Queen of the Conqueror

by Tracy Joanne Borman

  The abbey was also granted some property owned by the queen, including the town of Quettehou in Normandy and two houses in England.25 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.”26 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.27

  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.”28 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.”29 The various bequests that he made for the soul of his dead wife reveal the sincerity of his grief.30

  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.31 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.”32 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.33

  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,

  But here rests entombed in good state,

  Blessed in title that nature cannot revoke from her.

  O twofold light of November, it is a little plot,

  A small pile of ash, but nevertheless a source of glory and grace.”34

  A series of other memorial poems followed, all equal in their praise of the late queen. As well as those written by Norman and French poets, there was also a eulogy by Geoffrey of Cambrai, a monk at Winchester—a testament to the respect that Matilda had earned on both sides of the Channel.35 By contrast, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle affords only the following cursory mention: “And in this same year passed away Matilda, King William’s queen, on the day after the Feast of All Saints.”36 This gives a misleading impression of the impact that her death had upon her English subjects, who had just as much cause as the Normans—if not more—to mourn her loss, as the years to come would prove. Indeed, as one contemporary put it: “Her death represents tragedy for both the clergy and the common folk.” She would be “wept for by the English and the Normans for many years.”37

  Orderic tells how Matilda’s body was conveyed to La Trinité as soon as she had breathed her last. To honor her memory, William ordered “a most splendid funeral” at the abbey, which lasted for two full days. It was attended by scores of monks, abbots, and bishops as well as the nuns of La Trinité.38 This reinforced the reputation for great piety that Matilda had enjoyed during her lifetime. Likewise, the “great throng of poor people” who came to pay homage to their late duchess served as a testament to her generosity as a benefactress to many charitable causes.39 One account claimed that “murmurs of loud and heartfelt grief” were heard throughout the land.40

  The sources do not reveal which, if any, of Matilda’s children attended the funeral. By the time of her death, she had three surviving sons—Robert, William Rufus, and Henry—and as many daughters—Cecilia, Constance, and Adela. As a nun of the abbey, Cecilia would certainly have witnessed her mother’s body being laid to rest. The close bond that existed between the late queen and her eldest son, Robert, makes it likely that he, too, would have honored her memory by attending, even if it did entail the unsavory prospect of meeting his father. The presence of Cecilia may have provided an added incentive. Judging from the evidence of the charters, Robert felt a strong affection toward her, for he made a number of generous bequests to the abbey when she later became its abbess.41

  Some time after Matilda’s funeral, an exquisite monument, “wonderfully worked with gold and precious stones,” was erected over her tomb in the nave of the abbey.42 However, her remains suffered as turbulent a history as she herself had done in life. Five centuries after her death, her tomb was plundered in the French wars of religion. The marauding Calvinists spared the tombstone, but they smashed the monument and the effigy of the late queen that lay upon it and eagerly searched the tomb for treasure. When Matilda’s corpse was uncovered, their leader, Admiral Gaspard of Coligny, spied a gold ring set with a fine sapphire on one of her fingers. It was the ring with which Matilda had been presented at her coronation and which she had worn ever since. No doubt realizing its value, Coligny promptly seized it, but the abbess, Anna de Montmorenci, condemned his desecration with such passion that he was overcome with remorse and presented the ring to her.43

  In the seventeenth century, amends were made for this violation, and Matilda’s bones were reverentially reinterred in a small casket. A new monument was erected in 1708, but this was destroyed during the French Revolution. Her coffin was spared, though, and in 1819, the original eleventh-century tombstone, crafted from black-and-white Tournai marble in honor of her Flemish origins, was restored and moved to pride of place in the middle of the choir, before the high altar, where it can still be seen today.44 The epitaph, which her h
usband had ordered to be “lovingly engraved in letters of gold,” demonstrates that, to the last, Matilda was immensely proud of her ancestry.45 It also bears testament to her piety, and the charitable works she undertook during her lifetime:

  The lofty structure of this splendid tomb

  Hides great Matilda, sprung from royal stem;

  Child of a Flemish duke; her mother was

  Adela, daughter of a king of France,

  Sister of Henry, Robert’s royal son.

  Married to William, most illustrious king.

  She gave this site and raised this noble house,

  With many lands and many goods endowed,

  Given by her, or by her toil procured;

  Comforter of the needy, duty’s friend;

  Her wealth enriched the poor, left her in need.

  At daybreak on November’s second day

  She won her share of everlasting joy.46

  This monument, and the eulogies that preceded it, suggest that even in death Matilda maintained her dutiful and pious image. Indeed, she remained a powerful figurehead for the Norman dynasty—perhaps even more so than she had been in life. However, as her grieving family were soon to learn, the loss of her active, physical presence was to cost them dearly.

  “After the death of his illustrious queen, Matilda, King William, who survived her for almost four years, was continually forced to struggle against the storms of troubles that rose up against him.”1 This was no exaggeration on the part of Orderic Vitalis. The loss of Matilda caused a profound shift in her husband’s outlook. Grief turned to bitterness and made him even more intolerant than he had been before. His attitude toward his English dominions underwent a particularly dramatic shift. While Matilda had promoted peace and conciliation, “after her death, he [William] became a thorough tyrant,” according to one contemporary chronicler. It was suddenly obvious just how great a restraining influence she must have exercised over her husband in life. Deprived of her wise counsel, he became reckless and tyrannical, undoing much of the good work that Matilda had urged him to in fostering better relations between the Normans and Saxons in England.

  Unchecked by Matilda’s benign influence, William fell into ever worse excesses. “The king and the principal men greatly loved, and over-greatly, greed in gold and in silver, and did not care how sinfully it was got as long as it came to them,” lamented the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. “The greater the talk about just law, the more unlawful things were done. They levied unjust tolls and they did many other unjust things which are difficult to relate.”2 Malmesbury concurs that the king was rightly criticized for his “passion for money, which no scruples restrained him from scraping together by seeking opportunities in all directions, doing and saying much—indeed everything—that was unworthy of so great a monarch, where dawned a glittering hope of gain.”3

  It was at least partly William’s covetousness that inspired him to commission the great survey of his kingdom that became known as Domesday Book. The scale of this survey and the level of detail it entailed are staggering. William wanted to know how many hundreds of hides of land there were in each shire, how much land and livestock he possessed, and what annual dues were owed to him from all parts of the country. But his own holdings were only part of it, for he also ordered his surveyors to find out how much land and livestock the other landholders possessed and how much it was all worth. It was with some dismay that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the whole painstaking process: “He had it investigated so narrowly that there was not one single hide, not one yard of land, not even (it is shameful to tell—but it seemed no shame to him to do it) one ox, not one cow, not one pig was left out, that was not set down in his record.”4

  William’s avarice was reflected by his growing corpulence. According to Malmesbury, this “gave him an unshapely and unkingly figure” and made him the butt of his enemies’ jokes. When he was obliged to take an unaccustomed period of rest at his palace in Rouen, King Philip scoffed: “The king of England lies at Rouen, keeping his bed like a woman who has just had her baby.”5

  For the English, things seemed to go from bad to worse after Matilda’s death. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes 1087 as “a very heavy and pestiferous year in this land.” According to the account:

  Such a disease came on men that very nearly every other man had the worst illness—that is the fever, and so severely that many men died from the illness. Afterwards, through the great bad weather which came as we already told, there came a very great famine over all England, so that many hundreds of men died wretched deaths through the famine. Alas! how wretched and how pitiful a time it was then! Then the miserable men lay well-nigh driven to death, and afterwards came the sharp famine and did for them completely. Who cannot pity such a time? Or who is so hard-hearted that he cannot weep for such misfortune?6

  The author of this chronicle was in no doubt that England was being punished for the manifold sins of its people—and its king. Without Matilda there to boost her husband’s public image, he was more despised now than he had ever been.

  The fate of Matilda’s sons—in particular her eldest—would have grieved her if she had lived to witness it. Robert’s rebellion against his father had been a source of great anxiety to her, but it was as nothing compared to the bitter infighting between her sons that would bring the empire she and William had created to the brink of ruin. The speed with which their relationships now completely unraveled again hints at the vital unifying role Matilda had played while she was alive.

  Without her pacifying influence, the old hostilities between William and Robert flared anew.7 This time, Robert’s resentment was stoked by his father’s refusal to make clear his intentions with regard to the English succession. In theory, this should have passed to Robert, along with Normandy and Maine. But William himself had struggled to keep all three dominions under his control, and it was in large part thanks to the able government of his late wife that he had been able to do so. He was understandably reluctant to give England over to a son whose loyalty was highly questionable and whom he regarded as an incompetent fool.

  In fact, the enmity was such that William was determined “Curthose” would never set foot on Norman soil again, and he banished him to permanent exile. Robert tried in vain to rally his former supporters within Normandy to his cause; none of them were interested. He had failed the last time, and there was no reason to suppose that this increasingly dissolute and ineffective exile now had either the means or the personal qualities to oust the formidable Conqueror from his duchy. Without their support, Robert was a good deal less appealing a prospect to William’s enemies.

  With Robert apparently out of the picture, William focused on his younger sons. Having always favored William Rufus and Henry above their eldest brother, he was only too happy to install them in his place. Orderic Vitalis claims: “William Rufus and Henry who were obedient to their father earned his blessing, and for many years enjoyed the highest power in the kingdom and duchy.”8 The alacrity with which William arranged for the two young men to begin approving charters that would formerly have been Robert’s domain suggests that he had long wished (or even planned) to do so. William Rufus and Henry now became involved in the government of both Normandy and England, which made Robert’s prospects of inheriting anything seem distant indeed. The ease with which the duke was now able to supplant his eldest son proves just how great a role Matilda had played in protecting Robert’s rights. She had been his most powerful advocate at the ducal court, and without her influence, he found himself entirely at the mercy of his father’s will.

  The life of the ducal family in the immediate aftermath of Matilda’s death may have been dominated by the revival of hostility between William and Robert, but there was also cause for celebration. In the autumn of 1086, William and Matilda’s daughter Constance was betrothed to Alan IV Fergant, Count of Brittany. The wedding, which took place in either Caen or Bayeux,9 brought Normandy an extremely valuable ally, for Brittany had long b
een a thorn in William’s side.10

  But it would prove an all too brief respite. Around the time when his sister was exchanging her vows with the count of Brittany, Robert returned to northern France. It is an indication of just how embattled William now felt that, rather than dismissing his eldest son as ineffective, he immediately went on the offensive. The focus of the duke’s attack was the French Vexin, a strategically important region close to Rouen on the Norman border that was under King Philip’s authority.11 In July 1087, his army sacked the town of Mantes, which had been used as a base from which to attack Normandy in the past. The ferocity with which William fought was astonishing for a man of sixty, and he was every bit as brutal—if not more so—as he had been during any of the campaigns he had fought throughout his long career.

  However, during the sack, the great warrior was suddenly taken ill. He seems to have sustained an internal injury when his horse tried to leap a ditch and the pommel of his saddle was driven into his heavy stomach, which was protruding over the front.12 Racked by pain, William was forced to order a retreat. Having left the field of conflict, he gave way to his injuries. Jumièges tells how he was “overcome by nausea; his stomach rejected food and drink, his breathing became increasingly difficult and, shaken by sobs, his strength deserted him.”13 The duke was taken back to his palace at Rouen, where “the malady increased” and he was obliged to retire to bed.14 A short while later, he was moved to the nearby priory of St.-Gervais. The official reason was that he needed some peace and quiet away from the city, but the choice of a religious house was significant. It was obvious to everyone around him that the great Conqueror was dying.

  William himself knew it, and he railed against death as he would the bitterest of enemies.15 The prospect of what would happen to his dominions once he had gone intensified his anguish, for he lamented “that after his death his homeland of Normandy would be plunged into misery.”16 His rebellious son was no doubt foremost in his mind as he contemplated this gloomy prospect. Rather than halting his campaign upon hearing of his father’s illness, Robert was even now attacking Normandy’s borders with the aid of King Philip. His younger brothers, meanwhile, were playing the dutiful sons at St.-Gervais.