CHAPTER VII.
WILLIAM I. =1066--1087.=
LEADING DATES
William"s coronation 1066 Completion of the Conquest 1070 The rising of the Earls 1075 The Gemot at Salisbury 1086 Death of William I. 1087
[Ill.u.s.tration: A silver penny of William the Conqueror, struck at Romney.]
1. =The First Months of the Conquest. 1066--1067.=--Though at the time when William was crowned he had gained actual possession of no more than the south-eastern part of England, he claimed a right to rule the whole as lawful king of the English, not merely by Eadward"s bequest, but by election and coronation. In reality, he came as a conqueror, whilst the Normans by whose aid he gained the victory at Senlac left their homes not merely to turn their Duke into a king, but also to acquire lands and wealth for themselves. William could not act justly and kindly to his new subjects even if he wished. What he did was to clothe real violence with the appearance of law. He gave out that as he had been the lawful king of the English ever since Eadward"s death, Harold and all who fought under him at Senlac had forfeited their lands by their treason to himself as their lawful king. These lands he distributed amongst his Normans. The English indeed were not entirely dispossessed. Sometimes the son of a warrior who had been slain was allowed to retain a small portion of his father"s land. Sometimes the daughter or the widow of one of Harold"s comrades was compelled to marry a Norman whom William wished to favour. Yet, for all that, a vast number of estates in the southern and eastern counties pa.s.sed from English into Norman hands. The bulk of the population, the serfs--or, as they were now called by a Norman name, the villeins--were not affected by the change, except so far as they found a foreign lord less willing than a native one to hearken to their complaints. The changes which took place were limited as yet to a small part of England. In three months after his coronation William was still without authority beyond an irregular line running from the Wash to the western border of Hampshire, except that he held some outlying posts in Herefordshire. It is true that Eadwine and Morkere had acknowledged him as king, but they were still practically independent. Even where William actually ruled he allowed all Englishmen who had not fought on Harold"s side to keep their lands, though he made them redeem them by the payment of a fine, on the principle that all lands in the country, except those of the Church, were the king"s lands, and that it was right to fine those who had not come to Senlac to help him as their proper lord.
2. =The Conquest of the West and North. 1067--1069.=--In March =1067= William returned to Normandy. In his absence the Normans left behind in England oppressed the English, and were supported in their oppression by the two regents appointed to govern in William"s name, his half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had made Earl of Kent, and William Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford. In some parts the English rose in rebellion. In December William returned, and after putting down resistance in the south-eastern counties, set himself to conquer the rest of England. It took him more than two years to complete his task. Perhaps he would have failed even then if the whole of the unconquered part of the country had risen against him at the same time. Each district, however, resisted separately, and he was strong enough to beat them down one by one. In the spring of =1068= he besieged and took Exeter, and subdued the West to the Land"s End. When this had been accomplished he turned northwards against Eadwine and Morkere, who had declared against him. William soon frightened them into submission, and seized on York and all the country to the south of York on the eastern side of England. In =1069= the English of the North rose once more and summoned to their aid Svend, king of Denmark, a nephew of the great c.n.u.t. Svend sent a Danish fleet, and the Danes were joined by Eadgar the aetheling and by other English chiefs. They burnt and plundered York, but could do no more. Their great host melted away. The Danes went off with their booty to their ships, and the English returned to their homes. William found no army to oppose him, and he not only regained the lands which he had occupied the year before, but added to them the whole country up to the Tweed.
3. =The Completion of the Conquest. 1070.=--William was never cruel without an object, but there was no cruelty which he would not commit if it would serve his purpose. He resolved to make all further resistance impossible. The Vale of York, a long and wide stretch of fertile ground running northwards from the city to the Tees, was laid waste by William"s orders. The men who had joined in the revolt were slain. The stored-up crops, the ploughs, the carts, the oxen and sheep were destroyed by fire. Men, women, and children dropped dead of starvation, and their corpses lay unburied in the wasted fields. Some prolonged life by feeding on the flesh of horses, or even of men.
Others sold themselves into slavery, bowing their heads, as was said, in the evil days for meat. "Waste! waste! waste!" was the account given long afterwards of field after field in what had once been one of the most fertile districts in England. William"s work of conquest was almost over. Early in =1070= he crossed the hills amidst frost and snow, and descended upon Chester. Chester submitted, and with it the shires on the Welsh border. The whole of England was at last subdued.
4. =Hereward"s Revolt and the Homage of Malcolm. 1070--1072.=--Only one serious attempt to revolt was afterwards made, but this was no more than a local rising. The Isle of Ely was in those days a real island in the midst of the waters of the fens. Hereward, with a band of followers, threw himself into the island, and it was only after a year"s attack that he was driven out. When the revolt was at its height, Eadwine and Morkere fled from William"s court to join the insurgents. Eadwine was murdered by his own attendants. Morkere reached Ely, and when resistance was at an end was banished to Normandy. No man ever deserved less pity than these two brothers. They had never sought any one"s advantage but their own, and they had been faithless to every cause which they had pretended to adopt. Before Hereward was overpowered, Malcolm, king of the Scots, ravaged northern England, carrying off with him droves of English slaves. In =1072= William, who had by that time subdued Hereward, marched into Scotland as far as the Tay. Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy, and acknowledged him to be his lord. Malcolm"s acknowledgment was only a repet.i.tion of the acknowledgment made by his predecessors the Scottish kings, to Eadward and c.n.u.t (see pp. 63, 84); but William was more powerful than Eadward or c.n.u.t had been, and was likely to construe the obligation more strictly.
5. =How William kept down the English.=--William, having conquered England, had now to govern it. His first object was to keep the English in subjection.
_(a) The Confiscation of Land._--In the first place he continued to treat all who had resisted him as rebels, confiscating their land and giving it to some Norman follower. In almost every district there was at least one Norman landowner, who was on the watch against any attempt of his English neighbours to revolt, and who knew that he would lose his land if William lost his crown.
_(b) Building Castles._--In the second place William built a castle in every town of importance, which he garrisoned with his own men. The most notable example of these castles is the Tower of London.
_(c) The Feudal Army._--In the third place, though the diffusion of Norman landowners and of William"s castles made a general revolt of the English difficult, it did not make it impossible, and William took care to have an army always ready to put down a revolt if it occurred.
No king in those days could have a constantly paid army, such as exists in all European countries at the present day, because there was not much money anywhere. Some men had land and some men had bodily strength, and they bartered one for the other. The villein gave his strength to plough and reap for his lord, in return for the land which he held from him. The fighting man gave his strength to his lord, to serve him with his horse and his spear, in return for the land which he held from him. This system, which is known as feudal, had been growing up in England before the Conquest, but it was perfected on the Continent, and William brought it with him in its perfected shape. The warrior who served on horseback was called a knight, and when a knight received land from a lord on military tenure--that is to say, on condition of military service--he was called the va.s.sal of his lord.
When he became a va.s.sal he knelt, and, placing his hands between those of his lord, swore to be his man. This act was called doing homage.
The land which he received as sufficient to maintain him was called a knight"s fee. After this homage the va.s.sal was bound to serve his lord in arms, this service being the rent payable for his land. If the va.s.sal broke his oath and fought against his lord, he was regarded as a traitor, or a betrayer of his trust, and could be turned out of his land. The whole land of England being regarded as the king"s, all land was held from the king. Sometimes the knights held their fees directly from the king and did homage to him. These knights were known as tenants in chief (_in capite_), however small their estates might be.
Usually, however, the tenants in chief were large landowners, to whom the king had granted vast estates; and these when they did homage engaged not merely to fight for him in person, but to bring some hundreds of knights with them. To enable them to do this they had to give out portions of their land to sub-tenants, each engaging to bring himself and a specified number of knights. There might thus be a regular chain of sub-tenants, A engaging to serve under B, B under C, C under D, and so on till the tenant-in-chief was reached, who engaged to bring them all to serve the king. Almost all the larger tenants-in-chief were Normans, though Englishmen were still to be found amongst the sub-tenants, and even amongst the smaller tenants-in-chief. The whole body, however, was preponderantly Norman, and William could therefore depend upon it to serve him as an army in the field in case of an English rising.
6. =How William kept down the Normans.=--William was not afraid only of the English. He had cause to fear lest the feudal army, which was to keep down the English, might be strong enough to be turned against himself, and that the barons--as the greater tenants-in-chief were usually called--might set him at naught as Eadwine and Morkere had set Harold at naught, and as the Dukes of Normandy had set at naught the kings of France. To prevent this he adopted various contrivances.
_(a) Abolition of the great Earldoms._--In the first place he abolished the great earldoms. In most counties there were to be no earls at all, and no one was to be earl of more than one county. There was never again to be an Earl of the West Saxons like G.o.dwine, or an Earl of the Mercians like Leofric.
_(b) The Estates of the Barons scattered._--- Not only did William diminish the official authority of the earls, he also weakened the territorial authority of the barons. Even when he granted to one man estates so numerous that if they had been close together they would have extended at least over a whole county, he took care to scatter them over England, allowing only a few to be held by a single owner in any one county. If, therefore, a great baron took it into his head to levy war against the king, he would have to collect his va.s.sals from the most distant counties, and his intentions would thus be known before they could be put in practice.
_(c) The Fyrd kept in readiness._--Still more important was William"s resolution to be the real head of the English nation. He had weakened it enough to fear it no longer, but he kept it strong enough to use it, if need came, against the Norman barons. He won Englishmen to his side by the knowledge that he was ready to do them justice whenever they were wronged, and he could therefore venture to summon the fyrd whenever he needed support, without having cause to fear that it would turn against him.
7. =Ecclesiastical Organisation.=--Before the Conquest the English Church had been altogether national. Its bishops had sat side by side with the ealdormen or earls in the shire-moots, and in the Witenagemot itself. They had been named, like the ealdormen or earls, by the king with the consent of the Witenagemot. Ecclesiastical questions had been decided and ecclesiastical offences punished not by any special ecclesiastical court, but by the shire-moot or Witenagemot, in which the laity and the clergy were both to be found. William resolved to change all this. The bishops and abbots whom he found were Englishmen, and he replaced most of them by Normans. The new Norman bishops and abbots were dependent on the king. They looked on the English as barbarians, and would certainly not support them in any revolt, as their English predecessors might have done. Thurstan, indeed, the Norman Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, was so angry with his English monks because they refused to change their style of music that he called in Norman archers to shoot them down on the steps of the altar. Such brutality, however, was exceptional, and, as a rule, even Norman bishops and abbots were well disposed towards their English neighbours, all the more because they were not very friendly with the Norman n.o.bles, who often attempted to encroach on the lands of the Church. Many a king in William"s position would have been content to fill the sees with creatures of his own, who would have done what they were bidden and have thought of no one"s interest but his. William knew, as he had already shown in Normandy, that he would be far better served if the clergy were not only dependent on himself but deserving the respect of others. He made his old friend Lanfranc (see p. 88) Archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc had, like William, the mind of a ruler, and under him bishops and abbots were appointed who enforced discipline. The monks were compelled to keep the rules of their order, the canons of cathedrals were forced to send away their wives, and though the married clergy in the country were allowed to keep theirs, orders were given that in future no priest should marry.
Everywhere the Church gave signs of new vigour. The monasteries became again the seats of study and learning. The sees of bishops were transferred from villages to populous towns, as when the Bishop of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, migrated to Lincoln, and the Bishop of Thetford to Norwich. New churches were built and old ones restored after the new Continental style, which is known in England as Norman, and which Eadward had introduced in his abbey of Westminster. The Church, though made dependent on William, was independent, so far as its spiritual rights were concerned, of the civil courts.
Ecclesiastical matters were discussed, not in the Witenagemot, but in a Church synod, and, in course of time, punishments were inflicted by Church courts on ecclesiastical offenders. The power of William was strengthened by the change. That power rested on three supports--the Norman conquerors, the English nation, and the Church, and each one of these three had reason to distrust the other two.
[Ill.u.s.tration: East end of Darenth Church, Kent. Built about 1080.]
8. =Pope Gregory VII.=--The strength which William had acquired showed itself in his bearing towards the Pope. In =1073= Archdeacon Hildebrand, who for some years had been more powerful at Rome than the Popes themselves, himself became Pope under the name of Gregory VII.
Gregory was as stern a ruler of the Church as William was of the State. He was an uncompromising champion of the Cluniac reforms (see p. 67). His object was to moderate the cruelty and sinfulness of the feudal warriors of Europe by making the Church a light to guide the world to piety and self-denial. As matters stood on the Continent, it had been impossible for the Church to attain to so high a standard.
The clergy bought their places and fought and killed like the laymen around them. The Cluniac monks, therefore, thought it best to separate the clergy entirely from the world. In the first place they were to be celibate, that they might not be entangled in the cares of life. In the second place they were to refrain from simony, or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment, that they might not be dependent on the great men of the world. A third demand was added later, that bishops and abbots should not receive from laymen the ring and staff which were the signs of their authority--the ring as the symbol of marriage to their churches; the staff or crozier, in the shape of a shepherd"s crook, as the symbol of their pastoral authority. The Church, in fact, was to be governed by its own laws in perfect independence, that it might become more pure itself, and thus capable of setting a better example to the laity. As might have been expected, though the internal condition of the Church was greatly improved, yet when Gregory attempted entirely to free ecclesiastics from the influence and authority of the State, he found himself involved in endless quarrels.
Clergy and laity alike resisted him, and they were supported by the Emperor Henry IV., whose rule extended over Germany and the greater part of Italy. Gregory next claimed the right of excommunicating kings and emperors, and of deposing them if they did not repent after excommunication. The State, he declared, was as the moon, receiving light from the Church, which shone like the sun in heaven. The whole of the remainder of Gregory"s life was spent in a struggle with the Emperor, and the struggle was carried on by the successors of both.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of the nave of St. Alban"s Abbey Church. Built by Abbot Paul between 1077 and 1093.]
9. =William and Gregory VII.=--It is remarkable that such a Pope as Gregory never came into conflict with William. William appointed bishops and abbots by giving them invest.i.ture, as the presenting of the ring and staff was called. He declared that no Pope should be obeyed in England who was not acknowledged by himself, that no papal bulls or letters should have any force till he had allowed them, and that the decrees of an ecclesiastical synod should bind no one till he had confirmed them. When, at a later time, Gregory required William to do homage to the see of Rome, William refused, on the ground that homage had never been rendered by his predecessors. To all this Gregory submitted. No doubt Gregory was prudent in not provoking William"s anger; but that he should have refrained from even finding fault with William may perhaps be set down to the credit of his honesty. He claimed to make himself the master of kings because as a rule they did not care to advance the purity of the Church. William did care to advance it. He chose virtuous and learned bishops, and defended the clergy against aggression from without and corruption within. Gregory may well have been content to leave power over the Church in the hands of a king who ruled it in such a fashion.
10. =The Rising of the Earls. 1075.=--Of the three cla.s.ses of men over which William ruled, the great Norman barons imagined themselves to be the strongest, and were most inclined to throw off his yoke. The chief feature of the reigns of William and of his successors for three generations was the struggle which scarcely ever ceased between the Norman barons on the one side, and the king supported by the English and the clergy on the other. It was to the advantage of the king that he had not to contend against the whole of the Normans. Normans with small estates clung for support, like their English neighbours, to the crown. The first of many risings of the barons took place in =1075=.
Roger, Earl of Hereford, in spite of William"s prohibition, gave his sister in marriage to Ralph of Wader, Earl of Norfolk, who, though of English birth on his father"s side, had fought for William at Senlac, and may practically be counted as a Norman. As the chronicler expressed it:
There was that bride-ale To many men"s bale.
The two earls plotted a rising against William and the revivals of the old independent earldoms. They took arms and were beaten. Ralph fled the country, and Roger was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. His followers were blinded or had their feet cut off. It was the Norman custom not to put criminals to death. To this rule, however, William made one exception. Waltheof, the last earl of purely English race, had been present at the fatal bride-ale, but though he had listened to the plottings of the conspirators, he had revealed all that he knew to William. His wife, Judith, a niece of the Conqueror, accused him of actual treason, and he was beheaded at Winchester. By the English he was regarded as a martyr, and it was probably his popularity amongst them which made William resolve upon his death.
11. =The New Forest.=--Only once did William cause misery amongst his subjects for the sake of his own enjoyment. Many kings before him had taken pleasure in hunting, but William was the first who claimed the right of hunting over large tracts of country exclusively for himself.
He made, as the chronicler says, "mickle deer-frith"--a tract, that is to say, in which the deer might have peace--"and laid laws therewith that he who slew hart or hind that man should blind him.... In sooth he loved the high deer as though he were their father." He forbade, in short, all men, except those to whom he gave permission, to hunt within the limits of the royal forests. In the south-west of Hampshire, near his favourite abode at Winchester, he enlarged the New Forest. The soil is poor, and it can never have been covered by cultivated fields, but here and there, by the sides of streams, there were scattered hamlets, and these were destroyed and the dwellers in them driven off by William"s orders, that there might be a "mickle deer-frith." We may be sure that there was not nearly as much misery caused by the making of the New Forest as was caused by the harrying of the Vale of York, but popular tradition rightly held in more abhorrence the lesser cruelty for the sake of pleasure than the greater cruelty for the sake of policy. It told how the New Forest was accursed for William"s family. In his own lifetime a son and a grandson of his were cut off within it by unknown hands, probably falling before the vengeance of some who had lost home and substance through the creation of the Forest, and in due time another son, who succeeded him on the throne, was to meet with a similar fate.
12. =Domesday Book. 1085--1086.=--It was to William"s credit that his government was a strong one. In William"s days life and property and female honour were under the protection of a king who knew how to make himself obeyed. Strong government, however, is always expensive, and William and his officers were always ready with an excuse for getting money. "The king and the headmen loved much and overmuch covetousness on gold and on silver, and they recked not how sinfully it was gotten, if only it came to them.... They reared up unright tolls, and many other unright things they did that are hard to reckon." Other men, in short, must observe the law; William"s government was a law to itself.
It was, however, a law, and not a mere scramble for money. Though there were no Danish invaders now, William continued to levy the Danegeld, and he had rents and payments due to him in many quarters which had been due to his predecessors. In order to make his exactions more complete and more regular, he resolved to have set down the amount of taxable property in the realm that his full rights might be known, and in =1085=, "He sent over all England into ilk shire his men, and let them find out how many hundred hides were in the shire, or what the king himself had of land or cattle in the land, or whilk rights he ought to have.... Eke he let write how mickle of land his archbishops had, and his bishops, and his abbots and his earls, and what or how mickle ilk man had that landholder was in England in land and in cattle, and how mickle fee it was worth. So very narrowly he let speer it out that there was not a single hide nor a yard of land, nor so much as--it is a shame to tell, though he thought it no shame to do--an ox nor a cow nor a swine was left that was not set in his writ." The chronicler who wrote these words was an English monk of Peterborough. Englishmen were shocked by the new regularity of taxation. They could hardly be expected to understand the advantages of a government strong enough through regular taxation to put down the resistance of rebellious earls at home and to defy invasion from abroad. The result of the inquiries of the king"s commissioners was embodied in Domesday Book, so called because it was no more possible to appeal from it than from the Last Judgment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Reduced facsimile of part of Domesday Book.]
13. =William"s Great Councils.=--Though William was himself the true ruler of England, he kept up the practice of his predecessors in summoning the Witenagemot from time to time. In his days, however, the name of the Witenagemot was changed into that of the Great Council, and, to a slight extent, it changed its nature with its name. The members of the Witenagemot had attended because they were officially connected with the king, being ealdormen or bishops or thegns serving in some way under him. Members of the Great Council attended because they held land in chief from the king. The difference, however, was greater in appearance than in reality. No doubt men who held very small estates in chief might, if they pleased, come to the Great Council, and if they had done so the Great Council would have been much more numerously attended than the Witenagemot had been. The poorer tenants-in-chief, however, found that it was not only too troublesome and expensive to make the journey at a time when all long journeys had to be made on horseback, but that when they arrived their wishes were disregarded. They therefore stayed at home, so that the Great Council was regularly attended only by the bishops, the abbots of the larger abbeys, and certain great landowners who were known as barons. In this way the Great Council became a council of the wealthy landowners, as the Witenagemot had been, though the two a.s.semblies were formed on different principles.
14. =The Gemot at Salisbury. 1086.=--In =1086=, after Domesday Book had been finished, William summoned an unusually numerous a.s.sembly, known as the Great Gemot, to meet at Salisbury. At this not only the tenants-in-chief appeared, but also all those who held lands from them as sub-tenants. "There came to him," wrote the chronicler, "... all the landowning men there were over all England, whose soever men they were, and all bowed down before him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him, that they would be faithful to him against all other men." It was this oath which marked the difference between English and Continental feudalism, though they were now in other respects alike. On the Continent each tenant swore to be faithful to his lord, but only the lords who held directly from the crown swore to be faithful to the king. The consequence was that when a lord rebelled against the king, his tenants followed their lord and not the king. In England the tenants swore to forsake their lord and to serve the king against him if he forsook his duty to the king. Nor was this all. Many men break their oaths. William, however, was strong enough in England to punish those who broke their oaths to him, whilst the king of France was seldom strong enough to punish those who broke their oaths to him.
15. =William"s Death. 1087.=--The oath taken at Salisbury was the completion of William"s work in England. To contemporaries he appeared as a foreign conqueror, and often as a harsh and despotic ruler. Later generations could recognise that his supreme merit was that he made England one. He did not die in England. In =1087= he fought with his lord, the king of France, Philip I. In anger at a jest of Philip"s he set fire to Mantes. As he rode amidst the burning houses his horse shied and threw him forward on the pommel of his saddle. He was now corpulent and the injury proved fatal. On September 9 he died. When the body was carried to Caen for burial in the abbey of St. Stephen, which William himself had reared, a knight stepped forward and claimed as his own the ground in which the grave had been dug. It had been taken, he said, by William from his father. "In the name of G.o.d," he cried, "I forbid that the body of the robber be covered with my mould, or that he be buried within the bounds of my inheritance." The bystanders acknowledged the truth of his accusation, and paid the price demanded.
CHAPTER VIII.
WILLIAM II. =1087--1100.=
LEADING DATES
Accession of William II 1087 Norman rebellion against William II. 1088 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury 1093 The Council of Rockingham, and the First Crusade 1095 Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders 1099 Death of William II. 1100
1. =The Accession of the Red King. 1087.=--In Normandy the Conqueror was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. Robert was sluggish and incapable, and his father had expressed a wish that England, newly conquered and hard to control, should be ruled by his more energetic second son, William. To the third son, Henry, he gave a sum of money.
There was as yet no settled rule of succession to the English crown, and William at once crossed the sea and was crowned king of the English at Westminster, by Lanfranc. William Rufus, or the Red King, as men called him, feared not G.o.d nor regarded man. Yet the English rallied round him, because they knew that he was strong-willed, and because they needed a king who would keep the Norman barons from oppressing them. For that very reason the more turbulent of the Norman barons declared for Robert, who would be too lazy to keep them in order. In the spring of =1088= they broke into rebellion in his name.
William called the English people to his help. He would not, he said, wring money from his subjects or exercise cruelty in defence of his hunting grounds. On this the English rallied round him. At the head of a great army he marched to attack the rebels, and finally laid siege to Rochester, which was held against him by his uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had released from the imprisonment in which the Conqueror had kept him. William called upon yet greater numbers of the English to come to his help. Every one, he declared, who failed him now should be known for ever by the shameful name of _Nithing_, or worthless. The English came in crowds. When at last Odo surrendered, the English pleaded that no mercy should be shown him. "Halters, bring halters!" they cried; "hang up the traitor bishop and his accomplices on the gibbet." William, however, spared him, but banished him for ever from England.
2. =The Wickedness of the Red King.=--William had crushed the Norman rebels with English aid. When the victory was won he turned against those who had helped him. It was not that he oppressed the English because they were English, but that he oppressed English and Normans alike, though the English, being the weaker, felt his cruelty most. He broke all his promises. He gathered round him mercenary soldiers from all lands to enforce his will. He hanged murderers and robbers, but he himself was the worst of robbers. When he moved about the country with the ruffians who attended him, the inhabitants fled to the woods, leaving their houses to be pillaged. William allowed no law to be pleaded against his own will. His life, and the life of his courtiers, was pa.s.sed in the foulest vice. He was as irreligious as he was vicious. It was in especial defiance of the Christian sentiment of the time that he encouraged the Jews, who had begun to come into England in his father"s days, to come in greater numbers. They grew rich as money-lenders, and William protected them against their debtors, exacting a high price for his protection. Once, it is said, he invited the Jewish rabbis to argue in his presence with the bishops on the merits of their respective creeds, and promised to become a Jew if the rabbis had the better of the argument. His own mouth was filled with outrageous blasphemies. "G.o.d," he said, "shall never see me a good man. I have suffered too much at His hands."
3. =Ranulf Flambard.=--The chief minister of the Red King was Ranulf Flambard, whom he ultimately made Bishop of Durham. He was one of the clerks of the king"s chapel. The word "clerk" properly signified a member of the clergy. The only way in which men could work with their brains instead of with their hands was by becoming clerks, the majority of whom, however, only entered the lower orders, without any intention of becoming priests or even deacons. Few, except clerks, could read or write, and whatever work demanded intelligence naturally fell into their hands. They acted as physicians or lawyers, kept accounts, and wrote letters. The clerks of the king"s chapel were the king"s secretaries and men of business. These ready writers had taken a leading part in the compilation of Domesday Book, and they were always active in bringing in money. Under the Conqueror they were expected to observe at least something of the rules of justice. Under the Red King they were expected to disregard them entirely. Of all the clerks Ranulf Flambard was the most unscrupulous; therefore he rose into the greatest favour. The first William had appointed high officers, known as Justiciars, to act in his name from time to time when he was absent from England, or was from any cause unable to be present when important business was transacted. Flambard was appointed Justiciar by the second William, and in his hands the office became permanent. The Justiciar was now the king"s chief minister, acting in his name whether he was present or absent. Flambard used his power to gather wealth for the king on every side. "He drave the king"s gemots," we are told, "over all England;" that is to say, he forced the reluctant courts to exact the money which he claimed for the king.
4. =Feudal Dues.=--It was Flambard who systematised, if he did not invent, the doctrine that the king was to profit by his position as supreme landlord. In practice this meant that he exacted to the full the consequences of feudal tenure. If a man died who held land by knight service from the crown, leaving a son who was a minor, the boy became the ward of the king, who took the profits of his lands till he was twenty-one, and forced him to pay a relief or fine for taking them into his own hands when he attained his majority. If the land fell to an heiress the king claimed the right of marrying her to whom he would, or of requiring of her a sum of money for permission to take a husband at her own choice, or, as was usually the case, at the choice of her relations. Under special circ.u.mstances the king exacted aids from his tenants-in-chief. If he were taken prisoner they had to pay to ransom him from captivity. When he knighted his eldest son or married his eldest daughter they had to contribute to the expense. It is true that this was in accordance with the principle of feudality.
Neither a boy nor a woman could render service in the field, and it was therefore only fair that the king should hold the lands at times when no service was rendered to him for them; and it was also fair that the dependents should come to their lord"s help in times of special need, especially as all that the king took from them they in turn took from their own sub-tenants. Flambard, however, did not content himself with a moderately harsh exaction of these feudal dues.