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RICHARD II THE GOOD (996-1026)


Though Rollo and his descendants had been Counts of Rouen for 85 years Richer the Chronicler of Reims in 996 still thought it apt to describe them as pyratum rex. It was true that the Dukes of Normandy were key supporters of the Capetian monarchy but their links to the Scandinavians were still strong.

The English King Aethelred the Unready was constantly having to look to his back when being confronted by Danish attacks over the thirty eight years of his reign with Danish boats using the Cotentin harbours as bases to lay up their boats and finding the local Norman people having much in common with them.

In 1000 The English had had enough and launched a fleet from Portsmouth to attack the viking fleet. They landed at Barfleur and it is a tradition that they were met by the local citizens who routed them at the battle of Sanglac.

The failure to beat the Normans meant Aethelred had to take a more formal approach and reached agreement with Richard by marrying his sister Emma. Ironically it was the birth to her of Edward the Confessor that was to result indirectly in the demise of the English monarchy and their conquering by the Normans. The marriage settlement didn’t change the count’s attitude to his Danish cousins however and even as late as 1014 Richard played host at Rouen to a Danish host under Olaf and Lacman who had been devastating the region.

Despite being known as The Good he was not at first sight anything of the sort except perhaps to the burgeoning layers of viscomtes that appeared during these times. The forests that covered a much greater area of the land than they do now had traditionally been free for the local peasantry to use to hunt and fish in. But with the increase in nobility their rights and power grew at the expense of the people who found themselves having to pay tolls simply to get onto the land.

The consequence of this was to be seen by the Jersey poet Wace in his 16,000 line epic ‘The Roman de Rou’ almost in terms of a democratic revolution. ‘The lords do nothing but evil; why do we allow ourselves to be so treated ? We are a hundred to one …let us firmly knit together, and no man shall lord over us; we shall be free… in the wood, in the meadow, on the water!’

These thoughts echoed through the land and the people began to organise themselves in each district preparing to hold an assembly. But The Good’s uncle Rauol Count of Ivry and Bayeux sent spies around the Duchy to find out who was organising this resistance. When the information was gathered the troops were sent out to gather up these poor people. The retribution was severe with a variety of cruel punishments meted out and the victims minus various bits paraded around their towns as an example to the rest. The feudal system that resulted was to change the relationship between the landowners and the villeins for centuries.