Queens Consort (6 page)

Some historians accept that William of Normandy visited England at this juncture, and while there is very little reason to believe that such a visit took place, it is agreed that Edward offered William the English crown. Robert, the former abbot of Jumièges in Normandy and subsequently, as part of Edward’s pro-Norman policy, archbishop of Canterbury, passed through Normandy on his way to Rome, bringing the promise of the succession and hostages to confirm it. (These hostages were Wulfnoth, Earl Godwin’s son, and Haakon, his grandson, and they were to remain in Normandy for thirteen years.) Later stories included the presentation of a ring and ceremonial sword. There were, however, other strong contenders for the throne. The children of Edward’s sister Godgifu, Countess of the Vexin, had an interest, as did the descendants of Edmund Ironside, whose son Edward ‘The Exile’ returned to the English court in 1057 but died shortly afterwards, leaving a son, Edgar Aetheling, as the claimant for the house of Wessex. And it was still possible that Edward might have children of his own.

In 1052, everything changed again. Godwin was begrudgingly restored to favour and Queen Edith was fetched out of the convent. Godwin died the following year, and his son Harold became Earl of Wessex, assuming his father’s role as the second man in the realm. It was too early for William to risk a confrontation, and for him the decade was one of consolidation. He waited patiently for his chance and, in 1064, the winds of opportunity finally blew.

They blew Earl Harold and his party to the coast of Ponthieu, a neighbouring county of Normandy, where they were immediately
imprisoned by the local lord, Count Guy. The purpose of Harold’s journey is unknown, despite the claim of later Norman sources that he had been sent as an envoy to reaffirm Edward’s promise to William and retrieve the hostages. When storms deposited Harold at Ponthieu, William was conveniently able to deliver him from captivity, and the two men spent the summer together. Though Harold was effectively a prisoner, everyone politely maintained that this was a friendly visit. Whatever might have been in the two men’s hearts, there was no outward manifestation of rivalry, indeed ‘there is every likelihood that a good time was had by all’.
²⁰
William was anxious to impress his guest with his status as a great prince and his jewels, silks, furs and plate were much on display. He also took the opportunity to introduce Harold to Norman military tactics in a short campaign against Brittany, in which Harold acquitted himself admirably. But beneath the displays of amity, William was intent on furthering the purpose he had been harbouring for over a decade. At some point before his return to England, Harold swore an oath to uphold William’s claim to the English crown, an oath which also included the promise of marriage to one of William and Matilda’s daughters. The scene is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, with Harold placed between two altars holding sacred relics, which he touches with his hand as William, seated on a throne and holding a sword (the sword supposedly sent by King Edward?) looks on.

Harold’s estimation of the value of his oath was demonstrated when King Edward died on 5 January 1066. The next day, the newly consecrated royal abbey at Westminster saw the funeral of one king and the coronation of another: Harold. He took Ealdgyth, sister of Morcar, the Earl of Northumbria, as his wife. It was a smooth succession, suggesting it had been arranged in advance, but Harold was immediately beset by challenges. At stake was not only the future of the English crown, but the orientation of the country towards either Scandinavia or Latin Europe, and the consequent balance of both ecclesiastical and political power in western Europe as a whole. The crucial figures involved were Harold himself, his brother Tostig, Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, and Duke William of Normandy.

By the summer of 1066, William was preparing for war. The English expedition brought new and important responsibilities for Matilda, who was to act as his regent in the duchy in his absence, in the name of their son Robert, who was now fourteen. Something of William’s long-term plans for the attempt on the English throne may be discerned in the fact that he had officially designated Robert as his heir in 1063, suggesting that he knew he was to risk his life and hoped to ensure a trouble-free
succession. Three years later, as the troopships were under construction in the shipyards and the massive organisation of men, horses and supplies was underway, William called a great assembly where he proclaimed his son as his heir before his chief magnates and extracted an oath of fidelity. Three counsellors were appointed to guide Matilda in William’s absence, Roger of Beaumont, Roger of Montgomery and Hugh d’Auranchin. Matilda was to demonstrate her political capabilities more fully in the future, but it is significant that during the critical period of the expedition, Normandy, ‘a province notoriously susceptible to anarchy’
²¹
suffered no major disturbances, despite being left in the nominal charge of a young woman and a boy. Matilda also contributed directly to the venture with the gift of the
Mora
, the large and brightly decorated ship in which William himself set sail for the English coast.

Harold was aware of the challenge to his crown being mobilised across the Channel, but he was faced with more immediate problems. Tostig had been made Earl of Northumbria in 1055 after his father’s reconciliation with King Edward. He was deeply unpopular, and ten years later the Northumbrians rebelled against him. Töstig was exiled to Flanders and replaced by Morcar, soon to become Harold’s father-in-law. Shortly after Harold’s succession, Tostig attempted to revenge himself by mounting a series of raids along the English coast, but was driven up to Scotland, where he made a treacherous alliance with one of Harold’s far more powerful rivals, the King of Norway. Harold Hardrada now proclaimed himself the rightful heir of King Cnut and set out with a huge fleet to make a bid for the throne. Tostig swore allegiance to him and their combined forces managed to take possession of York in September 1066. Harold moved his army northwards with spectacular speed and attacked the invaders at Stamford Bridge, to the north-east of the city. It was a magnificent victory. Tostig and Harold Hardrada were killed and only twenty-odd Viking ships were left to limp back to Norway.

Yet once more, Harold had to move fast. The Norman forces had landed at Pevensey on 28 September and were now encamped at Hastings. There was no option but to swing his exhausted men round and make for the south coast. The two armies met on 14 October.

The only contemporary account of the battle to have survived in English is the ‘D’ version of
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. It is a brief and poignant description of the passing of a world:

Then Earl William came from Normandy into Pevensey, on the eve of the Feast of St Michael, and as soon as they were fit, made a castle at
Hastings market town. This became known to King Harold and he gathered a great army and came against him at the grey apple tree. And William came upon him by surprise before his people were marshalled. Nevertheless the King fought very hard against him with those men who wanted to support him, and there was great slaughter on either side. There was killed King Harold and Earl Leofwine his brother, and Earl Gyrth his brother and many good men. And the French had possession of the place of slaughter.

King William I was crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day 1066. The ceremony was a crucial reinforcement of the legitimacy of his right to the throne. William needed to show that he held the crown not only by right of conquest, but as the true heir to an unbroken line of succession. The choice of the Confessor’s church at Westminster was a part of this declaration of legitimacy, and Westminster became the coronation church for almost every subsequent English monarch. The tenth-century Saxon rite was employed, with two notable modifications. The congregation was asked, by the archbishop of York in English and the bishop of Coutances in French, for its formal assent to William’s rule, a question that was incorporated into following coronations. And the
Laudes Regiae
, a part of the liturgy that had been used at the coronation of Charlemagne and on the highest Church holidays ever since, were sung. Pre-Conquest, William had been named in the
Laudes
as ‘Duke of the Normans’, after the French king. Post-Conquest, he is referred to as ‘the most serene William, the great and peacegiving King, crowned by God, life and victory’. Life and victory,
vita et Victoria
, is a Roman formulation, while
serenissimus
is the antique imperial title: William was evoking the most ancient authorities to support his new status. No mention was made in the post-1066
Laudes
of the king of France, implying that he and William were now equals. As William’s consort, Matilda of Flanders was associated in this declaration of majesty, and thus the queen’s role was publicly formalised as never before.

William sailed back to Normandy in 1067. At Fécamp in April, he displayed the English royal regalia and had the
Laudes
performed at the most splendid Easter court the duchy had ever seen. He returned to his new kingdom the following year and sent for Matilda, who arrived with the bishop of Lisieux as her escort and was crowned by archbishop Aldred at Westminster on the feast of Pentecost, 11 May 1068. Once again the
Laudes
were sung, and Matilda was anointed as well as crowned. The use of holy oil on the monarch’s person marked a moment of apotheosis, of
spiritual consecration. Unction symbolised the unique relationship between the anointed and God. The coronation ordo used for Matilda incorporated three important new phrases: ‘
constituit reginam in popolo
’ — the Queen is placed by God among the people;
‘regalis imperii … esse participem
— the Queen shares royal power; and ‘
laetatur gens Anglica domini imperio regenda et reginae virtutis providential gubernanda
— the English people are blessed to be ruled by the power and virtue of the Queen.
²²
The power of English queens consort was always customary rather than constitutional, but Matilda’s coronation reinforced the rite undergone by her ancestor Judith, which transformed queenship into an office.

A counterpoint to Matilda’s arrival in England was the departure of the mother figures of the two most important Anglo-Saxon dynasties. Gytha, the mother of King Harold, and the Confessor’s queen, Edith, sailed to St Omer in Flanders with ‘the wives of many good men’,
²³
while Agatha, the widow of Edward Aetheling, and her daughters Margaret and Christina left for Scotland after Matilda’s coronation. The ‘D’ version of
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
juxtaposes the departure of the Englishwomen and the arrival of the new Norman queen in a manner which highlights the significance of blood ties and marriage to political legitimacy. For the Saxons, 1066 represented ‘an almost total dispossession and replacement of the elite’,
²⁴
and that dispossession was marked not only by the redistribution of lands to William’s supporters but by the dislocation of the carriers of Saxon blood, the women themselves. The ‘D’ Chronicle anticipates the role of women in disseminating the bloodline of the conquerors through marriage, Orderic confirms that Matilda travelled with an entourage of Norman noblewomen and a study of post-Conquest nomenclature shows that the process of melding Saxons and Normans into a new race was well advanced by the end of the twelfth century, by which time nearly all English people bore ‘Continental’ names. (The major chroniclers of the period, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and Orderic Vitalis himself were all products of ‘mixed’ marriages.) Thus the picture painted by
Chronicle
‘D’, of the sorrowing Saxon womenfolk making way for the wives and mothers of the next Norman generation, becomes a symbol of victory and defeat which emphasises the centrality of women in dynastic power structures.

As the stark description of ‘D’ makes clear, the Conquest was a domestic as well as a military triumph. Marriage to Saxon heiresses was a significant means of obtaining greater control of Saxon lands. The Domesday Book records that 350 women held lands in England under the Confessor, their combined estates amounting to 5 per cent of the total area documented.
Two per cent of this was held by Queen Edith, the Confessor’s wife, and his sister Godgifu, and the majority of the rest was divided between thirty-six noblewomen. For women who chose not to go into exile, the convent offered a refuge from marriage to an invader. The archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, was concerned about the number of Englishwomen who had gone into hiding in religious houses. Matilda of Scotland, the granddaughter of Edward Aetheling, spent much of her childhood in two convents, perhaps as a means of protecting her from Norman fortune-hunters, though the possibility of her having betrayed an implied vocation was to cause controversy in her marriage to Henry I. The eventual ruling of the archbishop of Canterbury on the matter was based on Lanfranc’s judgement that women who had taken the veil to protect themselves ‘in times of lawlessness’ were free to leave the cloister.

At the time of her coronation Matilda was pregnant with her fourth son, Henry, the only one of her children to be born in England. She and William went back to Normandy for Christmas 1068, but the Norman victory in his kingdom was still insecure. A huge uprising, headed by Edgar Aetheling, broke out in Northumbria, and William had to return to deal with it. That Matilda, now heavily pregnant, joined him on the expedition is proved by the birth of Henry at Selby in Yorkshire. The ‘harrying of the north’, as the campaign became known, appalled contemporaries with its ruthlessness.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
reports variously that William’s troops ‘ravaged and humiliated’ the county, ‘wholly ravaged and laid waste to the shire’, or just ‘completely did for it’. Matilda showed great fortitude and loyalty in accompanying her husband at this dangerous time, and the journey she made shortly after her son’s birth all the way back to Normandy, where she took office as William’s regent, attests to her physical bravery and determination. Normandy would prove to be the main focus of Matilda’s activities for the rest of her life, but she did take an interest in her newly acquired English lands. With the aid of her vice-regal council she managed her estates effectively, granted charters and manors — including two, Felsted in Essex and Tarrant Launceston in Dorset, in 1082, to provide the nuns at Holy Trinity, her monastic house at Caen, with wardrobes and firewood — and founded a market at Tewkesbury.