I

WILLIAM'S DEVOUTNESS

5

the consecration of the yet unfinished church of the Abbey founded by his wife Matilda in the same town, when they solemnly dedicated their eldest daughter, then a child, as a sacred virgin to the service of God. When the invading host was assembled for embarkation at St. Valery he was a constant worshipper in the church, praying for a favourable wind; and when it came not, the wonder-working shrine of the saint was at his request carried forth in procession, and he knelt before it in the sight of his army. On the morning of the day when the decisive battle was to be fought he vowed that if God would grant him victory over the perjured Harold he would erect a great church to His honour on the brow of the hill where the royal standard of the English was set up. The banner consecrated by the pope waved over the duke himself and the group of distinguished warriors who surrounded him in the central division, which consisted of Normans only, and was the flower of the whole army. And when the battle had been fought and won the Conqueror permitted the bodies of the slain to be carried away by their friends for Christian burial, but he turned a deaf ear to the petition of Harold's mother that the corpse of her son might be taken to the minster of his own foundation at Waltham. Harold's weight in gold should be the price of his burial, and her prayer was seconded by two canons of Waltham who had followed the English army to see the issue of the battle. But William was

inexorable; Christian burial might not be granted to the perjured usurper, and the body of Harold, wrapped in a purple robe, was buried under a heap of stones on the South Saxon shore.

Thus from the outset the Conqueror endeavoured to exhibit himself in the eyes of Europe as a champion of the Church, no less than as the rightful heir of the His English throne. He had to justify the papal ecclesiastical policy. blessing on his enterprise by appearing in the character of a reformer who would bring the English Church into stricter conformity with Roman discipline and usage, more direct submission to the authority of the pope. In this work, however, he proceeded with deliberation and caution. Hasty and violent changes would have been resented by the people, and might have turned the hierarchy into centres of

disaffection and rebellion. A systematic substitution of Norman for English prelates was the policy at first adopted. For neither the Church nor the nation was prepared to yield a ready submission to the conqueror. The two archbishops, Stigand of Canterbury and Ealdred of York, supported the election of Eadgar the Ætheling, the grandson of Eadmund Ironside, at a gemot hastily held in London when the news of Harold's death arrived. Some of the bishops indeed opposed it, but they were probably the Normans and other foreigners who had been appointed in Eadward's reign. Meanwhile, the English army being overthrown, and Harold and his brothers slain, the whole country south of the Thames was defenceless. Dover, Canterbury, Winchester submitted to William without resistance, and having secured these three important positions -the strongest fortress, the ecclesiastical metropolis, and the ancient capital of England-he advanced upon London by a circuitous route, wasting the country as he went, and finally fixing his headquarters at Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire. Here he received an embassy from London to offer formal submission. The embassy, however, was not representative of London only. It included the Ætheling Eadgar,—a king deposed before he had been crowned; Ealdred, Archbishop of York; Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester; and Walter, Bishop of Hereford. It is not clear whether Archbishop Stigand also was one of the envoys, but as his submission must have been made before the coronation of William, at which he assisted, it was probably made on this occasion.

The Conqueror was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. The canonical position of Stigand

tion.

was unsound, for reasons which will be explained His corona- presently when his deposition has to be recorded. It would have been inconsistent with the character which William was anxious to assume of a pious son of the Church if he had sought consecration at the hands of the suspected primate; but, pending the decision of the Church, he would not subject the archbishop to indignity or insult. And so, as he walked through the abbey to the altar, the two archbishops walked one on either side of him, but the actual rite of coronation was performed by Ealdred of York. The solemnity of the ceremony was unhappily marred by tumult

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WILLIAM'S CORONATION

7

and bloodshed. A mingled throng of English and Norman crowded the minster. The Archbishop of York and Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, asked the multitude in English and French whether they elected William and would consent to his coronation. A loud shout of assent arose from the representatives of both nations; it rang through the building, and was heard by the troop of Norman horsemen who were keeping guard round the church outside. Misinterpreting the noise, they imagined that some violence to the duke was being done or intended; but instead of hastening to his rescue, they set fire to some of the adjoining houses, either in revenge for the supposed insult, or to draw the people out of the church and so divert their attention from the duke. If this was their object they succeeded. The multitude, alarmed by the glare of the flames, rushed wildly out to save their goods; only the bishops and a few clergy and monks remained quaking before the altar with William, while even he himself, stout-hearted as he was, trembled vehemently as he took the oath to govern justly, and to defend the holy churches of God and their rulers. With trembling haste the archbishop poured the sacred oil upon his head and placed the sceptre in his hand. It was a sinister beginning of the conqueror's reign, and the first instance of the way in which his own desire and efforts to rule justly were often thwarted by the violence and insolence of his officials.

His treatment of English

clergy.

Since William professed to reign as the lawful successor of Eadward, all who had fought for Harold at Senlac, or afterwards resisted the authority of the Conqueror, whether clerics or laymen, were treated as rebels. Elfwig, a brother of Earl Godwin, and Abbot of monks and the New Minster at Winchester, had been killed in the battle of Senlac; Leofric, Abbot of Peterborough, had died of his wounds or from hardship a few days after it. The monks of the New Minster were punished by being kept without an abbot for three years; some of the estates of the house were divided amongst the king's followers, and a portion of their precincts was taken for the erection of his palace. The monks of Peterborough had elected one of their own body, named Brand, in the place of Leofric, and sent him for confirmation to Eadgar the Ætheling. William

was extremely wroth, and would have rejected the abbot, but as he was a good man, good men interceded for him, and he was allowed to make his peace by a present of forty gold marks. In fact, no English bishop or abbot was deposed or banished before the year 1070. On his first visit to Normandy in March 1067, William took Archbishop Stigand with him on the pretext of doing him special honour, but in reality, it is said, from fear that the primate might become an instigator of revolt in his absence. Æthelnoth, Abbot of Glastonbury, together with Eadwine and Morkere, the Northumbrian earls, were also compelled to accompany the king. All these unwilling companions were in fact hostages for the good behaviour of the newly conquered country. On all the churches in Normandy where prayers

churches.

had been offered for the success of his enterprise, His gifts to and on all the monastic houses in Burgundy, Aquitaine, and Auvergne which had contributed soldiers for the expedition, the king bestowed lavish gifts, ingots of gold and richly embroidered vestments, for in ornamental work of that kind England in common with other Teutonic countries excelled. To the pope he sent an astonishing amount of gold and silver, and costly ornaments, such as a Byzantine emperor might have envied. And some

of his choicest gifts were of course reserved for the house of his own foundation, St. Stephen's at Caen, which he visited in person.

Conference

Here he was greeted by Lanfranc, whom he had appointed abbot just before he set out for England. To him William was greatly indebted for the papal sanction which with had facilitated the accomplishment of his daring Lanfranc. enterprise, and perhaps some of the arguments by which he sought to justify it were suggested by the astute mind of Lanfranc, or at least put into shape by him.

The king and the abbot no doubt consulted deeply together concerning the administration of the newly conquered realm, and it seems highly probably that the deposition of Stigand and the elevation of Lanfranc to the archbishopric were arranged between them at this time. This surmise is strengthened by the fact that, a few months later, when Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, died, Lanfranc refused to accept the vacant primacy

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BISHOPRICS FILLED UP

9

to which he was elected by the unanimous voice of the Chapter and the whole people of Normandy. William, indeed, is said to have urged the office upon him, but he could hardly have ventured to do otherwise, considering Lanfranc's reputation and his own intimate relations with him. And as the Conqueror's will was absolute in appointments of this kind, there can be no question that had he been seriously determined in this instance, Lanfranc would have been compelled to give way. The natural explanation, therefore, is that he declined the office with the king's consent, because he was already marked out for a higher and more arduous post.

1067.

On his return to England in December 1067, William celebrated the Christmas festival at Westminster, where he afterwards held a council at which he is expressly Council at said to have treated the bishops with the greatest Westminster courtesy and suavity, admitting them to the royal kiss, granting their petitions, and lending a ready ear to their information and suggestions. The populace in London received him with outward signs of loyalty and good-will, and although there was much discontent beneath the surface, a strong party of order had been formed, at the head of which stood Ealdred, Archbishop of York, and several other bishops.

In this midwinter council at Westminster the first opportunity occurred of acting on the policy which had no doubt

1067.

been pre-arranged by William and Lanfranc, of Remigius gradually filling up the bishoprics and abbeys in made Bishop England with Norman prelates. Wulfwig, Bishop of Dorchester, of the vast central diocese which stretched from the Thames to the Humber, had died at Winchester during William's visit to Normandy, and was buried at Dorchester in Oxfordshire, which was then the episcopal see. The vacancy was now filled up by the appointment of Remigius the almoner of Fécamp, who had earned the gratitude of William by contributing a ship with twenty knights to the army of invasion. It is a noteworthy fact that Remigius was consecrated by Archbishop Stigand. On a later occasion indeed he declared that he had sought consecration from Stigand, as the existing metropolitan, not being fully aware of his uncanonical position. But he can hardly have been