Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/705

 WILLIAM

643

WILLIAM

end. In 1047 a serious rebellion of the nobles oc- curred, and William with the aid of Henry, King of France, gained a great victory at Val-cs-Dunes, near Caen, which led, the following year, to the capture of the two strong castles of Alengon and Donifront. tjsing those as his base of operations, the young duke, in 1054 and the following years, made himself master of the province of Maine and thus became the most powerful vassal of the French Crown, able on occasion to bid defiance to the king himself.

Meanwhile Wilham had begun to take a great interest in English affairs. How far his visit to England in 1051 was directly prompted by designs upon the throne, it is impossible to say. It is in any case hkely that his marriage, in spite of the papal prohibition, with Matilda, the daughter of the Earl of Flanders, in 105.3, was intended as a check upon the influence exercised in that powerful quarter by Earl Godwin and his sons. Through the media- tion of Lanfranc, the future archbishop, the union was legitimized by papal dispensation in 1059, but William and his wife consented to found two abbeys at Caen, by way of penance for their contumacy. Edward the Confessor had been brought up in Normandy, for he was the nephew of Duke Richard II (d. 1026). All through the reign, the king himself and at least a minority of his subjects had turned their eyes across the water, realizing that the Conti- nent represented in general higher religious ideals and higher culture than prevailed at home. Whether any explicit ijroniise of the succession had been made to the duke may be doubted, but one fact stands out clearly from a mass of obscure and often conflicting details: that King Harold, about the year 1064, finding himself on Xorman soil, was constrained to take a solemn oath of allegiance to William. Neither can there be much doubt that this pledge was given with explicit reference to the duke's intention of contesting the English throne. The repudiation of this oath by Harold at the Confessor's death en- abled Wilham to assume the character of an avenger of perjurj'. He was probably sincere enough in believing himself constituted by God champion of the Church, and in obtaining from Pope Alexander II not onlj' a blessing on his enterprise, but the gift of a specially consecrated banner as for a religious crusade. A ccnturj' later Henry II, when pro- jecting his conquest of Ireland, adopted a similar role. At the same time it is not now disputed by impartial historians (e. g. H. C. Davis, or C. Oman) that the claim to establish a better order of things was in fact justified by the event. "The Norman Conquest", says H. C. Davis, "raised the EngUsh to that level of culture which the continental people had already reached and left it for the Plantagenets of Anjou to make England in her turn 'a leader among nations'."

After the invasion and the decisive battle of Hastings, William at once marched on London, and there the best and wisest men of the kingdom — for example, such influential prelates as Aldred, Arch- bishop of York, and St. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester — came in and tendered submission. Before the end of the year the king was crowned by Aldred (to the exclusion of Stigand) in the newly con- secrated abbey-church of Westminster. In 1067 William revisited Normandy, but, owing perhaps in part to the tactlessness or incapacity of the regents, Odo of Bayeux and WiUiam Fitzosbom, he was re- called by an alarming series of popular outbreaks: first the south-west, with Exeter for a rallying-point, then the WcLsh border, under the Earls Edwin and Morcar, then Northumbria, under Earl Gospatric, to be followed next year (1069) by a still more formidable rising in the north, assisted by the Danes. William met these attempts intrepidly, but sternly. In Northumbria, after the second insurrection, he

infUcted a terrible vengeance. The whole countrj' from York to Durham was laid waste, and we learn, for example, from the Domesday Book, that in the district of Amundcrness, where there had been sixty-two villages in the Confessor's time, there were in 1087 but sixteen, and these with a vastly reduced population. Neither was this the only instance of such ruthless severity. A terrible penalty was exacted in other centres of rebelhon, and we read not only of a wholesale use of fire and sword, but of mutilation and Winding in the case of individual offenders. The Conqueror could respect a brave foe, and he seems, in 1071, to have granted honourable terms to Hereward, the leader of the desperate re- sistance in the fen-country. But to Waltheof, after the collapse of the rebellion of the earls in 1075, no mercy was showTi. The motive was probably pohtical, for Lanfranc, who was with him at the last, pronounced him guiltless of the offence for which he died.

Having at last reduced the country to submission, WiUiam set to work with statesmanUke dehberation to estabhsh his government on a firm and lasting basis. He rewarded his followers with large grants of land, but he was careful to distribute these grants in such a way that the concentration of great terri- torial power in the same hands was avoided. The new fiefs recorded in Domesday are vast, but scat- tered. Saxon institutions were as far as possible re- tained, especially when they might serve as a check upon the power of the great feudatories. For the most part William continued to govern tlu-ough the sheriffs and the courts of the .shire and of the hundred. The national levy of the fyrd was retained, and it helped to render the king less dependent upon his vassals. In spite of heavy taxation, the new govern- ment was not altogether unpopular, for the Con- queror had confirmed "the laws of Edward", and the people looked to him as their natural protector against feudal oppression. The least acceptable part of the Norman regime was probably the en- forcement of th? cruel forest laws; but on the other hand, modern authorities are agreed that the chroni- clers of a later age enormously exaggerated the devas- tation said to have been caused in Hampshire by the making of the New Forest.

As for William's ecclesiastical poUcy, he seems conscientiously to have carried out a programme of wise reform. His appointments of bishops were on the whole excellent. The separation of the secular and spiritual courts was a measure of supreme and far-reaching importance. The influence of the great monastic revival of Cluny was now, through Lan- franc, brought to bear on many English foundations. To the pope, William was ever careful to .show himself a considerate and respectful .son, even on such occa- sions as when he firmly resisted the claim made by Gregory VII to feudal homage. On the other hand, St. Gregory himself commended the king for the zeal he had shown in securing the freedom of the Church, and he was content, while such a spirit prevailed, to leave the sovereign practically free in his appointments to Enghsh bishoprics. Altogether, Mr. C. Oman does not exaggerate when he tells us that before the Conquest "the typical faults of the dark ages, pluraUsm, simony, lax observance of the canons, contented ignorance, worldline.ss in every aspect, were all too prevalent in ICngland"; but he adds that by the Conqueror's wise pohcy "the con- dition of the Church ahke in the matter of spiritual zeal, of hard work and of learning, was much im- proved". In the last years of WiUiam's reign a great deal of his attention was absorbed by the pohtical complications which threatened his Conti- nental dominions and by the undutiful attitude of his sons. It was in avenging a gibe levelled against him by the King of France that the Conqueror met