The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 - Various
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35
The war between Henry and the Pope continued. Henry summoned a synod at
Worms in January, 1076, which decreed the deposition of the Pope. The
envoy charged to convey this sentence appeared in the council chamber of
the Lateran in February, before an assembly consisting of the mightiest
in the land, whom the Pope had summoned to sit in judgment on Henry.
With flashing eyes and in a voice of thunder he directed the Pope to
descend from the chair of St. Peter. Cries of indignation rang through
the hall, and a hundred swords were seen leaping from their scabbards to
inflict vengeance on the daring intruder. The Pope, with difficulty,
stilled the angry tumult. Then, rising with calm dignity, amid the
breathless silence of the assembled multitude, he uttered that dread
anathema which "shuts paradise and opens hell," and absolved the
subjects of Henry from their allegiance.
The inhabitants of Europe were struck dumb with amazement when they
witnessed this exercise of papal prerogative. They thought that the
powerful arm of Henry would have been raised to smite down the audacious
Hildebrand. The Pope, however, well knew that Henry had by his excesses
alienated from himself the affections of his subjects. The sentence gave
a pretext to many of his nobility to withdraw from their allegiance.
Awed by spiritual terrors, his attendants fell away from him as if he
had been smitten by a leprosy. An assembly was now summoned at Trebur,
in obedience to a requisition from the Pope, at which it was decreed
that, if the Emperor continued excommunicate on the 23d of February,
1077, his crown should be given to another. The theory of the Holy Roman
Empire had thus become a practical reality. The vassal of Otho had
reduced the successor of Otho to vassalage. A great pope had wrung from
the superstition and reverence of mankind a spiritual empire, which, it
was hoped, would extend its sway to earth's remotest boundaries.
ARTAUD DE MONTOR
Gregory made it an invariable rule to act at the outset with gentleness.
"No one," says he, "reaches the highest rank at a single spring; great
edifices rise gradually." Certain of his strength, he chose to employ
conciliation. He especially sought to convince Henry, but the excesses
in which that prince wallowed were so abominable that his subjects in
all parts, and especially the great, revolted against him. In 1076,
Gregory assembled a council, which pronounced the excommunication of the
King, with all the terrible consequences attendant upon it.
History shows several emperors of the East excommunicated by preceding
popes: Arcadius, by Innocent I; Anastasius, by Saint Symmachus; and Leo
the Isaurian, by Gregory II and Gregory III.
The decree of the same council set forth that the throne vacated by
Henry was adjudged to Rudolph, duke of Swabia, already created king of
Germany by the electors of the empire.
Before the election of Rudolph, Gregory had declared that he would
repair to Germany. King Henry, on his part, promised to come into Italy.
The Pope left Rome with an escort furnished by the countess of Tuscany,
daughter of Boniface, marquis of Tuscany. The march of Gregory was a
triumph. Amidst that escort he reached Vercelli. It was feared by some
that Henry would make his appearance at the head of an army, but he had
not that intention. The Pope, nevertheless, deemed it best to retire
into the fortress of Canossa, belonging to the Countess Matilda, in
order that he might be secure from all violence.
Henry had spent nearly two months at Spires in a profound and melancholy
solitude. The weight of the excommunication oppressed him with a
thousand griefs. Weary of that state of uncertainty, and still, as ever,
tricky and hypocritical, he conceived the idea of winning over the Pope
by an apparent piety, and of satisfying his requirements by a brief
humiliation; moreover, the decree of excommunication declared that it
should be withdrawn if the King appeared before the Pope within a year
from the date of the decree. The winter was severe. After running a
thousand dangers, the King and his queen arrived at Turin, and proceeded
to Placentia. Thence the prince announced that he would proceed to
Canossa, by way of Reggio.
The Countess Matilda met him with Hugo, Bishop of Cluny. She wished to
restore harmony between the Pope and the King. Gregory seemed to desire
that Henry should return to Augsburg, to be judged by the Diet. The
envoys of the King at Canossa replied: "Henry does not fear being
judged; he knows that the Pope will protect innocence and justice; but
the anniversary of the excommunication is at hand, and if the
excommunication be not removed, the King, _according to the laws of the
land_, will lose his right to the crown. The prince humbly requests the
Holy Father to raise the interdict, and to restore him to the communion
of the Church. He is ready to give every satisfaction that the Pope
shall require; to present himself at such place and at such time as the
Pope shall order; to meet his accusers, and to commit himself entirely
to the decision of the head of the Church."
Henry, says Voigt, having received permission to advance, was not long
on the way. The fortress had triple inclosures; Henry was conducted into
the second; his retinue remained outside the first. He had laid aside
the insignia of royalty; nothing announced his rank. All day long,
Henry, bareheaded, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning
till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He thus
waited during a second and a third day. During the intervening time he
had not ceased to negotiate. On the morrow, Matilda interceded with the
Pope on behalf of Henry, and the conditions of the treaty were settled.
The prince promised to give satisfaction to the complaints made against
him by his subjects, and he took an oath, in which his sureties joined.
When those oaths were taken, the pontiff gave the King the benediction
and the apostolic peace, and celebrated Mass.
After the consecration of the host, the Pope called Henry and all
present, and still holding the host in his hand, said to the King: "We
have received letters from you and those of your party, in which we are
accused of having usurped the Holy See by simony, and of having, both
before and since our episcopacy, committed crimes which, according to
the canons, excluded us from holy orders.
"Although we could justify ourselves by the testimony of those who have
known our manner of life from our childhood, and who were the authors of
our promotion to the episcopacy, nevertheless, to do away with all kind
of scandal, we will appeal to the judgment, not of men, but of God. Let
the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we are about to take, be this
day a proof of our innocence. We pray the Almighty to dispel all
suspicion, if we are innocent, and to cause us suddenly to die, if we
are guilty."
Then turning towards the King, Gregory again spoke: "Dear son, do also
as you have seen us do. The German princes have daily accused you to us
of a great number of crimes, for which those nobles maintain that you
ought to be interdicted, during your whole life, not only from royalty
and all public function, but also from all ecclesiastical communion, and
from all commerce of civil life. They urgently demand that you be
judged, and you know how uncertain are all human judgments. Do, then, as
we advise, and if you feel that you are innocent, deliver the Church
from this scandal, and yourself from this embarrassment. Take this other
portion of the host, that this proof of your innocence may close the
lips of your enemies, and engage us to be your most ardent defender, to
reconcile you with the nobles, and forever to terminate the civil war."
This address astonished the King. Going apart with his confidants, he
tremblingly consulted as to what he could do to avoid so terrible a
test. At length, having somewhat recovered his calmness, he said to the
Pope, that as those nobles who remained faithful were, for the most
part, absent, as well as those who accused him, the latter would give
little faith to what he might do in his own justification, unless it
were done in their presence. For that reason, he asked that the test
should be postponed to the day of the sitting of the general diet, and
the Pope consented.
When the Pope had finished Mass, he invited the King to dinner, treated
him with much attention, and dismissed him in peace to his own people,
who had remained outside the castle. Henry, on his return to his nobles,
was not well received. Henry, as Voigt shows, soon became alarmed at
their disapprobation, which originated only in a feeling of wounded
complicity and ambitious views, which could not hope for success after
the victory gained by Gregory.
Henry, hearing himself accused of weakness, thought to deliver himself
from so much annoyance by a bold perjury; and he endeavored to draw
Gregory and Matilda into a snare. Warned by faithful friends, they did
not visit the King as had been agreed; and that new wrong determined
Gregory to suspend his departure for the Diet of Augsburg. No one, not
even the pious Matilda, now dared to speak of a reconciliation.
Henry held at Brescia, in 1080, a pseudo council of the bishops devoted
to him; and there he caused Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, an avowed
enemy of Gregory, to be elected as Pope; and he deposed Gregory,
although he was recognized as the legitimate pope by the whole Catholic
world, with the exception of the bishops in revolt, under the direction
of Henry. On learning this, Gregory celebrated at Rome, in the year
1080, a regular council, in which he again excommunicated Henry, and
especially the antipope, whom he would never absolve.
ARTHUR PENNINGTON
The war continued. Henry's rival for the empire, Rudolph of Swabia, was
supported by many German partisans, especially by the Saxons. He was
defeated with great loss at Fladenheim. The skill and courage of the
Saxon commander, however, turned a defeat into a victory. Emboldened by
this victory, Gregory excommunicated Henry, and "gave, granted, and
conceded" that Rudolph might rule the Italian and German empires. With
the sanction of thirty bishops, an antipope, Guibert, was elected at
Brixen. The war raged with undiminished violence. The Saxons, the only
power in alliance with the Romans, gained a victory over Henry in
Germany at the very same time when Matilda's forces fled before his army
in the Mantuan territory. Matilda had lately granted all her hereditary
states to Gregory and his successors forever. Before the summer of the
year 1080 the citizens of Rome saw the forces of Henry in the Campagna.
The siege of Rome continued for three years. The capture of the city was
imminent, when the forces of Robert Guiscard, the Norman, came to the
rescue of the Pope.
Nicholas II had bestowed on Robert Guiscard the investiture of the
duchies of Apulia and Calabria; Sicily also, the conquest of which his
brother Richard was meditating, being prospectively added to Robert's
dominions. The oath taken by Robert Guiscard on this occasion bound him
to be the devoted defender of the pontificate. He now became a friend
indeed. A hasty retreat saved the forces of Henry from the impending
danger. The Pope returned in triumph to the Lateran. But within a few
hours he heard from the streets the clash of arms and the loud shouts of
the combatants. A fierce contest was raging between the soldiers of
Robert and the citizens who espoused the cause of Henry. A conflagration
was kindled, which at length destroyed three-fourths of the city.
Gregory, perhaps conscience-stricken when he thought of the wars he had
kindled, sought, in the castle of Salerno, from the Normans the security
which he could no longer expect among his own subjects. He soon found
that the hand of death was upon him. He summoned round his bed the
bishops and cardinals who had accompanied him in his flight from Rome.
He maintained the truth of the principles for which he had always
contended. He forgave and blessed his enemies, with the exception of the
antipope and the Emperor. He had received the transubstantiated
elements. The final unction had been given to him. He then prepared
himself to die. Anxious to catch the last words from that tongue, to the
utterances of which they had always listened with intense delight, his
followers were bending over him, when, collecting his powers for one
last effort, he said, in an indignant tone, "I have loved righteousness
and hated iniquity, and, therefore, I die in exile."
COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK
A.D. 1086
CHARLES KNIGHT
(When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his
English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage
largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where many
of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jealous of the
royal power and eager for military and judicial independence within
their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the skill of
political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so widely
scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and hereditary
attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords
impossible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the
same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which
each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his
position as king by means of a new military organization and by his
control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By
the abolition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final
blow at the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By
this stroke he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By
his control of the national revenues he secured a great financial power
in his own hands.
A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the crown,
and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William sent
into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries were
recorded in the _Domesday Book_, so called because its decision was
regarded as final. This book, in Norman-French, contains the results of
his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes in
vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a
quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept
under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept
in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a
fac-simile edition of it, in two folio volumes, printed from types
specially made for the purpose. It is one of the principal sources for
the political and social history of the time.
The _Domesday Book_ contains a record of the ownership, extent, and
value of the lands of England at the time of the survey, at the time of
their bestowal when granted by the King, and at the time of a previous
survey under Edward the Confessor. Of the detailed registrations of
tenants, defendants, live stock, etc., as well, as of contemporary
social features of the English people, the following account presents
interesting pictures.)
The survey contained in the _Domesday Book_ extended to all England,
with the exception of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and
Durham. All the country between the Tees and the Tyne was held by the
Bishop of Durham; and he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate
government. The other three northern counties were probably so
devastated that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the
information of _Domesday Book_, by "what men" the land was occupied.
First, we have barons and we have thanes. The barons were the Norman
nobles; the thanes, the Saxon. These were included under the general
designation of _liberi homines_, free men; which term included all the
freeholders of a manor. Many of these were tenants of the King "_in
capite_"--that is, they held their possessions direct from the Crown.
Others of these had placed themselves under the protection of some lord,
as the defender of their persons and estates, they paying some stipend
or performing some service. In the _Register_ there are also _liberae
feminae_, free women. Next to the free class were the _sochemanni_ or
"socmen," a class of inferior land-owners, who held lands under a lord,
and owed suit and service in the lord's court, but whose tenure was
permanent. They sometimes performed services in husbandry; but those
services, as well as their payments, were defined.
Descending in the scale, we come to the _villani_. These were allowed to
occupy land at the will of the lord, upon the condition of performing
services, uncertain in their amount and often of the meanest nature. But
they could acquire no property in lands or goods; and they were subject
to many exactions and oppressions. There are entries in _Domesday Book_
which show that the villani were not altogether bondmen, but represented
the Saxon "churl." The lowest class were _servi_, slaves; the class
corresponding with the Saxon _theow_. By a degradation in the condition
of the villani, and the elevation of that of the servi, the two classes
were brought gradually nearer together; till at last the military
oppression of the Normans, thrusting down all degrees of tenants and
servants into one common slavery, or at least into strict dependence,
one name was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of
_villeins regardant_.
Of the subdivisions of these great classes, the _Register_ of 1085
affords us some particulars. We find that some of the nobles are
described as _milites_, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed
with the inferior orders of tenantry. Many of the chief tenants are
distinguished by their offices. We have among these the great regal
officers, such as they existed in the Saxon times--the _camerarius_ and
_cubicularius_, from whom we have our lord chamberlain; the _dapifer_,
or lord steward; the _pincerna_, or chief butler; the constable, and the
treasurer. We have the hawkkeepers, and the bowkeepers; the providers of
the king's carriages, and his standard-bearers. We have lawmen, and
legates, and mediciners. We have foresters and hunters.
Coming to the inferior officers and artificers, we have carpenters,
smiths, goldsmiths, farriers, potters, ditchers, launders, armorers,
fishermen, millers, bakers, salters, tailors, and barbers. We have
mariners, moneyers, minstrels, and watchmen. Of rural occupations we
have the beekeepers, ploughmen, shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, and
swineherds. Here is a population in which there is a large division of
labor. The freemen, tenants, villeins, slaves, are laboring and deriving
sustenance from arable land, meadow, common pasture, wood, and water.
The grain-growing land is, of course, carefully registered as to its
extent and value, and so the meadow and pasture. An equal exactness is
bestowed upon the woods. It was not that the timber was of great
commercial value, in a country which possessed such insufficient means
of transport; but that the acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds
of swine subsisted, were of essential importance to keep up the supply
of food. We constantly find such entries as "a wood for pannage of fifty
hogs." There are woods described which will feed a hundred, two hundred,
three hundred hogs; and on the Bishop of London's demesne at Fulham a
thousand hogs could fatten. The value of a tree was determined by the
number of hogs that could lie under it, in the Saxon time; and in this
survey of the Norman period, we find entries of useless woods, and woods
without pannage, which to some extent were considered identical. In some
of the woods there were patches of cultivated ground, as the entries
show, where the tenant had cleared the dense undergrowth and had his
corn land and his meadows. Even the fen lands were of value, for their
rents were paid in eels.
There is only mention of five forests in this record, Windsor,
Gravelings (Wiltshire), Winburn, Whichwood, and the New Forest.
Undoubtedly there were many more, but being no objects of assessment
they are passed over. It would be difficult not to associate the memory
of the Conqueror with the New Forest, and not to believe that his
unbridled will was here the cause of great misery and devastation.
Ordericus Vitalis says, speaking of the death of William's second son,
Richard: "Learn now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince
was slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the country
was extremely populous from early times, and full of well-inhabited
hamlets and farms. A numerous population cultivated Hampshire with
unceasing industry, so that the southern part of the district
plentifully supplied Winchester with the products of the land. When
William I ascended the throne of Albion, being a great lover of forests,
he laid waste more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabitants to
emigrate to other places, and substituted beasts of the chase for human
beings, that he might satisfy his ardor for hunting." There is probably
some exaggeration in the statement of the country being "extremely
populous from early times." This was an old woody district, called
Ytene. No forest was artificially planted, as Voltaire has imagined; but
the chases were opened through the ancient thickets, and hamlets and
solitary cottages were demolished.
It is a curious fact that some woodland spots in the New Forest have
still names with the terminations of _ham_ and _ton_. There are many
evidences of the former existence of human abodes in places now
solitary; yet we doubt whether this part of the district plentifully
supplied Winchester with food, as Ordericus relates; for it is a sterile
district, in most places, fitted for little else than the growth of
timber. The lower lands are marsh, and the upper are sand. The
Conqueror, says the _Saxon Chronicle_, "so much loved the high deer as
if he had been their father." The first of the Norman kings, and his
immediate successors, would not be very scrupulous about the
depopulation of a district if the presence of men interfered with their
pleasures. But Thierry thinks that the extreme severity of the Forest
Laws was chiefly enforced to prevent the assemblage of Saxons in those
vast wooded spaces which were now included in the royal demesnes.
All these extensive tracts were, more or less, retreats for the
dispossessed and the discontented. The Normans, under pretence of
preserving the stag and the hare, could tyrannize with a pretended
legality over the dwellers in these secluded places; and thus William
might have driven the Saxon people of Ytene to emigrate, and have
destroyed their cottages, as much from a possible fear of their
association as from his own love of "the high deer." Whatever was the
motive, there were devastation and misery. _Domesday_ shows that in the
district of the New Forest certain manors were afforested after the
Conquest; cultivated portions, in which the Sabbath bell was heard.
William of Jumieges, the Conqueror's own chaplain, says, speaking of the
deaths of Richard and Rufus: "There were many who held that the two sons
of William the King perished by the judgment of God in these woods,
since for the _extension_ of the forest he had destroyed many inhabited
_places (villas) and churches within its circuit_." It appears that in
the time of Edward the Confessor about seventeen thousand acres of this
district had been afforested; but that the cultivated parts remaining
had then an estimated value of three hundred and sixty-three pounds.
After the afforestation by the Conqueror, the cultivated parts yielded
only one hundred and twenty-nine pounds.
The grants of land to huntsmen (_venatores_) are common in Hampshire, as
in other parts of England; and it appears to have been the duty of an
especial officer to stall the deer--that is, to drive them with his
troop of followers from all parts to the centre of a circle, gradually
contracting, where they were to stand for the onslaught of the hunters.
In the survey many parks are enumerated. The word hay (_haia_), which is
still found in some of our counties, meant an enclosed part of a wood to
which the deer were driven.
In the seventeenth century this mode of hunting upon a large scale, by
stalling the deer--this mimic war--was common in Scotland. Taylor,
called the "Water Poet," was present at such a gathering, and has
described the scene with a minuteness which may help us to form a
picture of the Norman hunters: "Five or six hundred men do rise early in
the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven,
eight, or ten miles' compass, they do bring or chase in the deer in many
herds--two, three, or four hundred in a herd--to such a place as the
noblemen shall appoint them; then, when the day is come, the lords and
gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes
wading up to the middle through bourns and rivers; and then they being
come to the place, do lie down on the ground till those foresaid scouts,
which are called the 'tinkhelt,' do bring down the deer. Then, after we
had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer
appear on the hills round about us--their heads making a show like a
wood--which being followed close by the tinkhelt, are chased down into
the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid
with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as
occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows,
dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were
slain."