Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (25 page)

As Baldwin had acted as regent of France, his death signaled the resumption of the traditional hostility between Normandy and France. For now, though, the duke had other concerns. Toward the end of 1067, he began making preparations to return to England. In his absence, Odo and fitzOsbern had been unable to quell the rising antagonism to the new regime among the Saxon people, and rebellions had broken out in Kent and Herefordshire. Trouble was also brewing in the west, signaled
by the dangerous uprising in Exeter. As well as being a principal city, this was also the home of Harold’s mother, Gytha, who provided a figurehead for dissenters to the Norman regime. Anxious to hold on to his crown, William decided that he must return to his new kingdom with all haste. He had no hesitation in continuing to leave the government of Normandy in the hands of his wife, confident that she would again prove how fit she was to rule.

This time, Matilda was invested with even more independent authority to act in her husband’s name. Roger de Montgomery, who had been appointed to advise her on previous occasions, accompanied William to England. Matilda now possessed a level of power enjoyed by few of her female contemporaries. Even Orderic Vitalis, who tends to underplay her influence, admits, “Queen Matilda was now a powerful ruler with vast resources at her command.”
³¹

Having taken his leave of her, William set sail from Dieppe on December 6. He resolved that their separation would not be of long duration, however, for he was impatient to see her crowned in England. In early 1068, by which time he had quashed the rebellions that had flared up during his absence, he sent ambassadors to his wife in Normandy with instructions that she was to join him across the Channel.
³²
Their son Robert was to take charge of the government of the duchy in her absence. Jumièges and Orderic imply that this would henceforth be a permanent arrangement, but there is no evidence for this. Indeed, the charters attest that Matilda continued to be as active a regent during her husband’s subsequent absences as she had been since his conquest of England.

Much as she might have enjoyed the power of acting alone in Normandy, Matilda was no doubt eager to see her new kingdom, and Orderic Vitalis records that “she gladly obeyed her husband’s commands.”
³³
By now in her mid-thirties, she had never before left the shores of continental Europe, so the prospect of a sea voyage must have appealed to her sense of adventure. There is no record of her journey, but we know that she was accompanied by an impressive retinue that included scores of servants and noblewomen. The chronicler Langtoft describes a “rich company of ladies and maidens” in her train.
³⁴
As befitted her rank, a
number of prominent clergymen were among her attendants, including her chaplain, Guy of Amiens, her physician, Baldwin, abbot of St. Edmundsbury, and the bishop of Lisieux. She may also have been accompanied by some of her children on this or subsequent visits to her new kingdom. Her son Richard was certainly present at her coronation, for he was among the witnesses to a charter that was drawn up at the time, and we know from the evidence of Domesday Book that her daughter Matilda resided in England for some time, because she had her own household there.
³⁵

England’s new queen arrived shortly after Easter 1068, which fell on March 23 and had been celebrated by her husband in Winchester. Her appearance in England was noted by the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
“At this Easter the king came to Winchester … And soon after that the Lady Matilda came here to the land.”
³⁶
She was viewed with some suspicion upon her arrival in England, and her new subjects referred to her as “the strange woman.” Their suspicion was rooted in the fact that she was spoken of as “la Royne” by the Normans, which implied that she was a female sovereign in her own right, rather than being merely the wife of the king.
³⁷
It soon became clear how shocking a concept this was to her new subjects.

The lukewarm reception that his wife received in England did nothing to disrupt William’s plans for her. Until now, he had attempted to subdue the English by force alone. However, with Matilda at his side, he now intended to emphasize the magnificence—and legitimacy—of his dynasty. This was greatly helped by the fact that Matilda was almost certainly pregnant at the time of her arrival.
³⁸
She had probably conceived toward the end of William’s visit to Normandy and would therefore have been in the early months of her pregnancy. It would be her ninth known child—and her last. The fact that she endured an arduous journey by land and sea at such a time is again a testament to how much she desired to claim her new crown. Furthermore, it was crucial to the establishment of the Norman dynasty that the child she had carried in her womb across the Channel should be born on English soil. Attuned as she was to popular feeling, Matilda fully appreciated this, and she therefore resolved to stay in her new country for the remainder of her term.

The attention that was paid to the aesthetics of the new English royal court soon after her arrival suggests that Matilda was quick to bring her influence to bear. Even the pro-English chroniclers could not help but be impressed by the opulent spectacle that the couple presented, clad from head to toe in gold-encrusted robes and eating their sumptuous meals from gold and silver platters. They proceeded to hold another great court at Westminster for Whitsuntide, which was attended by a host of English notables.

As soon as these celebrations were out of the way, plans began in earnest for the main purpose of Matilda’s visit: her coronation. The event was loaded with significance. Besides being vital to William’s efforts to reinforce his legitimacy in the eyes of his new subjects, Matilda would be the first queen of England to be formally styled “Regina.” Before that, a female consort was simply referred to as the wife or companion of the king, a practice that was viewed with some disdain by the ninth-century commentator Asser, who observed: “The West Saxon people do not allow the queen to sit next to the king and do not even permit the king’s wife to be entitled queen.”
³⁹

There were, however, exceptions. Matilda’s ancestor Judith, daughter of Charles the Bold, married Aethelwulf, king of the West Saxons, in 856 and became the first consort to be formally consecrated as queen. This concession was probably made on account of Judith’s distinguished pedigree, as well as the influence of her husband, who “commanded that she should sit beside him on the royal throne, against the perverse custom of that people.”
⁴⁰

But even though Judith had set the precedent of consecration for a queen in the mid-ninth century, the initial wariness that Matilda’s new subjects had shown toward her proved that the notion of a queen as distinct from a king’s wife was still not fully accepted by the end of the following century. Indeed, the coronation ordo (a collection of prayers, ceremonies, and hymns) used for Aelfthryth, wife of King Edgar, in 973 emphatically limited the role of the female consort to the production of heirs. Although her successors had achieved some recognition of the
broader potential of their role, the fertility of a queen was still viewed as her primary function. Only with the consecration of Cnut’s second wife, Emma, did the situation begin to change. The rites used for her consecration as Cnut’s queen in 1017 stressed that she was to share in his power and rule, not just be a passive, silent partner according to the traditional model for consorts.

In order to emphasize the significance of Matilda’s coronation as the first one ever staged just for a queen, the ceremony had to eclipse even that of the king in splendor and magnificence.
⁴¹
Every detail was planned with meticulous care. The date that was chosen was heavily symbolic. The coronation was to take place on Whit Sunday (May 11), one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar, which is celebrated fifty days after Easter (hence its Latinate name, Pentecost) and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.
⁴²
The message was clear: conjoined with her husband, Matilda had been chosen by God as the savior of the people of England.

The ceremony was to take place at Westminster Abbey and be presided over by Archbishop Ealdred of York.
⁴³
He had been one of Edward the Confessor’s foremost prelates, and some sources claim that he had crowned Harold Godwinson as king of England. Even though his loyalties clearly lay with the native English people, it was a shrewd move on the part of the royal couple to choose him for the task, helping to retain an element of continuity in their accession to the throne.

Matilda’s coronation was probably the last to follow the ordo used for her predecessors. At the beginning of the ceremony, she was led into the church and prostrated herself in prayer before the altar. This symbolized the end of her previous personality and the birth of her new one as queen. Next she was anointed with holy oil, just as her husband had been at his coronation. This part of the ceremony was intended to emphasize the monarch’s divine status. The new queen was then given a ring to symbolize her “marriage” to the kingdom, as well as to the king in his public duties. Finally she was crowned. The overall effect—a combination of splendor, ritual, and pious stagecraft—inspired awe in everyone who attended, and as such achieved its purpose.

Special laudes—ritual chants—were written for Matilda, probably by Archbishop Ealdred himself. It is likely that this was the first time laudes
were used at the crowning of an English monarch, and they were no doubt designed to impress the audience with a Continental practice.
⁴⁴
The words emphasized both the legitimacy and the power of Matilda’s position as queen. Three crucial phrases were introduced:
constituit reginam in popolo
—the queen is placed by God among the people;
regalis imperii … esse participem
—the queen shares royal power; and
laetatur gens Anglica domini imperio regenda et reginae virtutis providential gubernanda—
the English people are blessed to be ruled by the power and virtue of the queen.
⁴⁵
This conveyed a strong message: Matilda’s authority was constitutional, not customary. Never before had a queen’s power been so formalized—or so equal to that of the king. The “manly” nature of her authority was stressed by the omission of the female saints traditionally referred to in a queen’s laudes; instead, her intercessors were all male apostles. Matilda had apparently transcended even her sex in becoming England’s new queen, and the coronation marked the dawning of a new era for royal consorts. No longer confined to the narrow domestic sphere, she and her successors were expected to play an unprecedentedly active part in the political, judicial, financial, and spiritual life of their kingdom. Matilda would fulfill this role so effectively that she would become a model of ideal queenship for centuries to come.

The “very rich festival” was followed by a magnificent banquet, the ceremonial of which was so admired that it established a series of precedents that endured for many subsequent coronations.
⁴⁶
They included the entrance of a “champion” to challenge any man who dared to question the queen’s authority. This was a Norman tradition, unknown to the Saxons, and this first champion, a man named Marmion, was from the conquering land. When the company was all seated for the banquet, he rode into the middle of the hall, fully armed, and declared: “If any person denies that our most gracious sovereign, lord William, and his spouse Matilda, are not king and queen of England, he is a false-hearted traitor and a liar; and here I, as champion, do challenge him to single combat.”
⁴⁷
There is no record that any man rose to the challenge on this occasion.

Meanwhile, William granted his cook, a man named Tezelin, the manor of Addington “for composing a dish of white soup called dillegrout, which especially pleased the royal palate.”
⁴⁸
The office of “grand pannetier” was also instituted at Matilda’s coronation banquet. His role
was to carry the salt and carving knives from the pantry to the royal table and to serve bread to the king and queen. In return for his service, he received the salt cellars, spoons, and knives laid on the royal table, as well as a fee for the bread. It became something of a custom for the officials who served the royal couple at banquets to be rewarded with the precious cups, bowls, or other utensils used during the meal. There are many contemporary accounts of unseemly squabbles breaking out as men jostled with each other for the right to perform such tasks (and thus share in the spoils), and on occasion they even came to blows, but there is no record of any such fracas at Matilda’s coronation. In fact, the occasion seemed to pass remarkably smoothly, particularly compared to that of her husband eighteen months before. This may be an early indication of the influence that Matilda would bring to bear over formal occasions of state.