he served in his wars in Maine. The capture of the Camp of Refuge was followed by a short campaign in Scotland, which had become a retreat for disaffected Englishmen, and had been a continual source of danger ever since Malcolm Canmore its king had married Margaret, the sister of Edgar the Etheling. William now (1072) advanced to Abernethy on the Tay, and made peace there with Malcolm, whose homage he received for his fief of Cumberland. Then, at length, could William call himself master of England, in token of which he had himself crowned a second time.

While William was in Normandy in 1075, a great conspiracy grew up in England, which even shook the throne. The leaders in it were Norman barons, who had grown fretful under the restraints which William had placed on their power, and impatient of his exactions. The conspiracy was called "the Bridal of Norwich," because it was first mooted at a marriage feast in that town, when the Earl of Hereford, in direct opposition to the Conqueror's commands, gave his sister Emma to Raoul de Gael, Earl of Norfolk., Loud talking, breaking from the nobles

1075

flushed with wine, disclosed their secret grudges against William to one another. The timid Waltheof, last of the great Saxon earls, to whom William had given his niece Judith in marriage, was involved in the plot; but it is said that he betrayed its existence. The rebels sought for aid from Denmark; it came, but too late. Lanfranc, acting as regent for the absent king, proved equal to the crisis. Hurling the thunders of the Church against Hereford, he launched after them the more practical thunders of war, defeated the rebels at Swaffham,* cut off their right feet by scores, flung Hereford into prison, and drove Raoul to find a refuge in Bretagne. William returned to England, bursting with a desire for revenge. It fell heavily all around him-on none more heavily than on Waltheof of Northumbria, who had hoped to save his head by

* Swaffham, a market town of Norfolk, twenty-seven miles from Norwich.

After

turning king's evidence against his Norman associates. spending a year in prison, he laid down the life which a faithless wife had sworn away (1076).

William reigned peacefully during the next ten years-peacefully as far as England was concerned. How his sons quarrelled continually, and how the eldest, Robert Curthose, rebelled against his father, holding out in the castle of Gerberoi in France, belong less to the history of England than to that of France (1078-79). Deeply the Conqueror must have felt that sting which is "sharper than a serpent's tooth."

*

1085

The celebrated Latin register of land known as Domesday Book† was an outgrowth of the feudal system; for since the army of the king depended on the distribution of the various manors and farms into which the land was parcelled, to know who held a certain piece of land became a matter of essential importance to the crown. Serving both as a basis for national taxation and as a muster-roll for the national army far into the Plantagenet centuries, it has come down to us in two volumes, a larger and a smaller, to show what kind of England it was that the Conqueror subdued, and how fierce and far-stretching was the mailed grasp in which he clutched his unhappy prize. A great council, held at Gloucester in 1085, resolved upon the survey which resulted in these volumes. royal commission, passing through the various districts, called before them the sheriffs, the lords of manors, the parish priests, the reeves of hundreds, the bailiffs, and six villeins from every hamlet, who, being sworn to tell the truth, gave evidence as to the amount of land in the district, its distribution into wood, meadow, and pasture, its value, and the service due by its owners, and the number of its inhabitants, both freemen and

* Gerberoi, a strong castle on the inner border of Normandy.

A

+ Some have thought that the title Domesday refers to the Day of Judgment. A Celtic derivation forms it from dom, a lord, and deya, a proclamation-that is, the king's proclamation to his tenants. Stow says that it is a corruption of domus dei, the name of that room in the royal treasury where the volumes were kept.

serfs. The survey was not complete. The northern counties, and some of the western, were in a semi-desert state. But as far as it went, the work was most thoroughly done. When it was completed, the king called a great council of the barons, clergy, and landowners at Salisbury, and required every one of them to take the oath of allegiance to him, and to become his man (August 1086).

A coarse jest of the French king, reflecting on William's corpulence, led the fiery Conqueror into his last war. While he was besieging Mantes,* his horse trod on a hot cinder; which caused it to plunge so violently that the king was thrown on the high fore-peak of the saddle and seriously injured. Inflam

mation and fever following, he died in a short time at 1087 Rouen, where his body, stripped naked by the robberservants who had watched his dying hours, was borne to Caen, and there huddled into an ignoble grave on which no tears fell. Meanwhile Robert was lazily trying on the coronet of Normandy; William, with prow turned to the English shore, was cutting the waves of the Channel; and Henry was counting the five thousand pounds of silver which had descended to him from his mother's inheritance. †

* Mantes, a town on the Seine, thirty-four miles from Paris.

They

The Channel Islands, only existing relic of the English dominions bevond the Channel, became appendages of the English crown at the Norman Conquest. thus form our first acquisition of territory beyond the circle of our island shore.

CHAPTER II.

GROWTH OF THE CHURCH AND THE BARONS.

Reliance on the people-Mortgage of Normandy-Death of Rufus-Beauclerc's marriage-Tenchebrai-Anselm-Investitures-Policy of Beauclerc The Blanche Nef-Death of Henry-Civil war- Battle of the Standard-Treaty of Wallingford-Death of Stephen.

HE reigns of William Rufus, Henry Beauclerc, and

THE Stephen of Blois, the sons and the nephew of the Con

queror, filling together sixty-seven years, demand no lengthened narrative. The first, especially, may be disposed of in a few sentences. The Red King was fierce, cruel, and extortionate, but he pursued with great determination the line of policy laid down by his father. When the barons, headed by Odo, showed an inclination to favour his brother Robert, he was forced

to rely on the support and loyalty of the English 1088 people. That was the one gain from a reign otherwise barren. After crushing the plot of Odo and hunting that restless priest across the Channel, Rufus went to Normandy. A tedious war ended in a compromise, by which it was agreed that whichever of the two brothers survived should wear both crown and coronet, unless the dead ruler left a child. A war of no great importance with Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotlanda war with the Mowbrays of Northumbria, who had uplifted the banner of revolt against their feudal lord--an unsuccessful raid into Wales-spent much English blood to little purpose. During the reign of Rufus the First Crusade began. Robert, (875)

9

whose bravery somewhat atones to the reader of history for his laziness, was seized with the spirit of the time. He resolved to go, if he could raise the necessary funds. Grasping at the

chance with avidity, William agreed to advance ten thousand marks for five years, Normandy being handed over as a pledge of payment. This happened in 1096. Four years later, some charcoal-burners, wending through a silent glade of the New Forest in the red light of an autumn evening, found a corpse clad in a rich hunting suit lying upon the grass in a bloody pool which had trickled from an arrowwound. It was Rufus, shot dead by some unknown hand.

1100

Having seized the treasures of Winchester, Henry could scoff at any claims on the English crown which might be advanced by his eldest brother, now returning from the Holy Land. By scattering gold, by lightening taxes, by filling vacant livings, and by repealing obnoxious laws, he attached a strong party of both nobles and clergy to his throne; and by marrying the Lady Edith, niece of Edgar the Etheling and a representative of the Saxon royal line, he took the first step toward that blending of the conquering and the conquered races which resulted in the birth of the great English nation. This nun-like queen, known to history as the good Maud (she assumed the Norman name of Matilda on her marriage), retired, after she had borne a son and a daughter, from the uncongenial court to quiet convent walls, within which she gave herself up to music, study, and the delights of charity.

The annexation of Normandy to England is a principal feature of Henry's reign. Flambard, escaping from prison, induced Robert to invade England. Henry bought off the invader, but soon snapped all ties of blood and treaty by pouring his soldiers across the sea, and defeating the Norman forces in the battle of Tenchebrai, which consigned Robert to lifelong imprisonment

* Tenchebrai or Tinchebrai is in the north-west of the department of Orne, near the source of the Noireau, and not far from Mortain.