Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II. Yonge Charlotte Mary
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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.
Then down he came on them with implacable vengeance, he was so very “stark,” as the old chronicle has it. Battle, devastation, plunder, lifelong imprisonment, confiscation, requited him who had drawn on himself the terrible wrath of William of Normandy. There were few soft places in that mighty heart; it could love, but it could not pity, and it could not forgive. He was of the true nature to be a Scourge of God.
Hardened and embittered by the selfish treasons that had beset his early boyhood, and which had forced him into manhood before his time, he came to England as one called thither by the late king’s designation, and, therefore, the lawful heir. The Norman law, a confusion of the old Frank and Roman codes, and of the Norwegian pirate customs, he seems to have been glad to leave behind. His native Normans must be ruled by it, but he was an English king by inheritance, and English laws he would observe; Englishmen should have their national share in the royal favor, and in their native land.
But the design proved impracticable. The English had been split into fierce parties long before he came, and the West Saxon, the Mercian Angle, and Northumbrian Dane hated one another still, and all hated the Norman alike; and his Norman, French, and Breton importations lost no love among themselves, and viewed the English natives as conquered beings, whose spoil was unjustly withheld from them by the Duke King.
Rebellion began: by ones, twos, and threes, the nobles revolted, and were stamped out by