The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present (17 page)

William had always been intending to attack the city of Mantes which had previously belonged to Normandy. But legend has it that the King of France made a cruel joke about William’s grossness which got to his ears. The size of his stomach by now was indeed making it hard for him to keep in his saddle and he no longer got about as he had in his younger days. At Rouen, confined to his palace, the duke heard Philip of France’s mocking bon mot: ‘The King of England keeps his bed like a woman after she has had a baby.’ William sent a deceptively mild message in return. ‘Tell Philip that when I go to Mass after the confinement, I’ll make him an offering of 100,000 candles.’ A month later he had surrounded Mantes. Then he set fire to it–a hundred thousand candles indeed.

This gesture proved William’s undoing. His horse stumbled on an ember and threw him so badly that he suffered fatal internal injuries. Watching over his deathbed was William’s favourite son Henry, later to become Henry I. His calculating and legalistic tendencies were always appreciated by a father who had similar qualities. But meanwhile the Duke of Normandy’s stout son William Rufus, named for his red hair and red face, the heir to the English throne, had immediately hightailed it to England to make sure no Anglo-Saxon seized the crown before he did.

The reign of William Rufus was a very different affair from his father’s. Superficially he resembled him in so far as he was a fearless and victorious warrior and strong king. He was adroit enough to make himself popular among the English by freeing important English leaders like Morcar. He added to his French possessions, and was even more of a threat to the Welsh and Scottish kingdoms than the Conqueror had been. He defeated and killed Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, who was constantly invading England, and in 1092 he reconquered Cumberland, formerly an independent principality founded by the Strathclyde Welsh. Carlisle became an English city, and obtained its own bishop in the next reign. At William Rufus’ cosmopolitan court the abacus was used for the first time to calculate what was owed the king. During his reign the construction of Durham Cathedral began, the first western European building to use ribbed vaulting for the roof.

But it soon became clear that the new king was a poor version of his great father. He was a greedy man who had none of the sense of fairness which had informed his father, harsh though he was. Although he built Westminster Hall in 1097 as the place where he and his advisers could mete out justice, William Rufus’ judgements were generally rather self-interested. Lacking his father’s self-discipline and continence, the new king was always in need of money to finance his extravagant lifestyle. Aided and abetted by an equally unscrupulous minor Norman clerk named Ranulf, who soon became his justiciar (or chief minister), a term used for the first time in English history, William Rufus was soon causing the country to groan under his demands. Ranulf was nicknamed Flambard, because, reported the monk Ordericus Vitalis, ‘like a devouring flame he tormented the people, and turned the daily chants of the Church into lamentation’. He encouraged the king to swell his coffers by interpreting the Domesday Book information more stringently, especially in relation to the monasteries, to which they felt the old regime’s inspectors had been too lenient.

Thanks to Flambard’s low but ingenious mind the two introduced new ways of making the country yield more gold for the king than ever before. Feudal dues that William I had demanded only where the estate could bear them were used to enrich the king at the expense of his barons. As with death duties today, feudal law stipulated that on the death of an important landowner or tenant-in-chief a ‘relief’ or tax was payable to the king before the heir could inherit his father’s estate. These were now demanded without mercy. Under William Rufus the property of minors supposedly in the king’s safekeeping until they came of age were run to rack and ruin or their woods cut down and sold for the king’s profit. Heiresses were married against their will to cronies of the king.

In 1088, a year after he succeeded to the throne, William II’s strenuous demands provoked an unsuccessful rising by his tenants-in-chief in the name of his weaker brother Robert, who was now ruling Normandy. Led by the king’s half-uncle Odo of Bayeux, these barons made the revolt an excuse to terrorize the country. Alarmed at their strength William cleverly defeated them by promising the humbler people of England that the forest laws would be less harshly enforced and some of the more stringent taxes lifted, with the result that those who had no wish to be at the mercy of marauding armed horsemen supported the king. Subsequently many of the most important tenants-in-chief lost their lands and were banished overseas. In 1095, however, a new rebellion broke out, led by Robert de Mowbray, the Earl of Northumberland and directed against the king’s tyranny. This too was unsuccessful. Even so, William failed to make de Mowbray surrender his castle of Bamburgh, so he ruthlessly built alongside it a new castle which became known as Malvoisin or Evil Neighbour. When eventually de Mowbray was forced to leave the castle, the soldiers of Malvoisin pounced and captured him. This was the last challenge to the king during his reign.

Because of William Rufus’ strong-armed approach to his tenants-in-chief, many of the Norman adventurers who still had that Viking zest to conquer decided to try their luck beyond the king’s reach by invading Wales and seizing land from the Welsh princes. Like the palatine earls they became a law unto themselves. These marcher lordships became the equivalent of little independent countries, run from the local castle–an economical way of using the energies of Norman knights, whose educational training was for warfare. They also had the advantage of keeping down the Welsh. From this period date the lordships of Montgomery, Brecon and Pembroke.

Not only did William Rufus antagonize the great barons. He also shocked and disgusted the English by his treatment of the Church, which he delighted in mocking from the decadent environs of his court. On Archbishop Lanfranc’s death the king refused for four years to appoint a new incumbent at Canterbury. This remissness, instigated by Ranulf Flambard, enabled him to benefit from the right of regale, by which all the rents of the wealthy archdiocese came into the king’s hands for as long as the see remained vacant. It was only because William became extremely ill unexpectedly and came to believe that he was on the point of death that he was frightened into good behaviour and agreed to appoint the best possible candidate for the archbishopric.

This was Abbot Anselm, from Lanfranc’s old Abbey of Bec in Normandy. The saintly Anselm did not want to come to England, because he was sure there would be a personality clash. He was, he said, ‘a weak old sheep, who should not be yoked to a fierce young bull like the King of England’. But William would not be denied, and he was soon ruing his decision. The new archbishop was appalled by the state of the English Churchunder the Conqueror’s son and by the immoral quality of the court, where the questions of greatest interest seemed to be whether the king crimped his hair and whether one should copy the new ram’s-horn shoes he had designed, whose toes curled up so extravagantly that they were almost impossible to walk in. Meanwhile, though Canterbury was now occupied, a great many other sees remained empty so that their rents could go to the king. Although Archbishop Anselm was a mild-mannered man, as head of the Church of England he could not countenance this continued abuse of Church lands. But the king thwarted his attempts to call a council of bishops to censure his behaviour, and said that the abbeys were his in any case–to which Archbishop Anselm replied that they were his only to protect, for they belonged to God.

Unlike the case with Lanfranc and William the Conqueror, neither side was capable of seeing the other’s point of view. The mounting irritation between king and archbishop reached new heights on the election of Pope Urban II. Owing to the continuing battle for power between the papacy and the secular ruler in the investiture contest, the German emperor had named his own rival pope, Clement. Archbishop Anselm was determined to receive the
pallium
, the badge of office, from Urban, but the red-faced Rufus flew into a rage and forbade him to leave the country because he had recognized neither Urban nor Clement as pope. In 1095 the king called a council of all the tenants-in-chief and all the bishops at Rockingham Castle, to determine whose authority over the archbishop was greater, the pope’s or the king’s. No solution was reached. Opinion was evenly balanced, with the barons wishing to limit the authority of William Rufus and the bishops anxious to curry favour with him. Most importantly every encounter with William II convinced Anselm that he should not yield to him.

Relations continued to deteriorate until 1097 when Archbishop Anselm refused point blank to send the money and the soldiers that feudal dues required of him for one of William Rufus’ campaigns against the Welsh. When William threatened to take the archbishop to court, Anselm responded that only the pope had sufficient authority to settle their dispute. Then the archbishop fled to Rome, fearing that the king was so incensed that he might have killed him. He remained there for the rest of William’s reign, leaving the Church in England once more without a head and enabling William to seize all the archbishopric’s property again.

Ambitious and energetic, for some time William Rufus had been casting covetous eyes at his elder brother Robert’s hereditary duchy of Normandy. Robert’s financial incompetence soon played into his hands. The sale by the duke of some of Normandy’s most important possessions–the Cotentin Peninsula and the Avranche–to William Rufus’ younger brother Henry gave the English king the perfect excuse to invade Normandy. Objecting to Henry’s hold over their common ancestral lands, he was paid off with a large portion of eastern Normandy. And Duke Robert soon surrendered the rest of Normandy into his younger brother’s hands, temporarily at least, by mortgaging it to him in order to finance a crusade against the Muslims in the Holy Land.

Like many of his contemporaries throughout western Europe, including Edgar the Atheling, Duke Robert was obsessed by the idea of liberating Jerusalem from its new Seljuk Turk overlords. Where previously Christian pilgrims had been allowed to visit the Holy Places, the Garden of Gethsemane, Mount Calvary and the tomb of Christ, the Turks were making access almost impossible. Moreover, Christian pilgrims were being killed and sold into slavery all over the east. In 1095, preaching in the market place of Clermont to an enormous gathering of nobles, burghers and farmers, Pope Urban II launched what became known as the First Crusade, urgently demanding soldiers for Christ to liberate the Holy Land from the Infidel, or Unfaithful.

All knights were to have a red cross sewn on to their surcoat over their chainmail, representing the cross Christ had died on, to show that they were Crusaders. In return for fighting a holy war they would be absolved of some of the sins that would prevent them entering heaven. In an era dominated by the Church there could be no greater appeal for the Norman military caste whose existence was dedicated to warfare. The First Crusade was a great success. By 1099 it had expelled the Turks and set up a Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem under Godfrey de Bouillon. Meanwhile in his brother’s stead, his creditor William was returning Normandy to order. He had recaptured Le Mans, attacked France and to the French king’s alarm seemed about to take over the sprawling lands of Aquitaine. The Duke of Aquitaine wished like Robert to raise money for the Crusade and had decided to follow suit and mortgage his lands to William. This would have brought within the King of England’s control all territory down to the Spanish border.

But at the height of his power William Rufus died out hunting on 2 August 1100, the victim of an anonymous arrow in the New Forest. Although legend accords Walter Tyrrel the role of bowman, if he fired the arrow it seems far more likely that he was acting at the behest of the king’s younger brother Henry, who was one of the party. The suspicious circumstances and lack of ceremony which surrounded William Rufus’ end suggest that his killing may have been the result of a conspiracy. For this powerful king was left to die alone while all his courtiers and his brother Henry abandoned him. He was found at the spot still marked Rufus Stone today by a humble charcoal-burner, the lowest occupation in Norman England. The charcoal-burner, whose name was Purkess, lugged the king’s body to nearby Winchester on a crude wooden cart. But even in Winchester there was no public mourning and William Rufus’ body was buried without a service inside the cathedral.

The dead king’s brother Henry was already at Winchester by the time the cart arrived. He had galloped as fast as he could to the royal Treasury, which ever since the Wessex kings had been kept in that city, for traditionally whoever held the Treasury could be crowned. He persuaded local nobles to proclaim him king as was customary in the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. Henry was only just in time, for his brother Robert’s man arrived immediately afterwards, intent on claiming the throne on behalf of the duke. By 5 August Henry had been crowned.

Court historians later noted that as a child Henry I had enjoyed seeing his brothers squabble among themselves because then he knew he would get the better of them. The new king’s every action was cautious, premeditated and calculated to serve his own ends. Though he was no scholar the nickname Beauclerk, which was applied to him from the fourteenth century, suggests a reputation for natural cleverness. Henry was less impetuous than William Rufus. Although he was just as grasping, he saw that he should proceed more shrewdly than his brother if he wished to rule peacefully.

Henry had inherited his father’s deep respect for acting within the letter of the law. His first action was to restore the Norman kings to popularity in England by publishing a Charter of Liberties in which he promised to end William Rufus’ oppressive practices and return to the days of Edward the Confessor. As an earnest of this he threw Ranulf Flambard into his father’s White Tower and married Princess Edith of Scotland, sister of King Edgar and great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. This united the ancient West Saxon blood with that of the new Normans and was another instance of Henry’s far-sighted calculation. The closeness thus achieved between the two courts also had the unlooked-for effect of peacefully opening up Scotland to Norman adventurers. Edith changed her name to Matilda, to make herself sound more Norman, while her second brother David (who succeeded Edgar) married the daughter of Earl Waltheof and did homage to Henry as his overlord.

Within the year these measures designed to win popularity among Henry’s subjects had paid off. For encouraged by the ingratiating Ranulf Flambard, who somewhat surprisingly had succeeded in escaping from the Tower, Duke Robert made a bid for the throne, landing at Portsmouth with an army raised from many of the Norman barons who held land in both countries. As a hero of the First Crusade and elder brother to Henry, Robert could have been a most dangerous rival.

But Henry’s Charter had done its work. The Church, which had been left alone by the new king, encouraged the English to rally to Henry, a sign of its favour being the return of the Archbishop of Canterbury from exile in Rome. Archbishop Anselm put himself at the head of the English people, declaring that they were not afraid of the Normans and would fight them if their English Henry would lead them. When Robert saw that he had no hope of defeating the massed ranks of the English he made a truce with his powerful brother and signed a legal document in which he abandoned his claim to the throne. Then, in return for a pension, he gave his lands in the Cotentin to England and meekly retired to Normandy, leaving the Anglo-Norman barons who had supported him to face Henry’s wrath.

Because he was a thoughtless sort of fellow Duke Robert had not understood the terrible risk his followers had taken. To set them all an example not to meddle with him again, Henry destroyed the massive holdings of a great baron named Robert de Bellême, whose lands covered much of Sussex, a great deal of Normandy and the semi-independent palatine earldom of Shrewsbury adjoining Wales. De Bellême’s private army, given royal permission to keep the Welsh behind their borders, was too much of a threat to the king, and Henry now mounted a concerted attack on him. He seized all his castles, including the one which still stands at Arundel in West Sussex, laid siege to his newly built fortress towering over the Severn at Bridgnorth, abolished the palatine earldom of Shrewsbury and finally drove de Bellême himself out of the country and back to Normandy.

Like most Norman barons, however, de Bellême was too powerful and restless a character to remain quiet for long. Once in Normandy he began making war on Duke Robert and taking parts of the duchy for himself. This gave Henry the perfect excuse for interfering in Normandy, which under his brother was dissolving into anarchy. In 1106 at Tinchebrai Henry decisively defeated Duke Robert in battle, condemned him to thirty years’ captivity in Cardiff Castle and formally annexed the duchy to England. Henceforth for almost a hundred years, until 1204 when Henry I’s great-grandson John lost the duchy to the French king, England and Normandy were ruled by the same government.

These upsets prejudiced Henry against the feudal barons, whose heroics his cold and rational character in any case despised. His firm actions had convinced them not to revolt again. For the rest of his reign he would make a point of surrounding himself with men of more modest birth, knights and clerks chosen for their learnedness who were reliant on his patronage to advance them, rather than on the threat of a thousand men-at-arms. Henry’s reign saw the rise of educated men like Roger of Salisbury and the emergence of a far more businesslike government. Roger, who became Bishop of Salisbury, was Henry’s justiciar. But he was a very different character from Flambard, being possessed of a superbly constructive organizing mind. Thanks to him the early twelfth century saw the appearance of the first national law courts, as well as the government department called the Exchequer, the precursor of the Treasury.

The Curia Regis, or king’s court, had arisen out of the deliberations of the king with his most intimate friends, the leading barons, in council, and these embraced the hearing of legal disputes. William Rufus had built Westminster Hall to allow the king’s judgement to be given in full view of the people. But in the reign of Henry I the rapid expansion of legal training, particularly on the continent, and of canon law in the separate Church courts began to influence the development of the criminal law. A new professional class of lawyers grew up, better equipped to deal with legal problems along the lines of universal principles. Trained judges in London started taking the place of the king in determining the legal issues of tenants-in-chief or deciding disputes appealed from the shire or county court. The tradition was begun, which is still carried on today, 800 years later, of justices going on circuit round the country to dispense the king’s justice locally. The king’s justice tended to be more impartial or disinterested, and by the time of his death the improvements he had introduced to the justice system ensured that Henry would be known as the Lion of Justice.

The new government department known as the Exchequer collected tax. It was called the Exchequer for a very simple reason. Unlike the Arab world, the western Europeans had yet to discover the number zero. This made even simple arithmetic a difficult exercise. The way to get round it was to use either an abacus or, as Henry did, a chequered cloth. On this cloth, which looked not unlike a chessboard, counters representing units of money were moved about: this was how twelfth-century national accounting was performed. In the new stone hall of Westminster, business continued even when the court was travelling. Twice a year, under the chairmanship of the king or his justiciar, officials called the barons of the Exchequer sat at a table with counters and the chequered cloth, going through with all the sheriffs the taxes, rents, fines and debts due to the crown. Every penny had to be accounted for.

In every way Henry’s reign marks a greater precision in the practice of government. Thanks to Bishop Roger of Salisbury’s methodical nature, for the first time in English history since the Roman occupation we can actually read the government accounts. By 1130 they were written down on a very long piece of parchment or fine hide which was then rolled up for easy storage. As this resembled a pipe, the accounts are known as the Pipe Rolls. For the first time too, we have a clearer idea about life at the royal court in the early twelfth century, because we possess a record of the duties of the royal household written after Henry’s death. This record is particularly important given that, on his death, England fell into chaos and records were not kept for a while.

Unlike today, when the monarch and her chief minister live at fixed addresses, Henry was always travelling round the country in the fashion of his new circuit judges, staying at the royal residences such as his abbeys or his hunting boxes. Like all the Norman kings he was addicted to the chase, and built a walled park at Woodstock in Oxfordshire to hunt exotic breeds. But the king would also expect to be put up by his tenants-in-chief, sometimes for weeks at a time. To feed and house the court, which might consist of hundreds of soldiers and courtiers, could be ruinous. Especially in William Rufus’ time the arrival of the court would be dreaded because its members were so badly behaved. We are told by the chroniclers that local landowners would hide themselves in the woods until the court had passed by after getting no answer to their request for beds for the night.

On the other hand it was a great honour to have the king to stay because it meant that a young man of the house might become a page in the royal household and from there rise to great heights as a minister. For, despite the increasing specialization and professionalism, the king’s household continued to be the centre of government. The king’s chancellor was head of all the clerks studying to be priests, who as we have seen performed the role of the civil service, doing much of the scribal work needed by the king’s business. The chamberlain was the other prize position at Henry’s court. Although his name indicates that he presided over the king’s bedchamber the chamberlain also supervised the king’s Treasury. This arose from the fact that in ancient times the Treasury had been kept in a chest in the king’s bedroom. Other king’s servants were the steward, who looked after the king’s hall, and the constable, who looked after the outdoor servants–including, as his name suggests, the horses in the king’s stable.

Out of these domestic positions would eventually grow the great offices of state we know today, though over the centuries their roles have subtly altered. The chancellor of the Exchequer now presides over the Treasury. At the royal Opening of Parliament the bearers of these offices, some of which like the lord chamberlain have become hereditary or have devolved on to one particular family, can be seen today walking in the procession behind the monarch. Great lords would actually pay the king to take their sons into his household because of the career opportunities it offered. A page in Henry I’s household who showed willingness and ability in putting out the king’s clothes or even his food might find his route to high office smoothed by being chosen to help the king’s chaplain. He would then usually become a chaplain himself, opening his way to being part of the king’s secretariat.

Henry’s court was conducted with regularity and precision, even down to noting what food was owed the courtiers. However high or low, every person at court, whether chancellor or royal laundress, was allocated a certain amount of money, food, wine and candles to live on. For example, the chancellor received the following stipend: five shillings a day, a simnel cake (a rich fruit cake decorated with marzipan), two salted simnels, a form of flour for bread, a measure of clear and ordinary wine (because water, except from springs, was too dirty to drink). Because he spent his life poring over letters the chancellor was allowed the large number of forty candle ends and a thick wax candle to light his room. In contrast the king’s watchmen who guarded Henry’s palaces received double the chancellor’s rations for their more physical work but few candles because they would not be concerned with reading or auditing accounts. They were allowed a supplement of two loaves in the morning, an extra dish in the evening and a gallon of beer to while away the long hours as they watched for the king’s enemies.

Henry’s close alliance with the Church, which was enhanced by having Bishop Roger as his first minister, meant that the continued struggle for supremacy between Church and secular ruler was resolved amicably for a while, though on less advantageous terms than William I had achieved. During Archbishop Anselm’s exile in Rome the contemporary papal spirit of independence had converted him to the idea of the supremacy of the clergy over the prince. Though the archbishop had led the domestic support for Henry against Duke Robert, in 1103 he publicly backed the new pope Pascal II when he renewed the investiture crisis and added that anyone in holy orders was forbidden to do homage to a lay ruler. Although Anselm had already done homage to Henry he refused to perform the act again, withdrawing to Rome for a second time. Once again England was left without a head of the Church, this time for four years. Naturally Henry could not agree to a directive that seemed to strike at his royal power. It would have prevented a large number of the English population swearing an oath of allegiance to him, for holy orders of course covered ordinary clerks as well as bishops and priests.

A satisfactory compromise was reached between Anselm and Henry. Royal authority over the Church in England was preserved at the cost of the king losing the right to perform investitures. All ordinary clerks were once more allowed to perform homage to the king, while bishops would do homage to the king for what were known as their temporal possessions, that is their Church lands, and swore as the king’s vassal to produce the soldiers which this entailed. This compromise pleased all parties, and indeed the European investiture contest would end along similar lines. But there was always the possibility that under less suave representatives of Church and state the question of whose authority was the greater might boil up again. Thirty years later, under Henry I’s grandson Henry II, it did just that.

Though he was not loved by the English, Henry reconciled them to Norman kings. But on his death the peace he had enforced throughout the island was shaken by civil war. A simple stroke of fate had upset all his careful plans. The tragic, premature death of his only son William saw the throne devolve to his daughter, the Empress Matilda, who had married the Emperor Henry V. Yet the Norman barons and the Anglo-Saxons themselves had never been ruled by a woman–Boudicca had been a Celt and had been queen only of a south-eastern tribe–and all sides were hostile to such an idea.

William’s death was entirely avoidable. After the formal annexation of Normandy to the English crown in 1106 the royal household shuttled between the two countries. Unfortunately on the way back to London after a four-year sojourn in Normandy in the autumn of 1120 the heir to the throne, William, was drowned in the Channel just off Barfleur with many members of Henry’s court. When the terrible news was brought to the king he gave a cry of agony and fell senseless to the floor. It is said that after this tragedy he never smiled again. He took another wife soon after, Adeliza of Louvain, in hopes of producing more male heirs, but none came. By 1126 he was therefore obliged to make his daughter, the widowed Empress Matilda, his heir. In a formal ceremony his tenants-in-chief did homage to the empress, as they had done to her brother William, and swore to be her liege men. In 1135 Henry I died in Normandy from too many lamphreys, an indigestible form of eel which his doctor had warned him against. But the English crown did not pass to Matilda. Instead Henry’s nephew, his sister Adela’s son Stephen of Blois, was proclaimed king. Although Stephen had personally sworn the oath of loyalty to his cousin Matilda, he rushed from his home in Blois to England to claim the throne before the empress could arrive there from Anjou.