English Lands Letters and Kings: From Celt to Tudor 4
Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.
Observe--that I call up these modern writers and their language, out of
their turn as may seem to you, only that I may plant more distinctly in
your thought the old incidents to which their words relate. It is as
if I were speaking to you of some long-gone line of ancestors, and on a
sudden should call up some delicate blond child and say--This one is in
the line of direct descent; she bears the same old name, she murmurs the
same old tunes; and this shimmer of gold in her hair is what shone on the
heads of the good Saxon foreparents.
_William the Norman._
We now come to a date to be remembered, and in the neighborhood of which
our first morning’s talk will come to an end. It is the date of the
Norman Conquest--1066--that being the year of the Battle of Hastings,
when the brave Harold, last of the Saxon kings went down, shot through
the eye; and the lithe, clean-faced, smirking William of Normandy “gat
him” the throne of England. These new-comers were not far-away cousins of
our Saxon and Danish forefathers; only so recently as the reign of Alfred
had they taken permanent foothold in that pleasant Norman country.
But they have not brought the Norse speech of the old home land with
them: they have taken to a Frankish language--we will call it Norman
French--which is thenceforth to blend with the Saxonism of Alfred,
until two centuries or more later, our own mother English--the English
of Chaucer and of Shakespeare--is evolved out of the union. Not only
a new tongue, do these conquerors bring with them, but madrigals and
ballads and rhyming histories; they have great contempt for the stolid,
lazy-going Latin records of the Saxon Chroniclers; they love a song
better. In the very face of the armies at Hastings, their great minstrel
_Taillefer_ had lifted up his voice to chant the glories of Roland, about
which all the histories of the time will tell you.
It was a new civilization (not altogether Christian) out-topping the
old. These Normans knew more of war--knew more of courts--knew more of
affairs. They loved money and they loved conquest. To love one in those
days, was to love the other. King William swept the monasteries clean of
those ignorant priests who had dozed there, from the time of Alfred, and
put in Norman Monks with nicely clipped hair, who could construe Latin
after latest Norman rules. He new parcelled the lands, and gave estates
to those who could hold and manage them. It was as if a new, sharp eager
man of business had on a sudden come to the handling of some old sleepily
conducted counting-room; he cuts off the useless heads; he squares the
books; he stops waste; pity or tenderness have no hearing in his shop.
I mentioned not far back an old Saxon Chronicle, which all down the
years, from shortly after Beda’s day, had been kept alive--sometimes
under the hands of one monastery, sometimes of another; here is what its
Saxon Scribe of the eleventh century says of this new-come and conquering
Norman King: It is good Saxon history, and in good Saxon style:--
“King William was a very wise man, and very rich, more
worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers. He was mild
to good men who loved God; and stark beyond all bounds to those
who withsaid his will. He had Earls in his bonds who had done
against his will; Bishops he set off their bishoprics; Abbots
off their abbotries, and thanes in prison. By his cunning he
was so thoroughly acquainted with England, that there is not
a hide of land of which he did not know, both who had it, and
what was its worth. He planted a great preserve for deer, and
he laid down laws therewith, that whoever should slay hart or
hind should be blinded. He forbade the harts and also the
boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if
he were their father.… He took from his subjects many marks
of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; and _that_ he
took--some by right, and some by mickle might for very little
need. He had fallen into avarice; and greediness he loved
withal. Among other things is not to be forgotten the good
peace that he made in this land; so that a man who had any
confidence in himself might go over his realm, with his bosom
full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay another man had he
done ever so great evil to the other.… Brytland (Wales) was in
his power, and he therein wrought castles, and completely ruled
over that race of men.… Certainly in his time men had great
hardship, and very many injuries.… His rich men moaned, and
the poor men murmured; but he was so hard that he recked not
the hatred of them all. For it was need they should follow the
King’s will, if they wished to live, or to have lands or goods.
Alas, that any man should be so moody, and should so puff up
himself, and think himself above all other men! May Almighty
God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his
sins.”
There are other contemporary Anglo-Saxon annalists, and there are the
rhyming chroniclers of Norman blood, who put a better color upon the
qualities of King William; but I think there is no one of them, who even
in moments of rhetorical exaltation, thinks of putting William’s sense of
justice, or his kindness of heart, before his greed or his self-love.
_Harold the Saxon._
The late Lord Lytton (Bulwer) gave to this period and to the closing
years of Harold one of the most elaborate of his Historic Studies. He
availed himself shrewdly of all the most picturesque aspects (and they
were very many) in the career of Harold, and found startling historic
facts enough to supply to the full his passion for exaggerated melodrama.
There are brilliant passages in his book,[12] and a great wealth of
archæologic material; he shows us the remnants of old Roman villas--the
crude homeliness of Saxon house surroundings--the assemblage of old
Palace Councils. Danish battle-axes, and long-bearded Saxon thanes, and
fiery-headed Welshmen contrast with the polished and insidious Normans.
Nor is there lacking a heavy and much over-weighted quota of love-making
and misfortune, and joy and death. Tennyson has taken the same subject,
using the same skeleton of story for his play of Harold. It would seem
that he has depended on the romance of Bulwer for his archæology; and
indeed the book is dedicated to the younger Lord Lytton (better known in
the literary world as “Owen Meredith”). As a working play, it is counted,
like all of Tennyson’s--a failure; but there are passages of exceeding
beauty.
He pictures the King Harold--the hero that he is--but with a veil of
true Saxon gloom lowering over him: he tells the story of his brother
Tostig’s jealous wrath,--always in arms against Harold: he tells of
the hasty oath, which the king in young days had sworn to William in
Normandy, never to claim England’s throne: and this oath hangs like a
cloud over the current of Harold’s story. The grief, and noble devotion
of poor Edith, the betrothed bride of the king, whom he is compelled by
a devilish diplomacy to discard--is woven like a golden thread into the
woof of the tale: and Aldwyth, the queen, whom Harold did not and can
never love, is set off against Edith--in Tennyson’s own unmatchable way
in the last scenes of the tragedy.
We are in the camp at Hastings: the battle waits; a vision of Norman
saints, on whose bones Harold had sworn that dreadful oath, comes to him
in his trance:--They say--(these wraiths of saints)--
O hapless Harold! king but for an hour!
Thou swarest falsely by our blessed bones,
We give our voice against thee out of Heaven!
And warn him against the fatal _arrow_.
And Harold--waking--says--
Away!
My battle-axe against your voices!
And then--remembering that old Edward the Confessor had told him on his
deathbed that he should die by an arrow--his hope faints.
The king’s last word--“the arrow,” I shall die:
I die for England then, who lived for England.
What nobler? Man must die.
I cannot fall into a falser world--
I have done no man wrong.…
Edith (his betrothed) comes in--
Edith!--Edith!
Get thou into thy cloister, as the king
Will’d it: … There, the great God of Truth
Fill all thine hours with peace! A lying Devil
Hath haunted me--mine oath--my wife--I fain
Had made my marriage not a lie; I could not:
Thou art my bride! and thou, in after years,
Praying perchance for this poor soul of mine
In cold, white cells, beneath an icy moon.
This memory to thee!--and this to England,
My legacy of war against the Pope,
From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from Age to Age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ’s.
Aldwyth, the queen, glides in, and seeing Edith, says--
Away from him! Away!
Edith says (we can imagine her sweet plaintiveness)--
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