David Starkey

Crown and Country: A History of England through the Monarchy


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      At first sight, this mass act of feudal homage looks like the ultimate Normanization of English politics. But the appearance is deceptive. For at Salisbury William received the oaths, not only of his own immediate vassals, or tenants-in-chief as they would later be called, but also of their tenants and sub-tenants as well. This looked forward to the idea of liege homage but it also looked back to the practice – which was as old as Alfred’s time at least – of every free man swearing an oath to the king in the Hundred Courts. The result was to give English feudalism a decidedly English twist.

      William left for Normandy immediately after the Oath of Salisbury. It was to be his last visit to England, and he left in typical fashion, having first exacted a heavy geld. The money was needed to finance William’s struggle with the king of France, Philip I, who had taken advantage of the quarrels within William’s family to try to cut his over-mighty vassal down to size. William’s campaign went well, and in August 1087 he captured Mantes. The lightly defended town was sacked and fired, and many of the inhabitants, including two especially venerated hermits, perished in the flames.

      This calculated use of terror was, as we have often seen, business as usual for William. But this time something went wrong. William’s horse bolted in the chaos of the burning town and he was struck hard in his now-protuberant stomach by the pommel of his saddle. He was carried to Rouen, where he lay for three weeks. He remained lucid throughout and was expected to recover. But in early September his condition deteriorated and on the 9th he died.

      The Anglo-Saxon chronicler honoured the dead king with a magnifi-cent obituary. It is based on personal knowledge – ‘we who often looked upon him’ – and it is nuanced and balanced. The chronicler praised his wisdom and wealth, which were very great; his piety, which built and endowed so many monasteries; his dignity, which manifested itself in the crown-wearings which took place three times a year when he was in England; his force of will, which brooked no opposition, and struck down bishops, abbots and earls and even his own brother Odo. But, above all, he admired his harsh yet equitable justice, which brought peace and tranquillity to a distracted kingdom. To set against all these qualities, however, were William’s vices: his insatiable covetousness, his inordinate pride and his addiction to hunting, which, for his mere pleasure, inflicted so much suffering on his subjects.

      The chronicler extenuates none of these faults. But, finally and justly, he acknowledges William’s stature as England’s greatest king: ‘he truly reigned over England’, he concluded, and was ‘more splendid and powerful than any of his predecessors’.

      From an Englishman, this was high praise indeed.

      But great king of England though he was, William remained a Norman at heart. As he requested, his body was taken for burial to the Norman abbey of St Etienne at Caen; all the bishops and abbots of Normandy were present at the ceremony, and the sermon was preached by the Norman bishop of Evreux. But a final hitch occurred. As the manner of his death makes clear, William had grown very fat in his later years. But his sarcophagus, probably made long before, took no account of the fact and some force was needed to fit the body in. The result was described by the Anglo-Norman monk, Oderic Vitalis: ‘the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders and the whole crowd’. Not even the clouds of incense could mask it and the service was rushed to a conclusion.

      It was a humiliating end for a man who had been so conscious of his dignity in life.

      II

      The three weeks William lingered on his sickbed at Rouen left him plenty of time to arrange his affairs and divide his estate among his sons: despite their quarrel, Robert, he decided, should have Normandy; William, England; while Henry was ‘bequeathed immense treasure’. It was a decision that was guaranteed to perpetuate the divisions in the royal house long after his own death.

      William II’s accession was smooth. His father dispatched him to England before the life was out of his body and gave him sealed instructions for Archbishop Lanfranc. These were executed to the letter. Lanfranc anointed and crowned William at Westminster on 26 September and all the magnates did him homage. William then rode to Winchester; opened and viewed the Treasury; distributed the lavish bequests to monasteries, churches and the poor of each county which his father had made for the good of his soul, and released all political prisoners. He then returned to London for the winter.

      It was a conventional beginning to a highly unconventional reign. For, in contrast to the older William with his piety and uxoriousness, the younger set himself to flout all contemporary norms of behaviour. Not only did he plunder the Church, he was actively irreligious. He never married or fathered children; instead, he had male ‘favourites’ and was almost certainly homosexual. Still worse, he made no bones about the fact.

      This flamboyantly un-Christian mode of life led churchmen both to loathe him and to underestimate him. We should not make the same mistake. For, despite the great differences in their moral character, William also inherited many of his father’s most impressive qualities. Like the Conqueror, Rufus was a skilled soldier and a natural leader of men. He was similarly strong-willed and determined to enforce his authority. And he went about it more imaginatively: he showed an occasional flair for public relations, while his building works transformed the physical setting of the monarchy.

      All this made William II a powerful and effective king. But that very fact meant that much of the Norman baronage looked with envy across the Channel at the laxer rule of Duke Robert. They correctly saw Robert as one of themselves and longed to have him for their lord in England. The lead was taken by Bishop Odo, whom William had been persuaded, against his better judgement, to include in his deathbed amnesty for political prisoners. Odo was duly released and returned to his earldom of Kent, whence he plotted with his fellow malcontents. During Lent 1088, a formidable coalition was assembled and at Easter, 16 April, a coordinated series of provincial revolts broke out: in East Anglia, Durham, the Midlands, the Welsh Borders, the West Country and, above all, in Odo’s territories of Kent.

      The rebellion polarized opinion – and the races – in England. The rebels, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted, were ‘all French’, or rather they were the crème de la crème: ‘the richest French men that were in this land’. And the chronicler castigates their behaviour severely: their purpose was to ‘betray their lord the king’; they were guilty of ‘great treachery’. But his harshest words are reserved for Odo: he was a veritable ‘Judas’, who planned ‘to do by [William] as … Iscariot did by Our Lord’.

      In contrast, English sentiment seems to have been solidly royalist. Bishop Wulfstan stood firm in Worcester and, with a comparatively small force, put the rebels to flight there. But the situation in Kent, where Odo had retreated with his spoil to his near-impregnable castle of Rochester, demanded sterner measures. The result was an appeal by William to his English subjects:

      He then sent after Englishmen, described to them his need, earnestly requested their support, and promised them the best laws that ever were in this land; each unright geld he forbade and restored to the men their woods and chases [that is, their hunting rights].

      The promised abolition of the Forest Laws (of which more later) was, like the Laws themselves, an innovation. Otherwise, both the form and the content of William’s appeal are remarkably similar to the compact hammered out between king and people as a condition of Æthelred II’s restoration to the throne in 1014.

      And it was equally effective. Thanks to the forces raised, William was able to bottle Odo up in Rochester. Finally, after inordinate wriggling on Odo’s part, an agreement was reached: Odo would surrender all his offices and possessions in England, in return for which William would allow him to return unharmed to Normandy. The English troops, however, thought this more than Odo deserved and, as he emerged from the castle, cried out:

      Halters, bring halters, and hang this traitor bishop and his accomplices from the gallows!

      A similar punishment awaited William of St Calais, who as bishop of Durham had begun the building of the mighty cathedral and castle. He had joined Odo and ‘did all the harm that he could all over the north’. William Rufus besieged him and the bishop was forced to come to terms: he ‘gave up the