§ 1. The Building of the Fleet

We left the Duke of the Normans successful in every negotiation which concerned his enterprise, both with his own subjects and with strangers. We saw his cause, after some hesitation, zealously taken up by his own people, while volunteers flocked eagerly to his muster from the territories of all the neighbouring princes. We have seen his undertaking receive the highest of religious sanctions in the blessing of the Roman Pontiff. Had the enterprise been one against Anjou or France, warfare would have begun long before the period of the year which we have now reached. But William’s present warfare was aimed at a realm whose insular position shielded it at least for a season. England could be reached only by sea, and the Normandy of those days had ceased to be a naval power. The army destined to undertake the conquest of England had to be carried across the Channel. A vast fleet was therefore needed, and a fleet had to be created for the |Formation of the Norman fleet. Summer, 1066.| purpose. The creation of that fleet was the work of the summer of the great year, while King Harold of England was so carefully guarding his southern coasts.^[1056] As soon as the undertaking was finally determined on, the woods of Normandy began to be felled,^[1057] and the havens of Normandy resounded with the axes and hammers of carpenters and ship-builders.^[1058] A large proportion of the ships were the |Contributions of ships.| offerings of the great Barons and Prelates of the land.^[1059] William Fitz-Osbern, who had been the first man in Normandy to pledge himself to the enterprise, now redeemed his pledge by the gift of sixty ships. The same large number was contributed by Roger of Montgomery and by Roger of Beaumont, and also by Hugh of Avranches, the future Earl of Chester. Fifty ships, with sixty knights, formed the contingent of Hugh of Montfort. Two less famous men, Fulk the Lame and Gerald the Seneschal,^[1060] contributed forty each. The gift of Walter Giffard was thirty ships with a hundred knights. The same number of ships, with their crews, were supplied by Vulgrin, the pious and peaceful Bishop of Le Mans. He, we are told, was specially zealous in the Duke’s cause,^[1061] looking on him doubtless as the champion of Rome and of Christendom. But greater even than these great contingents were the gifts of the Duke’s own kinsfolk, of the members of the ducal house no less than of those sons of his mother whom his bounty had so lavishly enriched. A hundred and twenty ships, the largest offering in the whole list, were the contribution of the Count of Mortain. A gift second only to that of his brother, a gift of a hundred ships,^[1062] was the contribution of the Bishop of Bayeux. William of Evreux gave eighty, Robert of Eu sixty. The monk Nicolas, the son of Duke Richard the Third, now Abbot of the great house of Saint Ouen, gave twenty ships with a hundred knights. Others of less degree gave one ship or more, according to their means.^[1063] And among these was another monk, of less lofty birth, but of higher personal renown, than the princely Abbot of Saint Ouen’s. |Remigius of Fécamp, first Bishop of Lincoln. 1067–1092.| A single ship with twenty knights was the offering of Remigius, then almoner of the house of Fécamp,^[1064] but who was in aftertimes to be the last Prelate of the ancient see of Dorchester, the first who placed his throne on the lordly steep of more famous Lincoln. But one gift, though the gift of a single ship only, had a value beyond all others in the eyes of the Duke. The ship which was destined for his own use, the ship which was to bear William and his fortune,^[1065] was the offering of the conjugal love of the |William’s ship the “Mora,” the gift of Matilda.| Duchess Matilda. This chosen vessel bore the name of the Mora, a name not very easy to explain. Either at its prow or at its stern it bore the likeness of a boy wrought in gold blowing an ivory horn pointing towards England.^[1066]

The whole number of the fleet thus collected is variously stated. The lowest reckoning gives the exact number as six hundred and ninety-six; the largest of those accounts which are at all credible raises it to an indefinite number above three thousand.^[1067] Exaggeration is always to be looked for in such accounts; but so great a difference can hardly be accounted for wholly by exaggeration. It is evident that our different accounts follow different ways of reckoning; that some, for instance, counted only the ships strictly so called, while others reckoned also the small craft of |Character of the ships.| every kind. The ships, after all, were only large open boats with a single mast and sail, and with a smaller boat attached. It is plain that they were designed almost wholly for transport, and they do not seem to have in any way equalled those mighty horses of the sea^[1068] which had borne Swend and Cnut to the conquest of England.

But while William was thus busily pressing his warlike preparations, he was, no less characteristically, largely occupied with ecclesiastical affairs. Indeed the chosen champion of the saints and of their honour, the armed missionary who was setting forth to convert the stiff-necked islanders from the error of their ways, was bound, more than ever, to show himself a faithful nursing-father |Council at Bonneville, June 15.| to the Church at home. In a court or council which the Duke held at Bonneville in the month of June two important ecclesiastical appointments were made. Two great Abbeys needed chiefs. The chair of Saint Evroul was void by the death of Abbot Osbern, and the new monastery of Saint Stephen was now far enough advanced towards perfection for the brotherhood to be regularly |Appointment of Mainer at Saint Evroul,| organized under an Abbot. The monks of Saint Evroul petitioned the Duke for the appointment of a new head of their body. William, after consulting with the Diocesan Hugh of Lisieux, placed the pastoral staff in the hand of the Prior Mainer, who presently received the abbatial benediction from the Bishop.^[1069] But a greater than Mainer was on this same day advanced from the second to the |and of Lanfranc at Saint Stephen’s.| highest rank in monastic dignity. It was at this court at Bonneville that the renowned Prior of Bec, the future Primate of Canterbury, the man whose acute and busy spirit made him well nigh the soul of his master’s enterprise, became the first chief of his master’s great foundation. The scruples of the great scholar and diplomatist had at last been overcome, and in the same hour in which Mainer received the staff of Saint Evroul, Lanfranc also received the staff |Motives to special devotion at this time.| of the still more famous house of Saint Stephen.^[1070] The policy of pushing on the two great expiatory foundations at this particular moment is obvious. The champions of the Church must, as far as might be, wipe out all memory of their former sin. William must set out on his holy enterprise with perfectly clean hands, and Matilda must be able to lift up hands no less clean as she prayed for his safety and victory before the altars which she had reared. Indeed, even without this overwhelming motive, the eve of so great and hazardous an undertaking was a moment which specially called for works of devotion of every kind, and we have seen that it was so felt by others in Normandy besides the Duke and Duchess.^[1071] At this time therefore, |Consecration of the Holy Trinity at Caen. June 18.| besides the organization of William’s foundation under its first and greatest Abbot, the material fabric of Matilda’s foundation was so eagerly pressed on that the unfinished minster was hallowed three days after the appointment of |Dedication of the Duke’s daughter Cecily.| the two Abbots.^[1072] As part of that great ceremony, the ducal pair offered on the altar of God an offering more costly than lands or buildings or jewelled ornaments. In a milder sense than that in which the words were used by the ancient prophet, they gave their first-born for their transgression, the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their souls. The Duke’s eldest daughter Cecily, now a child, but in after days to become a renowned Abbess of her mother’s foundation, was dedicated by her parents as a virgin set apart for God’s service.^[1073] It was not however till nine years later that her lips pronounced the irrevocable vows.^[1074]

These ecclesiastical ceremonies are the last Norman events of a peaceful kind which I have to record during this year of wonders. They answer to the ecclesiastical events which happened in England at a time a little earlier. The establishment of Lanfranc at Saint Stephen’s, the consecration of the minster of the Trinity, answer to King Harold’s renewed gifts to Waltham, to his labours for ecclesiastical reformation at Ely.^[1075] On each side of the Channel the rival princes and their subjects were striving to win the favour of Heaven by acts of special devotion. We have now to turn away from ecclesiastical, and from all other peaceful affairs, to that great struggle between the two contending chiefs, on the last act of which we are now fairly entered.