William the Conqueror by David Bates

Author:David Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300118759
Publisher: Yale University Press

A SHORT VISIT TO NORMANDY

Although it is not mentioned in the literary sources, William and Matilda must have crossed to Normandy in the autumn of 1068 and spent Christmas there. Given the certainty that the future Henry I was born in England, the journey presumably took place after Matilda had recovered from childbirth. References to visits to Bonneville-sur-Touques and, in a charter dated to 1069, to Valognes, with other charters also being confirmed for the abbeys of Saint-Désir of Lisieux and Troarn, suggest an itinerary that took them westwards from the Seine valley to the north of the Cotentin, with a crossing to England, perhaps from Barfleur to Portsmouth, taking place in January.23 This journey would surely have taken in a visit to Caen, with William and Matilda and their court perhaps spending Christmas there. This itinerary, followed in the midst of so much turbulence, is an important commentary on priorities that kept visits to Normandy as a central feature of rule.

In addition to the confirmation of the charters, the one piece of business known to have been conducted during this visit is recorded in a remarkable personal narrative composed by Rainald, at the time a royal chaplain and later a monk at Jumièges, and, from 1084, abbot of Abingdon. It tells how William and Matilda, along with Archbishop John of Rouen, Roger de Beaumont, and unnamed others, heard a case involving an attempt by a woman to reclaim a child that she said she had sold to the wife of a certain Stephen after he and his wife had lost their child, the sale having been made to the wife without Stephen’s knowledge. William and the others decided that the woman should have the child back if she could demonstrate that she was the mother by passing unscathed through the ordeal by hot iron, which she duly did. She therefore regained her son, but, with impeccably ruthless logic, was then denied the property he would have inherited, which was granted by the court to Matilda and, later, by her, to Rainald.24 While Archbishop John’s role as the duchy’s senior churchman is self-explanatory, Roger de Beaumont’s central role is significant as a commentary on the politics of favour and on the distribution of responsibilities within cross-Channel rule.

If William of Malmesbury’s explanation is true that Roger acquired few lands in England because he regarded the Conquest as an act of plunder, it indicates that diversity of opinion was no barrier to high favour with William; it was loyalty and ability that presumably counted, and for this reason Roger remained of central importance in Normandy. His principles did not prevent his sons, one of whom had fought at Hastings, in due course receiving huge lands in England.25 In contrast, Roger de Montgommery, equally favoured by William and in the process of becoming massively endowed with land in England, presented a complete record of the abbey of Troarn’s endowment to William for confirmation in the last weeks of 1068. The timing, which cannot

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