The Norman Conquest (14 page)

Edward and his advisers must have believed that they could manage perfectly well by relying on the established royal right to raise an army (or a navy – the sources make little distinction) on demand as the need arose. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 1008 Æthelred the Unready had demanded a helmet and coat of mail from every eight hides of land in England – a demand which, given that the kingdom contained some 80,000 hides, suggests an army of around 10,000 men. Similarly, we know from the Domesday Book that in Edward’s own day the rule in Berkshire was for every five hides of land to supply and subsidize one soldier for a two-month period – a system which, if applied across the whole kingdom, would have produced a 16,000-man host.
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Thus when in the spring of 1052 the king and his counsellors got wind that Godwine was preparing to invade, a fleet was raised by just such conventional means and assembled at Sandwich. The C Chronicle tells us that it was formed of forty small vessels, and the E Chronicle adds that it was captained by two of Edward’s new earls, Ralph and Odda.

When, after a lengthy wait, Godwine sailed at midsummer, it seemed as if the king’s ships might be a sufficient deterrent. Although the earl slipped past Sandwich and made a landing further along the Kent coast, he was pursued by Ralph and Odda and forced to keep moving. A storm in the Channel subsequently caused Godwine to sail back to Flanders and the king’s fleet to return to Sandwich.

Not long afterwards, however, the disadvantages of relying on a non-professional navy became apparent. As the E Chronicle explains, the king’s ships were ordered back to London to receive new crews and captains, but long delays meant that ‘the fleet did not move, and they all went home’.

This dispersal of the royal forces gave Godwine his chance. Again he set sail for England, this time harrying the Isle of Wight and linking arms with his sons Harold and Leofwine, who had raised a fleet of their own from Ireland. Probably towards the end of August, their combined armada sailed east along the coasts of Sussex and Kent, seizing provisions, ships and hostages, and recruiting more and more men to their banner. By the time they reached Sandwich, they had, according to the C Chronicler, ‘an overwhelming host’. ‘The sea was covered with ships’, says the
Life of King Edward
. ‘The sky glittered with the press of weapons.’

Had there still been a royal navy stationed in Sandwich, the Godwines could hardly have achieved such success. But Edward, although aware of his enemies’ return, was struggling to assemble a force with which to oppose them. ‘He sent up country for reinforcements’, says the C Chronicle, ‘but they were very slow in coming.’

And so Godwine and his sons were able to sail their fleet unopposed along the north Kent coast and up the River Thames. On Monday 14 September they reached London and stationed themselves at Southwark on the river’s southern bank. By this time the king had succeeded in assembling a fleet of fifty ships and also a large army. The Godwines sent a message to him, demanding the restoration of their lands and titles. Edward sent back an angry refusal. It was, in short, an almost exact replay of the previous autumn, with the two sides once again separated by the River Thames, each waiting for the other to blink.

But this time round the advantage clearly lay with Godwine. During his absence public opinion seems to have swung behind
him, possibly because Englishmen were against the idea of a Norman succession; certainly all versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are at this point laced with ill-disguised hostility towards the king’s Norman advisers. The
Life of King Edward
says that reinforcements were swelling the earl’s ranks from all directions, while the Chronicle informs us that the citizens of London were also quick to fall in with his wishes. It seems obvious that, as the
Life
claims, the military superiority lay with Godwine, and that no one was prepared to risk a civil war by fighting for Edward. The earl had stopped at Southwark that Monday morning at low tide, but all day long the tide had been rising in his favour. When it reached its peak his fleet raised anchor and swung across the river to encircle the king’s ships on the opposite bank. Godwine’s supporters reportedly had to be restrained from attacking the royal forces. Negotiations followed, and an exchange of hostages, but everyone realized that this was now checkmate.

The king’s Norman friends certainly realized it, and responded by mounting their horses and fleeing. Some went north, says the Chronicle, and others rode west. Robert of Jumièges and his companions forced their way out of London’s east gate, slaying those who tried to stop them, and hastening all the way to the headland in Essex known as the Naze. There the archbishop committed himself to a boat that was barely sea-worthy and risked a dangerous voyage across the Channel to Normandy. The E version of the Chronicle, pro-Godwine in its sympathies, was pleased to note that in his haste Robert left behind his pallium, and opined that this proved that God had not wanted him to be archbishop in the first place.

The next morning a council met outside of London, and the revolution of the previous year was formally reversed. Godwine ostentatiously begged Edward’s forgiveness, claiming he and his family were innocent of all the charges brought against them. The king, barely able to contain his fury, had no option but to grant his pardon and restore to the earl and his sons their confiscated estates. The council ratified the complete friendship between them, says the C Chronicle, and made a promise of good laws to the whole nation. Archbishop Robert was declared an outlaw, adds the E Chronicle, together with all the Frenchmen, ‘for they had mainly been responsible for the discord that had arisen between Godwine and the king’. A short time later, concludes the
Life of King Edward
, now that the
storm had finally subsided,’the queen, the earl’s daughter, was brought back to the king’s bedchamber’.
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It was now abundantly clear that there was not going to be a Norman succession. Robert of Jumièges, once he recovered from his perilous crossing of the Channel, was probably the first to relate to the duke of Normandy the terrible turn that events in England had taken.

But by the time the archbishop arrived in Normandy that autumn, events in England were the least of William’s worries.

5

Holy Warriors

L
ike Edward the Confessor, William of Normandy had begun the year 1052 with a sense of triumph, having successfully bested a fearsome opponent.

The man in question was Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou. Son of the notorious Fulk Nerra, whose skills as a warlord and castle-builder had transformed Anjou into one of France’s great principalities, Geoffrey was a figure cast very much in his father’s mould. His surname, which translates as ‘the Hammer’, was later said to be self-awarded, and signified his belief that he could beat anyone into submission. ‘A man of overweening pride’, confirmed the contemporary William of Poitiers, but also a man ‘remarkably skilled and experienced in the art of war’.
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Even before he succeeded his father in 1040, Geoffrey had been pursuing the same policy of ruthless expansion, capturing his neighbours in battle and detaining them until they agreed to his extortionate demands: both the count of Poitou to the south and the count of Blois-Chartres to the east had suffered in this way and been forced to cede territory. But when in 1047 Geoffrey moved northwards into Maine and seized and imprisoned the bishop of Le Mans, his other neighbours eventually decided that something had to be done. Two years later, the king of France summoned a coalition army of other French rulers and led a punitive invasion of Anjou. The duke of Normandy, being heavily in the king’s debt since the battle of Val-ès-Dunes, naturally rode by his sovereign’s side.
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But despite the invasion, and excommunication by the pope,
Geoffrey continued to grow stronger. He refused to relinquish his grip on the bishop of Le Mans in the hope of extending his power northwards, and in 1051 that ambition was realized. In March that year the young count of Maine died, and the citizens of Le Mans invited Geoffrey to come and take over the whole county.
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This was ominous news for Normandy, for Maine had been a buffer with Anjou. From March 1051 the expansion of Anjou menaced Normandy directly, and indeed it was probably soon after that date that Geoffrey invaded the duchy, seizing the town of Alencon.
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No doubt he considered this justifiable revenge for William’s participation in the earlier invasion of Anjou, but the doubly distressing fact for the duke was that here too the invader had come by invitation. The lords of Alencon, who took their name from nearby Bellême, held lands that straddled the border between Maine and Normandy, and, like border families everywhere, they tended to wear their loyalties lightly as a result. After Geoffrey had advanced into Maine they evidently decided that he, not William, was their preferred overlord, and threw open the gates of Alencon in welcome.

William responded forcefully, but indirectly, laying siege to the Bellême stronghold of Domfront, a fortified town some thirty-five miles to the west of Alençon but on the Maine side of the border. A short while later Count Geoffrey advanced with an army towards Domfront, intending to raise the siege, but withdrew on hearing that William was advancing to meet him with an army of his own (a fact that William of Poitiers naturally made much of). With his men up in arms and the way ahead suddenly clear, the duke proceeded towards his own town of Alençon, which fell very quickly: ‘almost without a battle’, says William of Poitiers.

Poitiers is in fact being rather coy. A fuller version of the encounter given by William of Jumièges reveals that the duke rode through the night to reach Alençon, but on his arrival was confronted by the defenders of a fortress, set apart from the town itself, who mocked him with insults. Orderic Vitalis, adding to Jumièges’ account, explains that the men inside the fortress beat animal skins and shouted ‘pelterer’ at William – the joke apparently being that his mother’s family, as undertakers, had also worked with skins. Suffice to say, the duke was unamused. In short order the fort was attacked and its defenders captured. Then, ‘under the eyes of all the inhabitants of
Alençon’, William ordered his mockers maimed. Thirty-two men, says Orderic, had their hands and feet cut off. It was a spectacle sufficiently horrifying that the citizens of Alençon immediately surrendered, fearing that they would receive similar treatment if they held out any longer. Nor was it just Alençon. When news of the duke’s actions reached Domfront, the defenders there also decided that submission would be the wisest course of action.

Thus, by a calculated act of brutality which provides us with an early character note, William swiftly regained one town and acquired another into the bargain. ‘The victor returned home and made his whole native land famous by his recent glory and triumph,’ says William of Poitiers, resuming his airbrushed panegyric, ‘at the same time inspiring even great love and terror everywhere.’
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It is likely that the siege of Alençon was over before the end of 1051, leaving William free to cross the Channel and visit Edward the Confessor before the year was out. But, like Edward, William soon discovered how quickly fortune’s wheel could turn. A few months after his victory, the duke made the alarming discovery that the king of France and Geoffrey Martel had sunk their differences and forged a new alliance. The first we hear of it – and perhaps the first William knew of it – is a charter of August 1052, which shows Geoffrey keeping company with the king at Orleans.

What had driven the former enemies into each other’s arms, it is clear, was their shared anxiety about Normandy. No longer was William a desperate teenager who needed to be saved from his own subjects. On the contrary, he was a rising star, with a burgeoning reputation in arms and a marriage that allied him to the count of Flanders. But, most of all, he was now the recognized heir to the kingdom of England. If he succeeded to the English throne, he would become the most powerful figure in France, able to deploy England’s vast wealth and resources in any future Continental struggles. This, one suspects, was the development that drew Anjou and France together.

William, for his part, immediately realized the implications of the rapprochement. The friendship between France and Normandy, assiduously cultivated by his ancestors and maintained in his own time, was over. In September 1052, just weeks after the visit of Count Geoffrey, we find William himself at Henry I’s court. Doubtless he
tried hard to dissuade his overlord from this change of heart, but evidently without success, for this is the last occasion we find the two men in each other’s company. ‘King Henry conceived a cruel enmity towards him,’ says William of Poitiers, ‘persuaded by the eloquence of evil men.’
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It was not long before enmity became open hostility. Henry’s first move was to sponsor a rebellion within Normandy itself, led by a senior member of William’s own family. The count of Arques – yet another William, unhelpfully – was the duke’s half-uncle, a son of Richard II by a second marriage. During the minority he had been pre-eminent among ducal counsellors, and had been rewarded with vast estates in Upper Normandy. But thereafter, for reasons unknown, he had become disaffected: William of Poitiers reports that he deserted from the siege of Domfront, and that as a result the castle he had built at Arques (near Dieppe) had been confiscated.
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It was by retaking Arques that the count signalled the start of his rebellion. At some point, probably in the first half of 1053, he bribed the ducal garrison, re-entered the castle and began plundering the surrounding countryside to stock it for war. William, warned that almost the whole of Upper Normandy was in revolt against him, responded swiftly and succeeded in forcing the count to retreat inside the castle walls. The fortress itself, however, could not be easily recaptured. ‘A rampart of pride and folly’, as William of Poitiers described it, Arques was probably the mightiest castle in all of Normandy. The duke’s only option was to build a siege castle to confine the rebels, with the hope of eventually starving them into submission.
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