When William was in his early twenties he asked Count Baldwin V of Flanders for his daughter Matilda's hand in marriage. But Matilda was already in love with an Englishman named Brihtric. As explained in Part One of this article, William was illegitimate. Matilda supposedly proclaimed that she would rather become a nun than the wife of a bastard, which made William so angry that he attacked her in the street as she left church one day. He slapped her, tore her clothes, threw her to the ground, and rode off.
Not an auspicious start to a marriage, yet William and Matilda did eventually marry, and they seem to have been quite happy together. They must have been an odd couple to behold, since William was tall and reportedly grew very fat later in life, while Matilda was short - almost a dwarf - and slender. They had at least four sons and five daughters. The pope objected to William and Matilda's marriage because they were distant cousins. For a while they (and everyone else in Normandy) were excommunicated, but after several years they were admitted back to the Church in return for building two abbeys.
In 1051 William paid a visit to the king of England, Edward the Confessor. Edward had been raised in Normandy, and he and William were cousins. The "Confessor" was a highly religious man who purportedly had the power to heal. His servants saved his bath water and gave it to sick people to drink, or put it in the eyes of the blind to restore their sight. A hundred years after his death Edward was made a Catholic saint.
Although he had a young wife, Edward was celibate and therefore childless. So he promised to make William his heir - or at least, that's what William claimed.
Edward's brother-in-law Harold Godwinson visited Normandy in 1063 or 1064. According to some accounts Edward had sent Harold to see William; by other accounts, Harold only ended up in Normandy because his ship had been blown off course. Apparently he was not permitted to leave the country until he had sworn on holy relics that he would uphold William's claim to the English throne. He also promised to marry William's daughter Agatha, who was then just a child.
But Harold broke both of these promises, thereby setting the stage for the Norman invasion of England.
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