1072

The Conquest

not

universally thought justifiable.

486

REMORSE FOR THE CONQUEST.

the call of conscience, yet we may trace that many obeyed the warning: there were those amongst the Normans who absolutely refused to take any share in the donations which William would have bestowed, who renounced them, as bought with blood, and who, by their words, and still more by their actions, rebuked the ambition of their Sovereign. This feeling also was probably the cause of the bounteous donations made by the Normans or their immediate descendants for pious and charitable purposes, more foundations of that description having been established under the three kings of the Anglo-Norman dynasty than during the whole preceding or Self-imposed subsequent period of English history. Very many also sought rest and consolation in the places of refuge from the world afforded by the Church. Interior remorse or sorrow could leave no token in history, except in the case of him who had been the great cause and originator of the wrong; the gratifications, the employments, and above all the heavy anxieties of royalty, might in some degree blunt his recollection of his own deeds when in health and vigour, but the whole came upon him with unutterable bitterness in the hour of death,

penances.

CHAPTER XI.

AFFAIRS OF FLANDERS-WILLIAM SUBDUES MAINE-DISTURB-
RALPH GUADER'S CONSPIRACY

ANCES IN

EXECUTION

ENGLAND

OF WALTHEOF.

1073-1075.

troubles

§1. WILLIAM, during the transactoins narrated Normandy: in the previous chapters, had been fully four there, years absent from Normandy. The Duchy had been governed, and well governed, by the faithful and prudent Matilda; but heavy sorrows were falling on her, and great troubles were arising, in which she required counsel and aid. For this purpose, her husband first sent over William Fitz-Osbern, but the absence of this powerful [baron], so redoubtable to the English and the Welsh from his bravery, and still more from his merciless cruelty, had probably incited much of the risings in the Welsh marches; and a further delay ensued before William could pass over, however urgently his presence may have been required.

the family of Baldwin. 1067

§2. An unnatural and implacable warfare had Flanders: been carried on in the family of Matilda's father, Baldwin the Good, who died during the first years of the Conquest. Baldwin had two sons; the elder bearing his father's name, and Robert. Both the brothers, sons of the sovereign of a flourishing and

1073

1067

Baldwin,

the son.

of Hainault.

wealthy country, had respectively acquired opulent possessions, forming frontiers to their paternal domains. Both had obtained their sovereignties by marriage with widows, and both had successfully wooed by combining what may be called love and war. Baldwin was meek and quiet, humble and devout, altogether given to works of piety, the protector of the stranger and the orphan. When at mass, he always had his poor about him, that they might help him by their prayers; and when he succeeded to the county of Flanders, such was the peace in his time, that the plough was left in the field, and the door of Richilda the cottage remained unclosed. Richilda, his wife, with whom he gained the county of Hainault, was of an entirely opposite disposition. Beautiful, courageous as a soldier, indomitable in her passions, sagacious and crafty, she was considered by the people to be skilled in magic—a reputation which, in that country, yet retaining a deep and inward tinge of the antient Teutonic paganism, seems almost to have been considered as a praise. Hereditary Countess of Hainault, the first of her three husbands was Herman (some say, of the family of the Counts of Ardennes ; others say, a branch of the house of Saxony), by whom she had two children-Roger, lame and ill-favoured, and a daughter.

Upon the death of Herman, Richilda assumed the government of Hainault in right of her children a stepmother she was to them, not by

1073

1051

in marriage for Baldwin. 1051

nature, but worse by deed. Baldwin of Lisle, anxious to procure this rich marriage for his son, and yet knowing the difficulty which there might be in imposing a Fleming upon the Hainaulters, proud as their forefathers, the Nervians, of their nationality, invaded Hainault for the purpose of giving the unreluctant Richilda the means of justifying herself to her liege lord the Emperor, and her stubborn subjects, by accepting, as it How grind were under compulsion, the young heir of Flanders, who henceforth, from his residence in the capital of Hainault, was usually called Baldwin of Mons. The fruit of this marriage was Arnolf the Simple and another Baldwin. Dearly loved were they by Richilda, who in order to secure the succession to her new family, placed her daughter in a monastery, and induced her son, lame Roger, to take holy orders, and afterwards procured for him the Bishoprick of Chalons. So much for the elder of Matilda's brothers. Robert, the younger, was the very opposite in Robert, his character to Baldwin of Mons.

Hard and rigid,

said that when

powerful and impetuous, it is
young his father sent him abroad to seek his
fortune as a sea king. Driven off by the Moors
in Spain, he entered Constantinople in the dis-
guise of a pilgrim; there he plotted with the
Northmen, there settled in the Byzantine service,
for the deposition of the Emperor. Here again
he was unsuccessful, and deservedly; and his
third attempt was upon Friezeland, by which we

1054

brother.

1073

1062

Friezeland

by marriage.

1063

must understand that portion afterwards called Holland, from a very small district, whose name, by one of those accidents which render political nomenclatures of so much importance, soon extended itself to the exclusion of the antient denomination.

83. Friezeland, for so we must still call it, was at this time governed by Gertrude of Saxony, the widow of Count Floris, or Florence, by Robert gains whom she had one son, Thierry. It is supposed, and not unreasonably, that Robert had gained Gertrude's consent, and that she was as willing to accept a second mate as Richilda was. But as female sovereigns were rarely allowed a choice, it was needful also for her to appear to act under coercion, and the maritime war carried on by Robert afforded her the reason and the excuse for accepting his hand. However accomplished, the marriage was entirely successful to the State. His bold and sturdy disposition was congenial to that of Gertrude's subjects; he conformed himself to their habits and customs-so much so that he became, as it were, a Friezelander, and obtained the name of Robert the Frizon; a name grateful to the Teutonic portion of Flanders, but used somewhat contemptuously by those of the Roman tongue.

The right of succession to the Earldom of Flanders depended very much upon the will of the parent. Being composed of self-existing communities, each possessing a national indi