If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still in this interval to complete his conquest of his own duchy by securing the surrender of Brionne; and two other events, both characteristic, one of them memorable, fill up the same time.William now banished a kinsman of his own name, who held the great county of Mortain, MORETOLIAM or MORETONIUM, in the diocese of Avranches, which must be carefully distinguished from Mortagne-en-Perche, MAURITANIA or MORETONIA in the diocese of Seez.This act, of somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds.First, the accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poor serving-knight of his own, but who became the forefather of a house which plays a great part in English history, Robert surnamed the Bigod.Secondly, the vacant county was granted by William to his own half-brother Robert.He had already in 1048 bestowed the bishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother Odo, who cannot at that time have been more than twelve years old.
He must therefore have held the see for a good while without consecration, and at no time of his fifty years' holding of it did he show any very episcopal merits.This was the last case in William's reign of an old abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy had been turned into means of providing for members, often unworthy members, of the ducal family; and it is the only one for which William can have been personally responsible.
Both his brothers were thus placed very early in life among the chief men of Normandy, as they were in later years to be placed among the chief men of England.But William's affection for his brothers, amiable as it may have been personally, was assuredly not among the brighter parts of his character as a sovereign.
The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic side of William's life.The long story of his marriage now begins.The date is fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims held in 1049 by Pope Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flanders is forbidden to give his daughter to William the Norman.This implies that the marriage was already thought of, and further that it was looked on as uncanonical.The bride whom William sought, Matilda daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was connected with him by some tie of kindred or affinity which made a marriage between them unlawful by the rules of the Church.But no genealogist has yet been able to find out exactly what the canonical hindrance was.It is hard to trace the descent of William and Matilda up to any common forefather.But the light which the story throws on William's character is the same in any case.Whether he was seeking a wife or a kingdom, he would have his will, but he could wait for it.In William's doubtful position, a marriage with the daughter of the Count of Flanders would be useful to him in many ways; and Matilda won her husband's abiding love and trust.Strange tales are told of William's wooing.Tales are told also of Matilda's earlier love for the Englishman Brihtric, who is said to have found favour in her eyes when he came as envoy from England to her father's court.All that is certain is that the marriage had been thought of and had been forbidden before the next important event in William's life that we have to record.
Was William's Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopes of succession to the English crown? Had there been any available bride for him in England, it might have been for his interest to seek for her there.But it should be noticed, though no ancient writer points out the fact, that Matilda was actually descended from Alfred in the female line; so that William's children, though not William himself, had some few drops of English blood in their veins.
William or his advisers, in weighing every chance which might help his interests in the direction of England, may have reckoned this piece of rather ancient genealogy among the advantages of a Flemish alliance.But it is far more certain that, between the forbidding of the marriage and the marriage itself, a direct hope of succession to the English crown had been opened to the Norman duke.
