GUENORA AND HER CHILDREN.

13

nobles to con.tract a lawful marriage.

proud of their progenitors. The adoption of 997-996 French manners and French customs did not diminish the worship due to ancestry; and they urged the Duke to contract a legitimate marriage, which tie he had hitherto avoided. They therefore earnestly exhorted him to espouse Richard the Damsel, as a measure tending to popularity. Guenora would give him children of pure Danish blood-father and mother belonging to the conquering race. Thus would he gratify the popular appetite for pleasant illusions; a policy constituting an essential element in the science of government. When the Monarch is inclined to be gracious, a very small tincture of concession accomplishes the end. George the Third declared to his Parliament, that he gloried in being a Briton: an assertion, poetically admissible in the days when Britannia ruled the waves. And, if at Hanover, the "Churfurst Georg" had gloried in being the descendant of Arminius, the effect amongst the Germans would have been the same.

Richard

Sans-peur.

27. Guenora's first born received, at his Children of mother's request, his father's name. This Richard is known, dynastically, as Richard le-Bon, or Richard the Second.

Robert, Guenora's second son, died young; his curious memorial was discovered at Fecamp, towards the beginning of the last century. The tomb has been since destroyed; but if admitted as coeval, we have to lament the loss, since the Revolution, of the earliest certificated sepulchral

14

CHILDREN OF RICHARD SANS-PEUR.

987-996 monument in Normandy, the more interesting as it exhibited a Lion, apparently employed as a device or bearing.

Further account of

Robert thus prematurely cut off, another the children. Robert was in due time nursed upon Guenora's knee. Long did he live, and in common language, prosperously; but he would have left a better report, had he, like his brother, died an infant.

ters of

Normandy.

Richard's immediate descendants were numerous, but the antient authorities and the modern genealogists are at variance amongst themselves and contradictory to each other. The status of adventurous William, the bastard of Normandy, is disclosed by his epithet.-Geoffrey, said to be the ancestor of the Earls of Clare, falls in the same category. Mauger, who acquired much importance in French affairs, was assuredly legitiThe daugh- mate. Richard's daughters contributed as much as their brothers to the brilliancy of the family. The fine well-grown Norman women of Rollo's lineage, wooed by grandees and sovereigns, were renowned for their comeliness. It became a species of proverb that the race of Rollo gained as much by the fascinations of the damsels as by the prowess of the sons. The daughters of Guenora inherited their mother's bright charms; Maude, Countess of Tours Blois and Champagne; -Havisa, Duchess of Brittany;-and the brisk, buxom, commanding Emma, the "Alfgiva Emma" -twice the Regnant Queen, and twice the Dowager of England.

Royal heirs, heirs apparent,

are not

DISORDERS OF THE NORMAN CHURCH.

always comforts to their parents;

15

Richard's

987-996

Richard's

sons

father and grandfather had each in their turn much cause for anxiety.-Troubled was Rollo when he resigned his authority to the blooming son, the only son, Guillaume Longue-épée. Sorrowfully, and with many cankering cares, did Guillaume Longue-épée provide for securing the succession to his only son Richard: and Richard Sans-peur, in his turn, might anticipate a troubled and clouded future. The right of Claims of Primogeniture, though admitted, was not inde- propr feasible, even in the Royal Family. A bevy of stout and growing youths might contest the Coronal; and, like the Carlovingian Empire, the House of Rollo be distracted by fraternal enmity. It was a difficult problem how to satisfy the expectations of the brothers. But a way opened through which Richard's uneasiness might receive a partial sedative, if not a cure: one son, at least, could obtain a competent provision, without impairing the integrity of the Duchy.

provisions.

Church of

disorders

The disturb thereof.

§ 8. The Norman Church, at this period, pre- Normandysented a most unedifying aspect. ances of the country, the Danish devastations, the irregularities of a mixed and floating population, and the absence of any moral restraint, had disordered the whole system. Provincial Councils or Synods, had wholly ceased; nor were any held in Normandy until the Conqueror's reign. Had they assembled, they would have been mischievous. The forms of ecclesiastical government, when they have lost their hold on the national conscience, are mere delusions;

987-996

942-994 Hugh Archbishop of Rouen.

16

DISORDERS OF THE NORMAN CHURCH.

nor can the principles or the practice of any Church ever acquire stability, except when she firmly demands obedience from her members. When she hesitates, she is next to lost. Her gentlest persuasions should be accepted as commands. Unless the Priest can lay down the law like the Judge, he had better let the law alone.-The Monks, with few exceptions, were destitute of discipline, the regular Canons, worse. Tosspots they would have been called in old Latimer's language, constantly lapsing into drunkenness and disorder.

All observance of canonical election had disappeared. It did not tell for much any where ; but in isolated Normandy the principle was wholly ignored. The rights of the Regale were rampant; and whether by management, but oftener by direct and absolute power, it was the Duke's Clerk who ascended the episcopal throne. Hugh, who, placed in the See of Rouen by Guillaume Longue-épée, held the dignity till nearly the close of Richard's reign, wasted and dissipated the property of the Church, and surrendered himself wholly to gross sensuality. Richard acted as patrons are accustomed, and therefore he, the Sovereign, determined to provide for his son Robert in the Church. Yet he had some regard for decency. At an early age the lad was put to book, and trained for his future vocation as carefully as his father's opporUpon Hugh's tunities would afford. At length Hugh's expected Richard death ensued, and Richard presented his son

death

994.

LEGITIMACY AND ILLEGITIMACY.

17

presents his son Robert to the Arch

to the dignity. He possessed as much authority 987-996 as any King of France; nay, greater. Time had not yet matured those usages and practices, which, enshrined in an antient Monarchy, convert bishoprick, the exercise of prerogative into an institution, modified or restrained by precedent, at the same time that they strengthen the hands of the King. The Norman Duke was a constitutional Despot. No need had Richard to consult his Nobles in this affair of patronage: nor does it appear that the Citizens of Rouen retained any prescriptive right of participating in the nomination. of their spiritual Chief, approximating to the influence enjoyed by the antient Municipality, who guarded the Shrine of Saint Remy. Yet, in this Objections case, an exception was taken by the Clergy. Not that they contested the Patron's power, nor were his bastardy. they scandalized by the Candidate's nonage, but they denied his eligibility, on the ground that he was incapacitated by bastardy.

taken to the

eligibility of

Robert on account of

mated by the

the subsequent

not

marriage of

the parents

according to the civil law.

29. According to the Civil law, the injury legitimate inflicted upon the innocent offspring by erring parents who gave them birth, is irreparable. A subsequent marriage legitimates all the previous concubinary issue.-Such is the subsisting law in Scotland, England being the only portion of the Western Church, where this charitable doctrine never did prevail. The proposal made, in the reign of the third Henry, for catholicising our common-law jurisprudence, was repudiated under circumstances which rendered

VOL. III.

C