The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 07 (of 12)

A.D. 1073.If men who have engaged in vast designs could ever promise themselves repose, William, after so many victories, and so many political regulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself with some hope of quiet. But disturbances were preparing for his old age from a new quarter, from whence they were less expected and less tolerable,—from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from his family, which he found not less difficulty in governing than his kingdom. Nothing but his absence from England was wanting to make the flame blaze out. The numberless petty pretensions which the petty lords his neighbors on the continent had on each other and on William, together with their restless disposition and the intrigues of the French court, kept alive a constant dissension, which made the king's presence on the continent frequently necessary. The Duke of Anjou had at this time actually invaded his dominions. He was obliged to pass over into Normandy with an army of fifty thousand men. William, who had conquered England by the assistance of the princes on the continent, now turned against them the arms of the English, who served him with bravery and fidelity; and by their means he soon silenced all opposition, and concluded the terms of an advantageous peace. In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination in which their safety consisted. Upon some frivolous pretences, chiefly personal disgusts,75 a most dangerous conspiracy was formed: the principal men among the Normans were engaged in it; and foreign correspondence was not wanting. Though this conspiracy was chiefly formed and carried on by the Normans, they knew so well the use which William on this occasion would not fail to make of his English subjects, that they endeavored, as far as was consistent with secrecy, to engage several of that nation, and above all, the Earl Waltheof, as the first in rank and reputation among his countrymen. Waltheof, thinking it base to engage in any cause but that of his country against his benefactor, unveils the whole design to Lanfranc, who immediately took measures for securing the chief conspirators. He dispatched messengers to inform the king of his danger, who returned without delay at the head of his forces, and by his presence, and his usual bold activity, dispersed at once the vapors of this conspiracy. The heads were punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, were awed into obedience. His glory was, however, sullied by his putting to death Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought the desire the rebels had shown of engaging him in their designs demonstrated sufficiently that Waltheof still retained a dangerous power. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politic prince increased,—at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no more than a splendid weakness.

A.D. 1079These troubles were hardly appeased, when others began to break forth in his own family, which neither his glory, nor the terror which held a great nation in chains, could preserve in obedience to him. To remove in some measure the jealousy of the court of France with regard to his invasion of England, he had promised upon his acquisition of that kingdom to invest his eldest son, Robert, with the Duchy of Normandy. But as his new acquisition did not seem so secure as it was great and magnificent, he was far from any thoughts of resigning his hereditary dominions, which he justly considered as a great instrument in maintaining his conquests, and a necessary retreat, if he should be deprived of them by the fortune of war. So long as the state of his affairs in England appeared unsettled, Robert acquiesced in the reasonableness of this conduct; but when he saw his father established on his throne, and found himself growing old in an inglorious subjection, he began first to murmur at the injustice of the king, soon after to cabal with the Norman barons and at the court of France, and at last openly rose in rebellion, and compelled the vassals of the Duchy to do him homage. The king was not inclined to give up to force what he had refused to reason. Unbroken with age, unwearied with so many expeditions, he passed again into Normandy, and pressed his son with the vigor of a young warrior.

This war, which was carried on without anything decisive for some time, ended by a very extraordinary and affecting incident. In one of those skirmishes which were frequent according to the irregular mode of warfare in those days, William and his son Robert, alike in a forward and adventurous courage, plunged into the thickest of the fight, and unknowingly encountered each other. But Robert, superior by fortune, or by the vigor of his youth, wounded and unhorsed the old monarch, and was just on the point of pursuing his unhappy advantage to the fatal extremity, when the well-known voice of his father at once struck his ears and suspended his arm. Blushing for his victory, and overwhelmed with the united emotions of grief, shame, and returning piety, he fell on his knees, poured out a flood of tears, and, embracing his father, besought him for pardon. The tide of nature returning strongly on both, the father in his turn embraced his son, and bathed him with his tears; whilst the combatants on either side, astonished at so unusual a spectacle, suspended the fight, applauded this striking act of filial piety and paternal tenderness, and pressed that it might become the prelude to a lasting peace. Peace was made, but entirely to the advantage of the father, who carried his son into England, to secure Normandy from the dangers to which his ambition and popularity might expose that dukedom.

That William might have peace upon no part, the Welsh and Scots took advantage of these troubles in his family to break into England: but their expeditions were rather incursions than invasions: they wasted the country, and then retired to secure their plunder. But William, always troubled, always in action, and always victorious, pursued them and compelled them to a peace, which was not concluded but by compelling the King of Scotland and all the princes of Wales to do him homage. How far this homage extended with regard to Scotland I find it difficult to determine.

Robert, who had no pleasure but in action, as soon as this war was concluded, finding that he could not regain his father's confidence, and that he had no credit at the court of England, retired to that of France. Edgar Atheling saw likewise that the innocence of his conduct could not make amends for the guilt of an undoubted title to the crown, and that the Conqueror, soured by continual opposition, and suspicious through age and the experience of mankind, regarded him with an evil eye. He therefore desired leave to accompany Robert out of the kingdom, and then to make a voyage to the Holy Land. This leave was readily granted. Edgar, having displayed great valor in useless acts of chivalry abroad, after the Conqueror's death returned to England, where he long lived in great tranquillity, happy in himself, beloved by all the people, and unfeared by those who held his sceptre, from his mild and inactive virtue.

A.D. 1084.

A.D. 1087.William had been so much a stranger to repose that it became no longer an object desirable to him. He revived his claim, to the Vexin Français, and some other territories on the confines of Normandy. This quarrel, which began, between him and the King of France on political motives, was increased into rancor and bitterness, first, by a boyish contest at chess between their children, which was resented, more than became wise men, by the fathers; it was further exasperated by taunts and mockeries yet less becoming their age and dignity, but which infused a mortal venom into the war. William entered first into the French territories, wantonly wasting the country, and setting fire to the towns and villages. He entered Mantes, and as usual set it on fire; but whilst he urged his horse over the smoking ruins, and pressed forward to further havoc, the beast, impatient of the hot embers which burned his hoofs, plunged and threw his rider violently on the saddle-bow. The rim of his belly was wounded; and this wound, as William was corpulent and in the decline of life, proved fatal. A rupture ensued, and he died at Rouen, after showing a desire of making amends for his cruelty by restitutions to the towns he had destroyed, by alms and endowments, the usual fruits of a late penitence, and the acknowledgments which expiring ambition pays to virtue.

There is nothing more memorable in history than the actions, fortunes, and character of this great man,—whether we consider the grandeur of the plans he formed, the courage and wisdom with which they were executed, or the splendor of that success which, adorning his youth, continued without the smallest reverse to support his age, even to the last moments of his life. He lived above seventy years, and reigned within ten years as long as he lived, sixty over his dukedom, above twenty over England,—both of which he acquired or kept by his own magnanimity, with hardly any other title than he derived from his arms: so that he might be reputed, in all respects, as happy as the highest ambition, the most fully gratified, can make a man. The silent inward satisfactions of domestic happiness he neither had nor sought. He had a body suited to the character of his mind, erect, firm, large, and active, whilst to be active was a praise,—a countenance stern, and which became command. Magnificent in his living, reserved in his conversation, grave in his common deportment, but relaxing with a wise facetiousness, he knew how to relieve his mind and preserve his dignity: for he never forfeited by a personal acquaintance that esteem he had acquired by his great actions. Unlearned in books, he formed his understanding by the rigid discipline of a large and complicated experience. He knew men much, and therefore generally trusted them but little; but when he knew any man to be good, he reposed in him an entire confidence, which prevented his prudence from degenerating into a vice. He had vices in his composition, and great ones; but they were the vices of a great mind: ambition, the malady of every extensive genius,—and avarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth,—the other governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys of wine and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. The general run of men he looked on with contempt, and treated with cruelty when they opposed him. Nor was the rigor of his mind to be softened but with the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, by a sympathy congenial to his own virtues, always excited his admiration and insured his mercy. So that there were often seen in this one man, at the same time, the extremes of a savage cruelty, and a generosity that does honor to human nature. Religion, too, seemed to have a great influence on his mind, from policy, or from better motives; but his religion was displayed in the regularity with which he performed its duties, not in the submission he showed to its ministers, which was never more than what good government required. Yet his choice of a counsellor and favorite was, not according to the mode of the time, out of that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers or instruments of ambition; but tempering the fierce policy of a new power by the mild lights of religion, he became a blessing to the country in which he was promoted. The English owed to the virtue of this stranger, and the influence he had on the king, the little remains of liberty they continued to enjoy, and at last such a degree of his confidence as in some sort counterbalanced the severities of the former part of his reign.

CHAPTER III.

REIGN OF WILLIAM THE SECOND, SURNAMED RUFUS

A.D. 1087.William had by his queen Matilda three sons, who survived him,—Robert, William, and Henry. Robert, though in an advanced age at his father's death, was even then more remarkable for those virtues which make us entertain hopes of a young man than for that steady prudence which is necessary when the short career we are to run will not allow us to make many mistakes. He had, indeed, a temper suitable to the genius of the time he lived in, and which therefore enabled him to make a considerable figure in the transactions which distinguished that period. He was of a sincere, open, candid nature; passionately fond of glory; ambitious, without having any determinate object in view; vehement in his pursuits, but inconstant; much in war, which he understood and loved. But guiding himself, both in war and peace, solely by the impulses of an unbounded and irregular spirit, he filled the world with an equal admiration and pity of his splendid qualities and great misfortunes. William was of a character very different. His views were short, his designs few, his genius narrow, and his manners brutal; full of craft, rapacious, without faith, without religion; but circumspect, steady, and courageous for his ends, not for glory. These qualities secured to him that fortune which the virtues of Robert deserved. Of Henry we shall speak hereafter.

A.D. 1088.We have seen the quarrels, together with the causes of them, which embroiled the Conqueror with his eldest son, Robert. Although the wound was skinned over by several temporary and palliative accommodations, it still left a soreness in the father's mind, which influenced him by his last will to cut off Robert from the inheritance of his English dominions. Those he declared he derived from his sword, and therefore he would dispose of them, to that son whose dutiful behavior had made him the most worthy. To William, therefore, he left his crown; to Henry he devised his treasures: Robert possessed nothing but the Duchy, which was his birthright. William had some advantages to enforce the execution of a bequest which was not included even in any of the modes of succession which then were admitted. He was at the time of his father's death in England, and had an opportunity of seizing the vacant government, a thing of great moment in all disputed rights. He had also, by his presence, an opportunity of engaging some of the most considerable leading men in his interests. But his greatest strength was derived from the adherence to his cause of Lanfranc, a prelate of the greatest authority amongst the English as well as the Normans, both from the place he had held in the Conqueror's esteem, whose memory all men respected, and from his own great and excellent qualities. By the advice of this prelate the new monarch professed to be entirely governed. And as an earnest of his future reign, he renounced all the rigid maxims of conquest, and swore to protect the Church and the people, and to govern by St. Edward's Laws,—a promise extremely grateful and popular to all parties: for the Normans, finding the English passionately desirous of these laws, and only knowing that they were in general favorable to liberty and conducive to peace and order, became equally clamorous for their reëstablishment. By these measures, and the weakness of those which were adopted by Robert, William established himself on his throne, and suppressed a dangerous conspiracy formed by some Norman noblemen in the interests of his brother, although it was fomented by all the art and intrigue which his uncle Odo could put in practice, the most bold and politic man of that age.

A.D. 1089.The security he began to enjoy from this success, and the strength which government receives by merely continuing, gave room to his natural dispositions to break out in several acts of tyranny and injustice. The forest laws were executed with rigor, the old impositions revived, and new laid on. Lanfranc made representations to the king on this conduct, but they produced no other effect than the abatement of his credit, which from that moment to his death, which happened soon after, was very little in the government. The revenue of the vacant see was seized into the king's hands. When the Church lands were made subject to military service, they seemed to partake all the qualities of the military tenure, and to be subject to the same burdens; and as on the death of a military vassal his land was in wardship of the lord until the heir had attained his age, so there arose a pretence, on the vacancy of a bishopric, to suppose the land in ward with the king until the seat should be filled. This principle, once established, opened a large field for various lucrative abuses; nor could it be supposed, whilst the vacancy turned to such good account, that a necessitous or avaricious king would show any extraordinary haste to put the bishoprics and abbacies out of his power. In effect, William always kept them a long time vacant, and in the vacancy granted away much of their possessions, particularly several manors belonging to the see of Canterbury; and when he filled this see, it was only to prostitute that dignity by disposing of it to the highest bidder.

A.D. 1093.To support him in these courses he chose for his minister Ralph Flambard, a fit instrument in his designs, and possessed of such art and eloquence as to color them in a specious manner. This man inflamed all the king's passions, and encouraged him in his unjust enterprises. It is hard to say which was most unpopular, the king or his minister. But Flambard, having escaped a conspiracy against his life, and having punished the conspirators severely, struck such a general terror into the nation, that none dared to oppose him. Robert's title alone stood in the king's way, and he knew that this must be a perpetual source of disturbance to him. He resolved, therefore, to put him in peril for his own dominions. He collected a large army, and entering into Normandy, he began a war, at first with great success, on account of a difference between the Duke and his brother Henry. But their common dread of William reconciled them; and this reconciliation put them in a condition of procuring an equal peace, the chief conditions of which were, that Robert should be put in possession of certain seigniories in England, and that each, in case of survival, should succeed to the other's dominions. William concluded this peace the more readily, because Malcolm, King of Scotland, who hung over him, was ready upon every advantage to invade his territories, and had now actually entered England with a powerful army. Robert, who courted action, without regarding what interest might have dictated, immediately on concluding the treaty entered into his brother's service in this war against the Scots; which, on the king's return, being in appearance laid asleep by an accommodation, broke out with redoubled fury the following year. The King of Scotland, provoked to this rupture by the haughtiness of William, was circumvented by the artifice and fraud of one of his ministers: under an appearance of negotiation, he was attacked and killed, together with his only son. This was a grievous wound to Scotland, in the loss of one of the wisest and bravest of her kings, and in the domestic distractions which afterwards tore that kingdom to pieces.

A.D. 1094.

A.D. 1096.No sooner was this war ended, than William, freed from an enemy which had given himself and his father so many alarms, renewed his ill treatment of his brother, and refused to abide by the terms of the late treaty. Robert, incensed at these repeated perfidies, returned to Normandy with thoughts full of revenge and war. But he found that the artifices and bribes of the King of England had corrupted the greatest part of his barons, and filled the country with faction and disloyalty. His own facility of temper had relaxed all the bands of government, and contributed greatly to these disorders. In this distress he was obliged to have recourse to the King of France for succor. Philip, who was then on the throne, entered into his quarrel. Nor was William, on his side, backward; though prodigal to the highest degree, the resources of his tyranny and extortion were inexhaustible. He was enabled to enter Normandy once more with a considerable army. But the opposition, too, was considerable; and the war had probably been spun out to a great length, and had drawn on very bloody consequences, if one of the most extraordinary events which are contained in the history of mankind had not suspended their arms, and drawn, all inferior views, sentiments, and designs into the vortex of one grand project. This was the Crusade, which, with astonishing success, now began to be preached through all Europe. This design was then, and it continued long after, the principle which influenced the transactions of that period both at home and abroad; it will, therefore, not be foreign to our subject to trace it to its source.

As the power of the Papacy spread, the see of Rome began to be more and more an object of ambition; the most refined intrigues were put in practice to attain it; and all the princes of Europe interested themselves in the contest. The election of Pope was not regulated by those prudent dispositions which have since taken place; there were frequent pretences to controvert the validity of the election, and of course several persons at the same time laid claim to that dignity. Popes and Antipopes arose. Europe was rent asunder by these disputes, whilst some princes maintained the rights of one party, and some defended the pretensions of the other: sometimes the prince acknowledged one Pope, whilst his subjects adhered to his rival. The scandals occasioned by these schisms were infinite; and they threatened a deadly wound to that authority whose greatness had occasioned them. Princes were taught to know their own power. That Pope who this day was a suppliant to a monarch to be recognized by him could with an ill grace pretend to govern him with an high hand the next. The lustre of the Holy See began to be tarnished, when Urban the Second, after a long contest of this nature, was universally acknowledged. That Pope, sensible by his own experience of the ill consequence of such disputes, sought to turn the minds of the people into another channel, and by exerting it vigorously to give a new strength to the Papal power. In an age so ignorant, it was very natural that men should think a great deal in religion depended upon the very scene where the work of our Redemption was accomplished. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were therefore judged highly meritorious, and became very frequent. But the country which was the object of them, as well as several of those through which the journey lay, were in the hands of Mahometans, who, against all the rules of humanity and good policy, treated the Christian pilgrims with great indignity. These, on their return, filled the minds of their neighbors with hatred and resentment against those infidels. Pope Urban laid hold on this disposition, and encouraged Peter the Hermit, a man visionary, zealous, enthusiastic, and possessed of a warm irregular eloquence adapted to the pitch of his hearers, to preach an expedition for the delivery of the Holy Land.

Great designs may be started and the spirit of them inspired by enthusiasts, but cool heads are required to bring them into form. The Pope, not relying solely on Peter, called a council at Clermont, where an infinite number of people of all sorts were assembled. Here he dispensed with a full hand benedictions and indulgences to all persons who should engage in the expedition; and preaching with great vehemence in a large plain, towards the end of his discourse, somebody, by design or by accident, cried out, "It is the will of God!" This voice was repeated by the next, and in a moment it circulated through this innumerable people, which rang with the acclamation of "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"76 The neighboring villages caught up those oracular words, and it is incredible with what celerity they spread everywhere around into places the most distant. This circumstance, then considered as miraculous, contributed greatly to the success of the Hermit's mission. No less did the disposition of the nobility throughout Europe, wholly actuated with devotion and chivalry, contribute to forward an enterprise so suited to the gratification of both these passions. Everything was now in motion; both sexes, and every station and age and condition of life, engaged with transport in this holy warfare.77 There was even a danger that Europe would be entirely exhausted by the torrents that were rushing out to deluge Asia. These vast bodies, collected without choice, were conducted without skill or order; and they succeeded accordingly. Women and children composed no small part of those armies, which were headed by priests; and it is hard to say which is most lamentable, the destruction of such multitudes of men, or the frenzy which drew it upon them. But this design, after innumerable calamities, began at last to be conducted in a manner worthy of so grand and bold a project. Raimond, Count of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, and several other princes, who were great captains as well as devotees, engaged in the expedition, and with suitable effects. But none burned more to signalize his zeal and courage on this occasion than Robert, Duke of Normandy, who was fired with the thoughts of an enterprise which seemed to be made for his genius. He immediately suspended his interesting quarrel with his brother, and, instead of contesting with him the crown to which he had such fair pretensions, or the duchy of which he was in possession, he proposed to mortgage to him the latter during five years for a sum of thirteen thousand marks of gold. William, who had neither sense of religion nor thirst of glory, intrenched in his secure and narrow policy, laughed at a design that had deceived all the great minds in Europe. He extorted, as usual, this sum from his subjects, and immediately took possession of Normandy; whilst Robert, at the head of a gallant army, leaving his hereditary dominions, is gone to cut out unknown kingdoms in Asia.