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 the duke.All these were murdered, the Breton count by poison.Such a childhood as this made William play the man while he was still a child.The helpless boy had to seek for support of some kind.He got together the chief men of his duchy, and took a new guardian by their advice.But it marks the state of things that the new guardian was one of the murderers of those whom he succeeded.
This was Ralph of Wacey, son of William's great-uncle, Archbishop Robert.Murderer as he was, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully.There are men who are careless of general moral obligations, but who will strictly carry out any charge which appeals to personal honour.Anyhow Ralph's guardianship brought with it a certain amount of calm.But men, high in the young duke's favour, were still plotting against him, and they presently began to plot, not only against their prince but against their country.The disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against young William in his lord King Henry of Paris.
