Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [233]
The feudal system, under which most of Europe now lay, had enormous weaknesses. In the centuries following the break-up of the empires of Rome and later of Charlemagne in the west, first tribes and then individual families had seized power over huge tracts of land which had yet to coalesce into the countries of modern Europe; and although a powerful king might assert his sovereignty over many lesser magnates, the individual feudal lords were in a state of almost perpetual dispute amongst themselves. No people claimed a single country as their nation state: Europe was a huge patchwork of estates to be bought, sold, fought for or obtained by marriage. Even a minor knight like Godefroi had estates on both sides of the English Channel. True, there were laws to govern feudal relationships and possession; true, the Church had proclaimed a Christian peace and ordered days of truce to be observed in every territory. The result, however, was only to add endless legal disputes and appeals to the long and complex process of intermittent violence that was the feudal world.
It was this system of formalised chaos that the counts and dukes of Normandy had tried to reduce to order first in Normandy and then, with more success, in the conquered island of England. For at the conquest, the Kingdom of Harold had fallen, at least in theory, entirely into the hands of Duke William; and though he had granted to his chief supporters the vast estates of the leading Anglo-Saxons, they were to hold them only as his tenants in return for military service. Though trusted lords were sometimes given wider powers where the king’s primitive bureaucracy was not large enough to cope, justice too – and most of the profits of justice in the form of fines – was generally the king’s. Such a centralised system, such order, was unique in Europe.
It worked well, as long as the king was strong.
But Stephen was not, and already his right to rule had been challenged by the late king’s daughter, and widow of the German ruler, the Empress Matilda. It was just the excuse that ambitious English nobles were looking for: where two sides might bid for their support, there must be chances for profit. In the spring of 1139 there was treachery in the air.
And no man was more treacherous than the bishop.
“I think he is a devil,” Nicholas remarked, and though Godefroi gave him a stern look to discourage such impertinence, he would privately have agreed. The bishop was usually absent, but when he appeared, his great, heavy jowl and angry, watchful eyes made even the knight afraid.
Roger of Caen, a low-born adventurer, had first ingratiated himself with King Henry, it was said, because as a young chaplain he could complete the mass before the King went out hunting in less time than anyone else. He had risen rapidly to be Chancellor of England, running the whole machinery of government for Henry with a ruthless efficiency matched only by his own greed and ambition. He was a priest, but he kept mistresses and had a son who came to succeed him as chancellor. As a reward for the family’s services the king had made him Bishop of Sarisberie and his two nephews Bishops of Lincoln and Ely, so that, within a single generation, his family had raised itself to a wealth and power equalled by only a few of the greatest nobles in the land.
Furthermore the ailing King Henry and weak Stephen had allowed Roger to hold castles as well: in the spring of 1139 the family controlled not only Sarisberie, but the other southern castles of Malmesbury, Sherborne and Devizes. And now they were being filled