1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [94]
With William dead, four years in the dungeons of Rouen had left Odo neither contrite nor subdued but ready and eager to quench his thirst on the drug of power that had been so abruptly denied him. He swiftly ingratiated himself with Robert Curthose, the new Duke of Normandy, and by early 1088 they were together plotting to overthrow King William Rufus of England and reunite Normandy and England under Robert's single authority. There would be little difficulty, Odo thought, in overcoming King William Rufus; he may well have considered him weak and effeminate. Later chroniclers, all monks, agreed that times had changed for the worse; they complained that the new king's courtiers wore their hair long and in curls, and that they minced around effeminately in wide-sleeved robes and wore shoes that curled up extravagantly at the toes like scorpions' tails.14 It was all a far cry from the hard men in crew cuts who had invaded England in 1066. Others were persuaded to join Odo's plot, including old Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances and (with the events at Dover in 1067 now long forgotten) the young Count Eustace III of Boulogne. The plan seems to have been that Odo would secure a strong foothold in the south-east of England and Robert would invade from Normandy. One of Odo's first acts in this rebellion was to send his knights on a petulant rampage through the lands of his old adversary Archbishop Lanfranc. Odo then marched from Rochester to the castle at Pevensey, where he holed up, waiting patiently for Duke Robert's invasion.
Faced with this widening Franco-Norman revolt, King William Rufus had no choice but to appeal to his lowly English subjects for help. He made rash promises of good government and low taxation that, as ever, were rather over-optimistically accepted by the populace: 'he promised them,' the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (E) advises us, 'the best law that ever was in this land; and forbade every unjust tax and gave men their woods and their coursing - but it did not last long'. By dint of these promises, Rufus was able to assemble a large Anglo Norman force which surrounded the castle at Pevensey so that Odo could not escape. The English, so the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued, were particularly keen 'to get Bishop Odo' whom they regarded as the brains behind the 'foolish'revolt. After six weeks the besieged bishop's provisions ran out and, with no sign of any serious attempt at invasion by Duke Robert, he was forced to surrender. He promised, perhaps already without sincerity, to hand over Rochester, and that he would then leave the shores of England and never return without the king's consent.
Odo was taken under relatively light guard to Rochester in order to arrange for the fortification there to be delivered up. Within its walls, however, were his allies Count Eustace III of Boulogne, the three sons of Earl Roger of Montgomery and perhaps as many as 500 knights. They were in no mood to surrender. Sallying out, they captured the king's men and then took them back within the castle. Odo, seizing the moment, also scurried within. Once more Rufus had to lay siege to Odo. Once more the young king proved a shrewder and more formidable enemy than the bishop had expected. During May 1088 Rufus blockaded the walls of Rochester Castle and erected two siege towers to cut off his uncle's escape. Over the next weeks provisions within ran out and conditions rapidly deteriorated. If we are to believe Orderic Vitalis, Odo and his allies were additionally inconvenienced by a plague of flies truly biblical in scale.15 Unable to endure any longer, they finally opened negotiations to surrender.
It was the custom of the time for the victors at a siege to herald their triumph over the defeated with a fanfare of trumpets.16 To avoid this final humiliation, Odo tried to win from the king the concession that, although he might