Leaders of the People: Studies in Democratic History
9781465655462
100 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The turbulent ambition of Norman barons threatened the sovereignity of William the Conqueror and of his son, the Red King, often enough, but these outbreaks promised no liberty for England. The fires of English revolt were stamped out utterly five years after Senlac, and the great Conqueror at his death left England crushed; but he left it under the discipline of religion, and he left it loyal to the authority of the crown, grateful for the one protection against the lawless rule of the barons. The English Chronicler, writing as “one who knew him and once lived at his court,” summed up the character of the Conqueror’s life and work in words that have been freely quoted through the centuries:— “King William was wiser and mightier than any of his forerunners. He built many minsters, and was gentle to God’s servants, though stern beyond all measure to those who withstood his will.... So stark and fierce was he that none dared resist his will. Earls that did aught against his bidding he put in bonds, and bishops he set off their bishoprics, and abbots off their abbacies, and thanes he cast into prison. He spared not his own brother, called Odo, who was the chief man next to the king, but set him in prison. So just was he that the good peace he made in this land cannot be forgotten. For he made it so that a man might fare alone over his realm with his bosom full of gold, unhurt; and no man durst slay another man whatsoever the evil he hath done him; and if any man harmed a woman he was punished accordingly. He ruled over England, and surveyed the land with such skill that there was not one hide but that he knew who held it, and what it was worth, and these things he set in a written book. So mighty was he that he held Normandy and Brittany, won England and Maine, brought Scotland and Wales to bow to him, and would, had he lived two years longer, have won Ireland by his renown, without need of weapons. Yet surely in his time men had much travail and very many sorrows; and poor men he made to toil hard for the castles he had built. He fell on covetousness, and the love of gold; and took by right and by unright many marks of gold and more hundred pounds of silver of his people, and for little need. He made great deer-parks, and ordered that whoso slew hart or hind, him men should blind; and forbade men to slay deer or boar, and made the hare go free; he loved the big game as if he were their father. And the poor men that were oppressed he recked nought of. All must follow the king’s will if they would live, or have land, or even a quiet life.” But now, in September, 1087, the great King William was dead, with his life-work done; and from the tyranny of a strong and just ruler, England passed to the despotism of his fearless son, William the Red, who was “terrible and mighty over his land and his men and towards all his neighbours;” in whose reign “all that was loathsome in the eyes of God and righteous men was of common use; wherefore he was loathed by well-nigh all his people, and hateful to God as his end showed.” There was much of the later Puritan in William I. in the steadfastness of purpose, the suppression of “malignants,” and determination to have justice done, no less than in the sincerity for Church reform, and the deep respect for the ordinances of religion. No king of England worked more harmoniously with a strong archbishop than William I. with Lanfranc—save, perhaps, Charles I. with Laud. Then on the death of William I., followed less than two years later by Lanfranc’s, came the reaction in Church and State from the efforts after law, religion, and social decency under the Conqueror’s rule.
