Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

Many years after, the remains of a wooden fort, the citadel, so to speak of the Camp of Refuge, still existed in the Isle of Ely, and was called by the peasantry Hereward’s Castle. The treacherous monks of Ely were well punished by having forty men-at-arms quartered on their Abbey.

Of the captives taken in the camp, many were most cruelly treated, their eyes put out, and their hands cut off; others were imprisoned, and many slain. Morkar, who was here taken, spent the rest of his life in the same captivity as Ulfnoth, Stigand, and many other Saxons of distinction, with the one gleam of hope when liberated at William’s death, and then the bitter disappointment of renewed seizure and captivity. If it could be any consolation to them, these Saxons were not William’s only captives. Bishop Odo, of Bayeux, whom William had made Earl of Kent, after giving a great deal of trouble to his brother the king, and to Archbishop Lanfranc, by his avarice and violence, heard a prediction that the next Pope should be named Odo, and set off to try to bring about its fulfilment in his own person, carrying with him an immense quantity of ill-gotten treasure, and a large number of troops, commanded by Hugh the Wolf, Earl of Chester.

However, Odo had reckoned without King William, and he had but just set sail, when William, setting off from Normandy, met him in the Channel, took his ships, and making him land in the Isle of Wight, and convoking an assembly of knights, declared his offences, and asked them what such a brother deserved.

Between fear of the king and fear of the Bishop, no one ventured to answer, upon which William sentenced him to imprisonment; and when he declared that no one but the Pope had a right to judge him, answered, “I do not try you, the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of Kent,” and sent him closely guarded to Normandy.

Another Norman state-prisoner was Roger Fitzosborn, the son of William’s early friend, who had died soon after the Conquest. Roger’s offence was the bestowing his sister Emma in marriage without the consent of the king, and in addition, much seditious language was used at the wedding banquet, where, unhappily, was present Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, the last Saxon noble.

Roger, finding himself in danger, broke out into open rebellion, but was soon made prisoner. Still the king would have pardoned him for the sake of his father, whom William seems to have regarded with much more affection that he be stowed on any one else, and, as a mark of kindness, sent him a costly robe. The proud and passionate Roger, disdaining the gift, kindled a fire, and burnt the garment on the dungeon floor; and William, deeply affronted, swore in return that he should never pass the threshold of his prison.

Waltheof, who was innocent of all save being present at the unfortunate feast, might have been spared but for the wickedness of his wife, Judith, William’s niece, who had been married to him when it was her uncle’s policy to conciliate the Saxons. She hated and despised the Saxon churl given her for a lord, kind, generous, and pious though he was; and having set her affections on a young Norman, herself became the accuser of her husband. Waltheof succeeded in disproving the calumnies, and the best and wisest Normans spoke in his favor; but the spite of Ivo Taillebois, and the hatred of his wife, prevailed, and he was sentenced to die.

He was executed at Winchester, where, lest the inhabitants should attempt a rescue, he was led out, early in the morning, to St. Giles’s hill, outside the walls. He wore the robes of an earl, and gave them to the priests who attended him, and to the poor people who followed him. When he came to the spot he knelt down to pray, begging the soldiers to wait till he had said the Lord’s Prayer; but he had only come to “Lead us not into temptation,” when one of them severed his head from his body with one blow of a sword.

His body was hastily thrown into a hole; but the Saxons, who loved him greatly, disinterred it in secret, and contrived to carry it all the way to Croyland, where it was buried with due honors, and we may think of Hereward le Wake attending the funeral of the son of the stalwart old Siward Biorn.

As to the perfidious Judith, she reaped the reward of her crimes; she was not permitted to marry her Norman lover, and he was stripped of all the wealth she expected as the widow of Waltbeof. This was secured to her infant daughter, and was so considerable, that at one time William thought the little Matilda of Huntingdon a fit match for his son Robert; but Robert despised the Saxon blood, and made this project an excuse for one of his rebellions. Matilda was, however, a royal bride, since her hand was given to David I. of Scotland, the representative of the old race of Cerdic, and a most excellent prince, with whom she was much happier than she could well have: been with the unstable Robert Courtheuse.

CAMEO IX. THE LAST SAXON BISHOP. (1008-1095.)

Kings of England.

1066. William I.

1087. William II.

The last saint of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the Bishop who lived from the days of Edward the Confessor, to the evil times of the Red King, was Wulstan of Worcester, a homely old man, of plain English character, and of great piety. The quiet, even tenor of his life is truly like a “soft green isle” in the midst of the turbulent storms and tempests of the Norman Conquest.

Wulstan was born at Long Itchington, a village in Warwickshire, in the time of Ethelred the Unready. He was the son of the Thane Athelstan, and was educated in the monasteries of Evesham and Peterborough. When he had been trained in such learning as these could afford, he came home for a few years, and entered into the sports and occupations of the noble youths of the time, without parting with the piety and purity of his conventual life, and steadily resisting temptation.

His parents were grown old, and having become impoverished, perhaps by the exactions perpetrated either by the Danes, or to bribe them away, retired from the world, and entered convents at Worcester. Wulstan, wishing to devote himself to the Church, sought the service of the Bishop, who ordained him to the priesthood.

He lived, though a secular priest, with monastic strictness, and in time obtained permission from the Bishop to become a monk in the convent, where he continued for twenty-five years, and at length became Prior of the Convent. The Prior was the person next in office to the Abbot, and governed the monastery in his absence; and in some religious orders, where there was no Abbot, the Prior was the superior.

Wulstan’s habits in the convent show us what the devotional life of that time was. Each day he bent the knee at each verse of the seven Penitential Psalms, and the same at the 119th Psalm at night. He would lock himself into the church, and pray aloud with tears and cries, and at night he would often retire into some solitary spot, the graveyard, or lonely village church, to pray and meditate. His bed was the church floor, or a narrow board, and stern were his habits of fasting and mortification; but all the time he was full of activity in the cause of the poor, and, finishing his devotions early in the morning, gave up the whole day to attend to the common people, sitting at the church door to listen to, and redress, as far as in him lay, the grievances that they brought him—at any rate, to console and advise. The rude, secular country clergy, at that time, it may be feared, a corrupt, untaught race, had in great measure ceased to instruct or exhort their flocks, and even refund baptism without payment. He did his best to remedy these abuses, and from all parts of the country children were brought to the good Prior for baptism. Every Sunday, too, he preached, and the Worcestershire people flocked from all sides to hear his plain, forcible language, though he never failed to rebuke them sharply for their most prevalent sins.

The fame of the holy Prior of Worcester began to spread, and on one occasion Earl Harold himself came thirty miles out of his way to confess his sins to him and desire his prayers.

About the year 1062, two Roman Cardinals came to Worcester with Aldred, who had just been translated from that see to the Archbishopric of York. They spent the whole of Lent in Wulstan’s monastery; and when, at Easter, they returned to the court of Edward the Confessor, they recommended him for the Bishop to succeed Aldred; and Aldred himself, Archbishop Stigand, and Harold, all concurred in the same advice. The people and clergy of Worcester with one voice chose the good Prior Wulstan; his election was confirmed by the king, and he received the appointment. He long struggled against it, protesting that he would rather lose his head than be made a Bishop; but he was persuaded at last by an old hermit, who rebuked him for his resistance as for a sin. He received the pastoral staff from King Edward, and was consecrated by his former Bishop, Aldred.

As a Bishop he was more active than ever, constantly riding from place to place to visit the different towns and villages; and, as he went, repeating the Psalms and Litany, his attendant priests making the responses; while his chamberlain carried a purse, from which every one who asked alms was sure to be supplied. He never passed a church without praying in it, and never reached his resting-place for the night without paying his first visit to the church. Wherever he went, crowds of every rank poured out to meet him, and he never sent them away without the full Church service, and a sermon; nay, more—each poor serf might come to him, pour out his troubles, whether temporal, or whether his heart had been touched by the good words he had heard. Above all, Wulstan delighted in giving his blessing in Confirmation, and would go on from morning till night without food, till all his clergy were worn out, though he seemed to know no weariness.

His clergy seem to have had much of the sluggishness of the Saxon, and were often impatient of a temper, both of devotion and energy, so much beyond them. If one was absent from the night service, the Bishop would take no notice till it was over; but when all the others were gone back to bed, he would wake the defaulter, and make him go through the service with no companion but himself, making the responses. They did not like him to put them out, as he often did on their journeys, while going through the Psalms, by dwelling on the “prayer-verses;” and most especially did they dislike his leading them to church, whatever season or weather it might be, to chant matins before it was light. Once, at Marlow, when it was a long way to church, very muddy, and with a cold rain falling, one of his clergy, in hopes of making him turn back, led him into the worst part of the swamp, where he sunk up to his knees in mud, and lost his shoe; but he took no notice until, after the service was over, he had returned to his lodgings, half dead with cold, and then, instead of expressing any anger, he only ordered search to be made for the shoe.

Wulstan took no part in what we should call politics; he thought it his duty to render his submission to the King whom the people had chosen, and to strive only to amend the life of the men of the country. He was in high favor with Harold during his short reign, and was for some time at court, where the fine Saxon gentlemen learnt to dread the neighborhood of the old Bishop; for Wulstan considered their luxury as worthy of blame, and especially attacked their long flowing hair. If any of them placed their heads within, his reach, he would crop off “the first-fruits of their curls” with his own little knife, enjoining them to have the rest cut off; and yet, if Wulstan saw the children of the choir with their dress disordered, he would smooth it with his own hands, and when told the condescension did not become a Bishop, made answer, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

Aldred, Wulstan’s former Bishop, now Archbishop of York, was the anointer of both Harold and William the Conqueror. He kept fair with the Normans as long as he could, but at last, driven to extremity by the miseries they inflicted on his unhappy diocese, he went to William arrayed in his full episcopal robes, solemnly revoked his coronation blessing, denounced a curse on him and his race, and then, returning to York, there died of grief.

Eghelwin, Bishop of Durham, gave good advice to Comyn, the Norman Earl, but it was unheeded, and the townsmen rose in the night and burnt Comyn to death, with all his followers, as they lay overcome with wine and sleep in the plundered houses. The rising of the northern counties followed, and Eghelwin was so far involved in it, that he was obliged to fly. He took shelter in the Camp of Refuge, was made prisoner when it was betrayed, and spent the rest of his life in one of William’s prisons.

Our good Wulstan had a happier lot, and spent his time in his own round of quiet duties in his diocese, binding up the wounds inflicted by the cruel oppressors, but exhorting the Saxons to bear them patiently, and see in them the chastisement of their own crimes. “It is the scourge of God that ye are suffering,” he said; and when they replied that they had never been half so bad as the Normans, he said, “God is using their wickedness to punish your evil deserts, as the devil, of his own evil will, yet by God’s righteous will, punishes those with whom he suffers. Do ye, when ye are angry, care what becomes of the staff wherewith ye strike?”

He had his own share of troubles and anxieties, but he met them in his trustful spirit, and straight-forward way. At Easter, 1070, a council was held at Winchester, at which he was summoned to attend. He was one of the five last Saxon Bishops; Stigand, who held both at once the primacy and the see of Winchester; his brother, Eghelmar, Bishop of Elmham; Eghelsie, of Selsey; and the Bishop of Durham, Eghelwin, who was in the Camp of Refuge.

Two cardinals were present to represent the Pope, and on account of his simony, Stigand was deposed and imprisoned, while Eghelric and Eghelmar were also degraded. Yet Wulstan, clear of conscience, and certain of the validity of his own election, was not affrighted; so far from it, he boldly called on the King to restore some lands that Aldred of York had kept back from the see of Worcester.

Thomas, Aldred’s successor, claimed them by a pretended jurisdiction over Worcester, and the decision was put off for a court of the great men of the realm, which did not take place till several fresh appointments had been made. Lanfranc, the Italian, Abbot of Bec, had become Archbishop of Canterbury, and was, of course, interested in guarding the jurisdiction of the Archiepiscopal see.

Wulstan, in this critical time, was exactly like himself. He fell asleep while Thomas was arguing, and when time was given him to think of his answer, he spent it in singing the service of the hour, though his priests were in terror lest they should be ridiculed for it. “Know you not,” he answered, “that the Lord hath said, ‘When ye stand before king and rulers, take no thought what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak.’ Our Lord can give me speech to-day to defend my right, and overthrow their might.” Accordingly, his honest statement prevailed, and he gained his cause.

There is a beautiful legend that Lanfranc, thinking the simple old Saxon too rude and ignorant for his office, summoned him to a synod at Westminster, and there called on him to deliver up his pastoral staff and ring. Wulstan rose, and said he had known from the first that he was not worthy of his dignity, and had taken it only at the bidding of his master, King Edward. To him, therefore, who gave the staff, he would resign it. Advancing to the Confessor’s tomb, he said, “Master, thou knowest how unwillingly I took this office, forced to it by thee. Behold a new king—a new law—a new primate; they decree new rights, and promulgate new statutes. Thee they accuse of error in having so commanded—me of presumption, in having obeyed. Then, indeed, thou wast liable to err, being mortal—now, being with God, thou canst not err. Not to these who require what they did not give, but to thee, who hast given, I render up my staff. Take this, my master, and deliver it to whom thou wilt.”

He laid it on the tomb, took off his episcopal robes, and sat down among the monks. The legend goes on to say, that the staff remained embedded in the stone, and no hand could wrench it away, till Wulstan himself again took it up, when it yielded without effort. The King and Archbishop fell down at his feet, and entreated his pardon and blessing.

Such is the story told a century after; and surely we may believe that, without the miracle, the old man’s touching appeal to his dead King, and his humility, convinced Lanfranc that it had been foul shame to think of deposing such a man because his learning was not extensive, nor his manners like those of the courtly Norman. Be that as it may, thenceforth Lanfranc and Wulstan worked hand in hand, and we find the Archbishop begging him to undertake the visitation of the diocese of Chester, which was unsafe for the Norman prelates. One great work accomplished by the help of Wulstan was, the putting an end to a horrible slave-trade with Ireland, whither Saxon serfs were sold, not by Normans, but by their own country people, who had long carried it on before the Conquest. Lanfranc persuaded William to abolish it, but the rude Saxon slave-merchants cared nothing for his edicts, until the Bishop of Worcester came to Bristol, and preached against the traffic, staying a month or two at a time, every year, till the minds of the people of Bristol were so altered, that they not only gave up the trade, but acquired such a horror of it that they tore out the eyes of the last person who persisted in it.

The favor and esteem with which Wulstan was regarded did not cease, but he was obliged to spend a life of constraint. The Archbishop made him keep a band of armed retainers to preserve the peace of the country, and they were new and strange companions for the old monk; but as he thought his presence kept them from evil, he did not remain aloof, dining with them each day in the public hall, and even while they sat long over the wine, remaining with them, pledging them good-humoredly in a little cup, which he pretended to taste, and ruminating on the Psalms in the midst of their noisy mirth.

These were the days of church-building—the days of the circular arch, round column, and zigzag moulding; of doorways whose round arch, adorned with border after border of rich or quaint device, almost bewilder us with the multiplicity of detail; of low square towers, and solid walls; of that kind of architecture called Norman, but more properly a branch of the Romanesque of Italy.

Each new Roman Bishop or Abbot thought it his business to renew his clumsy old Saxon minster, and we have few cathedrals whose present structure does not date from the days of the Conqueror or his sons. Walkelyn, Bishop of Winchester, obtained a grant from William of as much timber from Hempage Wood as could be cut in four days and nights; whereupon Walkelyn assembled a huge company of workmen, and made such good use of the time, that when the king passed that way, he cried out, “Am I bewitched, or have I taken leave of my senses? Had I not a most delectable wood in this spot?” where now only stumps were to be seen.

Wulstan had always been a church-builder, and he renewed his cathedral after the Norman fashion; but when it was finished, and the workmen began to pull down the old one, which had been built by St. Oswald, he stood watching them in silence, till at last he shed tears. “Poor creatures that we are,” said he, “we destroy the work of the saints, and think in our pride that we improve upon it. Those blessed men knew not how to build fine churches, but they knew how to sacrifice themselves to God, whatever roof might be over them, and to draw their flocks after them. Now, all we think of is to rear up piles of stones, while we care not for souls.”

Wulstan lived to a great age, survived William and Lanfrane, and assisted to consecrate Anselm. In the last year of his life he kept each festival with still greater solemnity than ever, and his feast for the poor overflowed more than ever before; his stores were exhausted, though he had collected an unusual quantity, and his clergy begged him to shut the gates against the crowds still gathering; but he refused, saying none should go empty away, and some gifts from his rich friends arrived opportunely to supply the need. The Bishop sat in the midst as feasting with them, now grown too feeble to wait on them, as he had always done hitherto.

At Whitsuntide, 1094, he was taken ill, and lingered under a slow fever till the new year, when he died in peace and joy on the 19th of January. His greatest friend, Robert, the Bishop of Hereford, a learned man, understanding all the science of the time, a judge, and a courtly Lorrainer, yet who loved to spend whole days with the unlettered Saxon, came to lay him in his grave. He received, as a gift from the convent, the lambskin cloak that Wulstan used to wear, in spite of the laughter of the gay prelates arrayed in costly furs, keeping his ground by saying, that “the furs of cunning animals did not befit a plain man.” He went home to Hereford, and soon after died, having, it is said, been warned in a vision by St. Wulstan that he must soon prepare to follow him.

CAMEO X. THE CONQUEROR. (1066-1087.)

In speaking of William, the Norman Conqueror, we are speaking of a really great man; and great men are always hard to understand or deal with in history, for, as their minds are above common understandings, their contemporary historians generally enter into their views less than any one else, and it is only the result that proves their wisdom and far-sight. Moreover, their temptations and their sins are on a larger scale than those of other men, and some of the actions that they perform make a disproportionate impression by the cry that they occasion—the evil is remembered, not the good that their main policy effected.

William was a high-minded man, of mighty and wide purposes, one of the very few who understood what it was to be a king. He had the Norman qualities in their fullest perfection. He was devoutly religious, and in his private character was irreproachable, being the first Norman Duke unstained by licence, the first whose sons were all born of his princess wife. He was devout in his habits, full of alms-deeds; and strong and resolute as was his will, he kept it so upright and so truly desirous of the Divine glory and the Church’s welfare, that he had no serious misunderstanding with the clergy, and lived on the most friendly terms with his great Archbishop, Lanfranc.

He was one of those mighty men who, in personal intercourse, have a force of nature that not merely renders opposition impossible, but absolutely masters the will and intention, so that there is not even the secret contradiction of mind. We have seen this in his dealings with both his own Normans and the Saxons who came in contact with him. His presence was so irresistible that men yielded to it unconsciously, but when absent from him they became themselves again, and in the reaction they committed treason against the pledges they seemed to have voluntarily given to him.

He was stern, fiercely stern. His standard and ideal were very high, such as, perhaps, only the saintly could attain to. The men who never quarrelled with him were Lanfranc, Edgar Atheling, and William Fitzosborn. The first was saintly and strong; the second, honest, upright, and simple; the third was endeared by boyish memories, and to these, perhaps, may be added Edward the Confessor and good Bishop Wulstan.

Many others William tried to love and trust—his uncle Odo, his own son, Earls Edwin and Morkar, Waltheof, the sons of Fitzosborn; but they all failed, grieved, and disappointed him. None was strong, noble, or disinterested enough not at one time or other to be a traitor; and, perhaps, his really honest, open enemy, Hereward le Wake, was the person whom he most valued and honored after the above mentioned.

And though his affection was hearty, his wrath when he was disappointed was tremendous. And his disappointments were many, partly because his standard was in every respect far above that of the men around him, and partly because his presence so far lifted them to his level, that, when they fell to their own, he was totally unprepared for the treachery and deceit such a fall involved.