The Norman Conquest (4 page)

On the face of it, Normandy might seem a strange place for anyone to go in order to escape the Vikings, because it had begun life as a Viking colony. At the start of the tenth century, having been dissuaded from attacking England by the kings of Wessex, a group of Norsemen had crossed to France and concentrated on ravaging the area around Rouen. Like the Vikings who had visited England a generation earlier, these invaders arrived intending to stay; they differed from their cousins in England in that they were successful. Try as they might, the kings, dukes and counts of France could not dislodge their new Scandinavian neighbours; by the end of the tenth century, the Viking rulers of Rouen controlled an area equivalent to the former French province of Neustria. But by then it had acquired a new name. It was now Normannia, ‘the land of the Norseman’.
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For Æthelred and his sons, however, it was not a case of ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’, because in the century since their first arrival, the Norsemen of Normandy had been evolving rapidly. It
was obvious from their names. Their first leader bore the suitably-Viking name of Rollo, or Hrolfr. His son and grandson, by contrast, had been given the French names William and Richard. They had also (as their new names imply) converted from paganism to Christianity. Gradually their followers did the same, shedding their Viking ways and adopting Continental ones. They learned to speak French, increasingly using it instead of their original Norse tongue, and their leaders began to style themselves with French titles: ‘count’ at first, and then, when they were feeling even grander, ‘duke’. Eventually, they ceased fighting to expand Normandy’s borders and entered into more settled relations with their neighbours. Counts William and Richard, for example, were both married to French princesses.

The extent to which Normandy had cast off its connections to the Viking north, a vexed question for modern historians, was also a matter of great moment to King Æthelred.
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When, at the start of his reign, the Vikings had returned to England after their long absence, they naturally looked upon Rouen as a friendly port of call. It was a handy place to put in for repairs during the winter, and plunder from England— gold, silver and slaves— could be conveniently unloaded there for profit rather than sailed all the way back to Scandinavia. Æthelred was understandably keen to dissuade the Normans from engaging in this trade; he tried both force (an unsuccessful attack on Normandy) and diplomacy (a treaty in 991), but neither had much long-term success in reducing the number of Viking fleets that put into Rouen laden with English loot. The king’s diplomatic initiative did, however, have one result with far-reaching consequences. In the spring of 1002, Æthelred agreed to marry the sister of the new Norman duke, Richard II. Her name was Emma.

It is difficult, of course, to assess people’s personalities, never mind their personal relationships, at a distance of 1,000 years, but it is probably fair to say that, despite the participation of papal legates, the marriage of Æthelred and Emma was not a match made in heaven. The couple, it is true, got on well enough to produce three children: Edward, the future Confessor, his brother Alfred, and their sister, Godgifu. But since Æthelred had six sons by a previous marriage, the production of more male heirs was hardly a top priority. The match with Emma was intended to stop Vikings seeking shelter
in Normandy, and this it signally failed to do. Only when the Vikings decided to conquer England in 1013 did Æthelred belatedly reap some benefit from having taken a Continental bride, which was, of course, a convenient cross-Channel bolt-hole. Whether Emma had any part in suggesting or arranging his reception is unclear. Tellingly, perhaps, the Chronicle records that she made her own way to Normandy, travelling separately from both her children and her husband.

In the event, Æthelred’s exile was remarkably short. Just a few weeks after his arrival in Normandy, his supplanter, King Swein, died suddenly, leaving the question of who would succeed him in suspense. The Viking army, camped in Lincolnshire, immediately declared in favour of Swein’s teenage son, but the English magnates decided to give Æthelred a second chance, and sent messengers inviting him to come home— but on conditional terms. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, they declared (in a phrase that provides one of the most damning indictments of Æthelred’s rule) that ‘no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past’.

Æthelred, being in no real position to negotiate, naturally accepted. If his subjects took him back, he promised, ‘he would be a gracious lord to them, and would remedy each one of the things which they all abhorred, and everything should be forgiven’. As a mark of his sincerity, the messengers who conveyed the king’s acceptance back to England were accompanied by his son, the youthful Edward the Confessor. ‘A complete and friendly agreement was reached and ratified with word and pledge on every side’, said the Chronicle, adding that shortly afterwards Æthelred himself crossed the Channel and was joyfully received by his subjects. In this new-found mood of national unity, the king achieved the one notable military success of his career, leading an army into Lincolnshire and driving the Danes out.
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Once they were gone, however, the mood of English co-operation quickly evaporated; very soon Æthelred was back to his old ways. The year after his return saw a fresh round of killings at court, orchestrated, as before, by his henchman, Eadric the Grabber. But the king’s attempt to neutralize his enemies served only to increase divisions: his eldest son by his first marriage, Edmund, now emerged
as the champion of a party of opposition. By September 1015, England was once again in total disarray; Æthelred was ill, and his heir apparent was in rebellion. It was at this moment that the Vikings returned, led by their new king, Cnut.

Today Cnut is generally remembered only for the story, first told in the twelfth century, that he once sat on the shore and ordered the waves not to wet him. This has the unfortunate effect of making him appear a comical character, which was anything but the case. ‘In your rage, Cnut, you mustered the red shields at sea’, sang a contemporary Norse poet, describing the invasion of 1015. ‘Dwellings and houses you burned, Prince, as you advanced, young though you were.’ When he had been forced to flee England the previous year and return to Scandinavia, Cnut had signalled his disappointment at English disloyalty by stopping off en route at Sandwich to unload the hostages taken by his father, minus their hands, ears and noses.
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With his return in 1015, a long-drawn-out and bloody struggle for England’s throne ensued. The English remained paralysed by their own rivalries until the following April, at which point Æthelred made an invaluable contribution to the war effort by dropping dead, clearing the way for Edmund to succeed him. For six months the new king led a spirited resistance— not for nothing was he later dubbed Edmund Ironside. Battle followed battle, and the Danes mostly had the worst of the fighting. In the end, however, the English cause was again fatally compromised by treachery. Eadric the Grabber, having gone over to Cnut at the first opportunity, had rejoined Edmund’s army in 1016 when the tide seemed to be turning. But when the two armies engaged in Essex in October that year, Eadric deserted again, ensuring a decisive Viking victory. Edmund’s death the following month, perhaps from wounds sustained in battle, ended all talk of truce and any hope of an English recovery. The crown passed to Cnut, and England once again had a Danish king.

In these dramatic, fast-moving events, the young Edward the Confessor finds no place. We can assume, from his role in the negotiations for his father’s return, that he was in England during these years, though we can safely dismiss the later Scandinavian legend that imagined him fighting alongside his half-brother Edmund, and at one point almost carving Cnut in two (at this time Edward was still no more than thirteen years old).
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With Cnut’s victory it became imperative for Edward and the rest of his family to flee the country
again. As the mutilated hostages of 1014 would no doubt have attested, the new king was not a man from whom to expect much mercy. Edward was lucky: before Christmas 1016 he managed to cross the Channel and return to Normandy, probably taking with him his younger brother Alfred and his sister Godgifu. The wisdom of their hasty exit quickly became apparent, as Cnut began his reign by ruthlessly eliminating potential rivals. Battles and natural causes had already reduced the number of Edward’s older half-brothers from six to one: the Danish king reduced it to zero by killing the sole survivor, Eadwig, at the same time dispatching any members of the English nobility whose loyalty seemed suspect. With grim satisfaction, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that Eadric the Grabber was among those executed.
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Amidst all the carnage there was one notable survivor: Edward’s mother, Emma, who contributed to the stability of the new regime in England in a wholly different way. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains, Cnut ‘ordered the widow of the late King Æthelred to be fetched as his wife’. This makes it sound as if Emma had little personal choice in the matter, which is probably the case; a Norman chronicler, writing not long afterwards, casually reports that she was captured in London by Cnut in the course of his conquest. Emma herself would later tell a different story: one which implied she had returned to Normandy after Æthelred’s death, and was wooed back by Cnut with promises and presents. As we will see in due course, Emma’s own testimony is riddled with half-truths and outright lies, so there is good reason to discount her version. Whichever way it happened, though, willingly or no, Emma became queen of England for a second time, providing a sense of continuity at Cnut’s court, but in the process abandoning her children to a life of cross-Channel exile.
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At this point, it becomes hard to follow the story of our protagonist, Edward the Confessor, for obvious reasons: few people at the time were interested in the affairs of a boy barely into his teens whose prospects must have seemed exceedingly dim. Later, once Edward had surprisingly become king of England, some Norman writers showed a retrospective interest in his youth. At the monastery of St Wandrille, for example, it was remembered around 1050 that Edward and his brother Alfred had been warmly welcomed by Normandy’s then duke, Richard II, ‘generously nurtured as if they
were his own sons, and as long as he lived they were kept in Normandy with the greatest honour’.
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While this may well be true, it is also fair to point out that there is no evidence that Richard did anything in particular to promote the interests of his English nephews (they apparently received no lands from him, for example). Some historians would argue that this was deliberate, supposing that the duke must have been involved in the remarriage of his sister Emma to Cnut, which actually represented a new alliance between England and Normandy. One of the conditions of such an alliance would obviously have been not to furnish the exiles with material aid, or to foster their hopes of reclaiming the English crown.
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Even if this was the case, however, it ceased to apply after Richard’s death. In 1026 the old duke, after a long rule of thirty years, was succeeded by his namesake eldest son— but only for a short time. Barely a year later Duke Richard III was also dead— poisoned, some people whispered, by his rebellious younger brother, Robert. At this distance it is impossible to say whether there was any truth in this allegation, but Robert had certainly resented his brother’s pre-eminence, and swiftly stepped into his shoes as Normandy’s new ruler.
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Robert, it soon became clear, had not signed up to his father’s policy of quiet neutrality with regard to the English exiles. According to the most important Norman chronicler for this period, William of Jumièges, Edward and Alfred ‘were treated with so much honour by the duke that, bound to them by great love, he adopted them as brothers’. One historian has recently suggested that this meant the three young men had sworn oaths to each other, and become, in effect, blood brothers. That might seem to be stretching the evidence rather further than is strictly necessary: Robert, Edward and Alfred were already, of course, cousins by birth; they had all been born within a few years of each other, and had been raised together in the ducal household. It would be perfectly understandable if Robert felt compelled to champion his cousins’ cause.
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According to William of Jumièges, this is exactly what happened. The duke, we are told, sent envoys to Cnut, demanding the restoration of Edward and Alfred. Cnut, unsurprisingly, sent them back empty-handed, at which point Robert decided to mount an invasion on his cousins’ behalf. He commanded a great fleet to be constructed
‘from all the maritime regions of Normandy’ and assembled on the coast.

For a long time this was regarded as a cock-and-bull story by historians; apart from anything else, it seems suspiciously similar to the events of 1066. The most frustrating thing about William of Jumièges is that, although he first wrote his chronicle in the 1050s, we know that he subsequently revised it after the Norman Conquest; what we don’t know is which sections are original and which ones might have been improved with the benefit of hindsight. In this instance, however, the chronicler’s story finds considerable support in the dry administrative record. Jumièges tells us that the Norman fleet was assembled at the coastal town of Fécamp, and a charter issued by Duke Robert in 1033 shows he was indeed at Fécamp that year, probably at Easter, accompanied by both Edward and Alfred, who appear among the list of witnesses. If this provides a plausible date for the expedition, two other charters issued around the same time substantiate the notion that Edward in particular was entertaining hopes of reclaiming his birthright, for in each of them he is styled ‘king’. One is particularly interesting, as it is a charter issued by Edward himself in favour of the monks of Mont St Michel, another location mentioned in William of Jumièges’ account.
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