Queen of the Conqueror Read online

  More convincing is the fact that the two families were related through Matilda’s grandfather, Baldwin IV. After the death of Matilda’s grandmother, Ogiva, Baldwin had married Eleanor, a daughter of Duke Richard II of Normandy. Another possibility is that Matilda, like William, was descended from Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, which made them fifth cousins.21 However, this descent is questionable to say the least, and even if it did exist, it would still have made the couple so distantly related that it would hardly have been sufficient cause for the papal ban.

  There remains a rather more scandalous explanation for Pope Leo’s decision, which was put forward in the nineteenth century and has been the subject of intense speculation among historians ever since. According to this theory, Matilda was already married at the time of her betrothal to William.22 Her supposed husband was Gerbod, the advocate of St.-Bertin Abbey near St.-Omer, by whom she had a daughter, Gundreda,23 and possibly also two sons, Gerbod and Frederic.24 This bizarre claim rests upon the evidence of a collection of charters from Lewes Priory, which was founded by Gundreda’s husband, William de Warenne, the first earl of Surrey. Principal among them is the foundation charter itself, in which Warenne refers to Matildis reginae matris uxoris meae (Queen Matilda mother of my wife).25 However, the fact that neither charter states who Gundreda’s father was suggests that it was not Duke William, because otherwise he would surely have been named.

  Other historians dismissed the idea that Matilda had been married before, asserting instead that Gundreda was her daughter by Duke William. Much was made of the duke’s confirmation of the Lewes charter in around 1083. This mentions Gundreda, but there is an erasure after her name and the words filia mea (my daughter) have been added. The twelfth-century inscription on Gundreda’s tomb adds weight to this theory, because it refers to her as being of ducal descent. The fact that William later assented to—or perhaps even arranged—her marriage to one of the foremost earls of the kingdom has also been viewed as significant.

  The monks of Lewes were understandably supportive of the idea that their founder, Gundreda, was of such distinguished pedigree, so they perpetuated the theory that she was William’s daughter, and the priory records were still repeating it four centuries later.26 However, upon closer examination, the evidence soon begins to crumble. All of the documentary sources were compiled many years after Gundreda’s death, and the foundation charter for Lewes—which dates from the fifteenth century—may even be a fake. Equally revealing is the fact that none of the contemporary chroniclers even hint that Gundreda was in any way related to Matilda (or, for that matter, to William). If this had been the reason behind the papal ban, then they would have cited it as such, whereas they agree that it was due to consanguinity. Besides, there is compelling evidence to suggest that Gerbod was married to a lady named Ada at the time of Matilda’s betrothal to William, and in all of the contemporary accounts, Matilda is consistently referred to as a maid—that is, a virgin.27 The idea that Gundreda was in some way a bar to Matilda’s union with the duke is therefore highly implausible.

  In fact, it is more likely that the Pope was motivated by political rather than doctrinal concerns. Like the other potentates of Europe, he was uneasy about the power that this upstart Norman duke was acquiring and had no wish to see him strengthen his dominions still further by forging an alliance with Flanders. There was nothing subtle about William’s aggrandizement: he was determined to flaunt it for all to see, as Orderic Vitalis attests: “William duke of Normandy was growing in power and influence, and surpassing all his neighbours in the magnificence and display of his new way of life.”28 The prospect of a coalition between William and the king of France through the proposed marriage to the latter’s niece was an alarming possibility.

  Leo IX may also have been influenced by the German emperor, Henry III, to whom he owed his position. Henry was at war with Count Baldwin V, who had been systematically distancing his small but strategically important principality from the German-controlled Holy Roman Empire and forging stronger links with France. Not only had he himself married a French princess, Adela, but in 1051 he had allied his eldest son, Baldwin, to Richildis, widow of the Count of Hainault.29 This had sparked a conflict with Henry III over Richildis’s inheritance, and there had been constant skirmishing along the Flemish-German border ever since. The emperor had no wish to see powerful Norman troops joining these clashes on his enemy’s behalf. He might therefore have called upon Leo to return the favor that he had shown him and oppose the marriage between William and Matilda.

  The Pope’s ban threw the couple’s betrothal into uncertainty. Although the duke might well have been inclined to sweep it aside with the same disregard that he showed to his enemies on the battlefield, it was much more complicated than that. As a pious leader, William always surrounded himself with ecclesiastical advisers, who in effect acted as his conscience when he was planning strategies and campaigns. He took seriously the need to do penance for the bloodshed that he caused, and made many generous benefactions to the church. The fact that the most senior pontiff in the Christian world had forbidden his proposed match was therefore not something that he could dismiss lightly. Moreover, if William chose to flout the Pope’s sanction, it could provide his recalcitrant nobles with a religious justification for rebelling against him.

  Little wonder that his first recourse was to try to persuade Leo to change his mind. He sent a contingent of Norman bishops, including his closest adviser, Lanfranc, to the Pope in order to obtain his sanction. But it was in vain. The latter was evidently just as determined to retain the stranglehold that he had over one of the most dangerous potentates in western Europe. There followed at least two years of frustrated negotiations, all of which came to nothing.

  Pious he may have been, but William was also every bit as strong-willed as his prospective bride. He had set his sights on Matilda and was determined to have her at any cost. Count Baldwin was no less determined, and between them they agreed that the marriage should go ahead, regardless of the papal ban.

  The date of the wedding is not known for certain. There is some contemporary evidence to suggest that it had already taken place by the time the council of Rheims met in 1049, in which case the decree was condemning a marriage rather than a betrothal. More reliable sources place it at around 1050. They include a charter to the abbey of St.-Wandrille in Normandy that Matilda witnessed that year. It was also in 1050 that her father put his signature to a charter drawn up on William’s orders to the monastery of St.-Pierre-de-Préaux, which may have been to mark the occasion of the marriage.30 The union had certainly been forged before the end of 1053, when Matilda is referred to as the duke’s consort in a charter given to Holy Trinity, Rouen.

  If Matilda did marry William around 1050, she would have been nineteen or twenty years of age, while her husband would have been around twenty-three. We are told that the count and countess brought their daughter “with all honour” and “together with many gifts” to the town of Eu. As well as being a convenient location on the border between Normandy and Flanders, the town was also a symbol of Duke William’s power, as he had wrested the castle from a contingent of rebellious nobles in 1049 and it was still garrisoned by his soldiers. Matilda and her parents were met at Eu by William and a retinue of his soldiers.31 William’s mother, Herleva, and her husband, Herluin de Conteville, were also there, along with a great host of magnates and churchmen.32 Matilda and William were probably married a day or so later. The precise location of the wedding ceremony is uncertain. While some sources place it at the cathedral church of Nôtre Dame d’Eu, others claim that it was celebrated in the chapel of the castle. Another theory is that it did not take place in Eu at all, but in Rouen.33 The doubt over its location suggests that it may have taken place in some secrecy—or at least with a good deal less fanfare than might have been expected of the first ducal marriage in thirty years.

  An inventory of the treasures of Bayeux Cathedral taken in 1476 by Louis de Harcourt, a membe
r of its clergy, describes two gowns of “incomparable richness” that were believed to be the wedding clothes of William and Matilda. The pair of matching cloaks owed more to a desire to flaunt their wealth than to exhibit good taste. William’s garment was covered with small golden crosses to emphasize his piety, as well as flowers, cameos, and precious stones. On the back was a band of cloth of gold with richly embroidered images. But he did not entirely give himself over to extravagant dress for the occasion, because among the treasury of the cathedral was a helmet that he had worn during the ceremony. It seems that even on his wedding day, he was determined to maintain his warrior reputation.34

  The wedding ceremony would have contained many of the elements that we would recognize today, including the giving away of the bride, the exchange of promises, and the blessing of the ring. There was also a formal blessing of the bridal chamber, emphasizing that the primary purpose of marriage was to produce heirs, and the bride and groom would each have been led there in great state. William and Matilda would no doubt have adhered to all of the due formalities, hoping that such strict observance of the protocol might help to legitimize their marriage in the eyes of the papacy and their subjects. According to a lively but unreliable account written in the thirteenth century, Count Baldwin had not been able to resist asking his daughter during the wedding feast what had made her change her mind about the man whose advances she had at first so scornfully rejected. To this, Matilda made no reference to his illegitimacy, but replied evenly: “I did not know the duke so well then as I do now.”35

  Mindful of the controversy that had surrounded it, Jumièges took care to stress the validity of the marriage, stating that William “married her legally as his wife.”36 His account, and later that of Orderic Vitalis, claims that it would be many years before the papacy finally sanctioned William and Matilda’s union. But recent research suggests that the Pope relented at a much earlier date, probably not very long after the council of Rheims. According to this theory, the whole controversy was exaggerated by Lanfranc’s biographer in order to enhance that prelate’s role in resolving the matter. The sources that support the latter’s account are dismissed as “late and untrustworthy,” and the foundation charters for the two abbeys that William and Matilda later built in recompense for their defiance of the papal ban do not mention anything about it. This recent argument attempts to further bolster itself by claiming that relations between William and the papacy were otherwise consistently good during the 1050s, as evidenced by the visit to Rome of two prominent Norman churchmen, Lanfranc and Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, in 1050.37

  But this hardly proves that relations were good: indeed, the two prelates visited the Pope to negotiate on William’s behalf. We know that at least two other high-ranking churchmen from Normandy had traveled to Rome during the early 1050s for this purpose.38 Lanfranc’s biographer tells how the influential churchman spoke forcefully to Pope Nicholas II on his master’s behalf, urging that William was determined not to give up his wife, so the pontiff would do well to yield. Lanfranc added that Count Baldwin’s pride would not suffer his daughter to be returned to him, particularly as by that time she had a brood of children whose legitimacy would be considered doubtful.39

  That the sources describing the lifting of the papal ban were “late and untrustworthy” cannot be wholly accepted, either. Although it is possible that Lanfranc’s biographer used a degree of poetic license in order to make his subject appear more heroic, the same cannot be said of Orderic Vitalis, who had no such interests to promote. Moreover, as will be seen, later events would also suggest that William and Matilda had had to battle against the ban for at least a decade.

  Regardless of its longevity, the controversy over the papal ban proves that from its inception, William and Matilda’s marriage was affected by, and would reflect, the shifting political climate of Europe. As such, it sheds light on the inception of a new balance of power in the medieval world, with the rise of the papacy as a force to be reckoned with by secular rulers. Uniquely, Matilda’s life bridged these two stages, and the story of her marriage to William would be played out against the transition from the old to the new Europe.

  As well as adjusting to papal ascendancy, the duke and duchess also faced opposition closer to home, as William’s uncle, Archbishop Mauger of Rouen, also objected to the match on grounds of consanguinity. He was promptly dismissed by his nephew. The official reason for Mauger’s removal was his “devoting himself more often than was right to hunting and cockfighting and spending the treasures of his church on over-lavish hospitality.” But Malmesbury claimed to know the truth: “Some say that there was a secret reason for his deposition: Matilda, whom William had taken as wife, was a near relation, and in his zeal for the Christian faith Mauger had found it intolerable that two blood-relations should share the marriage-bed, and had aimed the weapon of excommunication against his nephew and that nephew’s consort.”

  Matilda apparently played just as active a part in Mauger’s removal as did her new husband: “The young man was furious, his wife added her protests, and so (it was said) they had been looking for opportunities to drive from his see the man who had denounced their sin.”40 However, the fact that Mauger was removed with the consent of a papal legate suggests that it had nothing to do with his objection to William and Matilda’s betrothal. More likely is that William was eager to be rid of a man who had long coveted his duchy and whose blood claim was not tainted by bastardy like his own. But Matilda had made it clear that she was not content to play the passive wife: from the very beginning of their marriage, her role in the government of Normandy was pivotal.

  Following her marriage, Matilda and her new husband traveled together to the ducal palace of Rouen “with the greatest ceremony and honour.”1 William of Poitiers reported that the city “gave itself over to rejoicing at the entry of this spouse.”2 The duke was no doubt keen to impress his new bride, for Rouen was the foremost city of the province and the source of great admiration among contemporaries. Orderic was dazzled by the obvious wealth that resulted from its flourishing trade, and he described the rich variety of foods and other goods that the burgeoning populace benefited from.3 Surrounded on all sides by hills and forests, and flanked by the river Seine, Rouen was also a beautiful city, and certainly a fitting place to receive the new duchess of Normandy.

  Matilda was not the only one whom William was seeking to impress, for he and his bride were accompanied by her parents, who stayed with the couple until all of the pageantry and festivities were concluded several days later. Afterward, the newlyweds made a leisurely progress throughout the domain over which Matilda was now duchess. William was surely keen to show off his new bride, a “magnificent match” whose esteemed lineage diluted considerably the shame of his birth.4 Everywhere she went, Matilda was greeted with enthusiasm and tokens of affection by her new subjects and was “very well served and honoured.”5 The Normans had not had a duchess since Duke Richard II’s reign (996–1026), as both of his sons had been content to live with their mistresses, and they were determined to celebrate the new arrival.

  Matilda had evidently also enhanced her new husband’s international profile. According to Norman sources, shortly after their wedding an extraordinary message arrived from Edward the Confessor, the king of England, promising the throne to William. The message was probably conveyed to William by the Norman Robert of Jumièges,6 whom Edward had recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury as part of a consciously pro-Norman policy. Jumièges was passing through Normandy on his way to Rome, and he brought two hostages—Wulfnoth and Haakon, son and grandson respectively of Earl Godwine of Wessex, the most powerful man in England after the king—to prove the integrity of Edward’s promise.7 The practice of using hostages as a guarantee of good faith, usually when concluding a treaty, was rooted in ancient times and had been used with great effect by the conquering Romans. In this case, however, Edward had an ulterior motive, for he was only too glad to rid himself of members of t
he overweening Godwine family.

  It may seem perplexing that the English king should promise his crown to a foreign duke with apparently little connection to England and whose origins hardly bore scrutiny. But there had long been an affinity between England and Normandy. For a start, there was their geographical proximity, which made it politic for the rulers of each domain to maintain a close interest in the other. The two lands also shared a Scandinavian heritage, and there had been several marriages between their ruling families, such as the important union between Duke Richard II’s sister Emma and the English king, Aethelred the Unready, in the late tenth century. Edward the Confessor, the son of this union, had spent much of his childhood and youth in Normandy, together with his brother and sister. They had been cared for by a succession of northern French rulers, and the dukes of Normandy had played a particularly prominent part. As a result, Edward had grown up with strongly pro-Norman sympathies.

  After becoming king, Edward married Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine, in 1045, but they were childless. It was said that he refused to consummate the marriage—or, as Malmesbury put it, “to know her as a man would”—either from a “love of chastity” or because of his antipathy toward the Godwine family.8 Indeed, in order to counter their influence, he began to build up a faction of Norman retainers at court. In 1051, the simmering resentment between the king and his wife’s family burst into open conflict. Edward outlawed the Godwine family and sent Edith to a nunnery. It was this that cast the English succession into doubt and, according to Norman sources, prompted Edward to name William his heir.