William the Conqueror 0300118759, 9780300118759

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W I L L I A M T H E C O N Q U E RO R

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WILLIAM THE C O N Q U E RO R David Bates

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

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Copyright © 2016 David Bates All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Baskerville by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bates, David, 1945– author. Title: William the Conqueror / David Bates. Description: New Haven : Yale University Press, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016030229 | ISBN 9780300118759 (cl : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: William I, King of England, 1027 or 1028–1087. | Great Britain—History—William I, 1066–1087. | Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Biography. | Nobility—France—Normandy—Biography. | Normandy (France)—History—To 1515. | Normans—Great Britain—Biography. Classification: LCC DA197 .B3423 2016 | DDC 942.02⁄1092 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030229 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Frank Barlow, with grateful thanks

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CONTENTS

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LIST OF PLATES PREFACE LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS MAP GENEALOGY

Prologue: Writing a Life of William the Conqueror

1

1

The First Years

16

2

From Childhood into Adolescence

49

3

The Shaping of Things to Come

91

4

The Making of a Reputation

127

5

On to the Attack

164

6

The Year of Victory

211

7

King of the English

258

8

Victory Transformed

295

9

From Crisis to Triumph

329

10 Cross-Channel Rule

373

11 Political Consolidation and Personal Loss

423

12 The Final Years

451

13 Death and Legacy

483

Epilogue

513 529 568

BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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P L AT E S 1.

William of Jumièges presenting the Gesta Normannorum Ducum to William from Orderic’s autograph manuscript of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, ms. 1174 (Y.14), fo. 116r). © Collections Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen. 2. Diploma of Count Baldwin V of Flanders (13 November 1056) recording Harold’s presence at Saint-Omer (Gent, Rijksarchief te Gent, Sint-Pietersabdij, charter, no. 133). © Gent, Rijksarchief te Gent. 3. The tomb slab of Queen Matilda in the choir of the abbey of La Trinité of Caen. © Région Normandie – Inventaire général – Manuel de Rugy. 4. The Bayeux Tapestry’s representation of Harold taking an oath at Bayeux. © Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century, with special permission from the city of Bayeux. 5. (a) and (b) The Bayeux Tapestry’s representations of Harold crossing the Channel to France and his apparent seizure on landing by Guy, count of Ponthieu. © Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century, with special permission from the city of Bayeux. 6. (a) and (b) The Bayeux Tapestry’s representations of King Edward the Confessor’s deathbed and King Harold’s coronation. © Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century, with special permission from the city of Bayeux. 7. William’s coronation by papal legates in 1070 as represented in the late eleventh-century manuscript known as the Ramsey Benedictional (BNFr, ms. latin, 987, fo.111r). © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 8. (a) and (b) The west front and the nave and crossing and choir of the abbey of La Trinité of Caen. Photographs taken by François Neveux. 9. The manuscript of the version of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals associated with Archbishop Lanfranc showing the section describing how it was obtained for Christ Church, Canterburg (Trinity College, Cambridge, ms. B.16.44). © The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. 10. William’s writ confirming to the citizens of London all the laws of which they were worthy in King Edward the Confessor’s day. © London Metropolitan Archives. viii

plates

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11. (a), (b) and (c) Pennies of the first, second and (possibly) last issue (the PAXs type) minted in William’s name as king of the English. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 12. A cast of the majesty side of William’s double-sided seal, made in the nineteenth century by Louis-Claude Douët d’Arcq. © Archives Nationales de France. 13. The remains of the west front of the abbey church of Notre-Dame of Jumièges consecrated in William’s presence on 1 July 1067. © Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photograph by James Austin. 14. (a) and (b) The abbey church of Saint-Etienne of Caen. © Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Photograph (b) taken by F. R. P. Sumner. 15. The gatehouse of the castle enclosure at Exeter built in the years after the 1068 siege. © R. A. Higham. 16. (a) and (b) The White Tower of London and the remains of the keep at Ivry-la-Bataille in Normandy. © Dr Roland B. Harris 17. The surviving remains of the west front of Bishop Remigius’s cathedral at Lincoln. © Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. 18. A twelfth-century illuminated initial showing William sending a letter to Abbot St Hugh of Cluny to request monks assist the Church in England (BNFr, ms. latin 17, 716, fo.37r). © Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 19. Diploma recording the restitution of Gisors to Rouen cathedral by Simon, count of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin, in the presence of Matilda, Roger de Beaumont and other nobles (AD Seine-Maritime G8739). © Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime. 20. Two of the great original pancartes recording property acquired by the abbey of Saint-Etienne of Caen (AD Calvados H1830, nos. 1 and 1bis). © Archives Départementales du Calvados. 21. Aerial view of the site north of Sainte-Suzanne known as the Camp de Beugy, which was, in some form, used by William to conduct the siege. © Gilles Leroux, Inrap. 22. (a), (b) and (c) Reproduction from the Alecto facsimiles of two folios of Great Domesday Book for Bedfordshire, and the colophon at the conclusion of Little Domesday Book. © Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

P R E FAC E

I have lived with the responsibility of writing a full, scholarly biography of William the Conqueror for many years. The advice that I should do so was given by the late Marjorie Chibnall in a typically wise review of the ‘popular’ biography of William that I published in 1989. The suggestion that I should actually write this book came from Robert Baldock in 2000, with the signature of the contract following rapidly afterwards. Robert has been a consistent supporter of the project over the fifteen years of intermittent and interrupted progress that have followed. His suggestion in 2013 that I should write a prologue reflecting on David Douglas’s book and the changes of perspective that have occurred in the fifty years since it was published was a catalyst of decisive importance in this book’s completion. The 1989 William the Conqueror that I published, although informed by my ongoing work on William’s charters and a fully up-to-date knowledge of the secondary literature in terms of how I then understood it, now feels like a book written within a narrow historiographical tradition. This one is intended to bring together much broader perspectives on its subject. It attempts to locate William within the major changes in the writing of history that have taken place during my professional lifetime as well as the history of both eleventh-century Europe and the wider themes of human history over a much longer period. It is deliberately as multidisciplinary as I can make it. Even as I have delivered the manuscript to Yale University Press, I am left thinking that there is more that I must reflect on and learn about. It is my hope that others will be persuaded to think as much as I have. Since 2000, I have benefitted from the support of many institutions and individuals. My employer in 2000, the University of Glasgow, was a generous supporter, as has been the University of East Anglia, my employer from 2007 to 2010 and an exceedingly generous champion of my work since my retirement. Between 2009 and 2012, I held a Chaire d’Excellence at the Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, financed by the Conseil Régional de la Basse-Normandie. This gave me indispensable access to the university’s unique libraries and to seminars at a university with which I

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have long been closely associated, and of which I am honoured to hold a doctorate honoris causa. I held a British Academy Marc Fitch Research Fellowship from 2001 to 2003, which released me from all duties at the University of Glasgow, and a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellowship from 2013 to 2015, which funded the final stages of research and writing. I was also privileged to hold a Visiting Fellow Commonership at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2002–03, and a Visiting Professorship in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 2003. Since 2003, the Faculty of History of the University of Cambridge and Clare Hall (of which I was elected a life member with Marjorie Chibnall’s support), and Cambridge University Library have provided support, stimulus and working conditions that have been invaluable. The apparent disruptions of the onerous duties of the Directorship of the Institute of Historical Research from 2003 to 2008, and the invitation to give the Ford Lectures in the University of Oxford in 2010 (subsequently published in 2013 as The Normans and Empire), were hugely important to the broadening of intellectual horizons that have produced this book. The library of the Institute of Historical Research, where David Douglas’s private library was deposited during my time as Director, has remained my favourite place to work. I have incurred many debts of gratitude over the long period since I signed the contract to write this book. Drafts of all the chapters in the final manuscript have been read by Elisabeth van Houts and Helen Bates. Both have made many suggestions that have made huge improvements to both the presentation and quality of argument. At Yale University Press, Rachael Lonsdale has provided support, guidance and, sometimes, entirely justified pressure, all of which have been indispensable in the process of completion. Melissa Bond and Samantha Cross have seen the book through its production stage with exemplary efficiency and good humour. My family – Jonathan, Shiho and Amy Bates-Kawachi, and Rachel Bates – have been strong supporters, if occasionally impatient ones. Over such a long period, I have benefitted greatly from the advice, stimulus and criticism of many scholars. Inevitably, given my age, some of them are no longer with us. Marjorie Chibnall, Tim Reuter and Patrick Wormald all fall into this category. It is a measure of their influence that I still ponder what they might be saying to me now. Jinty Nelson has been a great and long-term supporter of the project, and John Gillingham a consistent stimulus to thought. Simon Keynes and Tessa Webber were hugely helpful to me during my time at Trinity, and Tessa has subsequently advised on many palaeographical matters. Pierre Bauduin and Véronique Gazeau were centrally important to making possible my large stretches of work in Caen, where many colleagues welcomed me warmly. Dominique Barthélemy

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was immensely supportive during my time in Paris. I have also discussed several major aspects of the book’s narrative and analysis with my UEA colleague Tom Licence to my great profit, and Martin Allen’s advice on all numismatic matters has been invaluable. Anna Asbury has helped with many problems of translation and made a large contribution towards compiling the bibliography. Richard Mason was an excellent copy-editor who did a great deal to shape some of the less confident prose in some sections of the book. Sophie Rixon has provided research assistance and worked on the index. Emily Ward has also worked on the index and provided good counsel. During the times that I have been writing and thinking about this book, I have had so many helpful conversations with people and received so much advice that the list of names that follows cannot possibly be complete. I therefore apologise to all who feel I have accidentally excluded them, and I hope that a statement on these terms will be a sufficient compensation for my forgetfulness. Those whom I must specifically thank are: Bill Aird, Laura Ashe, Debby Banham, Julia Barrau, Stephen Baxter, Pierre Bouet, Jean-Michel Bouvris, Elma Brenner, Martin Brett, Chris Briggs, Joe Canning, Cathie Carmichael, Helena Carr, Jean-Luc Chassel, John Clark, Bob Cowie, David Crouch, Johanna Dale, Els de Parmaentier, Frances Eustace, Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher, Jean-Hervé Foulon, Richard Gameson, Anna Gannon, George Garnett, Lindy Grant, Judith Green, Francis Grew, Ralph Griffiths, Mark Hagger, Elizabeth Hallam-Smith, Roland Harris, Sandy Heslop, Leonie Hicks, Bob Higham, George Hope, Edward Impey, Michael Jones, Katharine Keats-Rohan, Derek Keene, Pierre-Yves Laffont, Sylvette Lemagnen, Jacques Le Maho, Catherine Letouzey-Réti, Robert Liddiard, Aleksandra McClain, Christophe Maneuvrier, Stephen Marritt, Florian Mazel, Rory Naismith, François Neveux, Mark Ormrod, Jörg Peltzer, Alheydis Plassmann, Benjamin Pöhl, Susan Raich, Carole Rawcliffe, Sarah Rees Jones, Susan Reynolds, David Roffe, Pauline Stafford, Matthew Strickland, Kathleen Thompson, Rod Thomson, Nicholas Vincent, Paul Warde and Emily Winkler. I have given lectures and seminars on William over recent years in the universities of Bergen, Bristol, Caen Normandie, the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, and Rennes II, and must thank many people in the audiences at those institutions for their contributions. The final and largest expression of thanks must be to my PhD supervisor at the University of Exeter, Frank Barlow, to whose memory this book is dedicated. Frank was writing Edward the Confessor when I was his research student and gave me the manuscript to read. I willingly admit that I cannot remember any advice that I might have given him that could have been of any use. But the vote of confidence in my abilities and the way in which I

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was treated as a serious member of the historical profession did wonders for my self-esteem. The preparation of the British Academy’s memoir of Frank’s life after his death in 2009 at the age of ninety-eight brought his way of doing things back to the foreground of my memory and has been enormously beneficial in the writing of this book. Its publication and its dedication to his memory fulfil a promise I made to him in the last months of his life.

ABBR E V I AT I O NS

AAC

AAR AD AN ANS ASC

ASE B&C BIHR BL BNFr Breuis Relatio

BSAN Carmen CCCM CS DB

Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes caennaises, ed. Lucien Musset, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. xxxvii (Caen, 1967) ‘The Acta Archiepiscopum Rotomagensium, Study and Edition’, ed. Richard Allen, Tabularia www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/ craham/revue/tabularia, ix (2009), Documents, 1–66 Archives Départementales Annales de Normandie Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conference Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, cited by year (corrected in square brackets if necessary) and manuscript; unless otherwise stated the edition is Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–9). For a convenient modern translation, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. J. Swanton (London, 1996) Anglo-Saxon England Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D. 1100 presented to V. H. Galbraith, ed. T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (Oxford, 1957) Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Bibliothèque Nationale de France ‘The Breuis Relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannorum, written by a Monk of Battle Abbey’, ed. and trans. Elisabeth van Houts, in idem, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, 1000–1200 (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 1999), chapter VII. Reprinted, with a translation added, from Camden Miscellany, 5th ser., x (Cambridge, 1997) Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, OMT (Oxford, 1999) Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, 1066–1204, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, Martin Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi regis Angliae, ed. Abraham Farley, 2 vols. (London, 1783)

xiv

abbreviations

Douglas, WC DP EHR EME GC GG GND GP GR

HCY

HH HN

HR HRA HSJ JEH JMH JW Lanfranc Letters LDE MGH MSHAB

xv

David. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact on England, new edition (New Haven, CT, and London, 1999) Katharine Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166. 1. Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999) English Historical Review Early Medieval Europe Gallia Christiana in Provincias Ecclesiasticas distributas, ed. D. Samarthanus et al., 16 vols. (Paris, 1715–1865) The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall, OMT (Oxford, 1998) The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1992–5) William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum: The History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 2007) William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, M. Winterbottom, and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1998–9) Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, 1066– 1127, ed. and trans. Charles Johnson, revised by Martin Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, and Michael Winterbottom, OMT (Oxford, 1990) Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1996) Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, in Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia, et Opuscula duo; De Vita Sancti Anselmi et quibusdam miraculis ejus, ed. Martin Rule, RS, no. 81 (London, 1884) Historical Research Historia Regum Anglorum, in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols., RS, no. 75 (London, 1882–5) Haskins Society Journal Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Medieval History The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, 2 vols. (vols. ii and iii), OMT (Oxford, 1995–8) The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, OMT (Oxford, 1979) Symeon of Durham, Libellus de Exordio atque Procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis Ecclesie, ed. and trans. David Rollason, OMT (Oxford, 2000) Monumenta Germaniae Historica Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Bretagne

xvi NMPrinces NMProsopographie ODNB OMT OV PBA PL RADN Regesta Register Registrum RHF Roman de Rou RS TRHS VCH VEdR

abbreviations

Véronique Gazeau, Normannia Monastica. Princes normands et abbés bénédictins (Xe et XIIe siècle), Publications du CRAHM (Caen, 2007) Véronique Gazeau, Normannia Monastica. Prosopographie des abbés bénédictins (Xe et XIIe siècle), Publications du CRAHM (Caen, 2007) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/) Oxford Medieval Texts The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols., OMT (Oxford, 1969–80) Proceedings of the British Academy Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–65) Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. xxxvi (Caen, 1961) Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford, 1998) The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085: An English Translation (Oxford, 2002) Das Register Gregors VII, ed. Erich Caspar, 2 vols. MGH, Epistolae Selectae (Berlin, 1920–3) Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738–1904) The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou, trans. Glyn S. Burgess (Woodbridge, 2004) Rolls Series Transactions of the Royal Historical Society The Victoria History of the Counties of England (with county name), in progress The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, attributed to a monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, 2nd ed., OMT (Oxford, 1992)

miles

200

0

km

320

Abernethy

Falkirk

S

C

O

T

L

A

N

D

0

D

N O R T H N

Durham

E

N

I R I S H Dublin S E A

Stamford Bridge Rhuddlan

G

York

S

E L

Shrewsbury

A

Lichfield

Lincoln Nottingham

A

N

St David’s

Beverley

Selby

Chester

L

I R E L A

S E A

Newcastle upon Tyne

W

Worcester Peterborough Norwich Ramsey Hereford Ely Thetford Chepstow Gloucester Bury St Edmunds Cardiff Oxford GERMAN Malmesbury Dorchester Colchester Bath London Southwark Utrecht Wells Glastonbury EMPIRE Salisbury Rochester Wilton Winchester Exeter Canterbury Sandwich Bruges Bosham Battle Dover Wissant Selsey Pevensey Saint-Omer Ghent Boulogne F L A N D E R S Aachen Cologne E n g l i s h C h a n n e l Thérouanne Arras Cherbourg Liège Saint-Valéry Cambrai Fécamp L O T H A R S Y Bonneville Le Bec Amiens D Bayeux N Rouen Coutances Caen A Mainz M Se Lisieux Mont St. Michel R Pontoise in N O e Evreux Speyer Avranches Rheims Verdun Mantes Dinan Dol Domfront Paris B R I T T A N Y Alençon Rennes Chartres Rh in e

D

A N J O U Le Mans La Flèche

Angers Nantes

Orléans re Loi Blois Dijon

Besançon

Poitiers

B a y o f B i s c a y

Limoges

Lausanne

Cluny

Y

Angoulême

Vercelli

U B

Rhô ne

ne on

R

G

U

Vienne Ga r

N

D

A Q U I T A I N E

Map of Normandy, the British Isles and western Europe in the eleventh century

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Selective genealogical chart to illustrate William’s family Svein ‘Forkbeard’ king of Denmark,

986–1014

Gytha = Godwine

Earl = Estrith Úlfr

earl of Wessex

Ælfgifu = Cnut the Great king of England, of 1016–35 Northampton king of Denmark,

1018–35 others

Tostig

Edith = Edward the Confessor

king of Norway,

1030–35

Svein Osbeorn Estrithson

Harold II (Godwinson)

Beorn

Harold I (Harefoot),

king of England,

king of Denmark,

king of England,

1066

1047–76

1035–40

Harold ‘Hein’ king of Denmark,

1076–80

Cnut IV ‘The Saint’

Olaf others king of Denmark, king of Denmark 1086–95 1080–86 murdered while about to invade England

Drogo

Godgifu

=

= Eustace I

count of the Vexin

count of Boulogne

Alfred

Edward The Confessor

murdered,

king of England,

1036

1042–66 = Edith dau. of Godwine earl of Wessex

Walter

Ralph

count of the Vexin d. c.1063

earl of Hereford d. 1057

Adelida

Matilda

Cecilia, d. 1127 (nun) abbess of La Trinité of Caen

xviii

Constance, d. 1090 = Alan IV count of Brittany

Adela, d. 1137 = StephenHenry count of Blois

? Agatha

=

and the disputed succession to the English Kingdom Edgar ‘The Peaceful’

duke of Normandy,

Richard I

king of England,

942–96

959–75

Emma d. 1052

=

=

Robert

Richard II

king of England,

archbishop of Rouen,

duke of Normandy,

978–1016

989–1037

996–1026

Richard III

Robert I

duke of Normandy,

duke of Normandy,

Æthelred II = Ælfgifu ‘The Unready’

Harthacnut

Edmund ‘Ironside’

king of Denmark,

king of England,

1035–42

1016

king of England,

1040–42

1026–27

Edward The Ætheling, d. 1057

1027–1035 = Herleva dau. of Fulbert

William I the Conqueror duke of Normandy, 1035–87 king of England, 1066–87 = Matilda dau. of Baldwin V count of Flanders

Edgar the Ætheling, d. c. 1125

Christina (became a nun)

Robert II duke of Normandy,

1087–1106, d. 1134

St = Malcolm III Margaret king of

count of Ponthieu,

d. 1053 (2) Lambert of Lens (3) Odo of Champagne

Judith = Earl Waltheof, d. 1076

Scotland

Richard o. s. p. l. c. 1070

Adelaide = (1) Enguerrand II

William II

Henry I

king of England,

king of England, 1100–35 duke of Normandy, 1106–35

1087–1100

= Edith/Matilda, d. 1118 dau. of Malcolm III and St Margaret

xix

1. William of Jumièges presenting the Gesta Normannorum Ducum to William, as represented on Orderic’s autograph manuscript of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum.

2. Diploma of Count Baldwin V of Flanders (13 November 1056) recording Harold’s presence at Saint-Omer. The signa include not only Harold, but also Guy, count of Ponthieu, and Guy, archdeacon (later bishop) of Amiens, and the text concerns responsibilities exercised by Eustace, count of Boulogne.

3. The tomb slab of Queen Matilda in the choir of the abbey of La Trinité of Caen. Placed at the centre of the choir, it was at the heart of a mausoleum that was intended to commemorate the lives of the female members of William’s family.

4. The Bayeux Tapestry’s representation of Harold arriving at Bayeux and then taking an oath to William. The ambiguity of the accompanying narrative (UBI HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT WILLELMO DUCI) is notable.

5. (a) and (b) The Bayeux Tapestry’s representations of Harold crossing the Channel to France and his apparent seizure on landing by Guy, count of Ponthieu.

6. (a) and (b) The Bayeux Tapestry’s representations of King Edward the Confessor’s deathbed and King Harold’s coronation.

7. William’s coronation by papal legates in 1070, as represented in the late eleventh-century manuscript known as the Ramsey Benedictional. It includes a depiction of the papal banner given to William in 1066.

8. (a) and (b) The west front and the nave and crossing and choir of the abbey of La Trinité of Caen. The choir was substantially rebuilt towards the end of the eleventh century, and the west front is also of later date. Only the western part of the choir is likely to remain substantially unaltered from the church that was being built at the time of the dedication in 1066.

9. The version of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals associated with Archbishop Lanfranc. The section on the right-hand page contains the statement that the manuscript had been obtained for Christ Church, Canterbury, in all probability from Lanfranc’s former monastery of Le Bec. It is followed by a letter from the anti-pope Clement III.

10. William’s writ confirming to the citizens of London all the laws of which they were worthy in King Edward the Confessor’s day. Although formally undated, it is normally assigned to early in the year 1067, and represents an important ideological statement about William’s rule as king of the English.

11. Silver pennies of William I: (a) Penny of the Profile/Cross Fleury type, the first coinage issued on William’s behalf as king of the English (1066–c.1068), with a portrait similar to the coins of King Harold II, minted in 1066. This coin was produced at Hastings by a moneyer named Dunnic, who had also issued coins of Harold II. It shows that the English coinage was at first unaffected by William’s conquest; (b) Penny of William’s second (Bonnet) coinage, made by the York moneyer Aleif, c.1068–70. Eleven moneyers issued this coinage in York, but the number fell to four in the next issue. This is another indication of just how badly York was affected by the rebellions of 1068–9 and William’s Harrying of the North; (c) Penny of the Paxs type, issued by the Bristol moneyer Brihtword. The dating of this coinage is controversial. It might be William’s last coinage related to the attempted reconciliations associated with Domesday Book, or it might be a proclamation of the king’s peace corresponding with William II’s coronation in 1087.

12. A cast of the majesty side of William’s double-sided seal made in the nineteenth century by Louis-Claude Douët d’Arcq. It was copied from a seal attached to a diploma in favour of the abbey of Saint-Denis.

13. The remains of the west front of the abbey church of Notre-Dame of Jumièges, consecrated in William’s presence on 1 July 1067. The church was started in the early eleventh century, probably constructed according to a single design, and drew heavily on motifs from the architecture of the former Carolingian Empire.

14. The abbey church of Saint-Etienne of Caen: (a) The nave and crossing; (b) The west front. The nave and the crossing illustrate how far Saint-Etienne is an innovatory building, in all probability built according to a grander and more unique design after the conquest of 1066. The east end may well have only been in construction at the end of William’s life and was the subject of major changes in the thirteenth century.

15. The gatehouse of the castle enclosure at Exeter was built in the years soon after the 1068 siege. The mixture of stylistic influences, which include triangular-headed arches and cushion capitals typical of late Anglo-Saxon architecture, indicates newcomers and natives working on its design. The original entrance was blocked in later centuries and a new one created alongside it.

16. (a) The White Tower of London; (b) The remains of the keep at Ivry-la-Bataille in Normandy. The illustration of the White Tower shows one of the greatest secular buildings to survive that can be securely dated to William’s time. The apse is visible, which is closely linked to the one at Ivry, as are the blind arches at firstfloor level, which resemble those at Saint-Etienne of Caen. Although the remains at Ivry are fragmentary, the apse and the ground plan show that it was, in significant respects, likely to have influenced the construction of the White Tower.

17. The surviving remains of the west front of Bishop Remigius’s cathedral at Lincoln. There are several points of comparison in its construction and style that suggest parallels with the Arch of Constantine in Rome, notably the existence of the frieze.

18. An illuminated initial in a late twelfth-century manuscript showing William sending a letter to Abbot St Hugh of Cluny. The manuscript contains Abbot Hugh’s letter refusing William’s request for some of his monks to be sent to England.

19. A diploma recording the restitution of Gisors to Rouen cathedral by Simon, count of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin, in the presence of Matilda, Roger de Beaumont and other nobles. The crosses of William and Matilda’s son Robert and of Roger de Beaumont are placed below the text that records the ceremony.

20. Two of the great original pancartes recording property acquired by the abbey of Saint-Etienne of Caen. Although the earlier left-hand text is damaged, close reading shows that the interlineations and erasures were part of an editorial process that produced the second right-hand document.

21. Aerial view of the site north of Sainte-Suzanne known as the Camp de Beugy, which was, in some form, probably used by William to conduct the siege of Sainte-Suzanne. Ongoing archaeological excavations currently suggest that the site was already an aristocratic residence in the tenth century, but with major developments taking place in the twelfth century.

22. (a) The bottom of the right-hand column of one of the folios of the section of Great Domesday Book devoted to Bedfordshire that includes the return for part of Sharnbrook; (b) The bottom of the right-hand column of the reverse of the same folio that has, at its foot, an addition to the main text mentioning the English priest who performed a mass every Monday for William and Matilda’s souls; (c) The colophon of Little Domesday Book that dates the carrying out of the descriptio to 1086.

xx

PROLOGUE

WRITI N G A L I F E O F W ILLIAM T HE C O N QUE ROR I only met David Douglas once, when, in 1970, he was the external examiner for my PhD thesis. Incomprehensible as it may be to members of a modern generation accustomed to almost immediate feedback on a PhD, it was not until 2013, when working on the late Frank Barlow’s papers, that I learnt that Douglas thought highly of my work.1 Many who knew him better than I did regard Douglas as having been an inspiring personality.2 Published in 1964, his William the Conqueror was the first book to appear in the Yale English Monarchs series. He was also General Editor of the series. To revisit his hugely successful book while writing this one has been a thought-provoking experience. Although it is arguably unsurprising that Yale University Press should have commissioned a replacement over thirty years after the initial publication of Douglas’s William the Conqueror, for all the changes in the study and interpretation of the past that have taken place over the last half-century, much about the way in which he approached his subject remains relevant. Douglas was acutely aware of the difficulties and the responsibilities involved in writing about William the Conqueror. To re-read the Prologue to his book is not only to be reminded of this, but also to be struck by just how pertinent some of his observations remain in 2016. Thus, to cite two passages: The posthumous career of William the Conqueror in controversial literature is almost as remarkable as his actual career in eleventh-century history.3 1 Frank Barlow to Andrew MacLennan, 8 October 1974 (‘The thesis was examined by David Douglas, the doyen of Anglo-Norman scholars, who thought very well of it’). The exchange of letters is now among my own papers. 2 For David Douglas’s life and career, R. H. C. Davis, ‘David Charles Douglas, 1898–1982’, PBA, lxix (1983), 513–42. My comment is also based on several personal conversations. For Douglas’s work on the Normans, see also M. T. Clanchy, ‘Introduction’, in David C. Douglas, The Normans (London, 2002), xi–xix. This book contains reprints of David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement 1050–1100 (London, 1969) and The Norman Fate, 1100–1154 (London, 1976). 3 Douglas, WC, 5.

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Briefly, my aims have been to eschew the controversies of the past; to bring French and English scholarship here into closer relation; and throughout to base my study upon the original testimony . . .4 These two statements might almost feature verbatim as the mission statement for this book. To bring English and French scholarship into closer relation remains as necessary and admirable an aim as it has always been, even if collaboration between scholars on the two sides of the Channel has become much more extensive than it was in Douglas’s day. There has also been much reflection since that time on how national historiographies have been, and arguably still remain, a barrier to understanding.5 It is nonetheless very important how the scholarly study of early medieval rule has internationalized, with, above all, the long-running debates initiated by Gerd Althoff ’s Spielregeln about the nature of communication between rulers and ruled having crossed national boundaries.6 There are opportunities here to be exploited. In relation to the second of Douglas’s aims, to base a book about William on ‘the original testimony’ is nowadays a complex aspiration. What exactly might ‘the original testimony’ mean? While it is certainly something that has the verifiable potential to inform us factually or interpretatively about William and those around him, exactly how this material is to be used is not at all straightforward. Those who were writing about William during his lifetime were aware that they were living in momentous times. Stories about him were being invented while he was alive. The literary productivity that followed immediately after the victory of 1066 presents problems analogous to those tackled by contemporary historians of our own times – or indeed of any times. William divided opinion in his moment of triumph, just as he does now. The notion that the influences of the times in which a historian lives are inescapably important for one writing about William the Conqueror, with the historian often not consciously aware of what these influences are, or have been, applies as much to those writing before William’s death on 9 September 1087 as to all those who have come afterwards. And in the same way that the ‘original testimony’ is difficult to

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Ibid., xiii. This is epitomized by the publications that have followed from the CNRS ‘France-ÎlesBritanniques’ projects. For an interesting attempt at dialogue and synthesis, Christopher Fletcher, Jean-Philippe Genet, and John Watts (eds.), Government and Political Life in England and France, c.1300–c.1500 (Cambridge, 2015). 6 Gerd Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt, 1997). The relevance of these debates to my subject will be explained later in this Prologue and throughout the book. For a notably perceptive early review, see Timothy Reuter in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, xxiii (2001), 407. 5

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analyze in relation to William, so it is also difficult in relation to those whom he defeated. For all who wrote about this subject and, very specifically, about King Harold and Edgar the Ætheling, God’s judgement on them required moral and ethical perspectives that distort every bit as much as they do in relation to William.7 As will be suggested, above all in Chapters 6 and 7, while factual accuracy most definitely is present in this material, we certainly do not find objectivity in it. So viewed, the controversies of the past, the present, and indeed of the future, are inescapable aspects of the topic, a situation that has the most profound implications for the way in which we interpret ‘the original testimony’. William’s life has always been, and will forever remain, a morally difficult subject. It brought about massive changes. But it did so at the expense of thousands of lives and it was the cause of much misery. The ethical implications of this were a problem in the 1060s and 1070s, let alone today. As clear an expression as possible of the issues that a biographer of William the Conqueror faces can be found in the book written by FrançoisThéodore Licquet, published posthumously in 1835: But then, alas! When a more philosophical line of thought leads us to the examination of means and of results, our admiration falls, and cold seizes us. William frightens us, and, we are, in sum, almost reduced to lamenting the good that he did.8 Licquet’s words lie within a long tradition. When, for example, Orderic Vitalis, one of the writers on whom we are heavily dependent, set out to write about William in the early twelfth century, the knowledge that William had successfully subdued the English created the paradox that, while his triumph must have been pleasing to God, it entailed events which Orderic viewed as being a human catastrophe, ‘a mournful theme of ruin for the pen of true historians’.9 In the face of a situation in which a multiplicity of – often very extreme – opinions have been expressed, no biographer’s personal beliefs can be entirely put to one side. All we can

7 For a recent essay on this theme, Mary Frances Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late AngloSaxon England (Woodbridge, 2007), 7–34. 8 Georges-Bernard Depping, Histoire de la Normandie, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la conquête de l’Angleterre en 1066, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1835), ii, 173–4 (‘Eh bien! Que la pensée philosophique nous ramène à l’examen des moyens et des résultats, l’admiration tombe, le froid nous saisit; Guillaume nous fait peur, et nous sommes presque réduits à déplorer le bien qu’il a fait’); cited in Véronique Gazeau, ‘Imagining the Conqueror: The Changing Image of William the Conqueror, 1830–1945’, HSJ, xxv (2014, for 2013), 245–64, at 249. I have used Professor Gazeau’s translation. 9 OV, ii, 190–1 (unde flebile tema de sua ruina piis historiographis ad dictandum tribuit).

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do – as David Douglas did – is try to be fair.10 And find a way of doing so. We must remember that the ethical dimensions inherent in the study of the past mattered to Douglas, just as they did to William’s contemporaries and to those who wrote about him in the twelfth century, and as they should to us. In the selection of his essays that he chose for publication as he approached his eightieth birthday, Douglas began by thanking his school history master (who later became bishop of Coventry) for introducing him to these ethical dimensions.11 The schoolmaster/bishop whom Douglas did not name was Neville Gorton, bishop of Coventry from 1943 until his death in 1955. The date of his appointment says most that needs to be said about him to the author of this book, who was born in the city towards the end of the Second World War, and introduced to the charred cross in the ruined cathedral as a young child.12 In the end, for all who wrote about him during his lifetime and afterwards, including the unknown mastermind of Domesday Book, William’s remarkable career had to be seen as the result of a providentially destined purpose and, in England after 1066, the basis in which current legitimacy and law were rooted. His achievements were therefore deeply embedded in the sometimes incompatible belief systems of the medieval Church and of secular society. While the writers of histories could interpret very differently the personality and the actions of the man at the centre of events, one question was unavoidable. Why had he been allowed to win a decisive battle against a crowned king and subject a prosperous Christian population to his will and rule? And how had this been done? If the end had to be accepted, the means were open for debate. Moral and interpretative issues of this kind were present even in the way William’s birth was treated. For two of the major twelfth-century historians, Orderic Vitalis and Wace, the fact that he was born of parents who were not technically married was the cause of great personal and political insecurity. For a third, William of Malmesbury, who, like them, had read all the available eleventh-century narrative sources, it seems not to have mattered. Others injected motifs from saints’ lives to help them understand the birth of a child whose life was going to be so remarkable. And when we come to what was written after 1066 about the conquest of England, the contrast between the contemporary apologia written by William’s chaplain William of Poitiers and the sustained critique in the equally contemporary ‘D’ version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is very 10 Douglas’s fairness was commented on by Frank Barlow in his Foreword to the 1999 Yale Edition of William the Conqueror, xi (‘Douglas was very fair-minded’). 11 David C. Douglas, The Time and the Hour (London, 1977), 9. 12 See further Gorton’s obituary in The Times (1 December 1955), 14.

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striking indeed. The authors’ individual biographies were also a factor in the way they wrote. Malmesbury, a clever man massively learned in the Latin classics and with an interest in biography, was often very insightful, yet also capable of adjusting situations to fit classical and biblical models in a way that misleads. And Orderic never forgot that he himself was angligena, born of an English mother (and a French father). Domesday Book, it must be added, was certainly not an objective census.13 For the anonymous monk who wrote the famous homily in the ‘E’ version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William’s life was one on which all ought to reflect and from which they could learn. It contained a bewildering mix of good and bad. In reading how such writers tried to deal with these matters, we may sometimes think that they are laying bare William’s own anxieties. In the sources written during William’s lifetime and in those slightly later ones that had access to material transmitted directly by those who had witnessed events or through social memory, we can sometimes think that we are listening to the instruction that William was receiving. Thus, ‘the original testimony’, when used carefully, can become a means to try to explore William’s private thoughts. But in thinking in this way we must be aware that, in terms of the history of power and the responsibilities of rulership, several differing value systems were operating, and that nothing should be simplified. Although the first phase of Douglas’s professional career was located within the English social history tradition associated with his doctoral supervisor Sir Paul Vinogradoff and with Sir Frank Stenton, he consistently believed that all the more important developments in England’s history derived from the Latin tradition going back to Rome, rather than from the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon ones. This belief, very evident in Douglas’s teaching in his first academic post, at the University of Glasgow, probably went back to his undergraduate days.14 It placed him at odds with some of his contemporaries and it gave his work a quality that was very different from theirs. The depth of this commitment to seeing William’s life and the general history of the Normans through continental, as well as English, sources is epitomized by Douglas’s acquisition of French-language publications for his personal library and the libraries of the universities he served. The story of how a large consignment of printed cartularies, which he had persuaded the University of Leeds to purchase, left Rotterdam in 1940 just before Hitler’s army captured the city, to be incorporated into the Brotherton Library, is justly famous. The collections of the library of his 13 Most recently and very effectively, Sally Harvey, Domesday: Book of Judgement (Oxford, 2014). 14 Davis, ‘David Charles Douglas’, especially at 513–14, 519.

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fifth and final university, Bristol, were also enriched by similar endeavours. Douglas’s personal library, of which the French-language publications are now located at the Institute of Historical Research, also demonstrates the remarkable scale of his efforts.15 Understanding the history of the history of the Norman Conquest was his main preoccupation in the 1930s and 1940s. Douglas published so extensively on its anglophone historiography as to cause anxiety among his contemporaries that this was preventing him from doing the serious work on the history of Normandy and the Normans that they wanted him to do.16 Because awareness of the controversies of the past is an indispensable aspect of the subject of his book and mine, his publications should be consulted as a preliminary by all who take the subject seriously. But in the midst of this work Douglas did evidently become exasperated with the pernicious influence of polemic and unhistorical assessments. In a lecture given in 1946, a cutting reference to ‘a haze of heated polemical vapour’ was followed by an unacknowledged quotation from Ezekiel (‘The fathers had eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth were set on edge’).17 Douglas’s abandonment of historiography was followed in the 1940s by a remarkable series of articles on the duchy of Normandy and by the preparation of a book entitled William the Conqueror and the Rise of Normandy. Draft chapters were dispatched to Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1958 and a contract was sent out to him on 13 September of that year. Through a process that cannot now be traced in any detail, this project evolved into William the Conqueror, with the invitation to give the 1963 Ford Lectures clearly being the catalyst for the decision to set his subject in a broader context. One significant early change of direction within