William the Conqueror | Page 8

fail often to sink into the oppressor. Each step in his career as Conqueror was a step downwards. Maine was a neighbouring land, a land of the same speech, a land which, if the feelings of the time could have allowed a willing union, would certainly have lost nothing by an union with Normandy. England, a land apart, a land of speech, laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, was in another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be the oppressor. Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to further wrong.
With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider, on which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothing to do. It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of the English succession may have entered his mind or that of his advisers. When William began his real reign after Val-es-dunes, Norman influence was high in England. Edward the Confessor had spent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways and the company of Normans and other men of French speech. Strangers from the favoured lands held endless posts in Church and State; above all, Robert of Jumieges, first Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's special favourite and adviser. These men may have suggested the thought of William's succession very early. On the other hand, at this time it was by no means clear that Edward might not leave a son of his own. He had been only a few years married, and his alleged vow of chastity is very doubtful. William's claim was of the flimsiest kind. By English custom the king was chosen out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended from kings in the male line were counted as members of that house. William was not descended, even in the female line, from any English king; his whole kindred with Edward was that Edward's mother Emma, a daughter of Richard the Fearless, was William's great-aunt. Such a kindred, to say nothing of William's bastardy, could give no right to the crown according to any doctrine of succession that ever was heard of. It could at most point him out as a candidate for adoption, in case the reigning king should be disposed and allowed to choose his successor. William or his advisers may have begun to weigh this chance very early; but all that is really certain is that William was a friend and favourite of his elder kinsman, and that events finally brought his succession to the English crown within the range of things that might be.
But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyond the bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of his great continental conquest. William's first war out of Normandy was waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Count of Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine. William undoubtedly owed a debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-es- dunes, and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjou and Normandy. Both powers asserted rights over the intermediate land of Maine. In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in a war with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague tales of his exploits. The really instructive part of the story deals with two border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alencon lay on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy. Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy. The town was a lordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power and wickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike of Normandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than with ordinary nobles. The story went that William Talvas, lord of Belleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in his cradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame. Such a tale set forth the noblest side of William's character, as the man who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he who cursed him. The possessions of William Talvas passed through his daughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great part in William's history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, not of their lord, of which we hear just now. They willingly admitted an Angevin garrison. William in return laid siege to Domfront on the Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maine against Normandy. A long skirmishing warfare, in which William won for himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during the autumn and winter (1048-49).