Danes, Saxons and Normans Part 17

As Hereward lay dead, a.s.selm, the Norman, cut off the hero's head, but not without an emphatic expression of admiration. "By the virtue of G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "I swear that I have never in my life seen so valiant a man!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fen country near Boston.]

x.x.xIII.

BUILDING OF BATTLE ABBEY.

While pursuing his victorious career, William the Conqueror did not forget the vow which, immediately after the battle of Hastings, he made to erect an abbey, to be dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to St.

Martin, the patron of the warriors of Gaul.

It is related that, when the foundations were dug, and the first stones of the edifice laid, the architects discovered that there would be a deficiency of water. Somewhat disconcerted, they repaired to William, and acquainted him with the untoward circ.u.mstance.

"Never mind," said the Conqueror, in a tone more jovial than his wont; "work away, and, if G.o.d give me life, there shall be more wine among the monks of Battle Abbey than there is in the best convent of Christendom."

According to William's orders, the work was proceeded with: the outer walls were traced round the hill which Harold and his men had covered with their bodies; and the adjacent land was granted to the abbey.

When the building of Battle Abbey was finished, William offered his sword and the regal robe he had worn at his coronation; and seven-score monks were brought from the great convent of Marmontiers, near Tours, to inhabit the edifice and pray for the souls of all who had died on the field. This magnificent structure is now in ruins, and the altar-stone, standing amid stagnant water, marks the spot where the Pope's consecrated banner was planted by William in the hour of carnage and victory.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

x.x.xIV.

MALCOLM CANMORE.

After devastating Northumberland, reducing the men of Chester, and entirely crushing the refugees in the camp of Ely, William turned his attention towards the reduction of Scotland, where reigned a king who had some power and much inclination to work him annoyance.

Malcolm Canmore was son of Duncan, King of Scots, whose murder by Macbeth, Buchanan has narrated and Shakspeare immortalized. In danger of being destroyed by the usurper, Malcolm and his brother, Donald Bane, after lurking for awhile in Scotland, resolved to fly--one made for Northumberland, the other for the Western Isles.

At that time Siward the Dane ruled Northumberland; and of that great and sapient earl the mother of Malcolm had been a near kinswoman. This circ.u.mstance was sufficient to insure the Scottish prince a friendly reception; and, on reaching York, he had the consolation of being treated with every possible kindness. Moreover, when Siward carried him to the court of Westminster, the Confessor--who could not help comparing Malcolm's circ.u.mstances to his own, while an exile in Normandy--after expressing a strong sympathy with his misfortunes, and a strong interest in his welfare, bade him be of good cheer.

At the Confessor's court, among Saxon thanes and Norman chevaliers, Malcolm might have learned to forget the crown which he had lost and the rude land from which he had been forced to fly; but it happened that Macbeth, after forfeiting the popularity by the aid of which he had usurped the Scottish throne, became a cruel and rapacious tyrant.

The Scots, in disgust, manifested a decided desire for Malcolm's restoration; and Macduff, thane of Fife, abandoning Macbeth's cause, espoused that of Malcolm with enthusiasm and energy.

About the time of G.o.dwin's restoration to England, messages of encouragement from the north of the Tweed reached Malcolm in his exile; and, without much hesitation, the young prince, now grown to be a man of huge stature, resolved on an expedition to regain his father's crown. Powerful was the aid on which he had to rely; for the Confessor readily lent his countenance to the enterprise, and Siward undertook to conduct it to a successful issue.

A fleet was soon fitted out to land soldiers on the Scottish coast; and an army of horse, commanded by Siward and his son, escorted Malcolm across the Tweed and through Lothian. The enterprise proved perfectly successful. In vain Hugh the Norman, Osborne, surnamed Pentecost, and other foreigners who had fled into Scotland at the time of G.o.dwin's return, drew their swords in favour of the usurper. A battle was fought; the son of Siward fell, and many Anglo-Danes. But Malcolm was victorious; and Macbeth, who in the battle had lost all his Norman allies, was deserted by his army, forced to fly, and overtaken and slain at Lanfanan in Aberdeenshire. An effort was then made by some of Macbeth's friends to raise a kinsman of the usurper, named Lulach, to the throne; but the friends of Malcolm soon put an end to Lulach's pretensions and his life, and the son of Duncan was, without further opposition, crowned at Scone.

Nevertheless, a plot was soon after formed to put Malcolm to death, and of this the chief author was a n.o.bleman who frequented the court.

Malcolm early became aware of the existence of the plot, but affected ignorance, till one day, when out hunting, he took the chief conspirator aside, and severely reproached him.

"But," said Malcolm, "here is a fit place and time to do that manfully which you have intended to do treacherously; and here draw your sword, if you dare."

The n.o.bleman, however, fell on his knees, confessed his fault, asked forgiveness, and ever afterwards served his king faithfully.

It cannot be said that Malcolm Canmore, when seated securely on the Scottish throne, displayed any particular grat.i.tude to his benefactors. Indeed, the nation under the protection of which he had found safety in the day of adversity, and by the aid of which he had gained his crown, had more than once strong reason to complain of his enmity and denounce his ingrat.i.tude. But it was chiefly in the third year after the landing of William the Norman that Malcolm offended.

When the Northumbrians drew together at York, to make head against the Conqueror's power, Malcolm mustered an army to lead to their a.s.sistance. Ere he was ready to take the field, however, the Northumbrians were put down; but, unwilling to be baulked of carnage and plunder, he marched by way of Carlisle, which, with c.u.mberland, he then held from the English crown, into Northumberland, and let loose all the fury of his barbarous subjects on the land where he had found rest in his weariness and consolation in his despair.

The Scots proceeded with energy to the work of destruction and bloodshed. Cleveland was savagely overrun; Wearmouth was sacked; St.

Peter's Church was burned; the banks of the Wear were ravaged without mercy; and everywhere the inhabitants were treated with barbarous cruelty. Able-bodied men and women were driven off captive, like flocks of sheep, and in such numbers, that, for many years after, there was scarcely a tenement in Scotland without English slaves of one s.e.x or the other. Blood, meanwhile, flowed like water.

Grandfathers and grandmothers, on the verge of the grave, and infants torn from their mothers' arms, were ruthlessly slaughtered. Warriors, calling themselves men and Christians, exhibited neither humanity nor religion. Never had Pagan Danes or Norwegians been guilty of such atrocities as were perpetrated on this memorable occasion.

One day, while the church of St. Peter was in flames, and while the Scots were revelling in carnage and cruelty, Malcolm, as he rode along and witnessed savage outrages which it is charitable to suppose he could not prevent, received intelligence that Edgar Atheling, with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters, Margaret and Christina--whom the chronicler describes as "comely young women"--were on board a ship in the harbour, waiting for a fair wind, but scarcely knew whither to steer their course. The tale of their distress appears to have touched the heart of Malcolm; he sent messages of kindness, invited them to repair to Scotland, and a.s.sured them that they might there reside in safety as long as they pleased. In their despair, the royal exiles grasped at this invitation, and the mariners steered for Scotland.

Accordingly, when Malcolm Canmore returned to his own dominions, he found that the heirs of Alfred and of Ironsides had sought refuge on the Scottish sh.o.r.es. The young king hastened to make their acquaintance; and the result was important in its influence on the destinies of England. The sweetness and piety of Margaret Atheling, endowed as she was with all the comeliness characteristic of Saxon women, produced a strange effect on the royal Scot, and he soon arrived at the conclusion that the opportunity of securing such a bride ought not to be neglected. A marriage was, in due time, celebrated; the Saxon Queen of Scots, by her precepts and example, exercised a softening and civilizing influence on her fierce husband and his savage subjects; their daughter Maude became the wife of Henry Beauclerc; and from their ancestress--the heiress of Henry and Maude, married to Geoffrey, the brave and accomplished Count of Anjou--the Plantagenets inherited royal Saxon blood, and that sympathy with the vanquished race which made them, when kings, the favourites and heroes of the English people.

William the Conqueror was not, of course, inattentive to what was pa.s.sing in the north; nor, indeed, did Malcolm allow the Norman to overlook his existence. In 1073, the Scottish king gathered an army, and crossed the Border to vindicate the claim of his wife's family to the English crown. By this time, however, William had put the Saxons throughout England under his feet, and resolved to bring Malcolm to reason by demanding the extradition of those who had taken refuge in Scotland.

With this object William placed himself at the head of his army, and, for the first time, crossed the Tweed. Not inclined to try conclusions with an antagonist so formidable, Malcolm presented himself to the Conqueror at a place near the frontier, which is supposed to have been Berwick; and, though declining to surrender the Saxon emigrants, "met King William in a peaceful att.i.tude, touched his hand in sign of friendship, promised that William's enemies should be his also, and freely acknowledged himself his va.s.sal and liegeman."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fern Islands, off the Coast of Northumberland.]

x.x.xV.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE DEATH OF COSPATRICK.

It was the year 1072, when the destruction of the camp of Ely ruined the last hope which the Saxons entertained of making head against the Conqueror; and the year 1073 witnessed the exile of the last Saxon of ill.u.s.trious lineage whom the Conqueror allowed to occupy a high position and exercise important functions.

It appears that after the installation of Cospatrick as Earl of Northumberland, the peace of the North was unbroken save by the terrible inroad of Malcolm, King of Scots. On that occasion, Cospatrick, having no force sufficiently powerful to oppose that of the Scottish king, endeavoured to draw Malcolm from Northumberland by making an incursion into c.u.mberland in the direction of Carlisle, which then lay in ruins. But finding the Scots too intent on carnage and plunder to move, he was fain to return, to shut himself up in Bamburgh, and in that fortress to listen, with unavailing regret, to accounts of the barbarous atrocities perpetrated by the invaders.

At length affairs began to settle; and the Bishop of Durham and his clergy, hearing that William had departed for the South, ventured back to their church. They found everything in disorder. Even the magnificent crucifix, the gift of Tostig and Judith, was stripped of all its ornaments, and tossed upon the floor. Nor was this the worst that was to befall. Ere long the bishop was degraded, and a native of Lorraine, named Vaulcher, inst.i.tuted in his place.

When Vaulcher, accompanied by a numerous train of Norman knights, reached York, Cospatrick presented himself, and conducted the new bishop to Durham. Perhaps, by this attention to Vaulcher, Cospatrick hoped to escape such a fate as had befallen every other Saxon of high rank. But if so, he was mistaken. Between the Norman king and the Saxon earl no real confidence existed. Every movement in Northumberland hostile to the Normans had exposed Cospatrick to suspicion; and, after having received Malcolm's homage, William, thinking he could dispense with the aid of the grandson of Uchtred, alleged that he had taken part in the murder of Robert Comine and in the siege of York, and formally deprived him of his earldom.

Cospatrick was now at his wits' end. Mortified at his own reverses, and grieving at the oppression under which his countrymen were labouring, but against which it seemed vain to struggle single-handed, he left England and pa.s.sed over to Flanders, to which the Saxons still looked with hope of aid. But all efforts proved vain; and he returned to die in poverty on the verge of the great northern province which he had lately ruled.

It would seem that Cospatrick had, by advising the flight of the bishop from Durham, lost favour with the clergy, and that they used all their efforts to terrify him with threats of the wrath of St.

Cuthbert. An aged priest of Durham, while in Holy Island, professed to have had a dream, in which he saw a great Northumbrian thane, who had maltreated the bishop and his company during their flight, suffering the torments of h.e.l.l, and in which St. Cuthbert appeared denouncing woes against Cospatrick. This dream derived importance from the circ.u.mstance of the Northumbrian thane having died at the very time; and when related to Cospatrick, now grown old and infirm, it caused him much trouble of spirit. Indeed, he is said to have forthwith taken the shoes from his feet, and set out on a pilgrimage to Holy Island, to propitiate St. Cuthbert by prayers and offerings.

After his pilgrimage to Holy Island, Cospatrick found rest for a time at Norham, on the Tweed. At that place, weary with adversity and woe, he soon felt himself sinking under his infirmities. At length, sick unto death, he bethought him of religious consolation, and intimated his wish to have the spiritual aid of Aldwin and Turgot, two monks in whose piety and prayers he had great confidence.

At Melrose--not on the spot occupied by the magnificent ruins of that great abbey, to which Sir Walter Scott has, in our day, given so wide a fame, but in a flat peninsula, described by Bede as "almost inclosed by the windings of the river Tweed"--the Culdees had, in the seventh century, erected a religious house. After flourishing for two hundred years, this edifice had suffered at the hand of King Kenneth, and gradually dwindled down to a chapel sacred to St. Cuthbert. In this chapel Aldwin and Turgot were "living in poverty and contrite in spirit for the sake of Christ." On receiving Cospatrick's message, these holy men hurried down the Tweed, eager to comfort the expiring sinner.

On reaching Norham the monks found the Saxon earl loudly lamenting his shortcomings, and expressing penitence for his sins, and they confessed him with all the ceremonies usual on such occasions. Before their departure he gave them two dorsals, or pieces of tapestry which were hung against walls as screens for the back, and begged that, in whatever place the monks might chance to take rest, they would hang the dorsals up in memory of him. This scene over, Cospatrick yielded up his breath.