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William the Conqueror

E >> E. A. Freeman >> William the Conqueror




Another law bears more than all the personal impress of William.
In it he at once, on one side, forestalls the most humane theories
of modern times, and on the other sins most directly against them.
His remarkable unwillingness to put any man to death, except among
the chances of the battle-field, was to some extent the feeling of
his age. With him the feeling takes the shape of a formal law. He
forbids the infliction of death for any crime whatever. But those
who may on this score be disposed to claim the Conqueror as a
sympathizer will be shocked at the next enactment. Those crimes
which kings less merciful than William would have punished with
death are to be punished with loss of eyes or other foul and cruel
mutilations. Punishments of this kind now seem more revolting than
death, though possibly, now as then, the sufferer himself might
think otherwise. But in those days to substitute mutilation for
death, in the case of crimes which were held to deserve death, was
universally deemed an act of mercy. Grave men shrank from sending
their fellow-creatures out of the world, perhaps without time for
repentance; but physical sympathy with physical suffering had
little place in their minds. In the next century a feeling against
bodily mutilation gradually comes in; but as yet the mildest and
most thoughtful men, Anselm himself, make no protest against it
when it is believed to be really deserved. There is no sign of any
general complaint on this score. The English Chronicler applauds
the strict police of which mutilation formed a part, and in one
case he deliberately holds it to be the fitting punishment of the
offence. In fact, when penal settlements were unknown and legal
prisons were few and loathsome, there was something to be said for
a punishment which disabled the criminal from repeating his
offence. In William's jurisprudence mutilation became the ordinary
sentence of the murderer, the robber, the ravisher, sometimes also
of English revolters against William's power. We must in short
balance his mercy against the mercy of Kirk and Jeffreys.

The ground on which the English Chronicler does raise his wail on
behalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the
forests and the extortions of money with which he charges the
Conqueror. In both these points the royal hand became far heavier
under the Norman rule. In both William's character grew darker as
he grew older. He is charged with unlawful exactions of money, in
his character alike of sovereign and of landlord. We read of his
sharp practice in dealing with the profits of the royal demesnes.
He would turn out the tenant to whom he had just let the land, if
another offered a higher rent. But with regard to taxation, we
must remember that William's exactions, however heavy at the time,
were a step in the direction of regular government. In those days
all taxation was disliked. Direct taking of the subject's money by
the King was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified only
by some extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hire
soldiers against them. Men long after still dreamed that the King
could "live of his own," that he could pay all expenses of his
court and government out of the rents and services due to him as a
landowner, without asking his people for anything in the character
of sovereign. Demands of money on behalf of the King now became
both heavier and more frequent. And another change which had long
been gradually working now came to a head. When, centuries later,
the King was bidden to "live of his own," men had forgotten that
the land of the King had once been the land of the nation. In all
Teutonic communities, great and small, just as in the city
communities of Greece and Italy, the community itself was a chief
landowner. The nation had its folkland, its ager publicus, the
property of no one man but of the whole state. Out of this, by the
common consent, portions might be cut off and booked--granted by a
written document--to particular men as their own bookland. The
King might have his private estate, to be dealt with at his own
pleasure, but of the folkland, the land of the nation, he was only
the chief administrator, bound to act by the advice of his Witan.
But in this case more than in others, the advice of the Witan could
not fail to become formal; the folkland, ever growing through
confiscations, ever lessening through grants, gradually came to be
looked on as the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought
good. We must not look for any change formally enacted; but in
Edward's day the notion of folkland, as the possession of the
nation and not of the King, could have been only a survival, and in
William's day even the survival passed away. The land which was
practically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of course,
Terra Regis, the land of King William. That land was now enlarged
by greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than ever.
For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land of
William. And far more than had been the land of the nation
remained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good.

In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change.
But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength to
certain tendencies which had been long afloat. And out of them, in
the next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised a
systematic code of oppression. Yet even in his work there is
little of formal change. There are no laws of William Rufus. The
so called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, and
the like, on the part of the lord, the ancient heriot developed
into the later relief, all these things were in the germ under
William, as they had been in the germ long before him. In the
hands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom;
their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry the
First which promises to reform their abuses. Thus the Conqueror
clearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of his
nobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected on
grounds of policy. Under Randolf Flambard this became a regular
claim, which of course was made a means of extorting money. Under
Henry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulated
and modified, it is legally established.

The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William,
greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly at
all changed in outward form. Like the kings that were before him,
he "wore his crown" at the three great feasts, at Easter at
Winchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas at
Gloucester. Like the kings that were before him, he gathered
together the great men of the realm, and when need was, the small
men also. Nothing seems to have been changed in the constitution
or the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have been
utterly changed. The innermost circle, earls, bishops, great
officers of state and household, gradually changed from a body of
Englishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangers
among whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places. The
result of their "deep speech" with William was not likely to be
other than an assent to William's will. The ordinary freeman did
not lose his abstract right to come and shout "Yea, yea," to any
addition that King William made to the law of King Edward. But
there would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King William
thought fit to bid him. But once at least William did gather
together, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of the
smallest account. On one point the Conqueror had fully made up his
mind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom through
all succeeding ages. The realm of England was to be one and
indivisible. No ruler or subject in the kingdom of England should
again dream that that kingdom could be split asunder. When he
offered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part of
it, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offer
would be refused. No such offer should be heard of again. There
should be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund,
between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkere
had dreamed of in later times. Nor should the kingdom be split
asunder in that subtler way which William of all men best
understood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West,
had split asunder. He would have no dukes or earls who might
become kings in all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom. No
man in his realm should be to him as he was to his overlord at
Paris. No man in his realm should plead duty towards an immediate
lord as an excuse for breach of duty towards the lord of that
immediate lord. Hence William's policy with regard to earldoms.
There was to be nothing like the great governments which had been
held by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl of the West-Saxons or
the Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the Normans to be endured
by one who was Duke of the Normans himself. The earl, even of the
king's appointment, still represented the separate being of the
district over which he was set. He was the king's representative
rather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and not a
prince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and might
easily grow into a prince. And at last, at the very end of his
reign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step that
made England for ever one. In 1086 every land-owner in England
swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and
to defend him against his enemies. The subject's duty to the King
was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord.
When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly
government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of
both. Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an
English statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards
the later making of England, than this memorable act of the
Conqueror. Here indeed is an addition which William made to the
law of Edward for the truest good of the English folk. And yet no
enactment has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood. Lawyer
after lawyer has set down in his book that, at the assembly of
Salisbury in 1086, William introduced "the feudal system." If the
words "feudal system" have any meaning, the object of the law now
made was to hinder any "feudal system" from coming into England.
William would be king of a kingdom, head of a commonwealth,
personal lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a King of
the French, external lord of princes whose subjects owed him no
allegiance. This greatest monument of the Conqueror's
statesmanship was carried into effect in a special assembly of the
English nation gathered on the first day of August 1086 on the
great plain of Salisbury. Now, perhaps for the first time, we get
a distinct foreshadowing of Lords and Commons. The Witan, the
great men of the realm, and "the landsitting men," the whole body
of landowners, are now distinguished. The point is that William
required the personal presence of every man whose personal
allegiance he thought worth having. Every man in the mixed
assembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the King's own men and
the men of other lords, took the oath and became the man of King
William. On that day England became for ever a kingdom one and
indivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed of parting
asunder.


The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events of
William's later reign; it comes here as the last act of that
general settlement which began in 1070. That settlement, besides
its secular side, has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhat
different character. In both William's coming brought the island
kingdom into a closer connexion with the continent; and brought a
large displacement of Englishmen and a large promotion of
strangers. But on the ecclesiastical side, though the changes were
less violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new state of
things. The religious missionary was more inclined to innovate
than the military conqueror. Here William not only added but
changed; on one point he even proclaimed that the existing law of
England was bad. Certainly the religious state of England was
likely to displease churchmen from the mainland. The English
Church, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that very
reason, less dependent on her parent. She was a free colony, not a
conquered province. The English Church too was most distinctly
national; no land came so near to that ideal state of things in
which the Church is the nation on its religious side. Papal
authority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and a
less careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal things
and jurisdictions. Two friendly powers could take liberties with
each other. The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical as
well as with temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient laws
blames any assembly that did otherwise. Bishop and earl sat
together in the local Gemot, to deal with many matters which,
according to continental ideas, should have been dealt with in
separate courts. And, by what in continental eyes seemed a strange
laxity of discipline, priests, bishops, members of capitular
bodies, were often married. The English diocesan arrangements were
unlike continental models. In Gaul, by a tradition of Roman date,
the bishop was bishop of the city. His diocese was marked by the
extent of the civil jurisdiction of the city. His home, his head
church, his bishopstool in the head church, were all in the city.
In Teutonic England the bishop was commonly bishop, not of a city
but of a tribe or district; his style was that of a tribe; his
home, his head church, his bishopstool, might be anywhere within
the territory of that tribe. Still, on the greatest point of all,
matters in England were thoroughly to William's liking; nowhere did
the King stand forth more distinctly as the Supreme Governor of the
Church. In England, as in Normandy, the right of the sovereign to
the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was ancient and
undisputed. What Edward had freely done, William went on freely
doing, and Hildebrand himself never ventured on a word of
remonstrance against a power which he deemed so wrongful in the
hands of his own sovereign. William had but to stand on the rights
of his predecessors. When Gregory asked for homage for the crown
which he had in some sort given, William answered indeed as an
English king. What the kings before him had done for or paid to
the Roman see, that would he do and pay; but this no king before
him had ever done, nor would he be the first to do it. But while
William thus maintained the rights of his crown, he was willing and
eager to do all that seemed needful for ecclesiastical reform. And
the general result of his reform was to weaken the insular
independence of England, to make her Church more like the other
Churches of the West, and to increase the power of the Roman
Bishop.

William had now a fellow-worker in his taste. The subtle spirit
which had helped to win his kingdom was now at his side to help him
to rule it. Within a few months after the taking of Chester
Lanfranc sat on the throne of Augustine. As soon as the actual
Conquest was over, William began to give his mind to ecclesiastical
matters. It might look like sacrilege when he caused all the
monasteries of England to be harried. But no harm was done to the
monks or to their possessions. The holy houses were searched for
the hoards which the rich men of England, fearing the new king, had
laid up in the monastic treasuries. William looked on these hoards
as part of the forfeited goods of rebels, and carried them off
during the Lent of 1070. This done, he sat steadily down to the
reform of the English Church.

He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid,
Bishop of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time of
Edward. It was a kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest,
when, at the assembly held at Winchester in 1070, the King's crown
was placed on his head by Ermenfrid. The work of deposing English
prelates and appointing foreign successors now began. The primacy
of York was regularly vacant; Ealdred had died as the Danes sailed
up the Humber to assault or to deliver his city. The primacy of
Canterbury was to be made vacant by the deposition of Stigand. His
canonical position had always been doubtful; neither Harold nor
William had been crowned by him; yet William had treated him
hitherto with marked courtesy, and he had consecrated at least one
Norman bishop, Remigius of Dorchester. He was now deprived both of
the archbishopric and of the bishopric of Winchester which he held
with it, and was kept under restraint for the rest of his life.
According to foreign canonical rules the sentence may pass as just;
but it marked a stage in the conquest of England when a stout-
hearted Englishman was removed from the highest place in the
English Church to make way for the innermost counsellor of the
Conqueror. In the Pentecostal assembly, held at Windsor, Lanfranc
was appointed archbishop; his excuses were overcome by his old
master Herlwin of Bec; he came to England, and on August 15, 1070
he was consecrated to the primacy.

Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies.
The see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man of
high character and memorable in the local history of his see. The
abbey of Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who had
received the staff from the uncrowned Eadgar. It was only by rich
gifts that he had turned away the wrath of William from his house.
The Fenland was perhaps already stirring, and the Abbot of
Peterborough might have to act as a military commander. In this
case the prelate appointed, a Norman named Turold, was accordingly
more of a soldier than of a monk. From these assemblies of 1070
the series of William's ecclesiastical changes goes on. As the
English bishops die or are deprived, strangers take their place.
They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who became Bishop of Durham
in 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine who had been largely
favoured in Edward's day. At the time of William's death Wulfstan
was the only Englishman who kept a bishopric. Even his deprivation
had once been thought of. The story takes a legendary shape, but
it throws an important light on the relations of Church and State
in England. In an assembly held in the West Minster Wulfstan is
called on by William and Lanfranc to give up his staff. He
refuses; he will give it back to him who gave it, and places it on
the tomb of his dead master Edward. No of his enemies can move it.
The sentence is recalled, and the staff yields to his touch.
Edward was not yet a canonized saint; the appeal is simply from the
living and foreign king to the dead and native king. This legend,
growing up when Western Europe was torn in pieces by the struggle
about investitures, proves better than the most authentic documents
how the right which Popes denied to Emperors was taken for granted
in the case of an English king. But, while the spoils of England,
temporal and spiritual, were thus scattered abroad among men of the
conquering race, two men at least among them refused all share in
plunder which they deemed unrighteous. One gallant Norman knight,
Gulbert of Hugleville, followed William through all his campaigns,
but when English estates were offered as his reward, he refused to
share in unrighteous gains, and went back to the lands of his
fathers which he could hold with a good conscience. And one monk,
Wimund of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused bishoprics and abbeys,
but rebuked the Conqueror for wrong and robbery. And William bore
no grudge against his censor, but, when the archbishopric of Rouen
became vacant, he offered it to the man who had rebuked him. Among
the worthies of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly claim a
place, but a place should surely be theirs among the men whom
England honours.


The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in our
history. In the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in the
next reign, the plough of the English Church was for seventeen
years drawn by two oxen of equal strength. By ancient English
custom the Archbishop of Canterbury was the King's special
counsellor, the special representative of his Church and people.
Lanfranc cannot be charged with any direct oppression; yet in the
hands of a stranger who had his spiritual conquest to make, the
tribunitian office of former archbishops was lost in that of chief
minister of the sovereign. In the first action of their joint
rule, the interest of king and primate was the same. Lanfranc
sought for a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority of
Canterbury over the rival metropolis of York. And this fell in
with William's schemes for the consolidation of the kingdom. The
political motive is avowed. Northumberland, which had been so hard
to subdue and which still lay open to Danish invaders or
deliverers, was still dangerous. An independent Archbishop of York
might consecrate a King of the Northumbrians, native or Danish, who
might grow into a King of the English. The Northern metropolitan
had unwillingly to admit the superiority, and something more, of
the Southern. The caution of William and his ecclesiastical
adviser reckoned it among possible chances that even Thomas of
Bayeux might crown an invading Cnut or Harold in opposition to his
native sovereign and benefactor.

For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen his
minister too wisely. The objects of the two colleagues were not
always the same. Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was no
zealot for extravagant papal claims. The caution with which he
bore himself during the schism which followed the strife between
Gregory and Henry brought on him more than one papal censure. Yet
the general tendency of his administration was towards the growth
of ecclesiastical, and even of papal, claims. William never
dreamed of giving up his ecclesiastical supremacy or of exempting
churchmen from the ordinary power of the law. But the division of
the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the increased frequency
of synods distinct from the general assemblies of the realm--even
though the acts of those synods needed the royal assent--were steps
towards that exemption of churchmen from the civil power which was
asserted in one memorable saying towards the end of William's own
reign. William could hold his own against Hildebrand himself; yet
the increased intercourse with Rome, the more frequent presence of
Roman Legates, all tended to increase the papal claims and the
deference yielded to them. William refused homage to Gregory; but
it is significant that Gregory asked for it. It was a step towards
the day when a King of England was glad to offer it. The increased
strictness as to the marriage of the clergy tended the same way.
Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full rigour of Hildebrand's
decrees. Marriage was forbidden for the future; the capitular
clergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of the
parish priest was respected. In another point William directly
helped to undermine his own authority and the independence of his
kingdom. He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority of
the diocesan bishop. With this began a crowd of such exemptions,
which, by weakening local authority, strengthened the power of the
Roman see. All these things helped on Hildebrand's great scheme
which made the clergy everywhere members of one distinct and
exclusive body, with the Roman Bishop at their head. Whatever
tended to part the clergy from other men tended to weaken the
throne of every king. While William reigned with Lanfranc at his
side, these things were not felt; but the seed was sown for the
controversy between Henry and Thomas and for the humiliation of
John.

Even those changes of Lanfranc's primacy which seem of purely
ecclesiastical concern all helped, in some way to increase the
intercourse between England and the continent or to break down some
insular peculiarity. And whatever did this increased the power of
Rome. Even the decree of 1075 that bishoprics should be removed to
the chief cities of their dioceses helped to make England more like
Gaul or Italy. So did the fancy of William's bishops and abbots
for rebuilding their churches on a greater scale and in the last
devised continental style. All tended to make England less of
another world. On the other hand, one insular peculiarity well
served the purposes of the new primate. Monastic chapters in
episcopal churches were almost unknown out of England. Lanfranc,
himself a monk, favoured monks in this matter also. In several
churches the secular canons were displaced by monks. The corporate
spirit of the regulars, and their dependence on Rome, was far
stronger than that of the secular clergy. The secular chapters
could be refractory, but the disputes between them and their
bishops were mainly of local importance; they form no such part of
the general story of ecclesiastical and papal advance as the long
tale of the quarrel between the archbishops and the monks of Christ
Church.

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