Jeffrey James - The Bastards Sons: Robert, William and Henry of Normandy

Descent of the sons of William the Conqueror.

To him the fierce Normans faithful homage paid,

And lordly Maine his stern commands obeyed.

Thomas of Bayeux

William of Normandy, as everyone knows, won the crown of England in 1066 at the point of the sword. Less well known is that twenty-one years later, when aged sixty or thereabouts, he lay dying of wounds incurred fighting the French. The priory of St Gervase, located on a hillslope to the west of the bustling riverine port city of Rouen, became his hospice. Monks maintained a barrage of prayer; bishops, abbots, trusted barons and numerous servants attended upon him more directly. Only one of Williams three surviving sons the youngest, Henry stayed with him throughout this last ordeal. The eldest, Robert, known by the childhood nickname Curthose meaning, colloquially, shorty was just a few days ride away, but remained unaware his father was dying. The middle son, the Conquerors namesake, tagged with the nickname Rufus for his florid looks, had already hotfooted it to the coast to await news of his fathers passing. He planned to cross the English Channel and seize the crown of England before anyone else did.

William in later life had become increasingly overweight and prone to fatigue. King Philip of France unkindly likened him to a pregnant woman close to the onset of labour. William in turn threatened Philip with a hundred thousand candles, a somewhat obscure reference to the pillage and rapine he would unleash on the French when he was good and ready. His subsequent campaigning against Philip may have been vengeful but it also served to parry French raids launched from across the ill-defined border country, known as the Vexin, which buffered Normandy from the le-de-France.

The part of the Vexin lying between the Epte and Andelle rivers was claimed by the Normans; the territory between the Epte and Oise to the east remained under the control of the French. Within the region a number of great fortress towns Mantes, Chaumont, Pontoise, Gisors and Vernon abutted one another, and it was an aggressive midsummer assault on Mantes, a halfway point between Rouen and Paris, which proved Williams undoing. Astride a panicked horse, with his midriff crushed against the heavy pommel of his saddle, intense heat from the flames of burning buildings likely worsened his plight. Two monks we know about were burnt to death in the conflagration. According to the chroniclers, their deaths and the destruction of Mantes churches caused God to punish William by later bringing about his death. William sought to atone by gifting money to the Mantes authorities to rebuild the destroyed churches, just one of several sweeping gestures designed to curry redemption from on high in his final days.

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William the Conquerors father, the thirty-year-old Robert I, Duke of Normandy, had fallen ill and died at Nicaea on his return leg from the Holy Land in the summer of 1035 when William, his only son, was just seven or so. The duke had never married. He had maintained a long-term mistress named Herleva, Williams mother, the daughter of an artisan. Partnership arrangements in the first half of the eleventh-century, known as handfast marriages, reflected long-held pagan practice. Vows were exchanged but without the formality of a religious ceremony of any kind. To be born out of wedlock was commonplace at a time when many Europeans were still emerging from a non-Christian past. The succession of an illegitimate minor to the dukedom of Normandy in normal circumstances would nevertheless have done more than simply raise eyebrows: when told a seven- or eight-year-old bastard would succeed to the dukedom, the powerful Roger de Tosny point-blank refused to recognise him. Violence erupted. Medieval commentators wrote of men fortifying their towns, building towers, collecting stores of grain, fearing long-term dislocation. Normandy became torn by internecine broils and its frontiers compromised.