Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (26 page)

Two charters that were granted at the time give a sense of the scale and demographic of the assembly that gathered for the ceremonials. In contrast to her husband’s coronation, it was very much an Anglo-Norman congregation. Archbishop Ealdred aside, the other leading English prelate, Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was in attendance, as well as scores of English bishops and abbots. Three of the foremost English earls, Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof, came to pay homage to their new queen, as did retainers such as Tofi, the sheriff of Somerset. The high-ranking Normans were also there in force, including the king’s half-brothers, Bishop Odo and Count Robert of Mortain, and his most trusted advisers, Roger de Montgomery, Count Robert of Eu, and Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances.
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The fact that Matilda’s coronation was attended by both English and Norman dignitaries was no accident. With her English lineage, she was key to a carefully planned strategy to integrate the two cultures. Her subjects’ acceptance of their new queen was perhaps eased by the departure of the most high-profile Anglo-Saxon women, principal among them Gytha, the mother of King Harold. Ironically, when these women, “the wives of many good men,” set sail from England, most of them were bound to Matilda’s homeland of Flanders.
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The departure of Agatha, widow of Edward the Aetheling, and her daughters Margaret and Christina for Scotland shortly after Matilda’s coronation meant that
England’s new queen was now the principal female focus for her subjects.

The replacement of the mother figures of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty by a Norman queen was mirrored farther down the social scale. The chronicles paint a picture of sorrowing Saxon womenfolk making way for a new generation of Norman wives and mothers. But the higher echelons of Saxon women were essential to the new king. By arranging marriages between the remaining Saxon heiresses and his Norman nobles and knights, William perhaps seemed to be further implementing his policy of positive Anglo-Norman integration. At the same time, though, he was able to gain control of even more land and wealth than his military conquests brought him. Although Domesday Book records 350 female landowners in Edward the Confessor’s time, the majority of female-owned estates were concentrated in the hands of just thirty-six Saxon noblewomen.
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The holders of this land did not all give in to their fate meekly. Some followed Gytha’s example by going into exile, whereas others escaped marriage to an invader by entering a convent. Edward the Aetheling’s granddaughter, Matilda, the future queen of Scotland, spent most of her childhood in convents for this very reason. Indeed, so many others chose this path that even William’s leading churchman, Lanfranc, who might arguably have approved of their choice, became concerned that it would impede the integration that his master was so keen to achieve. Nevertheless, by the end of the twelfth century, the process of uniting the blood of the Saxons with their Norman conquerors was well advanced. Evidence can be found in the predominance of Norman names among the English population. Most of the major chroniclers of the period were born of mixed marriages, including William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, and Henry of Huntingdon.

But such integration would have seemed a distant prospect in the wake of Matilda’s coronation. The new queen now faced the seemingly insurmountable task of winning over her resentful subjects.

W
hile Matilda was preparing for her lying-in, her husband’s attention had been diverted by events in the north. Of all the regions in his newly conquered kingdom, Northumbria and Yorkshire were the least under his control. The proximity of the former to the Scottish border did not help matters, for the Scottish king, Malcolm III, was all too ready to assist any rebels against William. The brother earls, Edwin and Morcar, had been dispatched to their estates in the north after Matilda’s coronation, and although they had sworn fealty to William, they soon began whipping up opposition to the Norman regime. At about the same time, to make matters worse, Edgar the Aetheling had left court and taken refuge with the king of the Scots.

Fearing a rebellion, in the summer of 1068 England’s new king hastened to York, the principal city of the north, from where he could prepare his own forces to quell any uprisings. According to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, he fortified other key strategic towns on the way. “Then when the king was informed that the people in the north had gathered together and would stand against him if he came, he went to Nottingham and built a castle there, and so went to York, and there built two castles, and in Lincoln, and everywhere in that region.”
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Within a matter of months, large swaths of the Midlands and north were littered with these new defenses, which, being built from wood and according to tried and tested Norman designs, could be constructed with staggering speed. Jumièges
also described this tactic, in typically admiring prose: “The king surveyed the less fortified places of his realm, and to meet the danger he had powerful strongholds built at strategic sites, which he entrusted to excellent military garrisons and large numbers of mercenaries.”
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The distinctive motte-and-bailey-style castles that were so prevalent in Normandy symbolized William’s predominance, and by the end of the eleventh century at least eighty-four had been erected across England.
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The building of these castles necessitated the destruction of thousands of dwellings in order to make way for them, as Domesday Book testifies. They proved one of the most effective means by which the king could advance and consolidate his conquest of the country, effectively placing the English in a stranglehold.

As William’s reign progressed, he gradually replaced the more strategically important castles with stone structures. As well as being easier to defend, they were also more comfortable for the inhabitants, because they kept out the elements. The risk of fire was not as great as in wooden buildings, so large hearths could be installed, and there were few if any leaks during wet weather. Among the first of the king’s fortresses to be rebuilt was what became known as the Tower of London. Given that the inhabitants of London were among the most hostile in the country, William wanted to ensure that this new fortress would be stronger and more imposing than any the city had ever seen. The mighty stone tower (the White Tower) took several years to complete, so thick and high were its walls. It would dominate the capital for centuries to come.

At Winchester, the other major city of the south, the royal palace was already a fitting residence for England’s new king and queen, but since Edward the Confessor had bequeathed it to his wife Edith, it would have been a public relations disaster to wrest it from her. William therefore set about building another, buying up land from the monks of the New Minster “upon which in the fourth year of his reign he built a new hall and palace in handsome fashion.”
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But William and Matilda were able to make use of some of the residences that they had inherited from their predecessors. These included King Edward’s former palace in Westminster, which is featured in the Bayeux Tapestry, and although heavily stylized, it still gives an impression of grandeur. William’s court soon outgrew the palace, however, and
in around 1069, the king ordered a substantial extension, effectively doubling the size of the old palace and adding a new hall.

Meanwhile, at Gloucester, the old royal palace used by William’s predecessor served for the royal court’s Christmas gatherings each year. This was probably the old palace of Kingsholm to the north of the city, which is referred to as “the king’s hall” in twelfth- and thirteenth-century documents. There are no descriptions of what the palace might have looked like, and it subsequently disappears from the records, but it must have been of sufficient size and grandeur to accommodate the vast court that assembled for the Christmas celebrations.

Although the Conqueror’s strong-arm tactics intimidated the hostile inhabitants of the north of England, they did little to gain their loyalty and respect. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to win over their recalcitrant subjects another way, in late summer 1068, Matilda decided to join her husband in Yorkshire. She must have been motivated by more than the desire “to enjoy her husband’s company,” as one chronicler asserted. Assuming she was then at the court in London, this involved a journey of some two hundred miles—a considerable enough feat in itself, let alone for a woman who was by then heavily pregnant. It is a testament to the bravery and physical fortitude of this diminutive woman that she should embark upon such a venture. At around thirty-seven years old, she would have been considered of an advanced age to be giving birth. It was rare for a woman to experience a successful pregnancy beyond the age of thirty—most women by then would have endured many years of childbearing, as was the case with Matilda—and many did not survive long beyond their twenties. To take such a long and arduous journey in her condition suggests a definite determination on Matilda’s part: it seems she was intent on giving birth to her child in Yorkshire and thus inspiring greater loyalty among her subjects there.

Indeed, Matilda was always prepared to set aside her own comfort in the interests of the Norman kingdom. Her royal life was an exhaustingly peripatetic one. All travel in the eleventh century was slow, uncomfortable, and dangerous. Roads were rudimentary and took the form of dusty or muddy tracks, according to the season. Men tended to travel on
horseback, whereas noblewomen enjoyed the relative luxury of riding in wagons covered with richly decorated cloth to denote their rank. Although this shielded them from the worst of the elements, they would have been uncomfortable—particularly on long journeys—as they bumped and jolted over the uneven roads. This was also the slowest mode of transport, particularly in wet weather, when the carts laden with goods and passengers frequently became stuck along the muddy tracks. The considerable entourage by which Matilda was accompanied would have made progress even more cumbersome and difficult.

Moreover, Matilda’s new kingdom required her to make an exceptional number of journeys by sea. Between her first visit to England in 1068 and her last in 1080, she crossed the Channel at least eight times. These are just the occasions that are recorded in the contemporary sources—the number may have been higher, her ceaseless energy and visibility being so vital to the success of the Norman dynasty. Despite involving greater exposure to the elements, often in cramped and unsavory conditions, Matilda’s cross-Channel voyages would still have been preferable to her travel within Normandy and England. A calm crossing would be infinitely more comfortable than arriving sore and bruised after an arduous journey by road. If travel within her domains required a great deal of time and organization, Matilda’s frequent crossings to and from England would have constituted a major operation. The evidence suggests that both she and her husband retained a household that comprised many of the same officials in both England and Normandy. They would serve and follow the king and queen wherever they went.

The rigors of travel were—for the royal couple at least—partially offset by the comforts of the residences that were waiting for them on their arrival. One of the most detailed descriptions of the royal living quarters is provided by Baudri, the abbot of Bourgueil and archbishop of Dol in Normandy, who was also something of a poet. In a long verse that he later addressed to William and Matilda’s daughter, Adela, he describes her bedchamber:

The walls are covered with tapestries, woven according to her [Adela’s] design, and all seem alive: on one wall, creation, the fall and fratricide, the flood with fish on mountain tops and lions in the sea; sacred history from Noah to Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, the glory of Moses, and David to Solomon on a second wall; the Greek gods and myths, Phaethon, Ganymede, Cadmus, Pyramis and Thisbe, Hermaphroditus, Orpheus, Troy, and Roman kings on a third … On the ceiling, the sky with its constellations, the signs of the zodiac, the stars and planets described in detail. On the floor, a map of the world with its seas, rivers, and mountains, named along with their creatures, and the cities on the land masses of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The bed is decorated with three groups of statues, of Philosophy and the liberal arts, the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry) at the head of the bed, the trivium (rhetoric, dialectic, and grammar) at the foot. The third group represents medicine, with Galen and Hippocrates, the humors and physical characteristics, herbs and unguents.