1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [76]
This story is, of course, almost entirely legendary. There is no contemporary account of the meeting of Robert and Herleva; and during William's lifetime the subject of his illegitimacy remained strictly taboo. It was the poets of the twelfth century who invented these tales, giving them an aura of romance and mystical, divine approval, in order to please a courtly Plantagenet audience who were then the inheritors of William's achievements. The essential facts remain: in the late 1020s Robert formed a non-marital liaison with Herleva, the daughter of Fulbert, a tanner or undertaker of Falaise, and that William was the child of this union. Robert seems to have treated Herleva well, but presumably wishing at some stage to make a more advantageous match he found her a suitable husband, Herluin of Conteville, a minor lord with some land on the south bank of the estuary of the River Seine. The bastard William was to remain distinctly touchy on the subject of his birth. It was a matter which could be broached with him only circumspectly, indeed if at all. Many years later, when as Duke of Normandy he was besieging the town of Alencon, a number of the townsmen thought it would be a good idea to string out animal hides in order to taunt him about the low birth of his mother. Once in control of the place, he had the culprits rounded up.4 He then had their limbs cut off and their eyes put out. It is not recorded that the jest was ever repeated.
Not long after William was born, Duke Richard III of Normandy died and Robert of Hiesmois inherited the duchy. It was rumoured that Richard had been poisoned by Robert. At this distance in time a charge of fratricide can neither be sustained nor rebutted, although Robert certainly had the motive, and presumably the opportunity, to do away with his brother. His own rule of Normandy was short and unsettled. It came to an abrupt end in July 1035 when he died in Nicea, in modern-day Turkey, on the journey home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Thus it was that one of the most turbulent territories in Europe fell to the rule of his only son, an illegitimate boy of some seven or eight years.
There followed a decade of grim disorder, from which the child duke was lucky to escape with his life, let alone with his position intact. William's two half-brothers, Robert, afterwards count of Mortain, and Odo, the future bishop of Bayeux, were born to Herleva and Herluin in the 1030s and also grew up during this period of civil unrest. In theory they could expect to gain substantially from a connection with the duke. In practice the little boy's position was desperately insecure. Rival magnates vied for control; for long periods any authority at all was widely lacking. William's own life seems to have been sorely threatened several times. Four of his guardians were murdered in turn and one of them, Osbern the Seneschal, was stabbed to death in the very room where William slept. Such was the danger that Walter, Herleva'sbrother, had to smuggle the young duke out of his castle at night in order to conceal him for his own safety in poor men's houses. This was a harsh and unsettled upbringing. William's ruthless determination - without which the conquest of England can hardly be imagined - was born out of the brutalising experiences of his youth. The turning point did not come until 1047. In that year, the twentieth of his life, Duke William won a crucial victory over the rebels at the Battle of Val-es-Dunes, near Caen. This had not been achieved without the welcome support of King Henry I of France who had ridden out of Paris at the head of his own army in order to come to his young vassal's aid. Nevertheless the victory at Val-es-Dunes marks the true starting point of Duke William's effective rule over Normandy.
Odo's life and whereabouts during this dark period