At the beginning of the eleventh century, Robert, called “The Magnificent,” the fifth in succession from the great chieftain Rollo who had established the Northmen in France, was duke of Normandy.  To the nickname he earned by his nobleness and liberality some chronicles have added another, and call him “Robert the Devil,” by reason of his reckless and violent deeds of audacity, whether in private life or in warlike expeditions.  Hence a lively controversy amongst the learned upon the question of deciding to which Robert to apply the latter epithet.  Some persist in assigning it to the duke of Normandy; others seek for some other Robert upon whom to foist it.  However that may be, in 1034 or 1035, after having led a fair life enough from the political point of view, but one full of turbulence and moral irregularity, Duke Robert resolved to undertake, barefooted and staff in hand, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, “to expiate his sins if God would deign to consent thereto.”  The Norman prelates and barons, having been summoned around him, conjured him to renounce his plan; for to what troubles and perils would not his dominions be exposed without lord or assured successor?  “By my faith,” said Robert, “I will not leave ye lordless.  I have a young bastard who will grow, please God, and of whose good qualities I have great hope.  Take him, I pray you, for lord.  That he was not born in wedlock matters little to you; he will be none the less able in battle, or at court, or in the palace, or to render you justice.  I make him my heir, and I hold him seized, from this present, of the whole duchy of Normandy.”  And they who were present assented, but not without objection and disquietude.

There was certainly ample reason for objection and disquietude.  Not only was it a child of eight years of age to whom Duke Robert, at setting out on his pious pilgrimage, was leaving Normandy; but this child had been pronounced bastard by the duke his father at the moment of taking him for his heir.  Nine or ten years before, at Falaise, his favorite residence, Robert had met, according to some at a people’s dance, according to others on the banks of a stream where she was washing linen with her companions, a young girl named Harlette or Harleve, daughter of a tanner in the town, where they show to this day, it is said, the window from which the duke saw her for the first time.  She pleased his fancy, and was not more strait-laced than the duke was scrupulous; and Fulbert, the tanner, kept but little watch over his daughter.  Robert gave the son born to him in 1027 the name of his glorious ancestor, William Longsword, the son and successor of Rollo.  The child was reared, according to some, in his father’s palace, “right honorably as if he had been born in wedlock,” but, according to others, in the house of his grandfather, the tanner; and one of the neighboring burgesses, as he saw passing one of the principal Norman lords, William de Bellesme, surnamed