It is with this in mind that most historians are now agreed that the tapestry was made in Canterbury at Odo’s orders with a view to decorating the magnificent new cathedral that he was building at Bayeux. He may have unveiled it at the elaborate consecration ceremony in 1077, which Matilda herself attended. The idea that Matilda was in any way connected to it has thus been cast into grave doubt. She could claim the credit for a number of similarly high-impact gestures to mark her husband’s victory in England, but it is unlikely that the Bayeux Tapestry was one of them.
When William triumphed at Hastings, Matilda had only been regent of Normandy for a little over two weeks, but there was no prospect of her tenure’s coming to an end in the near future—her husband still had much to do in his newly conquered land. He might have won the English crown, but his campaign to subdue the rest of this hostile, rebellious country was only just beginning. His apologist’s bold claim that he “subjugated all the cities of the English in a single day” was wildly exaggerated.22
William’s first task was to take the city of London, which was so far from accepting the Norman duke as its ruler that it had elected Edgar the Aetheling, great-nephew of Edward the Confessor, as king instead. William rapidly reassembled his forces and advanced toward the city. They brought terror wherever they went, for William’s tactic was to force his recalcitrant new subjects into submission with brutality and bloodshed. Entire villages and towns were razed to the ground, and their citizens raped or murdered. The major strategic strongholds of Dover and Southwark were laid waste by the Norman troops as they advanced toward London—“a most spacious city, full of evil inhabitants, and richer than anywhere else in the kingdom.”23 Meanwhile, the duke ordered a detachment of his army to Winchester in order to secure its surrender and that of Queen Edith, Edward the Confessor’s widow and Harold’s sister, who had become a figurehead for the beleaguered English. Within a few short weeks, both cities had capitulated. Then, in early December, William marched to Berkhamsted, some thirty miles northwest of London, where Edgar the Aetheling had taken refuge. Upon the Conqueror’s arrival, Edgar immediately relinquished the crown, and William was declared king of England.
Eager to formalize his new status, William set about organizing his coronation. He had originally wanted to defer the ceremony so that Matilda might join him, “since if God granted him this honour, he wished for his wife to be crowned with him.” This was more than just devotion: he knew full well that Matilda’s presence—given her ancestral ties with previous English kings—would lend the occasion much-needed legitimacy. However, he had been dissuaded from doing so by his advisers, who had urged him that it was crucial to consolidate his position as soon as possible.24
Plans for the coronation duly proceeded, and the ceremony took place on Christmas Day 1066 in Westminster Abbey, where Harold had been crowned and Edward the Confessor buried. To further legitimize his position and emphasize the continuity of his accession, William ordered that the service should follow that used for previous English kings. He also commissioned a magnificent new crown in the style of Solomon (the ancient king of Israel renowned for his wisdom), “fashioned out of gold and precious stones,” including a sapphire, an emerald, and a large ruby at its center.25 But there was no fooling his new subjects, who still viewed him as a foreigner, a bastard, and a usurper.
Indeed, far from being a cause for celebration, William’s coronation was a tense, somber affair. The crowds that had gathered outside the abbey to witness the arrival of their detested new king were silent and subdued. The only cheering came from the Conqueror’s own men, who were there as much to suppress any trouble as to support their leader. During the ceremony, one of William’s Norman bishops, Geoffrey of Coutances, sought the assent of those present for their new king, as tradition dictated. Their affirmations were so loud that they alarmed the guards keeping watch outside the abbey, who, fearing an uprising, went on the rampage and torched a series of houses in order to terrify the inhabitants into submission. Meanwhile, the congregation took flight, and the ceremony had to be hastily concluded by the handful of “terrified” clergymen who had stayed behind. The episode tested the nerve of England’s newly crowned king, who, according to one chronicler, was “trembling from head to foot.”26
Still, the English were now forced to acknowledge William as their sovereign, however reluctantly. In doing so, they were also accepting Matilda as their queen. But William was not content with her sharing in his newly won status by association only; he resolved that she, too, would be crowned with full pomp and ceremony as soon as she could join him in England. This met with some opposition from the English barons, because it had not hitherto been the practice of the Saxon kings to gratify their wives with the title of queen. But William was determined. In his eyes, no woman was fitter than she for such a position. Matilda herself was eager to be crowned, and even before she joined her husband in England, she began styling herself queen of that kingdom.27 She was no doubt highly satisfied when she received news of her husband’s plans for her separate coronation. The prospect of playing as active a role in England as she did in Normandy would have appealed to her keen sense of ambition.
It would in fact be two years before Matilda joined her husband in his new kingdom. The reason for this delay is a matter for debate. It is possible that William considered the situation there too volatile, but as we have seen, Matilda’s unquestionable pedigree and heritage would have made her presence advantageous in the duke’s attempts to quickly establish his authority. Moreover, Matilda herself was keen to see her new kingdom—and take possession of her landed wealth. Upon becoming king, William had granted her extensive lands—perhaps as much as a quarter of the total at his disposal. These included rich estates in Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall.28
These lands made Matilda a wealthy woman in her own right, for she could levy taxes, or “geld,” from them. According to Domesday Book, this earned her in the region of £1,070 per year, a staggering sum for the time—equivalent to around £500,000 today. This income alone made her the richest woman in England. But as queen, she was also entitled to claim “Queen Gold,” which was one-tenth of every fine paid to the crown. There were numerous other financial privileges associated with her new position. The city of Warwick, for example, was obliged to provide her with one hundred shillings for the use of her property. Not all of Matilda’s revenue was paid in cash. For example, as well as sending her tolls on all goods landed at Queenhithe, the city of London provided oil for her lamps and wood for her hearth.29 The city of Norwich, meanwhile, had to deliver a palfrey to her each year.
Considering the riches that lay in wait for her in England, it must have been a compelling reason that kept Matilda in Normandy for so long, especially as she had so successfully quelled the threats both within and outside its borders during her regency. One of the stronger explanations is that she had been pregnant when William had set sail for England in September 1066. If she had conceived another child before her husband’s departure, then she would have given birth no later than June 1067.30 As the birth dates of Matilda’s sons do not fall within this period, the child must have been a girl, and it is most likely to have been the one whose name appears in the sources more than any of the other daughters, thanks to her later career: Adela.
The choice of name was significant. Adela was the name of Matilda’s mother, daughter of the king of France, and as such it would have reminded William’s rebellious new subjects of the legitimacy of his dynasty. A poem written in around 1079 by Godfrey of Rheims, chancellor to the French king, provides further evidence. He alludes to Adela’s birth as occurring just after the Norman Conquest:
The duke’s child would rise to become an excellent woman,
The goddess did not think it sufficient for her to be of ducal status.
The royal virgin obtained by fate that her father would be a king.
In order for Adela to be the daughter
of a king,
The Fates allowed the father to establish himself as a king.
Because the virgin was not allowed to leave the womb
Her father owed the kingdom of England to her.31
If, as the evidence suggests, Matilda was pregnant during the weeks leading up to her husband’s invasion of England—arguably the most crucial moment of their reign—then, given her belief in the mystical arts, she might well have consulted soothsayers at court on the significance of the pregnancy and how she might use it to ensure a favorable outcome. As Godfrey implies in his poem, the safe delivery of the child thus became inextricably linked with the successful conquest of England.32
Whatever her reason for remaining so long in Normandy, it did mean that Matilda was not present to witness the brutal early months of William’s reign. After being crowned, he was formally referred to as “the great and peacegiving King,” something that his new subjects would have found deeply ironic.33 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the mercilessness of William’s regime, which butchered thousands of Englishmen, laid vast swaths of land to waste, and imposed “stiff” taxes and other strictures upon the beleaguered natives. Any who dared to defy him were either mutilated or put to death. The twelfth-century chronicler John of Worcester describes how William punished his recalcitrant subjects “by gouging out their eyes or cutting off their hands.”34 The English commentators clearly believed that the Norman invasion was a punishment from God for their manifold sins. “They built castles widely throughout this nation, and oppressed the wretched people; and afterwards it always grew very much worse. When God wills, may the end be good.”35
The prospect of assimilation between the conquerors and conquered looked bleak indeed. The Norman Conquest was the second successful invasion of England in the eleventh century, the first being led by the Danes in 1013–16. The latter had been overthrown by the native English less than thirty years later, and it remained a strong possibility that the Normans would be ousted in similar fashion.36
The invading Normans presented a stark contrast to the people of England. They certainly looked very different, with their clean-shaven faces giving them the appearance more of priests than of fighting men. They were also “well-dressed to a fault.” It was with a mixture of curiosity and scorn that they regarded the “long-haired denizens of England” with their mustaches and “skin tattooed with coloured patterns.” William of Poitiers derided “the long-haired sons of the northern lands,” who appeared rough and ill-kempt next to the neatly cropped style of the Normans. According to Malmesbury, their appearance was mirrored by their uncivilized ways, which included “eating till they were sick and drinking till they spewed”—although he admitted that the conquering army inherited these bad habits.37
In religion, at least, the Normans were in accord with their new subjects. The Saxon were Christians who now found themselves in the hands of one of the most devout Christian peoples in Europe. Malmesbury claims that the Conquest greatly enhanced the religious life of the English: “you may see everywhere churches in villages, in towns and cities monasteries rising in a new style of architecture; and with new devotion our country flourishes.”38 Great Romanesque churches were erected across the country, becoming as much a sign of Norman preeminence as the imposing castles with which William and his men would later stamp their authority. As in the political sphere, the higher ecclesiastical offices were now held by Normans, and the English clerics were gradually (or in some cases, summarily) ousted from their positions.
The new king personified his race’s emerging piety, but he also symbolized its strident self-confidence, which was viewed as arrogance by resentful Saxon subjects. He trusted none of the English nobles who had survived Hastings and the campaigns that followed. To be fair, they had done little to earn his trust, proving all too ready to rebel against him—“behaviour which so exasperated his ferocity that he deprived the more powerful among them first of their revenues, then of their lands, and some even of their lives.”39 William’s privileged inner sanctum, then, was dominated by Normans. Odo of Bayeux, Roger of Montgomery, Roger de Beaumont, Robert of Mortain, Alan of Brittany, Geoffrey of Coutances, Earl Hugh of Chester, Richard fitzGilbert, and William of Warenne seem to have been the most active in his government, judging from the frequency of their witness marks on the charters. Almost all of these “wise and eloquent men,” as Orderic described them, had served the royal couple ever since their marriage, and some even before that time.40 Their loyalty was richly rewarded with large estates, honors, and titles. As well as the relentlessly acquisitive Odo, William’s other half-brother, Robert of Mortain, and his close associate Roger of Montgomery also profited from a share of the spoils after 1066.
William was not alone in his disdain for the English people. Lanfranc, still one of his closest advisers, felt such an aversion toward them that he begged to be excused from the post of archbishop of Canterbury when it was offered to him by William and a convention of powerful ecclesiastics. “I pleaded failing strength and personal unworthiness, but to no purpose; the excuse that the language was unknown and the native races barbarous weighed nothing with them either.” Neither did his opinion of the English improve after he was obliged to take up the office. He complained to Pope Alexander II: “Now I endure daily so many troubles and vexations and such spiritual starvation of nearly anything that is good; I am continually hearing, seeing and experiencing so much unrest among different people, such distress and injuries, such hardness of heart, greed and dishonesty, such a decline in holy Church, that I am weary of my life.”41
For all of his determination to sweep away every remnant of the Saxon regime, England’s new king found himself conforming to at least some of it. For example, William himself recognized that the English system of government was more sophisticated than that of his dukedom. Within this system, the king was assisted by the witan council. This William adapted, albeit under a different name (the curia regis), and he would surely have retained many of the existing personnel if they had not proved so rebellious. His kingship was much as Edward the Confessor’s had been, superior only in the formidable military power that supported it.
At a local level, the system of government more closely mirrored that of Normandy. Instead of comtes and vicomtes there were earls and sheriffs, but the function they performed was essentially the same. They were responsible for the collection of royal revenues, acted as executants of royal justice, held castles on behalf of the king, and played an important financial role. The key difference was the degree of autonomy these men had. In Edward the Confessor’s time, the kingdom had been divided into earldoms, and each earl had enjoyed immense power. They thus constituted a threat to royal authority, and the king was often subject to their will. All of this changed with the accession of William the Conqueror. He replaced any surviving Saxon incumbents with Norman men whose loyalty was proven and who were firmly under his control.
One of William’s first acts after the Battle of Hastings was to reassure Londoners that they would have the same rights of inheritance that they had enjoyed in Edward’s day. Upon the death of a father, his child would inherit his estate, with no interference from the crown. As a rare gesture of conciliation on the part of the arrogant and all-powerful new king, this offered some reassurance. However, in practice, the heavy casualties suffered by vast swaths of the native landowning classes at Hastings and the battles that followed made this privilege of dubious value. It certainly did little to stop the major social revolution that took place between 1066 and 1100, during which the great majority of Saxon estates fell into Norman hands.
The contemporary chronicler Abbot Ingulphus, of Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire, abhorred this situation. “So inveterately did the Normans at this period detest the English, that whatever the amount of their merits might be, they were excluded from all dignities; and foreigners, who were far less fitted, be they of any other nation whatever under heaven, would have been gladly chosen instead of them.”42 A pow
erful inner ring of high-ranking Normans, related by ties of blood and loyalty to the royal court, came to control nearly a quarter of the landed wealth of England. William himself controlled a fifth, and the church and remaining barons almost half between them. Even Orderic Vitalis was forced to admit that “foreigners grew wealthy with the spoils of England, whilst her own sons were either shamefully slain or driven as exiles to wander hopelessly through foreign kingdoms.”43
Rather than curtailing her husband’s excesses, Matilda initially joined in. She ordered the abbey of Abingdon, the loyalty of which was questionable, as it had been closely affiliated to the Godwine family, to send her a selection of precious ornaments. The monks duly obliged, but upon receiving their treasure, she declared it inadequate and demanded richer items.44
With wealth came corruption, and many of the Normans who had profited from their lord’s generosity “arrogantly abused their authority and mercilessly slaughtered the native people.”45 As scores of English abbots were ousted from their posts and replaced by greedy, tyrannical men, the same corruption spread to the country’s religious life. Orderic Vitalis observes: “Between such shepherds and the flocks committed to their keeping existed such harmony as you would find between wolves and helpless sheep.”46
There seemed to be no end to the Norman oppression. New laws were introduced that were heavily weighted against the native population, while even the humblest followers of the Conqueror were protected. If any of them was attacked by a Saxon, the perpetrator faced a considerable fine. By contrast, the attempted murder of a native Englishman would go unpunished if the attacker was a Norman.
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