19. Revolt at Rochester
The main centres of the uprising were in Northumbria, the south-west and in Kent and Sussex. Instigated by the rebels, raiding parties from the Welsh tribes also crossed into the Marches to loot and plunder, and Malcolm of Scotland seized the opportunity to attack in the north-west.
It was the middle of a particularly warm spring, and the country appeared prosperous and serene. The burghs were flourishing and the farmers busy in their fields. The uprising caught Rufus completely by surprise. He was hunting in the New Forest when news of the rebellion reached him, and he returned to Winchester immediately.
He summoned his council and ordered half his treasury in Winchester and a quarter of his London bullion to be made available to pay for a counter-attack.
England was soon in chaos. The Norman hierarchy was split almost down the middle; in many places, earls and bishops who supported Rufus were neighbours of those who supported Odo. Sometimes the fighting was a small local skirmish, but there were also large pitched battles involving hundreds of men.
There were many Englishmen in the service of their Norman masters and many minor English landowners whose land had not been lost to Normans; all were caught up in the fighting. The bloodshed was wholesale and affected almost every corner of the land. Families were divided; brother fought brother, and lifelong friends became mortal enemies.
My assessment of Odo as a wily and ambitious bishop, but a less competent general, proved to be accurate. Instead of using both the element of surprise and his superior numbers to press home his advantage, he dithered. The rebellion was well supported but concentrated around the strongholds of the rebels. Rather than riding out to coordinate the separate groups and take the fight to Rufus, he sat in Rochester waiting for the King to come to him. Robert of Mortain did the same in Pevensey.
This was disastrous for the rebellion. It gave Rufus time to gather his forces and to persuade many isolated rebels in small pockets around the country to abandon the cause. By the generous use of the vast wealth of his Exchequer, he assembled a large army of loyal Norman lords and knights and, enticed by bulging purses of coin, a significant number of English infantry.
Gilbert of Clare was the first rebel to surrender at Tonbridge. He had been wounded in the initial assault and capitulated within two days of the arrival of the King’s army. Rufus then moved towards Rochester to cut off the head of the rebellion — Odo of Bayeux himself. But the Bishop was not there. He had panicked when he heard about Tonbridge and learned that Arundel had fallen to the King, and fled in the middle of the night to Pevensey to seek the protection of his ally and brother, Robert Mortain.
Even though he travelled with only a handful of men, he was seen by the King’s scouts and, within hours, Rufus was aware of the Bishop’s mad dash. He immediately turned south to Pevensey, where both leading conspirators were now holed up together.
I decided to intercede with King Rufus to prevent further bloodshed and sent word to Edwin to set sail from Normandy and make landfall at Rochester, where further instructions would be waiting.
By the time I reached the King, he was already camped outside the great walls of Pevensey and had begun to throw a cordon around the defenders. He had chosen to lay siege and the likelihood was that it would be a protracted affair. Robert of Mortain was one of the richest men in England and had spent the years since the Conquest reinforcing the high Roman walls so that the castle was one of the most formidable in the realm, second only to the great tower at London.
Rufus was not pleased to see me, nor was he civil.
‘Tell me why I shouldn’t have you arrested as a traitor?’
‘Because, sire, I am loyal to you and so is your brother.’
‘Well, you both have a strange way of showing it. An insurrection in my first year on the throne, hundreds dead — where is the loyalty in that?’
‘Robert did not instigate it; it is Odo’s work and that of his supporters.’
‘So, why has a fleet of over sixty ships just sailed from Dives?’
I decided to play a mischievous feint I had been thinking about for a few days in the light of the poor showing of the rebellion.
‘Your brother is loyal, my Lord King. He sent me to Bishop Odo to persuade him to call off the rebellion, but Odo would not hear of it. The fleet sailed a few days ago on my orders. They are meant to intervene on your behalf, should Odo refuse to stop the rebellion.’
‘Do you expect me to believe that?’
‘It is true, my Liege.’
Rufus had changed. His mannerisms were far more effeminate than I remembered, his clothes more flamboyant and he had a plethora of boyish-looking young men around him who were neither knights nor pages. His father would not have tolerated this while he was alive.
The King’s rudeness towards me continued.
‘I don’t like you and I don’t trust you — an English prince who spends his life courting favour with his Norman masters. Have you no shame, man?’
‘Sire, I do have some regrets, but I try to live a good life and behave honourably. Will you let me talk to Odo and persuade him to abandon his cause?’
‘No, I will not. I plan to deal with him myself.’
In the face of the King’s intransigence, I took my leave.
But Rufus was right. I did live a strange life, where shame had been a frequent companion, and my deceit in suggesting to Rufus that Edwin’s force was intended to support him rather than Odo was perhaps less than honourable. However, my shame was a thing of the past. I knew now that I had the skills and bravura to step into the lion’s den — and not only on the battlefield. I had become adept at winning wars of words, turning verbal battles into dramatic victories by the use of my wits and my guile.
I quickly returned to Rochester to meet the fleet and explain my strategic volte-face to Edwin before he committed his force to the wrong side.
I reached Rochester just as the ships were unloading their men and horses. There was much celebrating in Odo’s beleaguered garrison. Having been abandoned by the Bishop, they now thought that Robert had sent an army to rescue them. Little did they know that our intentions were ‘flexible’ at best and that Odo’s cause was all but lost.
After explaining the situation to Edwin and the others, it was agreed that we should quickly send word to Duke Robert to explain the current circumstances and my decision to switch the allegiance of our men. As it was a matter of some delicacy, I despatched Sweyn and Adela with a small company of cavalry to carry the message. Scouts were sent to Pevensey to report on the progress of the siege.
Meanwhile, we sat and waited. Several weeks passed in the midst of another hot summer until, in the middle of July, Sweyn and Adela returned with a sealed parchment for Rufus from Duke Robert. We left Edwin in Rochester and set off for Pevensey within the hour.
The rebellion was over in the rest of the country. Rufus had acted swiftly and decisively and his supporters had followed his lead. One of the most dramatic stories came from the far west. The rebel earl, Geoffrey of Coutances, had recruited hundreds of troublesome Welsh tribesmen to swell the numbers of his own retinue and those of his landowners. They had laid waste to vast parts of the Marches and slaughtered livestock, burned villages and torched acres of tinder-dry crops. It was reported that for days on end the whole of Shropshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire had been covered in a pall of acrid smoke.
This wanton destruction united non-rebellious Normans and non-aligned Englishmen in fierce indignation and common cause. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, became the voice of incensed protest, issuing a solemn curse on the rebels. Over eighty years of age, a patron of music and learning and the only surviving Englishman from pre- Conquest days to hold the rank of bishop in the realm, he then led a citizen army to challenge the Norman rebels in battle.
Driven on by his oratory, a motley crew numbered in thousands, composed of English clerics, townsfolk and yeoman farmers, lined up behind Norman lords loyal to King Rufus and hurled themselves on to the rebel army. In a battle of astonishing savagery, joined just four miles east of Hereford at the confluence of the Wye and the Lugg in the tranquil water meadows of Mordiford, Wulfstan’s zealots cut the insurgent Normans to pieces.
