446 – Death and Taxes

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie and this is episode 446, Death and Taxes.

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When we left off, things were looking pretty bad for William and William's hope for a legacy.

Maine was once again in rebellion against Normandy, but this time, half of France seemed to be looking for an excuse to join in.

Also, Denmark was preparing for an invasion of England, and even William's brother-in-law, Count Robert of Flanders, was preparing to be part of the invasion fleet.

Oh, and there was also the matter of William's eldest son, Robert Curtose,

because apparently, they were quarreling again.

Probably.

I say probably because the records are all over the map on this issue.

It's not clear when it started.

It's not clear when it started up again.

It's not clear when it stopped.

It's not clear why.

It really is all over the place.

But that actually might be because the relationship between William and Robert had become touch and go.

I suspect that father and son might have been reconciling repeatedly, only to split up again a short time later.

I mean, that's how family feuds often go.

Family bonds, even when your family is treating you badly, are tough to break.

and stick an inheritance of Normandy in the mix, and it probably got even harder to just walk away.

And I feel like a good example of this is the fact that the last conflict between these two escalated all the way to a full-out war, and then Robert ultimately spared his father on the battlefield and tried to reconcile with him, gaining pretty much nothing.

So these contradictory records might not be contradictory at all.

They might be telling us that this was a genuine mess of breakups and reconciliations, driven by a sense of maybe it'll be different this time.

But regardless of the precise timeline of each familial breach, the fact remains that these two had never had an easy relationship, and it was getting worse by the day.

Orderick blames them both.

He tells us that Robert was stubborn and disobedient, and that William was cruel, unstable, and just nasty to his son.

It's a believable take on both accounts, but we'll never truly know for sure.

But one thing we do know is that they could no longer rely on Matilda's diplomatic efforts to soothe tensions between them.

And on top of that, they were in mourning.

And people are not always their best selves when they're in mourning.

Even worse, based on later events, it looks like Bishop Odo was probably an ally of Robert's, which means that when William imprisoned him at Rouen, Robert, within the space of just a couple years, would have lost two of his most influential supporters, first Uncle Odo and then his mom.

So things around court were a bit tense.

And right in the middle of that, Robert once again disappears from the courtly records, which suggests he bounced.

So,

where did he go?

Well, as we've been discussing on the members feed, this period is the start of the tournament.

And it was tournament season.

So it's very possible that Robert just hopped on the tournament circuit with his boys.

And sure enough, the list of places we're told Robert visited also happened to be places where the tournament was becoming popular.

And Robert wasn't just visiting the melee field and hanging with the fellas.

He also was spending some time with some ladies.

He was, after all, no longer under the thumb of his controlling father.

So he was doing things that Norman knights tended to do while they were on the road.

And this isn't isn't just spurious slander being spread by angry scribes.

When we look at the records going forward, we discover that Robert suddenly had some illegitimate children.

So we can consider those complaints by the scribes that he was a little bit too loose on the road to be confirmed.

Now, as far as his peers were concerned, this was all pretty normal.

In fact, it was pretty good.

But as far as William was concerned, this behavior was a serious no-no.

Consequently, I bet for Robert, this was a bit of a twofer.

And at some point during Robert's Euro trip, he decided to take a little detour to see Italy, and specifically pay Matilda of Tuscany a visit.

Now, I can totally see why.

She was wealthy, she was powerful, she was a terrifying foe on the battlefield, and critically, she was single.

Perfect marriage material.

Well,

maybe not perfect.

Matilda did have some baggage.

She was single now, but she had been married before, and that whole thing had not gone great.

Long story short, Matilda's family thought it would be good for their political and financial future if she married her stepbrother.

And they decided this while she was still a child.

So, being young and a girl, she didn't really have much of a say in the matter.

So, she was betrothed, and years later, she was married to her stepbrother, Godfrey the Hunchback.

Now, Matilda was not thrilled with this union, and eventually, she separated from Godfrey.

Now, he tried to get her back into the marriage, and even tried to get the Pope to intervene, but his efforts were unsuccessful, and in response, Godfrey just started seizing Matilda's properties instead.

And that was the last straw.

Matilda wanted out of this marriage permanently.

And like her estranged husband, she turned to the Pope for help, but he wasn't any help to her either.

It turns out that Godfrey had a lot of wealth and power, and Pope Gregory really wanted access to that if he could get it.

And then that fight kicked up between King Henry and Pope Gregory.

Everything revolves around that fight between Henry and Gregory.

It's crazy.

And for Matilda and Godfrey, the rift between them severely deepened and became political.

You see, Matilda sided with the Pope, and Godfrey sided with Henry.

And when I say sided, I mean sided with Henry.

You know when David Pecker of the Inquirer made up that story about how Ted Cruz's dad was actually a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald's and an ally of Castro?

Pecker just completely made up that story and published it because he knew it would help his political ally who was running against Ted Cruz.

Well, Godfrey the Hunchback was King Henry's David Pecker.

And we're told that Godfrey started spreading a rumor that Pope Gregory had an illicit love child.

Yeah, straight tabloid stuff.

And obviously, this did not sit well with Matilda, nor the Pope.

And a month later, Godfrey the Hunchback was assassinated.

Did his wife order it?

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure she didn't mourn him.

So yeah, Matilda was certainly the full package, but she also had a carry-on.

And Robert?

Well, he was Robert.

From the records of his life, it seems like he liked to give people the benefit of the doubt.

And if he had concerns about Matilda's backstory, it clearly wasn't enough to deter him.

And who knows?

Maybe he thought he'd find a kindred spirit with her.

If anyone knew what it was like to deal with a crazy family, it would have been her.

So, off he went to Italy to propose to Matilda.

Now, there was, of course, a problem with his plan.

Matilda was the ruler of Tuscany.

And Robert wasn't the ruler of much of anything.

Plus, she hadn't exactly enjoyed marriage the first time around.

She hated it so much that she even tried to become a nun for a little bit.

And then there's the fact that theoretically, Robert would inherit Normandy at some point, maybe,

but that really wasn't guaranteed.

And it was Normandy, not Italy, not Tuscany, Normandy, which wasn't a good selling point for Matilda.

And it doesn't look like Robert was proposing to turn over his property and become a stay-at-home dad while Matilda ruled.

So Robert's offer of marriage wasn't much of an offer at all.

And Matilda's response was, and I'm paraphrasing here, listen, short stuff, I'm a goddamn 10 over here, and you're, at best, a five.

Also, I'm pretty damn busy with papal politics right now, so why don't you march those tiny legs of yours right back to Normandy where you belong?

And with that, Short Bob ended his Italian holiday.

Meanwhile, William was back in England preparing his defenses.

King Canute IV had gathered a fleet of 1,000 ships, fully five times the size of the previous Danish invasion.

And not wanting to leave anything to chance here, Canute was joined by William's brother-in-law, Count Robert of Flanders, who had his own fleet of 600 ships.

And so, realizing that this was the biggest threat he was facing at the moment by a long shot, William had pulled back from the war war in Maine, drawn up his soldiers from France and Brittany, and hot-tailed it across the channel.

And he and his soldiers were there by fall of 1085.

Now, of course, this isn't the first time we've seen a king facing the threat of a massive coastal invasion out of Scandinavia.

You might recall how, when Alfred dealt with a similar situation, he marshaled the kingdom's resources to create an entire series of watchtowers and a network of burrs that would enable the Ferd to rapidly respond to threats while also providing safe harbor for everyone else.

It was a remarkably effective solution and it essentially turned the kingdom into one big fortress.

And the Normans were very familiar with fortresses.

As a chivalric culture, they were all about building fortifications and establishing military hardpoints.

Furthermore, thanks to that brutal geld that William levied against the English the year before, he was kind of flush with cash.

So it was time to go to work.

And once William crossed the channel and landed in England with his huge army, he looted and pillaged a bunch of English coastal towns.

And no, you didn't mishear that.

Before a single Dane had set foot in England, English villages were burned and looted, and English peasants were presumably slaughtered in the process by William and his men.

Meet the new boss, nothing like the old boss.

Now, historian Frank Barlow, trying to make sense of all of this, argues that he did this to quote, discourage a sympathetic rebellion and deny the invaders stores, end quote.

But at best, that is a lousy short-term strategy.

And if William could read, which he couldn't, he could have learned how Alfred had dealt with a similar threat and how that solution worked very well.

But even if he could read those records, which he couldn't, I don't think it would have mattered.

By this point in his life, William really couldn't have ruled like Alfred, even if he wanted to, which he clearly didn't.

Alfred was popular.

William, on the other hand, had spent his entire life fending off basically one long string of uprisings punctuated by the occasional assassination attempt because at the end of the day he was William people didn't like having him as their overlord the numbers of rebellions that he faced and the number of family members who launched uprisings against him is honestly pretty staggering even his own son had rebelled against him and like any tyrant William responded to his unpopularity with brutality that's why he'd been burning English coastal towns.

Not to deny the enemy resources, but because he was pretty damn certain that if given half the chance, people would happily join any military force that was trying to kill him.

And once the English coast was a smoking ruin, William headed off to discuss next steps with his counsel, Archbishop Landfrank.

And Landfrank had an idea.

He suggested that the king quarter his troops with lay magnates, bishops, and various monasteries.

And we're not talking about coastal communities here.

Stationing soldiers on the coast in preparation for an immediate defensive maneuver against an invading army would have made a lot of sense.

But that wasn't Lanfrank's plan.

Even though this invasion was going to come via the sea, his idea was to station soldiers all over England.

Why?

Well, the coastal English that William and his men had just pillaged and killed killed weren't the only potential traitors.

All of the English were potential traitors to their good, proper, and legal king.

So might as well stick some soldiers in the homes and monasteries of their leadership to make sure they remember who is the boss and what will happen if they start grousing.

Now William, of course, thought Landfrank had a great idea, and he implemented it immediately.

Because what could go wrong by stationing foreign soldiers with a local population that they actively look down upon?

And right on queue, we hear about Bishop Wolfstan, the last surviving pre-conquest bishop.

And obviously, he was a pre-conquest bishop.

His name wasn't William or Robert or Hugh.

Well, old Bishop Wolfstan had soldiers quartered within his monastic buildings, all the way over in Worcester.

And we have records of him complaining about the absurd lengths that he had to go dealing with the drunk soldiers who had overrun his properties.

Because of course they were.

They were knights.

Which means that in response to an enormous Danish invasion fleet, Lan Frank and William had stationed drunk-ass knights all over England in hopes of intimidating the English.

Good thing this isn't exactly the kind of thing that revolutions are made out of.

But whatever, I'm sure this will all be worth it in the end.

After all, the Danes are going to invade any day now.

Meanwhile, back in Denmark, that huge fleet was still in the harbor, just bobbing up and down in the water.

Apparently, the winds were blowing in entirely the wrong direction.

Now, here on the Pacific coast, we're all too familiar with things like this.

El Niño and El Niña are a constant source of scheduling headaches.

Think you can take the kiddo to the zoo over the weekend?

Think again, El Niño has decided that it's gonna dump rain now until at least mid-May.

And anomalous weather patterns like that are not restricted to the Pacific.

And when we look at this period, the records are full of reports of bad weather and failed harvests.

So chances are, the weather patterns shifted in 1085, and Knut's invasion was completely derailed.

Though, that wasn't the only unexpected event that was keeping him landlocked.

There was also the matter of King Henry IV of Germany, the same guy we keep talking about, who kept fighting with the Pope and who now was the Holy Roman Emperor.

You see, Henry's promotion wasn't good news for Cnut.

Even worse, now he wasn't fighting with the Pope or Matilda of Tuscany, Henry had a lot of free time, and he was close to the Danish border.

So while Cnut would have loved to invade England, he suddenly wasn't sure what would happen if he took all his forces and left Denmark.

But maybe things would change.

He'd just need to wait and see if the winds, both political and physical, would change for the better.

And as he waited, a whole new problem cropped up.

Harvest season was approaching, and he had gathered a fleet of a thousand ships.

A fleet of that that scale meant that most of his army weren't professional soldiers.

They were conscripted farmers.

Farmers who really wanted to go home and tend their farms.

Hearing their pleas, Knut's brother, Olaf, decided to raise these concerns on their behalf.

And the king, hearing his own brother plead for the farmers' release so that their families wouldn't starve.

Well, he thought this whole thing was really f ⁇ ing fishy.

Olaf was worried about the farmers?

Olaf, a prince, worried about farmers.

That's ridiculous.

You know, f this guy, I bet he's a spy.

But if he was a spy, and I don't think he was, but if he was, he was a spy who was still the king's brother.

So he can't exactly execute him for treason.

And instead, King Canute exiled Olaf to Flanders.

A little while later, Cnut actually did let the farmers go home and harvest their crops, because Olaf really did have a point there.

So things in Denmark are going great.

And actually, Malmsbury spices up the story a bit, and he adds that Cnut also blamed the bad weather on the spells of evil witches.

Witch witches, you ask?

The wives of the various chiefs of Denmark, of course.

The rich ones.

And so, he hit their husbands with a massive fine.

Now, we can't know for sure if Momsbray made this part of the story up, but given the expense of this army and the complete failure of the entire endeavor, you could imagine that Knoop might have been looking to recoup some of his losses, and an imposed fine upon his wealthiest subjects might actually fit the bill.

And while that witch thing was totally a bunch of nonsense, What exactly were these guys gonna do?

He was the king, and I'm sure people will always respect him because he's king.

Anyway, speaking of doing stuff out of a complete lack of foresight or empathy, back in England, it soon became clear that the Danes weren't actually going to invade this year.

And so, with the English towns smoldering in the distance, William dismissed most of his army and he headed off to Gloucester to celebrate Christmas.

And who shows up to Christmas this year?

But Robert Curthose.

I guess with the close of the tourney season and getting turned down by Matilda of Tuscany, Robert found himself with nowhere else to go for Christmas.

So here he was in Gloucester with dear old dad and his backbiting brothers.

Happy holidays.

And while Robert was, I assume, constantly looking over his shoulder just in case someone tried to pee on him again, William was talking to his advisors because he was getting anxious because he was getting anxious.

Not about Robert.

No, he was concerned about money.

You see, fighting two wars simultaneously is expensive as hell.

And that guild he mandated on the English last year wasn't enough.

And while burning and looting English towns did provide a little income, he needed more.

Like, a lot more.

So he summoned some scribes and other officials and basically said, hey nerds, get out there and find out how much much property everyone has, because I'm certain that some of these guys aren't being taxed enough, and daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

So officers and men of letters were sent to every corner of the kingdom with one simple task.

Find out who owned what, how much they had prior to the conquest, and how much they had now.

And these guys were specifically charged with recording income, not expenses.

So if you drew a huge income, but you also had a ridiculous amount of expenses,

tough.

The king wasn't looking to figure out your adjusted net income.

The conqueror just wanted your gross.

It was, after all, the bigger number.

And given that England was big, entire groups of men were sent all over the place to gather this information.

And as they did, they utilized the old English administrative bodies, the Shire Courts, the Hundred Courts, and any other gatherings that would help them assemble the census.

And so you had men all over the place, basically saying something along the lines of, All right, Unfirth, what do you got?

Oh, three sheep worth ruppence.

Nice.

Okay, so how many did you have back in 1066?

Oh, the farm was your father's back then.

Okay, what happened to him?

You know what?

Never mind.

I can guess.

Anyway, how many sheep did he have?

Fing hell, 240 sheep?

What happened?

You know, never mind.

We can guess.

Now we're told that these census takers were meticulous.

They didn't miss a thing.

Everything was accounted for, down to individual pigs and oxen.

Now, as many of you have guessed by now, this collection of information would eventually become known as the Doomsday Book.

It's a document that has a place of stature within the English national identity.

It's even seen that way by people who don't really know what's contained within it.

For average people with an interest in English history or culture, simply the phrase the doomsday book carries a certain gravitas.

And for historians, those who are intimately familiar with what is within those pages, this is an invaluable resource for researching the economic and property ownership situation of individuals in 1066 and then 20 years after the conquest in 1086.

But I think it's important to separate our contemporary view of this document from the document that was written at the time.

We need to remind ourselves that at the time it was being written, this wasn't a source of historic information, nor a symbol that's intertwined with national pride or familial pride.

There are some people who are very excited to see that their family name is contained within those pages.

At the time it was made though, this was a census produced by the people who had conquered the English.

In a very real, deliberate, and conscious way, it was a product and a tool of conquest.

And in an unconscious way, it also would have served as a painful reminder for many of what had been lost and who had taken it.

In the time that it was written, The Doomsday Book was a callous and provocative move by the king.

He was basically saying, hey, word is that my boys weren't thorough enough, and you still have some stuff.

So let's see whatever you got, because I'm gonna want that stuff.

Now, this, as you might imagine, was not appreciated by the wealth class.

The underclasses, of course, didn't own much, and as such, they didn't have much to take.

But the landlords were facing quite the haircut.

And I suspect there was some serious discontent as

the king's men went around assessing how much they were going to take from them, especially when the landlords realized that they weren't being discounted for expenses, which is the traditional route for tax dodging.

However, as unpopular as this was, William chose his moment well.

Because while his greed was no doubt infuriating for the landlords of England, the threat of a violent Danish invasion was still scarier, especially when you consider that King Canute and his army weren't gonna be the only people burning English villages and killing English people.

Their own fing king would be doing that as well.

Hell, he already had a head start.

And by stationing his drunk knights in English homes all throughout England, he was making a not-so-subtle threat that if they stepped out of line, he could bring that form of national defense to their communities with a snap of his fingers.

But at the the same time, it also looks like William wasn't entirely sure how the landlords would take his latest insult.

Because even though he usually rushed back to Normandy any chance he could get, William decided to stick around in England this time, probably just in case anyone decided to act up.

Meanwhile, back at the Bougie camp, Count Alan Rufus was still in charge.

And we're told that he had a unique method of fighting this war.

According to Orderic, he was basically spending his time showing off how rich he was.

We're told that the camp held lavish feasts and flaunted their extravagant wealth, and the soldiers marched around showing off their military power.

An interesting tactic.

Meanwhile, over at San-Suzan, Count Hubert was taking a different approach.

While Alan was strutting around like a peacock, Hubert was taking advantage of the fact that they had failed to surround him, and he was hard at work stuffing his castle full of knights.

And being that this was feudal France, there was no shortage of knights who were looking for a chance to increase their fame.

So, rather than starving the rebels out or causing them to lose heart in the face of royal opposition, actually the opposite was happening.

The rebels were recruiting, and the king's forces were, um,

well, they weren't doing great.

It turns out that braggadocio and flaunting your wealth isn't a common military tactic for a good reason.

Now, unfortunately, we're not given a blow-by-blow account of the tactics they used in the field.

Instead, Orderk just gives us the greatest hits of how bad this was going.

And by greatest hits, I mean greatest disasters.

For example, In late November, a company of knights were out in the field intending to attack Hubert's men.

Now, Orderk doesn't doesn't tell us if they were marching towards the castle or if they were in pursuit of one of Hubert's raiding bands.

Whatever the goal though, even though Orderic assures us that these knights were absolutely gallant, it seems they really weren't up for the task.

Turns out the bravery will only get you so far, especially when your enemy knows the terrain better than you and has the support of the public.

So, back to these knights.

They're out there riding along the road, being all gallant and stuff, when suddenly an arrow shot out of the bush and hit Richard de Lagle right in the eye.

The nobleman just keels over off of his horse, and the knights go and try and figure out who shot that arrow.

And it turned out it wasn't Hubert's army.

It wasn't even a raiding band.

It was just some random kid all by himself.

The records describe him literally as a beardless youth.

And we're told they knew this because apparently, after the arrow hit home, the the knights tore off after the kid and caught him.

But the Baron, who hadn't yet died from that arrow in his eye, told them to let the kid go.

And then he croaked before they could get him back to the camp.

Which,

you know,

maybe that happened?

But I doubt it.

I think it's much more likely that they just failed to catch the assassin, and then told Count Alan that actually they did catch the guy, but their liege heroically told them to let him go.

Which, you know, is is why he's not here.

Oh, and the liege is dead, by the way, so he can't confirm this, but you can totally trust us on this, bro.

He absolutely wanted us to let it slide.

But, you know, regardless of whether or not that arrow to the eye made Richard suddenly overcome with mercy, there was one person at camp who wasn't feeling merciful at all.

Richard's brother, Gilbert.

He was outraged and he demanded revenge.

Specifically, he wanted to take the fight directly to Hubert.

And this is where the situation goes from bad to worse.

Because you might recall that Orderic assured us that this castle was damn near impregnable.

You might also recall that King William himself determined that a direct assault was out of the question and told his army to focus on containment.

But Gilbert wasn't having it.

It was time to take the castle of of Saint-Suzanne and teach Hubert a lesson.

And Gilbert wasn't alone in this opinion.

Things had been going badly enough at the Bougie camp that some influential Norman lords with battlefield experience, like William de Warren, who was the guy who had tangled with Heroward, and Baudry de Goutry, had joined the effort.

And they, like Gilbert, weren't pleased with the current strategy, and they felt something more direct was in order.

And so, they got a bunch of knights together, they all put on their armor, saddled up their horses, and they trotted down the road leading to San Suzanne.

And I suspect that as they advanced, they probably had to deal with ambushes and attacks from Hubert's men, or apparently, from the equally deadly neighborhood kids that lived in the area.

Next, once they reached the dense thicket of vineyards that surrounded the castle, they would have to cut their way through the vegetation, but now they'd be within range of the castle, which sat on top of a rocky hill, so they probably also had to dodge any missiles raining down upon them from the castle or being launched from hiding spots within the vineyards.

Next, they had the fun task of scrambling up the steep rocky embankment, again while dodging arrows, javelins, rocks, stale bread, or whatever else the defenders had on hand that they could chuck over at them, before finally, finally reaching the walls of the castle.

And once there, they'd have to figure out how to breach those walls.

And if successful, then they would get the joy of fighting to the death against the men who were stationed inside.

It didn't go well.

Here's Orderic again.

Quote, they gained nothing but the steel in their wounds.

In this attack, William, Count Devereux, was made prisoner, and Matthew, son of Godfrey the Little, was mortally wounded.

⁇

And that imprisonment of William wasn't a one-off event.

Orderic assures us that this kind of thing was a regular occurrence.

This war was getting more and more expensive.

And while William was in England working out new ways to tax the hell out of the English in order to finance the fight, Hubert was on the continent, figuring out how he was going to finance this war as well.

And he came up with a pretty ingenious plan.

Those knights strutting around the bougie camp weren't just illiterate drunks.

Many of them were the drunk illiterate sons of older, wealthier, drunk illiterate nobles.

So what if he just captured a bunch of them and held them ransom?

Here's Orderic.

Quote, hence it happened that the castle of Saint-Zuzan was supplied at the expense of those who were encamped at Bonjan, and their means of resistance were continually increased.

Many wealthy nobles of Normandy and England were taken prisoners, and their ransoms honorably enriched the Viscount and Robert of Burgundy with his other comrades.

In this manner, Hubert resisted the Normans, growing rich by his enemy's wealth.

End quote.

And meanwhile, back in England, William was still stationing the bulk of his army all over England in preparation for a Danish invasion invasion that

was coming any day now.

Any day now.

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