Queen of the Conqueror: The Life of Matilda, Wife of William I (39 page)

The following year, 1082, Matilda and her husband visited William’s half-brother Odo at Grestain. This was the place where their mother, Herleva, was buried, and out of respect for her, they decided to build an abbey there. The fact that it was more than thirty years since her death suggests that both sons had a true and abiding affection for her.

There was, however, a subtext to the meeting, for William was concerned by the power that Odo had accumulated as regent of England. He was immensely rich, thanks in no small part to the fact that he had plundered the wealth of his adopted country, and he had built up a strong personal following, which could easily have posed a serious threat to the king’s authority. Indeed, he was even rumored to have supported Robert in his rebellion. While Odo was also fiercely ambitious, though, his aim was not the crown. Despite showing a blatant disregard for his vows as an archbishop by fathering children, he had his eye on the greatest church office of all: that of pope.

At his meeting with Odo, which Matilda presumably attended, William expressly forbade him to pursue the papacy. Not only would it take him away from England, where his presence was now necessary during the king’s absences, but it would also place him in a position of such power that he would no longer be subject to his half-brother’s authority. It is a measure of Odo’s arrogance that he promptly disregarded William’s
injunction and prepared to embark for Rome. The duke was one step ahead of him, however, and had Odo arrested as he was about to set sail. He was imprisoned in the Tower of Rouen, where he would remain for the rest of William’s reign.

The ruthlessness that William displayed in dealing with his half-brother again highlights just how fortunate Matilda and her eldest son had been. Odo’s fate proved that William had no qualms about punishing members of his family just as harshly as he might do an ordinary miscreant. Matilda and Robert had committed a far greater treachery than Odo; although he had overreached himself by setting his sights on the great prize of the papacy, and had flouted William’s orders in the process, he had not tried to usurp his half-brother’s own position. If it had not been for the love and admiration that the duke felt for Matilda, and to an extent her own skillful manipulation of such fondness, she and her son might well have met a terrible fate.

Throughout this time, Robert Curthose had remained part of his parents’ entourage. However, the veneer of unity had now begun to fracture once more. William continued to scoff at his son in public, tormenting him with petty humiliations, and in turn Robert again began to treat William with contempt. Father and son are last recorded as being together at Caen on July 18, 1083, along with Matilda.
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It seems that, frustrated with being kept under close scrutiny as part of William’s entourage, Robert left court soon after. Although he attested another charter with his father on January 9, 1084, this seems to have been a fleeting return, and he subsequently disappears from the records.
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In self-imposed exile, he was this time accompanied by a much-reduced band of followers. Although Robert had come close to victory at Gerberoy, William had reasserted his authority so effectively that few believed his son to have any real credibility any longer as an opponent.

Matilda’s health must have begun to seriously deteriorate shortly after that last meeting with her husband and beloved son at Caen in July 1083, for she would never leave that city. The fear and stress caused by the collapse of William and Robert’s rapprochement may have hastened her decline—contemporaries certainly believed this to be the case. Another
theory is that Matilda fell victim to the plague, which had struck Normandy and was particularly prevalent in Caen.
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She was now about fifty-two years old—an advanced age at a time when most women died in their thirties. Although she seems to have been of a robust constitution, and had no recorded illnesses, the years of childbearing, travel, and the tumultuous travails of state must have taken their toll.

Orderic claims that Matilda had in fact fallen grievously sick the previous year, at about the time when she and William met Odo at Grestain.
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This is supported by one of the charters to which she bore witness. Around 1156, her great-grandson restored to St.-Étienne the village of Northam in Devon, which he said had been originally granted to the abbey by Matilda “in her last illness.” The charter to which this refers is not dated, but it is likely to have been compiled in around 1082.
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It was also around this time that Matilda’s ecclesiastical endowments increased, perhaps in an attempt to secure eternal salvation. In 1082, she granted the manors of Felsted in Essex and Tarrant Launceston in Dorset to La Trinité in order to provide the nuns with money for wardrobes and firewood. Out of respect for her husband, she also made bequests to three churches in Falaise, the place of his birth.

More conclusive evidence that Matilda knew she was dying in 1082 was the fact that she almost certainly drew up her will in that year. The document survives in the registry of La Trinité, along with an inventory of Matilda’s wardrobe and jewels. It is a disappointingly neutral list, with no touching bequests for her loved ones and precious few references to personal belongings that would provide a clue as to what Matilda held dear. She was returning to that typical businesslike approach she had taken toward all affairs of state throughout her reign as duchess and queen. In the carefully crafted piece of statesmanship, she maintained the appearance of a dutiful wife to the last, stressing, “I have made all … bequests with the consent of my husband.”

The contents of the will also functioned to reiterate Matilda’s public image of benevolence and piety. For instance, she left the contents of her chamber, including her crown and scepter and many other precious objects, to her abbey at La Trinité, where she wished to be buried. The bequests give a further clue to the lavish style in which she must have lived, for they included a fine chasuble made by an English noblewoman at
Winchester, “a cloak worked in gold from her chamber which is to be used to make a cope, two gold chains each with a cross, one chain with carved decorations for hanging a lamp in front of the altar, candlesticks made at Saint-Lô … a chalice and vestment made in England, with all a horse’s accoutrements and all her vases, with the exception of those given away during her lifetime.” The trappings for the horses stand out as a peculiar item amongst the rich regalia. It is possible that the nuns of La Trinité had asked Matilda to make this bequest, knowing that they would be useful for the abbess or prioress during visits away from the abbey. Or perhaps they were meant to signal the peripatetic life that Matilda had led as queen and duchess.

The abbey was also granted some property owned by the queen, including the town of Quettehou in Normandy and two houses in England.
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Lastly, she gave generously to the poor, which seemed to inspire her husband, a witness to her last bequests, to do the same upon his own death four years later.

However, the fact that the lion’s share of Matilda’s possessions went to her abbey in Caen could indicate that she was influenced not just by a desire for eternal salvation, but also by consideration for her daughter Cecilia, who was now in her mid-twenties and had completed seventeen years’ service at the abbey. She was no doubt already of some standing in the hierarchy of La Trinité, and she would go on to achieve a highly successful career there.

With this in mind, then, it could be said that the will to some extent reflected Matilda’s character. Functional and businesslike, it displayed her cool grip of statecraft and the importance of a benevolent public image, but it also contained a hint of that underlying, and at times destructive, tenderness toward her family.

The long interim between the will and Matilda’s death suggests that the decline was a lingering one. By the onset of winter 1083, she was gravely ill, and in the early hours of November 2, “growing apprehensive because her illness persisted, she confessed her sins with bitter tears and, after fully accomplishing all that Christian custom requires and being fortified by the saving sacrament, she died.”
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William stayed with her throughout. He was consumed with grief at the death of the woman
whom he confessed to love “as my own soul,” and was said to have wept profusely for many days afterward.
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Despite its often turbulent nature, William and Matilda’s marriage had been one of the most successful partnerships in medieval Europe. Matilda had been instrumental to her husband’s success. His mainstay for more than thirty years, she had been one of his most valued advisers, had proved a wise and capable ruler during his long absences in England, and had borne him many children to secure his dynasty. It was her bloodline that had enabled him to pursue so vigorous a claim to the English throne in the first place, and her family connections had helped him to retain both this kingdom and the duchy of Normandy for himself and his heirs. Above all, though, it was her personal qualities that he would miss the most. Her wisdom, shrewdness, and strength of character made her utterly irreplaceable.

According to Malmesbury, William eschewed all other women for the remainder of his days. “For when she died, four years before him, he … showed by many days of the deepest mourning how much he missed the love of her whom he had lost. Indeed from that time forward, if we believe what we are told, he abandoned pleasure of every kind.”
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The duke subsequently fell into a profound depression, from which he never truly recovered, and was, according to one historian, “a mourner till the day of his death.”
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The various bequests that he made for the soul of his dead wife reveal the sincerity of his grief.
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Upon Matilda’s death, the entire duchy was plunged into mourning, and Mass was celebrated for her everywhere, from the great abbeys and cathedrals to the smallest and most remote of its churches. The monastery of St.-Évroult, where the young Orderic Vitalis took up residence two years later, was among those that held special services of remembrance.
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He and his fellow Anglo-Norman chronicler, Malmesbury, record Matilda’s passing with regret and claim that she was greatly missed. Orderic remembered her as “the most amiable, the most courteous, the most intelligent woman of her time; the most chaste, the most devoted to her husband, the most tender towards her children.”
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Her recent
transgressions had soon been forgotten. The large number of bequests that were made for her soul by her family and members of her court—even many years after her death—demonstrate the high regard in which she was held as well as her enduring influence.
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In an epigram that he wrote to honor the late queen, the poet Fulcoius, Archdeacon of Beauvais, lamented:

If she could be brought back from death through tears
,

Money, fair or foul means, then rest assured

There would be an abundance of these things …

Let this be the inscription [on her tomb]:

“Matilda, queen of the English

Known for her twofold honour, ruled over the Normans
,