Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (31 page)

During the early 1070s, Matilda continued to make increasingly generous bequests to the English church, fulfilling the pious and charitable role expected of medieval queens. She was described as “munificent and liberal of her gifts” and “indefatigable at alleviating distress in every shape.” It was said that she “frequently relieved the poor with bounteous alms.” Her epitaph later claimed that such generosity had “left her in need,” but this is unlikely to be true, given the enormous resources at her disposal—and her natural instinct for self-preservation.
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Considering this celebrated munificence toward the church, it is perhaps not surprising that Matilda could count some of the most influential ecclesiastics of the day among her acquaintance. Besides Archbishop Lanfranc, they included his protégé Gundulph, a monk from St.-Étienne who came to England after the Conquest and was appointed bishop of Rochester. Gundulph claimed to enjoy a close friendship with Matilda, which had no doubt been forged during his time at her husband’s abbey.
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Thanks to William’s generosity, Matilda owned a considerable amount of land in England, the administration of which formed a constant demand upon her time. She was assisted in this by her viceregal council.
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The wealth that she had amassed after the Norman Conquest also enabled her to play an active role in patronage. She was particularly generous toward the scores of her countrymen who had come to England in the wake of the Conquest, and she encouraged the artisans among them to teach their trades to the English people. She patronized Flemish architects, sculptors, and painters from her native land, and she promoted poets and chroniclers.
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The influence of her countrymen was also felt in the religious and political life of England. The tyrannical abbot of Glastonbury, Thurstan of Caen, forced his monks to abandon their English chants and learn “an alien and novel chant from Flemings and Normans.”
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By the early twelfth century, the number of Flemish people in England was so high that they were considered a burden to the state, and Matilda’s son Henry was forced to gather them all together “as though into some great midden” and banish them to Wales.
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The impressive variety of English charters in which Matilda was involved—from founding a market at Tewkesbury to rewarding loyal subjects with estates—attests to her versatility in business matters.
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As well as granting land and money, she could also appoint officials to manage her estates and local interests. Word of her preeminence soon spread beyond her kingdom. The contemporary biographer of her kinsman, Count Simon of Crépy, referred to her as “The queen of the English, Matilda, wealthy and powerful.”
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Little wonder that she attracted petitioners in her own right, not just because she was the king’s consort. This gave her a position of considerable influence and authority at the English court. While she was seen as more diplomatic and benevolent than her fearsome husband, her power and influence earned her a reputation as a formidable woman. One unnamed Englishwoman offered her estate in Surrey to the queen in return for her protection.

It seems undeniable, then, that Matilda had become something of a powerful royal in her own right. Not only did she have the king’s ear and the crucial role of managing all royal spectacles, but she was now firmly installed at the heart of legal and religious matters and had established her own enormous independent wealth. Her influence was such that her name became extremely popular among the royalty and aristocracy of France and England, who were keen to flatter her by naming their daughters after her. However, this emerging authority was the cause of some unease among contemporary commentators. Any royal female authority beyond that derived only from being mother of the heirs and mistress of the household was viewed with suspicion by the chroniclers, who were quick to accuse women of witchcraft, scheming, and even murder. Malmesbury’s account of Queen Emma’s reign is typically scornful. Although he admitted that she was a formidable queen, he was highly critical of the wealth that she accumulated and claimed that she wasted all of it on jewels.
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A similar undertone is evident in the accounts that would emerge of Matilda’s own reign, both as duchess of Normandy and queen of England. For every account that praised her benevolence to the church or her dignity of bearing, there was another depicting her as a defiant traitor or an insatiable adulterer who was dragged through the streets
naked as a punishment for her sin. The only way that her husband’s misogynistic biographer, Poitiers, could reconcile himself to the degree of power that Matilda had attained was to describe her as a “woman of masculine wisdom.”
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Most chroniclers also felt uneasy about the conflict at the center of a queen’s role; that on the one hand she must be pious and chaste, but on the other she must be a “fruitful mother.”
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The Virgin Mary was the ultimate symbol of motherhood and purity, and the chroniclers believed that royal wives should aspire to her example. Little matter that immaculate conception was difficult to come by in most royal marriages. Indeed, if a queen showed any hint of sexuality, she was immediately condemned as a wicked seductress. The same was not true of kings, who were expected to take mistresses and would suffer no diminution of their prestige as a result. It is an indication of the general prejudice against women that only they, not their husbands, could be accused of adultery. Equally, if a marriage was barren, it was the wife, not the husband, who was to blame.
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Nevertheless, from the mid-eleventh century onward, there were the beginnings of a profound change in the perception of women in society. Ladies of high birth became more conspicuous in the contemporary records as owners of titles and estates. Female royals and noble ladies also emerged as prominent patrons of literature. This literature itself sparked a new tradition of courtly love that placed women at center stage as the
belles dames sans merci
who could bestow or withhold favor as their will dictated. The idealized view of womanhood and maternity was inspired by the cult of the Virgin, as well as by developments in theology that placed much greater emphasis upon the sacred nature of marriage.

The new respect for women that this literature implied harked back to an earlier time. The famous eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poem
Beowulf
presents a very positive image of queenship—and of womankind in general. There are more female characters in
Beowulf
than in any other Old English poem. Among them are five queens, all of whom display what the author considers to be typically feminine virtues of pacifism, diplomacy, hospitality, and wisdom. The male characters are imprudent and boorish by comparison, embroiled in incessant wars and military affairs.
Despite the various battles that are waged in the story, it is the women, more than the men, who assume heroic status.
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If Matilda read this famous poem, she might well have reflected upon the parallels with her own position. As duchess of Normandy, she had already proved that she had an abundance of the feminine virtues described in
Beowulf
, while her husband conformed to the warfaring stereotype of its male characters. The contrast between their characters would become even more marked as their reign in England progressed.

I
n contrast to his previous visits, when William returned to Normandy on a more or less permanent basis in late 1072 or early 1073, he did not spend time with his wife parading the splendor of their court in a series of well-planned public engagements. He had more pressing business. Now that he had achieved a degree of stability in England, he could focus his resources upon reclaiming the province of Maine, which had rebelled against Norman rule three years earlier. Together with a sizable “raiding-army,” which included English as well as Norman troops, he launched a blistering attack on the province, employing the same brutal tactics he had used in the north of England. According to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, it was the English soldiers who caused the most devastation: “[they] greatly despoiled it; they did for vineyards, burned down towns, and greatly despoiled the land, and bent it all into William’s hands, and afterwards they turned home to England.”
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By the end of March 1073, the entire county was back under William’s authority. According to Eadmer, William was now “so powerful that there was no one in all England, all Normandy, all the Province of Maine who dared lift a finger against his rule.”
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Even though her husband had returned to Normandy, the fact that he was immediately preoccupied by campaigns to secure its borders meant that Matilda effectively continued to exercise authority as regent. She was formally appointed as such again in early 1074, when William briefly
returned to England, and once more around autumn 1075, when a revolt by a dangerous alliance of English earls forced him to endure a more prolonged spell there. This lasted until the following year, during which time Matilda had sole authority to confirm grants on her husband’s behalf. This is surprising, given that her son Robert was now in his twenties and was already being referred to as duke in some quarters,
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and it might have been expected that he would assume the regency. As on previous occasions, he may have shared the title with his mother, but it was clear that she had been appointed to act on his behalf once more, and his power was very much circumscribed by hers. The fact that William had so often chosen his wife over their eldest son as regent of Normandy was due at least as much to his faith in her as to his antipathy toward Robert—an antipathy that would soon have disastrous consequences.

Matilda had done much to earn William’s faith, in contrast to his half-brother, Odo, and his late right-hand man, William fitzOsbern, to whom he had entrusted the viceregency of England during most of his visits to Normandy. Odo in particular was motivated more by a desire for self-aggrandizement than by loyalty to his overlord. By the 1080s, he owned land in twenty-two English counties, which gave him an annual income of around £3,000—a staggering sum for the time.
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Orderic Vitalis describes him as “a second king,” whose authority was “greater than all earls and other magnates in the kingdom.” The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
agrees that he was “the foremost man next to the king,” and Eadmer describes his power as “absolute.”
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Although he was a high-ranking churchman, Odo’s piety was questionable. “In this man … vices were mingled with virtues, but he was more given to worldly affairs than to spiritual contemplation.” He did not scruple to plunder the English church for his own gain.
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There is evidence to suggest that both Odo and fitzOsbern encouraged cruelty and corruption by the Norman forces. Orderic Vitalis claims that the two men “were so swollen with pride that they would not deign to hear the reasonable plea of the English or give them impartial judgement … And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed.”
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The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
concurs that Odo and fitzOsbern “distressed the wretched folk.”
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This exacerbated
the already fragile relations between the English and their conquerors, and made the former even more ready to rebel. As a result, William was frequently obliged to cut short his stays in Normandy in order to deal with trouble in his new kingdom.