Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (10 page)

But this hardly proves that relations were good: indeed, the two prelates visited the Pope to negotiate on William’s behalf. We know that at
least two other high-ranking churchmen from Normandy had traveled to Rome during the early 1050s for this purpose.
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Lanfranc’s biographer tells how the influential churchman spoke forcefully to Pope Nicholas II on his master’s behalf, urging that William was determined not to give up his wife, so the pontiff would do well to yield. Lanfranc added that Count Baldwin’s pride would not suffer his daughter to be returned to him, particularly as by that time she had a brood of children whose legitimacy would be considered doubtful.
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That the sources describing the lifting of the papal ban were “late and untrustworthy” cannot be wholly accepted, either. Although it is possible that Lanfranc’s biographer used a degree of poetic license in order to make his subject appear more heroic, the same cannot be said of Orderic Vitalis, who had no such interests to promote. Moreover, as will be seen, later events would also suggest that William and Matilda had had to battle against the ban for at least a decade.

Regardless of its longevity, the controversy over the papal ban proves that from its inception, William and Matilda’s marriage was affected by, and would reflect, the shifting political climate of Europe. As such, it sheds light on the inception of a new balance of power in the medieval world, with the rise of the papacy as a force to be reckoned with by secular rulers. Uniquely, Matilda’s life bridged these two stages, and the story of her marriage to William would be played out against the transition from the old to the new Europe.

As well as adjusting to papal ascendancy, the duke and duchess also faced opposition closer to home, as William’s uncle, Archbishop Mauger of Rouen, also objected to the match on grounds of consanguinity. He was promptly dismissed by his nephew. The official reason for Mauger’s removal was his “devoting himself more often than was right to hunting and cockfighting and spending the treasures of his church on over-lavish hospitality.” But Malmesbury claimed to know the truth: “Some say that there was a secret reason for his deposition: Matilda, whom William had taken as wife, was a near relation, and in his zeal for the Christian faith Mauger had found it intolerable that two blood-relations should share the marriage-bed, and had aimed the weapon of excommunication against his nephew and that nephew’s consort.”

Matilda apparently played just as active a part in Mauger’s removal as
did her new husband: “The young man was furious, his wife added her protests, and so (it was said) they had been looking for opportunities to drive from his see the man who had denounced their sin.”
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However, the fact that Mauger was removed with the consent of a papal legate suggests that it had nothing to do with his objection to William and Matilda’s betrothal. More likely is that William was eager to be rid of a man who had long coveted his duchy and whose blood claim was not tainted by bastardy like his own. But Matilda had made it clear that she was not content to play the passive wife: from the very beginning of their marriage, her role in the government of Normandy was pivotal.

F
ollowing her marriage, Matilda and her new husband traveled together to the ducal palace of Rouen “with the greatest ceremony and honour.”
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William of Poitiers reported that the city “gave itself over to rejoicing at the entry of this spouse.”
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The duke was no doubt keen to impress his new bride, for Rouen was the foremost city of the province and the source of great admiration among contemporaries. Orderic was dazzled by the obvious wealth that resulted from its flourishing trade, and he described the rich variety of foods and other goods that the burgeoning populace benefited from.
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Surrounded on all sides by hills and forests, and flanked by the river Seine, Rouen was also a beautiful city, and certainly a fitting place to receive the new duchess of Normandy.

Matilda was not the only one whom William was seeking to impress, for he and his bride were accompanied by her parents, who stayed with the couple until all of the pageantry and festivities were concluded several days later. Afterward, the newlyweds made a leisurely progress throughout the domain over which Matilda was now duchess. William was surely keen to show off his new bride, a “magnificent match” whose esteemed lineage diluted considerably the shame of his birth.
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Everywhere she went, Matilda was greeted with enthusiasm and tokens of affection by her new subjects and was “very well served and honoured.”
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The Normans had not had a duchess since Duke Richard II’s reign (996–1026),
as both of his sons had been content to live with their mistresses, and they were determined to celebrate the new arrival.

Matilda had evidently also enhanced her new husband’s international profile. According to Norman sources, shortly after their wedding an extraordinary message arrived from Edward the Confessor, the king of England, promising the throne to William. The message was probably conveyed to William by the Norman Robert of Jumièges,
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whom Edward had recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury as part of a consciously pro-Norman policy. Jumièges was passing through Normandy on his way to Rome, and he brought two hostages—Wulfnoth and Haakon, son and grandson respectively of Earl Godwine of Wessex, the most powerful man in England after the king—to prove the integrity of Edward’s promise.
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The practice of using hostages as a guarantee of good faith, usually when concluding a treaty, was rooted in ancient times and had been used with great effect by the conquering Romans. In this case, however, Edward had an ulterior motive, for he was only too glad to rid himself of members of the overweening Godwine family.

It may seem perplexing that the English king should promise his crown to a foreign duke with apparently little connection to England and whose origins hardly bore scrutiny. But there had long been an affinity between England and Normandy. For a start, there was their geographical proximity, which made it politic for the rulers of each domain to maintain a close interest in the other. The two lands also shared a Scandinavian heritage, and there had been several marriages between their ruling families, such as the important union between Duke Richard II’s sister Emma and the English king, Aethelred the Unready, in the late tenth century. Edward the Confessor, the son of this union, had spent much of his childhood and youth in Normandy, together with his brother and sister. They had been cared for by a succession of northern French rulers, and the dukes of Normandy had played a particularly prominent part. As a result, Edward had grown up with strongly pro-Norman sympathies.

After becoming king, Edward married Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine, in 1045, but they were childless. It was said that he refused to consummate the marriage—or, as Malmesbury put it, “to know her as a
man would”—either from a “love of chastity” or because of his antipathy toward the Godwine family.
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Indeed, in order to counter their influence, he began to build up a faction of Norman retainers at court. In 1051, the simmering resentment between the king and his wife’s family burst into open conflict. Edward outlawed the Godwine family and sent Edith to a nunnery. It was this that cast the English succession into doubt and, according to Norman sources, prompted Edward to name William his heir.

Malmesbury asserts that William was “well worthy” of being named heir, “being a young man of high spirit, who had reached his high dignity by energy and strength of character.”
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The duke also had a hereditary claim to the throne through the marriage of Aethelred the Unready to his great-aunt Emma. Malmesbury inaccurately asserts that this made him “nearest by blood” to Edward, whereas in fact this honor belonged to the English king’s nephew and namesake. But if William’s claim was rather distant, his wife’s was not. Matilda’s bloodline was far more closely linked to the English crown, and the fact that she could claim her descent from Alfred the Great made her an important asset to William in pursuing his ambitions.

Just how seriously William took Edward’s promise—or indeed whether Edward even made such a promise—can never be known for certain. The accounts of it are mostly Norman and might well have been written as a retrospective justification of the duke’s later invasion. That said, the foremost English source for the period, the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, claims that William visited England in 1051 in order to make Edward confirm his promise in person. The English king was said to have presented William with a ring and ceremonial sword to symbolize his sincerity. However, there is reason to doubt this claim. The duke had more pressing concerns within his own domain at the time of his alleged visit, for he was preoccupied with a campaign around Domfront, a strategically important town on the border with Brittany.

If Edward’s promise was genuine, then William was enough of a pragmatist to realize that he was unlikely to gain much support within England should he ever have the opportunity to claim his inheritance. He also knew that he would be opposed by Earl Godwine of Wessex and
his sons Harold and Tostig, whose lands stretched across the whole of southern England from Kent to Cornwall and who had vast armies at their disposal. Although Edward exiled the Godwine family in the same year that he promised William the crown, the political situation remained volatile, and Edward soon learned that the Godwines were just as formidable a threat away from court as they were within it.

However enticing, the English throne must therefore have seemed more a distant prospect than a distinct possibility to William. Nevertheless, it symbolized the remarkable transformation of his position. It is astonishing that within the space of just sixteen years, he had progressed from being an illegitimate minor with an extremely precarious hold upon the duchy of Normandy to one of the most feared leaders in western Europe and the nominated successor of the king of England.

Even so, William continued to find it difficult to forge closer links with France. He had hoped that his marriage into Matilda’s celebrated line might prove useful on this front, but Henry I was no friendlier toward his Norman vassal than he had been before. Shortly after the wedding, he entered into an alliance with the duke’s archenemy, Geoffrey, the count of Anjou, the foremost leader in northwestern France. This created an extremely threatening situation for William, whose territory was now sandwiched between two hostile powers.

But Henry did not stop there. In 1053, he struck at the heart of William’s power by supporting a rebellion led by the duke’s uncles, Archbishop Mauger and William of Arques. William immediately assumed an aggressive stance and besieged the fortress of Arques. In response, the French king led a relief force to aid the duke’s enemies. By now, William was used to being on the offensive against hostile forces within his own domain, and thanks largely to his brilliant leadership, Henry’s troops were beaten into a retreat. This put paid to Archbishop Mauger and William of Arques’ rebellion. Both men fled Normandy shortly afterward, never to return. But the French king was less easy to subdue, and relations remained hostile for some time to come. Henry launched two further campaigns against the duke’s territory in 1054 and 1057, supported by Geoffrey of Anjou.

Although William succeeded in keeping Henry of France at bay, the
conflict between her husband and her own family must have been a cause of some embarrassment for Matilda. In an age when intermarriage between royal and noble families was a dominant factor of international politics, such conflict was by no means rare. Even so, she would have been painfully aware that her marriage had already failed to deliver one of its most hoped-for outcomes.

In the midst of these hostilities, there was no question where Matilda’s own loyalties lay. She was the very model of a dutiful wife—“near-perfect” according to one recent observer, and William’s “loyal friend” in the words of the late-twelfth-century chronicler Langtoft.
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Having been raised in one of the most distinguished courts in Europe, Matilda was well aware of the duties expected of her as a consort. Principal among these was the need for diplomacy. In a society dominated by violence and warfare, medieval women were looked to as peacemakers and mediators. In the famous Anglo-Saxon poem
Beowulf
, a marriage is arranged between the children of two deadly enemies, Hrothgar and Froda, in order to “settle with the woman a part of his deadly feuds and struggles.” The
Exeter Book
, a collection of tenth-century literature, also praises the grace and good manners of aristocratic wives as an antidote to their brutish husbands: “The woman must excel as one cherished among her people and be buoyant of mood, keep confidences, be open-heartedly generous with horses and with treasures, in deliberation over the mead, in the presence of the troop of companions, she must always and everywhere greet first the chief of those princes and instantly offer the chalice to her lord’s hand, and she must know what is prudent for them both as rulers of the hall.”
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