Chapter 11
The coronation of William the Conqueror marked the beginning of a formative period which produced changes of lasting importance to both parts of his conjoint realm, but it was inevitable that England should be the more immediately and the more profoundly affected. Norman influence upon England was now in fact to be fully extended, and on highly individual lines, by a Norman king, and the earlier growth of Norman power and policy already indicated clearly the main directions in which that influence would be most notably felt. Norman power had been based upon a new feudal nobility which now claimed the rewards of conquest. Norman policy had been fortified by a revival in the province of Rouen. The results to England of the Norman conquest might, therefore, be expected to be in the first instance aristocratic and ecclesiastical. And such was in fact to be the case. But even as William had dominated the recent developments in his duchy by adapting more ancient institutions to his purpose, so also might it be anticipated that he would now utilize to the full the traditional powers of the monarchy he had won, and the institutions of the country he had conquered. This also was to take place, with the result that the Norman impact upon England was to be drastically modified by English tradition under the direction of the Norman king.
The political union of Normandy and England under William the Conqueror, and the manner in which it had been consummated, entailed inexorably radical changes in the higher ranks of the social order in both countries. Between 1066 and 1087 Normandy and England were not only brought under the rule of a Norman king, but they were also progressively and together subjected to the dominance of the Norman aristocracy. The results were to be far-reaching. For Normandy it meant that a newly formed aristocratic group was to be vastly enriched, and at the same time brought into more closely defined relations with the duke who had become a king. For England the same process involved nothing less than the destruction of an ancient nobility, and substitution in its place of a new aristocracy imported from overseas. This was, in fact, perhaps the greatest social change which occurred in England during the reign of William the Conqueror, and it was effected to a large extent under his management.
The fate of the Old English nobility during these years was in truth catastrophic, and its downfall is one of the best documented social transformations of the eleventh century.1 The three great battles of 1066 in England had taken a heavy toll of this class, and those who escaped the carnage of Fulford, Stamford Bridge, and Hastings, the defeated supporters of a lost cause, faced a future which could only be harsh and bleak. Their position after William's coronation was at best precarious, and it soon deteriorated. At first the king was content to make use of English officials and to have at his court magnates such as Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof. But these earls were soon to disappear from the political scene, and the events of 1068–1071 were to bring fresh calamities to the men whom they might have protected. The early wars of King William in England entailed further widespread destruction to the lives and property of the Old English nobility, and at the same time brought to an end any policy of compromise which the king might perhaps have been disposed to adopt towards them. It was fatal to their fortunes. Many went into exile: to Scotland, to Flanders, or to Byzantium, and those who remained, robbed of their natural leaders, and deprived of their possessions, found themselves powerless in the face of the new aristocracy which was ready to supplant them. Their downfall was all but complete. Domesday Book records all the greater land-owners in England in 1086 and it is rare to find an English name among them. By the end of the Conqueror's reign, it has been calculated, only about 8 per cent of the land of England remained in the possession of this class.2 It had ceased to be a dominant part of English society.
The new aristocracy which supplanted it, though predominantly Norman, was not exclusively so. Many of those who took part in the Conqueror's venture came from other provinces in Europe, and some of these settled in the country they had helped to subdue. An important group of men derived, for instance, from regions to the east of Normandy, and among these were some who were either Flemish in origin, or to some extent dependents of the counts of Flanders. Eustace, count of Boulogne, despite his adventures in 1067 was to establish his family in England, and many lesser landowners in 1086 could similarly be traced to the Boulonnais.3 Such, for instance, as Gunfrid and Sigar from Chocques in Hainault, who were established in Northamptonshire, and the family of Cuinchy, who were later to supply earls of Winchester.4 Similarly, Arnulf from Hesdins, in the Pas-de-Calais, was, in 1086, a tenant-in-chief in many shires, and Gilbert ‘de Gand’, who likewise received large estates in England, was the son of a count of Alost.5But of all this group with Flemish connexions, the most interesting was a certain Gerbod, who was probably advocatus of the abbey of Saint-Bertin. Described as Flandrensis, he was apparently the son of another advocatus of the same name, and in 1070 he was entrusted with the earldom of Chester.6 At about the same time his brother, named Frederic, received lands in East Anglia while his sister, Gundrada, married William of Warenne.7 It was an important connexion, and, if it had been established permanently in England, the Flemish element in the settlement might have been larger than in fact it was. But Gerbod, after holding his earldom for less than a year, returned to Flanders, and having fallen into the hands of his enemies, perhaps at the battle of Cassel, passed into obscurity; whilst Frederic seems to have been killed by the followers of Hereward in 1079.8 None the less, men from Flanders continued to provide a significant element in the new nobility, and when, before the end of 1069, William protected the lands of Aldred, archbishop of York, he did so by means of a vernacular writ which contained a solemn warning to ‘Normans and Flemish and English’.9
More numerous than the Flemings, were the Bretons. Among these the most prominent were the sons of Eudo, count of Penthièvre. The second of them, Brian, received extensive lands in the south-west and perhaps became earl of Cornwall. He witnessed a charter of the Conqueror for Exeter in 1069, and in the same year he helped to repel the attack of the sons of Harold.10 But his sojourn in England was apparently brief. His position in Cornwall was soon to be taken by Robert, count of Mortain, and it was not Brian but his brother Alan I, ‘the Red’, who in fact was the real founder of the English fortunes of the family. This Alan, who served in the Breton contingent at Hastings, was in constant attendance upon the Conqueror, and received more than four hundred manors in eleven shires, his estates being concentrated in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, and the south-west.11 At Richmond he built the great castle which dominates the Swale and gave the name to his barony. And after his death about 1093 the extensive ‘honour of Richmond’ was to pass successively to his brother, Alan II (‘the Black’), and Stephen, who at last united the Breton and English possessions of the family.12
The establishment on this scale of a cadet branch of the ruling house of Brittany indicates the importance of the Breton element in the feudal settlement of England. The presence of Ralph of Gael as earl of Norfolk during the earlier years of the Conqueror's reign was another sign of the extent of Breton influence, and in truth there was scarcely a shire which was not affected.13 The lands pertaining to the Richmond fee became thickly studded with Breton names, many of whom were important. Again, Judhael of Totnes possessed in 1086 a large honour in the south-west; Oger ‘the Breton’, Alfred of Lincoln, and Eudo, son of Spirewic, were established in Lincolnshire; whilst in Essex, Tihel of Helléan gave his name in perpetuity to Helions Bumpstead.14 Indeed, the assimilation of the Bretons into the new feudal aristocracy of England was not to be completed before the Conqueror's death. Nor was it achieved without difficulty. The close connexion of the rising of Ralph de Gael with the affairs of Brittany has already been noted, and the suppression of that rebellion led to the imposition of fierce penalties against certain of the Bretons in England.15 It is not impossible that the substitution of Count Robert of Mortain for Count Brian in Cornwall was a consequence of these measures.
Despite the influential groups which derived from Flanders or Brittany, the bulk of the new aristocracy which was established in England under William the Conqueror came from the nobility which had arisen in Normandy during the earlier half of the eleventh century. Its rewards were immense. Of all the land in England surveyed in Domesday Book, about a fifth was held directly by the king; about a quarter by the church; and nearly half by the greater followers of the Conqueror.16 Moreover, this secular aristocracy was not only extremely powerful and predominantly Norman: it was also small. The immediate tenants of the king as recorded in Domesday Book were, it is true, a large and miscellaneous class, but those who were predominant among them were few. Thus about half the land, held by lay tenure in England under the Conqueror, was given by him to only eleven men. These were Odo, bishop of Bayeux and earl of Kent; Robert, count of Mortain; William fitz Osbern; Roger of Montgomery; William of Warenne; Hugh, son of Richard, vicomte of the Avranchin; Eustace, count of Boulogne; Count Alan the Red; Richard, son of Gilbert of Brionne the count; Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, who had a large secular barony in England; and Geoffrey from Manneville in the Bessin.17 The names may well challenge attention; for all except Eustace and Count Alan were Normans; and all except Geoffrey of Manneville and Count Alan had played a conspicuous part in the history of Normandy between 1040 and 1066. On them nearly a quarter of England was bestowed.
Most of what remained to be distributed among the secular followers of William was likewise acquired by comparatively few persons. Among the men who were lavishly endowed were, for instance, the representatives of the comital dynasties of Évreux and Eu; Roger Bigot from Calvados; Robert Malet from the neighbourhood of Le Havre; Hugh of Grandmesnil; and Robert and Henry the sons of Roger of Beaumont. And to these might be added Walter Giffard from Longueville-sur-Scie, Hugh of Montfort-sur-Risle, and Ralph III of Tosny.18 It is an impressive list, but while it could of course be supplemented in many directions with names which were later to become famous in English and European history, it could not be immeasurably extended. It deserves emphasis that less than 180 tenants-in-chief are recorded in Domesday Book as possessed of English estates which are rated at an annual value of more than £100.19 And from among these, the great men – and the great families – stand out to show the manner in which under the direction of the Conqueror the territorial wealth of England was concentrated between 1070 and 1087 into a few very powerful hands.
This small and dominant aristocracy preserved in England the cohesion it had previously attained in Normandy. Not only did inter-marriages between the greater families continue to strengthen the ties between them, but the magnates themselves were able to reproduce in England the close relationship with their dependents which they had established in Normandy before the Conquest. This element in the Norman settlement of England was in fact so important that it perhaps deserves more illustration than it always receives. The great Norman honours in England were, as is well known, widely scattered, but the tenurial connexions among their members were very frequently the outcome of earlier territorial associations between them in Normandy. In other words, the chief tenants of a Norman magnate in England might be widely separated from one another, holding lands in different shires, but they very often bore territorial names which reveal their families as near neighbours in Normandy. Thus, among the Domesday Book tenants of Robert Malet were men who can be shown to have come from Claville, Colleville, Conteville, and Émalleville, all of which are situated close to Graville-Sainte-Honorine, the centre of the Malet power in Normandy.20 Again, as tenants in England of Richard fitz Gilbert or his son can be found men who took their names from Abenon, Saint-Germain-le-Campagne, La Cressonière, Fervaques, Nassandres, and La Vespière, all of which are close to Orbec the head of Richard fitz Gilbert's Norman barony.21Examples could be multiplied. As has been seen, the early connexion between Pantulf and Montgomery was reproduced in eleventh-century Shropshire, and the-long-standing dependence of Clères upon Tosny was continued in Yorkshire where in the middle of the twelfth century, members of the family of Clères held lands which before the death of the Conqueror had belonged to Berengar ‘de Tosny’ of Belvoir.22 Similarly, among the tenants in England of Robert, count of Eu, were men whose names reveal the origin of their families in Creil-sur-Mer, Floques, Normanville, Ricarville, Sept-Meules, and Mesnières, which lie in a circle round Eu itself.23
The manner in which the Norman aristocracy was introduced into England provides striking testimony to the constructive statesmanship of the Conqueror. Two urgent tasks were here imposed upon him. On the one hand, it was essential that the establishment of this highly competitive nobility in a recently conquered land should be effected in such a manner that general anarchy should not ensue. On the other hand, it was imperative that the enrichment of the Norman magnates should be made to enhance, and not to diminish, the king's authority and power both in Normandy and in England. These problems were formidable. But upon their solution the survival of the Anglo-Norman state would in large measure depend.
In England, William's claim to rule as the legal and sanctified successor to Edward the Confessor here stood him in good stead. Even so, it was by personal mastery of a difficult situation that he was able generally to insist that his magnates should take up not only the rights, but also the obligations, of their English predecessors. Thus, it became usual for a Norman lord in England to find himself endowed within each shire not with a miscellaneous collection of manors but rather with all the lands which had formerly belonged to one or more pre-Conquest landowners. The consequences of this were to be profound. It has frequently been noted that, with certain exceptions, the lands granted to the king's followers were not as a rule concentrated, but scattered throughout the country. This process has sometimes been attributed to the king's political design, and sometimes to the fact that as the Conquest proceeded piecemeal, so also did the allocation of lands take place gradually as each new region came under the Conqueror's control. Both these views deserve consideration, but by themselves they offer only a partial explanation of what occurred. In the first place, the ‘scattering of the manors’ can itself be exaggerated, for while one of William's greater followers was normally given land in many shires, it was by no means uncommon for him to acquire a concentration of landed wealth in some particular region in which he was dominant.24 Again, the large and scattered estate was by no means unknown in England in the reign of Edward the Confessor, where many of the greater nobles possessed wide lands which (like those of their Norman successors) were largely farmed under a system of stock and land leases.25 In this respect, therefore, the new aristocracy often found little difficulty in adapting themselves, under the king's direction, to earlier conditions.
Moreover, while the transference of possession was of course sometimes accompanied by private violence, it was more often effected without disturbance, and it is wholly remarkable how frequently cases of dispute were settled at the king's command by reference to traditional legal process. In the great trials which were a characteristic feature of the Conqueror's reign appeal was regularly made to Anglo-Saxon custom,26 and one of the objects of the Domesday survey was not only to record the conditions prevailing in the time of Edward the Confessor but also to provide evidence of the legality of such changes as had occurred since his death. Here, again, William was concerned to represent himself as a king of England by due succession, and it was under the guise of an astute conservatism that the redistribution of English lands took place. A declared respect for legal precedent was thus paradoxically made to pervade the whole process whereby within the short space of twenty years a new nobility was given to England, and this in part explains William's success in effecting so great a redistribution of land without provoking irreparable disorder in his kingdom.
The survival of his composite realm depended, however, even more directly upon his ability to make the establishment of this aristocracy itself subserve its military strength. Indeed, this dominant purpose was displayed from the very outset of his reign. At strategic points in his kingdom he at once endowed with compact blocks of territory those members of the Norman nobility who were most deeply committed to his cause. Thus the bulk of Kent was given to his half-brother Odo, and the five rapes of Sussex – Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, Arundel, and Bramber – were bestowed on the counts of Eu and Mortain, William of Warenne, Roger of Montgomery, and William of Briouze.27 The Isle of Wight had in 1067 been entrusted to William fitz Osbern, and after 1076 Cornwall was under the dominance of Robert, count of Mortain.28 Finally, the great marcher earldoms came into being – Hereford, Shrewsbury, and Chester – and these passed to William fitz Osbern, Roger of Montgomery, and Hugh, son of Richard, vicomte of Avranches.29 From Kent round to Chester, in short, the most vital defensive areas were all in due course allotted to the king's half-brothers, and to William fitz Osbern, William of Warenne, the count of Eu, Roger of Montgomery, and Hugh of Avranches – precisely that group of Norman magnates which had most consistently supported William in Normandy, and which now was to receive the largest share of the landed wealth of England.
Of even greater importance, was the fact that everywhere in England the Norman aristocracy was made to receive its land on conditions which increased William's power as king. It was indicative of his personal authority that he was able to make these men from the start his tenants-in-chief in England, holding their lands, not in absolute ownership as spoils of conquest but in return for providing a specified number of knights for the royal service.30 It was the king, again, who fixed in each case the number of knights required – the servitium debitum as it was called – by means of individual bargains which bore no fixed relationship to the amount or value of the lands granted.31 These arrangements which, as is well known, involved the institution of military feudalism in England, were in short the product of a royal plan, adopted and enforced by King William in the years immediately following the Conquest. Early narratives suggest that it was already used to provide troops for the expedition to Scotland in 1072;32 a writ from the king to the abbot of Evesham shows the system in operation before 1077;33 and records of a slightly later date indicate that many of its details had been worked out before the end of the reign.34
The successful imposition of tenure by service upon his magnates in respect of their English lands must be regarded as one of the most notable of the Conqueror's achievements. Not only did it establish his followers as a dominant aristocracy in England, but it made their endowment meet the defensive needs of his realm. The conditions under which these men received their lands supplied the king with between 4,000 and 5,000 trained troops,35 and the fact that the provision of these troops rested in the hands of a comparatively few men, all closely associated with the king, made the arrangements the more efficient. Nor was there any doubt of their necessity. At no time was the Anglo-Norman state immune from attack. Its preservation was, as has been seen, the hazardous result of two decades of almost continuous war.36 The feudal policy of the Conqueror was thus a response to immediate military needs. The Anglo-Norman polity became an aristocracy organized for war. Only as such was it enabled to endure.
The success of these arrangements depended in large measure on the manner in which they were made. Two stages marked their institution. The first was the imposition of the servitia debita on the tenants-in-chief, a series of acts by the king which took place shortly after the Conquest, and which were a direct concomitant of the allocation of English lands to his greater followers. The second stage in the process concerned the means taken by the tenants-in-chief to meet the military obligations which had thus been laid upon them. In the earliest days of Anglo-Norman feudalism many of the knights supplied to the king by his tenants-in-chief did not themselves possess land, but discharged their military service as members of the household retinues of their lords.37 Such, for instance, were the ‘armed and mounted men’ who rioted outside Westminster Abbey during the coronation of the Conqueror, or the Norman retainers of Abbot Thurstan who, ‘fully weaponed’, outraged the monks of Glastonbury in the abbey-church in 1083.38They were a dangerous class. The knightly retinue of the abbot of Ely caused havoc on the abbey lands about 1070, and the household knights of Walcher, bishop of Durham, precipitated the northern rebellion of 1080.39 The household knight belongs, in fact, to a state of society which, as between 1066 and 1072, had not yet been perfectly stabilized. When it was no longer necessary for lords to have knights at hand ready for instant defence, the number of household knights began rapidly to decline in England, though they tended to survive longer in such areas as Lincolnshire and East Anglia where sudden attack from Scandinavia might be anticipated.40 Certainly, the king had no wish to perpetuate the existence of bodies of men who were always liable to cause disorder, and he discouraged the retention of such men by his tenants-in-chief.
Thus it was that during the Conqueror's reign it became progressively the practice of his tenants-in-chief in England to make provision on their own estates for the knights whose service was owed to the king. Early charters of enfeoffment in England are rare, and not always unambiguous, but some survive from the eleventh century.41 The enfeoffed knight was already a characteristic figure in English society at the time of Domesday Book;42 and by the middle of the twelfth century the typical knight in England was a man holding land by primogenital hereditary tenure in return for a liability to special duties and payments. His chief duty remained the performance of specialized military service, or the financing of such, together with attendance at his lord's court. His chief payments were involved in the ‘feudal incidents’ – sums to be paid on special occasions to his lord.43 Within a century of the Norman conquest, knighthood in England thus came to be recognized as the badge not merely of military aptitude but of social class characterized by a privileged form of land-tenure.
Such conditions were characteristic not of the eleventh century but of feudal society as fully formed. But the process which was to entail this result was inherent in the military arrangements made by William, and it began during his reign. He encouraged the enfeoffment of knights by his tenants-in-chief, and on occasion he personally intervened in the particular arrangements they made.44 Nevertheless, it was a gradual development which was by no means complete at the time of William's death. The enfeoffment of knights proceeded sporadically, and no attempt was made to regularize the ‘feudal incidents’ before the twelfth century.45 Throughout the Conqueror's reign, the knights in England formed a very miscellaneous class. Alongside humble retainers living within the households of their lords, there were already described as ‘knights’ important men possessed of large estates who were socially the equals of their lords, and who might hold land directly from the king elsewhere. Such were probably the ‘landholding men of account’ who attended the famous Salisbury moot in 1086 and there swore direct allegiance to the king.46
The establishment of a new aristocracy on a basis of contractual military tenure was the greatest social change effected in England by King William, and no topic has inspired more controversy than the question whether the basic institutions of military feudalism which it involved were themselves introduced into England for the first time by the Conqueror and his followers. Broadly speaking, until the end of the nineteenth century, it was generally held that the military arrangements made by King William were evolved by adaptation out of the Old English past when many forms of dependent tenure of course existed. Subsequent scholars, following the lead of J. H. Round, and fortified by the erudition of Sir Frank Stenton,47 have considered that there was here a break in continuity, and that a new phase of social development began when every great lord held his land in return for a direct obligation to provide a recognized amount of military service. The arguments adduced in favour of this interpretation are certainly cogent, and today it is probably true that most students of the subject would accept them, finding it hard to detect any significant trend towards organized military feudalism in Anglo-Saxon England, and regarding the feudal institutions and practices established in England as essentially an importation into England by William the Conqueror. On the other hand, in recent years this view has been vigorously challenged by several scholars who are being led back to the opinion that Anglo-Norman feudalism owed very much to the institutions of Anglo-Saxon England.48
This is assuredly not the place to enter into the details of this debate, but some of the points which will need further consideration before these problems are finally solved may here be briefly and neutrally noted in so far as they relate to the personal career of William the Conqueror himself. Thus it is clearly necessary in this matter to distinguish between the imposition of the servitia debita and the subsequent enfeoffments. Despite arguments to the contrary,49 it would seem that there is as yet insufficient evidence to disturb the belief that the allocation of these quotas was an innovation introduced into England by the first Norman king, and one which owed little or nothing to Anglo-Saxon precedent. With regard to the enfeoffments, however, more complex questions arise. In the Confessor's England the typical warrior was the thegn: by the time of William's death he was the knight. A contrast between the thegn and the knight has therefore been a cardinal feature of all theories which regard military feudalism in England as essentially a creation of the Conqueror's reign. The enfeoffed knight (it is said) whose estate varied in size, performed his service in return for the land he held, and he was essentially a man trained to fight on horseback, and possessed of the equipment for so doing. The thegn by contrast (it is added) was normally possessed of an estate of five hides; his military service derived from his rank and not from his tenure; and when he fought he fought on foot.50
How far these distinctions (which have been very generally received as true) are in fact valid must be a matter of opinion, since they are today being both defended and denied by expert critics.51 It may, however, be useful to discriminate among them. Thus it has been suggested that not every thegn in the time of Edward the Confessor would have denied that he owed his service in return for the land he held, and evidence has been adduced to show that on the lands of the bishop of Worcester, the knights' fees created in the Conqueror's reign were based on the five-hide estates which had previously been occupied by thegns.52 Such testimony deserves weighty consideration, but it must be noted that it relates to but one region of England, and that elsewhere such correspondence is demonstrably lacking.53 These matters may, therefore, be left in some suspense. But it may be reasonable to suppose that in practice the theoretical distinction between the thegn and the knight may sometimes have loomed less large in the eyes of contemporaries than it has done in the minds of later commentators. In the time of William the Conqueror it was not unknown for the same man to be described both as a thegn (tainus) and as a knight (miles);54 and on one of the greatest baronies in England there appear very shortly after the Conquest military tenants of native ancestry and pre-Conquest connexions, alongside Norman magnates some of whom are known to have feught at Hastings.55
Perhaps, indeed, the contrast between the mounted knight and the unmounted thegn has itself been somewhat overstressed. It is true that disaster overtook the Herefordshire thegns who in 1055 were made by Earl Ralph the Timid to fight, continental fashion, on horseback,56 and it is true also that the Norman knights in 1066 brought their horses with them, and used them effectively at Hastings. But it is possible that at Stamford Bridge, Harold had mounted troops at his disposal, and used some of them as cavalry during the engagement. Similarly, the conception of the Norman knight as exclusively a mounted warrior appears to break down when reference is made to his subsequent achievements. At Tinchebrai (1106) King Henry made his barons fight on foot; at Brémule (1119) similar methods were used; at the battle of the Standard (1138) the knights fought in close column on foot, sheathed in armour; and at the battle of Lincoln (1141) King Stephen ordered his knights to dismount, and drew them up in close order as infantry.57These men were the immediate descendants of the men who effected the Norman conquest of England, and gave the tone to the military organization which resulted therefrom. They may well have learnt much from the military practices which their fathers had found in England, but the extent to which they fought on foot none the less deserves full consideration in any estimate of the techniques which the Conqueror introduced into England. After all, much of the warfare he had waged as duke before 1066 had consisted of attacks on fortified strongholds such as Brionne, Domfront, and Arques; and in such operations mounted troops would have had but a small part to play. Indeed, it is a mark of the military history of the latter half of the eleventh century that infantry and cavalry were being increasingly combined in operations and sometimes with considerable tactical skill.58 William himself had shown how effectively this could be done. If his victory at Hastings was due in large measure to his having transformed a number of miscellaneous contingents into a disciplined force, so also did it derive from the skill with which he co-ordinated the onslaught of his mounted warriors with the action of his archers.
Moreover, the feudal host of some five thousand knights produced by the establishment of his greater followers in England can never have been sufficient by itself for the king to conduct the defence of his realm over a period of some twenty years. He was bound, therefore, to supplement it from elsewhere, and there seems no doubt that he turned in this matter to the military organization which already existed in England at the time of his coming.59 He found in this country a royal army – the fyrd; he found also forces for local defence organized in the shires of England. In both of these the duty of service seems to have been assessed in terms of hides or multiples of hides, and indispensable to the system were the thegns, who were the characteristic warriors of the royal host, and also the natural leaders of the local levies.60 Much is obscure about these arrangements, but there is no doubt that they survived the Conquest, and provided the Norman king with an instrument that he was not slow to use. In 1068 he summoned English troops to his service when he marched against Exeter,61 and in the same year the men of Bristol, on their own volition, repulsed the sons of Harold, in the same way as the thegns of north Somerset had repelled Harold himself in 1052.62 In 1073 William took a large force of English to Maine, and in 1075 Lanfranc successfully called out local levies against the rebel earls.63 In 1079 there was a strong English contingent in William's army at Gerberoi, and in the fighting the king was to owe his life to an English thegn.64Such events are important in dispelling the myth that the Norman conquest can be interpreted in terms of nationalism.65 They are scarcely less significant in illustrating the manner in which the military arrangements of pre-Conquest England were utilized by the Conqueror during the decades when he was establishing in this country the formal institutions of military feudalism.
Nor was it only on the military organization of pre-Conquest England that he relied to supplement his feudal force. Emphatic attention has recently been called to the extent to which he depended upon mercenaries.66 As has been seen, he used paid troops in his expedition of 1066, and though he disbanded many of these in 1068, he engaged more for his service in 1069–1070.67 The treasure alleged to have been taken from the churches of England in 1070 was doubtless used to finance the campaigns of the following years, and about 1078 William employed the profits of estates confiscated from his continental enemies to increase the numbers of his own mercenaries.68 It is not without relevance to this question that the period of the Conqueror's wars saw the rise to some temporary importance of a moneyed class in Normandy which owed its prosperity to the management of his revenues,69 and the same circumstances must also be considered in connexion with the process by which the structure of English feudal society was formed. The ‘money-fief’ has been traced back in England to the reign of the Conqueror.70 So also has the institution of scutage – the commutation of military obligations into money payments – and it has been suggested that its assessment may not have been wholly unconnected with the hidage system of an earlier age.71 Be that as it may, the continuous maintenance of a large body of mercenary troops by the Conqueror is certain, and it helps to explain his terribly heavy taxation of England. In 1085 when he returned to England with an exceptionally large force, the problem of finding means to sustain it was one of the causes of the Domesday inquiry into the taxable capacity of England.72
Nevertheless, when all qualifications have been made, there can be no question that the destruction of one aristocracy in England and the substitution of another holding its lands by military tenure involved a revolutionary change. Doubtless, the feudal arrangements thus made could not supply all the Conqueror's needs, and all concerned in the operation of the new order had here to make concessions to a strong native tradition of administration which in any case would not be lightly abandoned by a ruler who claimed all the rights of an Anglo-Saxon king. It remains true, however, that by the end of William's reign the whole aristocratic structure of England had been transformed by the action of a Norman king and in favour of Norman magnates. The ‘honour’ of the tenant-in-chief, created by grant from the Conqueror, and normally comprising land in many shires, had before 1087 become a fundamental unit of English social life.73 It had its centre – its caput – which was the lord's chief residence, and which might be a castle. It had its court – to which the military tenants of the honour owed suit. It was highly organized.74 A great Norman lord in England might well have a corps of officials comparable even to those of the king himself: he might have his steward, his chamberlains, and so forth; he might even have his justices and sheriffs. His household, smaller and less differentiated, might be of the same pattern as that of the king. His chief military tenants sometimes called themselves ‘peers’ of the honour,75 and in the lord's court these men took their share in shaping their lord's policy, settling disputes among his tenants, and generally in giving him counsel and support. The association was close. Liege homage which a man owed to the lord from whom he held his chief tenement was the strongest bond in the feudal world, and it was also the bond which linked the tenants-in-chief to the king.76 Correspondingly, the honours of the tenants-in-chief set up by the Conqueror in England were in a sense microcosms of the feudal state he ruled.
The feudal practices established by the Conqueror in England between 1070 and 1087 thus not only entailed permanent consequences for this country, but linked England and Normandy together in a single feudal polity subjected to the same king and the same aristocracy. The feudal structure of England was, however, never to become identical with that of Normandy, and this, too, was due in large measure to the problems which faced William during his English reign, and to the manner in which he attempted to solve them. In England he was concerned to establish a completed feudal organization by means of administrative acts: in Normandy he inherited a feudal organization which had slowly developed, and which in 1066 had not yet been fully formed. The Conqueror was thus enabled to assert from the start in England a larger measure of royal control than he had previously possessed over feudal arrangements in Normandy. This was clearly demonstrated in the vital matter of the servitia debita. The original assessments in England can be ascertained with some confidence from returns made in 1166 which themselves faithfully reflected conditions prevailing before 1135.77 The Norman assessments can be calculated, at least approximately, by reference to the list of Norman fees which was drawn up for Henry II of England in 1172,78 and from a list of Norman fees which was compiled for Philip Augustus between 1204 and 1208,79 and which can, on occasion, be supplemented from earlier evidence.80 The contrast that is here revealed is notable. There is nothing in Normandy to compare with the heavy quotas in England. In Normandy it is rare, indeed, to find any tenant – lay or ecclesiastical – with a service of more than ten knights, but in England before 1135 not less than eleven lay lords owed sixty or more knights, and at least twenty-seven more owed a service of twenty-five knights or over, whilst six bishoprics and three abbeys owed forty knights or more.
The imposition in England of these exceptionally heavy services indicate the strength of William as a feudal king. Scarcely less significant was the relationship in England between the service owed to him by his magnates, and the number of knights whom they actually enfeoffed. It must be recalled that such enfeoffments were in theory, if not always in practice, the affair of the tenant-in-chief who might establish on his own lands sufficient knights to perform the king's service, or more, or less than that number. If less, the tenant-in-chief would be compelled to secure mercenary knights to discharge his duty to the king: if more, he would have a private force at his command in excess of the knights he provided for the king. It was clearly in the interests of any king anxious to possess an efficient fighting force, and at the same time to preserve order in his dominions, that the number of knights owed for the royal service, and the number of knights enfeoffed by his magnates should as nearly as possible correspond. And in England, before the end of his reign, the Conqueror seems to have been able to make a remarkable approach to that ideal.
The measure of his success in this important matter could not be better illustrated than by a further comparison between England and Normandy. In Normandy there was always a marked discrepancy between the amount of service owed and the number of knights enfeoffed. In 1172, for instance, the bishop of Bayeux, whose Norman honour may be traced back at least to the time of Bishop Odo, had in Normandy a servitium debitum of twenty knights, but he had enfeoffed no less than one hundred and twenty knights on his lands. The chamberlain of Tancarville who in 1066 was represented by Ralph of Tancarville had instituted ninety-four knights' fees for a service of ten. Nor were these cases exceptional. On most of the larger Norman honours the number of enfeoffed knights was quite commonly five times that of the service owed, and it was comparatively seldom that it fell below three times of that amount.81 In England, by contrast, the variations between the enfeoffment and the service owed were comparatively insignificant in extent, and they grew less with the progressive dismissal of stipendiary knights between 1070 and 1087. There was never in feudal England anything to compare with the conditions whereby in France, John, count of Alençon, was to have one hundred and eleven knights enfeoffed for a service of twenty; the count of Meulan seventy-three for a service of fifteen; and Robert III of Montfort-sur-Risle forty-four for a service of seven. Such details have in truth a wide general significance. They go far to explain the success of the Conqueror in making private war in England a cause of forfeiture, whereas, in Normandy, it continued to be regarded as part of a knight's duties to fight in the private battles of his lord.82
None the less, despite these significant and important contrasts, the reciprocal influence between the kingdom and duchy in the formation of the feudal structure of the Anglo-Norman state is not to be disregarded. If English feudalism was essentially Norman, so also was Norman feudalism by the end of the eleventh century, in some sense, English. In Normandy feudal institutions, which had slowly grown up, had not, even in 1066, been brought fully under ducal control, and even the essential principle of the servitium debitum, with which Normandy was of course familiar, as has been seen, does not seem at that date to have been uniformly applied to all the greater Norman baronies. Now, between 1070 and 1087, in England, a feudal order was established in which the rights of the prince were from the outset legally recognized and rigidly enforced. But the same families were involved in the feudal arrangements on both sides of the Channel, and their overlord was in each case the same. If, therefore, the rights of the king as overlord in England were asserted with special emphasis, recognition of such rights was bound to spread also in the duchy. And so it was. In 1050, whatever may have been the ducal theory, it is very doubtful whether such great families as Beaumont, Tosny, and Montgomery would have admitted that they held their lands by conditional tenure from the duke. During the Conqueror's English reign, however, these three houses, and many others, became tenants-in-chief in England, and there submitted to large servitia debita. And by 1087 no Norman lord would have been so bold as to claim that he did not hold his lands conditionally by service, although such service was in Normandy less onerous than in England. The Normans gave the essentials of feudal organization to England, but the completion of feudal organization in Normandy was none the less due to the conquest of England.
The feudal unity of the Anglo-Norman state was thus conditioned by the influence on each other of the duchy and the kingdom under the guidance of a king who assumed special rights within the feudal organization he controlled, and who claimed, in addition, the full prerogatives of the English royalty he had won. It was based, moreover, upon that community of interest between king and aristocracy which William as duke had been so successful in creating in Normandy before 1066. As the feudal pattern of the Anglo-Norman kingdom was dependent by the settlement in England of the Norman aristocracy under conditions which were specially advantageous to the king, so also was its government to depend in the first instance upon the relationship between that nobility and the Conqueror.
The central institution of William's government was his court, and the king's court – the curia regis – could from one point of view be regarded simply as the court of the greatest feudal honour in the land. The duty of the feudal vassal everywhere included attendance at the court of his lord, and this duty was shared by the king's own tenants. When the servitia debita had been imposed by the king upon ecclesiastics as well as upon lay lords, the feudal character of his court became still more pronounced, and though the principle was never exclusively applied, the curia regis of the Conqueror could without much distortion be viewed as composed of men who were linked to the king by the conditions under which the Norman aristocracy held its lands in the duchy and in the kingdom. In this sense, therefore, the curia regis which regularly met under William as king did not differ in essence from the curia ducis which before 1066 had surrounded him as duke. In both courts could be found members of his family – his wife and sons – together with his chief magnates, lay and ecclesiastical. The great court which met at Laycock towards the end of the Conqueror's reign83 was, if larger, very similar in character to the court which in 1051 had ratified the privileges of Saint-Wandrille,84 or that which before 1066 had met at Fécamp to assert the rights of Saint-Florent of Saumur,85 or that again which in 1063 passed a notable charter for Saint-Ouen of Rouen.86
The sessions of this feudal court under King William, which took place in England between 1066 and 1087, did not, however, imply so abrupt a transition in English practice as might have been imagined. For in England William found already in existence a royal council of ancient origin, which, though formed according to different principles, constituted an assembly of magnates not unlike that which had surrounded the duke in his duchy. The witan of Edward the Confessor in its fullest sessions had likewise consisted of the greater ecclesiastics and lay lords (particularly the earls), together with such other notables as the king might order to attend.87 Like William's ducal court in Normandy before the Conquest, it was an assembly of magnates summoned by a ruler who needed their continuous support, and it is little wonder therefore that the Conqueror was at first ready to accept it. The councils which witnessed his greater English charters in 1068–1069 were thus very comparable with the larger witans of the Confessor's reign. In them William fitz Osbern and Roger of Montgomery, for example, took their place alongside Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof; Saxon and Norman prelates attended in company; and among the officials present were several who had served the Confessor.88
These early courts of William's English reign are of peculiar interest in illustrating his policy of making what was to prove a fundamental constitutional change, both smooth and efficacious. Not until after 1070 did personnel of his curia become radically altered. Then, however, the development was rapid as the substitution in England of the new aristocracy for the old was inexorably reflected in the composition of the curia. In the greater courts towards the end of the reign it is rare indeed to find an important English name. The transformation might thus seem to have been made almost complete, but even so its constitutional significance needs to be carefully appraised. Despite the introduction of new men and new feudal ideas, the court of William the Conqueror even at the end of his reign might still in one sense be found comparable to the witan of Edward the Confessor, since in 1080 as in 1050 this court consisted of the monarch and members of his family, the great ecclesiastics and lay lords, and certain officials. Nor was William, posing always as the Confessor's rightful successor, ever likely to forget the special position he occupied by virtue of his English royalty. On the other hand, it remains true to say that by the time of the Conqueror's death, the curia regis had become Norman in personnel, and Norman also in the fact that its members attended by reason of a military tenure which the Normans had made a normal feature of English aristocratic life.
This curia met with considerable frequency. But already before 1087 there was a tendency to hold its full sessions at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and such occasions were always marked by magnificent ceremonial and lavish entertainment. Indeed no more effective illustration of the character of Anglo-Norman monarchy, or of its relationship to the men on whose support it depended, could be found than in a full meeting of William's court at one of the great festivals of the Christian year. Here, for instance, was the occasion for a crown-wearing, which as has been seen, formed so essential a part of the manifestation of eleventh-century kingship in its sacred and secular dignity. Seated in majesty, clad in full regalia with his lords and prelates around him, the king's authority was exalted and the ultimate sanctions of his power displayed. At the same time, the intimate connexion between the king and his immediate vassals, and their common interests were asserted. These assemblies permitted the effective rulers of Normandy and England to maintain personal contact with each other, and they enabled the king to become acquainted with all the regions of his realm through intercourse with the men who were directly responsible for their administration. Such, for example, was the atmosphere which surrounded the ‘deep speech’ held by the Conqueror in his Christmas court at Gloucester in 1085, when the Domesday inquest was planned, and an assembly of this nature might well include magnates whose interests covered the whole of England.89
It was not, however, only on such occasions of special magnificence that King William sought counsel with his magnates. His curia was often of smaller dimensions consisting only of such men on whose advice the king particularly depended. Thus Archbishop Lanfranc, and the king's half-brothers, Odo and Robert, together with Alan of Brittany, Richard fitz Gilbert, Roger of Montgomery, and William of Warenne seem to have formed, as it were, an inner circle of advisers whose presence the king very frequently demanded. Here, again, there is a comparison to be made between English and Norman usage, for both before, and after, the Conquest, William's curia in Normandy likewise expanded and contracted in this way. Moreover, after 1070, the chief personalities in William's court, on both sides of the Channel, were substantially the same. Local officials varied, of course, on each occasion, and men concerned with particular business were drawn from the localities which were most affected. But the greater magnates moved with the king. Men such as Robert and Henry of Beaumont, Roger of Montgomery, Robert, count of Mortain, and Richard fitz Gilbert – all great landowners in England – appear at least as often in the Norman as in the English courts.90 Keeping company with the king on his transits across the Channel, they gave to the royal curia the same essential character, whether it was held in Normandy or in England.
Nor was the business which occupied the Conqueror's court in England essentially different from that which, at least since 1054, had concerned his court in the duchy. As in Normandy during the decades preceding the Conquest, so now, the majority of the instruments which passed in the curia in England between 1070 and 1087 were concerned with confirmations of land or privilege, and, as a consequence, with judicial decisions relating to the settlement of claims. In England, the circumstances of the Conquest, and of the ensuing settlement, made this task of special importance, and, as will be seen, special machinery was frequently employed to deal with it. Nevertheless, the normal work of the feudal court of the Conqueror continued to be the same, both in Normandy and in England. The trial at Laycock,91 which lasted from dawn to dusk before the full royal curia, might be taken as an example of the practice in England, but it could be paralleled in Normandy. It was before a full court held at Rouen between 1072 and 1079 that the king heard a suit between Ralph Tesson and the abbey of Fontenay,92 and a similar court held in 1080 gave judgment in favour of Holy Trinity, Rouen, against the bishop of Évreux.93 Examples could be multiplied. No court on either side of the Channel was more notable than that which in 1080 adjudicated between the family of Creully and the abbey of Fécamp,94 or that which on 5 September 1082 vindicated at Oissel the judicial privileges of the abbot of Saint-Wandrille against William, archbishop of Rouen.95
It would, however, be unwise to particularize too closely upon the functions of the Conqueror's court. The essence of his government was a personal monarchy whose power stretched over Normandy and England. The king ruled his realm, and summoned to his assistance those members of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, lay and ecclesiastical, who best could help him in his work. The duty of his council was, therefore, in the most general sense, to advise the king; and the king on his part would always wish to secure the support of the men who alone could make his rule effective. There was thus as yet no differentiation of governmental function, and not until after William's death was there to be evolved out of his court specialized bodies composed of men charged with particular fiscal and judicial duties. As is well known, the exchequer and the later courts of law were offshoots of the curia, as was also the chancery as a distinct office. In the Conqueror's reign, government was still viewed in a simpler way. The king ruled the land, and his feudal vassals were called upon to assist him in his task: to offer him counsel, and to support his executive acts.
The feudal organization of King William's realm thus served to link together Normandy and England, and to join together in a common purpose the Anglo-Norman king and the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. The very survival of that aristocracy, particularly in England where it constituted a small minority, depended upon its members co-operating with one another, and with their king. It was as much to the interest of these men as to that of William himself that such inevitable rebellions as might occur – such as that of 1075 – should be suppressed as quickly as possible, and the history of the Normans in England, especially during the reign of the Conqueror, is never to be explained by an inherent opposition between ‘king’ and ‘baronage’. More legitimately is it to be considered as a feudal settlement of a recently conquered country by an exceedingly able group of men with the king at their head. For their ideas of government were fundamentally the same. All alike inhabited a feudal world, which in England was largely their own creation, and they believed that it was to the advantage of everyone in this feudal world, including the king, to hold fast to his proper rights, and not to encroach upon the rights of others. The definition of feudal rights and obligations might cause dispute, but their ultimate sanction was not denied. It was a common acceptance of feudal principle by both king and magnates, in both Normandy and England, which permitted the survival of the Anglo-Norman kingdom, and went far to determine its character. It was to modify at every turn the operations of local government, and the fortunes of humbler folk whose lives were everywhere to be affected by the interrelations of great families. And it was to provide the essential background for the developing administration of a great king who exalted the royal power.
1 F. M. Stenton, ‘English Families and the Norman Conquest’ (R. Hist. Soc, Transactions, series 4, vol. XXVI (1944), pp. 1–17).
2 W. J. Corbett, in Cambridge Medieval History, vol. V, chap. XV, to which I am particularly indebted.
3 Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History, pp. 142–145.
4 Farrer, Honours and Knights' Fees, vol. I, p. 20; Round, King's Serjeants, p. 257; L. C. Loyd, Anglo-Norman Families, p. 84.
5 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 621; Loyd, op. cit., p. 51.
6 C. T. Clay, Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. VIII, pp. 40–46; C. Waters, Gundrada de Warenne, p. 1; Cart. S. Bertin (ed. Guerard), pp. 176–184.
7 Clay, loc. cit.; C. Brunel, Actes – Comtes de Pontieu, no. IV.
8 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 219; Liber Monasterii de Hyda (ed. Edwards), p. 295.
9 Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. I, no. 12; Stenton, English Feudalism, p. 24.
10 J. Tait, in Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. XLIV (1929), p. 86; Regesta, vol. I, no. 23; Will. Jum., p. 141.
11 A. Wilmart, in Annales de Bretagne, vol. XXXVIII (1929), pp. 576–602; Complete Peerage, vol. X, p. 784; for the family, see Clay, in Early Yorkshire Charters, vols. IV and V.
12 Complete Peerage, vol. X, p. 785. That he was the brother of Alan the Red appears from a charter for Bury St Edmunds (Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. 152, no. 169). According to St Anselm, the two brothers aspired to marry Gunhild, daughter of King Harold, when she was a nun at Wilton (Southern, St Anselm and his biographer (1963), pp. 183–195).
13 Stenton, English Feudalism, pp. 24–26.
14 Ibid. See also Round in Essex Arch. Soc., Transactions, vol. VIII, pp. 187–191.
15 AS. Chron., ‘D’, s.a. 1076 (equals 1075).
16 Corbett, op. cit.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid. Cf. Complete Peerage, vol. IX, p. 575, and vol. XII, part I, p. 758; Loyd, op. cit., pp. 45, 56; Douglas, Domesday Monachorum, pp. 65–71.
19 Corbett, op. cit.
20 Loyd, op. cit., pp. 29, 30, 31, 40, 56.
21 Ibid., pp. 1, 34, 41, 71, 112.
22 Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. I, nos. 593–596.
23 Loyd, op. cit., pp. 36, 43, 63, 73, 86, 97.
24 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 619.
25 Lennard, Rural England chaps. V, VI, VII.
26 Below, pp. 305–310.
27 D.B., vol. I, fols. 16–29.
28 Complete Peerage, vol. III, p. 428; and above, p. 267.
29 Below, pp. 295, 296.
30 Round, Feudal England, pp. 225 et sqq.
31 Ibid., p. 261.
32 Chron. Mon. Abingdon, vol. II, pp. 1–5; Liber Eliensis (ed. Stewart), p. 274.
33 Round, Feudal England, p. 304.
34 Douglas, Domesday Monachorum, p. 105.
35 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 626.
36 Above, pp. 211–244.
37 Stenton, English Feudalism, pp. 139–141.
38 Will. Poit., p. 220; AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1083.
39 Liber Eliensis (ed. F. O. Blake), pp. 216, 217, and above, pp. 240, 241.
40 Stenton, op. cit., p. 138.
41 e.g. Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. 151, no. 168; Galbraith, Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. XLIV (1929), pp. 353–372. The ambiguity of both these instruments is emphasized by their editors. See also A. Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, p. 38, for an early Westminster enfeoffment, and compare this with the Abingdon charter commented on by me in E.H.D., vol.II, no. 242.
42 See the section given to the knights of Lanfranc (D.B., vol. I, fols. 4, 4b).
43 On these see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law (2nd ed.), vol. I, pp. 296–356. The principal items were the relief payable when the knight took over his estate, and aids liable to be given to the lord on special occasions. The lord was also entitled to wardship over a knight who succeeded when under age, and could dispose of the heiress to a knight in marriage.
44 Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. xcix; also Economic History Review, vol. IX (1939), pp. 130, 131.
45 See ‘coronation charter’ of Henry I (Stubbs, Select Charters (1913), p. 100).
46 Stenton, English Feudalism, pp. 85 et sqq.; and see below.
47 Round, Feudal England, pp. 225–316; Stenton, English Feudalism, chaps. I–IV.
48 The debate is surveyed by C. W. Hollister in American History Review, vol. LXVI (1961), pp. 641–665; and by J. C. Holt in Economic History Review, vol. XIV (1961), pp. 333–340.
49 M.Hollings (see below) presents arguments which are relevant to this question. E. John (Land Tenure in England, p. 160) is more emphatic.
50 Stenton, op. cit., chap. IV, esp. pp. 116, 118, 131.
51 e.g. J. C. Holt and M. Hollings; and H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (1962), pp. 330–323.
52 Hollings, ‘The Survival of the Five Hide Unit in the Western Midlands’ (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXIII (1948), pp. 453–487).
53 C. W. Hollister, Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXXVII (1962), pp. 418–436.
54 Douglas, in Economic History Review, vol. IX (1939), pp. 128–143.
55 Douglas, Domesday Monachorum, pp. 58, 59, 105.
56 AS. Chron., ‘C’, s.a. 1055.
57 A. L. Poole, Obligations of Society, p. 37; David, Robert Curthose, p. 247.
58 J. F. Vcrbuggen, De Krijgskunst in West-Europa in den Middeleeuwen (1954), pp. 148–149.
59 Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions (1962), chap. VII.
60 Michael Powicke, Military Obligations in Medieval England, pp. 1–25.
61 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 180.
62 AS. Chron., ‘C’, s.a. 1052; ‘D’, s.a. 1067 (equals 1068).
63 Ibid., ‘E’, s.a. 1073, 1075.
64 Ibid., s.a. 1079.
65 In this connexion it may be noted that Earl Ralph from the Vexin, who in 1055 made the thegns of Herefordshire fight, continental fashion, on horseback, had a wife named Gytha and a son named Harold (Barlow, Vita Edwardi, p. lxxiv).
66 J. O. Prestwich, ‘War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State’ (R. Hist. Soc., Transactions, series 5, vol. IV (1954), pp. 19–43), from which most of the information which here follows is derived.
67 Ibid., p. 24.
68 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 297.
69 L. Musset, Annales de Normandie (1959), pp. 285–297.
70 Bruce D. Lyon, Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXVI (1951), p. 178.
71 Hollister, ‘The Significance of Scutage Rates in Eleventh and Twelfth Century England’ (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXXV (1960), pp. 577–588).
72 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1085, and below, pp. 347–354.
73 For example, the honour of the archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1096) described in Domesday Monachorum, p. 105.
74 Stenton, op. cit., pp. 54–58.
75 Douglas, Feudal Documents, no. 122; Cart. Mon. Rameseia (ed. Hart), vol. I, p. 133.
76 Stenton, op. cit., pp. 29, 30.
77 Red Book of the Exchequer (ed. Hall), pp. 186–445.
78 Ibid., pp. 624–647.
79 Rec. Hist. Franc., vol. XXIII, pp. 705–711. See also the somewhat later lists given ibid., pp. 608 et sqq. For the relationship of these texts, see F. M. Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 482, 483.
80 Particularly in the ‘Bayeux Inquest’, which is best discussed by H. Navel, in Bull. Soc. Antiq. Norm., vol. XLII (1935).
81 Red Book of the Exchequer, loc. cit.; Rec. Hist. Franc., loc. cit.
82 Stenton, op. cit., p. 14; Douglas, Domesday Monachorum, p. 72.
83 Regesta, vol. I, no. XXXII.
84 R.A.D.N., no. 126.
85 Ibid., no. 199.
86 Ibid., no. 158.
87 J. T. Oleson, Witenagemot in the Reign of Edward the Confessor (1955).
88 Regesta, vol. I, nos. 22, 23, 28.
89 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1085.
90 e.g. Regesta, vol. I, nos. 69, 72, 73, 117, 121.
91 Op. cit., vol. I, no. XXXII.
92 Gall. Christ., vol. XI; Instrumenta, cols. 61–65.
93 Cart. S. Trin. Roth., no. LXXXIV.
94 Cal. Doc. France, no. 1410.
95 Lot, Saint-Wandrille, no. 39.