Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (23 page)

Women had even more cause for complaint in this dramatically changed culture and society. Rape became commonplace, as Orderic Vitalis describes: “Noble maidens were exposed to the insults of low-born soldiers, and lamented their dishonouring by the scum of the earth.” Those women who escaped such violence on account of their age were no less wretched. “Matrons, highly born and handsome, mourned the loss of their loving husbands and almost all their friends, and preferred death to life.”
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Moreover, women found themselves oppressed by the law. For example, new marriage customs put them at a disadvantage, as they were now expected to bring with them considerable dowries, whereas in Anglo-Saxon times the onus had been on the man to arrange a more equitable settlement. As one authority on the subject neatly put it: “Favour lay with the spear not with the spindle in Norman days.”
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With precious few exceptions, then, the changes wrought by the Norman Conquest proved both dramatic and unwelcome for the native population. Even sixty years later, Malmesbury had cause to lament, “England has become a dwelling-place of foreigners and a playground for lords of alien blood. No Englishman today is an earl, a bishop, or an abbot; new faces everywhere enjoy England’s riches and gnaw her vitals, nor is there any hope of ending this miserable state of affairs.”
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Orderic Vitalis’s account, however, provides a stark contrast. He paints a picture of harmonious integration in which the Saxons gladly
accepted the civilizing influence of their Norman conquerors: “English and Normans were living peacefully together in boroughs, towns, and cities, and were inter-marrying with each other. You could see many villages or town markets filled with displays of French wares and merchandise, and observe the English, who had previously seemed contemptible to the French in their native dress, completely transformed by foreign fashions. No one dared to pillage, but everyone cultivated his own fields in safety and lived contentedly with his neighbour.”
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On this latter point, at least, the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
is in agreement: “Among other things, the good order he [William] made in this land is not to be forgotten, so that a man who was of any account could travel over his kingdom with his bosom full of gold, unmolested.” It also attests that after the initial wave of violence against the native population, England’s new king gradually imposed a set of strict laws against crimes such as murder and rape: “No man dare kill another man, however great a wrong he might have done the other. And if any common man had sex with a woman against her will, he immediately lost the limbs with which he played.”
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But this account was written at the end of William’s life, which indicates that the change had been gradual. Orderic Vitalis’s claim that the Conqueror’s civilizing influence had taken full effect within the space of just four years was an idealized and inaccurate view, as would be proved by the continuing unrest and resentment among the English population. William’s struggle with his rebellious subjects was to be a long and bitter one, and he would never enjoy the luxury of feeling secure on his throne.

I
f the situation looked bleak in England, it was a good deal brighter in Normandy, thanks to the efforts of its duchess. Ever since taking the reins of power on the eve of her husband’s invasion, Matilda had ruled the duchy with great shrewdness and political acumen. Throughout her initial two-year tenure, there was no erosion of ducal power or loss of territories to foreign magnates. In fact, the duchy enjoyed a more stable period than it had for many years. This achievement must not be underestimated. Normandy was, as one leading authority of the period has termed it, “a province notoriously susceptible to anarchy,” and the absence of its powerful duke and most of his army had made it dangerously vulnerable to antagonistic forces.
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Orderic Vitalis describes the political infighting with which Matilda had to deal: “One would try through jealousy to oust another from his position, and various disturbances broke out which caused wretchedness to the poor; troubles such as these delighted the cruel and distressed all who loved justice and seemliness.”
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Such rebelliousness was, he claimed, endemic among the Norman people as a whole: “They tear each other to pieces and destroy themselves, for they hanker after rebellion, cherish sedition, and are ready for any treachery.”
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Yet Matilda, a mere woman, had established her authority from the start and had brought this turbulent duchy firmly under her control. As a result, her husband had been able to concentrate upon the urgent need
to consolidate his victory in England, which could have been seriously threatened if his attention had been continually diverted by affairs back in Normandy.

Acting as regent would have absorbed all of Matilda’s time and energy. Contemporary ideals required rulers to be always accessible to their subjects, and this was particularly important when there were potential threats to their power. For Matilda, this meant traveling from city to city and holding court in as magnificent a style as possible. There was very little room for privacy in her life. Among the places she visited most often would have been her and William’s chief residences at Fécamp, Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, Bonneville-sur-Touques, and Lillebonne. In order to reinforce the strength of the Norman dynasty, she might have taken some or all of her children with her on the most important occasions, but otherwise her duties must have involved long periods of separation from them.

By making such sacrifices and working hard to maintain the stability of the realm, Matilda had won the respect of ministers and subjects alike. There could have been no clearer demonstration of her political skill or of her loyalty to William. Even William of Poitiers praised the “wisdom” of “our dearest mistress” and admitted: “Its [Normandy’s] government had been carried on smoothly by our lady Matilda.” However, the fact that he did not use her royal title may have been intended as a slight, and he could not resist musing that the absence of rebellion or invasion during her regency “must, we think, be attributed primarily to the king himself, whose return they feared.”
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As a female regent, Matilda was arguably at a disadvantage when it came to bringing her subjects to heel. But she overcame the perceived weakness of her sex, and in the eyes of her grateful husband, her worth soared to even greater heights than before the conquest. To a woman of Matilda’s ambition, this reward was greater than any riches. As an indication that he trusted her above all others, William made it known that in future she was to act with the fullness of his authority in whichever of his domains he needed her. Matilda, Duchess of Normandy, now faced the appealing prospect of being queen of England in more than just name.

Having “united the two shores of the channel,” William returned in
triumph to Normandy in the spring of 1067.
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Though he was delighted to find that his wife had kept the duchy in such good order, there were rumors that she had been less than faithful to him in other ways. One of the duke’s knights, Grimoult du Plessis, who had stayed behind in Normandy during the conquest of England, repeated a tale that Matilda had been sleeping with another man during William’s absence. Enraged, the duke was said to have dragged his wife from her bed and fastened her hair to a horse’s tail before parading her naked through the streets of Caen. The more detailed accounts attest that she was dragged from the end of the Rue de Vaucelles to her husband’s abbey, thus crossing the entire town. On the way, she passed by a road that she subsequently baptised Rue Froide (Cold Road)—not, as one might assume, because of her lack of attire, but because of the indifference of the inhabitants who lived there. Tradition has it that she also had a monument built on the site where the humiliating parade began, and named it the Croix Pleureuse (Cross of Tears).
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On their return to the chateau, William had his wife locked up in a dungeon. Only after Matilda continued to plead her innocence did he eventually agree to restore her. Finally convinced of his wife’s fidelity, he wrought a horrific revenge upon the knight who had told him such a scandalous falsehood, ordering his men to hunt him down and skin him alive with a wooden knife. Grimoult’s corpse was then quartered by four horses. According to the legend, William kept fragments of the knight’s skin under his saddle as a trophy.
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This extraordinary tale is typical of the salacious rumors that were put about by chroniclers sympathetic to the English cause, and there is no reference to it in any other source. In fact, Grimoult du Plessis had been one of the rebels who had fought against William at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047. He had subsequently been captured and held prisoner at Rouen, where he later died. As William’s captive, he would hardly have been in a position either to witness Matilda’s infidelity (if such it was) or to relate the tale to William, let alone suffer such a gruesome fate. More to the point, it is highly unlikely that Matilda would have risked her position by playing the whore during her husband’s absence. Even if she had been so inclined, she would hardly have had the time. The regency of Normandy was very much a full-time occupation.

While this rumor can be given little credence, there is another that has a rather firmer grounding in the contemporary records. Although she was on the surface a calm and pragmatic ruler, there is evidence to suggest that Matilda did not flinch from using her power for an altogether more sinister purpose than the just government of her realm. It had been almost twenty years since her humiliation at the hands of Brihtric, the Saxon lord who had spurned her proposal in Flanders, but time had apparently not lessened the implacable hatred that she felt toward him. For Matilda, revenge was a dish best served cold. During the first year of her husband’s reign, she demanded possession of the manor of Tewkesbury, which had been held by Brihtric since before the Conquest.
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The
Chronicle of Tewkesbury
claims that she also deprived his town of Gloucester of its charter. The vengeful queen then “stirred up the king’s wrath against the Saxon nobleman.” William ordered that Brihtric should be seized at his house at Hanley in Worcestershire on a day that should have been one of glory for his captive, witnessing as it did the consecration of a chapel that he had had built by Wulfstan, the bishop of Worcester. The Saxon was taken with all haste to Winchester, where he was thrown into prison, apparently without cause. He languished there for two years before dying in mysterious circumstances. It was widely rumored that Matilda had ordered his murder.
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The truth of what happened to Brihtric will probably never be known. The evidence against Matilda is far from conclusive. If she had deprived Brihtric of his estates and his life, then she must have done so through an agent, because she did not arrive in England until the following year. Moreover, there is evidence—overlooked until now—to suggest that Brihtric might have been present at Matilda’s coronation. Among the charters is a grant by William to Giso, the bishop of Wells, restoring some land in Banwell, Somerset, which the late King Harold had appropriated.
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This diploma has been dated to Whitsun 1068, and the considerable body of witnesses who attested it suggests that it was among the charters that were approved at Matilda’s coronation. The last name on the list is that of Brihtric. This makes it unlikely that Matilda had ordered the seizure of his lands the previous year, and impossible that she had ordered his imprisonment at the same time. It is deliciously tempting to imagine England’s new queen confronted by the sight of her former
lover amid the pomp and ceremonial of her coronation. Forced to restrain her emotions for fear of causing a scandal that would ruin the most important day of her life, she may have resolved to exact her revenge at the earliest opportunity. If this is a flight of fancy, then it is certainly feasible that something had prompted Matilda to seek redress for the slight that she had suffered all those years ago. Seeing Brihtric at her coronation would have been the perfect provocation.

We know from Domesday Book that Matilda did inherit a considerable portion of Brihtric’s estates. These dominated the west of England, encompassing Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire.
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His lands in the latter—his home county—besides Tewkesbury, included Avening, Fairford, Thornbury, and Old Sodbury.
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Matilda retained these during her lifetime, but she gave many of Brihtric’s other estates away. She donated some of his most prized lands in Dorset and Devon to the abbeys of St. Mary’s Le Bec, La Trinité, and St.-Étienne.
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Was this a penance for ordering Brihtric’s imprisonment—or, worse, his death? A nineteenth-century source supports such a notion. According to this account, a year before her death, Matilda transferred the ownership of her manor of Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, together with all its rents and dues, to her abbey in Caen. This manor had apparently been part of the spoils that she had wrested from Brihtric, so the fact that she gave it to the church during her final illness can be interpreted as an attempt at atonement for past sins.
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