XXIV Matilda and Brihtrik
While William the Norman was occupied with the subjugation of the west, Matilda of Flanders arrived in England to share her husband’s triumph. It was in the spring of 1068, after the siege of Exeter, that Matilda, with her children, set foot on English ground. Her reception was all that she could have desired. Her grace and majesty quite charmed the people; and when, with great state, she was crowned at Westminster, she was cheered enthusiastically.
The popularity of Matilda arose from a belief that her counsels often softened the heart of the Conqueror towards the Saxons, and disposed him to clemency. Such was probably the case. On one occasion, however, the royal lady manifested a most vindictive spirit, and exercised the influence she possessed with her husband to avenge, in a signal manner, a slight which she deemed had been put upon her in the days of a somewhat wayward youth.
It appears that when the daughter of Count Baldwin was a girl at Bruges, with nothing particular to occupy her attention, a young and noble Saxon, named Brihtrik, arrived at her father’s court as ambassador from Edward the Confessor, and brought with him the reputation of being enormously rich. Matilda was then passing her time in exchanging sharp sayings with her sister, Judith, going to mass with her ladies of honour, working at the embroidery in which she had such skill, and applying her fine intelligence to the studies which rendered her one of the most accomplished of European princesses. Captivated with Brihtrik’s handsome person, long hair, and fair face, and being at an age when ladies are supposed to fall in love without profoundly calculating the consequences, the Flemish princess soon found her heart full of a romantic kind of affection for the interesting stranger.
Brihtrik, however, does not appear to have evinced excessive joy at his good fortune. In vain the daughter of Count Baldwin indulged in dreams and in hints of uniting her fate with his. The Saxon lord, either from having another bride in view, or not relishing the idea of ladies taking the initiative in love, proved insensible to allurements, and left the court of Bruges, and the beautiful Matilda, without having given proof of anything like reciprocity of sentiment.
Matilda was by no means gratified with Brihtrik’s coolness. Indeed, she would seem to have brooded over the memory of the Saxon for many long years. In any case, when time passed over, and she became the bride of William the Norman, Queen of England, and the mother of sons destined to wear crowns and coronals, she had not forgotten Brihtrik the Saxon.
It is just probable that Brihtrik might not always have spoken of the daughter of Count Baldwin with the discretion which he ought to have exercised. When the alarm of invasion was agitating England, and the name of Duke William was on every tongue, the Saxon, over his cups in his own hall, or even in the palace of Westminster, might have been tempted, under the influence of repeated potations, to speak too freely of his early acquaintance with Matilda the duchess; and his words might have been carried to the palace of Rouen. At all events, she still sighed for vengeance on the man who had trifled with her affections, or treated her advances with indifference.
Matilda had an early opportunity of proving to Brihtrik that he had not been forgiven. The possessions of Brihtrik, which included Tewkesbury and Thornbury, lay in the south-west of England; and after the taking of Exeter, the lands of the vanquished in that quarter were divided among the conquerors. One of the first names inscribed on the partition-roll was that of Matilda of Flanders; and her portion of the plunder was all the land of Brihtrik the Saxon. But Matilda’s resentment was too deep to be satisfied with impoverishing Brihtrik; and the potent queen still further avenged her outraged vanity by imprisoning the object of her youthful love after she had plundered him.
Accordingly, Brihtrik, having been arrested at his manor-house, was incarcerated in the castle of Winchester. In a dungeon of that palatial stronghold, with misery for his mate, and precluded, probably, from looking on the face of day, save through the iron bars of a prison house, Brihtrik had the prospect of leisure to lament the coolness of which he had been guilty towards the daughter of Count Baldwin, and to curse the fate that had made the offended fair one the spouse of a king and conqueror of England.
But Brihtrik did not long survive the date of his incarceration. Whether he died a natural death, or fell a victim to Matilda’s relentless vengeance, does not clearly appear. It is certain, however, that the Saxon lord drew his last breath in prison, and that he was buried with a degree of secrecy which suggested suspicions of foul play.