CHAPTER VIII.

Charges brought against King William-Efforts to destroy the English language-Norman French or Romance Walloon tongue-In fashion with all ranks-Question of investitures-Dispute with Pope Gregory VII.-William carries his point-Hereditary succession-Primogeniture-Doomsday Book-Inclosures-Forest laws-Anecdotes of the great land commission-Ingenious modes of enriching the treasuryPartial legislation-Rapacity and avarice of Norman lords and bishops-Ŏdo, Bishop of Bayeux-His immense wealth-AmbitionAttempts to sail for Rome-Arrested by William in person-Illness and death of Queen Matilda-The Conqueror's grief-Character of his consort-Architectural labours of William and his consort-Their patronage of art-Improvements - Charters-Charges against her memory-Absurd and unfounded-Threats of foreign invasion-Mercenary troops-Rise of the Crusades-Not encouraged by WilliamSummons a general council at Salisbury-Sets out for NormandyRupture with Philip of France-Devastates the country-A truceIllness of the Conqueror-Sarcasm of the French king-How resented by William-Invasion of France-Accident at the capture of Mantes —Last illness and death-Speech attributed to him-Character of the Conqueror-By the Saxons-By the Normans-Faults of characterAdvantages derived from his firm and severe government-His great qualities-Funeral obsequies-Strange interruptions-Singular incidents-Subsequent disinterments-Portraits of the Conqueror-Personal appearance and demeanour-Bayeux tapestry-His great seal -Dissertation regarding his spurs and spoon.

WILLIAM has been charged by most English cotemporary writers with attempting to employ his power as a conqueror to destroy the English language, an undertaking hardly consistent with his acknowledged judgment and penetration in regard to human affairs. The Norman or French was naturally retained and spoken by the nobles and at the court, whence it was diffused through the higher ranks and the middle orders of society, likewise vassals, knights, and clergy, but without ever pervading the great body of the English people. That, however, there existed not merely a wish but that attempts also were made for its partial substitution, as far as practicable, there was sufficient evidence in the law courts, in public acts as well as in the schools, and in the feudal institutes of the times. Beyond these, the effort, if seriously made, was not successful.

The impression produced by such a conquest, at the same time, was so great that the Norman-French continued to be the vehicle of correspondence, of the religious services, of the national laws, and other public records, up to the reign of the third Edward. The native language, indeed, was adopted to serve special purposes, and on peculiar occasions, as in conducting business with the inferior vassals, the subordinate agents and the bulk of the freemen, common people, and serfs, all of whom seemed instinctively to agree in repudiating that of the Conqueror. This became a traditional legacy, a repugnance which is scarcely yet worn out among the country gentry, the agricultural class, and peasantry of every degree below them.

In the supreme courts and in private circles, the NormanFrench was exclusively employed, and it became a sort of fashion for the English of different ranks to follow the example set before them. The English language, then, was preserved only, like a sacred delegated treasure, along with the memory of freer laws and simpler customs, in the heart of the people. Though betrayed by all other ranks-by lords and prelates and knights, with their host of underlings, aided by a Norman police and Norman soldiers ever ready at their beck-the old Anglo-Saxon customs and manners threw their shield over the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare. The spirit of constitutional liberty bade them defiance to the last; still developing, and to be developed, and seeking a temporary refuge from the storm in the breasts of English yeomen".

Yet it is difficult to believe that William was so infatuated by success as to suppose that he could obliterate by any power of oppression the language of a whole people. Whatever were his real motives, his reputed desire to gain a perfect knowledge of that language in his maturer years does not indicate a design to extirpate it: and he had too many real foes to encounter to dream of destroying his best and most enduring monument, destined to spread to the remotest regions the knowledge of his name, his power, and his greatness. There was neither honour nor profit to be derived from such a conquest.

He was, moreover, engaged in a more hopeful contest, about this period, with Pope Hildebrand (Gregory VII.,) the successor of Alexander II., on the perplexing subject of investitures, the right to which that pontiff again claimed, threatening to summon all the powers of Europe to his aid. William had

7 Henry; Lingard; Mackintosh; Alison.

both a difficult and a delicate part to play. There was scarcely a potentate of the age whom this fiery pontiff had not excommunicated, not excepting the dreaded scourge of the Church, the freebooting Guiscard himself. Yet so submissively had even this adventurer received the paternal chastisement as afterwards to come to his Holiness's rescue, when hard pressed in the castle of St. Angelo, by the Emperor Henry IV. The king therefore had to deal with a man very different from his predecessor-equally fiery, more haughty, and as ambitious as

himself.

Gregory now called upon him to do homage for his crown to the Holy See, and to transmit the tribute, as his predecessors had before done, alluding to the Peter-pence, which had been voluntarily bestowed as a charity by the Anglo-Saxon monarchs.

The king consented to the payment, but declined the homage; and, farther to show his sense of independence, he refused permission to the English prelates to attend the Papal council summoned to condemn the refractory children of the one Church. After many threats and a variety of ingenious stratagems employed on both sides, William, not a whit dismayed by the failure of the Emperor Henry, persevered in his purpose, and contrived to retain the right contended for up to the close of his reign. But while he thus strenuously opposed his more daring and powerful rivals, few men were more mild to an unresisting enemy. Unfortunately, the repeated conspiracies of the nobles and the hostile spirit of the English had provoked him into acts of cruelty and oppression, which have left a lasting stain upon his memory. Hence the barbarous policy, so opposed to every principle of just government and the progress of civilization, of seizing the lands of the people, the endowments of the church farms, hamlets, and freeholds, to throw them back into forests and parks, restoring them to their aboriginal dwellers for the pleasure of again destroying them, deserves the reprobation of all wise lawgivers: nor less so those absurd and oppressive statutes for their protection, enacting penalties of the most harsh and intolerable kind against the exercise of a natural right, many of which, to the disgrace of common sense and humanity, have been allowed to continue unrepealed to the present day. Our early poets, as well as our historians,

8 Hume; Hallam; Alison; Mackintosh.

Nouvelle Hist. de Nor.; Chron. de Nor.; Hume; Henry; Lingard; Mackintosh.

dwell with mournful interest upon the depopulating character of these royal and arbitrary enclosures-a bold example not lost upon a grasping aristocracy intent on extending their feudal power.

The picture drawn by Drayton of the New Forest is touching in the extreme. Nor did this all-devouring and avaricious spirit of William's government, from the king down to his lowest officers, escape the justly satiric lashes of other English writers, didactic, moral, and dramatic. Here, as in William's other laws, the grand evil and fruitful source of so many national grievances lay not so much in abrogating the old Saxon laws, as in aggravating their faults and increasing their severity. It was their administration under the feudal system, as in the game and forest laws, in the confiscatory principle, and the amassing of land and other property in few hands, after the Norman domination, instead of the equal and just division among families, which then, as since, led to an intolerable state of national grievance and calamity.

If any proofs were wanting of the results of such a policy, they are to be found in the grand national census commenced by William in the year 1081.1 Ever active and energetic, it was no onerous task for a mind early habituated to the details of public business to draw out a model scheme by which to ascertain the nature and extent of all the lands-the whole tangible property throughout England. The comparative value of them in the last reign and the present showed, in many instances, a striking deterioration consequent upon the transfer and amalgamation of smaller farms and tenements into one under the same feudal head.

Still, though undertaken from interested motives, it was highly curious and useful as a lasting record of the national wealth and possessions. This, William had the sole merit of devising, maturing, and putting into complete execution. It was the natural as well as the last and best result of his great Norman system, which by its power of centralization was intimately connected with the previous stages of its progress. From its public utility, also, in the ascertaining of descents and titles, showing just cause of occupation as against all other claimants, including the crown, this general land registry has been thought

iNouvelle Hist. de Nor.; Chron. de Nor. Other writers assert that it was begun in 1078; a third party in 1080. It was not finished till near the close of his reign, if we may believe Ingulphus, the very learned but somewhat apocryphal abbot of Croyland."

to do him more honour than all his victories, though it boasted the not very attractive title of Doomsday-book.

The survey was conducted by commissioners, who took their information upon oath, with regard to the following particulars -the names of all the occupants; the name of every town and village who held them in King Edward's days-who are now in possession? how many freemen, villeins, and cottagers it contains? how many hides of land in each manor ? how many of the latter in each demesne? how much wood-land, meadow, and pasture? how much the demesne paid in taxes in King Edward's days, and how much now? How many mills are there, and streams, and fish-ponds?

This grand inquisitorial registry, like the feudal system itself, took cognizance of the smallest particulars on which to found a knowledge of the resources of the country, and how far its capabilities for bearing imposts might extend. By its means William contrived to raise his annual revenue to the amount of 400,000l., a sum equal to at least five millions of our present currency. But this grand item was independent of other sources of income, in the shape of feudal privileges and royal perquisites, fines, and forfeitures, licenses for buying and selling, for granting leave to marry, charters, grants, titles, &c., which

2 Henry, Hist. of England; Mackintosh; Kennett; Rapin; Alison; Brodie.

3 To determine the number of each of these divisions of the people, and the whole amount of the population, at the close of the Saxon period, is a problem which we have not the means of solving, notwithstanding the uncommon assistance which we derive from the great survey of the kingdom. It is true that Doomsday Book has not yet been critically examined for that purpose. But it may be doubted whether, if it were, all our difficulties would disappear. Of the thirty-four counties examined by Mr. Turner, four have no persons called slaves, and two of these are the extensive counties of York and Lincoln; while the proportion of slaves to the body of the intermediate class, containing villeins, bordars, and cottars, was in Nottingham as one to a hundred and fifty, in Derby as one to a hundred and thirty-nine, in Somerset as about one to six, and in Devon nearly one to four.

The population of England, according to Mr. Turner's Tables, after the desolation of the northern counties, was about 1,700,000 souls. If we were to throw our intermediate class among slaves, the number of freemen would be reduced below all probability. On the other hand, as long as it is allowed that the villeins, cottars, and bordars were bound by their tenures to serve their masters in agriculture, there is no improbability in the small number of those reduced to the lowest slavery.— Mackintosh, History of England, i. 78; Turner, Ang. Sax. Hist. iii 284-297.