CHAPTER 1

Wife of a Conqueror

from Family Stories …and How I Found Mine

by J. Michael Cleverley

 

 

Women regularly get short shrift in history, and especially family history (where there is often still a myth that one’s male surname lines are most important).  Case in point: many people know about William the Conqueror, but who has heard of his beautiful, gifted, and accomplished wife, Matilda?  I chose to write my first chapter about a woman, and I’m glad I did.  Matilda is one of England’s most illustrious women, yet still a “best kept secret.”   In her lifetime she was known as a cultured, virtuous, bright, head-strong administrator with a sterling pedigree.  William seems to have been head-over-heels in love with her from the day they wed to the day she died.

From a statue of Matilda in Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, a 19th century  depiction that is regal but does not reflect her likeness in life.  Her real appearance has been lost to the centuries, but we know she was small and petite, full of energy and life.

We started our search for Matilda’s stories at Falaise Castle in Normandy.  This was where William and Conqueror was born and became one of many William and Matilda called “home.”  Our son Mika and his wife and four sons were with us.  It was big experience for young ones.   Post-war repairs and renovations brought back the castle’s austere splendor.  With wooden swords, shields and touched imaginations, our grandsons fought their way across the castle yard toward the keep.  It was immediately clear that the highlight of our three-generation adventure was not just what we might find in Normandy.  The real joy came from doing it together.  It was a reminder that in family history, the emphasis is on the first word, “family.” Linking present family to those of the past is what it is about.

 
 
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Their relationship ran from the day William threw teenaged Matilda to the ground for publicly insulting him, to their becoming Europe’s greatest power couple, to the years he mourned and grieved her death.  But at the center of their story is William’s crossing the channel with thousands of Normans to conquer and rule England.  Over the years of his conquests, young Matilda ruled Normandy, many said better than William could have, while she gave birth to a large family, two of whom became kings of England.  That story was grandly recorded for all future generations in a 230-foot long tapestry made while they were still both alive.  You didn’t have to read to learn it.   It left us almost wordless as we followed the narrative through the aisles of today’s magnificent Bayeux Tapestry Museum.

 
 
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While in Normandy, of course, we visited D-Day’s beaches.  How curious a thing, the flow of history?  D-Day and the Conquest were both critical moments in the history of civilization, and in the stories of all the generations that followed.  Yet they flowed in opposite directions, in a round.  William departed from here.  Nineteen hundred years later, his descendants returned.  There are circles and loops in the tide of history, and, as I often found, in people’s lives, as well.

 

Perhaps the most important landmark William and Matilda left Britain was the Tower of London.  Almost a thousand years old, it remains one of the most popular attractions in London.  It’s central White Tower was completed a few years before Matilda’s death, but it’s not clear whether Matilda actually stayed in the castle.