Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/589

Rh NORMANDY 543 of the ducal kindred, some were themselves of doubtful legitimacy, while others could claim only through the female line. The result was that the minority of William was a time of utter anarchy, of plots, rebellions, public and private crimes of every kind, but that the young duke was never altogether set aside for any other claimant. And now for the first time since the very earliest days of the Norman state we find France unfriendly. The whole relations between the two powers change from the time of William s accession. It could not be in the beginning the personal act of the boy AVilliam himself. But the fact that William came to the duchy as a child had very likely a good deal to do with the change. The alliance had never been a natural one ; it had been alliance between prince and prince rather than between people and people, and now, during William s minority, there was no prince in Normandy ready to do to the ruler of France such good service as had been done by earlier Norman princes. While the princes were personal friends circumstances might make it convenient to forget that Normandy was a land lopped away from France; as soon as those circumstances had passed away the French kings and the French people again remembered that Rouen barred the way between Paris and the sea. For a while each power stood in need of the other. Normandy owed to France its introduction into the Christian and Romance-speaking world. France owed to Normandy its new position among the powers of Gaul. As the remembrance of these benefits on each side passed away, the far more natural feeling of rivalry and dislike showed itself again. After the accession of William there still are periods of friendship between France and Normandy ; but they alternate with more marked periods of enmity. The steady and faithful alliance is at an end ; it is significant that the name of the French king disappears from the charters of the Conqueror. If an immediate occasion of quarrel was at any time needed, it could always be found in the disputed frontier of the Vexin, the border district between Rouen and Paris. Old grievances are rubbed up again. Norman pride tells the tale of the Nor man settlement, of the humiliation of the dukes and kings of Francia. French enmity finds scornful epithets for the intruders who had cut off so goodly a land and so great a city from French dominion. The first sign of this revival of the older and more natural feeling was shown when King Henry took advan tage of the weakness of Normandy to advance his fortune at its expense. From this time the relations between king and duke are, among a good many shiftings, more often hostile than friendly. It was also during William s minority that the attempt of the ^Etheling Alfred on the English crown took place. He went with Norman com panions, and in some accounts the enterprise swells into a Norman invasion. At all events, it marks another step towards a greater Norman invasion. The ill feeling towards William finally broke out when he had reached an age to act for himself. This was in 1047, and the movement is one of special interest and importance, as bringing out more strongly than anything else the long -abiding distinction between the two parts of the duchy. Eastern or French Normandy, the land of Rouen and Evreux, clave to William; western or Teu tonic Normandy, the land of Bayeux and Coutances, rose against him. The stirrer up of strife was Guy of Brionne, son of Reginald, count of the Burgundian pala tinate, by a daughter of Richard the Good. The plan seemingly was that Guy should supplant William in the eastern district, and should leave the barons of the west to themselves. William asked and obtained help of his lord, the king of the French. It is not easy to see why Henry, who had hitherto acted an unfriendly part towards Normandy and who before long acted it again, should have stepped in, when the dismemberment of the duchy would seem to have been just what he would have wished. However this may be, the rebels were overthrown in the Estab- fight of Val-es-dunes by the joint forces of king and lishment duke; the power of William over his duchy was fully ofllis established ; and, though a difference may to this day be Povver - seen between the two parts of Normandy, they never again appeared in open strife against one another. That part of the reign of William which comes between the battle of Val-es-dunes and the invasion of England was the great day of Normandy as a wholly distinct and prac tically independent power. Under the wise and vigorous rule of its great duke the duchy became one of the most flourishing parts of Gaul and of Europe. We can now for the first time call up a fairly distinct picture of the coun try. The great Norman families, many of whom after wards won a second establishment in England, now stand out distinctly. They are wealthy and powerful, but under William s rule they are made to feel that they have a master. Many of them, as we have seen, were the duke s kinsfolk ; some were favourites of his own advancing. The counts of Eu and of Evreux, the lords of Beaumont, Grantmesnil, and Conches, the viscounts of Avranches and Saint-Sauveur, stand out among many others. Greater than all was the mighty house that was formed by the union of the houses of Montgomery and Belleme, a house holding lands both of Normandy and of France, and rank ing rather with princes than with ordinary nobles. Of those raised by William himself, we see his personal favourite William Fitz-Osbern of Breteuil, and his half- brother Robert, to whom he gave the county of Mortain, while his other half-brother Odo held the bishopric of Bayeux. These were the sons of Herleva by her husband Herlwin of Conteville, whom she married after the death of Duke Robert. That side of the feudal theory by which the noble holds of the prince and does military service for the lands which he holds was never better carried out than it was in Normandy under William. But under him the great lords were not only vassals but sub jects. The reign of law was enforced ; the towns grew and trade flourished ; the settlement of foreigners was encouraged ; Duke William in his own duchy showed all the great qualities which enabled him to become the conqueror and the ruler of England, without that darker side of his character which necessarily followed on his position as conqueror. Nowhere do these qualities stand out more clearly than His in his dealings with the church. William was neither the Dealings enemy nor the slave of the ecclesiastical power. He held the ith *r e supremacy over the spiritual estate with a firm hand. He had the great advantage that the prelates of Normandy were his vassals and subjects, holding their temporal estates of him and not of a king or emperor beyond his dominions. He was advocate of all his own churches ; he bestowed them at his will, and held firmly to the right of investiture. But he was a church -reformer in the best sense. He chose the best men from all lands for the bishoprics and abbeys in his gift. Among those whom he promoted and befriended are the great names of Lanfranc and Anselm. Up to this time the Norman bishoprics had been used as provisions for cadets and kinsmen of the ducal family, a custom of which the promotion of his own half-brother Odo during his minority was one of the last and most scandalous examples. Devout and strict in his own life, William backed up every effort for the enforcement of discipline and the improvement of morals. His reign was the great time for the foundation of the Norman monasteries. Some, as Jumieges, Cerisy, Bernay, Mont St Michel, are of older date ; but now every noble became the founder of