William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space.  He had doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on his marriage with Matilda of Flanders.  Notwithstanding the decree of a Pope and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage was celebrated, not very long after William’s return to Normandy, in the year of the revolt of William of Arques.  In the course of the year 1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontier at Eu, and there she became the bride of William.  We know not what emboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particular time, or what led Baldwin to consent to it.  If it was suggested by the imprisonment of Pope Leo by William’s countrymen in Italy, in the hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of the captive pontiff, that hope was disappointed.  The marriage raised much opposition in Normandy.  It was denounced by Archbishop Malger of Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques.  His character certainly added no weight to his censures; but the same act in a saint would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness.  Presently, whether for his faults or for his merits, Malger was deposed in a synod of the Norman Church, and William found him a worthier successor in the learned and holy Maurilius.  But a greater man than Malger also opposed the marriage, and the controversy thus introduces us to one who fills a place second only to that of William himself in the Norman and English history of the time.

This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the model monk, the ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newly founded abbey of Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellors of the Duke.  As duke and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop, William and Lanfranc ruled side by side, each helping the work of the other till the end of their joint lives.  Once only, at this time, was their friendship broken for a moment.  Lanfranc spoke against the marriage, and ventured to rebuke the Duke himself.  William’s wrath was kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into banishment and took a baser revenge by laying waste part of the lands of the abbey.  But the quarrel was soon made up.  Lanfranc presently left Normandy, not as a banished man, but as the envoy of its sovereign, commissioned to work for the confirmation of the marriage at the papal court.  He worked, and his work was crowned with success, but not with speedy success.  It was not till six years after the marriage, not till the year 1059, that Lanfranc obtained the wished for confirmation, not from Leo, but from his remote successor Nicolas the Second.  The sin of those who had contracted the unlawful union was purged by various good works, among which the foundation of the two stately abbeys of Caen was conspicuous.