CHAPTER I.

WILLIAM I., 1066-1087 (21 years).

Born 1027; married, 1053, Matilda of Flanders.

Chief Characters of the Reign.-Odo of Bayeux, William Fitz-Osbern, Edgar Atheling, Edwin, Morcar, Stigand, Waltheof, Lanfranc, Ralf Guader, Roger of Breteuil, Robert of Bellême, Robert Mowbray.

WILLIAM the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day, 1066. He had been duly elected by the witena-gemot, and looked upon himself, not as a conqueror, but as the rightful sovereign of the English. He was a man of great energy and ability. By

William's youth.

his father's death he had been left Duke of Normandy

when only eight years old, and he had had to fight hard to keep his place. When he grew up he became one of the strongest as well as one of the ablest men of his time, and made himself feared and respected by all his subjects.

In ruling England, William had to keep three things in view: (1) to secure his hold over the country; (2) to reward

William's policy.

his Norman followers; (3) to keep the Norman nobles from becoming too powerful.

The battle of Hastings had only overthrown the power of Harold and weakened the men of the south-east; the men of the north Revolts of the and west had not yet fought with the Normans.

Kent and
Hereford.

English. From 1067 to 1071 rebellions were continually breaking out in different parts of the island. In 1067 the men of Kent and Hereford, taking advantage of a visit which William made to Normandy, rose in revolt against Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and William Fitz-Osbern, whom William had left in command; but the revolts were unconnected, and William had taken to Normandy Edgar Atheling, Edwin, Morcar, and Stigand, the natural leaders of the English. The Normans soon crushed the English; but the next year risings took place in the west,

West and Northumbria. Invasion of the Danes.

helped by the sons of Harold, and in Northumbria, where Edgar Atheling, who had escaped from William's court to Scotland, gave his aid. Again the English were beaten; so in 1069 they called in the help of the Danes, and under Waltheof, the son of Siward, made another great effort in the north. The united armies of English and Danes captured York and massacred the garrison, and for a moment it seemed as if William's power was in serious danger; but he hurried to the spot, bought off the Danes, and defeated the English.

the north.

To guard himself against similar attacks he ravaged the country from the Humber to the Tees. A glance at the map shows that this included the largest part of the fertile land of Ravaging of the north of England. The result was that the north of England, always less fertile than the south, was thoroughly thrown back, and never regained its position till the growth of manufactures in the eighteenth century. A last effort was made by the English in 1071. In this year, for the first time, Edwin and Morcar put themselves at the head of the rebels, but they were defeated. Edwin was killed by his own men; but Morcar for some time held out with Hereward in the Isle of Ely, which the fens then made almost impregnable. William attacked it both by water and land, and the English surrendered. After these disasters the English gave up the struggle, and William was able to carry out his policy.

Revolt of

Edwin and

Morcar.

Normans

placed in chief

posts. Abolition of the great earldoms.

He began by putting Normans into the chief places in Church and State. Edwin and Morcar had lost their earldoms, and William did not revive them. He thought that great earldoms like those of Mercia and Wessex were dangerous to the power of the king, and he had good reason for doing so. On the Continent, the dukes, who had originally been merely governors of districts such as Burgundy or Bavaria, just as the English earls were governors of Mercia and Wessex, had gradually made themselves hereditary rulers of these districts; they had granted land to their followers on military service, they had gained control over the law courts, and they were rapidly making themselves stronger than the kings. William had himself been Duke of Normandy, and he was determined to have no one in England with similar power.

Careful

Accordingly, in rewarding his followers with titles and lands, he followed a careful plan. He had plenty of land to dispose of, for the English rebellions had been followed by vast confisdistribution of cations. This land he distributed to his followers; property. but in giving it to them, he took good care that no one should have too much land in one place. For instance, Robert of Mortain had seven hundred and ninety-three manors, but they were situated in twenty counties.

Counties palatine.

Only three exceptions were made. In Cheshire, Durham, and Kent, the earls were owners of the whole county, and the other landholders held their estates from them. These were called counties palatine. Cheshire was a safeguard against the Welsh, Durham against Scotland, Kent against the Continent; but Durham and Kent were given respectively to the Bishop of Durham and to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who, being churchmen, could not marry and found families, while Cheshire only was given to a layman, as it was thought that the Welsh would give the earl sufficient occupation to prevent him thinking of treason. To keep down the English, William built castles in all the large

Castles.

towns and at places of military importance; but he kept all these in his own hands, and gave them to men whom he could trust. It was not his policy to allow castles to be built which might be used against himself.

In the Church William replaced the English prelates and abbots by Normans. Some were deposed and others died; but in each Normans in the case a Norman filled the vacancy. In 1070 Stigand

Church. was deposed, and Lanfranc became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a learned and able man, and William found him a most useful adviser. These changes were good for the English Church. The Norman bishops, though some were statesmen and warriors rather than ecclesiastics, were more cultured than the English, and they brought the Church of England into closer union with Rome-a change which at that time was a good thing.

In 1070 William made twelve men of each shire declare the laws of the English, as it was his intention to preserve the law by the these laws, and not to supersede them by Norman

Declaration of

English.

practices.

While he was making these changes, William steadily maintained

Scotland.

Relations with

the rights of the old English kings. He invaded Scotland, and forced Malcolm, King of Scots, to "become his man " in 1072, Relation with and he refused to hold England as a fief of the Pope, as Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) demanded that he should in 1076. William also took means to curb the power of the Pope and clergy. He ordered (1) that no Pope the Pope and should be acknowledged in England, and that no letters should be received from a Pope without the king's consent; (2) that no canons should be made by the clergy, or (3) any of his ministers be excommunicated, without his express sanction.

the clergy.

Commencement of the

struggle be

William's measures were not popular with his Norman followers. They expected that, when their duke became a king, they would naturally become dukes and earls, and when they found that William meant to curb their power, some went home in disgust and some rebelled. For one tween the king hundred years the barons continually tried to make and the barons. themselves as strong as their fellows on the Continent. Against their efforts the king was usually helped by the clergy and the English, whose interest it was to curb the power of the turbulent barons. The towns had not been of much account Growth of the before the Conquest; but when England became con- towns, nected with the Continent, trade grew and they throve fast. In return for sums of money the kings granted them charters and privileges, and they soon became very important.

The first rebellion of the barons took place in 1074. Ralf Guader, Earl of Norfolk, and Roger of Breteuil, Earl of Hereford, were the leaders, and they asked Waltheof, son of Siward, Earl

Rebellions of

of Northumbria, to join them. Their wish was to the barons. make one of themselves king, and the other two dukes. Waltheof seems to have refused; but he fell under William's suspicion, and was executed. The rebellion was crushed by Lanfranc, with the assistance of the English. The next rebellion occurred in 1078. Robert of Bellême (sometimes spelt Belesme) and Robert Mowbray were the leaders, and they obtained the help of William's eldest son, Robert. They were defeated.

In 1085 the king ordered a complete survey of the whole kingdom to be made, so that he might know exactly how much land each man had, and what payments were due to the king. Commissioners

Book.

were sent to the shire-moots, where they learned from the great Domesday. men the general divisions of the shire, then to the hundred-moot, and finally they called before them, from each township, the reeve, the parish priest, and six villeins, or men who held land under the lord of the township. From them they learnt the amount of arable, pasture, and wood land, to whom it belonged, what mills and fisheries there were, and other particulars; what had been the value of the township in the time of King Edward, and what it was now worth. The results of these inquiries were written out in a book, called Domesday Book. It gives us a picture of all England except Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and Durham, some of which were waste and some in the hands of the Scots, and it is of incalculable value as a description of England at the time. When the book was finished, William summoned all the English landholders to meet him at Salisbury. There he made each of them swear allegiance to him, whether he held from an intermediate lord or not. This had a great effect. Abroad, the Normans took an oath only to the Duke of Normandy, and if he rebelled against the King of France, they were only doing their duty in following him; but in England, if vassals followed their lord against the king, they were guilty of treason. Though this oath was not feudal, from the meeting of Salisbury it is convenient to date the establishment in England of what is called Feudalism.

Landholders' oath to the king.

By this is meant the system in which the king is regarded as the supreme owner of the land, and as letting it out to his tenants-inFeudalism chief or barons, who hold on condition of serving defined. him in war, and of paying him certain dues. They, in their turn, let their land to sub-tenants, who hold it on the same terms, and so the whole of society is bound together by a system of land tenure.

During the whole of his reign William was at enmity with the King of France. In 1073 he led an English army against the Wars with province of Maine, just south of Normandy, and

France. captured it from the French king; and in 1087, stung by a joke of that monarch, he attacked Mantes, a town on the Seine. Here his horse plunged on some hot cinders, and William was so severely hurt that he died, 1087.