ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.

E CONQUEROR.

THERE are many peculiar difficulties attending any attempt to draw the character of a King, but none greater than that which arises from his isolated position. This isolation has often been pointed out as one of the characteristics of Royalty, but we doubt if sufficient allowance has been made for it as an exceptional element in estimating the mental and moral calibre of Princes. We acknowledge that they stand alone, and in a vague manner we recognize that this fact ought to some extent to modify our estimate of their character ; but we fail to make this modification in our actual estimate, because we have not suffi- ciently realized in detail the nature of this exceptional plea, and therefore are unable to give effect to it in regard to special points of character. We say, in a general manner, that Kings are not like other men, and that they must not be judged by exactly the IMITIC rules, but we (loin fact judge them, both for good and evil, in much the same way as ordinary mortals, and the significance of our vague deprecatory plea is almost entirely lost in the specific panegyric or denunciation which is based on our common moral experience. We cannot hope in our present series of estimates of Royal persons to remedy entirely this defect in criticism ; but, perhaps, something may be achieved in this direction by a few p \eliminary remarks, and by keeping this peculiarity well in view in 'exhibitingeach of the distinctive points of character.

A King, then, is removed by his peculiar position alike from the support of private friendship, the controlling influence of habitual responsibility to the law, and the habitual safeguard of authorized criticism. In his own country he has no fellow,—in his own family he has no equal,—and among the Princes of other countries he may find a similarity of position, but never an identity of interests. There can be no real reciprocity with him, either in thought or feeling. If he seek to indulge his affections, the differ- ence and inadequacy of any return that can be attempted by their object must tend to degrade the act to favouritism. If the feeling displayed is of a more subdued and intellectual type, it can- not escape from the character of patronage. Whether a wrong be resented, in word or deed, or passed over with a gentle rebuke or patient forgiveness, the course adopted can never have a merely personal character and a personal responsibility.. It will always be more or less a public act, liable to be judged by other considerations than those of personal feelings. The act is always too significant, either for good or the reverse_ The multitude of indifferent and insignificant acts which con- stitute the greatest part of the lives of ordinary men cannot exist as such with a King. He has always a representative and official character. He cannot act as a private individual, and what is more, he can never think as such. His whole view of life and men is affected by this fact. He always looks at other men and at the characteristics of society ab extra. He cannot accurately appreciate the personal motives of individuals within that society, or perceive and estimate the gathering forces of society during their noiseless formation. Even if his in- tellect is of moderate calibre, he estimates generally far better than any ordinary individual the significance and re- lations to the history of the world of the external features of society and of palpable results. If he is a man of superior intellect, he may index and summarize the progress of events, and look forward towards great ends from far distant premisses. He is not lost in details or led astray by inferior objects. He is.. naturally the best critic of society as a whole, and so, as far as its corporate action is concerned, he has to a great degree a prophetic power as to the course of events. But, like the philoso- phers of social science in modern times, who base everything in history on statistics and the theory of probabilities, his prog- nostications are frequently belied by the eccentricities of personal character, and the unseen agencies which are operating within the heart of society. He is always peculiarly subject to surprises, and is frequently censured for judicial blindness to feelings and movements which have never come within his ken. What he has gained in breadth of vision by being removed from the internal conflicts of society, he has lost in the forecasts of coming events which the daily action of informing opinion brings to the. minds of ordinary members of that society. If he is enlightened at all on such points it can never be from his own experience, but from the information of others, and he must always have the additional task and responsibility of estimating the value of this information with very imperfect materials for his judgment. How is the enlightened warning of the true prophet to be distinguished in such cases from the interested misrepresentation of selfish ambition?

Another of the results of this terrible isolation of Royalty is that a King can hardly be otherwise than selfish,—using the term in its. widest and least invidious sense. Unselfishness is based on sym- pathy, and his sympathy must be More or less imperfect, for the difficulty of realizing the position and feelings of others must be in his case vastly increased ; and self-sacrifice, which is always to some extent involved in the true act of sympathy, is in his case almost impossible. His position requires him always to think of him- self in the first place, and however noble may be the real nature of the man, and however kindly and generous his natural instincts,. the conditions of his life must warp his disposition, and make him (often quite unconsciously), in however slight a degree, postpone the feelings of others to his own wishes and necessities.. To judge a man thus placed as we should other men, and to pass. on his acts the decided and unreserved sentence of condemnation which would be justly called forth in their case, is therefore manifestly unjust. There is a sense, indeed, higher than is con- veyed by the vulgar doctrine of Right Divine, in which Kings can be only responsible to God,—for the laws of justice, as applicable to other men, cannot fairly be applied to them ; and it is some confused feeling of this virtual immunity from ordinary law which has given rise, no doubt, to the popular superstition as to. the divinity which hedges in a King.

Where the actions of a King are not extreme either for good or- evil, the considerations arising from these peculiarities of his position must render any decided opinion on his real character very difficult. In most cases, however, the balance is so much

inclined one way or the other, that the allowance to be made for his peculiar position will not affect the general positive result, and we may speak with some decision as to the main features of his character, without incurring much danger of doing injustice either to him or to the truth.

The special conditions of the life of Kings are, of course, ex- ternally at least, greatly modified by the differing circumstances of time and place. The Eastern despot and the absolute and constitutional princes of the West must have, of course, inherent differences of consciousness and corresponding grades of respon- sibility. But fundamentally, the same stern laws of isolation exist with respect to all, whenever the position they hold is a permanent one, and whenever they form part of a distinct Royal caste. So algo with respect to the conditions imposed by the successive stages of civilization in national life. In earlier and ruder times, there must be less mystery and more self-asser- tion in the Kingly office, and the royal status may be so precarious and brief in its tenure, that the incidents of a separate caste may scarcely attach to it, and in periods of transition from one stage of society to another, when the old foundations are overthrown, and there has been no time to consolidate the new, —where Founders of dynasties and systems take the place of a Royal caste and of a traditionary status, the conditions of this isolation must be materially affected. But the position of a Founder, or, as the old lawyers called him, a Conquestor or Con- queror, while it implies something more and something leas than that of an ordinary hereditary King, does not imply the non- existence of the social conditions of a caste. He may have emerged from conditions of life differing very widely from those of his new position, and he will always possess on that account an immunity from some at least of the dis- abilities which enter into the royal isolation ; but he will also be more profoundly impressed by the specialities of his new life, the weight and burden of which will be doubly felt from their novelty, and the close bondage of which will force itself all the more keenly on his perception, because he must ever be on his guard against any relaxation of this self-imposed restraint. To pass into a life of isolation must be more painful than to be born into and grow up in it, and some of the characteristics of which we have spoken may become even exaggerated in the actuating feelings of a Founder. The problem of character is in his case more complicated and more interesting, but much at least of the speciality of Royalty must enter into the rationale of its solution. It will generally be a strong man who can acquire such a position as that of the ancestor of a line of Kings ; it must be a still stronger man who can endure this changed life, and preserve through it some stamp, however faint, of moral greatness; and such a man, conceding the worst that has been said against him, was WILLIAM TIIE BASTARD, the Founder or Conqueror of the Anglo- Norman Monarchy. He was not a good man, and, with all his success, he was not a happy man ; but he was too great a man to be an absolutely wicked man, and the awe with which he inspired all around him was saved from becoming hate by a mastering con- sciousness of the presence of something good in his nature and a suspicion of possible good in his ultimate purpose. If we can give our readers any clearer idea of the character of such a man we may go beyond or differ from his contemporaries in the minute analysis of his character ; but we shall not certainly exceed them, or find ourselves at variance with them in their half-avowed instincts of it as a whole.

The details of the early life of William the Bastard are wrapped in considerable obscurity, but the leading points of the story are beyond dispute. He was the son of Robert, Duke, or rather, Count, of Normandy, who was the second son of the great- grandson of the legendary founder of the dukedom or countship- Hrolfr, Rolf, or Rollo. It is also certain that he was a base-born child in more than the ordinary sense of the term. His mother, variously called Harlette, Herleva, or Arlette, was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise. The social impediment in the minds of the great men of Normandy to the succession of William to his father's seat could hardly have been the fact of his being born out of wedlock, for illegitimacy was not the exception, but the rule, in the House of Rollo. No adequate explanation has yet been given of the intensity of the feeling against William's illegitimacy, though the position of a tanner was probably peculiarly low and socially degrading. We know too little of the feelings of those times, and of the particulars of Count Robert's relations with Harlette, to enable us to understand the exact nature of the feeling outraged by William's succession. But we know that it was violently and indignantly scornful among high and low in the more Teutonic and Norse portion of his dominions, and that

nothing could have saved the child from destruction but very skilful management on the part of his guardians (backed, perhaps, by a recollection of the personal popularity of Robert), the discord and mutual jealousies among his cousins of the Ducal House and of the conflicting races of Normandy, and, perhaps, the general preference among the turbulent barons for a minority rather than the strong government of a prince of mature age. William, then, was exposed from the first to a storm of social obloquy, and deprived of the peculiar prestige and advantages of the ruling caste, within which lie was nevertheless included, and to whose destiny of solitude he was at the same time subjected. He was, therefore, from the first thrown back on personal resources and the peculiarities of his own mind. The social ex- communication against which he was always struggling placed him to some extent from the first in what we have endeavoured to explain as the peculiar position of a Founder, with the important difference, however, that instead of endeavouring to secure his introduction into the sovereign caste, he was striving to pre- vent his exclusion from it, and that consequently the basis of his pretensions was a presumptive status, not an acquired authority. His feelings must have been akin to those of an heir whose legitimate succession was imperilled, rather than those of an aspirant whose claims were disputed. The stain of his birth may have given him some greater perception of the life of common men than falls to the lot of purely legitimate princes, but as far as his disposition was affected by it, it would enhance rather than diminish the caste feeling within him. From the few facts preserved to us, he seems to have led from his cradle a life of hairbreadth escapes and constant anxiety. When his strong, skilful hand was first felt at the helm, and how he guided the course of the vessel, is really quite unknown. We find him first an almost helpless and hopeless boy, surrounded with enemies ; and next, as a calm, self- assured ruler, crushing insurrection at home, and not only main- taining himself against foreign princes, but making himself respected and dreaded by them. At Val-i,s-Dunes he used the House of Capet in crushing the insurgent Norse or Teutonic chieftains of the Cotentin and the old Saxon Shore about Bayeux ; and then he beat back and humbled the French. King by employ- ing against him this once rebellious array. Men seemed to be compelled to do his will, apart from and even against their own interests. Nor was it over men of feeble hands and poor intellects that this ascendancy of William's was gained, lie triumphed over fierce races, who to the last fretted under his rule, but who were drawn irresistibly in the wake of his successful career ; and over strong, self-willed men, who were compelled to follow him because he made this the only path to their personal aggrandize- ment. He never id,..ntified his own personal interests with those of any man or any connection, but he compelled these to identify themselves with his objects. His attitude was the same in this respect both in State and Church. Th. Church served him well in some of his greatest needs, and it was always a powerful poli- tical instrument in his hands. He rewarded it richly, he endea- voured to raise its character, and aggrandized it, by making its machinery more effective for great ends. But even Hildebrand did not dare to more than faintly urge on this generous son of the Church ecclesiastical pretensions which would have inverted their relative positions, and made the Pope the patron instead of the patronized. He held his dominions from God, and by his own sword, was the sharp retort of William, and the great ruler of the Church, before whom the rest of Catholic Europe had been made to bow in implicit deference, patiently acquiesced in this curt refusal. William sought in all directions for wise counsellors and able agents of his policy, but he never allowed any one to make himself necessary to his service or an irremovable support to his throne. The most dangerous competitor against whom he was ever pitted was per- haps the strong-hearted and crafty son of Godwine, yet the battle of Hastings was but the culmination of a series of intellectual defeats which he had inflicted on that greatest of the Saxons. William's claims on the English Crown were of the most worth- less character, and his paitizans in England of the most insignifi- cant value in point of numbers and influence. Harold was little, if at all, inferior to the Norman as a soldier ; be had a strong hold on the affections of a considerable portion of the English nation, and he was certainly preferred by the great majority in the island to the Norman invader. Yet William had routed him thoroughly in the moral opinion of Europe before he vanquished him on the battle-field, and the paralysis of the Anglo-Saxon energies which opened up the conquest of England to William was due far more to the skilful manipulation by the Norman of the preliminaries of the contest, than to any distraction of forces caused by a double invasion in the north and south, or even any divisions of race. Though there was scarcely ever a Sovereign whose actions were more strictly personal in their character than William's, there was no one who managed more completely to give them an aspect of legal and social authority. His most violent acts of personal revenge and ruthless fury never seem to have struck his con- temporaries in the same light as did the atrocities of the men among whom he lived. Either there was a purpose evident to them and not to us which relieved their re- volting features, or the man himself had become to them an institution rather than an individual, and they accepted his acts as a necessity of his and their existence, rather than as an expression of personal motives on his part. The necessities of his early career had made him an assertor of order, and the isolation of his own interests had made him, as respects the mutual relations of other men, a comparatively impartial administrator. His long-enduring patience (engendered also by his early necessities), and yet his uncompromising fierceness in enforcing his ultimate decisions, had something of the slowness and sureness of Fate, and impressed even the _sufferers with only an uncertain sense of oppression. He was eminently a Founder, for he really laid the foundation and shaped the general outline of the subsequent social and political life of England ; but he possessed the peculiarity of great Founders of never making himself in out- ward profession the ultimate source of these institutions. They professed to be little more than adaptations of earlier codes to the wants and necessities of the existing age. Thus he secured an indefinite amount of traditional authority for what would other- wise have been criticized with all the keenness attaching to personal responsibility. Though everybody and everything felt the impress of his personal action and will, he never appeared but as the promulgator of the legislation of Alfred and Edward the Confessor. While he never allowed anything or anybody to interfere with his personal will or to dispute his personal position, he was entirely free from the poor vanity of weaker self-willed men,---of parading their personal pretensions and abilities.

Perhaps, even with our imperfect knowledge, some mitigating or explanatory points may be discerned in the worst actions of the Conqueror, which may redeem them from the charge of blind fury or deliberate malignity. Whatever may have been the amount of injustice inflicted by him on individuals—and it would be going very far indeed to assert his justice or wisdom in these instances, it is a fact that not one of those whose cases have met with most commiseration and excited most indignation against him can come forward with a clean and unblemished reputation. There is always a considerable possibility if not of probability that they were in the wrong also in the cause for which they suffered. This may have been William's good for- tune or his policy, but it must have made all the difference in the estimate formed by contemporaries of the justice or injustice of his conduct. Whatever our patriotic sympathies and our hatred of oppression, it is not easy to pin one's faith on the probity of such men as 1Valtheof, the chiefs of the house of Leofric, or the great Norman barons who experienced the vengeance or justice of William. Men talked suspiciously of the death of Conan of Brittany, but modern criticism has thrown great doubt on the imputation that he was poisoned by the Norman prince. The atrocious cruelties on the inhabitants of Aleneon are quite indefensi- ble, but were not exceptional cruelties in those days, and had a strong provocation and probably a political motive. The desola- tion of the Northern Counties of England was a great crime, but it was also a political act of defence against Scandinavia and Scotland, and may imply much less of conscious malignity and have proceeded from less cruelty of disposition than we should at first conceive. The Northumbrians, rude and wild in their acts as they were, had a vivid and deep-rooted attachment to a former state of things,—an attachment unto death to a traditionary system quite apart from that into which the Conqueror was reorganizing England ; and the Northumbrians, though far nobler in themselves than many other of the opponents whom he encountered, were destroyed by him because they were quite incompatible with his ascendancy in England.

There are personal relations which, however modified by the peculiar position of Kings, still even in their case give us a greater insight into the man than anything else possibly can. A marriage, indeed, may be a merely conventional form, and the relations be- tween husband and wife may differ little from the other ceremonial apparatus of royalty, but even a king's relations with his children must always give us some insight into his natural disposition. If no one is a hero to his own valet, few, if any, can be altogether mere impersonations of law and will to their own children. The province of the legislator stops here,—the arm of the administrator

is arrested, and something of the individual feelings, though often but little of the intellectual sagacity, of the man is here made apparent. But we do not care about a display of intellect here, when that is so strongly marked in other relations. In an age of gross dissoluteness, it is now understood that William stands unimpugned in the point of conjugal fidelity. It is also held to be established by evidence that he was not only fortunate in, but happy with, his wife, Matilda of Flanders. Of those sons who alone played any public part, it is known that Robert, the eldest, was least the favourite of his father, and that the affections of the latter were concentrated on William and Henry. Unlike many strong fathers, he did not then prefer the weaker nature in his sons. But neither can it be said that he was substantially unjust to that weaker ion. Young Robert, indeed, rose in rebellion again and again, on the specious plea that the government of Normandy was kept out of his hands, after it had been, implicitly at least, promised to him. But no one will blame William's conduct in this respect who sees how the character of the vain, frivolous prince developed itself ; and the repeated forgiveness which he extended to him had much of the contemptuous pity and forbearance of his treatment of Edgar, the Anglo-Saxon Etheling, and contrasts with his firmness on the main point in which the interest of the State was concerned.

To conclude, the reserve and suspicion of others fostered in William by his early trials led him to keep his thoughts, and plans, and reasons for his actions within his own breast ; and as he made no confidants, and explained himself to no one, it is not surprising that his motives were frequently mis- construed, even where there was a latent feeling that his ad- ministration was not fundamentally unjust. This makes it almost impossible to harmonize what contemporary critics assert against him and what they admit in his favour, and the praise and the blame seem alike arbitrary. Yet, perhaps, with all this inconsistency, and want of comprehensiveness in grasp, there has never been a more impressive character drawn of a Conqueror by one of the conquered than that by the contemporary Anglo-Saxon chronicler of William the Bastard ; and modern philosophy, though 'it may attempt to solve some of the psychological riddles which it presents, can add nothing to the reality of its life-like touches. "If any one desires to know what kind of man he was," says the chronicler, "or what wor- ship he had, or of how many lands he was lord, then we will write of him so as we understood him, who have looked on him, and at another time sojourned in his Court. The King William about whom we speak was a very wise man, and very powerful, more dignified and strong than any of his predecessors were. He was mild to the good men who loved God ; and over all measure severe to the men who gainsayed his will. On the same stead on which God granted him that he might subdue England, he raised a noble monastery, and there placed monks, and well endowed it. In his days was the noble monastery at Canterbury built, and also very many others over all England. The land was also plentifully sup- plied with monks, and they lived their lives after the rule of St. Benedict. And in his day Christianity was such that every man who could followed what belonged to his condition. He was also very dignified, thrice every year he bare his crown as oft as he was in England. At Easter he bare it in Winchester; at Pentecost in West- minster; at midwinter in Gloucester. And there were with him all the great men over all England, archbishops and suffragan bishops, abbots and earls, thanes and knights. So was he also a very rigid and cruel man, so that no one durst do anything against his will. He had earls in his bonds, who had acted against his will ; bishops he cast from their bishoprics, and abbots from their abbaies, and thanes into prison, and at last he spared not his own brother,

named Odo Among other things, is not to be forgotten the good peace that he made in this land ; so that a man who in himself was aught mightgo over his realm with his bosom full of gold unhurt. Nor durst any manslay another man, had he done ever so great evil to the other. He reigned over England, and by his sagacity so thoroughly surveyed it, that there was not a hide of land within England that he knew not who had it, and what it was worth,

and afterwards set it in his writ Certainly in his time men had great hardship and very many injuries. Castles he caused to be made, and poor men to be greatly oppressed. The King was very rigid, and took from his subjects many a mark of gold, and more hundred pounds of silver, which he took by right and with great unright from his people, for little need. He had fallen into covetousness, and altogether loved greediness. He Flanted great preserve for deer, and he laid down laws therewith, that whosoever should slay hart or hind should be blinded. He for- bade the harts and also the boars to be killed. As greatly did be

love the tall deer as if he were their father. He also ordained concerning the hares that they should go free. His great men bewailed it, and the poor men murmured thereat; but he was so obdurate that he reeked not of the hatred of them all ; but they must closely follow the King's will, if they would live or have land or property, or even his peace. Alas ! that any man should be so proud, and raise himself up, and account himself above all men ! May the Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins ! These things we have written con- cerning him, both good and evil, that good men may imitate their goodness, and wholly flee from the evil, and go in the way that leads us to the kingdom of heaven."