Of two events of these last years of the Conqueror's reign, events of very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken.
The Welsh expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on British ground, and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of England.William now made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but he was constantly called over to England.The Welsh campaign proves his presence in England in 1081; he was again in England in 1082, but he went back to Normandy between the two visits.The visit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more characteristic act of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it.The cruelty and insolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much more than he deserved, had passed all bounds.In avenging the death of Walcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself or allowed any other man to do.And now, beguiled by a soothsayer who said that one of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed of succeeding to the throne of Gregory the Seventh.He made all kinds of preparations to secure his succession, and he was at last about to set forth for Italy at the head of something like an army.His schemes were by no means to the liking of his brother.William came suddenly over from Normandy, and met Ode in the Isle of Wight.
There the King got together as many as he could of the great men of the realm.Before them he arraigned Ode for all his crimes.He had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he had shown himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the realm.Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for the defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on his wild schemes in Italy.How was he to deal with such a brother, William asked of his wise men.
He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak.William then gave his judgement.The common enemy of the whole realm should not be spared because he was the King's brother.He should be seized and put in ward.As none dared to seize him, the King seized him with his own hands.And now, for the first time in England, we hear words which were often heard again.The bishop stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the privileges of his order.He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge him but the Pope.William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his answer ready."I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom I set over my kingdom." So the Earl of Kent was carried off to a prison in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for the release of the Bishop of Bayeux.
The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his island kingdom.In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-bed of his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the Midwinter Gemot in England.The chief object of the assembly was the specially distasteful one of laying on of a tax.In the course of the next year, six shillings was levied on every hide of land to meet a pressing need.The powers of the North were again threatening; the danger, if it was danger, was greater than when Waltheof smote the Normans in the gate at York.Swegen and his successor Harold were dead.Cnut the Saint reigned in Denmark, the son-in-law of Robert of Flanders.This alliance with William's enemy joined with his remembrance of his own two failures to stir up the Danish king to a yearning for some exploit in England.English exiles were still found to urge him to the enterprise.William's conquest had scattered banished or discontented Englishmen over all Europe.Many had made their way to the Eastern Rome; they had joined the Warangian guard, the surest support of the Imperial throne, and at Dyrrhachion, as on Senlac, the axe of England had met the lance of Normandy in battle.Others had fled to the North; they prayed Cnut to avenge the death of his kinsman Harold and to deliver England from the yoke of men--so an English writer living in Denmark spoke of them--of Roman speech.Thus the Greek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other, still kept on the name of Rome.
The fleet of Denmark was joined by the fleet of Flanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout and peaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a share in the work of war.
Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of the tax that he had just levied.He could hardly have dreamed of defending England against Danish invaders by English weapons only.
But he thought as little of trusting the work to his own Normans.
With the money of England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse and foot, from France and Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert was still defying him at Sainte-Susanne.He gathered this force on the mainland, and came back at its head, a force such as England had never before seen; men wondered how the land might feed them all.
The King's men, French and English, had to feed them, each man according to the amount of his land.And now William did what Harold had refused to do; he laid waste the whole coast that lay open to attack from Denmark and Flanders.But no Danes, no Flemings, came.Disputes arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the great enterprise came to nothing.William kept part of his mercenaries in England, and part he sent to their homes.Cnut was murdered in a church by his own subjects, and was canonized as SANCTUS CANUTUS by a Pope who could not speak the Scandinavian name.
