Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/588

Rh 542 NORMANDY the enemies of Lewis, this was English interference directed against both Normandy and France. But direct dealings between England and Normandy begin at a later time, in the latter days of Richard the Fearless. A dispute be tween Richard and the English king ^thelred which arose about 991 is said to have been hindered by the interven tion of Pope John XV. from growing into a war. There can be little doubt that the quarrel arose out of the close connexion which still went on between Normandy and the Scandinavian North. The Danish invaders of England were received with welcome in Norman havens and were allowed to sell the plunder of England to Norman buyers. Richard the Fearless died in 996, known to the last at Rheims only as duke of the pirates. Yet he had made his duchy Christian and French. It might be too much to say that every trace even of heathen worship, much less of Danish speech, had died out from the lands of Bayeux and Coutances. The speech at least, we may be sure, lingered some time longer, the more so as we hear of fresh Danish settlements in the latter days of Richard. And, even if speech as well as creed died out, the two left behind them the tradition of local distinction and local enmity between the eastern and the western parts of the duchy. The true Normandy, the land which was still in some measure Teutonic, began on the left bank of the Dive. But Nor mandy as a state was Christian and French. The French speech of Rouen gradually supplanted the Danish speech of Bayeux. Yet, as commonly happens in such cases, a few Teutonic words, chiefly words of seafaring life, now crept into the Romance tongue of northern Gaul, in addition to the far greater infusion which had found its way in ages before as a result of the Frankish conquest. In Normandy itself the local nomenclature became Teutonic to an ex tent which makes itself felt on the map. Scandinavian endings like toft and by live on in the shape of tot and boeuf, and they are constantly coupled, like the by of Lincolnshire and the ton of Pembrokeshire, with the names of Scandinavian settlers. Even in the most French part of the duchy, some places, like Caudebec and Dieppe the cold beck and the deeps keep Teutonic names under a very slight disguise. And the Conqueror s own Falaise, bearing a name which has passed into the general voca bulary of the French tongue, is simply the Teutonic fals, whether the name dates from Frankish or from Norman settlement. Richard Of one effect of the reign of Richard the Fearless theGood. we g e t a picture in the peasant revolt (which has been already spoken of) which marked the beginning of the reign of his son Richard the Good (997). A peasant revolt implies masters, and harsh masters. It is hard to say how far the distinction of oppressor and oppressed coin cided with distinction of race ; but it is certain that the movement had some special and promising features. The peasants of Normandy set up a commune or something to which later writers gave a name which became afterwards so well known more than sixty years before the burghers of Le Mans did the like. We seem to be reading the history of Friesland or of the Three Lands rather than that of any part of the Western kingdom. But the revolt was fully and harshly put down, and the rule of the &quot; gentlemen &quot; was made safe. It is noticed that Richard the Good would have none but gentlemen about him. This seems to mark the final establishment in Normandy, as in other lands, of the new nobility, the nobility of office, or rather the nobility of kindred to the sovereign. We soon begin to trace the history of the great Norman families, only one or two of which can be seen, and that dimly, before Richard the Good. It illustrates the origin of Norman nobility that Rudolf of Ivry, who put down the revolt, was the duke s uncle, but only because his father, a miller, had married the cast-off wife or mistress of William Longsword. So at least the story goes, and a story of this kind is sure to have this kind of truth ; such a rise as it describes was possible and likely. After all, it may be that the revolt was not a mere failure. Villainage in Normandy was both lighter and died out earlier than in most parts of France. The thirty years of the reign of Richard the Good con tinue the period of unbroken friendship between Normandy and France, and also between Normandy and Britanny. But we find the Norman duke warring, sometimes on his own account, sometimes as the ally of the French king, with his neighbour of Chartres, and in the more distant lands of the ducal and even the royal Burgundy. His relations with the North and with England are of more consequence. Richard is charged with bringing two heathen sea-kings, one of whom is said to have been afterwards the famous Saint Olaf, as helpers against Chartres ; we hear also of a second quarrel with ^Ethelred, and even of an English invasion of the Cotentin. It is more certain that in 1002 /Ethelred married Richard s sister Emma, a marriage which may be set down as the first link in the chain of events which led to the Norman conquest of England. Eleven years later, when JEthelred was driven from his kingdom, he found shelter with his wife and her children at the court of his brother-in-law. Soon after ^Ethelred s death and Cnut s establishment in England, Emma married Cnut. Unbroken peace reigned between Cnut and Richard, and Emma s children by ^Ethelred, Alfred and Eadward and their sister Godgifu, were brought up at the court of their Norman uncle, another stage in the drama of the Norman Conquest. The short reign of Richard s son Richard (1026-1028) Robert, was marked only by disputes between the duke and his i atlier of brother Robert, count of Hiesmes, who presently succeeded t1ie Con &quot; to the duchy. He too maintained the French alliance, qL and restored King Henry to his crown when he was driven from it by his stepmother Constance. But friendly relations both with Britanny and England now ceased. Robert seems to have married and put away Estrith, the sister of Cnut, either before her marriage with Earl Ulf or more likely after his death. This led to a quarrel between Robert and Cnut, and to an attempted invasion of England on behalf of the banished ^Ethelings, the sons of ^Ethelred and Emma. Robert at last made the pil grimage to Jerusalem, and died on his way back in 1035. He had already made the great men of Normandy swear to the succession of his natural son William, born to him of Herleva of Falaise before his accession to the duchy. William the Bastard, one day to be the Conqueror, was about eight years of age at the death of his father. There can be no doubt that the succession of William Succes- was most unwillingly accepted. It was the acceptance of sil, n of one who was at once bastard and minor. The law of hereditary succession was nowhere very distinctly defined ; but it is clear that the notion of some kind of hereditary succession, as distinguished from election even Avithin a particular family, had made much greater advances in Normandy than it had in England. No princes were more lax as to marriage than the Norman dukes ; both William Longsword and Richard the Fearless were the offspring of unions which were very doubtful in the eye of the church, and Richard the Good and the other children of Richard the Fearless were legitimated only by the after- marriage of their parents. But the son of Robert and Herleva was pre-eminently the Bastard ; there was no pre tence of marriage of any kind. He was accepted, so far as he was accepted, simply because there was no candidate whose right was so distinctly better than his as to unite the whole country on his behalf. Of the other members , illiam -