The Later Reign of William in Normandy.[159] 1051–1066

We left the Duchy of Normandy in the enjoyment of a short season of unusual peace, after the energy of its great Duke had for a moment quelled all enemies at home and |1051.| abroad. We saw the Duke himself received as a cherished guest at the Court of England, during those gloomy months when England, in the absence of her defenders, seemed to have already become a Norman land. We saw him return to his home, clothed, there can be little doubt, in his own eyes, with the character of the lawful heir of the English Crown. We have now to trace out his history and that of his Duchy from the time of his return from his first English sojourn till he again steps upon the field of English history as an avowed claimant of the Kingdom of England. The intervening time fills a space of fifteen |Character of the period in Norman history.| years, years crowded with stirring and memorable events in the history of Normandy. But they are events which, till quite the end of the period, have no direct connexion with the history of England. It is only in the last stage of the present Chapter that the two streams of our narrative must again converge, at the moment when the two great figures of our drama meet face to face in the memorable and fatal visit of Earl Harold to the Norman court. The earlier years of the period are wholly occupied with the affairs of William and his Duchy, his marriage, his ecclesiastical reforms and foundations, his wars against rebellious kinsmen within his Duchy and with French and Angevin enemies beyond its bounds. But these things all form part of our story. No part of the life of the great Conqueror is foreign to the history of the Conquest of England. Every blow dealt by William against his restless neighbours or against his jealous overlord formed part of his military schooling for the greatest day of his military life. Every exercise of that political craft in which he surpassed all men made his hand more skilful for the weaving of that masterpiece of subtlety by which, even more than by his lance and bow, he knew how to make England his own.

The period will fall naturally into four divisions. First |William’s marriage.| comes William’s marriage with Matilda of Flanders, a step which was, in itself, of no small moment in William’s career, and which, as I have already hinted,^[160] supplies some |His French wars. 1050–1058.| most characteristic illustrations of William’s temper. Next come the wars of William with the King of the French and his allies, those allies being not only the ceaseless enemy of Normandy, the Count of Anjou, but also enemies of William’s within his own Duchy and within his own |His war for Maine. 1061–1063.| ducal house. Thirdly comes the later stage of the Angevin war, when it became almost wholly resolved into a struggle for the possession of Maine. Lastly, we come to William’s |The Breton War and the oath of Harold.| Breton campaigns, which, in our point of view, necessarily become a mere adjunct to the great question of the visit and the oath of Harold. I have purposely reserved that question for this stage of my history. As the date is uncertain, and as the event is recorded by no contemporary English writer, I could find no fitting place for it in the |The oath a Norman rather than an English question.| course of my purely English narrative. Recorded only by Norman writers, it seems essentially a piece of Norman history, and the question of right or wrong is essentially a Norman question.^[161] It has no bearing on the events narrated and discussed in my last Chapter; it has the closest bearing on the events which will be narrated in later Chapters. |Its bearing on the history.| Any personal obligations towards William, which Harold had contracted or which Harold had broken, formed altogether a personal question between William and Harold. It was a question with which the English nation had in strictness nothing to do.^[162] They might take it into consideration as a matter of prudence; they had nothing to do with it as a matter of right. If any wrong was done to William, it was done, not by England, but by Harold personally. It might be a crime in Harold to accept the Crown to which he was chosen, but that in no way affected the right of the English people to choose him. The question then, up to this point, is a Norman question; it became an English question only when William claimed the English Crown, and put forth the alleged perjury of Harold as one of the grounds of his claim. I have therefore reserved the consideration of the whole story for the present Chapter. It comes in here as a part of the Norman history, which has no direct bearing on the purely English events which have gone before, but which has the most direct and important bearing on the combined Norman and English events which are to follow.