12/31/2022 0 Comments William the conqueror artoonWulstan, Bishop of Worcester came in and tendered submission. Davis, “raised the English to that level of culture which the continental people had already reached and left it for the Plantagenets of Anjou to make England in her turn `a leader among nations’.”Īfter the invasion and the decisive battle of Hastings, William at once marched on London, and there the best and wisest men of the kingdom-for example, such influential prelates as Aldred, Archbishop of York, and St. Oman) that the claim to establish a better order of things was in fact justified by the event. At the same time it is not now disputed by impartial historians (e.g. A century later Henry II, when projecting his conquest of Ireland, adopted a similar role. He was probably sincere enough in believing himself constituted by God champion of the Church, and in obtaining from Pope Alexander II not only a blessing on his enterprise, but the gift of a specially consecrated banner as for a religious crusade. The repudiation of this oath by Harold at the Confessor‘s death enabled William to assume the character of an avenger of perjury. Neither can there be much doubt that this pledge was given with explicit reference to the duke’s intention of contesting the English throne. Whether any explicit promise of the succession had been made to the duke may be doubted, but one fact stands out clearly from a mass of obscure and often conflicting details: that King Harold, about the year 1064, finding himself on Norman soil, was constrained to take a solemn oath of allegiance to William. All through the reign, the king himself and at least a minority of his subjects had turned their eyes across the water, realizing that the Continent represented in general higher religious ideals and higher culture than prevailed at home. Edward the Confessor had been brought up in Normandy, for he was the nephew of Duke Richard II (d. Through the mediation of Lanfranc, the future archbishop, the union was legitimized by papal dispensation in 1059, but William and his wife consented to found two abbeys at Caen, by way of penance for their contumacy. It is in any case likely that his marriage, in spite of the papal prohibition, with Matilda, the daughter of the Earl of Flanders, in 1053, was intended as a check upon the influence exercised in that powerful quarter by Earl Godwin and his sons. How far his visit to England in 1051 was directly prompted by designs upon the throne, it is impossible to say. Meanwhile William had begun to take a great interest in English affairs. Using these as his base of operations, the young duke, in 1054 and the following years, made himself master of the province of Maine and thus became the most powerful vassal of the French Crown, able on occasion to bid defiance to the king himself. In 1047 a serious rebellion of the nobles occurred, and William with the aid of Henry, King of France, gained a great victory at Val-es-Dunes, near Caen, which led, the following year, to the capture of the two strong castles of Alencon and Domfront. He seems to have been a youth of clean life and of much natural piety, while the years of storm and stress through which he passed gave him an endurance and far-sighted resolution of character which lasted to his life’s end. “He is little”, the father said, “but he will grow, and, if God please, he will mend.” In spite of the murder of three of his guardians, and of attempts to kidnap his own person, the child, after a period of anarchy, became the ruler of Normandy in his father’s place. Before starting he presented to the nobles this child, then seven years old, demanding their allegiance. In 1035 Robert set out upon a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in which he died. William the Conqueror, KING OF ENGLAND AND DUKE OF NORMANDY, was the natural son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, his mother, Herleva, being the daughter of a tanner of Falaise.
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