Norman soldiers. The streets were crowded with spectators, and all the approaches to the abbey were guarded by Normans. In the abbey were already assembled a number of Saxons, whom their fears induced to be present to assist at the ceremony. After William and the Norman barons entered the church, Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, addressed the Normans who were present in the French language, and demanded whether it was their opinion that their duke ought to assume the title of king of the English; and at the same time Eldred, archbishop of York (Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, having refused to attend), asked the Anglo-Saxons present whether they were willing to receive the Norman duke as their king. At this moment the church rang with shouts and acclamations; and the Norman soldiers outside, mistaking the noise for an indication that some violence was being offered to the duke, or some interruption to the ceremony, obeyed secret orders which they had received in case of such an event, and set fire to a number of houses, and surrounded the doors of the church. All were thrown into confusion; the Anglo-Saxons who were in the abbey rushed out to save their houses from destruction, the Normans followed them, and none remained except the duke and a few ecclesiastics of both nations, who concluded the ceremony, and administered to him the oath usually taken by the Anglo-Saxon kings. The duke, it is said, trembled violently. William was forty-two years of age at the time of his coronation as king of England. His reign, which lasted twenty-one years, from 1066 to 1087, has been described as "little else than a succession of revolts, followed by chastisements so severe, that at its end few, if any, considerable estates remained in the possession of an Englishman." Let us briefly sketch the principal events of his reign, down at least to the period at which the Conquest may be considered as having been completed. The first occupation of William after his coronation was the confiscation of all the property of the principal Anglo-Saxons in that part of England which he had already reduced, and its division, according to promise, among his followers. After retaining to himself all the late king's treasures, with a great part of the richest plunder of the churches and shops, he bestowed the rest upon the priests, barons, knights, and soldiers, according to their rank, and the nature of the bargain they had made with him before leaving Normandy. Some received estates and castles, some the sovereignty of towns and villages, some were paid in money, and some obtained the hand of Saxon ladies, whose husbands or fathers had been killed at the battle of Hastings. The native population indiscriminately, but especially those who had taken part against the Conqueror, were mercilessly robbed of their houses, their lands, and their wealth. "The towns," says Thierry, "suffered in a different manner from the country; and each town or district had its own particular grievances. At Pevensey, for example, where the Norman army had landed, the soldiers shared among themselves the houses of the vanquished. In other places the inhabitants themselves were portioned out like chattels. The city of Dover, half-consumed by fire, was given to Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who in turn distributed the houses among his warriors and followers. Raoul de Courpespine received three houses, and a poor woman's field; William, son of Geoffrey, also received three houses, along with the town-house, or hall of the burgesses. Near Colchester, in Essex, Geoffrey de Mandeville seized forty manors or houses, surrounded by cultivated lands; fourteen Saxon proprietors were dispossessed by a Norman called Engelry; one rich Englishman placed himself for security under the protection of Gaultier, a Norman; another Englishman became a serf on the soil of his own field." So it was over all the conquered district; the sixty thousand Normans who had come over with William settling down like a band of nobles in the midst of a population of serfs. Some of the Saxons, indeed, may have been permitted to retain their rank and wealth; but these cases were the exceptions; and the meanest soldier in William's army found himself raised, both in wealth and station, above the descendants of the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon thanes. "The man who had crossed the sea with the quilted cassock and wooden bow of a common foot soldier, now appeared mounted on a war-horse, and bearing the military baldrick; and the herdsmen of Normandy, and the weavers of Flanders, became in England men of consequence." As yet, however, only a part of England had been conquered; and when the rest should have been subdued, the followers of William might expect still greater rewards. Allured by these hopes, crowds of new adventurers poured into England from the continent, to offer their arms and services to the Conqueror. Before pushing the Conquest into the northern and western districts of England, William paid a visit to Normandy, carrying with him, as hostages for the peace of the kingdom during his absence, the principal Anglo-Saxon nobility, and leaving William Fitzosborne, and Ódo, bishop of Bayeux, as his lieutenants. He had scarcely gone when the Saxons of the conquered districts of Kent and Herefordshire revolted against their Norman oppressors; and as the Cambrians or Welsh of the extreme west of England seemed disposed to assist their ancient enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, against the new invaders of the island, the insurrection appeared very formidable. William, accordingly, hastened back from Normandy, and after spending some time in soothing and conciliating the Saxons of London and the neighbourhood, by large promises and cunning proclamations, he marched westward into the provinces which still remained unconquered. Somerset, Devon, Gloucester, and other counties of the southwest, were speedily reduced, and divided, like the eastern counties, among the fortunate soldiers of the Conqueror. By the year 1068, the whole of England south of the Ouse and Severn had been effectually subdued and garrisoned by the Normans; there remained, however, the extensive provinces north of these rivers which still preserved their independence, and afforded a retreat for all the patriots of the south whom the Conqueror had dispossessed of their lands and forced to flee. Here the Northumbrian chiefs, Edwin and Morkar, the brothers-in-law of King Harold, a young Saxon named Edrick, and many other patriots, some of whom had sworn never again to sleep under a roof until their country should be delivered out of the strangers' hands, were constantly engaged in schemes and plots for the expulsion of the Normans. A close alliance was formed for this purpose between the Saxons and the Welsh of the west of Mercia, who generously forgot that, on the present occasion, the Anglo-Saxons were suffering precisely what, six hundred years before, they had themselves inflicted on the Celtic British. Besides the Welsh, the Anglo-Saxons found another ally in the Scotch, under their king, Malcolm Canmore, in whose dominions the young Saxon king, Edgar Atheling, with his mother and his two sisters, sought a refuge. Malcolm-a monarch of great abilities, and who, from an early period of his reign, had made it a part of his policy, for the civilisation of his own kingdom, to admit into it all strangers who chose to come--received the refugees kindly, gave them lands in the Lothians, and, in token of his friendship for the Saxons, married Edgar's younger sister Margaret, a princess of extraordinary accomplishments for that period. Hearing of this triple alliance between the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh, and the Scotch, William marched northwards, and, victorious wherever he advanced, took in succession the towns of Oxford, Warwick, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, and York. After the siege of York, an incident occurred which Thierry thus narrates :-"Eldred, archbishop of Canterbury, who had lent his assistance at the consecration of the foreign king, came into the desolated city to perform some religious ceremony. When he came, he sent to his lands, not far from the city, for some provisions for his household. His servants, driving wagons laden with corn and other articles, were met at one of the gates of York by the Norman governor with a numerous escort. 'Who are you?' demanded the Norman; and to whom do these supplies belong?' 'We are,' said they, the archbishop's servants, and these provisions are for the use of his household.' The viscount, paying no respect to this intimation, made a sign to his soldiers to seize the horses and wagons, and carry the provisions to the Norman magazines. When the archbishop, the friend and ally of the conquerors, found that even he did not escape the miseries of the Conquest, there arose in his soul an indignation which his calm and prudent spirit had never experienced before. He immediately repaired to the Conqueror's quarters, and presented himself in his episcopal habits, 6 29 with his pastoral staff in his hand. William rose, according to custom, to give the archbishop the kiss of peace; but the Saxon stepped back, and said, 'Hear me, King William. Thou wert a foreigner; nevertheless, because it was God's will to punish this nation, thou didst obtain, at the cost of much blood, the kingdom of England. Then I anointed thee king; I crowned thee; I blessed thee with mine own hands; but now I curse thee and thy race, because thou hast deserved it; because thou art the persecutor of God's church, and the oppressor of its ministers.' The Norman attendants of William had their swords half unsheathed, and would have killed the old man; but William allowed him to depart.” For two years York was the northernmost post of the Normans, and Northumbria continued in the possession of the Saxon patriots. Many attempts were made by the latter, assisted by the Welsh, the Scotch, and also by a Danish fleet sent to their aid by Sweyn, king of Denmark, to regain what they had lost; and one of these was so successful, that York came again into their possession, and Edgar Atheling was again saluted as king in the northern provinces. This success was partly owing to the diminished enthusiasm of the Normans in the cause of the Conquest, many of whom, instead of settling in the country, had taken the earliest opportunity of re-embarking for their native land, carrying along with them the riches which they had acquired. In 1070, however, William made a second expedition into the north, and before his activity and the valour of his troops all opposition gave way. Cumberland and Northumberland were reduced; Edgar and some of his followers fled again into Scotland; while the great patriot chiefs, Waltheof, Edwin, Morkar, and Gospatrick, were obliged to submit to the Conqueror. At the end of that year the whole of England, from Land's End to Tweed, was virtually conquered by the Normans. FATE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS-SOCIAL EFFECTS OF After the completion of the Conquest, in the year 1070, the Anglo-Saxons may be considered as dividing themselves into three classes the great mass of the population, which lived groaning under the Norman yoke; the patriot outlaws, who swarmed in the forests and less accessible districts of the country, and waged a perpetual war with the foreigners, leading a free but savage and precarious life; and the exiles, who, quitting their native land, scattered themselves in search of liberty over all parts of the world. Of the first class the great mass of the subdued Saxon population—a little more must be said. - Now that he was firmly seated on the throne, William pursued with even greater rigour and consistency than before his policy of degrading the natives of the country which he had conquered. In 1070, William, intriguing with Pope Alexander II., procured the assembling of an ecclesiastical council at Winchester, presided over by two papal legates, at which Stigand, the Saxon archbishop of Canterbury was deposed, along with Alexander, bishop of Lincoln; Eghelman, bishop of East Anglia; Eghelrik, bishop of Sussex; Eghelwin, bishop of Durham; and almost every other ecclesiastical dignitary of the English race. These prelates were replaced by Norman priests; the archbishopric of Canterbury being conferred on Lanfranc, to whose services at Rome, as we formerly mentioned, William had been greatly indebted. Eldred, the archbishop of York, having died, a Norman prelate, Thomas, was appointed his successor. The simultaneous deposition of so many of the Saxon clergy excited a deep interest in the ecclesiastical world, and it is probable that some complaints might have been heard but for the accession of Hildebrand to the papacy. He declared the deposition legitimate, and the discussion was at an end. The last prelate of English birth left in England was Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, a weak simple man, of amiable disposition, who had assisted the Conqueror more zealously than any other Saxon. Even his deposition was at length resolved on. Accordingly, in 1076, he was summoned before a council of Norman prelates and nobles, held in Westminster Abbey, King William and Archbishop Lanfranc presiding. It was here unanimously voted that Wulfstan was unfit to continue bishop of Worcester, seeing that he could not speak French; and he was required, therefore, to surrender his episcopal ring and crosier. On this demand being made, the weak old man was inspired with an energy superior to his character: his lean frame quivered, and rising up before all the assembly, he walked slowly up to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, who was interred beneath the abbey pavement, and standing by the tombstone, said, addressing the dead monarch beneath," Edward, I received this staff from thee, and I return it to thee again." Then turning to the Normans, he said, “A better than you gave me this staff, to whom now I give it back; take it up if you can." At these words he struck the tombstone with the end of his crosier, and the Normans, impressed with a superstitious awe, did not venture to repeat their demand; nay, according to the popular tradition, the staff clove the stone, and stuck in it so firmly that no one but Wulfstan himself could pull it out, which he did when the king bade him resume it. This miracle was generally believed; and after his death, which took place shortly after, Wulfstan was worshipped as a saint by the Saxons. The most immediate and remarkable result of the Conquest was the introduction of what is called the feudal system into England. Under the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, few traces of this system existed-the government being popular in its character. When, however, William had conquered England, there resulted from his partition of the territory among his followers a new set of social arrangements. Reserving one thousand four hundred and twenty-two manors to himself as his private share, he divided 31 |