dynasty was thereby sanctified in the eyes of the English. She did, however, abandon her English name and was known as Matilda; this was the name of Henry’s mother.

  Henry was intent upon consolidating his dominion. Forty years after the Norman invasion and conquest of England, the English invaded and conquered Normandy. Henry led his troops into the duchy and, at the battle of Tinchebray, captured his elder brother; Duke Robert was taken to England, and spent the rest of his life in prison. It was a signal victory for the new king, having reunited the lands of his father. For all but the first two of his thirty-five years as monarch, the country was at peace. He set up a ferry service between Southampton and Dieppe. One other innovation of the realm deserves to be mentioned. At the beginning of the twelfth century, the rabbit was introduced to England.