Christmas: Its Origin and Associations Part 4

[10] "Romance of Ipomydon."

[11] "Old English History."

[12] "Short History of the Norman Conquest."

[13] "History of the English People."

[14] J. G. Whittier.

[15] "Chambers's Journal," Dec. 28, 1867.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

CHRISTMAS, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO MAGNA CHARTA.

(1066 to 1215.)

Now we come to the

CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS UNDER THE NORMANS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A KING AT DINNER.]

Lord Macaulay says "the polite luxury of the Normans presented a striking contrast to the coa.r.s.e voracity and drunkenness of their Saxon and Danish neighbours." And certainly the above example of a royal dinner scene (from a ma.n.u.script of the fourteenth century) gives an idea of stately ceremony which is not found in any ma.n.u.scripts previous to the coming over of the Normans. They "loved to display their magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons, well-ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for their intoxicating power." Quite so. But even the Normans were not all temperate. And, while it is quite true that the refined manners and chivalrous spirit of the Normans exercised a powerful influence on the Anglo-Saxons, it is equally true that the conquerors on mingling with the English people adopted many of the ancient customs to which they tenaciously clung, and these included the customs of Christmastide.

The Norman kings and n.o.bles displayed their taste for magnificence in the most remarkable manner at their coronations, tournaments, and their celebrations of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. The great councils of the Norman reigns which a.s.sembled at Christmas and the other great festivals, were in appearance a continuation of the Witenagemots, but the power of the barons became very formal in the presence of such despotic monarchs as William the Conqueror and his sons. At the Christmas festival all the prelates and n.o.bles of the kingdom were, by their tenures, obliged to attend their sovereign to a.s.sist in the administration of justice and in deliberation on the great affairs of the kingdom. On these occasions the King wore his crown, and feasted his n.o.bles in the great hall of his palace, and made them presents as marks of his royal favour, after which they proceeded to the consideration of State affairs. Wherever the Court happened to be, there was usually a large a.s.semblage of gleemen, who were jugglers and pantomimists as well as minstrels, and were accustomed to a.s.sociate themselves in companies, and amuse the spectators with feats of strength and agility, dancing, tumbling, and sleight-of-hand tricks, as well as musical performances. Among the minstrels who came into England with William the Conqueror was one named Taillefer, who was present at the battle of Hastings, and rode in front of the Norman army, inspiriting the soldiers by his songs. He sang of Roland, the heroic captain of Charlemagne, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again as he approached the English line. He was the first to strike a blow at the English, but after mortally wounding one or two of King Harold's warriors, he was himself struck down.

At the Christmas feast minstrels played on various musical instruments during dinner, and sang or told tales afterwards, both in the hall and in the chamber to which the king and his n.o.bles retired for amus.e.m.e.nt.

Thus it is written of a court minstrel:--

"Before the King he set him down And took his harp of merry soun, And, as he full well can, Many merry notes he began.

The king beheld, and sat full still, To hear his harping he had good will.

When he left off his harping, To him said that rich king, Minstrel, we liketh well thy glee, What thing that thou ask of me Largely I will thee pay; Therefore ask now and asay." (_Sir Orpheo._)

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLIND MINSTREL AT A FEAST.]

After the Conquest the first entertainments given by William the Conqueror were those to his victorious warriors:--

"Every warrior's manly neck Chains of regal honour deck, Wreathed in many a golden link: From the golden cup they drink Nectar that the bees produce, Or the grape's extatic juice.

Flush'd with mirth and hope they burn."

_The G.o.dodin._

In 1067 the Conqueror kept a grand Christmas in London. He had spent eight months of that year rewarding his warriors and gratifying his subjects in Normandy, where he had held a round of feasts and made a grand display of the valuable booty which he had won by his sword. A part of his plunder he sent to the Pope along with the banner of Harold. Another portion, consisting of gold, golden vases, and richly embroidered stuffs, was distributed among the abbeys, monasteries, and churches of his native duchy, "neither monks nor priests remaining without a guerdon." After spending the greater part of the year in splendid entertainments in Normandy, apparently undisturbed by the reports which had reached him of discontent and insurrection among his new subjects in England, William at length embarked at Dieppe on the 6th of December, 1067, and returned to London to celebrate the approaching festival of Christmas. With the object of quieting the discontent which prevailed, he invited a considerable number of the Saxon chiefs to take part in the Christmas festival, which was kept with unusual splendour; and he also caused a proclamation to be read in all the churches of the capital declaring it to be his will that "all the citizens of London should enjoy their national laws as in the days of King Edward." But his policy of friends.h.i.+p and conciliation was soon changed into one of cruelty and oppression.

At the instigation of Swein, the King of Denmark, who appeared in the Humber with a fleet, the people in the north of England and in some other parts rose in revolt against the rule of the Conqueror in 1068.

So skilfully had the revolt been planned that even William was taken by surprise. While he was hunting in the Forest of Dean he heard of the loss of York and the slaughter of his garrison of 3,000 Normans, and resolved to avenge the disaster. Proceeding to the Humber with his hors.e.m.e.n, by a heavy bribe he got the King of Denmark to withdraw his fleet; then, after some delay, spent in punis.h.i.+ng revolters in the Welsh border, he attacked and took the city of York. The land in Durham and Northumberland was still quite unsubdued, and some of William's soldiers had fared badly in their attempts to take possession. At the Christmas feast of 1068 William made a grant of the earldom of Northumberland to Robert of Comines, who set out with a Norman army to take possession. But he fared no better than his predecessors had done. The men of the land determined to withstand him, but through the help of Bishop aethelwine he entered Durham peaceably. But he let his men plunder, so the men of the city rose and slew him and his followers. And now, says Freeman,[16] William "did one of the most frightful deeds of his life. He caused all Northern England, beginning with Yorks.h.i.+re, to be utterly laid waste, that its people might not be able to fight against him any more. The havoc was fearful; men were starved or sold themselves as slaves, and the land did not recover for many years. Then King William wore his crown and kept his Christmas at York" (1069).

Now the Conqueror set barons in different parts of the country, and each of them kept his own miniature court and celebrated Christmas after the costly Norman style. In his beautiful poem of "The Norman Baron" Longfellow pictures one of these Christmas celebrations, and tells how--

"In the hall, the serf and va.s.sal Held, that night, their Christmas wa.s.sail; Many a carol, old and saintly, Sang the minstrels and the waits.

And so loud these Saxon gleemen Sang to slaves the songs of freemen, That the storm was heard but faintly Knocking at the castle-gates.

Till at length the lays they chaunted Reached the chamber terror-haunted, Where the monk, with accents holy, Whispered at the baron's ear.

Tears upon his eyelids glistened As he paused awhile and listened, And the dying baron slowly Turned his weary head to hear.

'Wa.s.sail for the kingly stranger Born and cradled in a manger!

King, like David, priest, like Aaron, Christ is born to set us free!'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINSTRELS' CHRISTMAS SERENADE AT AN OLD BARONIAL HALL.]

According to Strutt, the popular sports and pastimes prevalent at the close of the Saxon era were not subjected to any material change by the coming of the Normans. But William and his immediate successors restricted the privileges of the chase, and imposed great penalties on those who presumed to destroy the game in the royal forests without a proper license. The wild boar and the wolf still afforded sport at the Christmas season, and there was an abundance of smaller game. Leaping, running, wrestling, the casting of darts, and other pastimes which required bodily strength and agility were also practised, and when the frost set in various games were engaged in upon the ice. It is not known at what time skating made its first appearance in England, but we find some traces of such an exercise in the thirteenth century, at which period, according to Fitzstephen, it was customary in the winter, when the ice would bear them, for the young citizens of London to fasten the leg bones of animals under the soles of their feet by tying them round their ankles; and then, taking a pole shod with iron into their hands, they pushed themselves forward by striking it against the ice, and moved with celerity equal, says the author, to a bird flying through the air, or an arrow from a cross-bow; but some allowance, we presume, must be made for the poetical figure: he then adds, "At times, two of them thus furnished agree to start opposite one to another, at a great distance; they meet, elevate their poles, attack, and strike each other, when one or both of them fall, and not without some bodily hurt; and, even after their fall, are carried a great distance from each other, by the rapidity of the motion, and whatever part of the head comes upon the ice it is sure to be laid bare."

The meetings of the King and his Wise Men for the consideration of state affairs were continued at the great festivals, and that held at Christmas in 1085 is memorable on account of the resolution then pa.s.sed to make the Domesday survey, in reference to which Freeman says: "One of the greatest acts of William's reign, and that by which we come to know more about England in his time than from any other source, was done in the a.s.sembly held at Gloucester at the Christmas of 1085. Then the King had, as the Chronicle says, 'very deep speech with his Wise Men.' This 'deep speech' in English is in French _parlement_; and so we see how our a.s.semblies came by their later name. And the end of the deep speech was that commissioners were sent through all England, save only the Bishopric of Durham and the earldom of Northumberland, to make a survey of the land. They were to set down by whom every piece of land, great and small, was held then, by whom it was held in King Edward's day, what it was worth now, and what it had been worth in King Edward's day. All this was written in a book kept at Winchester, which men called _Domesday Book_. It is a most wonderful record, and tells us more of the state of England just at that moment than we know of it for a long time before or after."

The Domesday Book was completed in 1086, and the following year (1087) William the Conqueror died, and his son, William Rufus, succeeded him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTMINSTER HALL.]

THE CORONATION OF WILLIAM THE RED

took place at Westminster on September 26, 1087, Archbishop Lanfranc officiating. The King kept his first Christmas sumptuously at Westminster, and, Freeman says, "it seems to have been then that he gave back the earldom of Kent to his uncle, Bishop Odo." The character of the Royal Christmases degenerated during the reign of Rufus, whose licentiousness fouled the festivities. In the latter part of his reign Rufus reared the s.p.a.cious hall at Westminster, where so many Royal Christmases were afterwards kept, and which Pope calls

"Rufus's roaring hall."

It is a magnificent relic of the profuse hospitality of former times.

Richard the Second heightened its walls and added its n.o.ble roof of British oak, which shows the excellence of the wood carving of that period. Although Sir Charles Barry has shortened the Hall of its former proportions to fit it as a vestibule to the New Houses of Parliament, it is still a n.o.ble and s.p.a.cious building, and one cannot walk through it without in imagination recalling some of the Royal Christmases and other stately scenes which have been witnessed there.

The last of these festal glories was the coronation of George the Fourth, which took place in 1821. This grand old hall at Westminster was the theatre of Rufus's feasting and revelry; but, vast as the edifice then was, it did not equal the ideas of the extravagant monarch. An old chronicler states that one of the King's courtiers, having observed that the building was too large for the purposes of its construction, Rufus replied, "This halle is not begge enough by one half, and is but a bedchamber in comparison of that I mind to make." Yet this hall was for centuries the largest of its kind in Europe, and in it the Christmas feasts were magnificently kept.

After a reign of thirteen years the vicious life of William Rufus met with a tragical close. His dead body was found by peasants in a glade of the New Forest with the arrow either of a hunter or an a.s.sa.s.sin in his breast. Sir Walter Tyrrel, a Norman knight, who had been hunting with the king just before his death, fled to Normandy immediately afterwards, and was suspected of being a regicide. The body of Rufus was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

CHRISTMAS IN THE REIGN OF HENRY I.

Henry the First's Christmas festival at Windsor, in 1126, was a memorable one. In that year Henry's daughter Matilda became a widow by the death of her husband, Henry V. of Germany, and King Henry determined to appoint her his successor to the throne of England and the Dukedom of Normandy. On Christmas Day, 1126, a general a.s.sembly of the n.o.bles and higher ecclesiastics of the kingdom was held at Windsor for the purpose of declaring the Empress Matilda (as she was still called) the legitimate successor of Henry I., and the clergy and Norman barons of both countries swore allegiance to her in the event of the king's death. This appointment of Matilda was made by Henry in consequence of the calamity which occurred just before Christmas, in 1120, when he lost his much-loved son, Prince William--the only male legitimate issue of Henry--through the wreck of _La Blanche Nef_ (the White s.h.i.+p). On board the vessel were Prince William, his half-brother Richard, and Henry's natural daughter the Countess of Perche, as well as about a hundred and forty young n.o.blemen of the most distinguished families in England and Normandy, all of whom were lost in their pa.s.sage home, only a few hours after the safe arrival of the king in England. Henry is said to have swooned at the intelligence, and was never afterwards seen to smile. He had returned home antic.i.p.ating a joyous Christmas festival, a season of glad tidings, but he was closely followed by this sad news of the death of the heir apparent.

The incident has called forth one of the most beautiful poems of Mrs.

Hemans, from which we quote two verses:--