these ungallant curtailments of her royal prerogatives and personal dignity with a submission, which her foreign spouse could never have ventured to exact from her if she had succeeded to the Britannic empire by the demise of the crown. In that case, William of Orange would have been indebted to her favour for the empty title of king, and such ceremonial honours and dignity as it might have pleased her to confer on him. Circumstances were, however, widely different. William's Dutch troops had rudely expelled Mary's royal father from his palace, forced him to vacate his regal office by driving him from the seat of government, and causing him to flee for refuge to a foreign land. William remaining thus undisputed master of the metropolis and exchequer, considered that Mary was indebted to him, not he to her, for a crown; and although the suffrages of the people invested her with the dignity of queen-regnant, she was, in all things, as subservient to his authority as if she had been merely a queen-consort. The conjugal apron-strings were, nevertheless, William's strongest hold on the crown of England. Nothing but Mary's popular and able government at home could have enabled him to overcome the difficulties of his position during the revolt of Ireland and the insurrection in Scotland.

The mild sway of Anne, her tenderness of the lives of her subjects, her munificent charities to the poor, her royal bounties to that meritorious portion of the church, the indigent working clergy, caused her to be regarded, while living, with loyal affection by the great body of her subjects, and endeared her memory to succeeding generations. Anne is the last queen of Great Britain of whom a personal history can be written, till Time, the great mother of truth, shall raise the curtain of a recent but doubtful past, and by the publication of letters and domestic state-papers now inaccessible, enable those who may undertake the biographies of the queens of the reigning family to perform their task with fidelity.

MATILDA OF FLANDERS,

QUEEN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

CHAPTER I.

MATILDA, the wife of William the Conqueror, was the first consort of a king of England who was called regina.1 This was an innovation in the ancient customs of the land, for the Saxons simply styled the wife of the king 'the lady his companion," and to them it was displeasing to hear the Normans speak of Matilda as la Royne, as if she were a female sovereign, reigning in her own right;-so distinct in those days was the meaning attached in this country to the lofty title of reine, or regina, from that of queen, which, though at present the highest female title of honour used in England, then only signified companion. The people of the land murmured among themselves at this unprecedented assumption of dignity in the wife of their Norman sovereign; yet the 'strange woman,' as they called Matilda, could boast of royal Saxon blood. She was, in fact, the direct descendant of the best and noblest of their monarchs, Alfred, through the marriage of his daughter Elstrith with Baldwin II. of Flanders, whose son, Arnold the Great, was the immediate ancestor of Matilda,-an interesting circumstance, which history passes over in silence. Few of the queens of England, indeed, can claim a more illustrious descent than this princess. Her father, Baldwin V., surnamed the Gentle, Earl of Flanders, was the son of Baldwin IV. by Eleanora, daughter of duke Richard II. of Normandy ; and her mother was Adelais, daughter of Robert, king of France, and sister to Henry, the reigning sovereign of that country. She was nearly related to the emperor of Germany, and to most of the royal families in

1 Asser, in his life of Alfred, whose contemporary and friend he was, and who must therefore be regarded as a very important authority, expressly states that the AngloSaxons did not "suffer the queen to sit near the king, nor to be called regina, but merely the king's wife:" that is, quen, or companion. It ought to be noted, that the Saxon historians writing in Latin, have used the word regina, to avoid introducing a barbarous word into the Latin text.

2 Hafdige se cuene is the Saxon phrase. Hlafdige, or lady, means the "giver of bread;" cwene, or quen, was anciently used as a term of equality, indiscriminately applied to both sexes. In the old Norman chronicles and poems, instead of the duke of Normandy and his peers, the phrase used is "the duke of Normandy and his quens." "The word 'quen,' signifying companion," says Rapin, vol. i. p. 148, "was common both to men and women."

Europe. "If any one," says William of Poitou, "inquires who was Matilda's mother, he will learn that she was the daughter of Robert, king of Gaul, the son and the nephew of kings from royal kings descended."

Matilda was born about the year 1031, and was very carefully educated. She was possessed of fine natural talents, and was no less celebrated for her learning than for her great beauty. William of Malmesbury, when speaking of this princess, says, "She was a singular mirror of prudence in our days, and the perfection of virtue." Among her other acquirements, Matilda was particularly famed for her skill in ornamental needlework, which, in that age, was considered one of the most important and desirable accomplishments which princesses and ladies of high rank could possess. "The proficiency of the four sisters of king Athelstane in spinning, weaving, and embroidery, procured those royal spinsters," we are told, "the addresses of the greatest princes in Europe." The fame of this excellent stitchery is, however, all the memorial that remains of the industry of Matilda's Saxon cousins; but her own great work, the Bayeux tapestry, is still in existence, and, beyond all competition, the most wonderful achievement, in the gentle craft of needlework, that ever was executed by fair and royal hands. But of this we shall have to speak more fully, in its proper place, as a pictorial chronicle of the conquest of England.

The Earl of Flanders, Matilda's father, was a rich, powerful, and politic prince, equally skilled in the arts of war and of peace. It was to him that the town of Lille, which he rebuilt and greatly beautified, owed its subsequent greatness; and the home manufactures of his native country, through his judicious encouragement, became a source of wealth and prosperity to Flanders. His family connexion with the king of France, his suzerain and ally, and his intimate relationship to most of the royal houses in Europe, rendered his alliance very desirable to several of the reigning princes, his neighbours, who became suitors for the hand of his daughter. Matilda had, however, bestowed her first affections on a young Saxon nobleman named Brihtric, and surnamed, from the fairness of his complexion, 'Meaw,' or 'Snow,' who had visited her father's court on a mission from Edward the Confessor. Brihtric Meaw was the son of Algar, lord of the honour of Gloucester, and was possessed of so fair a heritage in that fruitful part of England, that he would not have been esteemed an unsuitable consort for the Flemish princess if their love had been reciprocal, but, for some reason, he was insensible to her regard.1 The dark sequel of this tale, which will be related in its proper place, is one of those strange facts which occasionally tinge the page of history with the colours of romance. Rise and Progress, vol. i. p. 294. Anglo-Normans, vol. i. p. 335.

1 Chronicle of Tewkesbury. Cotton. MSS. Cleopatra, c. 111, 220. Leland's Collectanea, vol i. p. 78. Monasticon, 111, 59. Palgrave's

Thierry's

1044.]

William of Normandy's rough wooing.

17

Whilst Matilda was wasting her morning bloom of life in unrequited love for the youthful envoy, whose affection was probably already pledged to one of his fair countrywomen, the report of her charms and noble qualities attracted the attention of the most accomplished sovereign in Christendom. "Duke William of Normandy," says William of Jumièges, "having learned that Baldwin, earl of Flanders, had a daughter named Matilda, very beautiful in person and of a generous disposition, sent deputies, by the advice of his peers, to ask her of her father in marriage, who gladly consented, and gave her a large portion." Wace, also, tells us "that Matilda was very fair and graceful, and that her father gave her joyfully to duke William, with large store of wealth and very rich appareilement." Seven long years, however, of stormy debate intervened before the courtship of William of Normandy was. brought to this happy conclusion. Contemporary chroniclers, indeed, afford us reason to suspect, that the subsequent conquest of England proved a less difficult achievement to the valiant duke than the wooing and winning of Matilda of Flanders. He had to contend against the opposition of the courts of France and Burgundy, the intrigues of his rival kinsmen of the race of Rollo, the objections of the church, and, worse than all, the reluctance and disdain of the lady. The chronicler Ingerius declares, "that William was so infuriated by the scorn with which Matilda treated him, that he waylaid her in the streets of Bruges, as she was returning with her ladies from mass, beat her, rolled her in the mud, spoiled her rich array, and then rode off at full speed." This Teutonic mode of courtship, according to the above authority, brought the matter to a favourable crisis; for Matilda, being convinced of the strength of William's passion by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife.1

A different version of this strange episode in a royal wooing is given by Baudoin d'Avesnes, who shows that the provocation which duke William had received from his fair cousin was not merely a rejection of his matrimonial overtures, but an insulting allusion to the defect in his birth. According to this writer, the earl of Flanders received the Norman envoys who came to treat for a marriage between their duke and Matilda very courteously, and expressed great satisfaction at the proposed alliance; but when he spake of it to the damsel his daughter, she replied, with infinite disdain, that "she would not have a bastard for her husband."

The earl softened the coarse terms in which Matilda had signified her rejection of Duke William, and excused her as well as he could to the Norman deputies. Her passion for Brihtric Meaw had, probably, more to do with her rude refusal of William, than the defect in his birth on which she grounded her objection. It was not long, however, before 1 Chronicle of Inger, likewise called Ingerius.

VOL. I.

C

William was informed of what Matilda had really said. He was peculiarly sensitive on the painful subject of his illegitimacy, and no one had ever taunted him with it unpunished. Neither the high rank nor the soft sex of the fair offender availed to protect her from his vengeance. In a transport of fury he mounted his horse, and, attended by only few of his people, rode privately to Lille, where the court of Flanders then was. He alighted at the Palace gates, entered the hall of presence alone, passed boldly through it, strode unquestioned through the state apartments of the earl of Flanders, and burst into the countess's chamber, where he found the damsel her daughter, whom he seized by her long tresses, and as she, of course, struggled to escape from his ruffian grasp, dragged her by them about the chamber, struck her repeatedly, and flung her on the ground at his feet. After the perpetration of these outrages, he made his way back to the spot where his squire held his horse in readiness, sprang to the saddle, and setting spurs to the good steed, distanced all pursuit. Although the Norman, French, and Flemish chroniclers differ as to the place where William the Conqueror perpetrated this rude personal assault on his fair cousin, and relate the manner of it with some few variations, they all agree as to the fact that he felled her to the ground by the violence of his blows. This incident is quoted by one of the most learned of modern historians, Michelet, in his History of France, and authenticated by the author of L'Art de Vérifier les Dates, from a curious contemporary MS. Vatout also records the circumstance in his History of the Château d'Eu: and refers the antiquary for further particulars to an ancient MS. chronicle in the Ecclesiastical library at St. Germains-au-Près, Paris.

When earl Baldwin heard of the unprecedented affront that had been offered to his daughter, he was highly incensed, made a hostile attack on duke William's territories to avenge it, did a great deal of damage, and suffered not a little in return, for William was never slack at retaliation. After a long series of aggressive warfare in this unprofitable quarrel, they found it expedient to enter into pacific negotiation, by the advice of all their wise and prudent counsellors. A meeting took place between the belligerent parties for the ratification of the treaty, when, to the surprise of every one, duke William renewed his suit for Matilda's hand; and, to the still greater astonishment of all her friends, when the proposal was named to the said damsel, she replied, that “it pleased her well." Her father, who had not anticipated so favourable an answer, was much delighted at forming a bond of strong family alliance with his formidable neighbour, lost no time in concluding the matrimonial treaty, and gave his daughter, as before said, a large por tion in lands and money, with abundance of jewels and rich array. The castle of Augi,-no other, gentle reader, than the château d'Eu, so 2 Ibid. Vatout's History of Eu.

1 Baudoin d'Avesnes.