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Brittany had, in the centuries since its settlement by the Dumnonian elite in the years following the Roman withdrawal, a long history of changing allegiances and levels of sovereignty. Following the liberation of the realm by Alain, Athelstan’s foster son, it became a duchy with nominal allegiance to the wider French kingdom in much the same way as Normandy, its close neighbour.
Throughout that time there were ongoing contacts not just with Cornwall, but with all the nations around the Irish Sea and West Atlantic. This is perhaps best evidenced by the continuing development of the Insular style of artwork which can be seen in examples throughout the region, all of which share at least some similarities to one another.
Specific links between Cornwall and Brittany are demonstrated by the Bodmin Manumissions, produced in a Breton monastery and delivered to a Cornish one, as well as in the tradition of shared saints which churches in both nations celebrate.
There is also the rather spectacular echo of St Michael’s Mount and Mont San Michel in Normandy. While the island of Mont San Michel itself is placed in Normandy, it is only a hair’s breadth from the border with Brittany and the lands in this region changed hands many times in the centuries preceding the Norman invasion of England. As such, the community of monks itself no doubt held many Bretons in its ranks. Perhaps this motivated them to petition Edward the Confessor for land in Cornwall, which he granted in a charter of 1037 (S1061), giving them the tidal island of St Michael’s Mount as well as another site in Cornwall. It should be noted that the charter of Edward has been called into question, although some historians continue to assert its validity; regardless, it is certainly the case that the two religious communities were linked, with the Cornish Mount acting as a priory of the Norman institution.
Another example of potential cross-Channel landholding comes from Judhael of Totnes, the Breton lord who held vast estates in both Devon and Cornwall at the time of Domesday. It has been suggested that his father, Alfred, is the same Alfred who precedes him in the Domesday Book for Devon in the holding of two manors [17.15-6, fol. 108d]. Judhael, given his importance, is one of the most visible of the new Breton landholders, so it is more than possible that other, less important lords may have had familial links with lands and manors in both Brittany and Cornwall or Devon. If anything this seems extremely likely, given the historic trading and cultural links between north-west France, especially Brittany, and the south-west of Britain.
Returning to the events of 1066 and beyond, William, following a conflict with Duke Conan of Brittany, managed to pull them into his own sphere of influence and many Bretons thus accompanied the invasion force.
When the time came to distribute lands and fiefs in the wake of the Norman victory, many of his Breton subjects took lands further north and east, often around regional centres, usually radiating out from a single powerful lord like William Warrenne. However, a great many others, including Count Brian himself, settled in Devon and Cornwall.
The divide between the Bretons is interesting in itself, with many of the settlers in the south-west coming from the eastern and southern regions of Brittany; while those who settled elsewhere appear to largely hail from northern and western Brittany [Keats-Rohan, 1992]. It has been suggested that this reflects a political divide in Brittany between the Marcher lords of the Breton–Norman border and those from deeper within Brittany.
Certainly there seems to be some support for this viewpoint. The lords from around Dol, in particular, don’t appear to have supported Duke Conan in his conflict with William immediately prior to the Norman invasion and may have tacitly supported William instead. Aspects of this conflict will eventually rear their head again in the chaos of the Anarchy centuries later, but for now it perhaps gave William a good reason to keep his retainers spread apart from one another.
It is interesting to note that a majority of the landholders in Devon and Cornwall, at least by the time of Domesday, appear to be either Bretons or Norman lords from the Breton Marches. These are Normans who held lands in the Cotentin Peninsula and similar regions; areas that had, as recently as the tenth century, been in Breton hands and who most likely had at least some familiarity with Breton language and customs. Given the apparent cooperation between the two groups, it is also likely that the Norman lords would have had at least some Breton followers of their own.
Their settlement in the south-west can, if their assumed early support of William is believed, be seen as a reward for service. After all, ignoring the long-standing links between the two regions, Cornwall and Brittany are geographically extremely close together and were both linked into the longstanding trade networks of the Irish Sea and Western Atlantic, as we have seen. This would have made administering their new holdings while staying in touch with the homeland much simpler than it was for those whose awarded lands were much further up country.
In reality, the desirability of Cornwall in particular for Breton lords and their Marcher associates should be obvious. Rather than attempting to impose an entirely new language and culture onto a resentful populace, as many Norman lords faced in their English holdings, the rulers of Cornwall now spoke, if not the same language, then certainly a language that was still mutually intelligible. Indeed, even in the modern age Cornish and Breton remain much more closely related than either does to Welsh, despite all coming from the same shared Brythonic ancestor. The famous letter of William Bodinar even relates of a Cornish fisherman being able to make himself understood to Bretons as late as the eighteenth century.
This shared culture and language must have done a considerable amount to smooth out the transitional period. If we compare the Norman/Breton invasion to the long conflict with Wessex, it seems clear that the ‘invaders’ in the former case would have been significantly less disruptive culturally then the latter were. Of course, that does not mean the transition was a smooth one.
As we have noted previously, the Cornish were active participants in the Irish Sea slave trade and this trade would come to an end under William’s watch. While Cornwall maintained a high slave population during the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, the active trade of slaves to Ireland and beyond had been banned by William around 1070.
William of Malmesbury records it thus:
At his instigation also was abolished the infamous custom of those ill-disposed people who used to sell their slaves into Ireland. The credit of this action, I know not exactly whether to attribute to Lanfranc [the new Archbishop of Canterbury and William’s personal moral tutor], or to Wulstan bishop of Worcester; who would scarcely have induced the king, reluctant from the profit it produced him, to this measure, had not Lanfranc commended it.
While we have covered the occasional exaggeration in William’s chronicles previously, it does seem that the Conqueror was moved to ban the slave trade as his own laws record: ‘I prohibit the sale of any man by another outside the country on pain of a fine to be paid in full to me.’
This made the king’s feelings on the subject very clear, and would have been hugely disruptive to the Cornish economy (as well as that of Bristol, further along the coast). The timing of the laws (around 1070) also may provide some perspective on why there was Cornish support for the final stage of rebellions. It may well be that those lords or landholders who relied most heavily on the slave trade to provide their wealth turned against William and the Bretons at this stage.
Additionally, society itself was being rapidly overhauled under the new feudal system that the invaders brought with them from the Continent. This meant that, while slavery may well have been abolished, the lot of poor freemen was suddenly much reduced as they became tied inextricably to specific areas of land and lords.
Still, the changes seem to be at least somewhat cushioned in Cornwall by the arrival of the Breton lords and their patronage of local institutions. As Insley [2013] points out, many churches that had negotiated geld-free status with the English state maintain this status after 1066. There also appears to be some continuity in leading figures of these institutions, although they are eventually replaced by Norman incomers.
It may be, considering the example of Mont St Michel and the Bodmin Gospels, that there was always some level of cooperation or mutual acknowledgement between the religious institutions in both regions and this came to the Cornish Church’s aid after the invasion.
Equally it may be that the Cornish priests enjoyed better relations with the Breton lords above them because of all they shared in common, as discussed earlier. It is probably significant that the Vocabularium Cornicum was produced in the century following the conquest, potentially as early as 1150 and certainly in Cornwall by a Cornishman [Jefferson, 2013]. This document is one of the earliest significant records of the Cornish language we have, and the fact of its production suggests that there remains a highly educated Cornish-speaking elite in Cornwall at this date.
It is unlikely that such a work wouldhave been produced if not for the continuing patronage of Cornish institutions that Insley identified. It also laid the groundwork for the renaissance of Cornish literary works which would eventually follow in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with great works like the Ordinalia being completed at this time.
It is worth mentioning that there may in fact be a significant corpus of written Cornish works which have been lost to time. We know that Glasney College at one time held a significant library of manuscripts but it was destroyed, along with most of the works it held, during the dissolution of the monasteries, and we will never be sure of the full extent of the loss.
The arrival of the Bretons can therefore be seen to influence a strengthening of the separate Cornish identity, which had continued throughout the Anglo-Saxon period following the end of hostilities in 836.