"Tell the Count of Anjou," said he to William Fitz Osborn and Roger Montgomery, his messengers, "that if he attempts to carry victuals into Domfront, he will find me before the gates, mounted on a bay horse, and with a red shield. And that he may know me the better, I shall have at the point of my lance a streamer of taffety, to wipe his face withal."
In the battle which followed, a few days after, William fulfilled his threat, by overthrowing the Count, who escaped with difficulty, with the loss of part of an ear, and was soon after obliged to conclude a peace.
William married Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders, and of a sister of Duke Robert the Magnificent; and having omitted to ask the dispensation from the Pope, which was required on the marriage of such near relations, his uncle, the Archbishop of Rouen, laid them both under sentence of excommunication. William sought for an advocate to send to Rome to plead for their absolution, and his choice fell upon Lanfranc, a native of Lombardy, who had been bred as a lawyer, and was possessed of great learning and talent, but had chosen to embrace the monastic life, and had selected the Norman abbey of Bee as the place of his profession, because the monks there were very poor, and very strict in the observance of their rule. Lanfranc, at the Duke's desire, travelled to Rome, and there succeeded in obtaining the confirmation of the marriage, and the absolution of the bride and bridegroom, on condition of their each founding an abbey, and jointly building a hospital for the blind.
In accordance with this command, Matilda built the beautiful Abbaye aux Dames at Caen, where her eldest daughter, Cecile, afterward took the veil, and William founded, at the same place, the Abbey of St. Stephen, of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken from a number of poor people; and where could the blessing of Heaven have been?
Twenty-three years afterward a grave was dug in the noble choir of St. Stephen's Church, and William's corpse was carried through the porch, followed by a long train of nobles, knights, and clergy, but by not one of his numerous children. The requiem was chanted, and orations were made in praise of the Duke of Normandy, the King and Conqueror of England, the founder of abbeys, the builder of churches, when suddenly the cry of "Ha Ro!"-the Norman appeal for justice-was heard, and a man in mean garments stood forth, and spoke thus: "Clerks and Bishops, this ground is mine. Here was my father's hearth. The man whom you praise wrested it from me to build this church. I sold it not. I made no grant of it. It is my right, and I claim it. In the name of Rollo, the founder of his family, and of our laws, I forbid you to lay the body of the spoiler therein, or to cover it with my earth."
The Bishops were obliged to promise satisfaction to the man, and to pay him on the spot sixty pence as the price of the Conqueror's grave. But, even then, his bones were not permitted to rest in peace. In the course of the civil wars of France, his tomb was twice broken open by the Huguenots, the first time rifled of the royal ornaments in which he had been arrayed, and the second, the spoilers, disappointed of their expected prize, cast out the mouldering bones, and dispersed them.
CAMEO IV. EARL GODWIN. (1012-1052.)
_Kings of England_.
1013. Swein.
1014. Knut.
1015. Ethelred the Unready (restored).
1016. Edmund Ironside.
1018. Knut.
1036. Harold I.
1039. Harthaknut.
1041. Edward the Confessor.
The Danish conquest of England, although the power of the kings of that nation continued but a short time, made great changes in the condition of the country. The customs and laws that had hitherto been observed only in the lands granted by Alfred to the Danes, spread into almost all the kingdom, and the civilization which the great king had striven so hard to introduce was well-nigh swept away.
England might be considered to be in three divisions-the West Saxon, subject to the laws of Alfred; the Mercian, which had a law of its own; and the East Anglian and Northern portion, where the population was chiefly Danish, and which was therefore more under the immediate power of the Danish kings. Under them, London became the royal residence, instead of Winchester, and several words in our language still attest their influence upon our customs. Of these is the word Hustings, for a place of public assembly; and the title of Earl, for which the English language afforded no feminine, till it borrowed the word Countess from the French, reminds us that the Northern Jarls were only governors during the king's pleasure, and that their dignity conferred no rank on their families.
Under the Danish kings, the other divisions of England fell under the rule of three great Earls. The Danish Northumbria was ruled by the great Northman Siward Bjorn; Mercia was governed by the house of Leofric, an old noble family connected with the ancient line of Mercian kings.
There were many of this family named Leofric, and it is probably of the one living at this time that the curious old tradition of Coventry belongs, which related how his wife, the Lady Godiva, rode through the town with no covering but her abundant hair, to obtain from him the remission of the townspeople from his oppressive exactions-a story of which the memory is kept up at Coventry by a holiday, and the procession of the Lady Godiva.
Wessex had become the portion of Godwin, son of Ulfnoth, and great-nephew to the traitor, Edric Streona, the murderer of Edmund Ironside. There is a story, probably a mere fiction, that this family was of mean origin, that Ulfnoth was a herdsman of the south of Warwickshire, and that Godwin first rose to distinction in the following manner: Ulf, a Danish Jarl, who had married a sister of Knut, was separated from the army after one of the battles with Edmund Ironside, and after wandering all night, met in the morning with a youth driving a herd of cattle. He asked his name, and the reply was, "I am Godwin, the son of Ulfnoth; and you, I think, are a Dane."
Ulf confessed that he was, and begged the young man to show him the way to the Severn, where he expected to find the fleet.
"The Dane would be a fool who trusted to a Saxon," answered Godwin; and when Ulf continued his entreaties, he explained that the way was not long, but that the serfs were all in arms against the Danes, and would kill both him and any one whom they found guiding him. Ulf offered the young herdsman a golden ring for his reward. He looked at it a moment, then said, "I will take nothing from you, but I will be your guide," and led him home to his father's cottage, where he was hidden through the whole day. At night, when he prepared to set forth, Ulfnoth told him that Godwin would not be able to return, since the peasants would kill him for having protected a Dane, and therefore begged that the Jarl would keep him among his own people, and present him to the King.
Ulf promised, and this, it is said, was the foundation of Godwin's greatness; but there is great reason to doubt the tale, and it is far more probable that the family was anciently noble. Godwin married Gyda, the sister of Ulf, and thus was brought into near connection with Knut; but Ulf, his patron and brother-in-law, soon after was killed in one of those outbursts of violence and cruelty to which Knut seemed to return whenever he went back to his own savage North.
Knut had been defeated by the Swedes at Helge, and was at Roskild, when he was playing at chess in the evening with Ulf, and, making an oversight, lost a knight. He took the piece back again, changed his move, and desired his opponent to go on playing; but the Jarl, choosing to play chess on equal terms or not at all, threw down the board, and went away.