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.The barons of the duchy had sworn fealty to him ashis father s successor, and there was no time to put anotherheir in his place, or to deal with the opposition that would DEATH OFsurely result from the attempt.William was his father s CHAPEngland, and he was in all haste tocrown with the aid of Lanfranc.To Henry wasgiven only a sum of money, joined with a prophecy that heshould eventually have all that the king had had, a prophecywhich was certainly easy after the event, when it was writtendown, and which may not have been difficult to a father who hadstudied carefully the character of his sons.William was buriedin the church of St.Stephen, which he had founded in Caen,and the manner such foundations were frequently madein those days was illustrated by the claim, loudly advanced inthe midst of the funeral service, that the land on which theparticipants stood had been unjustly taken from its ownersfor the Conqueror s church.It was now legally purchasedfor William s burial place.The son, who was at the momentbusy securing his kingdom in England, afterwards erected init a magnificent tomb to the memory of his father. CHAPTER IVFEUDALISM AND A STRONG KINGthe second son of the Conqueror, followed withCHAP.IVfilial compunction his father s command that he shouldleave his death-bed and cross the channel at once to secure thekingdom of England.At the port of embarkation he learnedthat his father had died, but he did not turn back.Probablythe news only hastened his journey, if this were possible.InEngland he went first to Winchester to get possession of hisfather s great treasure, and then to Canterbury with his letterto Lanfranc.Nowhere is there any sign of opposition to hissuccession, or of any movement in favour of Robert, or onRobert s part, at this moment.If the archbishop had anydoubts, as a man of his good judgment might well havehad, knowing the new king from his boyhood, they were soonquieted or he resolved to put them aside.He had, indeed, noalternative.There is nothing to indicate that the letter of hisdying master allowed him any choice, nor was there any pos-sible candidate who gave promise of a better reign, formust have known Robert as well as he knew William.Together they went up to London, and on September 26,hardly more than two weeks after he left his father sbedside, William was crowned king by Lanfranc.The arch-bishop took of him the customary oath to rule justly and todefend the peace and liberty of the Church, exacting a specialpromise always to be guided by his advice; but there is noevidence of any unusual assembly in London of magnatesor people, of any negotiations to gain the support of personsof influence, or of any consent asked or given.The proceed-ings throughout were what we should expect in a kingdomheld by hereditary right, as the chancery of the Conqueror A108773often termed it, and by such a right descending to the heir.CHAP.This appearance may possibly have been given to these eventsby haste and by the necessity of forestalling any opposition.Men may have found themselves with a new king crownedand consecrated as soon as they learned of the death of thebut no objection was ever made.Within a fewold onemonths a serious insurrection broke out among those whohoped to make Robert king, but no one alleged that Will-iam s title was imperfect because he had not been elected.If the English crown was held by the people of the time tobe elective in any sense, it was not in the sense which weat present understand by the word constitutional.Immediately after the coronation, the new king went back toWinchester to a duty which he owed to his father.Thegreat hoard which the Conqueror had collected in the an-cient capital was distributed with a free hand to the churchesof England.William II was as greedy of money as hisfather.His exactions pressed even more heavily on thekingdom, and the Church believed that it was peculiarly thevictim of his financial tyranny, but he showed no dispositionto begrudge these benefactions for the safety of his father ssoul.Money was sent to each monastery and church in thekingdom, and to many rich gifts of other things, and to eachcounty a hundred pounds for distribution to the poor.Until the following spring the disposition of the kingdomwhich Lanfranc had made was unquestioned and undisturbed.William II wore his crown at the meeting of the court inLondon at Christmas time, and nothing during the wintercalled special exertion of royal authority on his part.But beneath the surface a great conspiracy was forming,for the purpose of overthrowing the new king and of puttinghis brother Robert in his place.During Lent the movers ofthis conspiracy were especially active, and immediately afterEaster the insurrection broke out.It was an insurrection inwhich almost all the Norman barons of England took part,and their real object was the interest neither of king nor ofkingdom, but only their own personal and selfish advantage.A purely feudal insurrection, inspired solely by those localand separatist tendencies which the feudal system cherished,it reveals, even more clearly than the insurrection of the AND A STRONG74CHAP.Earls of Hereford and Norfolk under William I, the solidIVstrength in the support of the nation which wasthe only thing that sustained the Norman kingship in Englandduring the feudal age.The writers upon whom we depend for our knowledge ofthese events represent the rebellious barons as moved by twoOf these that which is put forward as the lead-chief motives.ing motive is their opposition to the division of the Normanland into two separate realms, by the succession of the elderbrother in Normandy and of the younger in England.Thefact that these barons held fiefs in both countries, and under twodifferent lords, certainly put them in an awkward position, butin one by no means uncommon throughout the feudal world [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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