William the Conqueror | Page 4

and were
nowhere more common than among the Norman dukes. In truth the
feeling of the kingliness of the stock, the doctrine that the king should
be the son of a king, is better satisfied by the succession of the late
king's bastard son than by sending for some distant kinsman, claiming
perhaps only through females. Still bastardy, if it was often convenient
to forget it, could always be turned against a man. The succession of a
bastard was never likely to be quite undisputed or his reign to be quite
undisturbed.
Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage of
being at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or
1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Count of
Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter of
Fulbert the tanner. There was no pretence of marriage between his
parents; yet his father, when he designed William to succeed him,
might have made him legitimate, as some of his predecessors had been
made, by a marriage with his mother. In 1028 Robert succeeded his

brother Richard in the duchy. In 1034 or 1035 he determined to go on
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He called on his barons to swear allegiance to
his bastard of seven years old as his successor in case he never came
back. Their wise counsel to stay at home, to look after his dominions
and to raise up lawful heirs, was unheeded. Robert carried his point.
The succession of young William was accepted by the Norman nobles,
and was confirmed by the overlord Henry King of the French. The
arrangement soon took effect. Robert died on his way back before the
year 1035 was out, and his son began, in name at least, his reign of
fifty-two years over the Norman duchy.
The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor could
happen only when no one else had a distinctly better claim William
could never have held his ground for a moment against a brother of his
father of full age and undoubted legitimacy. But among the living
descendants of former dukes some were themselves of doubtful
legitimacy, some were shut out by their profession as churchmen, some
claimed only through females. Robert had indeed two half- brothers,
but they were young and their legitimacy was disputed; he had an uncle,
Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been legitimated by the later
marriage of his parents. The rival who in the end gave William most
trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of a daughter of his
grandfather Richard the Good. Though William's succession was not
liked, no one of these candidates was generally preferred to him. He
therefore succeeded; but the first twelve years of his reign were spent in
the revolts and conspiracies of unruly nobles, who hated the young
duke as the one representative of law and order, and who were not
eager to set any one in his place who might be better able to enforce
them.
Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy took in
two classes of men. All were noble who had any kindred or affinity,
legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house. The natural children of
Richard the Fearless were legitimated by his marriage with their mother
Gunnor, and many of the great houses of Normandy sprang from her
brothers and sisters. The mother of William received no such exaltation
as this. Besides her son, she had borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide,
and, after Robert's death, she married a Norman knight named Herlwin
of Conteville. To him, besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and

Robert. They rose to high posts in Church and State, and played an
important part in their half-brother's history. Besides men whose
nobility was of this kind, there were also Norman houses whose
privileges were older than the amours or marriages of any duke, houses
whose greatness was as old as the settlement of Rolf, as old that is as
the ducal power itself. The great men of both these classes were alike
hard to control. A Norman baron of this age was well employed when
he was merely rebelling against his prince or waging private war
against a fellow baron. What specially marks the time is the frequency
of treacherous murders wrought by men of the highest rank, often on
harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests. But victims were also
found among those guardians of the young duke whose faithful
discharge of their duties shows that the Norman nobility was not
wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the
Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearless through a daughter. Two
others, the seneschal Osbern and Gilbert Count of Eu, were irregular
kinsmen of