Anglo-Norman Studies XXIV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2001 [24] 0851158862, 9780851158860, 9780585490809

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ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXIV: PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2001 John Gillingham, Editor

THE BOYDELL PRESS

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXIV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2001

Anglo-Norman Studies is established as the single most important publication in the field (as a glance at bibliographies of the period will confirm), covering not only matters relating to pre- and post-Conquest England and France, but also the influence of the Normans on the wider European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern stage. This year's volume contains the usual stimulating mix: seven papers deal with England, six with northern and western France. One major focus is the endowment and building of churches in England from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the early thirteenth century; a second important group looks at war, rebellion and castle-building in Normandy and Poitou. Three papers investigate the value of charters and writs for an understanding of political structures in Anglo-Saxon and twelfth-century England; and there are studies of the revealing ways in which attitudes to outsiders and insiders (Jews, and kindred) were articulated in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe.

The editor and publishers gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the Trustees of the R. Allen Brown Memorial Fund in providing a grant towards publication of this volume

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXIV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2001

Edited by John Gillingham

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© by contributors 2001, 2002 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2002 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 0 85115 886 2 ISSN 0954–9927 Anglo-Norman Studies (Formerly ISSN 0261–9857: Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies)

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk A catalogue record for this series is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89–646512

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR’S PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS

R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Late Old English Kingdom Ann Williams Révolte nobiliaire et lutte dynastique dans l’Empire angevin (1154–1224) Martin Aurell La politique de fortification des Plantagenêts en Poitou, 1154–1242 Marie-Pierre Baudry Désigner les parents: le champ de la parenté dans l’oeuvre des premiers chroniqueurs normands Pierre Bauduin Nisi feceris under Henry II Julia Boorman Abelard and the Church’s Policy towards the Jews Natalie Fryde Where Did All the Charters Go? Anglo-Saxon Charters and the New Politics of the Eleventh Century Charles Insley King Stephen and the Bishops Stephen Marritt The Defence of Normandy 1193–8 Vincent Moss Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie orientale (1196–1204) Dominique Pitte English Romanesque and the Empire Richard Plant The Beginnings of Lambeth Palace Tim Tatton-Brown Ingelric, Count Eustace and the Foundation of St Martin-le-Grand Pamela Taylor Minor Cruciform Churches in Norman England and Wales Malcolm Thurlby

vi ix x 1 25 43 71

85 99 109

129 145 163 177 203 215 239

ILLUSTRATIONS Photographs and drawings are by the authors except where otherwise acknowledged in captions to the illustrations.

Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage Map

The manors of Tewkesbury and Deerhurst, Gloucestershire

16

La politique de fortification des Plantagenêts Fig. 1 Map: les châteaux du Poitou au milieu du XIIe siècle 44 Fig. 2 Map: les châteaux du Poitou en 1227 48 Fig. 3 Le château de Brosse, à Lignac (Indre), plan d’ensemble 50 Fig. 4 Le front sud de l’enceinte castrale de Bressuire 52 Fig. 5 Tour 25 de l’enceinte castrale de Bressuire, plan, coupe, élévation 53 Fig. 6 La tour porte du Prince de Galles, sur l’enceinte de ville de Thouars 54 Fig. 7 La porte de la citadelle de Parthenay, axonométrie 55 Fig. 8 La Grosse tour du Coudray-Salbart 56 Fig. 9 Le donjon de Montreuil-Bonnin 58 Fig. 10 La tour sud du donjon de Niort, avec ses mâchicoulis 59 Fig. 11 Le château du Coudray-Salbart, plan d’ensemble 60 Figs 12, 13 Archères du château du Coudray-Salbart, plan, coupe, élévation 62–63

Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie orientale Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5

Localisation des sites mentionnés dans cet article et celui de Vincent Moss Le site de Château-Gaillard, aujourd’hui Le complexe fortifié d’Andeli. Localisation des ouvrages mis en place par Richard Cœur de Lion L’articulation de Château-Gaillard par rapport aux ouvrages situés au niveau du fleuve Essai de restitution du plan initial de Château-Gaillard

164 165 169 170 171

English Romanesque and the Empire Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Anglo-Saxon Canterbury cathedral St Michael’s Hildesheim Capital now in the crypt, Notre-Dame, Boulogne

179 179 183

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12

Capital, Ely cathedral nave Capital from the crypt, St Maria im Kapitol, Cologne Hereford bishop’s chapel, from Vetusta Monumenta I, 1747 Speyer, double chapel York minster, plan of church Werden, abbey church, outer crypt Ely cathedral, plan Ely cathedral, west transept Hildesheim, St Michael

184 185 186 187 189 194 196 197 199

The Beginnings of Lambeth Palace Map

The topography of Lambeth Palace

206

Minor Cruciform Churches in Norman England and Wales Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16 Fig. 17. Fig. 18 Fig. 19 Fig. 20 Fig. 21 Fig. 22 Fig. 23 Fig. 24

Worth (Sussex), St Nicholas, S porticus, interior to SE Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxon.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to W from presbytery Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxon.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to ESE from nave Deerhurst (Glos.), St Mary, presbytery, interior to E Cholsey (Berks.), St Mary, exterior from SW Cholsey (Berks.), St Mary, crossing tower, detail SE angle Hook Norton (Oxon.), St Peter, interior to W Bramber (Sussex), St Nicholas, interior to E Bicester (Oxon.), St Eadburg, ‘crossing’, interior to E Stogursey (Somerset), St Andrew, crossing to S Penmon Priory (Anglesey), crossing, interior to SE Penmon Priory (Anglesey) S transept, interior to S Corsham (Wilts.), St Bartholomew, interior to E Pickering (Yorks.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to E Petersfield (Hants), St Peter, former crossing, interior to E Petersfield (Hants), St Peter, exterior from S Châtillon-sur-Seine (Cote d’Or), St Vorles, exterior from WSW Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, interior to E Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, presbytery, interior to E Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, interior to SW from presbytery Devizes (Wilts.), St John, crossing, exterior from SW Westbury (Wilts.), All Saints, exterior from SE Westbury (Wilts.), All Saints, crossing, interior from NW Warminster (Wilts.), St Denys, N transept, interior to NE

260 261 262 262 263 263 264 264 265 265 266 267 268 268 269 270 270 271 271 272 273 274 275 276

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EDITOR’S PREFACE The twenty-fourth Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies was held, as usual, at Pyke House and in sunny weather, from 27 July to 1 August 2001. The fourteen papers given there are all printed here. The fact that we were able to invite an unprecedented, but for an Anglo-Norman conference clearly appropriate, number of speakers from across the Channel, four from France and one from Germany, we owe to the generous support of a travel grant from the British Academy. As always Wendy Hughes, Alison Martin and all their staff made us feel at home at Pyke House throughout our stay. If, as stated recently in a review by Edmund King, the published proceedings often give ‘the sense of a group of scholars sharing work in progress’, it is in large part thanks to the special atmosphere of Pyke House, its garden and its adjoining pub. Much is also owed to Ian Peirce’s good cheer and memory for what needs to be done and when. Conference directors come and go, but Ian marches on. This year we visited Lambeth Palace by kind permission of the archbishop of Canterbury. Our visit included a fine exhibition of some of the Palace Library’s manuscripts which Melanie Barber laid on with the Conference’s interests especially in mind. The day was completed by a trip to unknown Croydon, to see the remarkable surviving remains of the archbishop’s Croydon Palace, where we had the help of Andrew Bradstock of the Friends of Croydon Palace. Tim Tatton-Brown both gave a paper on ‘The Beginnings of Lambeth Palace’ and guided us throughout a splendid day. The conference now has a website: www.battleconference.com. For the good advice, financial support and technical skill needed to get the website up and running I am very grateful to Suzanne Cawsey of the Historical Association, and to Richard Barber and Alison Coles of Boydell & Brewer. This, of course, adds yet one more item to the 24 years long list of obligations owed to the Boydell team. For all their help in getting this year’s volume in print on schedule I am much indebted to Vanda Andrews, Pam Cope, Pru Harrison, Mike Webb and, in particular, Caroline Palmer. Once in every five years the Battle Conference plays away from home, and my first experience of trying to plan and help organise the 2002 conference in Glasgow has made me realise just how much the Conference, and in particular its director, owes to Pyke House and to Hastings College of Arts and Technology. The facilities they provide and the very considerable administrative burdens they carry four years out of five constitute the unobtrusive institutional backbone which has enabled a conference with virtually no financial resources of its own to look forward to its twenty-fifth annual meeting. John Gillingham

ABBREVIATIONS AA SS Actes Henri II

Acta Sanctorum (of the Bollandists) L. Delisle and E. Berger, Recueil des actes de Henri II, roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie, 4 vols, Paris 1916–27 AD Archives Départementales ANS Anglo-Norman Studies Antiqs. Journ. The Antiquaries Journal (Society of Antiquaries of London) Arch. Journ. Archaeological Journal (Royal Archaeological Institute) ASC, Swanton The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. Swanton, London 1996 ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock et al., London 1969 ASE Anglo-Saxon England BAA British Archaeological Association BAR British Archaeological Reports Bates, Regesta Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: the Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates, Oxford 1998 Battle Chronicle The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. Eleanor Searle, OMT, 1980 BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research BL British Library BN Bibliothèque Nationale Cal. Docs France Calendar of Documents preserved in France . . . i, 918–1216, ed. J. H. Round, HMSO, 1899 Cal. Pat. Rolls Calendar of Patent Rolls, HMSO, 1891– Carmen The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. F. Barlow, OMT, 1999 CCM Cahiers de civilisation médiévale CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout 1953– Chronicles of Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Stephen ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS 1885–90 CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique De gestis pontificum William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS 1870 Diceto Radulphi de Diceto Opera Historica. The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 1876 Domesday Book Domesday Book, seu liber censualis . . ., i, ii, ed. A. Farley, 2 vols, ‘Record Commission’, 1783; iii, iv, ed. H. Ellis, 1816 Domesday People K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: a Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166, i, Domesday Book, Woodbridge 1999 Eadmer HN Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, RS 1884 EHD English Historical Documents, 2nd edn, i, 500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock; ii, 1042–1189, ed. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, London 1979–81

EHR English Lawsuits

English Historical Review English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, 2 vols, Selden Society CVI–CVII, 1990–1 Fasti, 1066–1300 John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300, ed. D. E. Greenway, London 1968– Fauroux Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie (911–1066), ed. M. Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie XXXVI, 1961 GDB Great Domesday Book: a Facsimile, ed. R. W. H. Erskine, London 1986 GEC Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, 13 vols in 14, London 1910–59 Gesta Guillelmi The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall, OMT, 1998 Gesta Regum William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols, OMT, 1998–9 Gesta Stephani Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, OMT, 1976 Giraldi Cambrensis ed. J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock and G. F. Warner, 8 vols, RS Opera 1861–91 HBS Henry Bradshaw Society Historia Novella William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. E. King and K. R. Potter, OMT, 1998 HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Howden, Chronica Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols, RS 1868–71 Howden, Gesta Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi et Ricardi Primi, ed. W. Stubbs, Regis 2 vols, RS 1867 HSJ Haskins Society Journal Huntingdon Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon: ‘Historia Anglorum’, ed. D. Greenway, OMT, 1996 ITS Irish Texts Society JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JMH Journal of Medieval History John of Worcester The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ii–iii, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, OMT, 1995–8 Journ. BAA Journal of the British Archaeological Association JRSAI Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Jumièges Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols, OMT, 1992–5 Lanfranc’s Letters The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. H. Clover and M. Gibson, OMT, 1979 LDB Little Domesday Book: a Facsimile, ed. Ann Williams and G. H. Martin, London 2000 Liebermann Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols, Halle 1903–16 Med. Arch. Medieval Archaeology MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH SRG MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum Scholarum

MGH SS Monasticon MRSN MSHAB MTB Newburgh NMT ns OMT Orderic os PBA PL PR PRIA PRO Regesta RHF RIA Royal Writs RS S SATF ser. Torigni Trans. TRHS VCH Vita Ædwardi Wace Waltham

Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, 6 vols in 8, London 1817–30 Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae, ed. T. Stapleton, 2 vols, London 1840–4 Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Bretagne Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson, 7 vols, RS 1875–85 Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh, in Chronicles of Stephen, vols 1 and 2 Nelson’s Medieval Texts new series Oxford Medieval Texts Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. M. Chibnall, OMT, 1969–80 old series Proceedings of the British Academy Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, Paris 1841–64 Pipe Roll (as published by Pipe Roll Society) Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Public Record Office Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, i, ed. H. W. C. Davis, Oxford 1913; ii, ed. C. Johnson, H.A. Cronne, Oxford 1956; iii, ed. H. A. Cronne, R. H. C. Davis, Oxford 1968 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, Paris 1738–1904 Royal Irish Academy Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvil, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, Selden Society LXXVII, 1959 Rolls Series, London Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, ed. P. H. Sawyer, London 1968 Société des Anciens Textes Français series The Chronicle of Robert de Torigni, in Chronicles of Stephen, vol. 4 Transactions Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Victoria County History The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminster, ed. F. Barlow, 2nd edn, OMT, 1992 Wace, Le Roman de Rou, ed. A. J. Holden, 3 vols, SATF, Paris 1970–73 The Waltham Chronicle, ed. and trans. L. Watkiss and M. Chibnall, OMT, 1994

Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage

R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture

THEGNLY PIETY AND ECCLESIASTICAL PATRONAGE IN THE LATE OLD ENGLISH KINGDOM Ann Williams I am very pleased to have been given this opportunity to express publicly my debt to Allen Brown. We met in the mid seventies of the last century at a time of my life when I was teaching thirteen hours a week class-contact, in an institution where research, especially historical research and especially medieval historical research, was regarded as irrelevant, and I was contemplating the abandonment of serious academic work. It was Allen’s encouragement, the fruit of his attachment to the medieval ideal of amicitia, which encouraged me to persevere, and it is no accident that my earliest piece of printed work (other than my doctoral thesis) appeared in the first volume of the Battle proceedings. Although this lecture is a tribute to Allen Brown, I am not sure that he would have approved of it. His views on ‘hairy housecarls’ are well-known, and perhaps he would have agreed with Professor Harper-Bill, who, three years ago now, bet me that I couldn’t write a paper on pious Old English thegns because they weren’t.1 Yet Allen would certainly have been sympathetic to my general theme, for one of the many ignorant preconceptions against which he strove was the idea of the medieval warrior-aristocracies as a bunch of mindless thugs with no finer feelings. Moreover as a warrior himself (both in the literal and the metaphorical sense) Allen knew from the inside what thoughts and feelings they might have. On the famous occasion when he and Ian Peirce attempted to re-create the Norman charge up Battle Ridge, Allen’s inexperienced mount bolted, and was pulled up by its rider’s horsemanship just short of the fence at the bottom of Pyke House’s garden. Standing in ‘The Chequers’ afterwards, armed and in full mail, with his helmet on the bar, a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Allen was lamenting the luck of the Browns. I tried to console him: at least he had pulled up the panicking animal and persuaded it back up the slope. ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘when I saw the sun glinting off the barbed wire and the nettle-bed

1

The bet was made in ‘The Chequers’ in 1998. The other inspirer of this paper was Charles Coulson, who asked me a question about the patronage of pre-Conquest churches to which I had then no coherent answer. An early draft was read to the history seminar at All Souls, Oxford, and I should like to thank all those who attended, especially Dr Rosamund Faith and Dr John Blair, for the stimulating discussion which helped me to clarify my thoughts on the subject. Dr Blair also allowed me to see and profit from the relevant sections of his forthcoming book on minsters before publication. John Gillingham, John Grassi and Stephen Church proffered welcome help and advice, and I must particularly thank Stephen Baxter, who read and commented upon the paper at an early stage and reminded me of a number of things I had forgotten and some I had not thought of. All the remaining mistakes and omissions are my own.

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beyond, I realised why in the thick of the melée those chaps would vow to God to found a monastery if only he would let them off this time.’ He was joking, of course, but only in part, for (as the saying goes) many a true word is spoken in jest. We need such imaginative insights into the minds of people whose conditions of life are now almost irrecoverable. Studies of the aristocracy of pre-Conquest England present particular problems. Given the backward glimpse provided by Domesday Book, it is not especially difficult to reconstruct the patterns of landholding, family and patronage which existed in the times of Harold II and Edward the Confessor, but any attempt to go beyond the external trappings of wealth, power and status comes up against a formidable barrier. Most of the surviving pre-Conquest evidence was produced and preserved not by laymen but by ecclesiastics and, to compound the problem, most of those ecclesiastics were Benedictine monks, obliged by their vows to sever the ties which bound them to their earthly kinsmen. Of course this severance was in practice far from total, and there were a few non-monastic and even lay writers, notably the scholarly ealdorman, Æthelweard the Chronicler; but in general, we see the laity of the tenth and eleventh centuries only as reflections in a primarily ecclesiastical mirror. The nature of the evidence has a particular bearing upon the theme of this paper. Many studies of early medieval lay piety attempt to exhibit the motives of aristocratic donors.2 The instruments which record their gifts provide some answers: to secure the repose of the donor’s soul and those of his ancestors; to obtain the prayers of the beneficiaries and perhaps rights of burial among them; to exchange the transitory goods of the world for the eternal benefits of heaven. These expressions of conventional piety may accurately reflect the concerns (or at least some of them) of the donors. It remains the case, however, that the memoranda and wills which record such sentiments were all written and preserved by the beneficiaries, so that to draw conclusions from them about the intentions of the benefactors begs the question.3 Whether such doubts can be resolved I do not know, but in what follows I should like to offer some general remarks on the evidence and suggest some tentative conclusions. First, then, the evidence. Some of the vernacular wills and memoranda which record thegnly gifts to churches survive as ‘originals’ (defined as single sheets contemporary with the transaction described).4 Most, however, exist only as copies or extracts in later compilations. Some were transcribed in their original language and apparently more or less verbatim. To give a single example, the Sacrist’s Register of Bury St Edmunds, dating from the second half of the thirteenth century, preserves a memorandum recording a gift of lands at Rickinghall, Rougham, Woolpit, Hinderclay

2

Janet M. Pope, ‘Monks and Nobles in the Anglo-Saxon Monastic Reform’, ANS 17, 1994 (1995), 165–80; Patricia A. Halpin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Women and Pilgrimage’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 97–122. For aristocratic motives in the post-Conquest period, see C. Harper-Bill, ‘The Piety of the Anglo-Norman Knightly Class’, ANS 2, 1979 (1980), 63–77, and Emma Cownie, Religious patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135, Woodbridge 1998, 151–84. 3 See the remarks of Cownie, Religious Patronage, vii–viii. For the mixed motives behind aristocratic donations, see Christopher Holdsworth, ‘Benedictine Monks and Nuns of the Tenth Century’, in Studies in the Early History of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. Laurence Keen, Dorchester 1999, 77–80; David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300, London 1992, 311–43. 4 For the other strictly contemporary sources, the inscriptions which record the building and dedication of churches by laymen, see Elisabeth Okasha, A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions, Cambridge 1971, nos 1, 28, 59, 64, 73, 146; for nos 1 and 64, see below, notes 56, 62.

Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage

3

and Redgrave, all in Suffolk, by one Ulfcytel.5 There seems no reason to doubt that this text is an accurate copy of an eleventh-century original. The language is Old English and the formulae can be matched in acceptable eleventh-century texts; the lands in question appear in the abbey’s possession in Domesday Book; the donor is almost certainly ‘the stalwart defender of East Anglia against the Danes’, Ulfcytel snilling (‘the bold’), who between 1004 and 1016 exercised the functions of an ealdorman in the region, though he never held the title.6 Authenticity is less easily gauged when documents have been translated from English into Latin, especially when they have also been abbreviated, and abbreviated moreover by ecclesiastics accustomed to post-Gregorian ideas on land-tenure, and on the terms in which land-tenure was expressed. The compiler of the twelfth-century Liber Benefactorum of Ramsey Abbey has left a full and frank account of his method, which was to translate all ‘charters and chirographs’ written in ‘barbaric English’ (Anglica barbarie exarata) into Latin, a task achieved, as he says, ‘not without hardship and weariness’ (non sine difficultate et taedio).7 These Latin translations are generally accepted as authentic records of lost vernacular memoranda, but, as Professor Whitelock observed in another context, in cases where the original survives for comparison ‘we can see what a poor substitute a Latin abstract may be’.8 The Ramsey chronicler expresses the pious wish to preserve the names of the ancient benefactors of his house even if their gifts have subsequently been lost to the Church, so that ‘the memory of the just may be preserved with praises’ (memoria iustorum cum laudibus perseveret).9 At this point, the possibility of wishful thinking (if not outright forgery) must rear its head. To give only one instance, the Latin translation of an alleged chirograph recording the gift by Ælfhelm polga and his wife Æffe of lands at Potton and Hatley (Beds.) directly contradicts the arrangements concerning these lands both in Ælfhelm polga’s will, which survives as a single-sheet original of the eleventh century, and in a memorandum granting Potton to Ælfhelm’s goldsmith Leofsige, entered in what remains of a tenth-century gospel book belonging to Ely.10 There have been attempts to reconcile the contradictory accounts, but the suspicion must remain that the Ramsey ‘chirograph’ never existed, and that the alleged ‘translation’ was actually manufactured by the cartularist.11 Even more trou5

Cambridge UL, Ff. 2.33, fol. 49v; calendared S.1219; printed, with translation, in A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1956, no. 73, 146–7. The memorandum is undated but in the list of benefactors the grant is dated 1006 (Cambridge UL, Ee. 3.60, fol. 321). For the identification of Redgrave, see C. R. Hart, Early Charters of Eastern England, Leicester 1966, [hereafter ECEE] 62. 6 Ann Williams and G. H. Martin, eds, Little Domesday Book: a Facsimile, London 2000, [hereafter LDB] fols 360v, 361, 362, 362v, 364v; Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 392; Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016, Cambridge 1980, 208–9, note 199. 7 W. Dunn Macray, ed., Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, RS, London 1886, 176; see also 4: quae Anglice scripta fuerant in Latinum ydioma conversas. 8 Dorothy Whitelock, The Will of Æthelgifu, Oxford 1968, 18. See also Simon Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, ASE 22, 1993, 253–9; idem, ‘The Will of Wulf’, Old English Newsletter 26, 1993, 16–21 (my thanks to Professor Keynes for a copy of this item); Kathryn A. Lowe, ‘Latin Versions of Old English Wills’, Journal of Legal History 20, 1999, 1–23. For post-Conquest examples of compression and omission, see Cownie, Religious Patronage, 152–3. 9 Macray, Chron. Ramsey, 47. 10 Macray, Chron. Ramsey, 62; for Ælfhelm’s will, see S.1487, printed with translation by Dorothy Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills, Cambridge 1930, no. 13, 30–5; for Ælfhelm’s grant to Leofsige, see S.1218a, printed with translation by Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 71, 144–5. 11 The Ramsey account (which also involves additions to the will of Æthelstan Manneson) is accepted by C. R. Hart, ‘Eadnoth I of Ramsey and Dorchester’, in The Danelaw, London 1992, 619–20, and by

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bling is the Ramsey chronicler’s admission that although some charters and chirographs have been ‘consumed by age or destroyed through carelessness’ (vel vetustate consumpta sunt, vel per incuriam perierunt), he has nevertheless included them in his account, because the grants in question are itemised in King Edgar’s confirmation. Natural suspicion is compounded by the fact that Edgar’s alleged confirmation charter is itself spurious.12 One of the challenges facing post-Conquest cartularists was that in pre-Conquest England ownership of land was conveyed orally by means of a formal ceremony before witnesses; even royal diplomas were merely written records of that oral ceremony.13 As for non-royal grants, some may never have been recorded in writing and in other cases the only written records seem to have been memoranda entered in gospel books and other de luxe volumes belonging to the beneficiaries. These in turn might furnish material for later inventions; a vernacular notice of one Thored’s grant of East Horsley in Surrey to Christ Church, Canterbury, entered in a gospel-book once belonging to Christ Church, was used by a post-Conquest cartularist to fabricate a Latin charter in respect of the estate.14 The Peterborough monk, Hugh Candidus, succinctly expresses the dilemma facing him and his fellows: I would fain tell you briefly what I know about those lands, the names of the donors and their titles and the names of the abbots in whose time the grants were made; for I would not have them altogether forgotten. But my words shall be few, because our knowledge is not great, and we cannot describe all, when, by the carelessness of those whose duty it was to record them (propter scriptorum neglicenciam), they have not come to our notice.15 Hugh goes on to list various pre-Conquest donations to Peterborough, whose authenticity is difficult to determine.16 It has been argued that he was working from

Andrew Wareham, ‘Saint Oswald’s Family and Kin’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt, Leicester 1996, 52–3; but see Ann Williams, ‘Æthelstan Manneson’s Daughters’, forthcoming. 12 Macray, Chron. Ramsey, 65; S.798. 13 The Abingdon cartulary contains a description (both in the vernacular and in a Latin translation) of the donation of Uffington, Berks., by Ealdorman Æthelstan Half-king, naming the witnesses allegedly present, and describing how the ecclesiastics pronounced the anathema, to which the rest responded ‘So be it, amen, amen’ (S.1208; printed [English version only] by Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 222, 44–5). In this case the ealdorman is said to have ‘booked’ (gebocode) the estate, that is, to have provided some sort of written record, though none survives, and it has to be said that the whole story is highly dubious. 14 S.1222, Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 88, 172–2, 421; see Robin Fleming, ‘Christ Church’s Anglo-Norman Cartulary’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, ed. C. Warren Hollister, Woodbridge 1997, 91–2, 140 (no. 68). Thored cannot be further identified; the name, which was not uncommon, appears among the attestations to charters of Cnut and Edward the Confessor between 1018 and 1046 (Simon Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, in The Reign of Cnut, ed. Alexander R. Rumble, Leicester 1994, 80 and note 208). 15 W. T. Mellows, ed., The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, Oxford 1949, 67–8; Charles Mellows and William Thomas Mellows, trans., The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, Peterborough 1941, 34. Unlike the Ramsey chronicler, Hugh omits gifts ‘inscribed in the ancient privileges’ (that is the royal diplomas). 16 For a discussion of the editorial purposes of post-Conquest cartularists, see Fleming, ‘Christ Church’s Anglo-Norman Cartulary’, 83–107, especially 91–2 (on the creation of charters from obituary lists).

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surviving documents rather than a list of benefactors, but if so he neither transcribed nor translated them, giving merely the names of the donors and the lands donated.17 Perhaps the most striking aspect of all this post-Conquest activity is that the later cartularists bothered to record the pre-Conquest lay benefactors at all. One reason was presumably the sheer volume of wealth which had been acquired from this source. It was not only kings, earls and prominent ecclesiastics who lavished land and treasure on the Benedictine houses. Though much of the wealth of Ramsey Abbey came from the family of St Oswald and his friend Æthelwine amicus dei, ealdorman of East Anglia, the donations of the rich local thegn, Æthelstan Mannesune, whose wife was St Oswald’s kinswoman, were also significant.18 Æthelstan’s contemporary, the afore-mentioned Ælfhelm polga, left Ramsey his warship (scegð), and also bestowed estates on both Ely and Westminster.19 Some smaller Benedictine houses were founded or re-founded by thegns; Tavistock Abbey by Ordwulf, son of Ealdorman Ordgar of Devon, and brother of Edgar’s queen, Ælfthryth; Cerne, in Dorset, and Eynsham, in Oxfordshire, by Æthelmær, son of Æthelweard the Chronicler, ealdorman of the Western Shires; Burton by the Mercian magnate Wulfric Spot, brother of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria.20 All three obtained royal diplomas in favour of their respective houses, though the charter of Æthelred II for Tavistock may not be authentic as it stands.21 It was not only the Benedictines who profited from lay generosity. The secular minsters and the clergy who inhabited them may have received a poor press from the dominant reform party, but they remained, in John Blair’s words, ‘familiar, accepted objects of patronage for many lay nobles’.22 The wills of the Old English aristocracy reveal the extent of this patronage, and, since the secular church has left few records of its own, are often the chief or only evidence for some minsters; we should, for instance, know little about the community of Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk were it not for the wills of Ealdorman Ælfgar of Essex and his daughters.23

17 ECEE, 243 and note 3. 18 Wareham, ‘St Oswald’s Family and Kin’, 47–53. 19 S.1487, printed and translated in Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 13. For the significance of the

ship, see Nicholas Hooper, ‘Some Observations on the Navy in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth and J. Nelson, Woodbridge 1989, 212. 20 H. P. R. Finberg, ‘The House of Ordgar and the Foundation of Tavistock Abbey’, EHR 58, 1943, 190–201; idem, Tavistock Abbey, Cambridge 1951, 1–5; Barbara Yorke, ‘Æthelmær, the Foundation of the Abbey at Cerne and the Politics of the Tenth Century’, in The Cerne Abbey Millennium Lectures, ed. K. Barker, Cerne Abbas 1988, 15–26; John Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, Stroud 1994, 114–16; P. H. Sawyer, Charters of Burton Abbey, Oxford 1979. 21 S.838 (Tavistock, authenticity disputed); S.906 (Burton, apparently authentic); S.911 (Eynsham, apparently authentic). The alleged charter of Æthelmær for Cerne (S.1217) is not usually regarded as authentic, though it has been defended by G. D. Squibb, ‘The Foundation of Cerne Abbey’, in Cerne Abbey Millennium Lectures, ed. Barker, 11–14. 22 John Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches in Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book: a Reassessment, ed. Peter Sawyer, London 1985, 120. 23 John Blair, ‘Introduction’, in Minsters and Parish Churches: the Local Church in Transition, 950–1200, ed. John Blair, Oxford 1988, 3–5. The community was defunct by 1066, when Stoke-byNayland was in the possession of Robert fitzWymarc, a royal staller; it is perhaps represented by the ‘church with sixty acres of free land’ recorded among the manorial assets (LDB, fol. 401). Robin Fleming has pointed out that Robert fitzWymarc held other estates granted to Stoke by Ealdorman Ælfgar and his daughters (Mersea and probably Peldon and Basildon, Essex, and Withermark, Polstead and Stratford St Mary, Suffolk) and suggests that Edward the Confessor used the endowment of the defunct community to

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New colleges of secular clerks were also established. The foundation of St John the Baptist at Clare in Suffolk, is recorded in Little Domesday: Ælfric gave this manor to St John . . . with the consent of his son, and placed therein a certain Leodmær the priest (sacerdos) and others with him. When a charter had been drawn up (facta etiam carta), he placed the church and the whole place in the care (ad custodiendum) of Abbot Leofstan [of Bury] and into the care (in custodia) of his son Wihtgar.24 Ælfric’s charter does not survive, but the confirmation charter of Everard, bishop of Norwich, recounting the transformation of Clare into a Benedictine priory by Ælfric’s Norman supplanters, claims that seven prebends had been ‘instituted in the times of King Edward by Ælfric son of Wihtgar, of worthy memory’ (a bone memorie).25 Ælfric was remembered at Bury as Alfricus comes famosus who gave Long Melford, Suffolk, to the abbey. The benefactor’s lists which record this gift also mention the foundation of Clare; one adds that the hospital there was established on the site of the ‘tower’ where Ælfric’s son Wihtgar lived, perhaps a reference to the pre-Conquest manor-house.26 Many rich thegns distributed money and treasure as well as land; indeed for the recipients it may have been the treasure that was of greater interest.27 Under Wulfric Spot’s will, each archbishop was to receive ten mancuses of gold, each bishop five mancuses, each monastic house (munucregole) one pound and each abbot and abbess five mancuses of gold.28 In the late tenth century, the rich Kentish thegn Brihtric likewise distributed treasure to the three leading churches of Kent, monastic and secular: Rochester Cathedral received thirty gold mancuses, a necklace worth forty mancuses, a silver cup and a ‘half-band’ (possibly a diadem) of gold; Christ Church, Canterbury, received sixty gold mancuses, a necklace worth eighty mancuses and two silver cups; St Augustine’s, Canterbury, was to have thirty gold mancuses, two silver cups and a ‘half-band’ of gold.29 Food-rents were also an important source of wealth; the lady Æthelgifu, whose lands lay in the Home Counties, ‘left stock and food-rents to nearly all the minsters of her native Hertfordshire’.30

enrich his staller (Robin Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, Cambridge 1991, 46; LDB, fols 42v, 46v, 401, 401v, 402). Given the pattern whose outlines are described below, this seems entirely plausible, though the community may not have been defunct, but merely impoverished. 24 LDB, fol. 389. 25 Christopher Harper-Bill and Richard Mortimer, eds, The Stoke-by-Clare Cartulary, Woodbridge 1982, i, no. 70, 54–8. The arrangements recorded in Everard’s charter are likely to be post- rather than preConquest, but the reference to Ælfric is still significant. 26 ECEE, 71; the reference to the ‘tower’ does not appear in the published versions of the benefactors’ lists. For a comparable dwelling, see the wooden belfry 140 feet high attached to the manor-house of Adam de Cockfield at Bury St Edmunds (Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, ed. Diana Greenway and Jane Sayers, Oxford 1989, 123). Wihtgar, Ælfric’s son, is thirteenth among the ninety wealthiest thegns in Edward the Confessor’s time; he held lands in Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk to the value of £182 3s, most of which passed to Richard fitzGilbert, ancestor of the Clares (Peter A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor, Oxford 1994, 37, 357–63). 27 James Campbell, ‘England, c. 991’, in The Battle of Maldon in Fact and Fiction, ed. Janet Cooper, London 1993, 2–3. 28 S.1536; Sawyer, Charters of Burton, no. 29, 53–6 and see xv–xxxviii. 29 S.1511; Alistair Campbell, Charters of Rochester, Oxford 1973, no. 35, 50. Of the three churches, only St Augustine’s was monastic at this date. 30 Blair, ‘Introduction’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, 5; S.1497; Whitelock, The Will of Æthelgifu.

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Smaller churches also benefited from thegnly piety. One of the most striking developments of the late Old English period is the proliferation of ‘estate-churches’ (tunkirkan), small, one-priest churches serving a single manor or vill. On a visit to Rome in 1050, Bishop Herman of Ramsbury is said to have told Pope Leo IX that ‘England [was] being filled everywhere with new churches, which daily were being added anew in new places’; he also described ‘the distribution of innumerable ornaments and bells in oratories’ attesting to ‘the most ample liberality of kings and rich men for the inheritance of Christ’.31 Not all such churches were built by laymen; it was presumably an earlier bishop of Ramsbury who built a timber church and baptistery at the episcopal manor of Potterne, Wilts., in the late tenth century.32 Others were the result of the joint efforts of local communities, like Holy Trinity, Norwich, which in King Edward’s time belonged to twelve burgesses, or the church at Stoneham, Suffolk, endowed by nine free men (liberi homines).33 The bulk of the estate-churches scattered through the countryside must, however, have been built by the lords on whose estates they stood.34 The Alsige who held Eastbridge, Kent, of Earl Godwine before 1066 was presumably responsible for one of the two churches recorded there, for one of them must be Ælsiescirce, which owed its dues to the minster of Lyminge and thence to the archbishop of Canterbury in King Edward’s day.35 At some time between 1053 and 1066, Oswulf son of Frane and his wife Æthelgyth built a church at Studham, Beds., inherited by Æthelgyth from her previous husband Ulf. The church, dedicated ‘to Christ and St Alban’, was placed under the patronage of Leofstan, abbot of St Albans; in return for a money payment (£1) and the reversion of Studham, the abbot granted Oswulf and Æthelgyth fraternity with St Albans, and provided wood for building the church.36 St Albans did not in fact receive Studham, which was held in 1086 by Robert de Tosny.37 Christ Church, Canterbury, was luckier, or perhaps more tenacious in holding on to the church of All Hallows in London, the reversion of which was given by Brihtmær of Gracechurch after the deaths of his wife and two sons, along with ‘the homestead where he dwelt’ (þare homstal þet he on set).38 31 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, cited by Richard Gem, ‘The English Parish Church in the Eleventh and Early

Twelfth Centuries: a Great Rebuilding?’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 21. 32 The church of Potterne, an episcopal manor, was enlarged before the Conquest; adjacent to it was a

timber house, presumably for the priest, whose presence is recorded in Domesday Book (R. W. H. Erskine, ed., Great Domesday Book: a Facsimile, London, 1986, [hereafter GDB] fol. 66). In the twelfth century a new stone church was built on a different site, within which a stone font from the original baptistery still survives (Barbara Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, Leicester 1995, 231–2). 33 LDB, fols 116, 438. 34 ‘It is above all to late Saxon thegns that the building of local churches should be ascribed’ (John Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, Stroud 1991, 115). 35 Tim Tatton-Brown, ‘The Churches of Canterbury Diocese in the Eleventh Century’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 105–18, especially 108, 115. Other churches apparently named from the lords of the estates on which they stood include Blacemannescirce at Blackmanstone (held by Blæcmann in Domesday Book), Ordgarescirce at Orgarswick and Siwoldescirce, possibly at St-Mary-in-the-Marsh. 36 S.1235 and see Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Alban’s Abbey’, 266; Margaret Gelling, Early Charters of the Thames Valley, Leicester 1979, no. 9, 22. The memorandum was drawn up when the church was dedicated by Wulfwig, bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames, who also attests it, along with Bondi the staller, Godric the sheriff, Ælfstan wicgerefa and Leofwine of Caddington. For Oswulf, a king’s thegn and a substantial local landowner, with land worth £41 15s in Beds., Herts., Bucks. and Northants, see Clarke, The English Nobility, 39, 331–2. 37 GDB, fol. 215. 38 S.1234; Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters no. 116, 216–17; D. C. Douglas, The Domesday

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The foundation and endowment of estate-churches often cut into the parochial rights of old minsters and mother-churches.39 Many such communities, founded in the seventh and eighth centuries, seem to have fallen into decay during the viking invasions and settlements, and it has been suggested that the endowments of such ailing establishments were appropriated by the West Saxon kings and used to endow both the reformed Benedictine houses, and the lay nobility.40 Though the laymen who gained land from this source might appear at first sight as despoilers, rather than benefactors of the church, a closer look reveals a more interesting picture, for some of these churches might be refurbished by the thegns into whose hands they passed.41 It was perhaps Earl Godwine, not usually noted for his piety, who re-founded the minster at Dover as a college of secular canons.42 Twenty-four are recorded by name in Domesday Book, holding, on the eve of the Conquest, twenty-four sulungs of land worth £61.43 Whoever restored the church moved it from its original site on the shore to the shelter of the Iron Age hill fort on the cliff top, but after the Conquest the community was removed again, to St Martin’s in the lower town. All that remains of Godwine’s foundation (if it was Godwine’s) is the impressive eleventh-century church of St Mary-in-Castro, which incorporates the Roman Pharos, now standing within the walls of Dover Castle.44 By the eleventh century, it is not uncommon to find wealthy thegns in possession of lands once associated with relatively independent minsters and mother-churches. A closer look at the relationship between these men, all of whom came from among the wealthiest thegns below the rank of earl, and the churches whose lands they held reveals a more complex picture than the one suggested by charters and wills. Those whom I shall discuss here include Edward cild at Wing, Vagn at Wootton Wawen, Orm Gamalson at Kirkdale, Ulf at Aldbrough, Siward son of Æthelgar at St Peter’s Shrewsbury, Tovi the Proud at Waltham Holy Cross, Odda at Deerhurst and Beorhtric son of Ælfgar at Tewkesbury; other examples may well be known to you.45 The church at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, though altered in the later middle ages, Monachorum of Christ Church, Canterbury, London 1944, 58–60. This is All Hallows Gracechurch, not All Hallows by the Tower. 39 By the late tenth century the practice was common enough to require legislation (note 116 below). Steps were sometimes taken to counteract any adverse effect, as when Ælfric parvus built a church on his estate at Milford, in the parochia of Christchurch (Twynham), Dorset (P. H. Hase, ‘The Mother-Churches of Hampshire’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 60). 40 Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, Leicester 1984, 203–6; Robin Fleming, ‘Monastic Lands and England’s Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100, 1985, 247–65 (but see the objections of D. N. Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar, Woodbridge 1992, 29–54). 41 Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape, London 1989, 162: ‘while monastic estates are likely to have passed into secular ownership, monastic churches, and especially churchyards, may have been retained, to be transformed in the tenth century with new churches in their midst’ (author’s italics). The context is the Scandinavian settlements, but the same holds true of English lay owners. 42 Tatton-Brown, ‘The Churches of Canterbury Diocese’, 110. See also S.1472 (Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 190–1), dated to the early 1040s, which records how Godwine brokered an agreement between St Augustine’s and Leofwine, priest of Dover (Ann Williams, ‘The Anglo-Norman Abbey’, in St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. Richard Gem, London 1997, 62). Harold, Godwine’s heir, also had some interest in the lands of the church (GDB, fol. 2). 43 GDB, fols 1v, 2. 44 Eric Fernie, The Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, London 1983, 115–16 and plate 61. Impressive from the outside, that is; the interior was heavily done over in the worst of nineteenth-century taste. 45 Mother-churches and minsters in the hands of earls and their kin (like Bosham, Berkeley and Leominster) have been omitted except for purposes of comparison.

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is one of the best-preserved examples of pre-Conquest architecture, perhaps originating in the eighth or ninth centuries.46 In its earliest form it consisted of a nave with porticus to north and south and an irregular polygonal apse overlying a crypt, presumably for the display of relics. At some time in the late tenth or early eleventh centuries, an ambulatory was added to the crypt; this remodelling may be associated with the tenure of Ælfgifu, widow of King Eadwig, who left the estate at Wing to her brother-in-law, King Edgar.47 The size and layout suggest a high-status foundation, but by 1066 the estate at Wing was in the hands of Edward cild. He is unknown outside the folios of Domesday Book, but was clearly a man of some local eminence; in the entry for Wing itself he is described as the man of Earl Harold, but elsewhere he appears as a thegn of King Edward. He held lands in Buckinghamshire assessed at fifty-two hides, worth £73, and at least one lesser landholder was commended to him; one Algar, who held one and a half hides of land at Moulsoe. An anonymous thegn holding land at Burston was commended to Alfred of Wing, who may have been one of Edward’s kinsmen.48 Wing was by a long way the most valuable of Edward’s manors; it was assessed at only five hides, but this is clearly preferential, for there was land for forty ploughs, and the manor was worth £32. The church is not mentioned in Domesday Book, though it was certainly standing in 1086, but its lands seem to be represented by two and a half hides worth £6 at Crafton, also held by Edward cild; by 1086, the tenement had passed to the monks of Saint-Nicholas of Angers by the gift of Edward’s supplanter, Count Robert of Mortain.49 The minster at Wootton Wawen in Warwickshire was probably founded by Æthelric, king of the Hwicce, in the eighth century but subsequently vanishes from sight.50 In 1086 the estate at Wootton belonged to Robert of Stafford but its name, Wootton Wawen, is derived from that of its pre-Conquest owner, Vagn, anglicised in Domesday Book as Waga.51 Vagn (Wagene) of Wootton attests Earl Leofric’s charter of 1043 for Coventry Abbey, and the rarity of his name suggests that he is the Vagn (Wagan) who witnesses a St Albans memorandum of 1051–2 at the head of the same earl’s housecarls.52 Vagn was perhaps in charge of the earl’s household, and it may 46 H. M. and Joan Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, Cambridge 1965, 665–71; Fernie, Architecture of

the Anglo-Saxons, 69–71, 121. 47 S.1484. 48 Edward’s lands at Wing and Crafton passed to the count of Mortain, who also held the anonymous

thegn’s land at Burston (GDB, fol. 146). His lands at Singleborough, Whaddon, Woolstone and Newton Longville passed, with Algar’s land at Moulsoe, to Walter Giffard (GDB, fol. 147), and his manor at Broughton to William de Warenne; he is probably identical with Edward, man of Earl Tostig, who held William’s only other manor in the shire, at Caversfield (GDB, fol. 148). Edward cild has been identified with the man of the same name whose property in Stamford, Lincs., (fourteen messuages and seventy acres of land ‘outside the city’) and at South Witham in the same shire passed to Countess Judith, Earl Waltheof’s widow; he also held a third share in the church at North Witham, belonging to the archbishop of York. This Edward is presumably the Edward who preceded the countess at Bisbrooke, Tickencote, Horne and Glaston, in Rutland (GDB, fols 228v, 336v, 340v, 366v; Clarke, The English Nobility, 306). If the two are identical, then Edward cild possessed seventy-seven and a half hides worth £83 10s, but the name is not uncommon. 49 GDB, fol. 146; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 133 and note 141. 50 S.94, preserved in the earlier Worcester cartulary, and see Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800, Cambridge 1990, 149–50. 51 GDB, fol. 242v. The name is first recorded as Waghnes Wotton in the thirteenth century (J. E. B. Gover, A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton, eds, The Place-Names of Warwickshire, English Place-Name Society 4, Cambridge 1927, 242). 52 S.1226 (the charter is spurious, but the witness-list may be genuine); S.1425. In the Latin précis of the

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have been with his lord’s support that he acquired his substantial estate in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, consisting of fifty-four hides of land, worth £33 5s; alternatively he may have been a well-established landholder whose allegiance the earl found worth attracting.53 Wootton itself was not Vagn’s most valuable manor; that was Tysoe, also in Warwickshire, assessed at twenty-three hides (and including three houses in Warwick) and worth £20. But the fact that it was Wootton (assessed at seven hides and worth £4) to which his name became attached suggests that this manor played some important role in his total holding, and it is perhaps significant that Vagn’s estates at Ullenhall, assessed at one hide and worth £3, and Norton Lindsey, also assessed at one hide but worth only £1, may have been part of the minster’s original parochia.54 The surviving church at Wootton is dated to the late Old English period, though it seems to be rather earlier than Vagn’s time. Whether or not it stands on the site of the earlier minster is as yet unclear, as is its status in the eleventh century. Like the church at Wing, it is not mentioned in Domesday, though a single priest is recorded, which might suggest that it was then no more than an estate-church, but (again like Wing) it subsequently became an alien priory.55 The church of St Gregory at Kirkdale (Yorks., North Riding) was rebuilt at the very end of the Old English period, as a contemporary inscription on the sundial over its doorway records: Orm Gamal suna bohte Scs Gregorius minster ðonne hit wes æl tobrocan 7 tofalan 7 he hit let macan newan from grunde Christe 7 Sanctus Gregorius in Eadward dagum cyning 7 in Tosti dagum eorl [Orm son of Gamal bought St Gregory’s church when it was completely ruined and collapsed and he had it constructed recently from the ground to Christ and St Gregory in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig].56

latter, the vernacular huscarlan is rendered barones (Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, 266–7). He is perhaps also the Waga who attests three charters of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester in the early 1050s (S.1406, 1408–9). 53 For Vagn’s lands, see GDB, fols 242v, 250. His relationship with Earl Leofric is discussed by Stephen Baxter, ‘The Earls of Mercia and their Commended Men in the mid Eleventh Century’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 23–46, esp. 26–9. 54 Steven Bassett, ‘In Search of the Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’, in The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. Steven Bassett, Leicester 1989, 18–19; idem, ‘The Administrative Landscape of the Diocese of Worcester in the Tenth Century’, in St Oswald of Worcester, ed. Brooks and Cubitt, 160–2, 164. Another possible member of the parochia at Wolverton was held by Sigmund the Dane, who like Vagn was a member of Earl Leofric’s following (GDB, fol. 242v; Ann Williams, ‘ “Cockles amongst the Wheat”: Danes and English in the West Midlands in the First Half of the Eleventh Century’, Midland History 11, 1986, 13–14). 55 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 685–8; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 116, 178; S. R. Bassett, ‘The Wootton Wawen Project’, West Midlands Archaeology 26, 1983, 66–71; 27, 1984, 72; 29, 1986, 62; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 133. 56 Okasha, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions, no. 64; Elisabeth Okasha, ‘The English Language in the Eleventh Century: the Evidence of Inscriptions’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, Stamford 1992, 333–45. There is some question whether the standing church is the one built by Orm or a rather later rebuilding (Richard Morris and Eric Cambridge, ‘Beverley Minster before the Thirteenth Century’, in Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire, ed. Christopher Wilson, BAA Conference Transactions 1983, 1989, 19–20). If it is Orm’s church, then its protoRomanesque elements imply that he was able to employ masons expert in the most up-to-date architectural fashions, which is what one would expect from a man of his standing.

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Orm Gamal’s son was a prominent figure in the north of England. His wife Æthelthryth was the daughter of Ealdred, earl of Bamburgh (1019–38), and her sister was the second wife of Earl Siward (d.1055). Orm’s father was perhaps the Gamal Orm’s son whose murder in 1064 helped to spark off the Northumbrian revolt against Earl Tostig in 1065.57 Orm himself can be identified as one of the major predecessors of Hugh fitzBaldric in Yorkshire, eleven of whose forty-three manors had formerly been in Orm’s possession, assessed at 198 carucates and worth nearly £50. Another sixteen manors, assessed at sixty carucates and worth £21, had belonged to one Gamal, perhaps identical with Orm’s father.58 Kirkdale itself does not appear by name in Domesday Book but the nearby village of Nawton was one of the fourteen berewicks of Orm’s manor of Kirby Moorside, assessed at fifty-one and a half carucates and worth £12 in King Edward’s day, and it is usually presumed that Kirkdale was a member of the same estate. The inscription specifically describes St Gregory’s church as a minster and excavation has revealed traces of a community dating back to the pre-viking period.59 No documentary evidence exists (apart from the inscription itself) and the extent of its original parochia is unknown. It was presumably defunct by the time that Orm acquired the ruinous building, but not so long ago that its original status had been forgotten.60 The Domesday entry for Kirby Moorside mentions a church with a single priest. If this was St Gregory’s (which is what is usually supposed), then, like Vagn at Wootton, Orm may have transformed whatever remained of the original foundation into an estate church.61 The church at Aldbrough in the East Riding may have had a similar history to that of St Gregory’s. Here again there is an inscription on a sundial, recording the foundation, or perhaps the re-foundation of the church: Vlf [hei]t (or leit) aroeran cyrice for h[a]num 7 for Gunn[wara] saula [Ulf ordered (or caused) the church to be erected for himself and for Gunnwaru’s soul].62 The sundial can be seen in the present church, dedicated to St Bartholomew, but the consensus seems to be that it ‘originally came from an earlier church that stood further east, on land that has now been eaten away by the sea’.63 Nothing certain is known about this earlier church or its status. The manor of Aldbrough, assessed with its berewicks at eleven carucates and six bovates, and with forty-one carucates of

57 John of Worcester ii, 598–9. 58 GDB, fols 327–8; Clarke, The English Nobility, 38–9, 327–8. The Egelfride who held six and

three-quarter carucates worth 21s at Buttercrambe may be Orm’s wife Æthelthryth, though the form represents Æthelfrida. Orm’s name is found in Domesday Book only in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Cheshire; it is not particularly common, and it may be that some (or all) of the other references are to Orm Gamalson. He may also have held land north of the Tees in the Northumbrian lands not surveyed in Domesday. 59 Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, ‘Kirkdale Anglo-Saxon Minster’, Current Archaeology no. 155, December 1997, 419–22; Lorna Watts, Philip Rahtz and Elisabeth Okasha, ‘Kirkdale: the Inscriptions’, Medieval Archaeology 41, 1997, 51–99. 60 The statement that Orm ‘bought’ the church is curious; from whom did he buy it? 61 GDB, fol. 327v; Watts and Rahtz, ‘Kirkdale Anglo-Saxon Minster’, 421. 62 Okasha, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions, no. 1; see also Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 20–1; Okasha, ‘The English Language in the Eleventh Century’, 344. 63 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 21.

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sokeland in fourteen places, was worth £40 on the eve of the Conquest; no church is recorded in Domesday, which need not, of course, imply that none was there.64 By 1086, Aldbrough belonged to Drogo de la Beuvrière, in succession to Ulf (presumably the Ulf of the inscription), who also held manors at Lissett, Beeford, North Frodingham and (perhaps) at Brandesburton, Seaton and Long Riston, all of which had passed to Drogo.65 Ulf may have held lands elsewhere, for Drogo’s was a ‘territorial’ fee made up of lands in Holderness belonging to a number of pre-Conquest thegns, not an ‘antecessorial’ fee based on the holdings of one or more thegnly predecessors.66 Ulf of Aldbrough was plainly a rich and influential man and it is tempting to identify him with one of the other magnates of this name who appear in the north-east. Professor Fleming identifies Drogo’s antecessor with Ulf Tope’s son, whereas Dr Clarke identifies him with Ulf fenisc, who is listed as one of those having sake and soke, toll and team and ‘all customs’ (omnes consuetudines) throughout Yorkshire, though he is not named (at least not with his distinctive byname) elsewhere in the Yorkshire folios.The name, however, is a common one, especially in the north.67 The lands of Ulf fenisc himself, amounting to 248 carucates (or the equivalent) and worth £162, included Bardney, Lincs, site of a monastery recorded by Bede but which was defunct by the early tenth century, and Barton-on-Humber, perhaps another early foundation, whose sumptuous church, dating from the late tenth century, still remains.68 The examples discussed so far have left little or no written account of their eleventh-century history. In contrast, that of the church of St Peter at Shrewsbury is recorded by Orderic Vitalis, born in 1075 in Shropshire of a French father and an English mother, who was sent there as a boy to learn his letters from the ‘noble priest’ Siward. He describes it as no more than a ‘wooden chapel’, and in the Life of St Wulfstan of Worcester it is called an oratorium.69 In Domesday, however, St Peter’s 64 Nine carucates at Aldbrough plus two carucates and six bovates in [East] Newton, [South] Skirlaugh

and Totleys [Farm] (GDB, fol. 324). 65 GDB, fols 324, 344, 344v. 66 For the distinction, see Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, 145–82. 67 Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, 140–1; Clarke, The English Nobility, 121, 130–1,

353; GDB, fol. 298v; there was (?)another Ulf whose lands passed en bloc to Robert de Tosny, but his lands lay well south of the Humber (Clarke, The English Nobility, 355–6). Clarke regards Ulf fenisc as a Scandinavian newcomer, who ‘could have gained his wealth by marrying into a wealthy English family’. Gunnwaru, however, is a Scandinavian, not an English name, and although the Aldbrough inscription does not actually say that she was Ulf’s wife, this would be the obvious interpretation. Moreover, whether or not the Ulf of the Aldbrough inscription was identical with Ulf fenisc, there is no reason not to assume that both he and his wife came from the long-established families of the Danelaw. If Gunnwaru was the wife (rather than, say, the mother) of Ulf of Aldbrough, then he is unlikely to have been identical with Ulf Tope’s son, whose wife was called Madselin (Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills, no. 39), unless, of course, Madselin was a second wife. 68 Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, eds, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Oxford 1969, 246–7; GDB, fols 354, 354v. The relics of St Oswald were removed from Bardney to St Oswald’s, Gloucester, by Æthelred and Æthelflæd of Mercia in the early tenth century. No church is recorded in Domesday and ecclesiastical life seems to have revived only when Gilbert de Ghent, who received Ulf’s lands (in Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Huntingdonshire and Nottinghamshire as well as Lincolnshire), re-founded Bardney as a cell of Charroux in 1087 (George Beech, ‘Aquitanians and Flemings in the Re-foundation of Bardney Abbey (Lincolnshire) in the Later Eleventh Century’, HSJ 1, 1989, 73–90). For the date of Barton-on-Humber church see Richard Gem, ‘Tenth-Century Architecture in England’, Settimane di Spoleto 38, 1991, 827–8 (I owe this reference to John Blair). It is presumably the church, then served by a single priest, recorded in Domesday Book. 69 Orderic iii, 142–51; R. R. Darlington, ed., The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, Camden

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appears as a minster (monasterium) and a parish (parochia) of the city, suggesting something more elaborate, and the church probably originated in the tenth century as a secular college.70 Its recorded pre-Conquest holding consists of only two hides of land, worth 10s, at Boreton and at Lowe, near Farlow, which nevertheless qualifies St Peter’s as a ‘superior’ church according to current criteria.71 St Peter’s may also have held the tithes of the manor of Upton Magna, one of the estates held by Siward son of Æthelgar, identified by Orderic as the church’s pre-Conquest patron.72 Siward’s estates in Shropshire and Worcestershire were assessed at just over eighty-eight hides, worth £72, putting him forty-ninth in Dr Clarke’s table of the ninety richest pre-Conquest thegns; his brother Ealdræd held a further ten hides, worth £10 10s.73 Orderic describes them as great-nephews (pronepotes) of King Edward and they were probably grandsons of the king’s half-sister Eadgyth who married Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia from 1007 to 1017.74 If so they were cousins to another local worthy, Eadric the Wild, who possessed at least forty hides of land in Herefordshire and Shropshire and whose total holding in the region was probably closer to a hundred hides.75 Dr Clarke estimated the value of his estate at just over £100, putting him above his putative kinsman in the wealth stakes, thirty-seventh out of ninety magnates with lands worth more than £40 a year.76 Like Siward, Eadric the Wild can be associated with a major church, this time the minster of St Mildburh at Much Wenlock, founded in the seventh century.77 The church’s estates on the eve of the Conquest consisted of fourteen manors, assessed at seventy-eight hides, worth £54 8s.78 After 1066, it passed, like St Peter’s, into the hands of Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury and, again like St Peter’s, was transformed into a Benedictine monastery.79 In 1086 Eadric the Wild was still holding land as a tenant of St Mildburh, and it is likely that he had been one of its patrons, among whom were included Earl Leofric and his wife Godgifu.80 Society 3rd ser. 40, 1928, 26. Wulfstan was accustomed to pray there when travelling to and from Chester, when he was administering the see (in 1070–1); when asked why he chose St Peter’s instead of St Mary’s within the town, he prophesied that this ‘least of churches’ would presently become the most glorious place in all Shropshire. The prophecy was fulfilled when Earl Roger of Shrewsbury transformed the little church into a Benedictine monastery. 70 S. Bassett, ‘Anglo-Saxon Shrewsbury and its Churches’, Midland History 16, 1991. 71 GDB, fols 252v, 260; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 106. 72 Una Rees, ed., The Shrewsbury Cartulary, Aberystwyth 1975, i, x, 33, 37; GDB, fol. 254v. 73 Clarke, The English Nobility, 39, 339–40; C. P. Lewis, ‘An Introduction to the Shropshire Domesday’, in The Shropshire Domesday, ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, London 1990, 20. For Ealdræd’s lands, see GDB, fols 259v, 260v. 74 Orderic ii, 194–5; in Domesday Book, Siward is described as teinus et cognatus regis Edwardi (GDB, fol. 180v). See Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge 1995, 93–5. 75 C. P. Lewis, ‘An Introduction to the Herefordshire Domesday’, in The Herefordshire Domesday, ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, London 1988, 9; idem, ‘An Introduction to the Shropshire Domesday’, 20. John of Worcester describes Eadric the Wild’s father Ælfric as a brother of Eadric streona (John of Worcester ii, 460–1, and see Orderic ii, 194–5), though he is more likely to have been the ealdorman’s nephew (see note 80 below). 76 Clarke, The English Nobility, 38, 303–4. 77 Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 98–101. 78 GDB, fols 252v, 254; Jane Croom, ‘The Minster Parishes of South-East Shropshire’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 71. 79 GDB, fol. 252v. 80 John of Worcester ii, 582–3. For the identification of Eadric the Wild and Eadric son of Ælfric, elsewhere described as Eadric of Wenlock, who in 1086 held two estates of St Mildburh (GDB, fol. 252v), see Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 91–3.

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It is rarely possible to investigate in any detail the relationships between thegns and the churches which came into their hands, and most of the evidence which survives is not only late (largely post-Conquest), but often contains material which is plainly legendary. All that we know of the early history of Waltham Holy Cross in Essex comes from the Chronicle of Waltham Abbey, written after 1177 by one of the secular canons ousted in that year by the Augustinians.81 The secular college had been established by Harold Godwineson in 1060, but in the present context the interesting figure is his predecessor as patron, Tovi the Proud.82 It was on Tovi’s manor of Lutgaresberie (Montacute), in Somerset, that the great crucifix which came to be known as the Black Rood of Waltham was found, at some time in the reign of Cnut.83 The Chronicle begins with the discovery of the Rood, its removal to Waltham, and Tovi’s establishment of two priests to serve it, endowed with lands at Waltham, Loughton and Alderton (Essex), Hitchin (Herts.), and Lambeth (Surrey). Tovi, a Scandinavian, probably Danish, follower of Cnut, is fairly well-documented for his time; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, supplemented by John of Worcester, records that it was at his wedding-feast at Lambeth in 1042 that Harthacnut suffered the seizure from which he subsequently died.84 The Waltham Chronicle calls him a staller, a high-ranking household official, and though he is not named as such in any contemporary source, he is found in Cnut’s reign attending the shire-court of Herefordshire on the king’s business.85 Further evidence of the Waltham Chronicle’s credibility is the church’s possession of lands at Waltham, Loughton, Alderton and Lambeth either in 1086, or before the Conquest, and though Holy Cross is not recorded as a tenant at Hitchin, it is probable that this huge multiple estate had been a royal manor, which Tovi had merely been administering on the king’s behalf.86 The Waltham Chronicle’s account of the church and vill of Waltham is less reliable. It specifically says that there was nothing there in Tovi’s time except for ‘a lowly hut’ (pauperis tugurii) built by Tovi himself as a hunting lodge. But the description of the manor of Waltham in Domesday Book, a forty-hide estate worth £36 and including the unidentified tenements of six sokemen, suggests a large and wellestablished settlement rather than one recently reclaimed from the forest.87 Waltham

81 Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall, eds, The Waltham Chronicle, Oxford 1994. 82 For the authenticity of the royal charter confirming Harold’s foundation and endowment of the college

(S.1036, dated 1062), see Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 201–3. 83 Lutgaresberie, then known as ‘Bishopstone’, was held on the eve of the Norman Conquest by

Athelney Abbey (GDB, fol. 93), and may at one time have belonged to Glastonbury. For a discussion of the problems connected with its earlier history, see Leslie Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury: Church and Endowment, Woodbridge 1996, 160–2, 323–4. 84 ASC, 1042; John of Worcester ii, 532–5. Tovi may have survived into the early years of Edward the Confessor, for he was among the executors of the will of Ælfric Modercope (S.1490, dating from 1042–3). He may or may not be the Tovi who attests charters of Harthacnut and Edward between 1042 and 1044, in every case in a rather lowly position (S.993, 998–9, 1003); the name is not uncommon and two men bearing it, Tovi the White and Tovi the Red, attest a charter in 1034 (S.961). It is equally uncertain whether he is the Tovi comes to whom Edward granted land at Bergh (unidentified) in 1048 (S.1017). Tovi was probably dead by the late 1040s. He is commemorated in the Liber Vitae of Thorney Abbey, as well as at Waltham itself. 85 S.1462; see also Ann Williams, Kingship and Government in pre-Conquest England, London 1999, 126–8. 86 GDB, fol. 34; LDB, fols 15v, 16. Hitchin had belonged to Earl Harold before 1066, and was held by the king in 1086 (GDB, fols 132v–133; see also VCH Herts. i, 272–4). 87 LDB, fol. 15v.

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may indeed be the site of the double-fortress built by Alfred in 895, an enterprise which involved diverting the Lea.88 Excavation in and around the present church, which dates from the twelfth century, has revealed no fewer than three earlier buildings.89 The first wooden church, which may be as early as the seventh century, was rebuilt in stone, perhaps in the eighth; its design, a nave with side-chambers (porticus) in the Brixworth style, suggests it was a minster. This was the church in which Tovi installed the Black Rood and its two attendant priests; by 1066 it had been re-designed and its east end rebuilt for the enlarged secular college founded by Harold Godwineson in the 1060s.90 The parochia of Waltham may have included the adjacent vills of Edmonton and Enfield on the Middlesex bank of the River Lea, both of which, according to the Waltham Chronicle, were held by Tovi.91 The manor of Edmonton, which probably included at least part of Enfield, was in King Æthelred’s possession in 1005, and was presumably given to Tovi by Æthelred’s successor Cnut.92 In contrast to the unrecorded Waltham, the minster of St Mary at Deerhurst is first mentioned, as an established community, in 804.93 It weathered the viking wars, for Ælfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury martyred in 1012, is said to have begun his career there in the late tenth century.94 In this case the historical sources support the archaeological evidence, which has revealed a complex building sequence dating back at least to the eighth century. By the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries, the church consisted of a nave with north and south porticus, a two-chambered entry porch, and a polygonal apse, resembling the structures already observed at Wing.95 By the mid eleventh century, the church and its lands were in the hands of a wealthy nobleman, Odda, sometime earl of the Western Shires during the exile of Earl Godwine in 1051–2.96 The manor of Deerhurst was more or less equally divided between Odda (fifty-nine hides worth £41) and St Mary’s (sixty hides worth £26 10s).97 Odda’s manor-house presumably stood near to St Mary’s; its site is perhaps 88 ASC, 895; VCH Essex v, 165–6; Jeremy Haslam, ‘Parishes, Churches, Wards and Gates in Eastern London’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 38. 89 P. J. Huggins and K. N. Bascombe, ‘Excavations at Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1985–1991: Three Pre-Conquest Churches and Norman Evidence’, Arch. Journ. 149, 1992, 282–343. The Waltham Chronicle says that the vill was founded by Tovi, and populated with sixty-six persons who had accompanied the Rood from Somerset (Waltham, 18–19). 90 Huggins and Bascombe, ‘Excavations at Waltham Abbey, Essex’, 308–11. 91 P. J. Huggins, ‘First Steps towards the Minster Parish of London’, London Archaeologist 6.11, 1991, 296; Waltham, 18–19. Edmonton and Enfield were held in 1066 by Esger the staller, Tovi’s grandson (GDB, fol. 129v). 92 This is to accept the identification of Edmonton with Eadulfinctun, which Æthelred II gave to Abbot Leofric of St Albans and his brother Archbishop Ælfric, in return for a loan of £200 in gold and silver to pay off a viking army. Eadulfinctun was returned by Abbot Leofric in 1005, in accordance with the will of his brother the archbishop (S.912, 1488; Pamela Taylor, ‘Boundaries and Margins: Barnet, Finchley and Totteridge’, in Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in honour of D. M. Owen, ed. M. J. Franklin and C. Harper-Bill, Woodbridge 1995, 259–79, at 265). See also Keynes, ‘A Lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, 265, 273–4. 93 S.1187. 94 Patrick Wormald, How do we Know So Much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?, The Deerhurst Lecture, 1991, Deerhurst 1993. 95 Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, St Mary’s Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire: Fieldwork, Excavations and Structural Analysis, 1971–1984, Woodbridge 1997. 96 Ann Williams, Land, Power and Politics: the Family and Career of Odda of Deerhurst, The Deerhurst Lecture, 1996, Deerhurst 1997. 97 GDB, fol. 166. On Odda’s death, his lands passed to his royal kinsman, Edward the Confessor, who divided Deerhurst between his new abbey at Westminster and his physician Baldwin, to hold for

The manors of Tewkesbury and Deerhurst, Gloucestershire (from Domesday Book: Gloucestershire, ed. John S. Moore, Chichester 1982)

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marked by the little church of Holy Trinity known as Odda’s Chapel, which he built in memory of his brother Ælfric, who died in 1053.98 Since Odda himself died in 1056, his total holding cannot be reconstructed, but Domesday Book reveals that he held lands at Longdon and Mathon, Worcestershire, and we should probably add Poltimore, Devon, described as manerium Odonis, and Upleadon, Herefords, held by Odda’s sister Edith, in all 107 hides of land, worth £87 6s.99 The accompanying map shows the configuration of the undivided manor of Deerhurst.100 It was not territorially compact but consisted of a central core of land with a scatter of discrete outliers, some physically within the neighbouring shires of Worcester and Warwick. The map also shows the intimate association of the manor of Deerhurst with that of Tewkesbury, assessed at ninety-five hides, and worth £100 on the eve of the Conquest.101 Not only are the central cores of Deerhurst and Tewkesbury contiguous, but wherever we find an outlier of Deerhurst, then almost always an outlier of Tewkesbury lies adjacent or nearby and vice versa.102 This pattern suggests that the two had once been a single unit, and in a recent survey of all the minster parochiae in the area, Dr Steven Bassett argued that Deerhurst’s parochia had originally stretched northwards to include the central estate of the manor of Tewkesbury.103 A Benedictine abbey was established at Tewkesbury in 1102, when Abbot Gerald of Avranches transferred his community from its original home at Cranborne in Dorset.104 In the later middle ages, the monks of Tewkesbury claimed that their house dated back to the eighth century, but this seems to be pure invention.105 More credible is their account of a church founded at Tewkesbury by Haylwardus snew between 978 and 988, for he can be identified as Æthelweard mæw (‘seagull’), founder of Cranborne in Dorset, whose son, Ælfgar mæw, was the father of Beorhtric son of Ælfgar, holder of both Tewkesbury and Cranborne on the eve of the Norman Conquest.106 Æthelweard mæw’s foundation of a church at Tewkesbury probably

Saint-Denis of Paris, where Baldwin had once been a monk. C. S. Taylor showed that this division, described in Domesday Book, reflected the earlier division of the estate between Odda and the church of St Mary (C. S. Taylor, ‘Deerhurst, Pershore and Westminster’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 25, 1902, 230–50). 98 ASC ‘D’, 1053. For the foundation stone of Holy Trinity and its Latin inscription, see Okasha, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions, no. 28, 63–4. 99 GDB, fols 107, 117v, 174v, 175v, 184v, 186, 188; see Williams, Land, Power and Politics, 7. 100 Taken from Ann Williams, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century: the Family, Estates and Patronage of Beorhtric Son of Ælfgar’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 52. 101 GDB, fols 163–163v. 102 One vill, at Lemington, was split between Deerhurst and Tewkesbury (GDB, fols 163v, 166). 103 Steven Bassett, The Origins of the Parishes of the Deerhurst Area, The Deerhurst Lecture 1997, Deerhurst 1998, especially 10–19; my thanks are due to Dr Bassett for a copy of this paper. 104 David Knowles, C .N. L. Brooke and Vera C. M. London, The Heads of Religious Houses in England and Wales, 940–1216, Cambridge 1972, 73. Cranborne became a dependent cell of the new foundation (ibid., 87). 105 Monasticon ii, 59 (the ‘Tewkesbury Chronicle’). 106 A charter of Æthelred II of about 1000 confirms the grants to Cranborne by Ælfgifu, widow of Æthelweard mæw, with the consent of her son, Ælfgar, and a further memorandum mentions grants made by Ælfgar himself; of the lands concerned, two, at Cranborne and Dewlish, were held on the eve of the Conquest by Beorhtric son of Ælfgar (ECEE, 253, 254). The byname mæw, ‘seagull’, has been misunderstood by the Tewkesbury writer and rationalised as snew, ‘snow’, that is, ‘fair’ (Williams, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century’, 41–5).

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marks its removal from the parochia of Deerhurst.107 The context may have been the division of an inheritance between two branches of the same kindred, for Beorhtric’s grandfather Æthelweard mæw may be related to (or even identical with) Æthelweard the Chronicler, ealdorman of the Western Shires, to whom (as I have suggested elsewhere), Odda of Deerhurst was probably related.108 Beorhtric was, by some distance, the richest pre-Conquest non-earlish landowner recorded in Domesday Book, with lands worth £560.109 It seems that, like his putative kinsman Odda, some of his wealth was derived from the endowments of the Church, for as at Deerhurst, part of the manor of Tewkesbury belonged to a church, situated at Stanway but described in Domesday Book as ‘the church of Tewkesbury’. In 1066 this church held twenty-four and a half hides of land, worth £25, and is called a minster (monasterium), which suggests an important community, but nothing further is known of it.110 It seems, then, that a number of the wealthiest thegns of the eleventh century may have been enriched from the lands of the Church. Barbara Yorke has suggested that Æthelmær, a possible kinsman of Odda and Beorhtric, ‘re-arranged’ the endowment of Cerne [Abbas, Dorset] so as to retain for his own benefit the main estate at Cerne Abbas itself, and when Ealdorman Æthelwine gave his manor of Upwood, Hunts., to Ramsey, he retained the hall so that he could continue to enjoy the associated hunting-rights.111 The hypothetical parochia of Waltham Holy Cross, covering Waltham, Edmonton and Enfield, represents a sizeable chunk of Tovi the Proud’s estate. On the Domesday figures (the only ones available), the three vills were assessed at a total of 105 hides, worth £126, about half Tovi’s holding of 177 hides of land worth £268.112 The fact that Odda (and perhaps Tovi) established a hall close to

107 Dr Bassett has suggested that Tewkesbury was a ‘lesser minster’ (see VIII Æthelred §5,1), ‘set up in the parish of an existing “old minster” . . . some of [which] may . . . have been founded as private minsters’ (‘The Administrative Landscape of the Diocese of Worcester in the Tenth Century’, 166). 108 Williams, Land, Power and Politics, 3–6, 12 and see note 111 below; idem, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century’, 61–2. The kinship of Odda and Beorhtric, if not their connection with Æthelweard the Chronicler, is suggested by the interconnection of their lands, not simply at Tewkesbury and Deerhurst but elsewhere: the lost tenement of Baldeyate given by Odda to the hermitage at Great Malvern lay in Beorhtric’s manor of Hanley Castle, Worcs., a member of the manor of Tewkesbury (GDB, 180v, see Williams, Land, Power and Politics, note 64, 28); Poltimore, Devon, was divided between a manerium Odonis, held in 1086 by the canons of St Mary’s Exeter, and a tenement of three and a half hides held by Beorhtric and Scirweald (GDB, fols 107, 117v). This Beorhtric is probably the son of Ælfgar, for the only other appearance in Devon of the rare name Scirweald is at Hillersdon (GDB, fol. 116v), held in 1086 by Odo fitzGamelin, much of whose fief came from the lands of Beorhtric son of Ælfgar. 109 Clarke, The English Nobility, 38, 260–2. For a detailed reconstruction of Beorhtric’s estate, amounting to between 338 and 372 hides in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, see Williams, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century’, 46–50. 110 GDB, fol. 163v; Bassett, ‘The Administrative Landscape of the Diocese of Worcester in the Tenth Century’, 165, 167. The minster’s lands have their own heading (‘the lands of the church of Tewkesbury’) and are further distinguished by marginal crosses, the first and largest being placed against Stanway ‘where the minster is’ (ibi monasterium); smaller crosses appear against Taddington, Lower Lemington, Great Washbourne, Fiddington, Natton and Stanley Pontlarge. The manor of Stanway remained ‘one of the jewels in Tewkesbury’s crown’ until the Reformation (Colin Platt, Medieval Britain from the Air, London 1984, 86–7 and plate 35). 111 Yorke, ‘Æthelmær: the Foundation’, 23–4; Macray, Chron. Ramsey, 52–3, and see note 121 below. For the pre-Benedictine church at Cerne, arguably an early minster, see Katherine Barker, ‘Ælfric the Mass-Priest and the Anglo-Saxon Estates of Cerne Abbey’, in Cerne Abbey Millennium Lectures, ed. Barker, 26–42. For the possible identity of Æthelweard the Chronicler, father of Æthelmær, and Beorhtric’s grandfather, Æthelweard mæw, see note 108 above. 112 The lands said by the Waltham Chronicle (Waltham, 18–19) to have been Tovi’s lay at Lambeth

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his minster suggests that it was not merely the land which was attractive; some of the ecclesiastical buildings, especially any built in stone, may have been converted to secular uses.113 It is often supposed that the religious communities affected were defunct when their assets were stripped but this is not so with St Mary’s Deerhurst, nor with St Peter’s Shrewsbury, and it might be closer to the truth to envisage a pattern of shrinking communities, impoverished rather than totally destroyed.114 Indeed the attraction of minster lands may have lain in the fact that, though depleted in manpower and resources, they were still going concerns, with a tradition of estate-management which could be utilised by the new owners.115 Another advantage to acquiring a failing but still functioning mother-church might lie in its residual parochial rights. The qualification for the transference of tithe from a minster to a thegnly church was possession of a graveyard, a factor which must be seen in the context of lordship, the ability of the landholder to compel his dependants to bury their dead in his own church, and therefore pay their burial-dues to his own priest.116 Possession of what had once been the mother-church itself would have been even more advantageous. This cannot be illustrated in a lay context, but in the early twelfth century the tithe and burial-rights of Tisbury, an eighth-century minster acquired by Shaftesbury Abbey in the tenth century, formed part of the assets of the manor.117 Such diversion of land and assets may have had deleterious effects which accelerated the minsters’ decline. The minster at Godstone (Walkingstead) in Surrey was functioning in the 980s, when the Kentish magnate Brihtric and his wife Ælfswith bequeathed ten hides at Stratton to the minster (into þæm mynstre to Wolcnesstede), (GDB, fol. 34v), Edmonton, Mimms and Enfield (GDB, fol. 129v), Hitchin and Cheshunt (GDB, fols 132v–133, 137), Waltham, Loughton and Alderton (LDB, fols 15v, 16). The hidage figures are skewed by the reduced assessment of Hitchin, given as five hides, but with land for thirty-four ploughs. With its appurtenances (another twenty-seven hides in all) Hitchin rendered £60 TRE, and its sokemen paid another £40. 113 A large timber hall to the north of Holy Cross Waltham has been identified as Tovi’s hunting lodge (P. J. Huggins, ‘The Excavation of an Eleventh-Century Viking Hall and Fourteenth-Century Rooms at Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1969–71’, Medieval Archaeology 20, 1976, 75–133). Beorhtric’s hall at Tewkesbury is recorded in Domesday Book (GDB, fol. 163) but its site and its relationship with the minster church is unknown. For the re-use of building materials, see also Lanfranc’s letter to Bishop Peter (note 123 below). 114 John Blair, forthcoming. 115 I owe this suggestion to Rosamund Faith, who has shown that minster-lands were probably exploited more efficiently, certainly more intensively, than were lay estates (Rosamund Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship, Leicester 1997, 16–28). 116 If the thegnly church had a graveyard, the lord could divert one-third of his demesne tithes to its support; if there was no graveyard, the full tithe went to the mother-church and he could ‘pay what he chooses to his priest from the [remaining] nine parts’ (II Edgar 2, 1–2). 117 See the Shaftesbury Cartulary, BL Harleian MS 61, fol. 38v (the date is c.1130): ‘Algarus et Herdyngus habent ecclesiam et unam hidam adiacentem et ecclesie (sic) decimam de Aquilegia (Oakley) et decimam omnium hominum de Tisseberia tam liberorum quam vilanorum et decimam Turberti de Hascia et alt’ Hascia (East and West Hatch, in West Tisbury) et de Linlegea (Linley Farm, in West Tisbury) et de Nipret (Nippard, lost) et de Wicy (Wick Farm, in West Tisbury) et de Heselden (Hazeldon Farm, in West Tisbury) et de Brudeforda (Bridzor, in Tisbury) et de Epsehilla (Apshill Farm, in West Tisbury) et Staprorda (Stowford, in Ebbesborne Wake) et Aquilegia Reinaldi (Oakley) et de Ferhilla Alurici (Fernhull, lost, in East Tisbury). Et de Berewica et omnibus locis veniunt corpora ad hanc ecclesiam’. For the abbey’s acquisition of Tisbury and its estate, see Susan Kelly, Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey, Oxford 1996, no. 28, 107–114.

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but the same testators left the estate at Godstone ‘and what belongs to it’ (7 innon þæt gecynde) to their kinsman, Wulfstan uccea. This arrangement might suggest a division of the endowment between the church’s land and a lay estate comparable to that already described at Deerhurst.118 By 1066 the manor at Godstone, assessed at forty hides and worth £20, was held by Osweard, possibly a member of the same family.119 Neither church nor priest is mentioned, and the next reference to a church (presumably the present late Norman building) comes in 1193; it seems never to have had more than parochial status.120 The adverse effects of lay exploitation were recognised at the time.121 Earl Godwine had to buy his wife Gytha an estate at Woodchester in Gloucestershire ‘so that she could live off it while she resided at Berkeley; for she was unwilling to use up (comedere) anything from that manor, because of the damage to the abbey’ (pro destructione abbatiae).122 Sometimes the damage was deliberate. An extreme example of ‘residence as predation’ is recorded in Lanfranc’s reprimand to Peter, bishop of Chester, for harassing the community at Coventry: you forced an entry into their dormitory and broke into their strongboxes . . . you have robbed them of their horses and all their goods. Furthermore you pulled down their houses and ordered the materials of which these were built to be taken to your own residences; finally you remained in that monastery with your retinue for eight days eating up the monks’ provisions.123 (While I was still teaching I used to cite this passage to students as an example of the high moral tone of the Norman episcopate as opposed to those dissolute AngloSaxons.) On the other hand, the relationships between some encroaching laymen and encroached upon churches look symbiotic rather than exploitative. Grants of minsters and their lands to laymen did not necessarily mean the extinction of the church and community concerned. Lay lords might provide a degree at least of protection and support, sufficient in some cases to ensure that they were remembered as benefactors rather than spoliators. Orm Gamalson and Ulf rebuilt the churches which came into their hands, though perhaps on a lesser scale. The church of Waltham, if not restored to its former status, was re-vitalised and re-endowed by Tovi the Proud, and its clergy were grateful enough to preserve the memory of their Danish lord into the next century. At Tewkesbury, Beorhtric son of Ælfgar and his family were remembered as 118 S.1511, Campbell, Charters of Rochester no. 35, 50–1. The will of Brihtric and Ælfswith dates from

the period 973–87; a little earlier, in 971, land at Godstone had been bequeathed by Ealdorman Ælfheah to Æthelred ætheling, the future Æthelred ‘the Unready’ (S.1485). 119 GDB, fol. 34. Dr Clarke has identified this Osweard with Osweard of Norton (The English Nobility, 329–31) but he might be the Osweard of Harrietsham (GDB, fol. 7v) who attested a private Kentish deed in the late 1040s (S.1473) and some ten years earlier acted as one of the archbishop’s envoys to Harold I (S.1467). Harrietsham had, like Walkingstead, belonged to Brihtric and Ælfswith, who bequeathed it to their kinsmen Wulfheah and his brother Ælfheah, possibly the ancestors of Osweard of Harrietsham (S.1511). 120 Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, 103; VCH Surrey 4, 288–90. 121 The proprietary instincts of the Old English aristocracy are demonstrated by Ealdorman Æthelwine’s gift of his manor of Upwood, Hunts., to Ramsey, while retaining the hall so that he could continue to enjoy the hunting, hawking and perhaps fishing available in the surrounding moors and marshes (Macray, Chron. Ramsey, 52–3; the adjacent fish-weirs are specifically mentioned in the account of the grant). 122 GDB, fol. 164. 123 Lanfranc’s Letters, 112–13.

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benefactors, even if in garbled form.124 St Mary’s, Deerhurst, produced no comparable record of Odda, but he is praised for his piety both by the ‘D’ text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and by John of Worcester; he was seen as a second founder at the abbey of Pershore, Works, and remembered as a benefactor of the hermitage at Great Malvern, transformed into a priory after 1066.125 It remains hard to appreciate the motives of the laymen themselves. Were they, in endowing and maintaining the churches which they received, assuaging a sense of guilt at profiting from endowments which should have been applied to ecclesiastical purposes? Or did they regard the churches which fell into their hands simply as symbols of their power and status, on which they could exercise the conspicuous consumption which signalised that power?126 Ecclesiastics would naturally stress the first alternative, but the second should not be overlooked. The Waltham Chronicle makes much of the piety and devotion of Tovi and his wife Gytha, but when Tovi girded his own sword on the Black Rood, and Gytha had her jewellery melted down for its embellishment, this might be seen as self-adornment at one remove.127 This suggestion is not intended to cast doubts on the sincerity of the donors, merely to suggest that piety takes different forms in different societies, and that it is none the worse for that. There may have been something special about Odda of Deerhurst. The language used of him by the ‘D’ text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (‘he was a good man, and pure, and very noble’) is almost unique; elsewhere in the various versions of the Chronicle, laymen are praised (if they are praised at all) for more worldly virtues.128 Thus Earl Oslac of Northumbria, exiled in 975, appears as ‘a valiant man . . . wise and skilled in speech’ (deormod hæleð . . . wis 7 word snotor); Earl Hakon, drowned in the Pentland Firth in 1030, is ‘the gallant (dohtig) earl’; and of Ulfcytel snilling, ‘[the Danes] themselves said that they never met harder fighting in England than Ulfcytel gave them’ (swa hi sylfe sædon þæt hi næfre wyrsan handplegan on Angelcynne ne gemetton þonne Ulfcytel him to brohte).129 Such eulogies are to be expected in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is largely concerned with lay rather than ecclesiastical affairs. The only passage comparable to its praise of Odda is the ‘D’ text’s encomium on Leofric, earl of Mercia: ‘he was very wise in divine and temporal matters, which was a benefit to all this people’ (se wæs swiðe wis for Gode 7 eac for worulde: þæt fremode eallre þisre ðeode). Leofric, also 124 Monasticon ii, 59. The monks claimed to have the body of the West Saxon king Beorhtric (d.802), but he was buried at Wareham, Dorset; Steven Bassett has suggested that the tomb was actually that of Beorhtric son of Ælfgar (The Origins of the Parishes of the Deerhurst Area, 12). 125 ASC ‘D’, 1056; John of Worcester ii, 580–1 and see Williams, Land, Power and Politics, 10–12. 126 For churches as status symbols, see Geþyncðo, printed in F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Halle 1903–16, i, 456; EHD i, 431–2 (translation only). See Ann Williams, ‘A Bell-House and a Burh-geat: Lordly Residences in England before the Norman Conquest’, Medieval Knighthood 4, 1992, 221–40. 127 Waltham, 22–3. Gytha, daughter of Osgod Clapa, was presumably Tovi’s second wife; since they were married only in 1042, no son of hers could be the father of Tovi’s grandson Esger the staller, whose career was well advanced by the late 1050s (Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, 205–7). 128 God man clæne swiðe æðele (ASC ‘D’, 1056). The author of De Obsessione Dunelmi attributes the 7 7 survival of Cnut son of Carl, when the rest of his kin were massacred in the course of a blood-feud, to his ‘innate integrity’ (Christopher J. Morris, Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria: a Study of ‘De Obsessione Dunelmi’, York, Borthwick Paper no. 82, 1992, 3–4). 129 ASC ‘A’, 975, ‘C’, 1030, ‘C’ and ‘D’, 1004. The ‘D’ and ‘E’ texts for 975 call Oslac se mæra eorl, ‘the glorious earl’.

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praised by John of Worcester, was not only (like Odda) a notable benefactor of churches, but one of the few laymen to whom visionary powers were ascribed.130 More typical of his class (one suspects) is Alsige of Faringdon. He built a church at Longney in Gloucestershire, but fell foul of his diocesan bishop, St Wulfstan of Worcester, by allowing it to be overshadowed by a large nut-tree. Wulfstan ordered the tree to be cut down, but Alsige, who was accustomed to sit beneath its shade on fine days, drinking and dicing with his friends, declared that rather than comply he would let the church remain unconsecrated. Of course the bishop won; he cursed the tree, which died and had to be removed.131 There are clearly objections to a literal reading of this incident, but the use of churches for secular purposes may not have been uncommon; Archbishop Wulfstan lupus specifically forbade the practice in his Canons of Edgar.132 A final body of evidence which bears on the nature of lay piety exists in the gild statutes which survive from the tenth and eleventh centuries.133 Few of them name their founder, but the gild at Abbotsbury in Dorset was established by Urk, who gave ‘the guildhall and the site at Abbotsbury to the praise of God and St Peter and for the guildship to own it in his lifetime and after it, in lasting memory of himself and his wife’.134 All the gilds whose statutes survive are associated with churches, and there may have been an early minster at Abbotsbury, but the estate seems to have been in lay hands by the tenth century. It was given to Urk by Cnut, probably in 1033.135 He and his wife Tole acquired other lands in Dorset, perhaps amounting to just over sixty-nine hides of land, worth in excess of £60.136 Urk was a royal housecarl who served Edward the Confessor as well as Cnut, and it was probably in Edward’s reign, perhaps in 1044, that he founded a Benedictine house at Abbotsbury, dedicated to St Peter; the gild, one of whose purposes was to support the church, may date from the same time. Its main functions were to celebrate the annual feast of St Peter on 1 August, to ensure the performance of funerary rites

130 ASC ‘D’, 1057; A. S. Napier, ‘An Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia’, Transactions of the

Philological Society, 1907–10, 180–8; Milton McC. Gatch, ‘Miracles in Architectural Settings: Christ Church, Canterbury, and St Clement’s, Sandwich, in the Old English Vision of Leofric’, ASE 22, 1993, 227–52. 131 Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, 40–1. There are obvious hagiographic elements to this anecdote (Christ’s cursing of the barren fig-tree, perhaps St Boniface’s destruction of Thor’s Oak) but William claims that Coleman had it from the lips of Alsige himself. Alsige was a real person, a royal reeve who served Edward the Confessor, Harold II and William I, and continued to hold land, including Longney, in 1086 (Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 118–19). The identification of Alsige of Longney and Alsige of Faringdon has been challenged on the grounds that Longney is a long way from Alsige of Faringdon’s other estates; but Alsige of Faringdon had other lands in Gloucestershire (GDB, fols 164, 165v, 170v). 132 Roger Fowler, ed., Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, Early English Text Society, Oxford 1972, li, 6–9. 133 Gervase Rosser, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gilds’, in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 31–4. 134 Benjamin Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici, London 1865, 605–8; EHD i, no. 139, 559–60 (translation only). One of the gilds at Woodbury, Devon (see note 140 below), was known as ‘Alwine’s gild’. 135 For the history of Urk and Abbotsbury, see Simon Keynes, ‘The Lost Cartulary of Abbotsbury’, ASE 18, 1989, 207–43. For the possibility of an earlier church and a Glastonbury connection see also Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury, 44–5. In the same year (1033), Cnut gave Horton, site of another early minster disbanded in Æthelred’s time, to his housecarl Bovi; this house too had been re-established as a Benedictine community before 1066 (S.1063; Mary-Anne O’Donovan, Charters of Sherborne, London 1988, pp. lviii–lxi; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 141, 142). 136 Urk and his wife Tole died without issue, bequeathing their lands to Abbotsbury; the figures given assume that the lands held by Abbotsbury in 1066 represent this bequest (GDB, fols 78–78v, 83v).

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for its deceased members, and if one of them should die at a distance, to fetch his body ‘to the place which he desired in his life’. Similar concerns appear elsewhere. The thegns’ gild of Cambridge supplied half the provisions for the funeral feast of a deceased brother, and required all the members, on pain of a fine, to attend the feast and contribute to the almsgiving; as at Abbotsbury, anyone who dies ‘outside the district’ is to be fetched ‘where he wishes’.137 At Exeter, when a member died each brother paid for six Masses or six psalters of psalms.138 At Bedwyn in Wiltshire likewise, each member paid for five Masses or five psalters and on the thirtieth day afterwards, each pair of members contributed five loaves and a pennyworth of something to accompany them, presumably for the feasting and almsgiving which accompanied the funeral.139 The members of two rural gilds at Woodbury, Devon, contributed 1d each as soul-scot for departed members.140 The gilds had other functions apart from these funerary duties. The Cambridge statutes mention the help which the brothers might expect from each other, specifically in the prosecution of the blood-feud, and at both Exeter and Bedwyn the brethren helped their members repair homes destroyed by fire; at Exeter, the brethren also contributed to the expenses of any member who undertook the pilgrimage to Rome.141 But it is the emphasis on burial which seems primary, and (given that we are currently sitting on the field where so many English thegns and free men lost their lives) it is a theme worth pursuing just a little further. The desire for a proper burial, both on the part of the deceased and of his kindred, is not a specifically medieval preoccupation. As I was writing an early draft of this paper, I caught a Radio 4 transmission on the public duty to bury solitaries and destitute people; the council officer in Haringey charged with this responsibility remembered the fears expressed by older residents of what they called ‘the nine-o’clock trot’, referring to the hasty burial of paupers early in the morning before ‘respectable’ funerals were solemnised. Reading the Old English gild statutes must strike a chord in anyone who has arranged the funeral of a friend or relative, and tried to fulfil the wishes of the deceased as expressed in their lifetime. It is not the concern with the hereafter, nor even the fear of death that seems familiar, but the desire to have the physical body properly interred. To judge from the daily news, the most commonly expressed anxiety of those whose relatives have died at a distance (usually in tragic circumstances) is to find the body and bring it home for burial. In 1999, during the fruitless search for the bodies of those ‘disappeared’ by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, a Catholic nun was quoted as saying that ‘to withhold the bodies of the dead 137 Thorpe, Diplomatarium, 610–13; EHD i, no. 136, 557–8 (translation only). Compare Æthelweard the Chronicler’s account of the removal of Ealdorman Æthelwulf’s body from the battlefield at Reading to Northworthig (Derby), and the Chronicle’s account of how the lithesmen of London took the body of the murdered Beorn Estrithson from Devon for burial in the Old Minster at Winchester (A. Campbell, ed., The Chronicle of Æthelweard, London 1962, 37; ASC ‘E’, 1049 [in the ‘C’ text it is Beorn’s cousin Harold Godwineson who performs this service]). 138 Thorpe, Diplomatarium, 613–14; EHD i, no. 137, 558–9 (translation only). 139 EHD i, no. 138, 559 (translation only). 140 Thorpe, Diplomatarium, 608. Brief accounts are given of the customs of two of the three Woodbury gilds; for the third (‘Alwine’s gild’), as for the remaining rural gilds, only a list of members is provided. Only for the rural gilds of Devonshire is it made clear that women might be among the members; Adeleoua (Æthelgifu) appears at Woodbury and Godgith (Godgyth) at Exmouth (Thorpe, Diplomatarium, 608–10). 141 The statutes make little or no mention of the public responsibilities of gilds, for which see W. Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings, London 1967, 124–31; Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury; Haslam, ‘Parishes, Churches, Wards and Gates in Eastern London’, 35–43.

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from their grieving relatives is to commit a double crime’. Compare the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, reporting the wreck of the White Ship: ‘to their friends this was a double grief; first, that they lost their lives so swiftly; second, that few of their bodies were found afterwards’.142 This urgent desire to pay proper respect to the physical corpse links medieval and modern (even contemporary) sentiment, and provides us with an insight into the springs of lay piety in the remote world of pre-Conquest England.

142 The Times, 3 June 1999; ASC, 1120.

Révolte nobiliaire et lutte dynastique

RÉVOLTE NOBILIAIRE ET LUTTE DYNASTIQUE DANS L’EMPIRE ANGEVIN (1154–1224)1 Martin Aurell La révolte nobiliaire est inhérente aux territoires gouvernés par les Plantagenêt. Elle fait même partie intégrante de leur vie sociale et politique. Elle est un élément essentiel du système qui règle les relations entre la royauté et l’aristocratie. Elle éclate avec une régularité remarquable. Elle obtient la Magna Carta, si décisive pour l’évolution institutionnelle ultérieure de la monarchie anglaise.2 Elle est responsable du retour de la Normandie (1204), des pays ligériens et, enfin, en 1224, du Poitou à la couronne de France. Elle est pour beaucoup dans l’impossible survie de l’Empire angevin. Pour mesurer l’ampleur du phénomène, prenons l’exemple de l’Aquitaine. Sous le règne d’Henri II, il existe, en moyenne, un soulèvement seigneurial contre les officiers royaux tous les trois ans et demi. Ses épicentres se trouvent dans le Limousin, où le domaine propre du roi est inexistant, et surtout dans le comté d’Angoulême, où les Taillefer et ensuite les Lusignan, toujours en conflit contre le duc, se constituent une véritable principauté territoriale indépendante, enclavée au cœur de l’Aquitaine.3 La violence de ces soulèvements est telle qu’elle aboutit parfois à l’assassinat des représentants d’Henri II: ces mêmes Lusignan sont à l’origine du meurtre de Patrick de Salisbury en 1168 et d’un ami très proche de Richard Ier en 1188.4 Le sort d’un Anglais en Poitou n’est pas toujours très rassurant, comme le prouvent les remarques d’Isaac, abbé de l’Étoile: ‘Hugues, seigneur de Chauvigny, proclame sur les toits qu’il veut se venger sur moi de tous les Anglais. Ah si je n’étais pas anglais et si, à l’endroit

1

Que John Gillingham soit sincèrement remercié de m’avoir invité à présenter cette communication au colloque de Battle et d’en avoir amélioré sa version imprimée par ses remarques. 2 Le poids de l’aristocratie dans l’obtention de la Magna Carta est mis en relief, ou peut-être amplifié, par les études de J. C. Holt, Magna Carta, Cambridge 1992 (2e éd.); Magna Carta and the Idea of Liberty, dir. J. C. Holt, New York 1972. Une vision plus classique, qui accorde à nouveau la place qui lui revient à Etienne Langton, archevêque de Cantorbéry, se retrouve dans N. M. Fryde, ‘The Roots of Magna Carta. Opposition to the Plantagenets’, dans Political Thought and the Realities of Power in the Middle Ages, dir. J. Canning, O. G. Oexle, Göttingen 1998, 3–65, et Why Magna Carta? Angevin England Revisited, Münster 2001, que l’auteur nous a généreusement communiqué, sous sa forme manuscrite, avant sa parution. 3 A. Debord, La société laïque dans les pays de la Charente, Xe–XIIe siècles, Paris 1984, 382–96. Pour le comté d’Angoulême, cet auteur va jusqu’à parler d’‘embryon d’Etat’, Ibid., 392. Cf., en dernier lieu, C. Dubuc, ‘Les possessions poitevines des Lusignan’, et B. Barrière, ‘Le comté de la Marche, une pièce originale de l’héritage Lusignan’, dans Isabelle d’Angoulême, comtesse-reine et son temps (1186–1246), Poitiers 1999, 17–26 et 27–35. 4 Pour Patrick de Salisbury, cf. P. Meyer dans son édition de L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, Paris 1891–1901, t. 3, 25–6, n. 6; J. Gillingham, Richard I, New Haven (Ct)1999, 90, sur l’assassinat par Geoffroy de Lusignan d’un représentant du duc d’Aquitaine en 1188, qui a pu entraîner une confusion de la part des chroniqueurs anglais avec les événements de 1168.

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où je suis exilé, je n’avais jamais vu d’Anglais!’5 Enfin, à partir de 1202, encore les Lusignan donnent un argument juridique à la conquête française de la Normandie, en raison de l’affaire de la rupture du mariage par verba de presenti d’Isabelle d’Angoulême, qu’ils portent devant le tribunal de Philippe Auguste.6 L’hostilité des nobles aquitains à l’égard du roi d’Angleterre et de ses représentants, contre lesquels ils n’hésitent guère à prendre les armes, n’est que trop souvent ouverte. Certes leur principauté est la plus périphérique et la moins bien contrôlée par les Plantagenêt, mais des exemples similaires pourraient être pris dans d’autres régions. Les médiévistes britanniques et américains ont, de longue date, pris conscience de l’ampleur et de l’importance du phénomène de la rébellion nobiliaire. À l’instar de J. E. A. Jolliffe,7 ils insistent sur le caractère indéniablement autocratique de l’idéologie du roi, même si, sur le terrain, celui-ci ne réussit pas toujours à imposer les structures administratives souhaitées.8 À l’égard du souverain et de ses méthodes chaque jour plus efficaces de gouvernement, l’attitude de la noblesse est double. Elle peut certes répondre à la docilité, à la loyauté et au service.9 Mais elle prend, plus souvent peut-être, le visage de la contestation et de la revendication: l’aristocratie, profondément attachée à son propre pouvoir de contrainte et à l’autonomie de ses seigneuries, supporte mal la rhétorique ou les faits centralisateurs de la royauté et de ses agents, ressentis comme des griefs et même comme des attaques à l’honneur du lignage ancestral. C’est pourquoi sa révolte peut être analysée comme une riposte à la coercition royale. Les sources reflètent parfois ce discours nobiliaire d’hostilité envers le monarque. Les vieilles épopées, dont raffolent les chevaliers du XIIe siècle, mettent en scène le refus d’obéissance au roi indigne, le feluns reis ou traitre e fel, qui n’hésite pas à s’emparer injustement de l’héritage de ses sujets; J. Gillingham a récemment mis en valeur ce thème du ‘mauvais roi’ dans l’ Estoire des Engleis (1136–7) de Geoffroi Gaimar,10 qui met en avant la légitimité de la rébellion contre le roi ayant outrepassé ses droits. La révolte aristocratique est justifiée par un discours hostile aux 5

Notations marginales à son traité De canone Missæ (1166), PL, t. 194, col. 1895B. Cf. G. Raciti, ‘Isaac de l’Etoile et son siècle’, Cîteaux, 1961, 145. 6 N. Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel’, dans King John: New Interpretations, dir. S. Church, Woodbridge 1999, 173–4. 7 Angevin Kingship, Londres 1963 (2e éd.). 8 Le modèle developpé par J. Boussard dans Le Comté d’Anjou sous Henri Plantagenêt et ses fils, 1151–1204, Paris 1938, et Le Gouvernement d’Henri II Plantagenêt, Paris 1956, qui insiste sur la fermeté et l’efficacité des institutions locales du gouvernement des Plantagenêt, est de nos jours fortement nuancé. Cf. N. Vincent, ‘King Henry II and the Poitevins’, dans La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), dir. M. Aurell, Poitiers 2001, 103–36. 9 Les ouvrages récents sur la noblesse dans l’entourage des Plantagenêt sont nombreux: T. K. Keefe, Feudal Assessments and the Political Community under Henry II and his Sons, Berkeley (Ca) 1983; idem, ‘Counting those who Count: A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Charter Witness-Lists and the Itinerant Court in the First Year of the Reign of King Richard I’, HSJ 1, 1989, 135–45; idem, ‘Place–Date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage Strategies at the Court of King Henry II Plantagenet’, HSJ 2, 1990, 179–88; N. Vincent, Peter des Roches. An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238, Cambridge 1996; R. V. Turner, Men Raised from the Dust. Administrative Service and Upward Mobility in Angevin England, Philadelphie (Pen) 1988; idem, Judges, Administrators and the Common Law, Londres 1994. Cf. tout récemment les textes des communications de M. Billoré, F. Chauvenet, R. Turner et N. Vincent dans La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), dir. M. Aurell, Poitiers 2000. 10 ‘Kingship, Chivalry and Love. Political and Cultural Values in the Earliest History written in French: Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis’, dans J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, Woodbridge 2000, 233–58.

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empiétements des officiers de la monarchie sur la juridiction seigneuriale, à leurs excessives exigences fiscales ou au caractère autoritaire des décisions du gouvernement et de leur application. Ces thèmes apparaissent dans la liste des griefs des soulevés de 1173, dressée par Raoul de Diss: ils reprochent à Henri II la confiscation des domaines seigneuriaux, la commise des châteaux, les lourdes amendes, voire l’exil de ses opposants.11 Dans sa loyauté au roi, le doyen de Saint Paul’s de Londres tente certes de présenter les contradictions internes des arguments des détracteurs d’Henri II: il fait remarquer que les mesures répressives du roi ne menacent que les traîtres, hostiles à la couronne ou oppresseurs du pauvre. Son témoignage n’en demeure pas moins significatif du rejet de la croissance du pouvoir royal par une large partie de la noblesse. Dans un tel contexte, la conscience aristocratique ne semble que faiblement troublée par la mise en cause de l’autorité du monarque. Pour en augmenter les scrupules, la royauté élabore, de son côté, un discours contraire centré sur la notion de traîtrise et sur le personnage du traître (proditio, proditor). La vision que les écrivains fidèles au roi transmettent de la trahison est très large. Pour Raoul de Diss, dans le texte analysé plus haut, elle englobe probablement les injustices des nobles à l’encontre des paysans de leur seigneurie. Mais elle n’est pas toujours si bien fondée sur le plan rationnel. En 1166, dans une lettre adressée à Thomas Becket, son auteur inconnu rapporte la terrible colère d’Henri II – ‘arrachant ses cheveux, détachant sa ceinture et jetant au loin son manteau et sa robe’ – contre son courtisan Richard du Hommet, qui a osé lui parler en faveur du roi d’Écosse: ‘Henri l’a manifestement appelé “traître”.’12 Cet exemple montre combien le roi définit de façon vaste une telle forfaiture: un simple mot suffit; il ne faut pas en venir aux armes pour la commettre; le refus de service militaire ou de reddition de château, mais aussi le départ inopiné de la cour sans sa permission, impliquent qu’on devienne traître. C’est dire le caractère extrêmement subjectif qui préside à la définition de la proditio par le roi, qui détermine à quel moment et pour quelle raison tel noble fait acte de trahison et se révolte contre lui. Aussi vaguement soient-elles caractérisées, ces séditions relèvent du sacrilège pour le roi et les intellectuels de son entourage. Elles s’attaquent, en effet, à un être paré de la dignité surnaturelle de l’onction, au mépris du commandement divin révélé aux prophètes, point de départ d’un excellent article de M. Strickland sur la question:13 ‘Ne touchez pas à mes oints’ (‘Nolite tangere christos meos’, 1 Par, 16, 22, Ps 104, 15). Le caractère sacré de la royauté est alors renforcé par la renaissance du droit romain, qui diffuse la notion de majesté; le roi, source unique de la loi, doit être aveuglement obéi: toute résistance à ses ordres constitue un crime gravissime de lèse-majesté.14 De son côté, quoique moins autocratique et plus contractuel, le droit

11 Diceto i, 371. 12 ‘Epistolæ S. Thomæ, Cantuarburiensis archiepiscopi’, dans RHF, t. 16, éd. L. Delisle, Paris 1876,

256–7. Sur la colère du roi et sa dimension sociale, cf. G. Althoff, ‘Ira regis. Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger’, dans Anger’s Past. The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, dir. B. Rosenwein, Cornell (NY) 1998, 59–74. 13 M. Strickland, ‘Against the Lord’s Anointed: Aspects of Warfare and Baronial Rebellion in England and Normandy, 1075–1265’, dans Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in honour of Sir James Holt, dir. G. Garnett et J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 57–79. 14 Sur l’introduction du droit romain en Angleterre, cf. H. Kantorowicz et B. Smalley, ‘An English Theologian’s View of Roman Law: Pepo, Irnerius, Ralph Niger’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 1, 1943, 237–52.

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féodal traditionnel contemple la rébellion comme un acte de félonie, comme une rupture arbitraire du serment de la foi et de l’hommage. Même tempérée par les valeurs chevaleresques,15 la répression de cette trahison est relativement dure: dévastation des domaines, confiscation de quelques seigneuries, lourdes amendes, emprisonnement ou exil sont les peines appliquées aux fauteurs de trouble.16 En voici quelques exemples. C’est peut-être à la suite de l’assassinat de Patrick de Salisbury en 1168 que Gui de Lusignan est contraint de fuir en Terre sainte, où il deviendra un jour roi de Jérusalem; deux cents quarante-deux partisans d’Arthur de Bretagne, battus à Mirebeau (1202), sont enfermés dans le château de Corfe (Dorset), où ils sont vingt-deux à mourir de faim;17 en 1157, Henri d’Essex, porte-étendard du roi, fuit devant une embuscade galloise, et il est accusé de trahison par Robert de Montfort, qui le bat en duel judiciaire: le roi le contraint à devenir moine à Reading et il lui confisque son patrimoine.18 Contrairement à leurs prédécesseurs, les Plantagenêt n’ont, toutefois, pas mis en œuvre des châtiments plus cruels, comme la mutilation ou l’exécution.19 Si tant est qu’il a existé, l’assassinat en cachettes d’Arthur de Bretagne a d’autant plus scandalisé l’opinion qu’il est exceptionnel.20 Autre signe d’assouplissement: la commise définitive des fiefs devient inhabituelle, puisque l’idée de leur hérédité est incompatible avec la punition de la progéniture pour la révolte du père.21 Les seigneurs normands de Laigle, maîtres de la région frontalière du Perche, ont ainsi vu leurs domaines anglais confisqués pour avoir participé à la révolte de 1173, mais Henri II ne tarde pas à leur rendre ces seigneuries ancestrales.22 Toutefois, que le roi réprime moins sévèrement que par le passé l’indiscipline de ses chevaliers ne diminue en rien la rigidité de son idée sur l’obéissance. La qualité humaine du rapport entre le seigneur et le vassal est essentielle pour comprendre la docilité au roi de la part de l’aristocratie ou, au contraire, sa révolte. Or, ce thème est fréquent dans l’historiographie des Plantagenêt. Ainsi, Jordan Fantosme affirme que, si les barons d’Henri II ont gagné la guerre contre Guillaume d’Écosse, c’est en raison de la confiance et de la loyauté, qu’ils ont conservées envers leur maître.23 Écrite peu après sa mort, l’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal vise à démontrer que ses choix politiques, souvent discutés, ont toujours été honnêtes, car déterminés par la fidélité à la parole donnée à son seigneur et aux hommes de son ost.24 De son côté, Giraud de Barri raconte que le lévrier d’Owain, un guerrier de l’armée d’Henri II a reçu sept blessures pour avoir secouru son maître, au plus fort 15 J. Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, dans Gillingham, The English,

209–32. 16 J. A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England, Cambridge 1997, 257–64. 17 R. Hajdu, ‘A History of the Nobility of Poitou, 1150–1270’, Ph.D., Princeton University 1973, 312; M.

Cao Carmichael de Baglie, ‘Savary de Mauléon (ca. 1180–1223), chevalier-troubadour poitevin: traîtrise et société aristocratique’, Le Moyen Age 105, 1999, 274. 18 Torigni, 218; Newburgh i, 325; II, 5. 19 Au début du XIIe siècle, aveuglement et castration de ceux qui complotent contre le roi sont encore répandus, C. W. Hollister, ‘Royal Acts of Mutilation’, Albion 10, 1978, 330–40. 20 M. D. Legge, ‘William the Marshal and Arthur of Brittany’, BIHR 55, 1982, 18–24. 21 Green, Aristocracy, 264; Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 44–5, 67–77 et 311–13. 22 K. Thompson, ‘The Lords of Laigle: Ambition and Insecurity on the Border of Normandy’, ANS 18, 1995 (1996), 191–2. 23 Chronicle, éd. et trad. angl. R. C. Johnston, Oxford 1981, v. 457–8. 24 D. Crouch, ‘The Hidden History of the Twelfth Century’, HSJ 5, 1993, 113. Au sujet de la loyauté de Guillaume le Maréchal au roi, cf. un préambule d’un acte qui reprend l’image biblique de l’or dans la

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d’une bataille contre les Gallois; le chien est amené au roi comme symbole de loyauté canine, au sujet de laquelle Giraud se lance dans une longue louange: c’est un attachement similaire à son endroit qu’Henri II aimerait voir chez ses sujets.25 Enfin, un dernier texte témoigne de l’importance du lien personnel dans les choix politiques de l’aristocratie: Rigord (vers 1158–1208), historiographe officiel de Philippe Auguste, rapporte que, en 1202, bien de ses guerriers abandonnent la lutte contre le Capétien et préfèrent partir pour la croisade, ‘en raison de la mort du roi Richard d’heureux souvenir’.26 Que cela nous plaise ou pas à des médiévistes que l’historiographie des Annales a appris à raisonner en termes de structures et de mouvements sociaux ou mentaux profonds, l’impopularité de Jean Sans Terre parmi ses nobles est pour beaucoup dans la perte de la Normandie (1204).27 Et il nous faudrait percer la conscience de ces guerriers aristocratiques, sonder leurs cœurs et leurs reins, pour comprendre plus précisément les raisons de leur choix politique, somme toute, personnel et libre. Dans sa simplicité, ce constat traduit le malaise de l’historien qui applique des grilles de lecture cartésiennes au phénomène de la réponse de la noblesse à l’accroissement de l’administration des Plantagenêt. La révolte nobiliaire peut certainement être analysée comme un système dont les principaux éléments seraient le renforcement du gouvernement central du roi, la présence de ses officiers en périphérie, la reddition des châteaux à la couronne, les progrès de la justice de la monarchie au détriment des tribunaux seigneuriaux, la pression exercée sur les feudataires pour qu’ils accomplissent leur service militaire ou pour qu’ils s’acquittent de l’écuage, la brutalité des mercenaires de l’armée du souverain . . . La liste pourrait être allongée, et dans l’état actuel de nos recherches on aurait du mal à faire la part des causes premières et secondes de la contestation aristocratique à la royauté anglaise. À ces éléments endogènes, fomentant la révolte au sein de l’aristocratie de l’Empire Plantagenêt, il faut considérer, surtout à partir des années 1190, des facteurs de nature exogène.28 Le plus important d’entre eux semble le retour en force, sur la scène politique, des Capétiens, ennemis invétérés des Plantagenêt et maîtres historiques de la plupart de leurs principautés, pour lesquelles ils reçoivent leur hommage en marche.29 En effet, sur le continent, le roi de France revendique une légitimité monarchique qui fait terriblement défaut aux Angevins, ses vassaux bien malgré eux.30 Leur allégeance est une aubaine pour le noble de leurs territoires qui souhaiterait se soulever, car il peut jouer sur l’appui plus ou moins explicite du Capétien, leur maître, pour excuser sa sédition.

fournaise: ‘Tamquam aurum in fornace, in necessitate probavit’, Patent Rolls de 1216–1225, cités par J. C. Holt, The Northerners. A Study in the Reign of King John, Oxford 1961, 254. 25 Itinerarium Kambrie, dans Giraldi Cambrensis Opera vi, 69; I, 7. 26 Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, éd. F. Delaborde, Paris 1882, t. 1, 153, no 139. 27 ‘The collapse is much more plausibly attributed to the question marks against John’s personality than to any structural reasons [. . .] With John’s accession there came to the throne a king whose reputation was even more unsavoury than Philip’s’, Gillingham, Richard I, 340. 28 J. W. Baldwin, ‘La décennie décisive: les années 1190–1203 dans le règne de Philippe Auguste’, Revue historique 266, 1981, 311–37. 29 J.-F. Lemarignier, Hommage en marche: recherches sur l’hommage en marche et les frontières féodales, Lille 1945. 30 ‘The main weakness of the Plantagenets and the main strength of the Capetians lay in the feudal suzerainity of the kings of France’, J. C. Holt, ‘The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm’, dans J. C. Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government, Londres 1985, 254.

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Il existe un élément bien plus important encore pour comprendre l’importance que revêt la révolte dans l’Empire angevin, problème des plus éclairants sur lequel il faut à présent se pencher. Il s’agit des divisions et luttes internes à la famille, au sens strict et moderne du terme, d’Henri II, auxquelles seront consacrées les pages qui suivent. Les Plantagenêt font preuve, les uns contre les autres, d’une agressivité remarquable. En effet, Henri II, sa femme Aliénor d’Aquitaine et leur innombrable progéniture n’ont jamais cessé de se battre. En témoignent la vaste révolte de 1173, fomentée par Aliénor et par ses fils Henri le Jeune, Richard Cœur de Lion et Geoffroi de Bretagne, la nouvelle rébellion d’Henri le Jeune en Limousin en 1183, ou le harcèlement fatal d’Henri II malade, en 1189, par les troupes du même Richard, sans parler du meurtre fort vraisemblable du jeune Arthur de Bretagne par son oncle Jean Sans Terre au lendemain de la bataille de Mirebeau. Ces luttes frappent par leur réitération. Elles s’enchaînent dans un perpétuel recommencement. Elles déclenchent la rébellion aristocratique. Ce lien de cause à effet entre la querelle domestique et le soulèvement des nobles permet de nuancer une vision trop tranchée des rapports entre la royauté autocratique et les seigneurs férus de leurs privilèges. Ainsi que T. K. Keefe le faisait remarquer, la révolte de 1173 n’est pas une riposte aux enquêtes et prélèvements nouveaux d’Henri II.31 Comme plusieurs autres, elle est davantage la guerre des partisans du fils contre ceux du père que le soulèvement aristocratique contre les taxes royales. Ces luttes armées entre parents pourraient appartenir à la fiction. Du moins, les guerres familiales apparaissent-elles constamment dans la littérature de la période. Geoffroi Gaimar met, par exemple, en scène la lutte entre le Danois Haveloc et l’oncle de sa femme, qui essaie de l’écarter de la royauté. L’Histoire des rois de Bretagne (1138) de Geoffroi de Monmouth (vers 1100–55), évêque de Saint-Asaph (Llanelwy), présente Brennius et Belinus, se révoltant contre leur père pour se battre ensuite l’un contre l’autre. Dans le Roman du Brut (1155), qui en est la traduction et la paraphrase, Wace fait de Mordred, le pire des ennemis d’Arthur, son propre neveu; il jette, d’ailleurs, sur ce ‘chevalier merveilleux et preux’ le regard positif que Monmouth portait sur lui.32 On dirait les Plantagenêt sortis tout droit de l’imagination d’un romancier de leur temps. Ce sont les Atrides du XIIe siècle. Cette dernière comparaison peut apparaître comme anachronique. Le chroniqueur Richard de Devizes, contemporain et admirateur de Richard Cœur de Lion, s’y rapproche pourtant de beaucoup, tandis qu’il affirme que la dynastie angevine est ‘la confuse maison d’Œdipe’.33 Or, ces luttes intra-familiales contrastent avec l’unité interne de la maison royale capétienne, consciente que sa survie repose sur une solidarité sans faille de ses membres et sur leur stricte obéissance à l’aîné. Elles entraînent souvent une hostilité et une rancune insatiables, passions que les écrits des clercs de cour essaient de modérer par leurs conseils. Bien qu’il les ait souvent pardonnés et qu’il leur ait remis leurs possessions, l’animosité d’Henri II à l’égard de ses fils est grande. Entre 1188 et

31 ‘The 1168 and 1172 levies were not a factor in the rebellion’, Feudal Assessments, 117. L’auteur prend ici ses distances à l’égard de J. E. A. Jolliffe et de W. L. Warren. 32 Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, éd. A. Bell, Oxford 1960, 3–25; Wace, Le Roman de Brut, éd. I. Arnold, Paris 1938–40, v. 11173–4; R. Allen, ‘Eorles and Beornes: Contextualizing Lawman’s Brut’, Arthuriana 8 (3), 1998, 5–6 et 14; J. C. Holt, Colonial England, 1066–1215, Londres 1997, 313. 33 Chronicon Richardi Divisensis de tempore regis Richardi Primi. The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, éd. et trad. angl. J. T. Appleby, Londres 1963, 2–3, d’après une citation de la Thébaide de Stace.

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1189, alors que la révolte de Richard Cœur de Lion bat son plein, Pierre de Blois rédige un peu probable Dialogue entre le roi Henri et l’abbé de Bonnevaux, où le père maudit ses enfants et les voue en enfer, auprès d’un ecclésiastique qui tente de l’amener à de meilleurs sentiments.34 Pour être vraisemblable, un tel scénario, qui sert à Pierre de Blois de prétexte pour pousser ses éventuels lecteurs laïcs au repentir et à la fréquentation des sacrements, doit répondre à une certaine réalité. Les haines qui couvent au sein de la famille royale sont féroces. Un chroniqueur aussi cultivé que Raoul de Diss est capable de montrer qu’elles ont connu de nombreux précédents historiques. Il cite à l’appui les bibliques Jephté, fils de Galaad, Absalon, fils de David, et Adrammélek et Scharet, assassins de leur père Sennachérib, roi d’Assyrie; l’abrégé de Trogué-Pompée par Justin (IIIe–IVe siècles), les Antiquités judaïques de Flavius Joseph (37–vers 95) ou l’Histoire scolastique de Pierre le Mangeur (1100–79) lui servent à évoquer les parricides de la cour des Perses et d’Hérodes; grâce à Sigebert de Gembloux (vers 1030–1112), il peut aborder les disputes de Mérovingiens, Wisigoths et Carolingiens; Geoffroi de Monmouth et Jean de Worcester sont sa source essentielle pour les rois anglo-saxons et normands; en revanche, des traditions orales, qu’il a connues par le couple royal ou par son entourage continental, fondent probablement sa description des luttes entre Guillaume IX (1086–1126) et Guillaume X (1126–37) d’Aquitaine et entre Foulques Nerra (987–1040) et Geoffroi Martel (1040–60) d’Anjou. L’histoire vient au secours des intellectuels proches des Plantagenêt, qui essaient de démontrer que l’attitude de leurs maîtres, sans être banale, s’insère dans une certaine continuité parmi les grandes lignées royales ou princières. Il n’empêche qu’ils en perçoivent les conséquences sous un jour catastrophique. Les annales de Saint-Aubin d’Angers écrivent à 1173: ‘les trois fils du roi Henri se révoltent ensemble contre leur père: les royaumes terrestres en sont bouleversés, les églises désolées, la religion foulée aux pieds et la paix enlevée de la terre’.35 L’incidence des querelles familiales sur l’ensemble du royaume est ainsi nettement exprimée; le conflit domestique prend des proportions inattendues. Comme l’écrit Gautier Map, un roi capable gouverne ses territoires ‘à la façon d’un bon père de 34 ‘Dialogus inter regem Henricum II et abbatem Bonnevallis’, éd. R. B. C. Huygens, Revue bénédictine

68, 1958, 97. D’après R. W. Southern (‘Peter of Blois and the Third Crusade’, dans Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, éd. H. Mayr-Harting, R. J. Moore, Londres 1985, 208–11, référence bibliographique qui nous a été aimablement indiquée par Nicholas Vincent), cette conversation entre Henri II et l’abbé Christian, abbé de Saint-Florentin de Bonneval (diocèse de Chartres, arrondissement de Châteaudun), entre 1188 et 1198, a bel et bien eu lieu, Pierre se contentant d’en transcrire les termes. Parmi les arguments retenus par ce médiéviste: le témoignage de Christian à un acte de Thibaut, comte de Blois, en 1188; l’affirmation de Giraud de Barri selon laquelle Henri II passait, peu avant sa mort, plus de temps à discuter avec les ecclésiastiques qu’avec les laïcs; la décision du roi de se croiser; sa colère envers son fils Richard qui a prêté hommage à Philippe Auguste, acte des plus déloyaux à son égard . . . Nous préférons plutôt voir dans l’abbé de Bonnevaux un personnage allégorique, car on s’imagine mal Pierre de Blois en scribe fidèle du dialogue entre les deux hommes. Ce prétendu abbé renvoie peut-être au vague souvenir du cistercien saint Pierre, archévêque de Tarentaise, donnant lieu à un culte immédiatement après sa mort en 1174 et canonisé en 1191. Moine de Bonnevaux (diocèse et arrondissement de Vienne) dans sa jeunesse, Pierre intervint directement dans la réconciliation d’Henri II et Louis VII le mercredi de cendres de 1170. Sa Vita est due à Geoffroi d’Auxerre, AA SS, 8 Mai (BHL 6773), 330–1, pour la trêve de 1170. Il existe encore d’autres établissements religieux d’hommes de ce nom dans le domaine des Plantagenêt, qui aurait pu inspirer le monastère de ce peu probable confident: Bonnevaux, abbaye cistercienne fondée en 1119 par Hugues de Lusignan sur ses terres, et deux prieurés limousin de Grandmont, ordre érémitique particulièrement favorisé par Henri II: Bonneval-de-Montusclat et Bonneval-de-Serre. 35 Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises, éd. L. Halphen, Paris 1903, 16.

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famille dirigeant son foyer’.36 Il conçoit donc la harmonie de la maison d’Anjou comme un préalable indispensable à la pacification et au contrôle de l’Empire Plantagenêt. L’analyse de son admirateur et plagiaire Giraud de Barri ne diffère guère,37 tandis qu’il dresse le bilan du règne d’Henri II et de ses fils, qu’il insiste sur l’ampleur de leurs disputes, châtiment voulu par Dieu, et qu’il conclut sur la tradition tyrannique des gouvernants des îles en général et de l’Angleterre en particulier.38 Pour ces deux clercs, à qui la lecture quotidienne de l’Évangile a appris que tout royaume divisé contre lui-même périra, l’échec final de Jean Sans Terre face aux Capétiens trouve sa cause principale dans la mésentente pathétique des Angevins. Quand ils se penchent sur les raisons profondes de cette dispute sans cesse renouvelée, ces prêtres adoptent un discours où merveilleux païen et providence chrétienne se mêlent inextricablement. C’est dans une atmosphère surnaturelle que baigne, par exemple, le récit de Roger de Howden sur la dernière guerre entre Henri II et Richard Cœur de Lion: au cours d’un de leurs entretiens en rase campagne, la foudre tombe entre le père et le fils, alors que le ciel est dégagé de nuages; au moment où Richard pénètre dans la salle du château de Chinon où repose le cadavre de son père, celui-ci se met subitement à saigner des narines, phénomène de cruentation qui désigne le meurtrier dans le jugement de Dieu médiéval.39 Chez le chroniqueur d’habitude si sobre qu’est Roger de Howden, le surnaturel fait irruption dans la querelle intra-familiale. Il accroît ainsi le caractère extraordinaire de l’âpre dispute entre le fils et le père, comme si cette lutte n’avait d’autre explication que magique. C’est, en effet, sur le registre du mythe des origines que plusieurs penseurs se placent pour rendre intelligible ces conflits.40 Giraud de Barri rappelle que les comtes d’Anjou descendent d’une fée maléfique – identifiable peut-être à Mélusine41 – qui s’est évaporée dans les airs alors qu’elle assistait, contrainte et forcée par son époux, à la consécration de la messe, ce qu’elle avait toujours refusé de faire.42 Originaire de Cologne, Césaire (vers 1180–1240), prieur du monastère cistercien de Heisterbach, se fonde sur cette anecdote, largement diffusée en Occident, pour comparer les rois d’Angleterre à Merlin, britannique comme eux et engendré par un démon incube, car ‘l’on dit qu’ils descendent d’une mère fantomatique’.43 Giraud de Barri affirme que Richard Cœur de Lion commentait cette légende pour justifier les guerres au sein de sa famille, et qu’il en concluait: ‘Nous, qui provenons du diable, reviendrons au diable.’ Il dit, de même, que Bernard de Clairvaux (1091–1153), proche du roi de 36 De Nugis Curialium. Courtiers’ Trifles, éd. et trad. angl. M. R. James, C. N. L. Brooke et R. A. B.

Mynors, Oxford 1983, 485. 37 Sur les relations, qu’on ne saurait qualifier au sens strict d’amicales, entre ces deux personnages, cf. A.

K. Bate, ‘Walter Map and Giraldus Cambrensis’, Latomus 31, 1972, 860–75. 38 De principis instructione, III, 27, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera viii, 303. 39 Howden, Chronica ii, 366, Howden, Gesta ii, 71. Cf. B. B. Broughton, The Legends of King Richard I

Coeur de Lion, La Haye–Paris 1966, 88–9, et H. Platelle, ‘La voix du sang: le cadavre qui saigne en présence du meurtrier’, dans Actes du 99e congrès national des sociétés savantes, Paris 1977, t. 1, 161–79. 40 Sur les mythes d’origines des familles aristocratiques, cf. E. Bournazel, ‘Mémoire et parenté’, dans La France de l’an Mil, dir. R. Delord, Paris 1990, 114–24. 41 J. Le Goff et E. Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Mélusine maternelle et défricheuse’, Annales ESC 26, 1971, 587–621. 42 De Principis Instructione III, 27, 301. Le refus de voir l’eucharistie par cette fée a été mis en parallèle, de façon trop audacieuse peut-être, avec la négative de Jean Sans Terre à communier le jour de son couronnement, H. G. Richardson et G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta, Edimbourg 1963, 331. 43 De matre phantastica descendisse, Dialogus miraculorum, éd. J. Strange, Cologne 1851, III, 12.

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France, et Héraclius, patriarche de Jérusalem, dépité par le refus d’Henri II à partir en croisade en 1185, sous prétexte que ses fils se révolteraient en son absence, attribuaient des origines diaboliques de la lignée dans des termes identiques: pour ces deux ecclésiastiques, la conduite peccamineuse des Plantagenêt les mène tout droit en enfer, non sans avoir au préalable tyrannisé leurs sujets.44 Dans les temps mythiques de la fondation de la maison d’Anjou, la troublante union avec une femme diabolique rend compte des disputes sanglantes de sa postérité. Nous retrouvons également un registre plus proche de la culture populaire et profane que savante et cléricale dans l’utilisation des prophéties de Merlin pour justifier a posteriori ces haines familiales. En dépit de son engendrement diabolique, ce personnage œuvre le bien et favorise le triomphe de son pupille Arthur, roi des Bretons: son savoir magique, acquis par sa filiation d’un ange déchu, lui permet de prédire l’avenir. Élaborées de toutes pièces ou traduites et mises en forme à partir d’un original gallois par Geoffroi de Monmouth, ses vaticinations sont écrites pour la première fois dans ses Prophéties de Merlin (1134) et recopiées ensuite dans la troisième section de son Histoire des rois de Bretagne (1138), l’un des ouvrages les plus diffusés du Moyen Âge.45 Les prédictions de Merlin se caractérisent, comme il se doit dans le genre prophétique, par leur obscur hermétisme, qui laisse une grande liberté d’interprétation à ses glossateurs ultérieurs. Elles mettent de préférence en scène un bestiaire dont la nature mystérieuse accroît cette plasticité exégétique. C’est ainsi que les chroniqueurs Raoul de Diss et Richard le Poitevin, d’une part, et Roger de Howden, de l’autre, appliquent respectivement les prophéties sur la rupture de l’alliance par l’aigle et de sa joie pour sa troisième nichée et sur la révolte des rejetons de l’animal rugissant, aux relations détestables entre Henri II et ses garçons.46 Selon le témoignage de Giraud de Barri, le roi fait peindre une fresque dans son palais de Winchester, qui représente un grand aigle attaqué par ses quatre aiglons, afin d’être figuré avec sa progéniture séditieuse.47 Cette peinture ne va pas sans rappeler les deux prophéties précédentes.48 De son côté, Gautier Map préfère l’oracle ‘Le lynx pénétrant partout menacera de destruction sa propre race’ pour parler des agissements d’Henri le Jeune, qu’il compare à Absalon, contre son propre père.49 En somme, les Plantagenêt et leur entourage recourrent spontanément aux vaticinations de Merlin pour disculper leur guerre intestine.

44 De Principis Instructione III, 28, et II, 27. 45 ‘Perhaps the most popular of all medieval histories’, M. T. Clanchy, England and its Rulers,

1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity, Totowa (NJ) 1983, 27. On conserve, en effet, de lui 215 manuscrits médiévaux, dont 81 élaborés au XIIe et au début du XIIIe siècle, et il a été traduit dans de nombreuses langues vernaculaires, A. Chauou, L’Idéologie Plantagenêt. Royauté arthurienne et monarchie politique dans l’espace Plantagenêt (XIIe–XIIIe siècles), Rennes 2001, 234. 46 Diceto ii, 67, qui voit Aliénor d’Aquitaine en l’aigle, car ses deux ailes couvrent les deux royaumes de France et d’Angleterre, qu’elle a rompu l’alliance par sa séparation avec Louis VII et que son troisième fils Richard a toujours voulu exalter le nom de sa mère; Richard le Poitevin, ‘Chronicon Richardi Pictavensis’, RHF, Paris 1877, t. 12, 419; Howden, Gesta i, 42. 47 Giraud de Barri, De Principis Instructione III, 26, 295–6. Cf. N. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘Aliénor d’Aquitaine conduite en captivité. Les peintures murales commémoratives de Sainte-Radegonde de Chinon’, CCM 41, 1998, 317–30, 324. 48 Giraud de Barri n’établit pas ici explicitement le lien entre la fresque et Merlin, mais il se livre aussitôt à un commentaire de Michée, 7, 5–6. Pourtant aussi bien dans les textes de Merlin que dans la description de la fresque par Giraud, il est question d’un aigle, de ses rejetons et des cous que l’on attaque ou enchaîne. 49 De Nugis Curialium, 282.

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Toutes ces prédictions réduisent la part de leur liberté individuelle, et par conséquent leur responsabilité morale, dans leurs haines, colères et violences. Fixé dans la nuit des temps, où il a été saisi par le devin breton, leur destin est inexorable. C’est pour ou contre leur gré qu’il s’accomplira, y compris dans le parricide. En définitive, les vaticinations de Merlin, tout comme l’ancêtre féérique des comtes d’Anjou, appartiennent au registre folklorique des interventions du démon et de ses satellites, dont l’influence atténue le libre arbitre des actes humains. Nul ne l’a mieux exprimé que Giraud de Barri, l’un des principaux promoteurs de l’idée de la malédiction pesant sur les Plantagenêt. Il attribue, en effet, à Geoffroi de Bretagne – dont le fils Arthur sera assassiné un jour par le frère Jean – la réponse suivante à Geoffroi de Lucy, futur évêque de Winchester (1189–1204), émissaire ecclésiastique de son père qui le prie de se réconcilier avec lui: ‘Vous ne devez pas ignorer qu’il nous a été donné par nature, et pour ainsi dire par droit d’héritage de nos ancêtres, qui nous l’ont légué et inculqué, qu’aucun de nous n’aime l’autre, et que toujours le frère combattra le frère et le fils le père de toutes les forces dont il sera capable. Ne tâchez donc pas de nous priver de nos droits héréditaires, en vous efforçant en vain de chasser le naturel.’50 À en croire Pierre de Blois, Henri II ne dit rien d’autre: ‘Je suis par nature le fils de la colère, comment pourrais-je ne pas me mettre en colère?’51 Un déterminisme surhumain conditionne le défi prométhéen lancé par les Plantagenêt à la morale chrétienne, à l’ordre lignager et à l’équilibre politique. Présentée par Giraud de Barri et d’autres intellectuels de la cour, cette destinée inéluctable relève largement de la culture païenne, qu’elle s’identifie aux démons sucubes et incubes des légendes galloises dont ils entendent les contes depuis leur enfance, ou au fatum des stoïciens latins dont ils sont les lecteurs assidus. Faut-il pour autant, à l’instar de Karl J. Leyser,52 insister sur le côté blasphématoire de ces assertions à l’emporte-pièce attribuées aux Angevins, et les mettre sur le compte d’une laïcisation accrue de la royauté, dont l’administration devient chaque jour plus efficace? Le problème du prétendu rejet du sacré par la royauté Plantagenêt est complexe, et il n’est pas ici le lieu d’en discuter.53 Retenons cependant que, tout irrévérencieux qu’ils soient vis-à-vis du magistère traditionnel de l’Église sur la liberté de l’agir humain, leurs propos déterministes font néanmoins appel à un monde de démons, fées et magiciens qu’on ne saurait qualifier de séculier ou d’hostile au sacré. Il semble partant malaisé de placer sur un même niveau la modernité étatique du XIIe siècle et un vieil imaginaire païen, largement récupéré à l’époque par la culture savante des théologiens.54 Si les Plantagenêt font appel à un merveilleux folklorique pour comprendre pourquoi ils se détestent, ils ne refusent toutefois pas des explications qu’on pourrait dire davantage orthodoxes. Ils se penchent ainsi sur des mariages chronologiquement 50 De Principis Instructione III, 27, 302. 51 ‘Dialogus inter regem’, 99–100. ‘Natura sum filius ire’ renvoie à Eph 2,3 (‘eramus natura filii ire’), où

saint Paul fait allusion aux convoitises de la chair dans lesquelles vivaient les chrétiens avant leur conversion. 52 Medieval Germany and its Neighbours, 900–1250, Londres 1982, 262–3. 53 Sur ce problème, cf. les réserves, tout à fait fondées, de N. Vincent, ‘Conclusion’, dans Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154–1224), dir. M. Aurell, Poitiers 2001, 212, à l’égard de l’article de G. Koziol, ‘England, France, and the Problem of Sacrality in 12th-Century Ritual’, dans Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth Century Europe, dir. T. N. Bisson, Philadelphia (Pe) 1995, 124–48. 54 De nombreuses pistes sur l’intéraction entre thèmes folkloriques et théologie scolastique dans J.-C. Schmitt, Les revenants. Les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale, Paris 1994.

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plus proches qu’avec la comtesse prise de phobie pour l’eucharistie. Contraires à l’éthique chrétienne, ces unions sont aussi dommageables que celle avec la fée du mythe des origines. Elles ouvrent la porte de la maison d’Anjou à des femmes aussi nocives que l’ancêtre fondatrice. Elles ne peuvent avoir que des conséquences néfastes pour leur progéniture. Normandes ou poitevines, elles sont source de malheur. D’une part, la prestigieuse alliance des Angevins avec la maison des ducs de Normandie, qui leur apportera un jour la royauté anglaise, est viciée dès le début. En effet, d’après Geoffroi de Vigeois, Roger de Howden et Gautier Map, Henri V, premier mari de l’impératrice Mathilde, ne serait pas mort, mais il aurait quitté nuitamment sa femme.55 Giraud de Barri le dit retiré en ermite près de Chester, où il expie incognito ses fautes; il accuse donc Mathilde de bigamie au moment de son mariage avec Geoffroi le Bel, et Henri II d’avoir été engendré dans l’adultère.56 D’autre part, toujours d’après les écrivains proches des Plantagenêt, l’alliance aquitaine de leurs maîtres est aussi corrompue, si ce n’est plus, que la normande. Dans un passé récent, la débauche a valu à la maison de Poitou des déboires similaires à ceux d’Henri II. Selon Raoul de Diss,57 Guillaume IX d’Aquitaine, le troubadour dont l’infidélité conjugale est unanimement réprouvée par les chroniqueurs anglonormands du début du XIIe siècle,58 aurait abandonné sa femme légitime pour la Maubergeonne; en répresaille, son fils Guillaume X aurait mené une guerre de sept ans contre lui, avant de mourir en pèlerinage à Saint-Jacques, loin de la nécropole familiale, où son corps ne put jamais reposer en punition pour sa révolte. Dans sa recherche des causes de la querelle des Plantagenêt, Giraud de Barri reprend ce même thème des amours coupables du duc d’Aquitaine avec la vicomtesse de Châtellerault, qu’il attribue non pas à Guillaume IX, mais à Guillaume X, père d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine, comme s’il avait besoin de discréditer davantage l’épouse d’Henri II à travers ses plus proches parents.59 C’est surtout par cette femme que le scandale est arrivé. Son mariage avec Henri II deviendra même – aux termes d’une prophétie attribuée à saint Hugues d’Avalon, chartreux et évêque de Lincoln, sur son lit de mort en 1213 – la cause de l’imminente chute des Angevins.60 Cette union, intervenue dans des conditions détestables, ne peut que donner au roi d’Angleterre la primogéniture hostile qu’on lui connaît. La plupart des écrivains attribuent, en effet, aux intrigues d’Aliénor la révolte de 1173 contre Henri II:61 c’est elle, pour reprendre le mauvais jeu de mots de Robert de Torigni sur son nom, qui lui ‘aliéna’ ses fils.62 Comme toute épouse de rang princier

55 Ce riche dossier est analysé par G. Lecuppre, ‘L’empereur, l’imposteur et la rumeur: Henri V ou

l’échec d’une “réhabilitation” ’, CCM 42, 1999, 189–97. 56 De Principis Instructione III, 27; 300. 57 Diceto i, 366. 58 G. T. Beech, ‘Contemporary Views of William the Troubadour, IXth Duke of Aquitaine, 1086–1126’,

dans Medieval Lives and the Historian, dir. N. Bulst, et J.-Ph. Genet, Kalamazoo (Mi) 1986, 73–88. 59 De Principis Instructione III, 27; 298–9. 60 [Adam d’Eynsham], Magna Vita sancti Hugonis. The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, éd. et trad. angl. D. L.

Douie et H. Farmer, Londres 1961–2, 184–5. 61 À la liste des textes cités par E.-R. Labande, ‘Pour une image véridique d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine’, Bulletin de la société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1952, 175–234, 210 n. 184, ajouter Giraud de Barri, Expugnatio Hibernica. The Conquest of Ireland, éd. et trad. angl. A. B. Scott et F. X. Martin, Dublin 1978, I, 46; Pierre de Blois, Epistulæ, PL 207, no 154, col. 448D; et Raoul le Noir, Chronica. The Chronicles of Ralph Niger, éd. R. Anstruther, Londres 1851, 175, 301. 62 Torigni, 256, et M. A. Pappano, ‘Marie de France, Alienor d’Aquitaine and the Alien Queen’, dans

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au Moyen Âge, son image à la cour de son mari pâtit certes de ses origines étrangères et lointaines, qui en font une inconnue au passée et à la parenté incertains, ainsi que de sa provenance d’une maison souvent ennemie, avec laquelle le mariage scelle une trêve provisoire.63 Mais aux yeux de ces clercs, le cas d’Aliénor est bien plus grave. Ses secondes noces n’auraient jamais dû avoir lieu, car elles sont, à la fois, bigames, incestueuses et félonnes. D’abord, Guillaume de Newburgh, Gervais de Cantorbéry et Robert de Courson, un moraliste parisien, affirment, sans argumentation aucune certes, que le constat de nullité de son mariage avec Louis VII est illégal. Ensuite, la consanguinité, avancée pour cette annulation, existe bel et bien aussi dans sa seconde union,64 car Henri II et Aliénor sont cousins au cinquième degré, c’est-à-dire exactement au même degré qui l’unissait naguère à Louis VII;65 un ragot de cour, dont se font écho les inséparables Gautier Map et Giraud de Barri, voudrait même qu’elle ait connu charnellement Geoffroi le Bel avant d’en épouser, commetant un inceste encore plus grave, le fils.66 Enfin, Henri II a pris la femme de son seigneur pour mieux le combattre, acte de félonie des plus indignes pour un vassal.67 Adultère, consanguin et déloyal, le mariage du comte d’Anjou et de la duchesse d’Aquitaine ne laisse présager rien de bon. Il déçoit bientôt Henri II qui prend de nombreuses maîtresses. En cela, il n’innove guère, alors que la dynastie des ducs de Normandie resta longtemps attachée au mariage more danico, la bigamie institutionalisée accordant les pleins droits aux fils nés des concubines.68 Guillaume de Newburgh remarque que, dans son infidélité conjugale, Henri II imite son grand-père maternel, même s’il décerne à ce dernier la palme de l’intempérance.69 Cette assertion est corroborée par la recherche moderne qui a découvert au moins dix-neuf bâtards à Henri Ier.70 Or, Giraud de Barri place l’infidélité d’Henri II à l’égard d’Aliénor parmi les multiples causes de la haine de ses fils envers lui.71 Il insiste sur la bigamie de la mère d’Henri II et du père d’Aliénor, double adultère déterminant les malheurs des générations qui en sont issues selon la

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lady and Lord, dir. J. C. Parsons et B. Wheeler, New York 2001, article sous presse qui nous a été aimablement communiqué par l’auteur. 63 M. Aurell, Les Noces du comte. Mariage et pouvoir en Catalogne (785–1213), Paris 1995, 110–12. 64 Illicita licentia, Newburgh i, 281, III, 26; Artificioso juramento, Gervais de Cantorbéry, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, éd. W. Stubbs, RS 1879–80, 149; J. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, Princeton 1970, 335. 65 Labande, ‘Pour une image . . .’, 196 et 212. 66 Gautier Map, De Nugis Curialium, 474–6: le titre de cet ouvrage, qui se traduit par Balivernes des courtisans, veut tout dire; Giraud de Barri, De Principis Instructione III, 27, 300. Pour l’antipathie de ces deux auteurs envers Aliénor, cf. D. D. R. Owen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queen and Legend, Oxford 1993, 30 et passim pour les étapes de constitution de la légende de débauchée autour de sa personne. Cf. contra G. Duby, Dames du XIIe siècle: Héloïse, Aliénor, Yseult et quelques autres, Paris 1995, 26–7 et 34–7. 67 Giraud de Barri, De Principis Instructione II, 3, 160. 68 F. Lefevre, Les mariages des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, Université de Rouen, Mémoire de maîtrise multigraphié, 1991, et M. Aurell, ‘Stratégies matrimoniales de l’aristocratie (IXe–XIIIe siècle)’, dans Actes du colloque Sexualité et mariage au Moyen Age (Conques, 15–18 octobre 1998), dir. M. Rouche, Paris 2000, 185–202. 69 Newburgh i, 280; III, 26. 70 R. V. Turner, ‘The Children of Anglo-Norman Royalty and their Upbringing’, Medieval Prosopography 11/2, 1990, 18, et D. Crouch, ‘Robert of Gloucester’s Mother and Sexual Politics in Norman Oxfordshire’, BIHR 72, 1999, 323–33. Cf. également C. Given-Wilson et A. Curteis, The Royal Bastards of Medieval England, Londres 1984, ouvrage malheureusement non référencé. 71 Expugnatio, I, 46; De Principis Instructione II, 3, 159.

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prophétie d’un ermite poitevin dont Hugues d’Avalon s’est souvent fait l’écho.72 Son hagiographe Adam d’Eynsham met dans la bouche de cet évêque moribond la prophétie de l’effondrement de la royauté anglaise face aux Capétiens à cause du mariage illicite d’Henri II et d’Aliénor: ‘Les rejetons de bâtardise ne donnent pas de racines profondes [. . .], d’une couche adultère la semence sera exterminée.’73 Hugues en veut d’autant plus à la lignée anglo-normande que son ancêtre mythique, Guillaume le Conquérant, est né d’une union aussi peu conforme à la morale chrétienne. La croyance, qui met en relation la luxure et le désordre dans la famille, voire dans la société tout entière, est aussi ancienne que répandue. Si elle concerne les aventures extra-conjugales, elle se rapporte encore davantage à l’inceste, c’est-à-dire le mariage à la proche parente, systématiquement associé aux haines et conflits qu’il entraîne. Dans la maison d’Anjou, par exemple, l’union incestueuse, célébrée en 1032, entre Geoffroi Martel et sa cousine Agnès de Poitou provoqua la guerre du jeune marié et son père Foulques Nerra, aux dires du chroniqueur de Saint-Aubin.74 En signalant dans l’inceste la racine de la querelle familiale, le moine annaliste reprend a contrario une vieille idée développée par saint Augustin. Le but du mariage est de diffuser la charité au large, en tirant l’amour du cercle restreint de la parenté. Plus il est éloigné, plus est ample l’espace à l’intérieur duquel règne la paix et la concorde. À l’époque de la réforme dite grégorienne, théologiens et moralistes développent plus particulièrement cette thèse, démontrant, des cas concrets à l’appui, que de l’union consanguine il ne découle que luttes, disputes et guerres.75 Or, nous avons vu comment, dans le droit fil de ce discours ancien, plusieurs chroniqueurs parlent de l’empêchement de parenté qui interdit le mariage entre Henri II et Aliénor d’Aquitaine, princes des comtés voisins d’Anjou et de Poitou. Leur argumentation porte d’autant plus que la duchesse a rompu son union précédente, précisément sous prétexte de consanguinité. La révolte des enfants, fomentée par la mère, qui éclate à peine vingt ans après le mariage, leur donne raison. Elle apporte même un exemple des plus spectaculaires et convaincants à la pastorale exogamique. Les textes de Giraud de Barri et Gautier Map, accusant Aliénor d’avoir épousé le fils de son amant, se comprennent dans un tel contexte. Écrits sous le règne de Jean Sans Terre, après la mort des principaux protagonistes de la guerre intra-familiale, ils cherchent une explication à l’intensité inouïe de la querelle intestine des Plantagenêt. Comme n’importe quel clerc familiarisé avec la prédication de la période et prisonnier de son outillage mental, Giraud et Gautier la trouvent dans la pire des transgressions. Ils reprennent donc a posteriori l’idée de cet inceste pour rendre compte des haines mutuelles des Plantagenêt, dans le but d’apporter un exemplum, une anecdote moralisante supplémentaire à la condamnation de l’endogamie. La valeur de leur témoignage, précieuse sur le plan de l’histoire des mentalités et de la religiosité, est 72 De principis Instructione III, 27, 298–9. 73 Magna Vita sancti Hugonis, t. 2, 184–5, traduit par R. Foreville, ‘L’image de Philippe Auguste dans les

sources contemporaines’, dans La France de Philippe Auguste. Le temps des mutations, dir. R.-H. Bautier, Paris 1982, 125, et commenté par D. Bates, ‘The Rise and Fall of Normandy, c.911–1204’, dans England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, dir. D. Bates et A. Curry, Londres 1994, 22. 74 ‘Incesto conjugio [. . .] uxorem duxit, exinde bellum gessit’, ‘Calendarium Sancti Albini’, dans Recueil d’annales angevines et vendômoises, éd. L. Halphen, Paris 1903, 4, cité par B. Bachrach, ‘Henry II and the Angevin Tradition of Family Hostility’, Albion 16, 1984, 119. 75 P. Corbet, Autour de Buchard de Worms: l’Eglise allemande et les interdits de parenté (IXe–XIIe siècles), Mémoire d’habilitation sous presse, Université de Nancy II 1998, et Aurell, Les Noces, 299.

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nulle sur le plan de la vie affective d’Aliénor, sujet au demeurant des plus futiles.76 Tout au plus leurs histoires, analyses et considérations éthiques montrent-elles qu’au XIIe siècle tout clerc anglais tient le péché de la chair, et plus précisément le mariage consanguin, pour responsable de la dissolution violente de la famille.77 Comme on pourrait s’en douter, les explications des médiévistes contemporains se placent, quant à elles, à un tout autre niveau. Elles étudient les luttes intestines de la maison d’Anjou sur le plan psychologique, familial ou éducatif.78 Elles font remonter les rancunes jamais assouvies à l’enfance des fils d’Henri II, en remarquant la faible part du roi, toujours en voyage, dans leur éducation. Le rôle pédagogique d’Aliénor, appelée souvent en Aquitaine, est presque aussi limité. Des nourrices, personnages indispensables de la cour, la remplacent auprès d’eux. L’une d’entre elles, Hodierne fait l’objet de l’affection de Richard Cœur de Lion, qui la comble de biens et d’honneurs. Une autre, Agathe, qui prend soin du futur Jean Sans Terre, profite également des largesses d’Aliénor.79 À suivre ces hypothèses, dont les auteurs revendiquent parfois une démarche psychanalytique, Aliénor n’aurait connu une véritable affection maternelle que pour Richard, et ce seulement à partir de son adolescence, dès lors qu’il est nommé duc d’Aquitaine. C’est pourquoi Elizabeth A. R. Brown écrit que, dans ses rapports avec ses fils, la reine est plus ‘dominatrice’ que ‘nourricière’.80 En outre, après la naissance de Jean et la ménopause d’Aliénor, Henri II prend, au su de tous, la jeune Rosemonde Clifford pour concubine. Selon ces théories, les frasques d’Henri, la jalousie de son épouse et leur absence affective et éducative seraient à l’origine du conflit de générations, des luttes ultérieures de leurs enfants et de leurs traumatismes, très marqués – paraît-il – chez Jean Sans Terre qu’ils accusent de paranoïa, de manie persécutrice, d’insécurité et d’autoritarisme . . . Ces thèses contiennent assurément une part de vérité. Les médiévistes anglais sont, par exemple, revenus dernièrement à la vieille idée des troubles de la personnalité du roi Jean, le rendant impopulaire et lui aliénant la noblesse de ses principautés, afin de comprendre la défaite de 1204, alors que les recettes de la fiscalité anglaise demeurent à cette date supérieures à la française.81 Mais ces théories accordent parfois une part trop belle à la psychologie d’individus, d’autant plus insaisissables à huit siècles de distance que leur contexte social et mental est bien différent du nôtre. Il semble, par contre, moins déplacé de quitter le domaine de la personne concrète, toujours indiscernable en raison de sa liberté déroutante, pour celui de la société et des comportements collectifs, où des règles générales ou, du moins, une certaine 76 Sur les avatars de la démarche psychologisante appliquée à la reine, nous nous permettons de renvoyer

à M. Aurell, ‘Aliénor d’Aquitaine et ses historiens: la destruction d’un mythe?’, dans Guerre, pouvoir et noblesse au Moyen Age. Mélanges Philippe Contamine, dir. J. Paviot et J. Verger, Paris 2000, 43–9. 77 Ne faudrait-il pas situer sur le même plan la grave accusation portée contre Henri II d’avoir abusé d’Alice de France, jeune fiancée de son fils Richard Cœur de Lion dont il avait la garde? Mais il est vrai que les sources décrivant cette affaire ne sont pas comparables, ni par leur genre, ni par l’absence de ton moralisateur, à celles que nous venons d’analyser autour du mariage d’Henri II et d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine. Le dossier d’Alice de France a été récemment repris dans Gillingham, Richard I, 5, 82 et 142. 78 R. V. Turner, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Children: an Inquiry into Medieval Family Attachment’, JMH 14, 1988, 321–35. 79 M. Cheney, ‘Master Geoffrey de Lucy’, EHR 82, 1967, 750–63. 80 ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine: Parent, Queen and Duchess’, dans Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician, dir. William Kibler, Austin (Texas) et Londres 1977, 9–34. 81 Cf. les actes du colloque récent de Norwich, dir. S. D. Church, King John. New Interpretations, Woodbridge 1999. Sur les raisons de l’impopularité de Jean, cf. les communications de J. Gillingham, J. Bradbury et N. Barratt.

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rationalité peuvent être dégagées. Force est donc de chercher des causes politiques à ces guerres familiales, et d’insister derechef sur le caractère composite de l’espace immense contrôlé par Henri II, où des principautés territoriales, sans histoire ni tradition communes, possèdent un passé lourd en inimitiés ataviques. L’Empire angevin est divisible par essence; sa cohérence est fragile; de trop puissantes forces centrifuges le menacent. Selon son biographe anonyme, Geoffroi le Bel aurait fait, sur son lit de mort, à son fils et successeur un avertissement qu’on considérerait volontiers lucide: ne jamais transférer les coutumes de l’une à l’autre de ses principautés, mais en préserver la spécificité juridique, en évitant toute fusion inutile.82 En dépit de ce conseil, l’action politique d’Henri II, qui vise à souder ces territoires épars autour d’un gouvernement unitaire et d’une idéologie commune face au roi de France,83 paraît trop ambitieuse, irréaliste peut-être. Une ligne similaire est adoptée, au lendemain de son couronnement, par Richard Cœur de Lion.84 Cette volonté centralisatrice se concrétise dans quelques lois, assises et enquêtes relatives à tout le royaume anglo-normand, voire à l’ensemble de l’Empire Plantagenêt.85 Pour chaque principauté où règne un fils, elle se manifeste, de façon humiliante et contraignante, par les ordres continuels et par les fréquentes visites d’Henri II et sa cour. Elle trouve, surtout en Anjou, Aquitaine et Bretagne, l’opposition de l’aristocratie locale. Pour conserver leur indépendance, les seigneurs en appellent contre Henri II à celui de ses fils qui se trouve à la tête de leur principauté. Les sources épistolaires ne disent rien d’autre. Plus pondérées et austères dans leurs analyses que les chroniques, les traités ou les recueils de contes de courtisans, elles s’en prennent aux ‘mauvais conseillers’ qui ont mené les fils du roi vers la sédition. Ainsi, dans la lettre qu’il adresse, en 1172, à Alexandre III pour lui demander d’excommunier les rebelles, Henri II se livre à une exégèse, aussi longue que rhétorique, du verset de Proverbes, 17, 2, ‘Le serviteur astucieux dominera le fils imprudent.’86 En outre, la facilité avec laquelle les fils ou frères révoltés obtiennent le pardon royal est mise par la documentation sur le compte de l’ascendant de leur entourage, qui mitige considérablement leur responsabilité. À son retour de captivité, Richard Cœur de Lion rencontre, chez l’archidiacre de Lisieux, Jean Sans Terre qui se jette à ses pieds; il le relève et lui dit: ‘Jean, n’aie pas peur. Tu n’est qu’un enfant. Tu as eu de mauvais compagnons et tes conseillers paieront.’ Les deux frères partagent aussitôt le repas d’un saumon en signe de réconciliation.87 Jean a certes déjà vingt-sept ans. Mais, par son pieux mensonge sur son âge, son frère se rappelle peut-être qu’il avait lui-même quinze ans lors de sa première insurrection contre Henri II. Si les récits de la rébellion et du pardon insistent tant sur le bas

82 ‘Historia Gaufredi’, Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et seigneurs d’Amboise, éd. L. Halphen et R. Pourpardin, Paris 1913, 224. 83 J. Boussard, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II Plantagenêt, 14 et 583–9. 84 Les travaux de J. Gillingham ont fait son sort à la fausse image d’un Richard Cœur de Lion, exclusivement intéressé à la guerre au détriment des tâches gouvernementales. 85 Enqûete des sheriffs en Angleterre en 1170 et en Normandie en 1171; acte sur les sûretés par dette, en 1177, concernant la Normandie, l’Anjou, l’Aquitaine et la Bretagne; en 1181, assise des armes pour l’Angleterre et la Normandie; assise de Geoffroi de Bretagne sur la primogéniture, inspirée de la constitution d’Henri II pour la Normandie, Holt, ‘The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm’, 227–8. 86 PL 200, col. 1389–90, no 32. 87 [Jean le Trouvère], L’Histoire . . ., v. 10363–419. En 1173, Henri II ‘excusa ses fils cadets sur la base de leur âge trop tendre’, Newburgh ii, 38. Jean le Trouvère dit, une fois de plus, qu’Henri II fit porter la responsabilité sur leurs conseillers, L’Histoire . . ., v. 2328–82.

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âge des révoltés, c’est, d’une part, pour faire voir qu’ils sont d’autant plus influençables qu’ils sortent à peine de l’adolescence. D’autre part, leur classe d’âge, la ‘jeunesse’, au sens sociologique du terme,88 les rend particulièrement sensibles à l’appel de combattre leur père ou leur frère aîné. En juvenis piaffant d’impatience pour reprendre l’héritage qui tarde à venir, chacun de ces princes opte par la voie de faits, et il prend les armes contre le chef de la dynastie. Cette envie des enfants aristocratiques envers leur géniteur tout-puissant, qui les empêche d’accéder au pouvoir et au patrimoine, semble fort prononcée au sein de la maison Plantagenêt, où le meurtre du père a une portée tout autre que purement symbolique. Somme toute, une incompatibilité radicale existe entre la conception moderne de la royauté et la perception patrimoniale du pouvoir, entre le public de l’État en gestation et le privé de la dynastie princière, paradoxalement trop solidaire et soucieuse de préserver à tout prix le droit des cadets. L’archaïsme du système n’en demeure pas moins pesant, alors que les révoltes aristocratiques périphériques de l’‘Espace Plantagenêt’ attisent les querelles domestiques de la famille royale: la cour n’apparaît pas comme un épicentre, dont les intrigues de palais aboutiraient, à l’image d’ondes concentriques, aux marges provinciales qu’elles désagrégeraient ensuite. Au contraire, c’est la pression de la périphérie qui détruit l’unité du centre.89 Les fils du roi défendent contre lui les intérêts de la noblesse des principautés qu’ils gouvernent. L’influence de leur propre entourage est trop pesante. Les mesnies des enfants sont un élément perturbateur au détriment de la cour du père. Dans ce sens, l’histoire des Plantagenêt est-elle exceptionnelle dans le panorama occidental des XIe et XIIe siècles? Bien entendu, la fréquence de leurs révoltes n’est pas courante. Ni Louis VII, père – il est vrai – d’un fils unique, ni Frédéric Barberousse, contemporains d’Henri II, n’ont pas rencontré une telle opposition de la part de leur progéniture. Mais les familles paternelle ou maternelle du roi d’Angleterre ont connu par le passé des situations similaires à la sienne. La violence des luttes, emprisonnements à vie et peut-être fratricides se retrouvent dans la maison d’Anjou de Foulques Nerra et son fils Geoffroi Martel, ou de Normandie, avec les frères Richard III (1026–8) et Robert le Magnifique (1028–35) ou avec la progéniture de Guillaume le Conquérant. L’historien américain Bernard S. Bachrach décèle même une sorte d’‘héritage angevin de structures de comportement’ dans ‘l’interaction violente et hostile’ au sein de la famille d’Henri II.90 Force est toutefois de constater que l’appel à l’atavisme familial n’a peut-être pas de raison d’être, car cette situation n’est pas exclusive aux ancêtres angevins et normands des Plantagenêt. À l’époque, les disputes entre proches parents ne sont pas si rares qu’on pourrait le croire. Dans la dynastie comtale de Barcelone, la comtesse Ermessende de Carcassonne (†1058) subit, pendant son veuvage, la révolte de son fils, puis de son petit-fils; Raimond Bérenger II (1076–82) est assassiné probablement à la demande de son frère jumeau Bérenger Raimond Ier (1076–96). Le fratricide est aussi présent dans la maison de Léon-Castille, où le roi Alphonse VI (1065–1109) est contraint par

88 G. Duby, ‘Les jeunes dans la société aristocratique dans la France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle’,

Annales ESC 19, 1964, 835–46. 89 Au sujet de la préparation de la révolte de 1173 par le refus de Richard à céder l’Aquitaine à son frère,

cf. l’analyse de J. Martindale, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine’, dans Richard Cœur de Lion in History and Myth, éd. J. Nelson, Londres 1992, 22: ‘There was therefore an undeniable sense of regional attachment and shared experience which crossed the generation between mother and son.’ 90 Bachrach, ‘Henry II’, 112.

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le Cid de prêter le serment purgatoire pour se disculper du meurtre de son aîné Sanche II (1065–72). Plus banalement, au XIIe siècle, Alphonse VIII (1158–1214) de Castille, gendre d’Henri II Plantagenêt, se bat contre son cousin germain Alphonse IX de Léon (1188–1230) au détriment de la Reconquista, tandis que Sanche, comte de Provence, se révolte, en 1185, contre son frère Alphonse II (1162–96), roi d’Aragon et comte de Barcelone.91 Enfin, au cours de la croisade albigeoise, le comte Raimond VI de Toulouse, autre gendre d’Henri II, doit combattre son propre frère Baudouin, guerrier de l’ost de Simon de Montfort; en 1214, il le capture et le condamne à la pendaison.92 Les exemples pourraient encore être multipliés. Ils montrent que ce qui est véritablement exceptionnel parmi les maisons princières est l’harmonie qui règne au sein de la dynastie royale française, comme si le ‘miracle capétien’ tenait aussi au respect que l’aîné sait imposer, génération après génération, à ses cadets et à ses fils. Or, c’est précisément cette famille qui est trop souvent choisie par les médiévistes comme point unique de comparaison avec les Plantagenêt, ses ennemis invétérés. Les rois de France sont pourtant, comme eux, des adeptes de la transmission de l’héritage paternel et maternel à l’aîne et des autres acquisitions territoriales, sous forme d’apanage, aux cadets. En 1225, le testament de Louis VIII aliène un tiers du domaine royal, composé en partie par les plus récentes conquêtes au détriment de Jean Sans Terre et d’Henri III, au profit de ses trois puînés.93 Ce système de partage préserve la primogéniture, car l’aîné reçoit l’intégralité du patrimoine ancestral des parents et la fonction royale, qui implique l’hommage de ses cadets. À quelques minimes adaptations près, il se retrouve chez les Plantagenêt.94 De toutes façons, il est inhérent au lignage aristocratique à la fin du XIIe siècle, et les rois de France ou d’Angleterre n’ont fait que suivre la coutume générale. Il apparaît même de façon fréquente dans les ouvrages latins où les clercs de la cour des Plantagenêt évoquent l’ancienne Grande Bretagne, antérieure à Arthur, et les partages auxquels elle donne lieu au sein des maisons royales.95 Ce n’est donc pas dans la division des territoires du vivant du roi ou dans la règle successorale, largement acceptée dans les lignages royaux et nobiliaires, qu’il faut chercher la raison fondamentale de la querelle des Plantagenêt. Elle tient peut-être à la vitalité de l’aristocratie dans les territoires périphériques de l’Empire et à sa propension à se révolter. Il est temps de conclure et d’organiser les considérations précédentes, dont le caractère hétéroclite dénote la difficulté à trouver une seule motivation ou un schéma explicatif univoque à la révolte anti-royale. A quelques siècles de distance près, l’intensité que prend ce phénomène dans l’Empire Plantagenêt peut être analysée autour de quelques idées force: lutte intra-familiale et constitution de partis autour de

91 C. Estepa, El Reinado de Alfonso VI, Madrid 1985; J. González, El Reino de Castilla en la época de

Alfonso VIII, Madrid 1960; Aurell, Les Noces, 182, 226–33 et 625. 92 L. Macé, Les comtes de Toulouse et leur entourage (XIIe–XIIIe siècles), Toulouse 2000, 74–86. 93 A. W. Lewis, Le Sang royal. La famille capétienne et l’Etat. France, Xe–XIVe siècle, Paris 1986,

209–20. 94 Holt, ‘The End of the Anglo-Norman Realm’, 240–1; W. L. Warren, Henry II, Londres 1973, 108–9,

206, 229–30; J. Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet, Londres 1984, 184–7; J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, Londres 2001 (2e éd.), 119–22 et 220. Les différentes nuances et débats entre ces auteurs sont présentés dans M.-T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship. Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century, Oxford 1983, 276–84. 95 Giraud de Barri, Descriptio Kambrie, Giraldi Cambrenis Opera, vi, I, 7; R[obert de Torigni], The Story of Meriadoc, King of Cambria. Historia Meriadoci Regis Cambrie, éd. et trad. angl. M. L. Day, New York 1988, 3–7.

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chacun des héritiers de la maison d’Anjou; tendances centrifuges des principautés de l’Empire, qui, chacune sous la conduite d’un duc ou d’un comte, cherchent à s’affirmer sur le plan territorial; réaction seigneuriale contre le renforcement de l’administration royale . . . Fondées sur une méthode d’histoire sociale, ces explications semblent plus solides que les divagations psychologisantes sur le tempérament ou sur les traumatismes de tel ou tel individu de la famille angevine. Il n’empêche que le décalage est impressionnant entre la lecture des événements que proposent, d’une part, les médiévistes contemporains et, de l’autre, les courtisans anglais écrivant à la fin du règne de Jean Sans Terre pour expliquer a posteriori l’échec des Plantagenêt. Démons incubes et succubes, vaticinations immémoriales, déchaînement merveilleux des forces de la nature, punitions divines pour le péché d’inceste emplissent l’imaginaire de ces clercs, déroutés par la haine ayant déchiré la dynastie angevine. Aussi éloignée soit-elle de la logique de l’historien de l’an 2000, leur ‘pensée sauvage’ mérite cependant tous nos égards. À l’aide d’un outillage mental fort étranger au nôtre, elle tente, d’une bien saisissante façon, d’expliquer l’inexplicable.

La politique de fortification des Plantagenets

LA POLITIQUE DE FORTIFICATION DES PLANTAGENETS EN POITOU, 1154–1242 Marie-Pierre Baudry La présente étude a pour objet les fortifications des Plantagenêts en Poitou, de 1154 à 1242. Prenant appui sur les méthodes croisées de l’archéologie monumentale, et de l’analyse des textes, elle met en évidence les particularités de construction des châteaux édifiés par ou avec le soutien des rois d’Angleterre en Poitou.1 Cette recherche s’est heurtée à la difficulté de dater les sites, comme à l’impossibilité d’attribuer a priori les fortifications aux Plantagenêts. La comparaison des châteaux poitevins avec ceux construits par les Plantagenêts à la même époque en d’autres régions de France, et en Angleterre nous permet de confirmer l’existence d’un certain nombre de caractéristiques qui leur sont propres. La problématique, posée par l’analyse architecturale, est de mieux comprendre les choix de fortification et les stratégies respectives d’Henri II Plantagenêt, de Richard Ier, Jean et Henri III en Poitou. I. ETUDE HISTORIQUE

Le contrôle du Poitou au XIIe siècle L’ancien comté de Poitou, qui s’étend au sud de la Loire, du Berry à l’est, jusqu’à la mer à l’ouest, fait partie du duché d’Aquitaine que la reine Aliénor apporte en dot à Henri Plantagenêt en 1152 (Fig. 1). Il est difficile d’évaluer précisément le nombre de châteaux existant alors en Poitou. Les principaux apparaissent dès le XIe siècle: Poitiers, la capitale, Brosse (face aux comtés de la Marche et de Limoges), Châtellerault (à la frontière de la Touraine), Thouars (devant les marches d’Anjou et de Bretagne), Aulnay et Melle aux portes de la Saintonge.2 A partir des années 1150, la création de nouveaux châteaux est le fait de châtelains déjà en place qui veulent consolider leur pouvoir.3 On distingue quatre grandes familles de barons poitevins, dont la puissance dépasse tous les autres: les Thouars qui, en qualité de vicomtes, sont les détenteurs légitimes d’une partie du pouvoir banal, mais aussi les Lusignan, les Parthenay, et les Mauléon, qui tiennent les principales places-fortes du comté au XIIIe siècle. Le roi d’Angleterre, comme le roi de France, ne peut maintenir ses positions qu’avec l’alliance de ces barons. Dès les 1 2

Marie-Pierre Baudry, Les fortifications des Plantagenêts en Poitou, 1154–1242, Paris 2001. Sidney Painter, ‘Castellans of the Plain of Poitou in the 11th and 12th Centuries’, Speculum 31, 1956, 243–57. 3 Robert Hajdu, ‘Castles, Castellans and the Structure of Politics in Poitou, 1152–1271’, JMH 4, 1978, 30.

Fig. 1 Les châteaux du Poitou au milieu du XIIe siècle

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premières années de son règne, Henri II multiplie les incursions en Poitou, afin d’affirmer son autorité vis-à-vis des seigneurs locaux. Il affronte deux révoltes importantes. La première, en 1168, est menée les seigneurs de Lusignan et le vicomte de Thouars, dont les châteaux sont pris et rasés.4 La révolte de 1174, menée par les princes Richard et Henri contre leur père, entraîne dans la guerre de nombreux seigneurs poitevins; une nouvelle fois, le roi réprime fermement l’insurrection, et détruit les nouvelles fortifications.5 Cependant, l’emprise réelle d’Henri II semble se limiter au sud de ses domaines patrimoniaux: l’Anjou et la Touraine. De fait, il garde le contrôle étroit des places qui occupent les frontières: Chinon, Mirebeau, Loudun. La vicomté de Thouars, qui s’étend de l’Anjou à la mer, présente dans ce contexte une importance stratégique qui en justifie la fortification.6 A la différence de son père, le prince Richard est fréquemment en Poitou, qu’il gouverne une quinzaine d’années, de façon plus ou moins indépendante à partir de 1174, avant d’hériter du trône d’Angleterre. En 1182, il affirme son autorité sur son comté, en fortifiant la frontière de Touraine, contre son père. Après son couronnement, il prépare son départ pour la Terre Sainte. Il contraint un grand nombre de barons poitevins à le suivre, afin de s’assurer qu’ils ne profiteraient pas de son absence pour tenter une nouvelle révolte. Dès son retour cependant, le roi lance une formidable campagne militaire afin de reprendre l’initiative sur le continent. Il entreprend alors la fortification de la Normandie. Château-Gaillard est unanimement considéré comme sa plus belle réalisation.7 L’action de Richard Ier en Poitou, à la même époque, est moins connue. A-t-il lancé de nouveaux chantiers de construction? Il est difficile de lui attribuer directement des fortifications dans ce contexte. La défense des villes Le règne de Jean sans Terre annonce une politique nouvelle, marquée par l’importance donnée aux villes en Poitou et en Aunis. Le roi s’attache la fidélité des bourgeois en leur accordant des chartes de communes, dès 1199 (Poitiers, Saint-Jean d’Angély, Saintes, Niort, et Oléron). Le choix de ces villes traduit une nouvelle organisation politique de la région. Niort et La Rochelle sont de nouvelles agglomérations, dont le développement économique est largement soutenu par le roi à la fin du XIIe siècle.8 La situation de ces ports, ouverts sur l’Atlantique, permet un commerce florissant avec l’Angleterre, et les Plantagenêts veillent à s’assurer le contrôle de ces voies de circulation maritime. Henri II et Richard devaient imposer leur pouvoir en Poitou en réprimant les incessantes révoltes des seigneurs locaux et en confisquant leurs châteaux. Tournant le dos à cette politique de constante répression, Jean sans Terre cherche à s’allier les barons poitevins par des concessions de privilèges. Les principaux bénéficiaires sont les puissants seigneurs de Lusignan, de Mauléon, et de Thouars. En août 1200, le

4 5 6

Torigni, 235–6. Diceto i, 394–5. Marie-Pierre Baudry, ‘Les fortifications des Plantagenêts à Thouars’, dans La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), éd. M. Aurell, Civilisation médiévale 7, Poitiers 2000, 297–314. 7 Christian Corvisier, ‘Château-Gaillard et son donjon. Une œuvre expérimentale de Richard Cœur de Lion’, dans Les fortifications des Plantagenêts, XIIe–XIVe s., éd. M. P. Baudry, Civilisation médiévale 9, Poitiers 2001, 41–54. 8 Robert Favreau, ‘Les débuts de la ville de La Rochelle’, CCM 30, 1987, 3–32.

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mariage de Jean sans Terre avec Isabelle d’Angoulême, promise à Hugues IX de Lusignan, remet en cause les alliances acquises et donne toute légitimité au roi de France d’envahir les terres continentales des Plantagenêts.9 C’est au cours de l’été 1204 que Philippe Auguste entreprend la conquête du Poitou. Par la prise des villes de Niort et de La Rochelle, il cherche à couper le roi d’Angleterre de ses bases d’expédition. Cette rapide conquête est cependant de courte durée. Dès le début de l’année 1206, Jean sans Terre réunit à La Rochelle une puissante armée, et plus de 200 bateaux.10 A son arrivée, il reçoit l’hommage des seigneurs poitevins. Philippe Auguste renforce alors ses positions à Poitiers, Loudun et Mirebeau. On peut supposer que le roi d’Angleterre s’attache également à fortifier les places dont il conserve le contrôle. On le voit séjourner à plusieurs reprises à Saint-Maixent, Niort, Bressuire, Coudray, Thouars.11 Une trêve est signée entre les deux rois en octobre.12 Elle confirme les positions du roi d’Angleterre en Poitou et fixe les territoires acquis par le roi de France au nord de la Loire: la Normandie, le Maine, la Bretagne, la Touraine et l’Anjou. Comme le résume fort bien John Baldwin, il ne reste de la conquête capétienne de 1204 que Poitiers et la petite bande de territoire qui l’entoure.13 L’état des châteaux tenus par le roi de France en 1206–10 donne les noms de 110 châteaux, dont un seul en Poitou: Montreuil-Bonnin.14 C’est à partir du Poitou que le roi Jean tente une expédition vers les domaines angevins du roi de France, en février 1214. Il débarque une nouvelle fois à la Rochelle, rejoint Niort, dont il ordonne la fortification,15 et avance vers l’Anjou. Il est refoulé par les troupes françaises menées par le prince Louis, et essuie une large défaite à la Roche aux Moines. Le roi d’Angleterre tente néanmoins de reformer son armée et ordonne à tous ses barons de se réunir en armes à Niort sous les ordres du sénéchal Hubert de Burgh.16 Il revient à Parthenay afin de recruter des partisans. Finalement il est contraint par le roi de France à signer une trêve.17 Tous les grands seigneurs poitevins, parmi lesquels les Lusignan, Thouars, et Parthenay, se portent garants pour lui de cette trêve.18 Savary de Mauléon paraît à la tête des Poitevins qui le suivent à Douvres, et figurent vite parmi ses principaux capitaines dans sa guerre civile en Angleterre.19 En 1216, il fait partie des six personnes de haut rang qui sont témoins du couronnement du jeune Henri III, ce qui traduit la situation privilégiée de ce Poitevin à la cour d’Angleterre.20 9

J. C. Holt, ‘Aliénor d’Aquitaine, Jean sans Terre et la succession de 1199’, CCM 29, 1986, 95–100; S. Painter et F. Cazel, ‘The Marriage of Isabelle d’Angoulême’, EHR 63, 1948, 83–9; et 67, 1952, 233–5. 10 The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Eighth Year of King John (1206), éd. Doris M. Stenton (PR 52), Londres 1942, 126. 11 ‘Itinerarium Johannis regis Angliae. A Table of the Movements of the Court of John King of England, from his Coronation, May 27th AD 1199, to the End of his Reign’, éd. T. D. Hardy, Archaeologia 22, 1827, 377. 12 Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, éd. H-F. Delaborde, Paris 1916–79, t. 2, 473. 13 John Baldwin, Philippe Auguste, Paris 1994, 307. 14 Registres de Philippe Auguste, éd. J. W. Baldwin, Paris 1992, 342. 15 Rotuli litterarum patentium in turri Londinensi asservati, tempore regis Johannis, éd. T. D. Hardy, Londres 1835, vol. 1, 112 a. 16 Ibid., 119. 17 Rotuli chartarum in turri Londinensi asservati, éd. T. D. Hardy, Londres 1837, vol. 1, pars 1, 208 b. 18 Layettes du Trésor des chartes, Paris 1863–1909, vol. 1, no 1083. 19 M. Cao Carmichael de Baiglie, ‘Savary de Mauléon (ca 1180–1233), chevalier-troubadour poitevin: traîtrise et société aristocratique’, Le Moyen Age 105, 1999, 269–305. 20 Kate Norgate, The Minority of Henry the Third, Londres 1912, 5.

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Le soutien des barons Henri III poursuit la politique de Jean sans Terre en Poitou, en s’alliant les barons poitevins par l’octroi de fiefs rentes.21 Il multiplie les avantages accordés à Hugues de Lusignan, sans lequel il ne peut conserver ses positions en Poitou.22 Le mariage de ce puissant seigneur avec la reine mère Isabelle, veuve de Jean, marque de la façon la plus éclatante le rapprochement entre les Plantagenêts et les Lusignan. En 1220, la trêve conclue avec le roi de France est renouvelée.23 Henri III se prépare cependant à un nouvel affrontement. Il demande aux citoyens de Poitiers, La Rochelle, et Niort de rendre leur ville, et soutient de nouveaux travaux de fortification à Niort.24 Dans le même temps, il ordonne aux gardiens de ses châteaux du Poitou de les rendre à Philippe de Ulecote.25 Les seigneurs poitevins sont alors en conflit ouvert avec Henri III, qui a interrompu le versement de leurs rentes. Pour faire pression sur ce dernier, ils font le blocus de Niort.26 L’importance stratégique des villes de Niort et de La Rochelle, qui servent de bases d’expédition pour le roi d’Angleterre, apparaît clairement dans ce contexte. C’est par leur conquête, en 1224, que Louis VIII assoit durablement le contrôle capétien sur le Poitou. Il traite avec les Lusignan, et les tient en respect par la construction d’un château au cœur de leur domaine, à Saint-Maixent. Sa mort, dès 1226, bouleverse une nouvelle fois l’échiquier politique. Le roi d’Angleterre profite de la succession pour resserrer ses liens avec les Poitevins (Fig. 2). Les sommes d’argent considérables qu’il leur verse témoignent de sa volonté de conserver des appuis forts sur le continent. Savary de Mauléon apparaît alors comme le plus important allié des Plantagenêts en Poitou. Entre 1227 et 1230, il obtient plus de 1000 livres de rente. Quant à Guillaume de Parthenay, il reçoit une rente annuelle de 500 marcs, qui est doublée en 1226 pour fortifier sa ville.27 Cette rente est même portée à 1500 marcs en 1233, à la mort de Savary de Mauléon.28 La même année, la rente annuelle des autres seigneurs poitevins, Jean de Beaumont, Guillaume Maingot, Robert de Rancon n’excède pas 50 livres. Dans les années 1230–40, les rois de France et d’Angleterre renouvellent leurs efforts pour s’assurer le soutien des Lusignan, notamment au cours de l’expédition anglaise de 1230 en Poitou. Le roi de France conclut une trêve avec Hugues X,29 tandis qu’Henri III s’assure le contrôle des châteaux de Geoffroy.30

21 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, Londres 1916, vol. 1, 1226–40, 40, 50, 52, 65, 68, 71, 108, 124, 127, 134, 151–2, 157–8, 163–5, 168, 187, 211, 221, 315, 357, 398. 22 Elisabeth Carpentier, ‘Les Lusignan entre Plantagenêt et capétiens: 1200–1246’, in Isabelle d’Angoulême comtesse-reine et son temps (1186–1247), Civilisation médiévale 5, Poitiers 1999, 37–45; et Christophe Dubuc, ‘Les possessions poitevines des Lusignan’, Ibid., 17–26. 23 Layettes du Trésor, vol. 1, 496. 24 Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londinensi asservati., éd. T. D. Hardy, vol. 1, Londres 1833, 442 a. 25 Foedera conventiones, éd. Th. Rymer, 1704 (1ère édition), 163. 26 ‘Enquête de Xaintray’, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire du Poitou et des provinces voisines, Poitiers 1876, 28, 33, 34, 36, 37. 27 Royal and Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, éd. W. W. Shirley, RS 1862–6, i, 302. 28 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, vol. 1, 211. 29 Layettes, vol. 2, 175. 30 Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office 1232–1563, Londres 1906, vol. 1, 379.

Fig. 2 Les châteaux du Poitou en 1227

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En 1242, le roi d’Angleterre soutient une ultime révolte des seigneurs de Lusignan contre Louis IX.31 L’armée du roi de France emporte de rapides et définitives batailles en Poitou puis en Saintonge. Le comte de la Marche livre les châteaux de Merpins, Château-Larcher et Crozant, et s’engage à payer 400 livres par an pour y entretenir une garnison française.32 Henri III ne compte plus alors en Poitou que l’appui de Guillaume de Parthenay, auquel il écrit pour lever les troupes nécessaires à la défense de son château.33 Or ce dernier fait défection avant la fin du mois, et rend hommage au comte de Poitiers.34 Le roi se retire sur la Gascogne et abandonne définitivement le Poitou. La guerre est terminée, même si ce n’est qu’en 1259, avec le traité de Paris, que le comté revient à la couronne de France. II. ETUDE ARCHEOLOGIQUE

Partant de l’analyse d’une centaine de châteaux en Poitou, l’étude retient une douzaine de constructions attribuées aux Plantagenêts dans les années 1180–1242. Ce sont les caractéristiques architecturales défensives de ces châteaux et enceintes urbaines qui révèlent l’intervention de maîtres d’œuvre proches de la couronne anglaise. La généralisation des enceintes flanquées La généralisation de l’enceinte flanquée, à la fin du XIIe siècle, est l’une des caractéristiques principales des châteaux des Plantagenêts, en France comme en Angleterre.35 En Poitou, nous notons que son développement coïncide parfois avec le déplacement du château, vers l’extrémité d’un éperon rocheux inscrit dans le méandre d’une rivière. Le choix des maîtres d’œuvre ne traduit pas seulement la volonté de tirer parti de l’obstacle naturel formé par les eaux: il montre à quel point il est important de s’assurer le contrôle des ponts. Dans bien des cas étudiés, le château est à proximité immédiate d’une grande route, et en protège ou barre l’accès (Chiché, Thouars, Parthenay, Mauléon, Mervent, Argenton). Les enceintes castrales de la fin du XIIe et du début du XIIIe siècle sont systématiquement élevées sur des plans polygonaux, généralement irréguliers (Fig. 3). Elles sont formées de segments de murailles rectilignes, et leur tracé s’adapte autant que possible aux contours de l’escarpement rocheux qui la supporte. Les plans très réguliers sont ceux de châteaux dont l’enceinte a pu être construite en un seul jet, sans les contraintes imposées par les éléments conservés d’un château plus ancien, ou par le relief: Coudray-Salbart, Chiché, Saint-Maixent, et Poitiers sont des châteaux de plaine. La présence d’une double ligne de fortification n’apparaît en Poitou que sur des sites dont l’importance stratégique justifie un tel investissement (Coudray-Salbart, 31 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, vol. 1, 496. 32 Layettes, vol. 2, 478. 33 Lettres de rois, reines et autres personnages des cours de France et d’Angleterre, éd. J-J.

Champollion-Figeac, Paris 1839, t. 1, 60. 34 Layettes, vol. 2, 480. 35 Derek Renn, ‘Plantagenêt Castle-Building in England in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, Les

fortifications des Plantagenêts, XIIe–XIVe s., éd. Baudry, 15–22.

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Fig. 3 Le château de Brosse, à Lignac (Indre), plan d’ensemble

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Parthenay, Bressuire). Le coût de ces enceintes de pierre était sans doute un frein à leur multiplication. Dans d’autres places, l’échelonnement en profondeur de la défense apparaît sous la forme d’ouvrages de terre, remparts et fausses braies (Mauléon, Lusignan, Tiffauges). Pour les mêmes raisons sans doute, le développement d’enceintes urbaines en pierre apparaît relativement tard. Les sources écrites, autant que les observations menées sur le terrain, rendent compte du souci des Plantagenêts de fortifier les villes: Parthenay, Thouars, Niort, Poitiers. Nous ne pouvons attester de l’existence de ces enceintes avant les années 1200. Certaines ont été attribuées au XIIe siècle, en raison du caractère archaïque de leurs ouvrages de flanquement. Cet argument ne nous semble pas suffisant car il nous apparaît que leur système défensif simplifié relevait peut-être davantage d’un choix économique. Du contrefort à la tour de flanquement L’introduction de la tour sur l’enceinte vise à améliorer les conditions de la défense en multipliant les postes de tir. Dans tous les cas étudiés en Poitou, nous classons ces tours en deux groupes distincts: les pleines et les creuses, considérant qu’il s’agit dans les deux cas d’ouvrages de flanquement. Si l’usage du contrefort rond, très répandu en Poitou du XIe au XIIIe siècle, relève d’une tradition régionale, son évolution vers la tourelle semble avoir eu un développement particulier dans les fortifications Plantagenêt. La distinction entre le contrefort rond et la tour ne tient qu’à leur diamètre. La tour ronde pleine est très répandue dans les châteaux du Poitou que nous avons recensés. D’autres exemples sont identifiés dans les domaines Plantagenêt à la fin du XIIe siècle, sans que l’on puisse leur attribuer de façon exclusive ce type de construction: Arques, Falaise, Lavardin, Montbazon, Loches, Chinon.36 On considère actuellement ces tours pleines comme des tourelles qui procèdent d’un élargissement du chemin de ronde, mais pas encore comme de véritables ouvrages de flanquement. C’est ainsi qu’elles sont souvent attribuées à la fin du XIIe siècle, voire aux années 1160–70, par les auteurs qui y voient un certain archaïsme.37 Ces datations relatives, établies sur une logique évolutive, nous semblent parfois un peu rapides. Plusieurs châteaux poitevins, et non des moindres, témoignent d’une même campagne de construction pour les tours pleines et les tours creuses à archères: Talmont, Montreuil-Bonnin, Tiffauges, Coudray-Salbart, Parthenay, Thouars, Bressuire (Fig. 4). Elles sont régulièrement espacées, et participent toutes à la défense en offrant un niveau de tir depuis la terrasse sommitale. La tour de plan circulaire Le Poitou apparaît totalement dépourvu de tours de flanquement quadrangulaires ou polygonales qui semblent en revanche caractériser les premières fortifications des Plantagenêts dans le Nord-Ouest en France et en Angleterre à la fin du XIIe siècle

36 Stéphane Rocheteau, ‘Le château de Chinon aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, dans Aurell, La cour

Plantagenêt (1154–1204), 315–56. 37 Philippe Durand, ‘Les fortifications de Poitiers: étude et hypothèse de datation des éléments

subsistants’, dans Les fortifications des Plantagenêts, XIIe–XIVe s., éd. Baudry, 61–76.

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Fig. 4 Le front sud de l’enceinte castrale de Bressuire (Douvres, Framlingham, Gisors,38 Caen, Fougères, Châtillon-sur-Indre). La tour à archères est toujours circulaire ou semi-circulaire en Poitou. Au donjon de Niort, le percement d’archères triples dans un contrefort peut être considéré comme une des premières tentatives d’amélioration du flanquement grâce aux ouvrages circulaires, dans les années 1180.39 La généralisation des tours rondes amène naturellement les constructeurs à privilégier les salles intérieures de plan centré, circulaire ou polygonal, pour des commodités de mise en œuvre. Cela implique des modes de couvrement adapté: coupole, cul-de-four. L’évolution de la tour de flanquement, au XIIIe siècle, impose l’usage du plan quadrangulaire (Bressuire, Brosse, Parthenay). Le problème du couvrement des archères est en effet une contrainte considérable, et conditionne le choix de la voûte. Trois des côtés de la salle sont percés d’une ouverture de tir, le quatrième accueillant l’accès (Fig. 5). La voûte en berceau apparaît comme le couvrement le plus simple et le plus adapté, mais ne permet pas le percement de trop larges ouvertures sous les sommiers. La solution choisie dans les châteaux de Philippe Auguste est la voûte sur croisée d’ogives. La croisée d’ogives – angevine – est moins courante dans les châteaux Plantagenêt contemporains. Elle n’apparaît en Poitou qu’au Coudray-Salbart, peut-être à Saint-Rémy et au Haut-Clairvaux. Elle reste rare dans les pays de la Loire (Chinon, Le Grand-Pressigny). Ces difficultés de mise en œuvre de la voûte expliquent sans doute la conservation des planchers dans les petites 38 Jean Mesqui et P. Toussaint, ‘Le château de Gisors aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Archéologie médiévale 20, 1990, 253–317. 39 Baudry, ‘Le château des Plantagenêts à Niort’, Les fortifications des Plantagenêts, XIIe–XIVe s., 23–40.

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Fig. 5 Tour 25 de l’enceinte castrale de Bressuire, plan, coupe, élévation, Pascal Langeuin tours à archères du château de Bressuire. On en trouve plus souvent des exemples dans l’architecture religieuse.40 Pour les ouvrages d’entrée, comme pour les contreforts et les flanquements sur l’enceinte, les fortifications du Poitou privilégient l’usage de la tour ronde. Alain Salamagne a attiré l’attention sur ce parti pris de construction relativement rare, mais dont on trouve plusieurs exemples en Poitou: Bressuire, Coudray-Salbart, Thouars (Fig. 6).41 Nous pouvons ajouter à cette liste Montreuil-Bonnin, Parthenay, toujours dans des châteaux attribués aux Plantagenêts. Même si nous nous refusons à établir un lien direct entre toutes les portes rondes existant dans le Nord-Ouest de la France, nous devons souligner l’appartenance d’un bon nombre d’exemples cités aux Plantagenêts (Radepont, Arques la Bataille, Merpins en Charente). Les tours portes circulaires des châteaux de Dublin, Trim, remaniés par le roi Jean dans les années 1220, sont à rapprocher de ce contexte.42 Au début du XIIIe siècle, les places poitevines adoptent comme ailleurs les châtelets d’entrées encadrés de deux tours rondes, d’abord pleines à la base (Thouars), puis creuses à archères flanquant le passage (Chiché, Chateau-Larcher, Gençay, Parthenay). L’accès est contrôlé par un assommoir, et fermé par des vantaux et une herse (Chiché, Château-Larcher, Gençay, Mauléon). Les entrées complexes 40 André Mussat, L’architecture gothique dans l’ouest de la France, Paris 1960. 41 Alain Salamagne, ‘Pour une approche typologique de l’architecture militaire: l’exemple de la famille

monumentale des tours portes de plan curviligne’, Archéologie médiévale, 1988, 179–213. 42 Jeremy K. Knight, ‘The Road of Harlech: Aspects of Some Early Thirteenth Century Welsh Castles’,

dans Essays in honour of D. J. Cathcart King, Cardiff 1987, 79; T. McNeill, ‘Trim Castle, Co Meath: the First Three Generations’, Arch. Journ. 147, 1990, 308–36.

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Fig. 6 La tour porte du Prince de Galles, sur l’enceinte de ville de Thouars

formées d’une succession de plusieurs herses et assommoirs résultent dans ce contexte de la transformation d’une ancienne porte dont il a fallu doubler les vantaux (Thouars, Bressuire). Seule la porte de la citadelle, à Parthenay, présente cette structure dès l’origine, ce qui en fait un des châtelets d’entrée les plus élaborés de notre domaine d’étude (Fig. 7).

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Fig. 7 La porte de la citadelle de Parthenay, axonométrie d’Albéric Verdon

La tour à éperon La porte de la citadelle, et plusieurs autres tours rondes, à Parthenay et au Coudray-Salbart, présentent un éperon face à l’attaque (Fig. 8). Ce dispositif, qui renforce l’épaisseur du mur, et impressionne l’ennemi, est assez rare; il est donc intéressant de noter qu’on en trouve plusieurs exemples dans les domaines Plantagenêt vers 1200: Château-Gaillard, Issoudun, les tours du front sud de

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Fig. 8 La Grosse tour du Coudray-Salbart Loches.43 La comparaison de ces ouvrages avec les portes de Douvres en Angleterre s’impose, mais ne nous permet pas de préciser les datations. Sur le front est, la porte Fitzwilliam, encadrée de deux tours pleines en amande, est élevée après 1222, peut être contemporaine d’une grosse tour pleine en amande élevée par Hubert de Burgh sur le front d’attaque. 43 Pascal Langeuin, ‘Le front sud du donjon de Loches et ses tours en amande’, Bulletin monumental

154–III, 1996, 235–67.

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Les donjons de Talmont et du Haut-Clairvaux relèvent d’un programme différent: un énorme éperon a été ajouté sur une tour romane de plan quadrangulaire. Des talus ‘angevins’ Des études récentes ont signalé l’existence d’une famille assez homogène de tours circulaires possédant des talus ‘à l’angevine’, dans les domaines Plantagenêt, vers 1200 (Chinon, Conches).44 La base de la tour est rectangulaire en plan, et des pans coupés triangulaires rachètent le passage au plan circulaire. A 25 kilomètres de Chinon, les portes de Thouars présentent les seuls exemples de talus angevin en Poitou. Ce type de talus est resté peu usité en France, mais est couramment utilisé outre-Manche à partir du XIIIe siècle (Douvres, Tonbridge, Chepstow, Goodrich, Ipswich, etc.). Parallèlement, Christian Corvisier souligne l’existence de talus à ressauts, d’un type tout à fait particulier, et que l’on ne peut confondre avec de simples ressauts de fondation.45 Il apparaît au donjon de Niort, et à Montreuil-Bonnin, comme aux donjons contemporains de Château-Gaillard et Longchamps, à Chinon et à la Bell Tower de Londres. Tous ces édifices sont datés du règne de Richard Ier. Sur le modèle des châteaux de Philippe Auguste, les tours du Poitou adoptent systématiquement le talus conique à partir du XIIIe siècle. La conservation du donjon Les châteaux étudiés en Poitou possèdent, pour la plupart, un donjon, ou tour maîtresse.46 Aux XIe siècle et XIIe siècle, ils relèvent généralement du type ‘donjon roman’, de plan rectangulaire, et avec une originalité constructive poitevine que nous avons déjà soulignée: des contreforts arrondis.47 Au cours de la période 1154–1242, ils adoptent parfois le plan circulaire (Brosse, Coudray-Salbart, Montreuil-Bonnin). Christian Corvisier ne les date pas avant 1200, notant une ‘carence remarquable des donjons circulaires dans le comté d’Anjou stricto sensu, jusqu’à la conquête de Philippe Auguste’ et même l’absence de donjon circulaire avant 1200 dans tout le Sud-Ouest de la France.48 Il en reconnaît plusieurs exemples avant 1200 en Normandie: Château-sur-Epte, Neufmarché, Neaufles-Saint-Martin, Bonneville-surTouques. Le donjon de Montreuil-Bonnin, que nous avons attribué à Richard Ier, peut relever du même contexte. Les comparaisons avec l’Angleterre sont très limitées. Il semble qu’il n’y ait pas eu outre-Manche de donjon cylindrique érigé par la couronne avant le règne d’Henri III. La Wakefield tower de la tour de Londres est considérée comme un des premiers exemples de ce type.49 Le Pays de Galles conserve de rares donjons de plan circulaire datés du début du XIIIe siècle, comme ceux de Chepstow, 44 Jean Mesqui, Châteaux et enceintes de la France médiévale, Paris 1991–3, vol. 2, 306. 45 Christian Corvisier, ‘Les grosses tours de plan circulaire ou centré en France avant 1200, étude sur les

antécédents de la politique castrale de Philippe Auguste’, thèse de l’Université de Paris I, sous la direction de L. Pressouyre, 1998, vol. 1, 149. 46 Nous prenons en considération le terme ‘donjon’ au sens large. Prenant la forme d’une tour et sa chemise ou d’une chemise sans tour; cf. Christian Corvisier, ‘Les shells-keeps ou donjons annulaires: un type architectural anglo-normand?’, Bulletin trimestriel de la Société géologique de Normandie et des Amis du Muséum du Hâvre 84, fasc. 3 et 4, 1997, 3e trim., 71–82. 47 André Châtelain, Donjons romans des pays d’Ouest, Paris 1973. 48 Corvisier, Les grosses tours, vol. 1, 30. 49 Peter E. Curnow, ‘The Wakefield Tower, the Tower of London’, Château-Gaillard 8, 1976, 174.

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Fig. 9 Le donjon de Montreuil-Bonnin et Chartley.50 Plusieurs appartiennent à des officiers proches du roi ayant résidé en France: Pembroke à Guillaume le Maréchal, Longtown et Skenfrith, châteaux de Hubert de Burgh. L’Irlande en possède également, vers 1200–10: Dundrum, Nenagh.51 50 Knight, ‘The Road of Harlech’. 51 Terence B. Barry, The Archaeology of Medieval Ireland, Londres 1997, 59.

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Fig. 10 La tour sud du donjon de Niort, avec ses mâchicoulis A la différence des donjons de Philippe Auguste, aucune grosse tour du Poitou antérieure à 1242 ne possède un accès de plain-pied avec le sol de la cour. Par une porte surélevée, on accède directement au premier étage de la tour, dont la base renferme un ou deux niveaux de caves (Fig. 9). On peut se demander à quoi servent ces énormes tours. Elles intègrent une grande salle qui n’occupe qu’une faible proportion du volume intérieur et paraît peu habitable: les fenêtres y sont rares, les cheminées et latrines parfois absentes. Seule la grosse tour du Coudray-Salbart

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Fig. 11 Le château du Coudray-Salbart, plan d’ensemble par Pascal Langeuin intègre l’ensemble de ces éléments résidentiels, et présente de plus un décor sculpté qui se développe sur les supports de la voûte. Nous avons pu comparer ces sculptures de feuilles plates, de trèfles et de fleurettes, avec celles qui apparaissent dans les églises contemporaines de la proche région. Plus intéressantes encore sont les figures sculptées qui ornent la clef des arcs formerets. Il s’agit de têtes couronnées, simples, que l’on peut assimiler aux personnages qui apparaissent dans la sculpture religieuse, et sont parfois interprétées comme les représentations des donateurs ou commanditaires.52 Le rôle ostentatoire de ces tours, et par ailleurs l’importance de leurs dispositions sommitales pour la défense et le guet, sont à prendre en considération. Les mâchicoulis sur arcs Plusieurs châteaux poitevins conservent d’importantes portions de leurs chemins de ronde avec merlons et créneaux, dispositifs de fermeture, trous de hourdages, voire vestiges de hourds encore en place (Coudray-Salbart). Plus rares sont les mâchicoulis sur arcs, conservés de façon exceptionnelle au donjon de Niort. Ils existent sur la tour sud, exclusivement, et sont bien d’origine, même s’ils montrent des différences 52 Bernard Pilot, ‘Les personnages “historiques” dans la sculpture du domaine Plantagenêt’, mémoire de

DEA soutenu à l’université de Poitiers sous la direction de Piotr Skubiszewski, 1997, 31.

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sensibles de mise en œuvre: on compte trois arcs brisés, et un arc en plein cintre (Fig. 10). Tous les auteurs s’accordent à dire que ce type de mâchicoulis semble directement provenir de Terre Sainte. Nous avons placé la construction du donjon de Niort vers 1185, c’est-à-dire bien avant le départ des croisés en Terre Sainte. Mais l’édifice n’était peut-être pas achevé une dizaine d’années plus tard, et a pu bénéficier, comme Radepont et Château-Gaillard, des mêmes innovations au niveau des aménagements sommitaux. L’arc de l’assommoir qui existe dans la tour porte de Talmont présente une mise en œuvre similaire, alors que le principe de cette entrée ménagée dans un passage coudé trouve clairement son origine dans les châteaux de Terre Sainte. La gaine Le château du Coudray-Salbart présente un dispositif original, qui permet de multiplier les étages de tir: une gaine. Il s’agit d’un couloir voûté à archères, ménagé dans l’épaisseur du mur et reliant les tours (Fig. 11). Pierre Héliot en a recensé des exemples très divers en Orient et en Occident, sans proposer une véritable typologie.53 Le développement de la gaine du Coudray-Salbart sur tout le périmètre de l’enceinte, avant 1242, et la qualité de sa mise en œuvre, renvoient à un programme d’ensemble très cohérent dont on trouve plusieurs exemples dans les châteaux d’Henri III Plantagenêt: Benauges et le château de la Réole en Bordelais, peut-être Palluau, en Bas Poitou. La gaine est alors interrompue par des portes, des ruptures de niveaux, voire des assommoirs, et semble autant canaliser et contrôler la circulation dans le château que faciliter les déplacements des défenseurs. Quelques exemples plus anciens sont identifiés dans les domaines Plantagenêt: la tour d’Avranche à Douvres, Domfront, Arques-la-Bataille, où il s’agit de véritables galeries souterraines creusées dans le rocher desservant des postes de tir au niveau des fossés.54 On ne peut cependant considérer cet élément comme caractéristique de l’architecture Plantagenêt. Des châteaux proches du domaine royal capétien présentent au XIIIe siècle des gaines importantes (La Folie à Braine, Saint-Gobain, Selles à Cambrai, et le château du Courtrai à Lille, etc.). En l’attente d’une étude approfondie, nous ne pouvons que constater l’originalité de ces galeries défensives qui peuvent être considérées comme un apport oriental aux fortifications de l’ouest de l’Europe.55 Les archères à niches Les études récentes de Jean Mesqui mettent en évidence la diffusion des archères à niches dans les domaines Plantagenêt de France et d’Angleterre dès la fin du XIIe siècle, alors que ces ouvertures de tir sont quasiment absentes des autres régions à la même époque, et sont surtout exclues des programmes de construction de Philippe Auguste.56 Les maîtres d’œuvre des Plantagenêts ont été les premiers, dans les années 1190–1220 en Occident, à développer des niches au-devant des ouvertures de tir, mais ils n’ont pas utilisé de façon systématique, ni exclusive, ce mode de construction. 53 Pierre Héliot, ‘Un organe peu connu de la fortification médiévale, la gaine’, Gladius 10, 1972, 45–67. 54 Pascal Langeuin, Le château d’Arques-la-Bataille, étude archéologique du bâti, mémoire présenté à

l’EPHESS sous la direction de J. M. Pesez et F. Piponnier, Paris 1999, vol. 1, 53–4. 55 K. A. C. Creswell, ‘Fortification in Islam before AD 1250’, PBA 38, 1952, 89–125. 56 Mesqui, Châteaux et enceintes, vol. 2, 262–72.

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Fig 12 Archère du château du Coudray-Salbart, plan, coupe, élévation

L’enceinte flanquée du château de Douvres en est notamment dépourvue. Quelques exemples poitevins contemporains (Talmont, le Haut-Clairvaux, Thouars) montrent l’adaptation de véritables chambres de tir desservant des archères. La niche apparaît couverte d’une voûte en plein cintre à la fin du XIIe siècle (Niort, Château-sur-Epte, Vendôme, Gisors, Chinon). La niche couverte en berceau brisé paraît plus tardive. Elle est généralement associée à un ébrasement rectangulaire couvert de linteaux que l’on trouve très fréquemment au début du XIIIe siècle (Fig. 12). La niche d’archère peut desservir plusieurs fentes de tir; on la qualifie alors d’archère ‘multiple’. Les archères triples de Niort présentent des ébrasements en

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Fig 13 Archère du château du Coudray-Salbart, plan, coupe, élévation

éventail, qu’elles soient percées dans un mur simple, ou dans un contrefort semicirculaire (ce qui facilite alors leur mise en œuvre). Elles peuvent être comparées à celles des châteaux de Gisors, Douvres, Framlingham, et Vendôme, par leurs dimensions et leur mode de construction (sous niche plein cintre). La tour trilobée découverte récemment en fouilles à Parthenay relève de la même famille, avec une conception plus élaborée: chacun des lobes de la tour dessert trois niches dans lesquelles s’ouvrent deux ou trois archères aux ébrasements divergents. Une telle complexité témoigne d’une recherche particulière pour multiplier les possibilités de tir, dans toutes les directions.

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Les étriers L’étrier est un élargissement, à la base de la fente de tir, qui doit améliorer les possibilités de flanquement vertical depuis les archères. Il est généralement associé à une plongée, c’est-à-dire une inclinaison de l’appui ou du sol de l’archère, vers l’extérieur, de façon à allonger la fente et rendre possible l’utilisation de l’étrier. Cet élément n’est pas attesté dans les domaines Plantagenêt avant la fin du XIIe siècle.57 Les tours du front sud de Loches en présentent des exemples précoces, avant 1205. Ils adoptent là une forme originale, semi-circulaire, que l’on retrouve rarement. Les étriers circulaires, que l’on ne saurait confondre avec des canonnières, apparaissent sur les fentes de tir des ouvrages les plus anciens de Parthenay, Bressuire, Harcourt à Chauvigny, et Coudray-Salbart (Fig. 13). Les étriers triangulaires se généralisent au début du XIIIe siècle d’abord en Poitou (Coudray-Salbart, Parthenay, Chiché, Bressuire, etc.), puis dans les fortifications des domaines français (Provins, Carcassonne vers 1230). Les fentes de visées Les fentes de visées sont également destinées à optimiser les conditions de tir. Ce sont de petites ouvertures horizontales qui donnent aux archères cette forme si caractéristique de croix. Comme l’étrier, la fente de visée est quasiment absente de toutes les fortifications édifiées par les Plantagenêts en Normandie, Anjou et Touraine, donc antérieures à 1205, et n’apparaît en Grande Bretagne que dans quelques châteaux gallois bâtis par Hubert de Burgh à son retour du Poitou. L’origine de ces dispositifs liés au flanquement n’est donc pas anglaise, ni même orientale: Jean Mesqui note que la fente de visée et l’étrier n’apparaissent pas avant le XIIIe siècle en Orient.58 C’est bien en Poitou que l’on voit se généraliser, dès le début du XIIIe siècle, les archères à étriers et à fentes de visée (Parthenay, Chiché, Coudray-Salbart). La fente de visée, parfois scindée en deux fentes décalées, apparaît progressivement en France dans les années 1230–50. Le château d’Harcourt, à Chauvigny, dont les fentes de tir possèdent quatre fentes de visées superposées, constitue un exemple tout à fait original. Des fortifications adaptées à un nouvel armement? La création des archères à niches, des étriers, des fentes de visées, traduit les efforts des maîtres d’œuvre des Plantagenêts pour améliorer la défense. Des exercices de tir ont été réalisés, en France comme en Angleterre, pour préciser les conditions d’utilisation de l’archère.59 En dépit de l’intérêt que présentent ces expérimentations, nous devons émettre quelques réserves sur les conclusions proposées, en particulier sur ‘l’inutilité’ de l’étrier et de la fente de visée, et donc leur rôle décoratif. Les étriers des châteaux de la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle, tous semblables et très réguliers, peuvent avoir un effet décoratif; mais c’est là une interprétation subjective d’un 57 Ceux de la Bell tower de Londres semblent avoir été tous refaits à la fin du XIIIe siècle. 58 Mesqui, Châteaux et enceintes, vol. 2, 271–2. 59 Peter N. Jones et Derek Renn, ‘The Military Effectiveness of Arrow Loops: Some Experiments at

White Castle’, Château-Gaillard 9, 1982, 445–56; Philippe Durand, ‘L’expérimentation de tir dans les châteaux: de nouvelles perspectives pour la castellologie’, Bulletin monumental 156–III, 1998, 258–74.

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observateur contemporain. Ceux des châteaux poitevins antérieurs sont de différents types. Quant aux fentes de visées, elles paraissent s’adapter, par leur forme, leur largeur et leur ébrasement, à leur emplacement. Le château du Coudray-Salbart montre la diversité des archères mises en œuvre sur un même édifice, sans que l’on puisse déceler une évolution linéaire des formes.60 Elles reflètent la créativité des constructeurs qui visent certainement à améliorer le flanquement, mais sans proposer un modèle idéal. III. POLITIQUE DE FORTIFICATION DES PLANTAGENETS EN POITOU

Les chantiers royaux des Plantagenêts De la Normandie au Poitou, la mise en évidence de caractéristiques propres aux fortifications des Plantagenêts pose directement la question de la maîtrise d’œuvre des constructions royales. Les similitudes architecturales sont frappantes, mais relèvent souvent de détails de mise en œuvre, et ne portent pas sur l’ensemble d’un programme castral, comme dans les châteaux de Philippe Auguste. De telles similitudes ne peuvent s’expliquer que par le recours à des maîtres d’œuvre spécialisés. La diffusion d’éléments originaux, tels que l’archère à niche, est en effet restée limitée pendant près d’un demi-siècle à des châteaux relevant directement du roi d’Angleterre. Si l’utilisation d’une main d’œuvre locale est probante pour le gros œuvre, on note qu’en dehors de la voûte sur croisée d’ogives, dont la diffusion dépasse le cadre de l’architecture castrale, les caractéristiques des constructions Plantagenêt sont essentiellement militaires. Pouvons-nous mettre en rapport ces évidences architecturales avec l’organisation, connue par les textes, des chantiers de construction des Plantagenêts? S’appuyant sur l’exemple de la Normandie, Lindy Grant affirme qu’Henri II employait des artisans et des architectes de la région. Une partie des maçons normands concentraient leurs activités sur les commandes royales.61 Cette analyse nous paraît aussi valable pour le Poitou, où le roi d’Angleterre soutient financièrement de grands chantiers de construction, tout en faisant appel à une main d’œuvre locale. Nous avons ainsi pu mettre en évidence les similitudes de construction qui apparaissent parfois entre des châteaux considérés comme ‘Plantagenêt’ et les églises contemporaines des environs. Le rôle des officiers du roi Les similitudes constatées entre certains châteaux poitevins et un ensemble isolé de châteaux du Pays de Galles, ont amené des historiens gallois à poser l’hypothèse de l’exportation d’un modèle de fortification via les grands chefs de guerre dont on peut suivre la carrière en France et outre-Manche. Jeremy Knight étudie les châteaux gallois d’Hubert de Burgh ou de Guillaume le Maréchal en soulignant les traces, dans ces édifices, de l’expérience acquise en Poitou par ces grands personnages.62 Il

60 Marie-Pierre Baudry, ‘Le château du Coudray-Salbart’, Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux

historiques et scientifiques, nouv. sér., fasc. 23–4, Paris 1991, 137–212; Peter E. Curnow, ‘Some Developments in Military Architecture c.1200: le Coudray-Salbart’, ANS 2, 1979 (1980), 41–63. 61 Lindy Grant, ‘Le patronage architectural d’Henri II et de son entourage’, CCM 37, 1994, 78. 62 Knight, ‘The Road of Harlech’, 75.

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attribue ainsi à Hubert de Burgh, inspiré par les modèles poitevins, l’introduction des archères à étriers vers 1220 dans le pays de Galles. Jeremy Knight compare par ailleurs le plan d’Usk et celui de Coudray-Salbart, rappelant qu’Hubert de Burgh était sénéchal de Niort de 1212 à 1215. Il prend ensuite en charge les nouvelles fortifications du château de Douvres et dirige en personne les travaux de construction. On peut lui attribuer notamment le renforcement des portes en amande du front nord et du front est. Il revient en Poitou en 1224–7, et lors de l’expédition de 1230.63 Ces études soulignent d’une part le rôle actif que de grands chefs de guerre pouvaient prendre dans la conception des places-fortes qu’ils défendaient, et expliquent, d’autre part, les similitudes frappantes qui existent entre des châteaux poitevins (Coudray-Salbart, Thouars), et d’autres bâtis outre-Manche à la même époque (Usk, Cheepstow, Trim). Une maîtrise d’ouvrage royale? Dans le cas des châteaux relevant directement du roi d’Angleterre (Niort, le Haut Clairvaux, Talmont et Montreuil-Bonnin à la fin du XIIe siècle), nous pouvons parler d’une maîtrise d’ouvrage royale. Dans le cas des châteaux tenus par de grands barons poitevins, il est plus difficile de distinguer l’intervention royale de l’initiative propre au seigneur du lieu, et les sommes d’argent versées par le roi ne correspondent peut-être qu’à une aide ponctuelle pour la défense du territoire. Elles sont expressément affectées à la fortification du comté. En 1202, le roi Jean accorde des subsides au seigneur de Parthenay pour fortifier ses châteaux.64 Il s’agit davantage d’une maîtrise d’ouvrage déléguée des travaux de fortification, que de subsides accordés sans justification. Pour comprendre comment s’organise le financement des grands travaux attestés au début du XIIIe siècle dans les places des barons, il faut pouvoir mesurer la charge qu’ils représentent. Or, les comptes de construction des rois d’Angleterre ne nous livrent aucune dépense sur les châteaux bâtis en Poitou, ce qui laisse penser que les Plantagenêts n’en assumaient pas directement la construction. Quant aux fortifications de villes, il est tout aussi difficile d’en évaluer précisément le coût, faute de documents. Les 200 marcs accordés par le roi d’Angleterre avant 1220 pour la fortification de Niort ne constituent qu’une partie des sommes versées.65 Au coût de la construction des châteaux, il convient d’ajouter le coût de leur entretien, de leur garde, et de leur approvisionnement. En 1227, Henri III promet à Guillaume de Parthenay des renforts en cas de guerre: cent chevaliers, deux cents sergents, dix arbalétriers à cheval, et dix à pied.66 Une telle garnison nécessite des moyens considérables, non seulement pour la solde, mais aussi pour l’hébergement et l’approvisionnement des hommes et des chevaux, pour les armes et les charrois. Ces quelques estimations soulignent l’effort considérable que représente la garde d’une forteresse. Elles expliquent dans une large mesure pourquoi les rois d’Angleterre ne conservent sous leur contrôle direct qu’un nombre très restreint de châteaux. Henri II Plantagenêt et Richard Cœur de Lion préfèrent détruire ceux qu’ils confisquent et concentrer les crédits de mise en défense de la couronne sur quelques 63 64 65 66

R. P. Walker, ‘Hubert de Burgh and Wales, 1218–1232’, EHR 87, 1972, 465. Rotuli litterarum patentium, vol. 1, pars 1, 11. Rotuli litterarum clausarum, 442 a. Royal and Historical Letters i, 302.

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places clés. Jean sans Terre et Henri III ne conservent également que quelques places stratégiques, dont ils confient la garde aux plus fidèles de leurs vassaux en Poitou. Pour Jean sans Terre en effet, le nombre de châteaux détenus importe moins que le nombre de gardiens fidèles et la possibilité d’y stocker des vivres.67 Au début du XIIIe siècle, le roi d’Angleterre concède aux barons poitevins un grand nombre de châtellenies, à charge pour eux d’en assurer la défense, et met à leur disposition, en cas de guerre, des moyens financiers considérables. Les principaux châteaux sont rendables. Ces concessions démembrent le domaine comtal. ‘A Fortress policy’? Au terme de cette étude, il nous semble possible de préciser l’action des rois Plantagenêt en Poitou, en particulier Richard, Jean et Henri III. Mais pouvons-nous, pour autant, avancer l’hypothèse d’une politique de fortification de ces rois en Poitou? Les études qui ont été menées sur ce thème en d’autres régions montrent qu’il est difficile de parler d’un plan d’ensemble de construction castrale à l’échelle d’un territoire.68 L’étude croisée des textes et des sites conservés nous autorise cependant à mettre en avant quelques directions de recherche sur le choix de fortification de quelques places clés. Nous n’avons pu attribuer en Poitou qu’une seule construction aux maîtres d’œuvre d’Henri II: Thouars, dans les années 1180, et peut-être le front sud de l’enceinte de Poitiers, dont la porte fait cruellement défaut pour l’analyse architecturale. L’étude des châteaux poitevins précise en revanche le rôle de Richard Ier dans le développement des fortifications.69 Les textes lui attribuent la construction du Haut-Clairvaux, dès 1182, de Saint-Rémy-sur-Creuse, en 1184. L’étude archéologique nous a permis de confirmer ces informations, et de lui attribuer également le renforcement du château de Talmont, la reconstruction de MontreuilBonnin et du donjon de Niort. Ces travaux ont pu commencer avant son couronnement. Nous pouvons supposer qu’à son retour de croisade, dans les années 1194–9, Richard Ier se soucie moins de fortifier le comté de Poitou, que la Normandie, puis l’Anjou et la Touraine où se porte la guerre. Ce sont les travaux du règne de Jean qui illustrent le rapide développement de la défense active sur l’enceinte (Corfe, Douvres, Scarborough). On peut lui attribuer sur le continent le renforcement de quelques places maîtresses de l’Anjou et de la Touraine (Chinon, Loches), mais c’est en Poitou, à partir de 1205, que se porte la guerre, et c’est dans cette région qu’il s’attache à conserver de puissantes bases stratégiques. En 1206, l’itinéraire de son expédition n’obéit pas simplement au déroulement du conflit: le roi s’arrête dans quelques places isolées, telles que Chiché ou le Coudray-Salbart. Nous pouvons supposer qu’il s’assure de l’état d’avancement des travaux de mise en défense. C’est avec son soutien que les seigneurs poitevins, les

67 R. Eales, ‘Castles and Politics in England, 1215–1224’, Thirteenth Century England II: Proceedings

of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference, 1987, éd. P. R. Coss et S. D. Lloyd, Woodbridge 1988, 28–9. 68 Charles Coulson, ‘Fortress Policy in Capetian Tradition and Angevin Practice: Aspects of the Con-

quest of Normandy by Philipp II’, dans ANS 6, 1983 (1984); N. J. G. Pounds, The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: a Social and Political History, Cambridge 1990, 55. 69 John Gillingham, ‘Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages’, dans War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in honour of J. O. Prestwich, éd. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1984, 78–91.

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Parthenay et les Beaumont en particulier, complètent leurs châteaux par de vastes enceintes systématiquement flanquées de tours rondes (Bressuire, Chiché). Le coût, tant de la construction que de l’entretien et de la garde des châteaux, apparaît considérable, au regard des revenus moyens d’un seigneur, même d’un puissant baron, au début du XIIIe siècle. Et si l’on songe aux enceintes de villes qui apparaissent à cette époque, on conclut vite que même les rois d’Angleterre avaient des difficultés à en assumer la construction, et ne pouvaient manifestement pas en assumer la garde. On comprend dès lors pourquoi ils se sont appuyés sur les communes pour assurer la défense des villes. En dehors de Poitiers et sans doute de Thouars avant 1200, les villes du Poitou ne semblent pas dotées d’enceintes urbaines avant les années 1214–20. Là encore, l’initiative royale semble fondamentale, et ce sont bien Jean Sans Terre et surtout Henri III qui incitent les bourgeois de Niort ou les seigneurs de Parthenay, à renforcer leur ville. La perte de Niort et de la Rochelle, en 1224, amène Henri III à s’appuyer sur les barons dont il soutient financièrement l’effort de guerre: Savary de Mauléon, jusqu’à sa mort en 1233, puis le seigneur de Parthenay. Les châteaux de ce dernier témoignent tout particulièrement de l’importance que lui accorde le roi d’Angleterre: Parthenay, le Coudray-Salbart. CONCLUSION

La comparaison des châteaux poitevins avec ceux construits par les Plantagenêts à la même époque en d’autres régions de France et en Angleterre nous permet de confirmer l’existence d’un certain nombre de caractéristiques qui leur sont propres. Au-delà de l’introduction de la tour de flanquement sur les enceintes – processus que l’on retrouve également dans les domaines capétiens – les constructions des Plantagenêts se signalent dès le XIIe siècle par des éléments architecturaux tout à fait originaux. L’innovation s’exprime à travers les éléments de la défense, talus et éperons, mâchicoulis sur arcs, archères. Cette créativité révèle autant la recherche d’un meilleur système de défense, que la volonté ostentatoire de montrer la puissance du maître d’ouvrage. Les talus à l’angevine, avec leurs formes compliquées, sont prétextes à révéler la qualité de la construction, tout en pierre de taille, le savoir-faire des appareilleurs, et les moyens financiers du commanditaire. Les constructions des Plantagenêts proposent une recherche originale, répondant sans doute à une évolution rapide des techniques d’attaque des places dans les années 1200. L’archère à niche, qui apparaît dès le règne de Richard, n’est pas systématiquement employée dans les constructions nouvelles outre-Manche. Mais elle est bien considérée comme le fossile directeur des constructions anglaises dans l’ouest de la France. Sa diffusion, de la Normandie à la Gascogne, suit en effet les progrès de l’avancée des Plantagenêts, alors qu’elle n’apparaît pas avant le milieu du XIIIe siècle dans les domaines d’influence capétienne. Cette évolution est particulièrement intéressante en Poitou, où l’on note, outre les archères à niches, des archères à étriers et fente de visée, au tout début du XIIIe siècle. Le Poitou voit ainsi la diffusion très rapide d’éléments architecturaux dont on ne peut assurer avec certitude l’origine orientale, ni même l’origine anglaise quoiqu’ils apparaissent clairement dans les châteaux des Plantagenêts. Le choix de fortification est resserré sur quelques places dont l’importance stratégique, au XIIIe siècle, semble souvent liée à leur situation au bord de la mer (Niort, Talmont), ou près d’un pont. Pour les armées en campagne des rois de France

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et d’Angleterre, les passages obligés que constituent les ponts sur les fleuves sont autant de points clés dont ils doivent s’assurer le contrôle. Il serait intéressant de pouvoir mettre en parallèle la reconstruction des ponts et celle des fortifications voisines. Bien que n’étant pas, ou plus, associés à des fortifications, les ponts médiévaux du Thouarsais constituent à ce titre un ensemble tout à fait significatif. Jean Mesqui n’exclue pas l’hypothèse de mêmes maîtres d’œuvre, circulant dans le domaine Plantagenêt, rappelant qu’en 1202 Jean sans Terre fait venir à Londres maître Isembert, qui avait dirigé la construction des ponts de Saintes et de La Rochelle.70 Les nouvelles fortifications permettent de verrouiller les points clés de la circulation dans la région. Cette dernière caractéristique, qui reste ouverte à de futures directions de recherche, invite à reconsidérer ce que R. Allen Brown et Charles Coulson ont appelé ‘a Fortress policy’. Si nous ne pouvons accepter l’idée d’un plan d’ensemble de fortification à l’échelle d’un territoire, nous pouvons en revanche distinguer, chez les Plantagenêts, la volonté de disposer de quelques places fortes en nombre limité, mais très sûres. Cette stratégie militaire basée sur le lancement d’expéditions à partir de puissantes bases logistiques, en Poitou comme en Terre Sainte, est caractéristique de Richard Ier. Mais Jean sans Terre, puis Henri III, s’attachent à conserver également des points d’appui dans cette région, surtout après 1204, lorsque la frontière nord de leurs territoires continentaux est repoussée au sud de la Loire. Ces places sont confiées à de puissants vassaux capables d’en assumer la garde (Thouars, Parthenay, Mauléon), ou aux bourgeois des villes encouragés par des privilèges ou des chartes de communes (Niort, Poitiers). En l’absence de textes, l’analyse architecturale révèle les choix stratégiques des Plantagenêts pour conserver le contrôle du Poitou. L’étude des fortifications nous éclaire ainsi sur l’histoire des Poitevins, et de leurs relations avec les rois d’Angleterre. Elle nous permet d’entrevoir l’ampleur de leur politique de fortification au début du XIIIe siècle.

70 Jean Mesqui, ‘Les ponts du Thouarsais, une famille architecturale sous influence’, Connaissance des

ouvrages d’art 2, 1987, 10–12.

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Désigner les parents

DESIGNER LES PARENTS: LE CHAMP DE LA PARENTE DANS L’ŒUVRE DES PREMIERS CHRONIQUEURS NORMANDS Pierre Bauduin La terminologie de la parenté a depuis longtemps retenu l’attention des anthropologues et des historiens.1 On connaît l’importance que les pionniers de l’anthropologie sociale, à commencer par Lewis Morgan,2 accordèrent à l’examen des nomenclatures servant à désigner les parents. Morgan voyait dans l’observation de cette terminologie l’axe autour duquel pouvait être entreprise l’étude des structures de parenté. En démontrant le lien organique entre ces deux éléments, il admettait ainsi que les vocables en usage dans une société donnée reflètent dans une large mesure le système de parenté dont ils sont l’expression. Par la suite de nombreux classements ont été élaborés à partir de données collectées dans les différentes sociétés humaines. Toutefois, les valeurs que l’on peut attribuer aux nomenclatures ne font pas l’unanimité des spécialistes.3 Les médiévistes sont venus plus tardivement sur ce terrain, apportant dans leurs bagages un vocabulaire courant et des concepts qui ont été source d’incompréhension réciproque entre les historiens et les anthropologues, voire entre les historiens eux-mêmes. Les exemples sont nombreux; nous renverrons simplement à l’analyse qu’en fit Anita Guerreau-Jalabert voici une vingtaine d’années dans ses ‘observations sur une terminologie imprécise et confuse’4 ou bien à ce qui est devenu un morceau d’anthologie en la matière, en l’occurrence le long appendice que Jack Goody consacre au ‘lignage’ dans son ouvrage sur l’évolution de la famille et du mariage en Europe.5 Si toutes les ambiguïtés ne sont pas levées, les médiévistes ont depuis entrepris un effort pour comprendre la nomenclature laissée par la société médiévale, tant au niveau de la signification des vocables recensés que sur le plan de l’interprétation

1

Emile Benveniste, ‘Termes de parenté dans les langues indo-européennes’ L’Homme 5, 1965, 5–16; Donald Bullough, ‘Early Medieval Social Groupings: the Terminology of Kinship’, Past and Present 45, 1969, 3–17; André Burguière, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Martine Segalen et Françoise Zonabend, Histoire de la famille, t. 1, Mondes anciens, mondes lointains, Paris 1986, 22–7. 2 Lewis H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, Washington 1871. 3 Un aperçu de ces débats dans Robin Fox, Anthropologie de la parenté. Une analyse de la consanguinité et de l’alliance, Paris 1972, 234–7. 4 Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘Sur les structures de parenté dans l’Europe médiévale’, Annales ESC 36, 1981, 1030–1. 5 Jack Goody, L’évolution de la famille et du mariage en Europe, Paris 1985 (pour l’édition française), 225–41; Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘La parenté dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne: à propos d’une synthèse récente’, L’Homme 110 (avril–juin 1989), 69–93, en particulier 71–2.

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qu’il est possible d’en faire.6 La terminologie de la parenté ne se laisse pas en effet aborder sans prendre un certain nombre de précautions. Les unes tiennent aux sources disponibles. Pour la période antérieure au XIIe siècle, elles sont pour leur immense majorité en langue latine et la nomenclature employée est l’héritière de celle en usage dans le monde romain. Bien sûr, elle ne la reproduit pas à l’identique et les historiens ont depuis longtemps déjà repéré les glissements sémantiques de tel ou tel terme ou le recours à des périphrases permettant de rendre compte d’un système de classification qui ne correspondait plus à celui de l’Antiquité romaine. Il n’en demeure pas moins que tous les spécialistes se trouvent confrontés à un moment ou à un autre à la rigidité d’un vocabulaire dont l’utilisation semble parfois déconnectée de la réalité sociale. Le ‘piège des mots’ (R. Le Jan) n’est d’ailleurs pas seulement imputable au choix de la langue latine comme véhicule de l’écrit; il traduit aussi certaines formes du conservatisme social et en premier lieu celui des dépositaires de cette culture écrite: les clercs. La terminologie de la parenté n’est cependant ni imperméable ni monolithique. Outre les glissements sémantiques déjà évoqués, l’examen des sources montre les décalages entre la documentation législative, plus réticente à répercuter les transformations de la société, et d’autres sources (diplomatiques, domaniales, notariales ou narratives) plus promptes à enregistrer le changement social. D’autres préoccupations doivent être prises en considération. La plus évidente est le risque de se laisser enfermer dans une approche sémantique. Celle-ci n’est qu’un moyen d’aborder les systèmes de parenté. Elle rend d’abord compte des relations les plus explicites et les schémas qu’elle permet de dégager doivent être confrontés à d’autres données fournies, par exemple, par l’anthroponymie ou l’étude des transferts patrimoniaux. D’autre part, il ne faut pas perdre de vue que la terminologie et les classifications qu’elle suggère ne sont pas seulement l’expression d’une réalité sociale mais aussi celle d’un ‘univers idéal de parenté’ (Robin Fox).7 Elle rend compte et participe à l’élaboration d’un système de représentation d’une société donnée. Il faut ainsi s’interroger tout à la fois sur son adéquation au réel et son intention ou sa capacité à agir sur celui-ci. On le voit, le champ d’investigation est particulièrement large. Notre enquête a été menée à partir de trois textes bien connus: le De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum rédigé par Dudon de Saint-Quentin à la demande de Richard Ier et achevé pour l’essentiel avant 1001, les Gesta Normannorum ducum de Guillaume de Jumièges composés avant 1060 puis complétés par leur auteur au plus tard au début de l’année 1070 et les Gesta Guillelmi que Guillaume de Poitiers écrivit entre 1071 et 1077.8 Ce choix a été en partie guidé par des impératifs méthodologiques. Les œuvres 6

Pierre Toubert, Les structures du Latium médiéval. Le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe siècle à la fin du XIIe siècle, Rome 1973, t. 1, 704–11; Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘La désignation des relations et des groupes de parenté en latin médiéval’, Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevii 46, 1988, 65–108; Régine Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe–Xe siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale, Paris 1995, 159–77; Benoît-Michel Tock, ‘L’utilité des bases de données diplomatiques pour l’étude des généalogies’, Le Médiéviste et l’Ordinateur 36, hiver 1997, consultable sur le site de l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes. 7 Fox, Anthropologie de la parenté, 239. 8 Dudon de Saint-Quentin, De gestis Normanniae ducum seu de moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. J. Lair, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, t. XXIII, Caen 1865, [ci-après: Dudon]; trad. anglaise History of the Normans, par E. Christiansen, Woodbridge 1998; The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. E. M. C. van

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de Guillaume de Jumièges et de Guillaume de Poitiers ont fait l’objet de rééditions récentes; le De moribus et actis . . . est accessible seulement dans l’ancienne édition de Jules Lair mais l’œuvre et son auteur ont suscité ces dernières années un nombre impressionnant de travaux qui ont permis de réhabiliter partiellement Dudon et de situer son travail dans le contexte politique, social et culturel du temps. Dans les trois cas l’analyse du champ lexical a été largement facilitée par l’existence de tables de concordances réalisées par le CERLA de l’Université de Caen.9 Il faut d’autre part souligner la cohérence de ce corpus de textes. En dépit de différences sur lesquelles nous reviendrons, les trois œuvres se rattachent aux Gesta consacrés à un prince ou à une dynastie princière, un genre qui se développe en Normandie avec une précocité et une vigueur à peu près sans équivalent pour des constructions politiques de même nature en France du nord. Leurs auteurs sont suffisamment connus pour que l’on se dispense ici d’un long exposé biographique. Il faut toutefois garder à l’esprit que leur proximité tant à l’égard de la société laïque que des modèles littéraires profanes de l’Antiquité n’est pas identique. Notre analyse portera d’abord sur les vocables désignant les groupes et relations de parenté puis sur ceux se référant plus spécifiquement aux positions généalogiques. Nous dresserons en guise de conclusion le bilan et les limites de l’apport des sources narratives à notre connaissance des structures de parenté dans la Normandie du XIe siècle. Dans une étude publiée en 1988, Anita Guerreau-Jalabert a clairement démontré les valeurs accordées par les auteurs médiévaux des IXe–XIIe siècles aux termes affinitas, cognatio, consanguinitas, parentela et proximitas.10 Ces désignations suggèrent tout à la fois des groupements de parenté et les diverses relations ou comportements entre les individus qui se reconnaissent ‘parents’. L’organisation de ce champ sémantique permettait ainsi de repérer les articulations entre les différents registres de la parenté (consanguinité, alliance de mariage ou affinité spirituelle). Elle faisait ressortir la valeur du couple parentela–cognatio pour illustrer le caractère fondamentalement indifférencié11 du système de parenté de l’Occident médiéval. L’analyse qualitative des termes relevés devait cependant être confrontée à des observations plus fines dans l’espace et dans le temps. Appliquée à notre corpus, l’analyse s’avère parfois décevante, souvent en raison du faible nombre d’occurrences rencontrées. Parentela apparaît seulement à quatre reprises, parfois dans un contexte trop imprécis pour formuler des conclusions solides. Elle ne se rapporte pas forcément à la parentèle théorique c’est à dire ‘l’ensemble de ceux qu’un individu donné appelle ses parents et parmi lesquels il lui est interdit de se marier’.12 Dudon distingue clairement la parentèle franque de Guillaume Longue Epée, faisant ici référence aux parents maternels du prince normand.13 Les usages sociaux de la parentela ne sont pas ignorés: Guillaume de

Houts, 2 vols, OMT 1992–5, [ci-après: Jumièges]; The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. R. H. C. Davis et M. Chibnall, OMT 1998 [ci-après: Gesta Guillelmi]. 9 Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur l’Antiquité. Nous remercions Pierre Bouet de nous avoir facilité la consultation de ces données. 10 Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘La désignation des relations’. 11 Rappelons qu’on parle de structure indifférenciée (ou cognatique) lorsque la parenté est transmise indifféremment par le père ou par la mère. 12 Novum glossarium mediae latinitatis. 13 Dudon III, 44, 188.

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Poitiers emploie le terme pour désigner un groupe solidaire à l’occasion de la remise d’otages.14 Parens n’offre qu’un médiocre secours pour affiner l’analyse. Les parentes peuvent être les membres de la parentèle, c’est en ce sens que Dudon l’emploie lorsqu’il désigne les parents francs de Guillaume Longue Epée.15 Toutefois parens (au singulier ou au pluriel) est le plus souvent usité dans un contexte différent. Il peut s’appliquer aux parents biologiques, ou seulement à l’un d’eux (souvent le père): il prend alors souvent une connotation morale soulignée par l’emploi de qualificatifs (pius, dignus) destinés notamment à souligner la sollicitude des parents à l’égard de leurs enfants.16 Le terme se réfère enfin aux ancêtres17 ou plus précisément à l’ancêtre fondateur (Enée, Rollon).18 A l’évidence, la relation la mieux perçue, ou du moins la mieux mise en évidence, est la consanguinité. Notons au préalable que la rareté des occurrences à cognatio ou cognatus défie pratiquement toute tentative d’analyse. Cognatio se rencontre une seule fois, dans le récit de Dudon,19 où, associé à progenies, elle désigne un groupe de parents liés par une relation consanguine. Aucun de nos trois chroniqueurs n’utilise cognatus pour qualifier un parent: il y a là un hiatus avec la langue des chroniqueurs plus tardifs (comme Orderic Vital) ou le vocabulaire des chartes contemporaines. Cognatus peut cependant être employé sous une forme adjectivale pour souligner la proximité créée par les liens du sang: Guillaume de Poitiers mentionne ainsi le cognatus sanguis qui unit Gui de Bourgogne à son frère Guillaume Tête Hardie.20 La cognata terra Danorum évoquée par le même auteur pour expliquer l’aide apportée par les Danois à Harold en 1066 renvoie probablement à une proximité de sang.21 La relation de consanguinité est exprimée de manière plus explicite par consanguinitas (5x) et consanguineus (4x) que l’on rencontre principalement dans le récit de Guillaume de Poitiers: elle est aussi, pour l’auteur des Gesta Guillelmi, l’une des justifications essentielles de la conquête. La consanguinitas désigne parfois un groupe de parents, la parentèle consanguine;22 plus généralement elle évoque une relation, qui peut être située de manière précise. D’après Guillaume de Poitiers, Edouard le Confesseur choisit comme héritier Guillaume de Normandie tant en raison des bienfaits reçus autrefois qu’en raison de leur appartenance à une même linea consanguinitatis.23 Il revient sur ce point dans le long exposé où il légitime les droits du prince normand sur le trône d’Angleterre en soulignant la proxima consanguinitas des deux hommes. L’archidiacre de Lisieux en profite pour définir cette proxima consanguinitas en précisant la position généalogique des deux protagonistes: Guillaume, dit-il, était ‘le fils du duc Robert [le Magnifique] dont la tante paternelle

14 Gesta Guillelmi I, 14, 20. 15 Dudon III, 44, 189: Delebo hos horumque cognationem penitus a facie terrae, et non remanebit harum

progenierum ullus in toto orbe. Gesta Guillelmi I, 39, 62; I, 59, 96. Jumièges, Lettre dédic., t. 1, 6. Gesta Guillelmi II, 7, 112 (Enée); I, 43, 72 (Rollon). Dudon III, 45, p. 189. Gesta Guillelmi I, 9, 12. Gesta Guillelmi II, 16, 126. Sur cet épisode et les relations familiales unissant la famille de Godwin à celle des rois du Danemark: Ian W. Walker, Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King, Stroud 1997, en particulier, xvi, 22–3, 147–8 et passim. 22 Gesta Guillelmi II, 48, 186. 23 Gesta Guillelmi I, 14, 20. 16 17 18 19 20 21

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(amita), sœur de Richard II et fille de Richard Ier, fut la mère d’Edouard’.24 Le champ de cette consanguinité proche englobe ainsi des cousins au troisième degré canonique, ce que suggère également un autre passage des Gesta Guillelmi consacré à la révolte de Conan II, fils d’Alain III de Bretagne.25 Consanguineus peut s’appliquer à des proches dont on situe précisément la position généalogique. C’est le cas d’Edouard le Confesseur par rapport à Guillaume le Conquérant.26 Toutefois les occurrences rencontrées dans les récits des chroniqueurs montrent également l’emploi du terme pour des relations plus difficiles à situer. Dudon fait du roi danois Hagrold un consanguineus de Richard Ier,27 simplement parce qu’il admet par ailleurs que la dynastie ducale normande est issue de la famille royale danoise. Guillaume de Poitiers met en scène un consanguineus de Guillaume le Conquérant, Robert, fils de Guimar, sans qu’il soit possible de déterminer avec précision le rapport de parenté unissant les deux personnages.28 Il apparaît également que la consanguinitas fonde des comportements de solidarité et détermine des limites qu’il convient de ne pas franchir. Dans le récit de Dudon, Hagrold est sollicité par les Normands ut Richardo Willelmo magni ducis filio suo consanguineo succurrere festinaret.29 Guillaume de Poitiers justifie la clémence de Guillaume de Normandie à l’égard de Gui de Bourgogne par les liens du sang (consanguinitate) entre les deux hommes.30 La propinquitas a une valeur très proche de la consanguinitas. Propinqui est employé pour désigner des personnages ailleurs qualifiés de consanguineus, c’est le cas par exemple d’Hagrold de Danemark ou d’Edouard le Confesseur respectivement par rapport à Richard Ier31 et à Guillaume II de Normandie.32 Elle induit également des comportements sociaux de même nature: Guillaume de Poitiers déplore ainsi la faiblesse de nombreux hommes de bien, ‘qui, égarés par une affection charnelle (affectu carnali) sont indulgents aux fautes de ceux qui leurs sont proches par le sang (sanguinis propinquitate)’33 et stigmatise par ailleurs l’entreprise de Gui de

24 25 26 27 28

Gesta Guillelmi II, 30, 150. Gesta Guillelmi I, 43, 72. Gesta Guillelmi II, 12, 120. Dudon IV, 84, 239. Gesta Guillelmi II, 10, 116. Sur ce personnage, qui apparaît également comme un consanguineus et un propinquus d’Edouard le Confesseur, voir en particulier: Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor, Londres 1970, 94, 124, 125 n. 3, 163 n. 1, 164–5, 191, 229, 252; Judith Green, ‘The Sheriffs of William the Conqueror’, ANS 5, 1982 (1983), 132–3; Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 205, 207 et les récentes mises au point de Marjorie Chibnall (Gesta Guillelmi, 116, n. 2 et 3) et de Katharine Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: a Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166, I, Domesday Book, Woodbridge 1999, 19. Katharine Keats-Rohan propose d’identifier le personnage avec Robert de Moyaux (Calvados, cant. Lisieux–1) et en fait le fils de Guimar et d’Ansfred le sénéchal. Jean-Michel Bouvris a par ailleurs noté les relations étroites entre les femmes du lignage – bienfaitrices ou nonnes – et les abbayes ducales (Montivilliers, la Trinité de Caen); cette orientation pourrait s’expliquer par des liens familiaux avec la dynastie des ducs de Normandie (Jean-Michel Bouvris, ‘La renaissance de l’abbaye de Montivilliers et son développement jusqu’à la fin du XIe siècle’, L’abbaye de Montivilliers à travers les âges, Actes du colloque de Montivilliers (8 mars 1986), Recueil de l’Association des Amis du Vieux Havre no 46, 1988, 44). 29 Dudon IV, 84, 239. 30 Gesta Guillelmi I, 9, 12: Motus dux consanguinitate, supplicitate, miseria uicti, non acerbius uendicauit. 31 Dudon IV, 84, 239 et IV, 88, 244. 32 Gesta Guillelmi I, 1, 2 et I, 41, 70. 33 Gesta Guillelmi I, 1, 53, 128.

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Bourgogne, révolté contre Guillaume de Normandie en dépit de leur generis propinquitate.34 Cependant dans ces deux exemples la nécessité de préciser la relation de sang, ici par sanguinis et generis, suggère que la propinquitas ne recouvre pas exactement le champ de la consanguinité. Les propinqui peuvent être associés aux ‘amis’,35 voire aux ‘compatriotes’,36 sans qu’il soit toujours possible, dans notre corpus, de définir l’origine de la relation. A une seule exception près, enfin, les proximi, ne renvoient pas à des parents mais à la suite d’un puissant personnage.37 Les relations établies par l’alliance de mariage et la parenté spirituelle sont peut-être davantage suggérées par l’amicitia que par l’affinitas et la proximitas. Chez Dudon, l’affinitas n’appartient pas au registre de la parenté mais évoque la proximité géographique, ce que dénote également l’emploi d’affines. A plusieurs reprises toutefois, se trouve exprimée l’idée que cette proximité est un facteur qui engendre une communauté de sentiments.38 Dans les Gesta Normannorum ducum et les Gesta Guillelmi, l’affinitas (3x) est toujours une relation créée par l’alliance de mariage39 et sous-entend parfois les obligations qui naissent de celle-ci: d’après Guillaume de Jumièges, le futur Baudouin V, en révolte contre son père, compte sur l’affinitas du roi Robert le Pieux, son beau-père. Aucun vocable spécifique n’exprime la relation établie par le baptême. La proximitas, qui ‘semble désigner principalement la relation de parenté spirituelle’40 est absente du vocabulaire des chroniqueurs normands du XIe siècle et les proximi, on l’a vu, ne renvoient pas à des parents spirituels. Ces derniers n’apparaissent d’ailleurs pratiquement jamais avec des désignations spécifiques dans nos sources, contrairement à ce que l’on observe plus tard, par exemple dans l’Historia Ecclesiastica d’Orderic Vital. Seul Dudon parle de filiolus,41 non pour désigner le filleul par rapport au parrain mais le néophyte par rapport au prélat qui l’a baptisé. Cette quasi-absence des vocables relatifs à la parenté spirituelle ne signifie en aucune manière que nos auteurs n’accordent pas d’importance au baptême et à la relation qu’il créé. Bien au contraire, Dudon, en particulier, décrit plusieurs cérémonies baptismales – et pas uniquement le baptême de Rollon. Mais la valeur du lien semble placée sur le registre de l’amitié. Les nombreuses références à l’amicitia (46x) et aux amici (33x) justifieraient une étude particulière qui dépasserait largement notre propos. On sait l’importance que revêt cette relation librement consentie et créatrice d’obligations réciproques: elle est à l’époque carolingienne un élément essentiel à la cohésion des groupes aristocratiques.42 Nos sources laissent clairement apparaître la force de l’engagement que créait l’amicitia. Dans le récit de Dudon, Rollon quitte l’Angleterre après avoir

34 35 36 37

Gesta Guillelmi I, 7, 8. Jumièges V, 6, t. II, p. 16; Gesta Guillelmi I, 41, 70. Gesta Guillelmi II, 38, 168. Gesta Guillelmi II, 11, 118; II, 38, 143; II, 47, 184. La seule exception concerne les évêques Hugues de Lisieux, Odon de Bayeux et Jean d’Avranches, tous trois proximi de Guillaume le Conquérant par leur haute naissance (Gesta Guillelmi I, 56, 90). Nous n’avons pas tenu compte ici du sens évangélique de ‘prochain’ que revêt également proximus, en particulier chez Dudon. 38 Dudon III, 47, 192; III, 51, 206. 39 Jumièges III, 3, t. 1, 80 et VI, 6, t. 2, 52; Gesta Guillelmi I, 52, 96. 40 Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘La désignation des relations’, 87. 41 Dudon I, 6, 134 (2x). 42 Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 83–5. Rappelons que l’amicitia était un des fondements des relations politiques dans le monde romain (Joseph Hellegouarc’h, Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République, Paris 1963, 41–90, 142–50).

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assuré le roi Athelstan qu’il resterait son amicus et plus tard, le roi, se souvenant de son amicitia avec le chef normand, alors en Frise, lui envoie des vivres et des guerriers.43 Hugues le Grand invoque son amicitia avec Arnoul de Flandre pour motiver son refus d’assister Herluin, comte de Montreuil, pourtant son vassal.44 Le roi de Germanie, Henri, n’accepte l’amicitia de Louis IV qu’après avoir sollicité son ami Guillaume Longue Epée, à qui il reviendra de jouer le médiateur entre les deux souverains.45 Guillaume de Poitiers se plaît à rappeler que son héros s’efforçait d’être honneur et appui pour ses amis et ‘faisait en sorte que ses amis lui eussent de très grandes obligations’.46 L’amicitia établissait un pacte d’égal à égal avec des puissants qui se reconnaissaient solidaires. Si elle est fréquemment conclue entre des personnages qui ne se reconnaissent pas de relations de parenté, elle sert aussi à apaiser les différends familiaux47 et à renforcer des liens entre parents, y compris consanguins.48 Il ressort également que l’amicitia recouvrait également, au moins en partie, le domaine de l’alliance de mariage et de la parenté spirituelle. Le mariage est le préalable nécessaire ou vient confirmer l’amitié des puissants. D’après le chanoine de Saint-Quentin, Guillaume Tête d’Etoupe demande la main de Gerloc, sœur de Guillaume Longue Epée afin que les deux comtes soient désormais liés par une amitié indéfectible.49 Guillaume de Jumièges rapporte que Geoffroy, comte de Rennes, désireux d’obtenir l’amicitia et l’assistance de Richard II vint à Rouen avec l’intention d’épouser la sœur du duc; il fit sa demande aussitôt après avoir conclu des ‘pactes d’amitié’ avec Richard.50 Il apparaît aussi, du moins dans le récit de Dudon, que l’affinité spirituelle créait ou confortait l’amicitia. A l’annonce d’un accord imminent entre Charles le Simple et Rollon, le ‘duc des Francs’, Robert, propose au chef normand de le recevoir au sortir des fonts baptismaux en lui faisant valoir tous les avantages de cette offre de parrainage. Les deux hommes deviendront de la sorte deux amici inséparables et Rollon pourra compter sur le service de Robert et l’influence de celui-ci pour obtenir la bienveillance du roi. A quoi le chef normand répond que le parrainage de Robert pourra engendrer entre eux des liens comparables à ceux qui unissent un fils à son père.51 La demande de compérage faite par Louis IV à Guillaume Longue Epée s’inscrit dans la suite logique d’un long épisode mettant en exergue le rôle du prince normand dans l’établissement de l’amicitia entre le roi carolingien et Henri de Germanie. Guillaume, l’ami des deux rois, est l’intermédiaire obligé de cette relation. Le succès de la médiation conduit Louis, qui vient d’apprendre la naissance de son fils (Lothaire), à demander au duc de Normandie d’en être le parrain. Dans le dialogue qu’il reconstitue à cette occasion, Dudon souligne les implications du lien ainsi établi: non seulement l’affection (dilectio, amor) mutuelle 43 44 45 46 47 48

Dudon II, 8, 148 et II 9, 149. Dudon III, 59, 204. Dudon III, 50–4, 194–8. Gesta Guillelmi I, 13, 16–18. Dudon II, 4, 143. Gesta Guillelmi I, 41, 70: pour Edouard le Confesseur, qui est ainsi à la fois le consanguineus, le propinquus et l’amicus de Guillaume le Conquérant. 49 Dudon III, 47, 192. Dudon relate également l’union matrimoniale entre la fille d’Herbert II de Vermandois et Guillaume Longue Epée, après avoir rappelé, peu auparavant l’amicitia, au demeurant plus fragile, qui unissait les deux princes (III, 42, 186). 50 Jumièges V, 5, t. 2, 14. 51 Dudon II, 27, 167–8.

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des deux hommes s’en trouvera renforcé, mais Guillaume assure le roi Louis de son assistance et de son soutien à l’encontre de tous ceux qui oseraient se rebeller contre lui.52 Dans les deux cas la relation créée détermine un comportement spécifique, qui s’apparente à celui engendré par l’amicitia, y compris dans sa dimension politique, clairement exprimée ici par Dudon.53 Si toutes ces désignations offrent l’avantage de mieux cerner les champs de la consanguinité, de l’alliance et de l’affinité spirituelle, elles ne présentent toutefois qu’un reflet imparfait de l’univers de la parenté des auteurs du XIe siècle. Celui-ci est également exprimé par d’autres termes comme genus, prosapia, progenies, stirps, voire, même s’ils sont moins souvent employés, par genealogia, linea ou stemma.54 Des vocables que des auteurs en langue vulgaire comme Wace ou Benoît de Sainte-Maure rendent par ‘lignée’, ‘lignage’, ‘parage’, ‘estrace’. La plupart de ces termes ont en commun de répondre à une même question, essentielle aux yeux des hommes du temps, auteurs ou commanditaires des œuvres: d’où viennent les héros dont on retrace ainsi les hauts faits? Stirps, prosapia et genus peuvent être employés comme synonymes pour désigner la famille au sein de laquelle se développent les qualités qui en fondent la noblesse. Les deux premiers permettent souvent de renvoyer à un passé ancien, voire mythique,55 de plonger l’individu qui s’y rattache dans un ensemble plus vaste et illustre, en particulier par ses origines ethniques ou royales. Genus exprime mieux les liens du sang qui unissent les membres du groupe. Des liens qui peuvent également être mieux situés dans le champ généalogique. Guillaume de Poitiers fait ainsi dire à Edouard le Confesseur que, de tous ceux qui appartenaient à son ‘lignage’ (genus), Guillaume de Normandie était le plus digne de gouverner l’Angleterre:56 le mot a ici la même valeur que linea consanguinitatis utilisé auparavant par l’auteur57 pour rapporter l’une des raisons du choix d’Edouard. S’il peut désigner le groupe des parents, genus traduit surtout l’idée du sang qui circule entre les membres de ce groupe et les qualités dont sont gratifiés ceux qu’il irrigue, parents, voire église gouvernée par un prélat de bonne famille.58 Cette transmission n’est pas unilinéaire, encore moins agnatique et il n’est pas sans intérêt d’observer que les deux seules occurrences à maternus entrent précisément en composition avec genus,59 pour signifier les lignées maternelles respectivement du roi Harthacnut et de Mathilde de Flandre.

52 Dudon III, 55, 199. 53 Le rôle social et politique des relations créées par la parenté spirituelle a été mis en évidence par

plusieurs travaux, en particulier: Arnold Angenendt, ‘Taufe und Politik in frühen Mittelalter’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 7, 1973, 143–68; Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe, Princeton 1986, 75–6, 332–9; Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 78, 167, 189–90; Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘Spiritus et caritas. Le baptême dans la société médiévale’, dans La parenté spirituelle, ed. Françoise Héritier-Augé et Elisabeth Copet-Rougier, Paris–Bâle 1995, 133–203, notamment 190–3. 54 genealogia: Jumièges, Lettre dédic., t. 1, 6; Gesta Guillelmi I, 1, 2; linea: Dudon III, 35, 179; Gesta Guillelmi I, 14, 20 et I, 22, 30; stemma: Dudon IV, 98, 258; Gesta Guillelmi I, 58, 92 et II, 40, 174. 55 Ainsi dans le long exposé où Guillaume de Jumièges expose les origines du roi Lothbroc (Jumièges I, 1, t. 1, 10; I, 3, t. 1 14 et 16). 56 Gesta Guillelmi II, 12, 121. 57 Gesta Guillelmi I, 14, 20. 58 Dudon, Prol.,115. 59 Gesta Guillelmi I, 5, 6 et I, 22, 32.

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* L’examen des vocables se référant à des positions généalogiques particulières nécessite au préalable deux remarques. En premier lieu une demi-douzaine de vocables n’apparaissent qu’une seule fois.60 Ils sont parfois employés, en particulier chez Dudon, dans une énumération qui ne permet pas de repérer à qui ils s’appliquent. Ainsi dans un discours que le chanoine de Saint-Quentin prête à Bernard le Danois ce dernier motive son refus d’accompagner Guillaume Longue Epée au-delà de l’Epte car lui et ses compagnons ont combattu, tué ou capturé ‘les grands-pères (avos) et les oncles maternels (avunculos), les pères (patres) et les oncles paternels (patruos), les tantes maternelles (materteras) et paternelles (amicas), les cousins (consobrinos) et autres parents consanguins (consanguineos) de ceux qui survivent encore. Comment serions-nous alors assez forts pour résister à tant d’ennemis?’61 A l’évidence l’auteur connaît la terminologie descriptive propre à chaque lignée, ainsi que la force des solidarités entre les membres de la parentèle, mais l’emploi de ce vocabulaire est ici trop imprécis pour évaluer l’emploi courant de ces termes. Dans un même ordre d’idées, il faut aussi noter que les trois auteurs n’usent pas du même registre sémantique. Avus, proavus, atavus se rencontrent presque exclusivement chez Dudon de Saint-Quentin et de façon très marginale dans les Gesta Guillelmi de Guillaume de Poitiers. Lorsqu’il est possible de les situer dans la généalogie, ils renvoient toujours à un ascendant paternel et on ne rencontre aucune désignation spécifique pour les ancêtres féminins. Proavus est le plus souvent utilisé dans une énumération à la suite (ou précédant) pater et avus:62 il semble ainsi marquer le seuil au-delà duquel les ascendants ne sont plus désignés de manière spécifique. Aussi proavus peut-il prendre une valeur plus générale d’ancêtre. C’est le sens dans lequel l’emploie Guillaume de Poitiers63 et il faut sans doute comprendre ainsi ce terme lorsque le chanoine de Saint-Quentin rappelle que son commanditaire Richard Ier lui demanda de rapporter ‘les coutumes et hauts faits de la terre normande et les droits qu’il avait établis dans le royaume de son ancêtre (proavus) Rollon’.64 Une seule fois Dudon prolonge l’énumération jusqu’à l’arrière-arrière-grand-père (atavus), désignant ainsi un ascendant de Louis IV d’Outremer, qu’il ne nomme pas:65 la référence à la lignée carolingienne semble ici justifier un ancrage plus profond dans le passé. Avus, enfin, lorsqu’il fait référence à un ancêtre précis, renvoie le plus souvent à Rollon, le grand-père de Richard Ier ou à Charles le Simple.66 Son emploi peut être alors connoté de manière à justifier la possession héréditaire de la Normandie.67

60 Il s’agit d’atavus (arrière-arrière-grand-père), consobrinus (en principe cousin croisé ou parallèle),

matertera (en principe sœur de la mère), noverca (belle-mère = épouse du père), sororius (beau-frère = époux de la sœur), vitricus (beau-père: époux de la mère). 61 Dudon III, 45, 189. 62 Dudon II, 3, 142; II, 28, 169; III, 55, 189; IV, 92, 248; IV, 94, 252. 63 Gesta Guillelmi II, 48, 184. 64 Dudon, Prol., 119. 65 Dudon III, 55, 199. 66 Dudon IV, 71, 226; IV, 82, 238; IV, 88, 245; IV, 90, 247; IV, 94, 251; IV, 110, 273; IV, 123, 286; IV, 126, 290. 67 Ex.: quod suus avus Rollo vi ac potestate. armis et praeliis sibi adquisivit (IV, 90, 247).

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Sans surprise, la terminologie rencontrée reflète le primat de la famille nucléaire centrée autour du couple conjugal et de ses enfants et les résultats de l’analyse concordent ici avec ce qui a pu être démontré par ailleurs.68 Nous éviterons donc un exposé fastidieux des emplois de pater, mater, genitor, genitrix, frater, soror, germanus, germana et des vocables désignant les conjoints (conjux, uxor, vir, maritus). A une exception près, sponsus/sponsa relève d’abord de l’allégorie religieuse.69 Régine le Jan a montré que l’emploi de senior en lieu et place de vir/maritus suggérait une hiérarchisation croissante au sein du couple:70 cette acception (comme celle de dominus dans le sens de mari) se rencontre de manière exceptionnelle dans nos sources.71 Conjux, habituellement usité pour désigner l’épouse, peut s’appliquer au mari: l’emploi indifférencié d’un même terme pour désigner les deux époux pourrait ainsi traduire la promotion du couple conjugal dont les deux membres se trouvent plus étroitement associés.72 Mais là encore la seule occurrence rencontrée ne permet pas de fonder des conclusions sur ce point. Notons enfin que les chroniqueurs normands se montrent réticents à utiliser concubina pour désigner une compagne illégitime,73 même s’ils rendent compte par d’autres expressions du caractère illicite, du moins aux yeux de l’Eglise, de certaines unions.74 Cette même réserve s’applique également aux enfants naturels.75 Nous n’avons pas procédé à l’analyse détaillée des quelque 421 occurrences à pater, mater, filius et filia (auxquelles il faudrait ajouter 24 autres à genitor/genitrix). Un simple comptage, avec toutes les réserves qu’appelle ce genre de démarche, fait clairement ressortir la relation père–fils (respectivement 173 et 170 occurrences; contre 54 pour filia et 24 pour mater). Il faut toutefois noter de profondes divergences entre les chroniqueurs. Pater l’emporte largement chez Dudon, dans une proportion de plus du double (2,3) alors que le rapport s’inverse dans les œuvres des deux autres auteurs (Guillaume de Jumièges: 2,5; Guillaume de Poitiers: 3,4). Il y aurait là des comparaisons intéressantes à faire avec l’évolution de l’anthroponymie, en particulier la diffusion des dénominations reflétant la filiation. Les membres d’une même fratrie sont dits frater et soror. Seul Guillaume de Poitiers parle de germanus/germana qu’il applique, lorsqu’on peut identifier avec 68 Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 168. 69 Par exemple pour opposer l’époux mortel (mortalis sponsus) au Christ, uirginum sponsus (Gesta

Guillelmi I, 39, 62) ou qualifier la relation d’un évêque avec son église (Gesta Guillelmi I, 53, 86 et I, 58, 92). L’exception concerne la duchesse Mathilde (Gesta Guillelmi I, 22, 32) lorsque Guillaume de Poitiers relate l’entrée solennelle de la nouvelle épouse (sponsa) de Guillaume à Rouen. 70 Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc, 168. 71 Dudon IV, 88, p. 245 (senior); Jumièges IV, 8, t. 1, 112 (dominus). 72 Dudon IV, 88, 245. On notera toutefois, dans un même ordre d’idées, l’usage de consortium dans le sens d’union matrimoniale (Jumièges II, 12, t. 1, 68). 73 Dudon (IV, 125, 289) rapporte qu’après la mort d’Emma, Richard Ier prit plusieurs concubines dont il eut deux fils et autant de filles. Hormis ce passage les compagnes des princes normands ne sont jamais qualifiées de concubinae par Dudon, et pas davantage dans les oeuvres de Guillaume de Jumièges et de Guillaume de Poitiers. Cette réserve contraste avec les récits de chroniqueurs contemporains extérieurs au duché comme Raoul Glaber (Raoul Glaber, Histoires, traduites et présentées par Mathieu Arnoux, Turnhout 1996, IV, 20, 258). La seule autre occurrence à concubina se rencontre sous la plume de Guillaume de Jumièges, pour désigner Ælfgifu, concubine de Knut le Grand (Jumièges VII, 5, t. 2, 104.). 74 Guillaume de Jumièges qualifie de mariages more danico les unions de Rollon et de Guillaume Longue Epée respectivement avec Popa et Sprote (Jumièges II, 6, t. 1, 58 et III, 2, t. 1, 78). Dudon (IV, 125, 289, 290) parle de prohibita copulatio pour désigner la relation de Richard Ier avec Gunnor avant que n’intervienne la légalisation de l’union (eam lege maritali desponsavit). 75 Les termes bastardus et nothus n’apparaissent jamais dans notre corpus.

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certitude les personnages ainsi désignés, aux enfants issus d’un même lit (et non spécifiquement d‘un même père). L’emploi du terme ne semble pas particulièrement connoté et être interchangeable avec celui de frater.76 Frater uterinus, se rencontre seulement à deux reprises (pour Raoul d’Ivry et Odon de Bayeux)77 et dans chaque cas il désigne des frères issus d’une même mère mais on sait par d’autres sources qu’en Normandie l’expression peut simplement désigner des enfants issus d’un seul et même parent, père ou mère.78 Au-delà de cette unité centrée sur la famille nucléaire s’étendait la parenté proche. Celle-ci paraît, dans nos sources, mieux définie du côté des consanguins, englobant une proxima consanguinitas dans les limites du troisième degré canonique. Elle paraît en revanche plus diffuse du côté de l’alliance ou de la parenté spirituelle, où la seule étude terminologique ne permet pas de donner de réponse satisfaisante. Les relations entre affins du premier degré sont rarement exprimées de manière spécifique. Les emplois de gener (gendre),79 de socer et de soceri (beau-père et beaux-parents)80 n’appellent aucune remarque particulière. En revanche, la relation entre beaux-frères, marquée par la périphrase frater sororis (Dudon, 2x)81 ou le vocable sororius (Guillaume de Poitiers, 1x), est mise en valeur lorsqu’il est question de la dévolution de biens matrimoniaux ou de droits sur un royaume ou un comté. Nos sources maintiennent la distinction entre les deux lignées, paternelle et maternelle, bien que cela soit plus évident encore chez Guillaume de Poitiers que dans les œuvres de ses devanciers. Celle-ci doit être nuancée car, d’un côté, plusieurs vocables ne sont attestés qu’une seule fois et dans un contexte trop imprécis pour conclure à la valeur qui est donnée au terme et, d’autre part, certaines désignations ont perdu leur sens originel et admettent un sens bilatéral. Les chroniqueurs normands distinguent l’oncle paternel (patruus) de l’oncle maternel (avunculus). Si l‘emploi du premier terme ne souffre d’aucune ambiguïté, avunculus relève d’une terminologie classificatoire. Pris dans un contexte général, le vocable désigne un oncle, de manière indifférenciée. Ainsi Dudon, dans un tableau où il décrit les mœurs des Danois, parle des jeunes qui entrent continuellement en conflit contre leurs pères et leurs avunculi.82 Lorsqu’il s’agit d’exprimer la position généalogique de deux personnages, l’emploi d’avunculus s’avère souvent juste. Les frères d’Emma de Normandie, épouse d’Aethelred II, sont toujours qualifiés d’avunculi par rapport à Alfred et à Edouard.83 Mais là encore certains flottements sont à remarquer. Bernard de Senlis est à la fois l’avunculus de Guillaume Longue Epée et du fils de ce dernier, Richard Ier.84 Si l’appartenance de Bernard à la lignée maternelle de Guillaume ne fait à peu près aucun doute, il est difficile de déterminer dans quelle mesure Bernard est effectivement l’oncle maternel de Guillaume et avunculus paraît ici désigner d’abord 76 Gesta Guillelmi II, 8, 112–14. 77 Jumièges IV, 20, t. 1, 134; Gesta Guillelmi II, 37, 166. 78 Dans les Gesta Normannorum Ducum Robert de Torigni qualifie Adélaïde d’Aumale de soror uterina,

mais précise dans sa chronique qu’elle et son demi-frère, Guillaume de Normandie, étaient issus d’un même père mais de mères différentes (Chronique, ann. 1026, éd. Léopold Delisle, Rouen Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, 1872, t. 1, 34). 79 Jumièges V, 16, t. 2, 36; Gesta Guillelmi I, 22, 32. 80 Dudon II, 33, 173; Gesta Guillelmi I, 22, 32. 81 Dudon IV, 94, 252 et IV, 125, 288; Gesta Guillelmi I, 39, 62. 82 Dudon II, 1, 141. 83 Jumièges V, 8, t. 2, 20 et VI, 9, t. 2, 76; Gesta Guillelmi I, 1, 2. 84 Dudon III, 45, 189; IV, 75, 231.

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un proche parent en ligne maternelle.85 Dans le récit de Guillaume de Jumièges, lorsque deux personnages sont mis en rapport avec un troisième qui est l’oncle paternel de l’un et l’oncle maternel de l’autre, c’est avunculus qui l’emporte.86 La bilatéralité du terme semble enfin progresser, du moins si l’on regarde certaines interpolations au récit de Guillaume de Jumièges (celles en particulier des rédactions anonymes AB), qui utilisent systématiquement avunculus y compris pour désigner l’oncle paternel.87 Cela ne veut cependant pas dire que ces vocables soient totalement interchangeables: lorsqu’il est possible d’identifier les personnages auxquels ils s’appliquent patruus88 et amita89 gardent toujours le sens d’oncle et de tante paternels et le cousin germain en ligne paternelle est désigné par la périphrase filius patrui,90 de préférence au vocable de la terminologie classificatoire consobrinus, au demeurant fort peu utilisé par les chroniqueurs du XIe siècle. On le voit, la distinction entre les deux lignées est maintenue, mais elle est d’abord opérante lorsqu’il s’agit de désigner le côté paternel, mieux défini que la lignée maternelle. Dans notre corpus, nepos se singularise par la fréquence des occurrences rencontrées (49x). Il s’agit d’un terme classificatoire qui admet plusieurs sens: neveu (c’est le sens le plus fréquent) mais aussi petit-fils, voir simplement descendant et peut-être fils bâtard.91 Le terme a une valeur bilatérale, mais il arrive que l’on distingue les neveux issus du frère ou de la sœur par un terme (fratruelis = fils du frère)92 ou une périphrase (filius sororis)93 spécifiques. L’emploi redondant de nepos, en particulier avec un personnage connu par ailleurs comme un oncle (ou un parent paternel) permet à certains auteurs (Dudon notamment, suivi sur ce point par Guillaume de Jumièges) de mettre en avant une série de couples oncle-neveu: cette relation paraît ainsi le pivot autour duquel s’organisent les rapports au sein de la parenté proche. Il est temps de dresser un bilan. L’un des intérêts de l’analyse est de faire ressortir la fluidité des modèles familiaux dans la Normandie du XIe siècle. La prégnance d’une structure cognatique reste forte. Elle est clairement exprimée dans un passage où Guillaume de Poitiers rapproche les révoltes de Guillaume d’Arques et de Gui de Bourgogne tous deux issus des Richardides, l’un par son père (Richard II), l’autre par sa mère (Adélaïde de Bourgogne, fille de Richard II): les deux hommes, ajoute l’auteur, ‘savaient, pour leur malheur, qu’ils pouvaient être comptés parmi la 85 Katharine Keats-Rohan, ‘Poppa “de Bayeux” et sa famille’, dans Onomastique et parenté dans

l’occident médiéval, éd. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan et C. Settipani, Oxford 2000, 140–53. 86 C’est le cas de l’archevêque de Rouen, Robert, avunculus de Robert le Magnifique et d’Alain III de

Bretagne (Jumièges VI, 10, t. 2, 78). Jumièges VI, 3, t. 2, 48; VI, 11, t. 2, 80; VII, 4, t. 2, 102. Jumièges VI, 7, t. 2, 54; Gesta Guillelmi I, 28, 42; I, 43, 72; I, 53, 86; I 58, 92. Gesta Guillelmi II, 30, 150. Gesta Guillelmi I, 38, 92, pour désigner l’archevêque Mauger par rapport à Hugues, évêque de Lisieux. 91 Guillaume de Poitiers (Gesta Guillelmi II, 47, 184) rapporte la capture, à Douvres, du jeune nepos d’Eustache de Boulogne, identifié soit comme le petit-fils du comte de Boulogne soit comme son fils bâtard Geoffroy. 92 Gesta Guillelmi I, 41, 68 et I, 46, 76: pour désigner Hakon, le neveu d’Harold envoyé comme otage à la cour normande par Edouard le Confesseur. Hakon était le fils de Swein, le frère d’ Harold. Sur cet épisode, Walker, Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King, 33, 37–8. 93 Gesta Guillelmi I, 35, 56, pour Geoffroy III le Barbu, fils d’Ermengarde et neveu de Geoffroy Martel, le frère de celle-ci. 87 88 89 90

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descendance des ducs de Normandie’.94 L’importance de la lignée maternelle, au côté de celle du père, n’est pas démentie par les sources. Au contraire, elle occupe une place essentielle dans la transmission du genus et dans celle des droits: la ratio sanguinis exposée par Guillaume de Poitiers95 parmi les arguments légitimant la conquête repose sur le fait que Guillaume le Conquérant et Edouard appartenaient tous deux à un même genus par le biais d’Emma, la mère du roi anglais. L’exemple n’est d’ailleurs pas isolé, d’autres passages montrent que les chroniqueurs normands restent attentifs à la transmission des droits en ligne maternelle.96 Ce cadre demeuré cognatique n’exclut d’ailleurs pas des réaménagements que l’on pourrait qualifier de ‘lignager’ (ou ‘patrilignager’), si l’on accorde à ce qualificatif l’idée d’une forme d’organisation de la parenté selon un schéma vertical où priment l’ascendance et la descendance masculines et la succession patrilinéaire. En définitive, la souplesse apparente des structures familiales autorise les auteurs à jouer des différents registres pour argumenter leur discours. Il faut toutefois nuancer. Nous avons souligné à plusieurs reprises les différences observées entre les trois récits. Les champs lexicaux de nos auteurs ne se superposent pas. Guillaume de Jumièges, lorsqu’il désigne les parents, utilise une nomenclature presque exclusivement centrée sur la famille nucléaire. Au-delà de celle ci, les seules occurrences rencontrées concernent avunculus, patruus, nepos, et gener.97 Dudon et Guillaume de Poitiers usent d’un vocabulaire plus riche, mais là encore avec des différences notables. Le premier s’attache, on l’a vu, à replacer ses héros dans la lignée d’ascendants (père, grand-père, arrière-grand-père). La distinction entre les lignées paternelle et maternelle, perceptible chez lui, est plus nette dans le récit de Guillaume de Poitiers, qui par ailleurs met mieux en relief les relations de consanguinité. L’analyse lexicale d’une seule de ces œuvres livrerait une image tronquée de la parenté dans la Normandie du XIe siècle. Celle des trois textes, présente l’avantage d’offrir une vision plus complexe des choses, mais l’adéquation de celle-ci au réel doit encore être mesurée en la confrontant à d’autres sources, en particulier aux actes de la pratique. Il reste d’autre part à établir une comparaison avec le vocabulaire des chroniqueurs postérieurs. Les divergences constatées nécessiteraient une analyse approfondie et nous nous contenterons, pour terminer, de livrer quelques pistes. Sans doute les différences tiennent-elles pour partie à la formation et à la culture des auteurs. On a depuis longtemps opposé le latin chatoyant de Dudon à la simplicité de la langue utilisée par Guillaume de Jumièges. La prégnance des modèles littéraires de l’Antiquité profane est nettement plus marquée dans le De moribus et dans les Gesta Guillelmi et il resterait à montrer dans quelle mesure elle a pu influencer le champ sémantique de leurs auteurs dans le domaine qui nous concerne. La carrière des trois chroniqueurs et leur proximité à l’égard de la société laïque ne sont pas les mêmes. Moine à Jumièges, l’auteur des Gesta Normannorum ducum ne se considérait pas dans la position la plus favorable pour écrire les faits des princes du monde séculier.98 Guillaume de Poitiers, issu d’une famille chevaleresque de la région de Préaux, débuta la carrière des armes 94 95 96 97

Gesta Guillelmi I, 23, 32–4: nouerunt in progenie se computari ducum Normanniae. Gesta Guillelmi II, 30, 150 et II, 12, 120. Gesta Guillelmi II, 19, 130. Nepos se rencontre uniquement dans les livres 3 et 4, dans des passages où Guillaume de Jumièges puise l’essentiel de son information dans l’œuvre de Dudon. 98 Jumièges, t. 1, 6.

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avant d’embrasser l’état ecclésiastique. Lui, comme son prédécesseur Dudon, ont été chapelains ducaux et appartenaient à la hiérarchie de l’église séculière, l’un comme chanoine de Saint-Quentin, l’autre comme archidiacre de Lisieux. En raison de leur carrière et de leurs fonctions ils étaient plus proches du milieu curial et du monde laïc qu’ils côtoyaient. Sans doute leurs œuvres reflètent-elles mieux les préoccupations et les représentations de la société laïque de leur temps. Au-delà, il convient de se demander si leurs propos n’entendaient pas également agir sur la réalité. Il est ainsi frappant de constater l’insistance avec laquelle Dudon sollicite les ancêtres de ses héros: le procédé ne vise-t-il pas à conforter un modèle de succession à un moment où la Normandie connaît un changement de règne difficile? Dans un même ordre d’idées, force est de constater que l’intérêt porté par Guillaume de Poitiers aux liens de consanguinité et à la transmission du genus par la lignée maternelle s’accorde au discours légitimant les droits de Guillaume de Normandie sur le trône d’Angleterre.

NISI FECERIS UNDER HENRY II Julia Boorman Henry by the grace of God king of the English and duke of the Normans and Aquitanians and count of the Angevins to the abbot of Thorney, greeting. I order you that without delay you hold full right to Richard fitz Adam concerning one virgate of land in Tywell which he claims to hold of you by free service of five shillings a year, of which Roger Bacherler deprives him, and unless you do it (nisi feceris) the sheriff of Northampton(shire) is to do it, so that I do not hear further complaint for default of right. Witness Rannulf de Glanville at Geddington. This writ from the later years of Henry II’s reign is a good example of the use of nisi feceris, and of a breve de recto – a writ of right – as given in the Treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England commonly called Glanvill, which also belongs to this period. The nisi feceris clause is a topic familiar to students of twelfth century developments in judicial procedure. In R. C. van Caenegem’s words, ‘the clause became a familiar and conspicuous feature of the diplomatic of writs under Henry II and entered the formula of some very important common law writs. . . . It has been a powerful factor in the transfer of pleas from private courts to the county – and hence to the central courts – since the breve de recto ordered a lord to do right in his court and added that unless he did so, the sheriff would do so.’ The opportunity to look afresh at writs containing nisi feceris is afforded by the greatly increased amount of material assembled through the ongoing collection of the acta of Henry II, a project which is now moving towards completion.1 The effect of the inclusion in writs of a clause stating what the king commanded should happen nisi feceris – ‘unless you do it’ – was that any writ which contained such a clause already had within it a follow-up procedure which could be set in train without further recourse to the king if the addressee did not carry out the king’s precept, or failed to respond to the satisfaction of the person who had obtained the writ

1

The collection of the acta of Henry II is a British Academy Research Project and I am grateful to the Chairman, Professor Sir James Holt, and the Director, Professor Nicholas Vincent, for access to the collection; see J. C. Holt, ‘The Writs of Henry II’, PBA 89, 1996, 47–64. The writ for Richard fitz Adam from the Red Book of Thorney (Cambridge University Library Add. MS 3020 fol. 35v) was noted by W. L. Warren (Henry II, London 1973, 335, with Thorney misprinted as ‘Thornley’) as an example of the developed form of the writ of right; see R. C. van Caenegem, Royal Writs, 154–6 and 424, no. 24; G. D. H. Hall, ed., The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, with a guide to further reading by M. T. Clanchy, Oxford 1998. S. F. C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism, Cambridge 1976; J. Biancalana, ‘For Want of Justice: Legal Reforms of Henry II’, Columbia Law Review 88, 1988, 433–536; P. Brand, ‘ “Multis Vigiliis Excogitatam et Inventam”: Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law’, HSJ 2, 1990, 197–222; J. Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England, Oxford 1994.

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from the king. The way in which nisi feceris could work in the earlier part of the reign of Henry II is illustrated in a number of cases concerning Earl Robert of Leicester acting on behalf of Henry II when the king was not in England. Two writs issued by Earl Robert ‘per breve regis de ultra mare’, by the king’s writ from overseas, include nisi feceris clauses citing in one case the sheriff, and in another a major landholder, in case of default. In one writ, Earl Robert addresses the king’s barons of Hastings: ‘I order that the abbot and monks of Holme hold, well and in peace and justly, their lands in Yarmouth which Abbot Richer held and the land which they bought from the monks of Binham, as they best held them in the time of King Henry the king’s grandfather.’ In the other, Earl Robert addresses Reginald de Warenne: ‘I order that you hold full right to Robert de Mandevill concerning the land which was of William de Mandevill, his brother, of Digswell with its appurtenances, which he claims to hold of you.’ The first writ then continues: ‘Et nisi feceris vicecomes de Northfolc’ faciat. Et nisi fecerit ego faciam’; the latter: ‘Et nisi feceris, Robertus de Valloniis faciat. Et nisi fecerit, ego faciam fieri’: ‘and unless you do it, x is to do it; and if he does not, I shall do it (or cause it to be done)’. Thus in both cases Earl Robert’s writ cites himself as a further stage in a nisi feceris chain.2 One clear example which we have from the reign of Henry II showing the operation of a nisi feceris clause reveals the effect of Earl Robert of Leicester being cited by the king in such a clause. This is the narrative from St Alban’s, this time involving Robert de Valognes as the claimant, in dispute with Abbot Robert over the wood of Northaw.3 It is a lengthy and complicated story, but its relevance here is the statement that Robert de Valognes went to the king (who is said in the narrative to have been at that time getting ready for the siege of Toulouse, thus dating this to 1159) and obtained ‘writings’ which were brought to England by Robert himself and in which the king ‘forbade that it should be permitted to anyone to deprive Robert unjustly of anything which his ancestors had according to the dictates of justice possessed heritably’. On bringing them back to England Robert de Valognes handed them to the abbot, who ordered them to be read in the audience of his court, but then said: ‘You should not have brought us these letters at all, since it is known that neither you nor your ancestors have possessed even one portion of the land heritably.’ Robert de Valognes then left and ‘went to Earl Robert of Leicester who was then heading justice in England and handed these same writings over to him, in which was contained: “And unless you do it, Earl Robert of Leicester shall, so that he ought not to be vexed any more with this matter for lack of right”. No time was lost; the said Robert succeeded, with grace, in obtaining letters of summons directed to the sheriff of Hertfordshire ordering him to summon Abbot Robert to Northampton ready to answer the objections which he could expect concerning the aforesaid wood.’ The abbot did not attend at Northampton, though he sent someone; he was summoned again and on his again staying away Earl Robert adjudicated the said wood to Robert de Valognes ‘in a judgment of the king’s court’ and ordered the sheriff of Hertfordshire by royal authority to put Robert in possession. As might be expected, this was not the end of the story. Following the involvement of Queen Eleanor and Pope Alexander and further recourse to the king, this time by the abbot, and further sets of letters obtained by him to Earl Robert of Leicester, the abbot eventually won the case because Robert de

2 J. R. West, ed., The Register of the Abbey of St Benet of Holme 1020–1210, Norfolk Record Society 2, 1932, no. 49; Royal Writs, 421, no. 19.

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Valognes did not appear in court; so the wood was confiscated and returned to St Alban’s. In this particular case, then, the nisi feceris clause citing Earl Robert of Leicester in the writ given to Robert de Valognes did not bring an end to the matter; according to the St Alban’s narrative, the abbot was in the first instance ‘unwilling to be judged by the earl’, although it is worth noting that the abbot eventually asked the king for letters to the earl to hear the case. The nisi feceris clause had however enabled the recipient of the writ to take it direct to the earl, without needing to go back to the king, when he did not obtain satisfaction from the abbot, and had led to the summoning of a court which did make a judgment, described as a judgment of the king’s court in the narrative. The citing of Earl Robert of Leicester in this nisi feceris clause thus shows the king acting to ensure that cases could be taken forward even if he were engaged on business elsewhere. Similarly, Earl Robert’s writs citing himself as a further stage in the nisi feceris clauses were issued on the directive of the king’s writ from overseas, and illustrate the same concern of the king that the king’s justice should proceed even if the king could not deal with it personally. Early instances of the setting up of a chain of action can be seen in promises made by the king that he would himself follow through in a case. The term nisi feceris does not appear in any of William I’s extant writs, but in a small number a second stage of procedure is already envisaged. One writ of William I, from 1066x1078, for the abbot of Evesham, addressed to bishop Wulfstan and R. the sheriff, concludes with the king’s statement that if anyone presumes to do an injustice to the abbot, the abbot should appeal to the king, and the king will do him full right. Another writ of William I, from 1067x1086, for the abbey of Saint-Pierre of Préaux, addressed to bishop Remigius of Lincoln and Robert d’Ouilly and all his other faithful men, notifies the king’s wish that the abbey hold land which he grants, and concludes ‘and if anyone reclaims anything . . . let him come to me and show his claim to me’. Thus while not envisaging that the terms of the writs might not be fulfilled, these writs of William I nevertheless contain provision for subsequent matters arising to be dealt with by someone other than the addressees.4 From the reign of William II comes knowledge of a writ, now preserved only in a seventeenth-century transcript, which apparently provides a more closely parallel ‘foretaste’, as R. C. van Caenegem described it, of a nisi feceris clause. It is a precept to the officials of the Honour of Richmond to allow the abbot and monks of St Sergius to hold all things in England ‘as in the time of my father and of my predecessors and of Count Stephen. Since I have conceded and do concede to them and wish that they hold them as quietly as Alan Rufus . . . Which if you do not do it (nisi feceritis) I shall order my justices that they do this without delay.’ Thus this writ apparently envisages the possibility of its terms not being fulfilled, and states what the king will do in such a circumstance; but, as van Caenegem noted, it does not contain any automatic commission to anyone to take the case forward.5 It was under Henry I that the clause ‘nisi feceris, N. faciat’ appeared, in a formula which encapsulated the king’s commission to another person to do something if the 3

English Lawsuits, no. 396; H. T. Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani i, RS 1867, 159–66; Warren, Henry II, 327–30. 4 Bates, Regesta, nos 132, 219. 5 Regesta ii, errata and addenda to vol. i, no. 412a, appendix no. lxixa; C. T. Clay, ed., Early Yorkshire Charters iv, 7; see VCH Cambridgeshire ii, 315; ix, 381. Royal Writs, 148, 154 note.

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addressee did not. There are about thirty writs in Regesta with this type of nisi feceris issued by Henry I, more from the later rather than the earlier part of the reign.6 One writ, dating apparently from the very beginning of the reign, 1100x1101, is of interest here because it contains not only the command to the addressee but a second command following what is in effect a nisi feceris clause, though its wording does not exactly match that of the later nisi feceris clauses. This writ is addressed to William Malet and orders him to restore to the canons of St Paul’s whatever he has taken at Barling after the death of William the king’s brother; it concludes ‘which if you do not do it (si non feceris) I order Hugh of Buckland that he do justice in the shire court and keep peace hereafter’. Hugh of Buckland, sheriff of a number of shires under Henry I, also had a close association with St Paul’s, so there might have been particular circumstances which could have led to his being cited in this way, where a command from the king within the writ commissions a specific person, other than the addressee, to take action in court if the addressee fails to fulfil the requirements of the writ. In a writ of Henry I from about a decade later, probably in 1111, we can see both the role of an overlord and a chain of referral in a nisi feceris clause. The writ commands Jordan de Sackvill to do full right to Abbot Faritius and the church of Abingdon concerning the land he has taken away from them, which Ralph of Caversham gave to the church in alms, and states that unless he does it without delay, Walter Giffard is to do it, and if he does not, Hugh of Buckland is to do it. Another writ of Henry I, to Walter Giffard and his mother Agnes, a precept to them to do full right to Abbot Faritius concerning the land which Ralph of Caversham with their permission gave to Abingdon and of which the church was duly seised, demonstrates the relationship of the Giffards as overlords regarding land given by Ralph of Caversham to Abingdon.7 It is helpful in looking at the development of the nisi feceris clause to distinguish two other related but slightly different ways in which it could be used. One which seems to emerge under William II and is to be found in a few instances under Henry I is where, rather than a commission to someone to take court action, writs include a statement of what the king commands or concedes may be the specific outcome if the addressee does not comply appropriately with the terms of the writ. A writ of Henry I addressed to Absalom of Sandwich is an interesting example. It commences: ‘I order you to do full right to the abbot of St Augustine’s in his court according to the judgment of his court concerning the fee which you hold from St Augustine and from him, namely the church which you claim to hold from him in fee and inheritance’, and continues: ‘et nisi facere volueris, tunc concedo quod ipse recognoscat se ad feodum suum’, which can be translated ‘and unless you are prepared to do this, I grant that he may recover his fee’. In this instance the king declares specifically what outcome he grants may follow if the addressee does not comply with the first part of the precept, and it shows Henry I acting to give his support to the judgment of a lord’s court on a tenant who claims to hold from that lord.8 A writ of William II, probably from the mid 6

See Regesta ii, nos 522, 603, 642, 879, 974, 993, 1033, 1115, 1166, 1271, 1293, 1302, 1402, 1410, 1458, 1495, 1505, 1520, 1521, 1533, 1538, 1541, 1630, 1648, 1669, 1684,1712, 1754, 1837, 1882 and 1898. 7 Royal Writs, 428, no. 33; Regesta ii, nos 522, 974, 979; C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Composition of the Chapter of St Paul’s, 1086–1163’, Cambridge Historical Journal 10, 2, 1951, 111–33; M. Gibbs, ed., The Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul’s, Camden Society 3rd ser. 58, 1939, xx–xxi, 30, 53–4, 92–3. 8 Regesta ii, no. 1314; English Lawsuits, no. 227; Susan Reynolds (Fiefs and Vassals, Oxford 1994, 376) drew attention to the fact that a tenant might be required to do full right to his lord in this way, attributing

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1090s, is an early instance which includes a specific outcome: the king addresses the tenants of the see of Worcester, which had come into the king’s hand on the death of the bishop, and states that they are to pay reliefs, and that if anyone refuses (noluerit) to do this Urso and Bernardus are to take both their lands and monies into the king’s hand.9 A similar use of a nisi feceris clause, with about ten examples in Regesta appearing under Henry I, is in writs which order that some particular service is to be done or particular response made and that unless the addressees obey the precept, they will be compelled to do so. The verb used is frequently justificare, which can be translated as ‘to justice’, with the sense of compelling by judicial means, through distraint of chattels or something similar, as is sometimes specified. The person cited to exercise the compulsion is often the person to whom the service is due, though someone else may be cited, sometimes holding an official position such as that of sheriff.10 An interesting example is the writ of Henry II given in support of William Mauduit as castellan of Rockingham, issued in very similar terms to a writ of Henry I for Michael of Hanslope as castellan; if those who should do ward do not respond appropriately at his summons, he is to ‘justice’ them through their chattels; and if he cannot, then the sheriffs in whose areas they hold lands are to do it. That sheriffs did indeed distrain in such circumstances is shown by the testimony of a former sheriff in a sworn inquiry in the reign of Richard I concerning Peterborough fees owing castle guard at Rockingham. As one of the jurors, Philip of Daventry affirmed that, in the time of King Henry the king’s father, he had been sheriff of Cambridgeshire, where there were many fees owing castle guard at Rockingham, and that there often came to him the king’s precepts to distrain for that guard, and he recalled that the knights were quit for four shillings.11 In these cases then the nisi feceris clause again declares a specific outcome in the event of non-performance, but with the declared intention of judicial compulsion to gain obedience in the performance of what the writ has ordered. Thus while some versions of the nisi feceris clause specified a particular penalty or outcome, others, like that for Robert de Valognes which he took to the earl of Leicester, or Henry I’s precept to William Malet which also carries the order to Hugh of Buckland to take action in the shire court, were evidently intended to lead rather to the convening of a court to deal with the issue. In this way the clause could be significant in the transfer of cases. As G. J. White has noted, however, in a recent discussion of a range of cases from Henry II’s first decade, including the operation in many of them of a nisi feceris clause, the writs ‘should be read as they were written’, envisaging the operation of the clause only as a ‘back-up’ in case of default.12 The following discussion will be based on the texts of nearly 250 writs given by

an example to Abingdon though citing this writ (ibid., note 241). Regesta ii, nos 697 and 1065 show similarities. 9 Regesta i, no. 387. 10 Regesta ii, nos 553, 563, 576, 697, 1034, 1771, 1812, 1860a, 1865; no. 878 concludes: ‘nisi ita factum fuerit, Haimo, justifica inde adversarios’, Haimo having been among the addressees. 11 E. Mason, ed., The Beauchamp Cartulary Charters 1100–1268, Pipe Roll Society ns 43, 1980, liv–lv, 102, nos 174–5; The Book of Robert of Swaffham, Cambridge University Library, Peterborough Dean and Chapter MSS, 1, fol. cxix verso, and The Book of Charters and Privileges of Henry of Pytchley Junior, ibid. 5, fol. xiii. See F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism 1066–1166, Oxford 1961, 211–14; E. King, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310, Cambridge 1973, 21, 26. 12 Royal Writs, 154–6; G. J. White, Restoration and Reform 1153–65, Cambridge 2000, 212 and 161–212 passim.

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Henry II himself which contain a clause with the words nisi feceris. This number does not include any writs which are only known through mentions or summaries, or any which are currently thought or known to be spurious. This discussion does not attempt any kind of analysis based on precise ‘counting’; questions of completeness, survival, categorisation and interpretation are only too obvious, but with this substantial number to work with, some useful comments can be made. Of these writs, thirty or so concern situations in Henry II’s territories in France and one or two concern Ireland. The remaining writs relate to situations in England, and discussion here will focus mainly on these. As would be expected, the vast majority of these writs of Henry II involve ecclesiastical institutions. It is noteworthy however that, while most collections from ecclesiastical institutions supply perhaps two, three or four examples, the abbey of Thorney supplies eight, and St Benet’s abbey of Holme has given us more than twenty of the total number.13 In most of the writs it is an ecclesiastical institution which is the beneficiary, though there are a few individuals who appear as beneficiaries in ecclesiastical contexts. Groups of persons including laymen are also found as beneficiaries in a small number of these writs, and there are about twenty lay individuals who appear as beneficiaries. In the cases concerning lay beneficiaries it is of course usually only through ecclesiastical sources that knowledge of the writ has been preserved, and as Sir James Holt has noted, discussing the writs of Henry II as a whole, it likely that for the reign of Henry II knowledge of a vast number of acts in favour of the laity has been lost.14 In this context it is worth noting that there are several instances, for example the writ for Richard fitz Adam noted above and writs addressed to the abbots of St Benet of Holme, Ramsey, and Westminster, where knowledge of the writ has been preserved by the addressee, that is, by the person whose action was under the constraint of the nisi feceris clause.15 As the case of Robert de Valognes and the abbot of St Alban’s illustrates, writs could be obtained by beneficiaries and carried personally by them to the first addressee and subsequently, if that addressee had not complied with the terms of the precept to the satisfaction of the beneficiary, to a person cited in a nisi feceris clause.16 That knowledge of such writs should have been ultimately preserved by the persons whose actions were subject to the nisi feceris clause is interesting. How this might come about is illustrated by the case of Hugh fitz Warner and the abbot of Westminster. The Westminster Domesday preserves knowledge not only of a precept of Henry II addressed to the abbot of Westminster to hold full right to Hugh fitz Warner concerning lands in Teddington and Sunbury, with a nisi feceris clause citing the sheriff of Middlesex, but also of a quitclaim of Hugh fitz Warner, made ‘in the curia at Westminster’, giving up lands in Teddington and Sunbury in return for a grant in fee and heredity of three virgates and surrendering the king’s writ concerning the claim into the abbot’s hand; it may well be that these two documents are directly related. It is not evident here whether the sheriff, who had been cited nisi feceris, actu13 See West, St Benet of Holme, nos 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 38,

41, 46, 48, 49, 202; Red Book of Thorney, fols 23v–24r, 35r–v. 14 Holt, ‘Writs of Henry II’, 61. 15 Red Book of Thorney, fol. 35v; West, St Benet of Holme, nos 33, 202; W. Dunn Macray, ed., Chronicon

Abbatiae Rameseiensis, RS 1886, 290–2, nos 347–9, 353; E. Mason, ed., Westminster Abbey Charters 1066–c.1214, London Record Society 25, 1988, no. 133. 16 Holt, ‘Writs of Henry II’, 57.

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ally had any involvement, but if a case did get as far as a hearing in the county court, then the writ might be given up to the sheriff. Among several instances of this can be seen for example the case of Roger de Boiville, who on 27 July 1185 came to an agreement with the canons of St Augustine’s Bristol in the shire court of Gloucester before William fitz Stephen then sheriff, other named persons and many other barons, knights and free tenants, and ‘gave up into the hand of the aforesaid sheriff the writ of right of the lord king (breve domini regis de recto), on which he had pleaded’. The writ might even be solemnly destroyed by the sheriff, as is recorded in a quitclaim by Robert fitz Walter in the Burton cartulary. Here, as well as making his affidavit in the hand of Serlo the sheriff, mention of whom indicates a date probably of c.1177x1180 for this event, Robert handed the writ of the lord king through which he had impleaded the church to the sheriff, which the sheriff in full county of Nottingham, in the presence of all, tore up and rendered into pieces.17 Only about thirty of the writs of Henry II with nisi feceris clauses are preserved as originals, and by no means all the writs under discussion can be assigned a narrow date range. Some observations may be made however on the basis of the widest likely date ranges, using features such as the apparent presence or absence of dei gratia in the king’s title and attestations by well-known personnel. There are a dozen or so of these writs concerned with situations in England which state that the addressees will be ‘justiced’ to compel them to obey; seven are apparently from the earlier part of the reign, two from the mid 1160s and three from after 1172/3. Of the writs concerned with England which have a nisi feceris clause of the type which does not specify such action, the great majority, approximately seven eighths of the total of over two hundred, belong apparently to the period between 1154 and 1172/3, with rather less than twenty of these dating probably from c.1162 to 1172/3. Less than thirty appear to date from after 1172/3. Some interesting comparisons can be made between these writs of Henry II with nisi feceris clauses and the writs of Henry II as a whole. Some 887 writs overall, a figure which included mentions and summaries of writs, were discussed by Sir James Holt in a paper in 1996; 88 per cent were for the church, and fewer than 7 per cent for the laity, a pattern which is paralleled by that for the writs with nisi feceris clauses currently under discussion. The proportions issued in the earlier and later periods of the reign are also comparable with Holt’s calculation of some 80 per cent of all writs which could be categorised coming from before 1172/3, including as many as 54 per cent from before 1162. Holt however draws attention to the fact that, taking account of all documents with an individual, as opposed to an ecclesiastical institution, as the beneficiary, about the same number seem to date from after 1172/3 as from before 1162.18 This pattern is not reflected in the nisi feceris writs of Henry II concerned with England, with almost all such writs for individuals apparently coming from before 1172/3; as there are only some twenty or so of these writs, however, the small numbers make it difficult to suggest whether this should be seen as significant.

17 Mason, Westminster Abbey Charters, nos 133, 452; English Lawsuits, no. 465; D. Walker, ed., The

Cartulary of St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Record Ser. 10, 1998, 239–40, no. 374; G. Wrottesley, ed., An Abstract of the Contents of the Burton Chartulary, William Salt Archaeological Society 5, part i, 1884, 48–9. ‘Serlo’ is not recorded as a sheriff in his own right under Henry II but Serlo of Grendon accounted at the Exchequer on behalf of William fitz Ralph from 1177–8 to 1179–80 (PR 24 Henry II, 86; PR 25 Henry II, 80–1; PR 26 Henry II, 136–7). 18 Holt, ‘Writs of Henry II’, 60–1.

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The addressees of the writs with nisi feceris clauses, in other words those persons whose actions are subject to the nisi feceris clause, can be grouped into several categories. The dozen or so writs concerned with England which state that the addressees will be ‘justiced’ to compel them to obey the order in the writ in respect of obedience or services are all addressed to groups of persons. Lay individuals form the largest category among the addressees of the two hundred or so other writs concerned with England, with over seventy such persons, including earls, having writs with nisi feceris clauses addressed to them. About fifty of the writs have sheriffs of specific counties as their addressees, a small number from very early in Henry II’s reign, such as Henry of Oxford, Richard de Camville, and Richard, sheriff of Somerset, being named, though most sheriffs are addressed by their office. A few sheriffs are addressed in company with ministers, bailiffs, or reeves, and there are a dozen or so writs which are addressed to officials such as reeves and bailiffs not in company with sheriffs. One sheriff, William sheriff of Norfolk, is addressed in company with the bishop of Norwich; indeed, about a dozen writs with nisi feceris clauses are addressed to the bishop of Norwich, almost all of which concern St Benet of Holme. This is from a total of rather more than twenty addressed to bishops, on occasion jointly with the archbishop of Canterbury; a further three are addressed to archdeacons, R(obert) archdeacon of Oxford, Ph(ilip) archdeacon of Norwich and ‘the archdeacon of Northampton’. Individual abbots, as has been noted, can be addressees, and include those of Bury St Edmunds, St Nicholas Angers, Ramsey, Thorney, Westminster and St Benet of Holme, as well as the abbot and convent of Bordesley and the abbot and chapter of Cirencester; the dean and chapter of St Peter’s York, the prior and canons of St Sepulchre Warwick and the prior of Bromholm are also to be found among the addressees. One category of persons is however not normally found among the addressees, namely justices, and writs which include justices among the addressees do not usually carry nisi feceris clauses. There are two examples worth discussing here. One, perhaps ‘the exception which proves the rule’, is an original deed of 1155x1158 for the abbey of Fécamp, given in England at Newnham by Henry II. Addressing his justices and bailiffs of Normandy and John count of Eu and Count Walter Giffard, the writ concludes: ‘et nisi feceritis, domina et mater mea imperatrix faciat fieri’. This unusual circumstance may be explained by the person cited being so significant a member of the king’s immediate family, a version perhaps of the king in person. The other example is again an original, and has been printed in Christopher Holdsworth’s Rufford Charters. Here, however, a word has evidently been erased immediately in front of ‘the sheriff and all his ministers of Nottinghamshire’, who are the addressees; Holdsworth’s edition gives this word as ‘justiciis’, saying the word is ‘almost rubbed out’. If the word was ‘justiciis’, and if this is deliberate erasure done at the time of issue, then this provides powerful evidence that writs carrying nisi feceris clauses did not and ought not to include justices among the addressees. The reprimand ‘displicet mihi quod eos vexatis contra me’ in this writ and its concluding clause ‘nisi feceritis iusticia mea faciat fieri’ do suggest that the inclusion of the king’s justices in the address would have been incongruous.19 This brings us to the question of what is implied by citing iusticia mea in this way. 19 L. Delisle, ed., Recueil des Actes de Henri II, Paris 1909, revue et publie par E. Berger, Paris 1916–27,

no. 46, and Cal. Docs France, no. 131; C. J. Holdsworth, ed., Rufford Charters ii, Thoroton Record Society 30, 1974, 332, no. 664. The erased word cannot now (2002) be deciphered.

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If the writs did indeed embody an inbuilt commission and were intended to carry the process forward in a practical way, rather than simply to reinforce the directive with a promise, or threat, of the king’s ultimate judicial sanction, then it would be important for the significance of the clause to be understood. Where a specific person is named in such a clause then it is clear that, as Robert de Valognes did, the beneficiary could go direct to that named person. Most writs of Henry I in Regesta which carry a nisi feceris clause do in fact cite specific persons by name in that clause; some are also called sheriffs, and the majority of those cited by name are known to have been sheriffs or justices under Henry I. Only a small proportion of Henry I’s writs however cite sheriffs or justices by office in nisi feceris clauses; for example ‘the sheriffs in whose shires they hold’ can be found, ‘my justice of Normandy’ appears in a couple of instances, and one writ cites Nigel de Albini ‘et alia justicia mea’.20 It is from the reign of King Stephen that citing ‘my justice’, justicia mea, starts to become more usual; of the twenty-one writs of King Stephen himself in Regesta which carry a clear nisi feceris clause, fifteen, including three which concern constraint or ‘justicing’, cite a named individual; the term ‘my justice’ appears in eight of the nisi feceris clauses; and three cite the sheriff.21 It seems that the word justicia could be used as denoting judicial authority, as in King Stephen’s grant to Robert bishop of Lincoln of justiciam meam of Lincoln and Lincolnshire, but could also be used to refer to the person thus endowed, as in the grants to Geoffrey de Mandevill, where the clause ‘ut sit capitalis justicia in Essexa’ is found in a charter of Empress Matilda.22 Two of King Stephen’s writs apparently cite the justice of a specific locality, an original addressed to the abbot of Bury St Edmunds for Roger de Clare citing ‘justic’ mea de Sudfolc’ faciat fieri’, and a writ from the Liber Eliensis for Ely citing ‘justicia mea Cantebrigeschire’; a few writs of Henry II are directly comparable, for example those for the priory of St Andrew Northampton and for Spalding Priory, with the justice of Lincolnshire apparently cited in both.23 A number of other writs from Henry II’s reign cite justices or sheriffs, the ‘justice or my sheriff of Somerset’, or the ‘justice or my sheriff of Norfolk’, for example.24 This could mean the ‘judicial authority’ of a locality, but the juxtaposition of ‘justice’ with ‘sheriff’ seems to suggest that two alternative officials are indicated, and these writs have been understood to imply the operation of local justices. H. A. Cronne considered that King Stephen’s writ for Roger de Clare was the best example of several requiring local justiciars to take action.25 It is difficult however to find evidence to confirm that local justices were approached in such circumstances. 20 Regesta ii, nos 563, 1684, 1898, 993 and compare nos listed in notes 6 and 10 above; no. 1848, which

has ‘the justiciars and sheriffs of Northumberland’ is noted by the editors of Regesta ii with an asterisk as spurious, and no. 1566, which has ‘justicia mea et vicecomes’, is shown by its note in Regesta ii to raise some questions; these two instances of nisi feceris clauses with persons cited by office under Henry I are therefore problematic. J. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154, Public Record Office Handbooks 24, London 1990, and idem, The Government of England under Henry I, Cambridge 1986. 21 Regesta iii, nos 47, 84, 143, 201, 212, 269, 472, 719 include ‘my justice’; nos 82, 143, 228, 239c, 257, 264, 354, 355, 472, 490, 544, 545, 753, 885, 887 include named individuals; nos 84, 544, 545 include the sheriff. 22 Ibid., nos 490, 274. 23 Ibid., nos 201, 269; Royal Writs, 461, nos 94–5. 24 L. Landon, ed., The Cartae Antiquae Rolls 1–10, Pipe Roll Society ns 17, 1939, 143, no. 302; West, St Benet of Holme, no. 33. 25 H. A. Cronne, ‘The Office of Local Justiciar under the Norman Kings’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal 6, 1957–8, 37.

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One writ, preserved as an original, instructing Hugh de Plugenet to restore to the church of St George of Oxford a croft pertaining to the prebend which was of Walter archdeacon of Oxford, cites iusticia mea de Oxenef’in its nisi feceris clause. This writ has the dei gratia style and is witnessed by John dean of Salisbury, who must be John of Oxford who was elected bishop of Norwich in 1175, and whose attestation thus dates this writ to 1172x1175.26 The question must arise of whether such citations do indeed refer to local justices, and if they do, how far this writ can be taken to show the continued operation of the office of local justice at a relatively late date under Henry II. While, as John Hudson has pointed out, references to the ‘justice of shire N.’ do not indicate that every shire had its own shire justice, and the appearance of ‘justices’ among the addresses of a writ directed to a particular county can be variously interpreted, it is striking that this writ from the later years of Henry II uses this particular way of citing the agent of the king’s justice in its nisi feceris clause. As the reign of Henry II progressed differently designated embodiments of the king’s justice could be cited, in the form of the itinerant justices. It appears that the earlier wording was justicia mea errans.27 From the later years of the reign there are about a dozen examples citing ‘my justice(s) of those parts’, justicie mee de partibus illis as it is most often rendered in those copies where it is written in an extended form. These writs citing ‘my justice(s) of those parts’ are all either addressed to sheriffs or have already cited sheriffs in their nisi feceris chain. Throughout the reign of Henry II, ‘my justice’, without further qualification, can be found cited in the nisi feceris clauses, and it remains uncertain whether a specific person should be understood. Where any form of ‘justice’ is cited in a nisi feceris clause under Henry II however it is never subject to any further judicial authority in the clause. The sheriff on the other hand can be at the end of the chain, or the sheriff can be cited as being subject nisi feceris to ‘my justice’, or, as in the case of the writ of Earl Robert of Leicester, to the earl himself. The sheriff might be designated in nisi feceris clauses alongside the king’s justice, as ‘my sheriff or my justice’, but writs with the sheriffs themselves as addressees were frequently subject to a clause citing ‘my justice’. A writ of Queen Eleanor apparently shows that a local justice could be the agent of sanction on a sheriff; she addresses John fitz Ralph, sheriff of London, instructing him to coerce John Buccuint in respect of a grant made by Buccuint to Reading abbey, and concludes: ‘which if you do not do it, let the king’s justice of London do it, lest I hear further complaint for lack of right’.28 It is noticeable, however, that the sheriffs, cited by office, loom large in the business of these writs, both as addressees and in the nisi feceris clauses, both early and late in the reign of Henry II. It is the sheriff who is the agent most frequently cited nisi feceris in writs directed to individuals, even high-ranking individuals, and not only in writs addressed to eminent laymen, but also, with the sheriff cited either alone or with ‘my justice’ as an alternative agent, in most of the writs addressed to abbots. The sheriff is also cited in a writ to Henry bishop of Winchester, although most bishops have an archbishop, or ‘my justice’, cited in nisi feceris clauses in precepts addressed 26 H. E. Salter, ed., Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in Oxford Muniment Rooms, Oxford 1929, plate 81. 27 J. Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law, London 1996, 32; White, Restoration and

Reform, 183 n. 119; F. M. Stenton, Facsimiles of Early Charters from Northamptonshire Collections, Northamptonshire Record Society 4, 1930, 58. 28 B. R. Kemp, ed., Reading Abbey Cartularies i, Camden Society 4th ser. 31, 1986, 358, no. 467; Royal Writs, 480, no. 127.

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to them. The abbot of Bordesley has in one instance the bishop of Worcester, and in another the bishop of Hereford cited with the archbishop of Canterbury as the next stage, but these cases concern Mr John of Warwick, a canon, and bishops, or the archbishop of Canterbury, or, on occasion, the archbishop of York, are often cited where matters involving churches are concerned. One writ addressed to Bartholomew bishop of Exeter, for the priory of Plympton, cites Earl Reginald of Cornwall. This is one of a small number of known writs from the reign of Henry II which cite major lay landholders in nisi feceris clauses. Countess Rose is cited in a writ to Hugh de Wellebeof to cause the monks of Thorney to hold the alms which he gave them for the soul of his father as testified by the charter of Payn de Beauchamp and Countess Rose, and if she does not do it, the sheriff of Bedfordshire is to do it. A writ addressed to Turstin fitz Robert Copsi in favour of the brothers of the Hospital of St Peter’s York cites first Roger de Mowbray, and if he does not do it, Count Conan, and if he does not do it ‘my justice’ is to do it. As is evident from the mention of the charter of Payn de Beauchamp and Countess Rose in the writ which cites Countess Rose, the position of the overlord was being used in this way in the earlier part of the reign of Henry II. In this context, the possibility that Reginald de Warenne held a sub-tenancy of Valognes might have some relevance to the citing of Robert de Valognes in the mandate of Earl Robert of Leicester to Reginald de Warenne noted above.29 In citing anyone in such a clause, the king is authorising them to deal with the matter on his behalf, although his continued interest is made evident by the words which often follow a nisi feceris – ‘that I hear no more complaint thence for lack of right’, a concluding clause which also occurs in writs without nisi feceris clauses and can be found under William I.30 How the range of ways in which the king’s response to such complaints had expanded by the later years of Henry II’s reign is shown by the treatise known as Glanvill which describes the processes of law and procedures in the king’s court. This treatise shows in their developed form procedures which illustrate that, as its author claims, the king indeed did not scorn ‘to be guided by the laws and customs of the realm which had their origin in reason and have long prevailed’, including the writ of right, addressed to the person from whom the person seeking the writ claims to hold, with its final clause: ‘Et nisi feceris vicecomes faciat, ne amplius audiam pro defectu recti.’ The treatise however also includes several procedures which are identified as specifically arising from the king’s responses to the needs of justice. These include the Grand Assize, described as a ‘royal benefit granted to the people’ so that ‘all men may preserve the rights they have in any free tenement, while avoiding the doubtful outcome of battle’, and procedures such as those of novel disseisin or mort d’ancestor which offer a way of dealing with questions which are concerned with seisin only, and ‘by benefit of a constitution of the realm which is called an assize are for the most part settled by recognition’. Glanvill commences its discussion of pleas with what happens ‘when anyone complains to the lord king or his justices concerning his fee or free tenement, and the case is such that it ought to be, or the lord king is willing that it should be, tried in the king’s court’, and states that the complainant will have a ‘writ of summons’ as follows:

29 Royal Writs, 423–4, no. 23; Red Book of Thorney, fol. 35r; Clay, Early Yorkshire Charters viii, 30. 30 Bates, Regesta, no. 310.

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXIV The king to the sheriff, greeting. Command (Precipe) N. to render to R., justly and without delay, one hide of land in such-and-such a vill, which the said R. complains that the aforesaid N. is withholding from him. And if he does not do so (nisi fecerit), summon him by good summoners to be before me or my justices on the day after the octave of Easter, to show why he has not done so. And have there the summoners and this writ. Witness Rannulf de Glanvill’ at Clarendon.

In this writ, the instruction is to the sheriff and it is expected that the person to whom the sheriff conveys the king’s precept will not do what is contained in the writ, and that a court case will ensue. It is called a writ of summons, and its purpose is to set a case in the king’s court in train. Yet the formula in which the ‘writ of summons’ is framed, with its nisi fecerit instruction to the sheriff, shows its relationship to the nisi feceris clause.31 Thus by the later years of Henry II, not only has the role of the king’s court and of the itinerant justices expanded, but alternative procedures are available in several circumstances, for example in questions of disseisin, which earlier in the twelfth century can be found in writs with nisi feceris clauses. From the earliest years of the reign of Henry II, however, the much more extensive use of the nisi feceris formula than in previous reigns suggests the development of the concept whereby precepts acquired from the king were often intended to set in train a more comprehensive and potentially effective legal process than a single ad hoc royal intervention. Nevertheless, the nisi feceris clause is not employed in every case under Henry II where it might have been anticipated. An interesting example is provided by three writs and a letter concerning the monks of Durham, the vill of Heatherslaw, and the heirs of Thomas de Muschamps. The letter, from Absalom the prior and A. the monk, is addressed to ‘the sheriff of Northumberland and all those hearing these letters’ and continues: ‘know that we were present and saw that Thomas de Muschamps gave to St Cuthbert in alms the vill of Heatherslaw with all its appurtenances, and that by his sword he invested the same saint, that is St Cuthbert, and thence we are lawful witnesses ready by all means to prove this and to come on the day set to Stephen of Bulmer unless we be detained by infirmity. Indeed, we pray that none refuse our testimony, since we have spoken the truth and in this matter are true witnesses.’ This reveals that in the time of Absalom the prior, 1154x1158, early in the reign of Henry II, the sheriff was involved in this case. There are two writs of Henry II, actually preserved in the original, related to this case, and mention in one of them of ‘my other writs’ suggests that more than two were issued by Henry II on this matter; neither of Henry II’s two extant writs, however, has a nisi feceris clause, whereas King Stephen’s writ to the same effect, also preserved in the original, which must date to before 1138 when Eustace fitz John was arrested, cites fitz John in a nisi feceris clause.32 Nor, of course, were all writs with such clauses taken to the second stage. The beneficiary might readily achieve what was desired. An example which illustrates this is a case concerning Richard Basset and the abbey of Abingdon. The Abingdon chronicle includes a writ of Henry II, with a nisi feceris clause, addressed to Richard Basset, 31 See G. D. H. Hall, ed., Glanvill, 2, 5, 28, 45, 66, 97, 109, 118, 122, 125, 149, 167–8 and book xiii

passim. 32 Royal Writs, 435, nos 47, 47a; English Lawsuits, no. 361; Regesta iii, no. 257.

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which the abbot obtained from the king, ordering that the monks hold in peace four hides in Chaddleworth as in the time of Henry I. The chronicle describes Richard as seeking to ‘draw to himself’ this land which the abbey had received through Richard’s predecessors, but also recounts that ‘the writ having been heard’, Richard came to an agreement with the abbey, and includes the resulting chirograph, which confirms the hides to the abbey and notes some woodland rights for Richard Basset. Or, like Hugh fitz Warner who was the beneficiary in the writ addressed to the abbey of Westminster, the person obtaining the writ might give up the claim and the writ, though Hugh did receive other land as part of the agreement.33 How often writs without nisi feceris clauses in fact formed part of a process involving sheriffs or justices, and how often writs with such clauses were not actually used to take matters further is a question that awaits further investigation. As Hudson has noted, the doing of justice was a central role of the medieval ruler.34 The development of the nisi feceris clause was one way in which default of justice, or lack of right, could be remedied, and despite its executive tone, a guarantee of court action was a key element in this development. The nisi feceris clause can be thought of as a threat, but also as a promise. For the person obtaining such a writ, it was a promise of further action and the sanction of the king’s justice in case of default. Eventually the reign of Henry II provided significant developments in the range of action open to complainants, and in that sense nisi feceris was a promise of things to come.

33 J. Stevenson, ed., Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon ii, RS 1858, 170, 188–90, 224; see note 17

above. 34 Hudson, English Common Law, 27.

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Abelard and the Church’s Policy towards the Jews

ABELARD AND THE CHURCH’S POLICY TOWARDS THE JEWS Natalie Fryde The First Crusade of 1096 represented a turning-point for the Jews in Western Europe. Two French sources report that some Crusaders felt that it was wrong to travel overseas to fight against the Saracens and free the Holy Places, while the people who had murdered Christ, the Jews, were waiting on their doorstep at home.1 The pogroms spread from Rouen via Metz, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Trier, Cologne and Boppard as far as Regensburg and Prague. The attacks were less the work of Crusaders than townspeople, either motivated by religious fanaticism or because the attackers owed the Jews money and saw the pogroms as a way of relieving themselves from this pressure.2 Nevertheless, the Jewish chronicler Salomon ben Simson regarded Geoffrey de Bouillon, the leader of the Crusade, as responsible for the attacks. In a letter to the Emperor Henry IV, who called him to account, Geoffrey denied this with the words that ‘he never had any intention of doing them any harm’.3 Many Jews found refuge with the local authorities, whether the aristocracy or Church. When it comes to the Second Crusade of 1146, whether dealing with pogroms from the point of view of the history of the Crusades or of medieval Jewry, historians have regarded the massacres which accompanied the Crusade as horrifying repeats, similarly motivated and directed, of those which accompanied the First Crusade. This is true of older narratives such as that by Waas and even of the new editions of classic works such as Patschowsky’s edition of Liebeschütz. Prevailing opinion is that the emotions which accompanied the Crusade strengthened feelings against the Jews and led to a long term deterioration in their situation. As Liebeschütz wrote: ‘This was in spite of the fact that the church’s doctrine on the status of the Jews had remained basically unchanged, even though the experience of the Crusade had been assimilated into its patterns of thought and teaching.’4 The underlying idea that the people, goaded on by fanatics, were alone responsible for the massacres of the Jews during the Second Crusade, however, needs modification. I hope to show here that dramatic theological debates between 1130 and 1145, the time of the beginning of the Second Crusade, and an unfortunate involvement of the Jews in one of the major conflicts within the Church, the election of Pope Innocent II, meant a fateful polarisation of ecclesiastical

1

Guibert de Nogent cited in Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversos: Judaeos-Texte, 11.–13. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt 1988, 94. 2 Adolf Waas, ‘Volk Gottes und Militia Christi – Juden und Kreuzfahrer’, in Das Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, ed. Paul Wipert, Berlin 1966. 3 Ibid., 415. 4 Hans Liebeschütz, Synagoge und Ecclesia: Religionsgeschichtliche Studien über die Auseinandersetzung der Kirche mit dem Judentum in Hochmittelalter, ed. Alexander Patschovsky, Heidelberg 1983, 130.

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policy against them. The texts are familiar, as is also the tale of the election of Innocent II, and do not at first sight seem to have much to do with the relationship between Christians and Jews. And what, you may be asking, has this to do with Abelard? Well, that is the theme of this paper. The general situation of the Jews and the Church’s attitude to them changed fundamentally between 1130 and 1145. Only now did both the theological position and ecclesiastical policy towards them develop a decidedly hostile stance. Anselm of Canterbury’s (1093–1109) doctrine of the Trinity and its subsequent refinement by his pupils unavoidably hit the Jews. Their strong monotheism meant that the doctrinal gap between Christianity and Judaism widened.5 A second reason for increased antagonism to them was that the Jews as a people became entwined in the conflict between the leading thinkers of the day, Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard. This was the result not only of the debate about the Trinity but also of that about the responsibility for the death of Christ on the Cross. Because, however, the famous conflict between the two was fought primarily over Abelard’s doctrine of the Trinity, the implications for the Jews of the controversy between the two great thinkers on the subject of the question of the inherent Jewish guilt for Christ’s death, have not really been recognised.6 Since Bernard’s statements about the Jews, although brief, are nonetheless sharp and far from reputable, they have been discreetly neglected.7 Historians are agreed that until the First Crusade and even for some time afterwards the attitude of the Church and rulers was neutral or even tolerant towards the Jews. There were good reasons for the fact that, during the pogroms of the First Crusade, Jews looked to the bishops for refuge. This traditionally tolerant and protective attitude was led by Rome itself. One need only remember the letter of Pope Alexander II (1061–1073) to the Spanish bishops, requiring them to protect the Jews against the Reconquistadors.8 Another such case was the bull Sicut Judaeis of Pope Calixtus II (1119–24) which was also intended to protect the Jews.9 This protection 5

A monograph on the development of the doctrine of the Trinity is lacking. For Anselm’s interpretation of it, see Richard W. Southern, Saint Anselm: a Portrait in a Landscape, Cambridge 1990, 91–186. J. Hofmeier, Die Trinitätslehre des Hugo von St Viktor, Münchener Theologische Studien II, Systematische Abteilung, Bd 25, Munich 1963. L. Ott, ‘Die Trinitätslehre Walters von Mortaigne als Quelle der Summa Sententiarum’, Scholastik 8, 1943, 159–86. Abelard’s Trinity theory has not been the subject of a monograph; hardly surprising since it was denounced as heretical and it would need a theologian to take the job on. It is summarised by Adalbert Podlech, Abaelard und Heloise oder die Theologie der Liebe, Munich 1990, 122–33. Podlech is of the opinion that Abelard’s views were not heretical but there are difficulties in reconstructing his ideas since, even during his lifetime, ideas of his students, who had possibly misunderstood him, were attributed to him. 6 Liebeschütz, Synagoge und Ecclesia, 131. Although Liebeschütz analysed Bernard’s Crusade sermons and his attitude to the Jews (ibid. 130–4) and, in his ‘The Significance of Judaism in Peter Abaelard’s Dialogus’, Journal of Jewish Studies 12, 1961, 1–18, studied Abelard’s Dialogue, he did not detect a connection between the controversy between Bernard and Abelard and the Church’s doctrine and policy towards the Jews. 7 For example by J. Leclerq, ‘Les formes successives de la Lettre-Traite de Saint-Bernard contre Abaelard’, Revue Bénédictine 78, 1968, 87–105, and the review of M. Bernard in Gregorianum 36, 1955, 676–89. A more differentiated treatment can be found in Friedrich Lotter, ‘Das Prinzip der “Hebraica Veritas” und die heilsgeschichtliche Rolle Israels bei den frühen Zisterziensern’, in Der Bibel in jüdischer und christlicher Tradition. Festschrift für Johann Meier zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Merklein, Karlheinz Müller and Günter Stemberger, Frankfurt 1993, 479–518. 8 Julia Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury. Zur Begegnung und Auseinandersetzung der Religionen’, Saeculum 17, 1966, 277–363, esp. 354ff. 9 ‘No Christian shall dare to wound, kill, rob or deprive them of their customary law without judgement of the prince’, in Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversos, 95.

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was not merely on humanitarian but also on theological grounds. There was the hope that, when the end of the world came, all Jews would be converted. This protective stance was also the policy of rulers. Emperor Henry IV (1085–1105) granted them privileges, as did William Rufus (1087–1100).10 The tale that he organised a public debate between Jews and bishops and declared that if the Jews emerged victorious, he himself would convert to Judaism, is probably apocryphal. Nevertheless, the tale mirrors the favour which Jews enjoyed at the Anglo-Norman court. William’s brother and successor Henry I (1100–35) granted the Jews a privilege which permitted them to practise their religion freely.11 One can also detect this tolerance amongst intellectuals. Anti-Jewish bishops were not unknown but, partly because of the problems of early medieval transport and communication, they remained of local importance only. In the cultural centres of Europe of the day there was indeed a tradition of oral debate and written disputation between Jew and Christian, though only a fraction of such works written at that time have survived. These disputations were conducted with great interest and self-confidence on both sides. Occasionally, Christians were wary of entering disputes with learned rabbis.12 A prerequisite for such a dialogue was that Christian intellectuals learned Hebrew. Abbot Sigo of St Florent-près-Saumur in Anjou learned Hebrew and Greek; Stephen Harding, the founder of the Cistercian Order, obtained advice and help from the great rabbinical school of Troyes when he was working on the Cistercian Bible.13 The biblical school of St Victor was based upon source criticism and took Jewish sources into consideration.14 These dialogues and disputations were characterised by openness and reason. Anselm of Canterbury himself showed the way here: he was of the opinion that Jews and heathens could be converted through rational argument.15 Although he did not directly address the Jews in his own dialogues, Anselm’s whole life’s work was based on the justification and dissemination of his faith through rational argument. Behind this, there naturally lay the desire to convert; hence the Jews were naturally also objects of his attention. Julia Gauss came to the opinion that both the Monologion and the Cur Deus Homo were composed as debates in order to explain the central dogmas on a philosophical basis comprehensible for the Jews.16 Sir Richard Southern changed his opinion over the years as to whether the Jews were being addressed.17 It is true that Anselm was primarily concerned with justifying his faith rather than 10 Ibid., 40–9. 11 H. G. Richardson, The English Jewry under Angevin Kings, London 1960, 23–6. 12 Gauss, ‘Anselm von Canterbury’, 290 and n. 60. ‘In northern France, Lorraine and in the Rhineland . . .

where their schools enjoyed fame and respect, the rabbis felt greatly superior and by no means seldom sought occasions to dispute questions of faith.’ 13 Lotter, ‘Das Prinzip’, 8. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversos, 105. 14 Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, ‘Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum: Beiträge zum christlich-jüdischen Gespräch’, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia 4, ed. Paul Wipert, 228–63, esp. 229–33. 15 Aryeh Grabois, ‘The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century’, in Saeculum 50, 1975. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1964, 156–86. 16 Gauss, Anselm of Canterbury, 357. 17 Southern, Saint Anselm, 198–202. Gauss, Anselm von Canterbury, 277–363. Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘Theology and the Commercial Revolution: Guibert of Nogent, St Anselm and the Jews of Northern France’, in Church and City 1000–1500: Essays in honour of Christopher Brooke, Cambridge 1992, 23–48, here 23–6. Idem, ‘Christians Disputing Belief: St Anselm, Gilbert Crispin and the Pseudo Anselm’, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalterstudien 4, 1992, 131–49. Idem, ‘The Jewish-Christian Debate in the

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converting the Jews; none the less his teaching could quickly develop into a defence of the faith directed to Jews and ultimately used against them. Anselm’s concept of the Trinity was of the equality of the three parts but affording Christ a special position.18 This doctrine was worked out in answer to the views of the itinerant controversialist Roscelin whose teaching had been denounced as heresy by the Church.19 Unfortunately Roscelin cited Lanfranc and Anselm as authorities in support of his own teaching on the Trinity, a view described as cutting the Trinity into pieces. Anselm was furious and attacked him. This particular controversy would be irrelevant for us were it not for the fact that Roscelin was one of Abelard’s teachers. This meant that Abelard’s teaching on the important question of the Trinity was examined under a magnifying glass from the very beginning of his brilliant career. Contemporary disputations with the Jews had also examined the separation of the three parts of the Trinity; for contemporary Jewish thought too was preoccupied with the nature of God. Unfortunately the original Jewish literature on this question, the book known as Secreta Secretorum, is missing. However, it is clear that Jewish and Christian thinkers were at this time intensively preoccupied with dissecting the nature of God. Some Christian thinkers feared Jewish influence and in Abelard’s case, apparently, such influence can be detected.20 If Anselm did not address the Jews directly, his pupil and friend Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, did in 1095 in his Disputatio Judei cum Cristiano de Fide christiana. In accordance with Anselm’s belief in an intellectual disputation with the Jews and their conversion by reasonable arguments, Gilbert composed a dialogue between an abbot and a Jew ‘in a friendly spirit’ and where ‘tolerance and patience’ are often mentioned. The character of this dialogue is one of open and frank disputation and rational argument; it is by no means an out and out attempt to convert. The abbot justified his point of view, showing the Jew respect.21 Only in a later manuscript, and in the margin, can we read that the Jew in the disputation was converted.22 That the rulers of Europe between the Crusades found it necessary to grant the Jews letters of protection speaks for their conduct and tolerance. It also confirms that the Jews were increasingly coming under pressure from the Christians of Europe. The reasons for this are not simply the hysteria which accompanied the First Crusade but also the social and economic developments of the early twelfth century. It was a time of rapidly increasing population without corresponding progress in agricultural technology which would have made it possible to feed the population of Europe. Only certain lighter soils could be cultivated under these conditions. This meant that the Twelfth Century Renaissance’, JMH 15, 1989, 105–25. Idem, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Renaissance, London 1995, 42–6, 84–5. 18 Southern, Saint Anselm, 174–81. 19 R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning, London 1920, 87–94. 20 As Podlech remarked, in Abelard’s Dialogue, ‘argumentierte der Jude auf die Dreiheit Herz (cor), Seele (anima), und Kraft (fortitudo) hin, hebräisch, lev, näphäsch und meot. Diese Ganzheit in der Dreiheit der Hingabean Gott ist von den mittelalterlichen Talmudisten entwickelt worden.’ Podlech, Abaelard und Heloise, 496 n. 402. Abulafia, Christians and Jews, 30. 21 ‘The Disputatio Judaei cum Christiano by Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, written soon before 1098, and the Dialogus between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew by Peter Abailard show a tolerance and an appreciation of the Jewish point of view which contrasts strikingly with the bitterness of later controversy.’ Smalley, Study of the Bible, 77–8. Crispin warned, however, against discussing the Trinity with non-Christians, Abulafia, Christians and Jews, 79. 22 Clement C. J. Webb, ‘Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster. Dispute of a Heathen Touching the Faith of Christ’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3, 1954, 55–77, here 76.

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Jews, in more heavily populated areas, were driven from the land, insofar as they had been able to work on it. Rulers could do little against this. In the towns, the gilds were excluding all non-members from retail trade in the towns and the Jews were amongst those who suffered under such exclusion measures. About this time a money and credit economy reared its head in Europe. The Jews were forced into pawnbroking and credit activities since all other means of earning a living in town and country were increasingly closed to them. Neither letters of protection nor privileges by rulers and other authorities helped the Jews to cope with these difficulties.23 That is one side of the picture. The other side of the picture is that, parallel to this, the controversies over the doctrine of the Trinity were leading to a doctrinal polarisation against the Jews. They, and specially the theme of converted Jews, really became the subject of a red-hot debate in Europe in 1130 when Peter Pierleone, Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, was elected Pope and assumed the name Anacletus II. Anacletus was the great-grandson of a very rich Jewish merchant called Baruch who, in around 1030, converted to Christianity and whose sons reached high positions in the Church and in the city of Rome.24 The Pierleoni were among the richest citizens of Rome and their wealth increased further as they continued their activities as bankers, in spite of conversion and in spite of the prohibition against lending money at interest – admittedly not a marked feature of Church teaching in the eleventh century. The papal election of 14 February 1130 was one of the most dramatic episodes of medieval Church history. Two parties employed all possible means to ensure the victory of their own candidates. Peter Pierleone was elected by a majority of only one vote. He was able to take up his office in Rome, only because the powerful Frangipani faction, previously hostile to the Pierleoni, came over to his side. The other candidate, Innocent II, maintained that he had won since his voters were the more prominent ones! He was forced to flee from the city, but managed to obtain his acceptance as Pope in the Empire and France, largely because the Cistercian Order with its tremendously influential Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux quite decidedly took his side. Bernard proceeded to attack Anacletus massively on the grounds of his Jewish ancestry. ‘It was a disgrace for Christ that a Jew should sit on St Peter’s throne’ – thereby conveniently forgetting that both St Peter and Christ had been Jews.25 Pierleone was only one-eighth Jewish by descent, the relevant part of his family had been converted a hundred years earlier; his career in the Church, way of life and learning were all exemplary. Nothing helped. Bernard had made his mind up. His reasons are obscure. Bernard was not only a mystic, he was also a brilliant organiser, who turned the Cistercian Order into a mighty force within the Church.26 He was one of the fathers of the Church who understood how to propagate their ideas through writings, exchange of letters, carefully organised collections of writings, lectures, 23 See Abelard’s description of the situation below, p. 107. 24 F-J. Schmale, who wrote the standard study of Anacletus’ election, maintained that ‘before 1130, as far

as the sources allow us to see, the Pierleoni were never reproved for their Jewish ancestry, but through baptism were regarded as having equal rights with other Christians’. Franz-Josef Schmale, Studien zum Schisma des Jahres 1130, Forschungen zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht 3, 1961, 71 n. 190. 25 PL 182, 294b. For Bernard and the Jews, Hans-Dietrich Kahl, ‘Bernhard von Fontaines, Abt von Clairvaux’, in Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte, ed. Martin Greschat, Mainz 1983, 173–92, here 188. 26 Jürgen Miethke, ‘Bernhard von Clairvaux’, in Die Zisterzienser: Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit, Schriften des Rheinischen Museumsamt 10, Bonn 1980, 47–55.

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sermons and public disputations.27 Modern research has stressed the originality of his theology.28 Others disagree with this.29 In spite of his clearly conservative leanings in scholarship, he was a great innovator when it came to propaganda. In comparison with him, most of the rulers of the time were mere amateurs. His opinions enjoyed enormous authority and were widely disseminated. Thus his opinion of Anacletus’ Jewish ancestry will have been widely disseminated, especially as he carried out a sort of campaign tour around France to promote the cause of his own candidate, Innocent. Until Anacletus’ death in 1138, Bernard made Innocent’s general recognition his main task. The success of his campaign meant that Anacletus was recognised as Pope only in Rome and in the Norman kingdom of Sicily. The fact that Bernard had to use so much time and energy to get Innocent accepted shows that Anacletus was by no means a poor candidate although today he is simply labelled an anti-Pope. While Bernard was prosecuting Innocent’s case, he became involved in his even more famous conflict with Peter Abelard. He himself regarded the campaign against Abelard as a continuation of the campaign against Anacletus, which is curious since it is difficult to find a common denominator. ‘We have escaped the roaring of Peter the Lion, who occupied St Peter’s throne, only to confront Peter the Dragon, who has attacked the belief of St Peter. The former openly persecuted God’s church like a marauding lion. This one is lurking like a dragon in a secret den in order to murder the innocent. But you, Lord God, will humble the proud. You will trample upon both lion and dragon.’30 Bernard saw Abelard as a danger for the Church. His affair with Heloise and his buoyant lifestyle were scandals in the eyes of the pious. His great success among the students in Paris, which he owed not only to his mastery of logic and ethics, but also to his brilliant powers of expression and rhetoric, including his ability to lecture with wit and irony, was an additional reason why the ascetic Bernard

27 Giles Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2 vols, Oxford 1967, here ii, 1–39. Some 550 care-

fully selected letters of Bernard have been left to us according to Kahl, Bernhard von Fontaines, 173. 28 ‘Much recent study has not only pronounced Bernard cleared of the charge of being an enemy of spec-

ulation or dialectic or of the schools as such, but has also found, especially since the appearance of E. Gilson’s famous study of his mystical thought, that Bernard had as a theologian a very considerable speculative and synthesizing ability.’ D. E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: the Influence of Abelard’s Thought in the Early Scholastic Period, Cambridge 1969, 110. For Bernard’s attitude to the Jews, see Lotter, ‘Das Prinzip’, 481ff, 502ff, esp. 502: ‘In großer Fülle finden sich in Bernhards Werken, insbesondere auch den Predigten und den Briefen, Aussagen, in welchen die Juden mit den üblichen Charakterisierungen abqualifiziert werden. In zwei Sermones . . . häufen sich diese Stereotypen in solchem Maße, daß diese Predigten geradezu als Darstellungen der antijudäistischen Theologie gelten können. Demnach sind die Juden blind, verstockt und hartherzig, gottlos, Gott undankbar, blasphemisch, gnadenlos, grausam und verworfen. Sie haben giftige Zunge, sind hochmutig und heuchlerische Pharisäer, widersetzen sich Gott Vater, Christus und dem Heiligen Geist, haben die Propheten getötet und die Apostel verfolgt, schließlich Christus ermordet. Die Synagoge war ihm eine grausame Mutter und stieß auch die Heiden zurück. Der Verlust von Land, Priesterschaft und Tempel ist daher Gottes gerechte Strafe für die Juden, ihre Knechtschaft die schimpflichste und schwerste.’ 29 An analysis of the library of Cîteaux by Haskins contradicts this. ‘The library of Citeaux has been reconstructed from what survives today; the codices of the twelfth century are almost wholly scriptural, patristic and liturgical with a little history, some textbooks and a few classics. Law, medicine, philosophy, the scholastic theology, are almost entirely lacking. “Citeaux was not a school of learning, not even of theological learning”.’ Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, New York 1957, 45, citing Vacandard’s Vie de Saint Bernard. Miethke, ‘Bernhard von Clairvaux’, is also sceptical about Bernard’s interest in scholarship. 30 Leopold Grill, ‘Die neunzehn “Capitula” Bernhards von Clairvaux gegen Abaelard’, Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 80, 1961, 230–9, here 234.

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couldn’t stand the charismatic Abelard. It is interesting that some of Abelard’s enemies accused him of being the son of a Jewish father and an Egyptian mother.31 However, it was only in 1139, when the great mystic, William of St Thierry, sent both Bernard and the bishop of Chartres an urgent letter warning against Abelard’s heresy that Bernard felt, as he said, forced to take up the struggle. We must assume, however, that he had long been conversant with Abelard’s ideas. After all, as early as 1121, Abelard had been denounced by the Synod of Soissons for his doctrine of the Trinity. For this, as well as for his scandalous life, he was regarded as a dangerous man by conservative forces in the Church. From 1121 onwards the dangerous suspicion of heresy hung over him. Heloise, whom infatuation admittedly may have led to exaggeration, wrote that he enjoyed fame like no other king or philosopher.32 It is difficult to believe that Bernard was not perfectly well informed about Abelard’s teachings long before 1139.33 In 1131 they had been simultaneously guests in the abbey of Morigny when Bernard was on the way to the royal court in the company of Pope Innocent II. By 1139 Abelard had given up his support for his former pupil Anacletus and the latter had died in the previous year, allowing Innocent II to take control in Rome. Like most of the French clergy, he now recognised Innocent as Pope. Nevertheless, the 1131 meeting between them at Morigny must have been – to say the least – a tense one and it seems unlikely that Bernard would have forgotten. It was probably in March 1139 that William of St Thierry, who described himself as an old friend of Abelard, sent a copy of the latter’s Theologia, together with a letter of denunciation, to Bernard and to the man who had led Abelard’s defence at the Council of Soissons: Geoffrey de Lèves, bishop of Chartres, now a papal legate. William enclosed a list of thirteen charges against Abelard, not failing to mention that the latter was now in favour at the papal court.34 William did not explicitly discuss Abelard’s teaching that the Jews were not responsible for Christ’s death on the Cross – but the twelfth of his charges, that Abelard claimed there is no sin without awareness of sin, touched directly on this point. Bernard plunged into a careful study and analysis of Abelard’s work, met him twice, and Abelard promised to take into account Bernard’s criticism. What happened between this chain of events and the Council of Sens is uncertain. There is no evidence of any revision by Abelard of his ideas. As the

31 Joachim Prinz, Popes from the Ghetto: a View of Medieval Christendom, New York 1966, 207. 32 Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 3. 33 In his Historia Calamitatum, composed between 1132 and 1137, Abelard complained of a monk who

claimed to have reformed monastic life and who was travelling from land to land, denouncing him in no uncertain terms. This had led to disapproval of him by both Church and lay authorities as well as causing him to lose some of his best friends. This description would fit Bernard well, who was even then renowned for his travelling. Abelard related this tale of his ‘persecution’ before he wrote about his stay in the abbey of St Gildas in Brittany. This would mean that Bernard’s antipathy to him went back a long way, since Abelard was at St Gildas in 1127. Another candidate, however, would be the other great monastic reformer of the age, Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. Arno Borst, ‘Abaelard und Bernhard’, Historische Zeitschrift 186, 1958, 497–526, here 507. For an English translation of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, Abelard and Heloise: the Story of his Misfortunes, ed. Betty Radice, London 1977, 45. Poole, Illustrations, 143, also believed that Bernard had previously persecuted Abelard. Bernard’s own words (as translated in Carl Jospeh Hefele, Conciliengeschichte 5, Frankfurt 1863, 404 citing Ep. 327) were that he ‘had previously known very little, indeed almost nothing at all’. 34 Grill, ‘Die neunzehn “Capitula” ’, 231. For Bernard’s concern about Abelard’s followers and influence at the papal court, Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 5; Heinrich Fichtenau, Ketzer und Protestanten: Häresie und Vernunftglaube im Hochmittelalter, Munich 1992, 270ff; Jacques Le Goff, Die Intellektuellen im Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1986, 50ff.

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consequence of Bernard’s subsequent victory over Abelard, the strength of Abelard’s position at this time and the protection on which he could reckon may have been underestimated. Bernard conducted a campaign against him and put pressure on his students who became so frightened – or convinced by his arguments– that many of them became monks of Cîteaux. A council was summoned to Sens in order to judge Abelard’s theses. Whether Abelard or Bernard, or both of them, had demanded it, is unclear. It was formally convened by the archbishop of Sens as the diocesan.35 Even before the council met, the stance of the Church was hardening; Abelard was already calling Bernard his prosecutor. Abelard requested his students to appear in Sens to give him moral support. At the council, in the presence not only of bishops and leading members of the nobility but also – to illustrate the importance of this event – of the king, Bernard took centre stage. Only certain chosen points were mentioned and the council simply repeated a condemnation which had already been decided upon. Apparently Bernard did not want to risk a debate with Abelard.36 On 3 June 1140 Abelard was condemned on fifteen points.37 Top of the list was his Trinity doctrine. According to Bernard, he was dismembering the Trinity.38 The question of guilt, however, was also cosidered since Abelard had made it a main theme in his Ethics. He who did something evil unknowingly was not guilty, a doctrine which, according to Abelard, applied to the Jews since they had killed Christ unknowingly and should therefore not be punished for it.39 Abelard’s attempt to diminish their guilt on the grounds of their ignorance had already been condemned. Entirely contrary to his usual way of behaving, at Sens Abelard said nothing. With this judgement, the doctrine of the culpable murder of Christ by the Jews became official Church doctrine, although it was contrary to all previous teaching from the days of Gregory the Great onwards. The presence of the king and the court can be interpreted as signifying the approval of the secular hierarchy. In future, the idea that the Jews were not guilty of Christ’s murder would always be associated with Abelard and with his other dangerously heretical ideas. Abelard refused to accept the judgement and departed for Rome to appeal against it in person. Bernard sent one letter after the other to counteract his influence there.

35 According to Podlech, the archbishop of Sens convened the Council on his own initiative. A.

Angenendt ‘Peter Abaelard’, in Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte, ed. Martin Greschat, Mittelalter I, Mainz 1983, 158, attributes the initiative to Abelard’s friends and pupils. According to Poole, Illustrations, 142, Abelard himself demanded the debate. 36 The sources for the Council of Sens are contradictory. Abelard seems to have been condemned for heresies of which he was innocent, Denifle, ‘Die Sentenzen’, 402–69. See also M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: a Medieval Life, Oxford 1997, 307–14. 37 J. Rivière, ‘Les “capitula” d’Abélard condamnés au concile de Sens’, in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 23. The precise number of counts upon which Abelard was condemned is also a subject of dispute – numbers between fourteen and nineteen have been proposed. As at the Council of Soissons, Abelard was not given an opportunity to defend his point of view, Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 321–5. 38 Ibid., 402–4. 39 Luscombe, School of Peter Abelard, 429ff. Angenendt, Peter Abaelard, 148–60, here 157. Bernard’s interpretation of Abelard’s teaching was that ‘those simple-minded Jews who condemned Christ to death, did not sin since they did not act against their conscience but persecuted Christ purely in pursuance of their law and did not think that they were acting wrongly’. Cited in Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 425, as the eleventh charge against Abelard. For earlier Church teaching on this point, Lotter, ‘Das Prinzip’, 485 and n. 16.

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Why Abelard never reached Rome, but stopped on the way at Cluny, for good, as it turned out, is unknown. It is probable that initially he stopped there to justify his standpoint to Bernard’s great rival, Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who seems not to have been present at Sens. Peter the Venerable had been an admirer of Abelard, calling him ‘our Aristotle’.40 Recent writers have assumed that Peter the Venerable gave Abelard refuge to prevent him being thrown in gaol or worse. This may be so. Bernard had, through his letters, obtained the pope’s confirmation of the judgement of Sens and a papal sentence of life imprisonment. Historians regard Abelard as a broken man, an assumption given some support by his desolate appearance at Sens. He had expected help there and it had not materialised.41 Other interpretations are possible. That he was too ill or too fed up to continue, or that Peter the Venerable was carrying out the papal sentence of life-imprisonment and holding him against his will. Whatever the reason, Abbot Roland of Cîteaux travelled to Cluny and arranged a meeting between Abelard and Bernard. Apparently the two were reconciled. Abelard was taken from Cluny to a small, isolated house belonging to the Order. The abbot reported on his health and his studies to Heloise. But she did not visit him. How did he occupy himself? He worked on his so-called Collationes, the work posterity has called The Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian.42 Analysis of the work has proved that Abelard, although he had begun it earlier, resumed work on it at the end of his life. In this work, he repeated his heresy that the Jews were not guilty of murdering Christ. The work opens with moving words put into the mouth of the Jew: No folk has suffered for God like ours. You will agree that there can be no sin which has not been paid for through our suffering. Are we not scattered amongst all other people without ruler or regent and so oppressed by taxes that we pay an unbearably high ransom to hold onto our pitiable lives? We are regarded as so unworthy and hateful that it is considered respectable to harm us and it is done in God’s service as the highest sacrifice to him. You may think that God hates us indeed for him to condemn us to such a fate or that it is a just retribution that Christians should take out their evil tempers on us. Christians claim to have good justification for this in that they say we have murdered their Lord. You only have to see with what type of people we, homeless in foreign lands, have to live and on what rulers we are forced to depend. We are dependent for life and limb on our worst enemies and unbelievers. We cannot even escape through sleep, deprived of it, as we are, through constant fear of our lives. We cannot travel anywhere – except to Heaven – without danger and are not even secure under our own roofs. To travel to the next village, we have to pay a huge sum of money for protection – which then proves completely unreliable. In such circumstances, it is a miracle when we are allowed to remain alive. We are forbidden to hold arable land, vineyards or any farms. Our only way of making our

40 Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, 10. 41 Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversos, 133. 42 E. M. Buytaert, Abaelards Collationes, Antonianum 1964, 18–54, here 27–34. Rudolf Thomas, Der

philosophisch-theologische Erkenntnisweg Peter Abaelards im Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum, Bonn 1966. A complete edition of the Dialogue (with German translation) is to be found in Peter Abailard: Gespräch eines Philosophen, eines Juden und eines Christen, ed. Hans-Wolfgang Krautz, Frankfurt 1995.

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living is to lend money at interest to non-Jews. This makes us even more hated. I hope that I have made clear how difficult it is for us to live in exile amongst you.43 Abelard’s words here represent an impressive example of humanity, not only in the twelfth century but for the Middle Ages in general. This was not a politically correct statement by any means and amounted to a dangerous restatement of his heretical statements about guilt. One must admire the courage of a seriously ill person – a broken man! – who dared to do this, especially as the virulently anti-Jewish Peter the Venerable was looking over his shoulder while he was composing the Collationes. For Peter told Heloise that he had been observing Abelard at work.44 At about this time Peter himself composed, not a dialogue with the Jews, but a tract against them, the Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiem.45 Given the close proximity between the two men at the end of Abelard’s life it would be worth making a detailed comparison of the contents of the two works and examining the relationship between them. Peter got round the difficult question of the conventional doctrine that the Jews should be regarded as the living witnesses of Christ’s murder in order that they should be converted at the Last Judgement, by recommending that their life should be made Hell on earth, so that they actually wished for death – exactly the complaint which Abelard put into the mouth of his Jew in the Dialogue. For Bernard of Clairvaux, this went too far. He thought that life for the Jews under Christian princes was already difficult enough.46 He also denounced their murder and the activities of a rabble-rousing monk called Brother Ralph whose popular preaching aimed at inflaming his audience against the Jews.47 In the period preceding the Second Crusade, however, Peter the Venerable provided further dangerous ammunition when he maintained that Jews were also responsible for the Koran and the teachings of Islam. This tone continued in later tracts such as the Contra Perfidiam Judeorum (1204) of Peter of Blois.48 All this is worlds away from Abelard who, for his part, was trying, probably consciously, to continue the old tradition of Christian–Jewish dialogue. Indeed, his words remain the high-point of this form of literature. That he chose to spend his last days on this work and not on other philosophical or theological studies is remarkable. It confirms just how high was the priority that he placed on remaining in dialogue with the Jews and how great the sympathy with which he viewed their dire situation. Bernard, by contrast, spoke of Jews in the same breath as heretics and advised against any contact with them.49 In this respect he cast his shadow over the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215 which played a major role in making an anti-Jewish policy official Church doctrine with consequences which lasted far beyond the Middle Ages.

43 Krautz, Gespräch, 30ff. 44 Podlech, Abaelard und Heloise, 403. Buytaert detects a slight modification by Abaelard at the end of

his life in his doctrine of guilt, Abaelards Collationes, 26–39. 45 Petri Venerabilis Abbatis Cluniacensis noni Opera Omnia, PL 189, Paris 1854, Turnhout 1980,

508–652. 46 Kahl, ‘Bernhard von Fontaines’, 187. 47 Lotter, ‘Das Prinzip’, 509–12. 48 Volker Pfaff, ‘Die soziale Stellung des Judentums in der Auseinanderstzung zwischen Kaiser und

Kirche vom 3. bis zum 4. Lateran Konzil’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 189, 1965, 168–206, here 170. 49 Liebeschütz, Synogoge und Ecclesia, 13.

Where Did All the Charters Go?

WHERE DID ALL THE CHARTERS GO? ANGLO-SAXON CHARTERS AND THE NEW POLITICS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY1 Charles Insley In 1681, on the island of Mauritius, the last Dodo was killed. Exactly six hundred years before, the Anglo-Saxon solemn diploma met an equally final end, with what I would argue was the last example being produced in that year. Like the Dodo, the final demise of the diploma had been a drawn-out process and one which had begun in the second quarter of the eleventh century. The Problem The genesis of this article was some thought provoking papers in sessions on early medieval biography and charters at the University of Leeds in 1996,2 further stimulated by Robin Fleming’s 2000 Allen Brown Memorial Lecture,3 and consists of three related questions. First, how far can we use Anglo-Saxon charters as ‘texts’ in their own right, rather than simply a resource to be quarried for the names of people and places? More particularly, should we dismiss much of the contents of Anglo-Saxon charters as more or less irrelevant pseudo-religious verbiage? Were the elaborate and often baroque proems of charters from the period c.930–90 simply the academic exercises of clever monastic scribes or did they have a more important function? Charters have for so long been seen as administrative records that it is sometimes difficult to think of them as anything else. Should we in fact regard Anglo-Saxon charters in part as we regard Anglo-Saxon lawcodes: with a practical dimension, certainly, but also with a deeper ideological dimension?4 Second, why is the Anglo-Saxon solemn diploma of the tenth and eleventh centu1

I am grateful to all who have commentated on this paper, in its earliest form at Leeds and at subsequent airings at York and Battle, notably Matthew Innes, Pauline Stafford, Andrew Wareham, Katie Cubitt, Elizabeth Tyler, Chris Lewis, Alan Thacker, Ann Williams, David Dumville and Katharine Keats-Rohan. 2 P. Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson and J. Martindale, Manchester 2001, 68–82. I am grateful to Professor Stafford for allowing me to see this article in advance of publication. 3 R. Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 1–22. 4 P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits, Oxford 1999, is the most authoritative survey of the development and purpose of Anglo-Saxon law codes. See also his ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship from Euric to Cnut’, in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood, 1977, 105–38, repr. in P. Wormald, Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as Text, Image and Experience, London 1999, 1–44, and idem, ‘Aethelred the Lawmaker’, in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. D. Hill, BAR, British Ser., 59, 1978, 47–80.

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ries structured in the way it is, containing, as it often does, a long and wordy proem which often seems to bear little relation to the purpose of the charter, in contrast to the arenga of many continental charters?5 Thirdly and finally, we must also ask why, having lasted from the seventh century to the mid-eleventh century, the diploma, in its Anglo-Saxon form, by which I mean invocation, pictorial, verbal, or both, proem, disposition, anathema, blessing and dating protocol, disappeared so rapidly from the second quarter of the eleventh century? Why, in effect, was the Anglo-Saxon solemn diploma, as well as being unusual in comparison with continental diplomatic, a diplomatic dead-end? The answers (for there must be more than one) to these question must lie with the function of the charter. There has been a considerable amount written about the Anglo-Saxon charter over the last twenty or so years, much of it excellent.6 Much of this scholarship has focused on key issues such as where were charters produced and by whom, issues of authenticity and authentication, issues of script development.7 More rarely, though, has the question been asked of what was the function of the Anglo-Saxon charter. What did the beneficiaries do with their charters? What did they expect? Surely it must be the case that the form of the Anglo-Saxon charter followed its function. With regard to the question of the survival of the ‘archaic’ form of the Anglo-Saxon diplomas into the eleventh century, none of the explanations are entirely convincing. To crudely caricature the argument, for Pierre Chaplais, the heavy religious overtones of most Anglo-Saxon charters, their language, the absence of secular penalties, the absence of authentication meant that their authenticity was ‘a purely religious one’ and a result of their production in ecclesiastical scriptoria, or by scribes attached to such scriptoria.8 For Chaplais, then, the form of charters was inextricably linked to their manner of production. For Simon Keynes, the form of the Anglo-Saxon diploma was a relic of its introduction into England in the late seventh century, ascribing to the Anglo-Saxons of the tenth and eleventh centuries a conservatism which they do not in fact appear to have had.9 5

See, for example, the charters of Charlemagne or Charles the Bald: Diplomatarum Karolinum I: Pippini, Carlomanni, Caroli Magni Diplomata, ed. A. Dopsch, J. Lechner and M. Tangl, MGH, Hanover 1906; Recueil des Actes de Charles II le Chauve, ed. G. Tessier, 3 vols, Paris 1943–55. 6 The starting point for recent discussions of Anglo-Saxon charters is the work of Simon Keynes, especially S. D. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge 1980. 7 Keynes, Diplomas; idem, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 185–22; idem, ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Æthelwulf and his Sons’, EHR 109, 1994, 1109–49; idem, ‘The “Dunstan B” Charters’, ASE 23, 1994, 165–93; idem, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1061–81)’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 203–71; P. Chaplais, ‘The Origin and Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.2, 1965, 48–61; idem, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: From the Diploma to the Writ’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.4, 1966, 160–76; idem, ‘Some Early Anglo-Saxon Diplomas on SingleSheets: Originals or Copies?’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 3.7, 1968, 315–36; idem, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” of the Tenth Century Revisited’, in H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore, eds, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, London 1985, 41–51; D. Dumville, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Background and Earliest Phases’, ASE 16, 1987, 147–79; idem, English Caroline Script: Studies in Benedictine History AD 950–1066, Woodbridge 1992; idem, ‘English Square Minuscule Script: the Mid-Century Phases’, ASE 23, 1994, 133–64; C. L. G. Insley, ‘Charters and Episcopal Scriptoria in the Anglo-Saxon South-West’, Early Medieval Europe 7.2, 1998, 173–97; J. Crick, ‘The Case for a West-Saxon Minuscule’, ASE 26, 1997, 63–80. 8 Chaplais, ‘Origin and Authenticity’, p. 36. 9 Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 31–3.

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Neither the Chaplais nor the Keynes answers seem to provide an entirely satisfactory explanation of the form of Anglo-Saxon charters of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The English do not seem to have been a particularly conservative people in any respect and conservatism alone cannot explain the persistence of a particular form. The decision not to change is as much an active choice as to change and it is clear that in terms of diplomatic innovation, draftsmen and scribes of the tenth century were quite happy to experiment with formulation and vocabulary: one only has to look at the style and quality of the Latin in those charters ascribed to ‘Athelstan A’ to see this. If David Dumville is to be believed, the Anglo-Saxon royal ‘chancery’ of the tenth century was a powerhouse of script evolution and dissemination.10 Not everyone would agree with his analysis, but the case still stands for the high degree of script evolution occurring in the tenth and eleventh centuries, through the various later phases of square minuscule to the highly developed Anglo-Caroline scripts in existence at Canterbury, Exeter and elsewhere in the mid-eleventh century.11 Why then, did tenth and eleventh century charter scribes not change the basic form and layout of the charter; why did they persist in using what scholars have seen as an outdated form? The question becomes all the more pressing when we can see that Anglo-Saxon charter draftsmen could evolve a more streamlined form of charter. I am not talking about the writ, which although used to convey land, is a fundamentally different type of instrument from the charter, but the so-called ‘Dunstan B’ group of charters. These charters, surviving from a range of beneficiaries, both lay and ecclesiastical, ranging in date from the 950s through to the 970s and probably produced by scribes associated with Dunstan at Glastonbury, dispense with the proem altogether, opening instead with a dating clause and then launching straight into the disposition.12 The end product looks much more like some Carolingian royal charters of the ninth century, certainly in terms of their conciseness, and in some respects they presage the much more ‘administrative’ form of the Anglo-Norman writ-charter of the twelfth century. The superficial similarity with continental material may be no accident, given the links between Dunstan who, Keynes suggests, was the originator of the formulation, and the continent.13 The point to be drawn out here is that Anglo-Saxon charter scribes could, when they wanted to, significantly alter the form of the diploma. Why, therefore, did they not do so on a larger scale than the handful of ‘Dunstan B’ charters?

The Function of the Charter in the Tenth Century There may be many answers to this question, or maybe none. What I propose to do here is suggest a few lines of enquiry as to why the English kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries persisted in using so archaic and cumbersome a form as the Anglo-Saxon diploma. What I shall suggest is that the form persisted, not because it had become fossilised, but precisely the opposite: that the form was still useful in the tenth and eleventh centuries because it had a wider function than simply recording the 10 Dumville, English Caroline Script, 53, 152, and idem, ‘English Square Minuscule: the Mid-Century Phases’, 156–64. 11 T. A. M. Bishop, English Caroline Minuscule, Oxford 1971; Dumville, English Caroline Script; idem, ‘English Square Minuscule: the Mid-Century Phases’. 12 Keynes, ‘The “Dunstan B” Charters’. 13 Ibid., 181–6.

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conveyance of land and as a title deed. Like law-codes, the charter had a very real role in the development and dissemination of English royal political and ideological agendas and not just through the development and articulation of ideas of rulership in the royal styles employed in the charters.14 This line of enquiry really only works, though, if we can show that tenth-century charters, or at least some of them, can be linked to the court and the crown. On one level, since all charters were produced either by ecclesiastical or royal scribes, and the role of the tenth-century English ecclesiastical establishment (from Plegmund right through to Wulfstan) in the shaping of royal ideology is well known, all charters can be considered linked in some sense to the crown.15 However, I feel that we need to go further. It is not enough to suggest that a particular draftsman or a particular bishop was aware of what one might term ‘current’ issues, since this may not necessarily inform the drafting of charters. A clear link between the king and a particular charter, either in terms of the personnel producing the charter, or its contents, needs to be demonstrated. Much has been written about the existence or not of an Anglo-Saxon ‘chancery’ or royal writing office and I do not intend to dwell on the debate here.16 To an extent, the terminology of the debate is anachronistic, since in a tenth-century context a scribe could surely be both an ecclesiastical scribe, working in a particular scriptorium, and a royal scribe, writing charters for a number of different beneficiaries on behalf of the king. The context of any Anglo-Saxon charter scribe’s training and the script that they wrote was a monastic one and it is likely that charter scribes spent much of their time on other things, such as book production.17 Ultimately, whether a scribe was a royal scribe or an ecclesiastical scribe depended on where they were standing, or sitting, when they wrote the charter. So which groups of tenth-century charters can be identified which correspond to these parameters? Much of what follows draws on the important work of Simon Keynes on the diplomas of Æthelred II.18 At least three groups of charters satisfy the criterion outlined above: the charters ascribed to ‘Athelstan A’, those ascribed to ‘Edgar A’ and those charters of Æthelred II in which the king either apologises for the actions of his ill-guided youth or where he justifies the forfeitures of specific estates. The first two groups fall into the category of charters produced for a wide range of beneficiaries, both lay and ecclesiastical, while the third group, discussed extensively by Keynes and Stafford, falls into the category where the content, not necessarily the nature of production, of the charter, suggests a clear royal link.19 The Orthodoxorum 14 See the works of Wormald, esp. The Making of English Law, 320–45, 430–65. See also P. Stafford,

‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10, 1981, 173–90; K. Lawson, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element in the Laws of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR 107, 1992, 565–86. 15 For Wulfstan’s role in shaping royal ideology, see ibid. and D. Whitelock, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and Statesman’, TRHS 4th ser. 24, 1942, 24–45; eadem, ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63, 1948, 433–52; A. Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11, 1983, 57–81. 16 See Keynes, Diplomas; idem, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’; Chaplais, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery’; idem, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” Revisited’; The Charters of Abingdon Abbey I, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters 7, Oxford 2000, lxxiii–lxxxiv; Insley, ‘Charters and Episcopal Scriptoria’. 17 Chaplais, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” Revisited’, 43. 18 Keynes, Diplomas. 19 Keynes, Diplomas, 95–104; P. Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II: a Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’, in Hill, Ethelred the Unready, 15–46; eadem, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 68–9, 80–2.

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group of late tenth-century charters, recently discussed extensively by Susan Kelly,20 can also be added to this list, since they are closely connected to reform houses and, as Kelly has argued persuasively, it seems likely that the originator of the Orthodoxorum formulation was ‘Edgar A’.21 How far, then, do these charters support the suggestion that they had a specific, perhaps ideological, function. If we turn to Æthelred’s charters first, six can be identified in which the king makes restitution for past misdeeds and thirteen where the forfeiture of an estate is detailed.22 The mention of past misdeeds or forfeiture occurs in the disposition, in a discussion of the circumstances of the grant. It is not so much the fact that Æthelred was making restitution and disavowing his ‘youth’ but the medium in which it happened. If we agree, as surely we must, that the granting of charters was part of meetings of the witan, then, over the course of several meetings of the court, Æthelred publicly stated his regret for the assaults on church property in the 980s caused by his own youth and ignorance.23 In two of the charters Æthelred blames his own youthful lack of judgement and the poor advice of his counsellors: this in part may have been true, but it also seems likely that these references to earlier poor counsel were the dominant court circle of the 990s publicly attacking the memory and reputations of their predecessors.24 Surely, though, the issuing of these charters was in part a response to criticism of Æthelred himself, who, even allowing for the embittered hindsight of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, seems to have had his moments of malicious wilfulness. The same purpose may underly the ‘forfeiture’ charters. Stafford has suggested that they were a public way of punishing those who had committed acts of treason; of, as it were, visibly humiliating ‘public enemies’. One could also suggest that, like the ‘restitution’ charters, the ‘forfeiture’ charters were a response to criticism of Æthelred himself. At several points during his reign, Æthelred seems to have acted in an arbitrary fashion in relation to outlawry and forfeiture: one only has to think of the punishment meted out to Ealdorman Ælfhelm and his sons in 1006, or the sons of Earngrim towards the end of his reign.25 It is possible that the charters detailing forfeiture were justifications of his heavy-handedness.26 It is one thing for the king to act in an arbitrary manner, it is another for him to explain, presumably in meetings of the witan, why he had acted in such a way. It is also true, as Wormald and Stafford have pointed out, that forfeiture as a penalty was increasingly exploited by tenth century kings and assuming an ever larger importance, not least because of the size of the king’s family and the need to provide them with lands.27 20 Kelly, Abingdon, lxxxiv–cxv. 21 Ibid., lxxxix, cxv–cxxi. 22 S 876, 885, 891, 893, 937, dating from between AD 993 and c.1000, make reference to the actions of

the king’s youth. S 838 also does so, but is dated AD 981 and therefore too early in the king’s reign and probably not authentic as it stands (Keynes, Diplomas, 97 n. 43, but see Kelly, Abingdon, xcii, on the possibility that S 838 is authentic). S 877, 883, 886, 892, 893, 896, 901, 918, 927, 934, 937, 939, 1501 all make reference to forfeiture for a number of offences: treason, desertion, defiance of royal orders, murder, theft, violent assault and fornication. See also Keynes, Diplomas, 95–104. 23 Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 68–70. 24 Ibid. 25 ASC, s.a. 1006 and 1015. Ealdorman Ælfhelm was murdered at a hunt near Shrewsbury in 1006 and his sons Wulfheah and Ufegeat blinded. Their kinsmen Sigeferth and Morcar were murdered at a Royal Council at Oxford in 1015. 26 Lawson, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’, 570–1; Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 72–3. 27 Wormald, The Making of English Law, 363; idem, ‘Aethelred the Lawmaker’, 63–5; Stafford, ‘Political

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As is the case with the apologies for earlier actions, the production of these ‘forfeiture’ charters may have been stimulated by the presence at court of such luminaries as Ealdorman Æthelweard and his son Æthelmær, Ordulf, the king’s uncle, Ælfthryth, the king’s mother, Wulfric Spott, founder of Burton, archbishops Sigeric and Ælfheah and even Bishop Wulfstan.28 These charters were clearly not just being used to convey or redistribute land, or confirm privileges. In both cases Æthelred may have been making ‘public’ statements about royal power and its relationship to aristocratic ‘counsel’.29 As Stafford points out, there are sixteen surviving charters from the period 990–1005 which explicitly refer to counsel.30 Were these charters the tip of an iceberg of ‘dialogue’ between the king and his elite negotiating the limits of royal power? This may have been a debate framed by clerics, but it was one which was crucial for all parts of the late tenth-century elite, lay and ecclesiastical. Where do these charters stand in relation to the remarkable (and seldom commented on) statement in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1014 that following the death of Swein Forkbeard, the witan would accept Æthelred back on condition that he would rule better, remedy hated abuses, forgive injuries and be a true lord?31 One can see in these charters the same concern for good kingship, just lordship and counsel that we see in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, or in parts of the lawcode known as VI Æthelred, dating from c.1008.32 If we turn now to the charters of ‘Edgar A’, we can detect more obvious use of the charter, especially the proem, to articulate a particular royal or dynastic image. A number of these charters contain a proem which begins annuente altithroni moderatoris imperio totius albionis triuiatim . . .: this explicitly states that rule over all of Albion is in the permission of the Almighty and granted specifically to Edgar.33 Two observations can be made at this point. The first is that the proem is being used to make the sort of overtly political statement more often found in the royal styles of Anglo-Saxon charters. The second observation regards the resonances of this claim, given Edgar’s supposedly ‘imperial’ pretensions. The idea that the kingdom of England and rule over the rest of Britain was a gift bestowed by God on the West Saxons explicitly draws on Alfred’s use of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, as well as having echoes in the Old English translation of Orosius’ Seven Books against the Pagans and Alfred’s lawcode.34 The same is true of the large number of tenth-century

Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 71–2. See ibid., 77–9, for the tension, articulated in Æthelred’s charters, between ideas of forfeiture and inheritance. 28 Æthelmær and Ordulf were two of the king’s counsellors involved in the return of land to Abingdon (S 937). They were also singled out as counsellors in the renewal of Abingdon’s privileges in 997 (S 891). See Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 73–4. 29 Ibid., 72–4. 30 Ibid., 75: S 876, 880, 881, 891, 893–6, 898–9, 909, 911, 913, 937, 942, 944. 31 Stafford, ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, 180–3; Wormald, The Making of English Law, vol. 1, 361–2. 32 Liebermann i, 246–57; M. Swanton, ed., Anglo-Saxon Prose, London 1975, 126–7; Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 73. See Wormald, The Making of English Law, 330–45, 449–65. For a discussion of the Enham legal material of c.1008, see Wormald, ‘Aethelred the Lawmaker’, 49–58, and Lawson, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’, 573–7. 33 S 709, 717, 720, 729, 746. 34 The Old English Orosius, ed. J. Bately, Early English Text Society, Oxford 1980. See especially xcv on the translator’s use of Orosius’s view of Christian history. See also D. Whitelock, ‘The Prose of Alfred’s Reign’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. E. G. Stanley, Oxford 1966, 67–103 at 90.

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royal styles which echo the same theme: diuina fauente totius Britannie primatum regalis regiminis optinens, or opitulante gratuita saluatoris mundi clementia Anglorum basileus and the like. These styles, like the ‘Edgar A’ proem, were not making hard and fast claims about the extent of English royal power, rather they were appropriating for the English kings of the tenth century the Bedan ideas of the role of the Gens Anglorum and its divinely ordained mission.35 They were designed to foster a particular image for kings such as Athelstan and Edgar among their own aristocracy. The ‘tenth-century establishment’ had largely bought into the West Saxon success story and it is possible that this sort of language used in charters was a way of making sure that they still believed it. The other proems used by ‘Edgar A’ and indeed, by ‘Athelstan A’ are more diffuse and less overtly political. All, however, echo two themes above all others: the need to secure salvation in a miserable, transitory world by the giving of alms, that by the giving of earthly riches one might secure everlasting glory and that it was necessary to record the decisions and actions of men rather than leave them to the perils of future ignorance.36 These ideas are expressed in a wide variety of ways and to an extent this variety obscures the essential continuity of the message. The very decorative nature of the prose of ‘Athelstan A’, for instance, tends to obscure the fact that his proems echo those of some of the charters of ‘Edgar A’. There is no denying that ‘Athelstan A’ had a powerful command of language and imagery, but it is his use of the hermeneutic style that tends to concern scholars, not the message his admittedly impressive prose carries. One could make the obvious point the theme of the ‘transitory life’ proem is so general a concern that it is merely a topos and has no real meaning in the charter. This may be true, to an extent, but it also underlines the role of English kings, especially Edgar, in the foundation of monastic churches. In one sense, this type of alms-giving was very much a royally led fashion, if one thinks of the account of Edgar’s foundation of the monasteries or the language of the New Minster refoundation charter, and one enthusiastically followed by the English elite, both lay and ecclesiastical, in the later tenth century.37 Again, it could be suggested that the language of charters was being used to reinforce a royal agenda, in this case monastic foundation and endowment. The later tenth and very early eleventh century saw a spate of lay foundations: Tavistock, Cerne, Burton, Eynsham, Buckfast, as well as ecclesiastically inspired foundations/refoundations such as Ramsey.38 There are also Bedan resonances in these proems. The idea that earthly life is an 35 Wormald, ‘Engla Lond: the Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology 7, 1995, 1–24,

repr. in his Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West, 359–82; idem, ‘The Making of England’, History Today 44, 1995, 26–33; idem, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald, D. Bullough and R. Collins, Oxford 1983, 99–129. 36 These themes are very common, especially the meditation on the transitory nature of earthly life. See, for instance, S 461–4, 584, 663, 701, 738, 744, 755, 770, 830, 832, 844, 846, 848, 855, 890, 900. The second theme is slightly less common, but still seen in a large number of charters: see S 497, 684, 795 for examples. 37 D. H. Whitelock, ‘The Authorship of the Account of King Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries’, in Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. J. L. Rosier, Paris 1970, 125–37. For the New Minster refoundation charter (S 745), see S. Miller, ed., The Charters of New Minster, Winchester, Anglo-Saxon Charters 9, Oxford 2001, no. 23, 95–111. 38 The dedication of Ramsey by Bishop Oswald and Ealdorman Æthelwine in 991 is recorded in the

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essentially transitory existence echoes the famous sparrow story in the Ecclesiastical History.39 Salvation was only reserved for the righteous, again, a Bedan theme: the reason the British had forfeited their rule in Britain was that they had strayed from the path of righteousness. The theme of these proems is, I would suggest, a reinforcement of the image of the English as an elect people and a warning about the dire consequences of straying from this path. As Wormald says of Æthelred’s legislation ‘As rulers of a holy people, they were bound to enforce God’s Law, and God’s favour in this world and the next depended on it.’40 It may be, thinking in terms of Æthelred’s charters, that his ‘misdeeds’ and arbitrariness may have been perceived by his court not just as unfortunate, but as potentially disastrous. The last thing that the elect needed was a king who had strayed from the path to salvation, a king who was being, in a sense, ‘unkingly’. This again echoes the more general concerns articulated by Wulfstan in his Institutes of Polity and in the Sermo Lupi.41 The desire expressed in proems to set things down in writing may be no more than that ‘those responsible for drafting and writing the charters themselves would wish to advertise the benefits of their own labours’.42 Equally, though, such sentiments may mask a real desire for commemoration and remembrance, one of the motivations for lay foundation and patronage of ecclesiastical institutions as well as an increasing need for the recording of decisions concerning land. How much, if at all, this reflects a royal agenda is very much an open question, although in some respects the charter enshrined a permanent memorial to the king or kings involved in its granting: kings were commemorated by and through their charters. The Orthodoxorum group of charters, so-named from the first word of their proems, also fit into this mould of discursive charters, since they also claim to be acting in restitution of previous wrongs. These charters, three for Abingdon and two for Pershore and Romsey, respectively, are a problematic group, whose authenticity has been the subject of quite fierce debate.43 To sum up, very briefly, Keynes suggested that only the last of the group, S 876 of AD 993, was authentic: its tone, and reference to past false charters (introduced by the clause tempore siquidem . . .) fits Æthelred’s reflective period of the 990s.44 Keynes also noted that the Orthodoxorum proem was linked to the formulation of ‘Edgar A’ from the 960s. Keynes rejected the identification of ‘Edgar A’ as an Abingdon scribe, suggesting that instead he was a royal scribe, and therefore ‘unable to adapt for his own purposes a formula used previously in the two Abingdon diplomas’ (S 658, S 673).45 For Keynes, the most likely scenario was that the Orthodoxorum proem first came into existence in the 990s, and was used at Abingdon to forge their earlier charters. Very recently, Keynes’ objections

Worcester Chronicle (John of Worcester, ii, 438). See S 911 for the foundation of Eynsham and S 838 for Tavistock. For the foundation of Tavistock see H. P. R. Finberg, ‘The House of Ordgar and the Foundation of Tavistock Abbey’, EHR 58, 1943, 190–201. 39 Bede’s, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, OMT, Oxford 1969, Bk ii, ch. 13. 40 Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, p. 73; idem, The Making of English Law, 464–5. 41 Ibid., 464–5. The Sermo Lupi explicitly draws a parallel between the fate of the British in Gildas’s De Excidio Britannie and the English (Wormald, ‘Engla Lond’, 20; EHD i, 933–4). 42 S. D. Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick, Cambridge 1992, 226–57 at 226. 43 S 658, 673, 786, 788, 812, 876. 44 Keynes, Diplomas, 99. 45 Ibid.

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have been seriously undermined by Susan Kelly, who argued that the earlier charters were not simply an adaptation of S 876: in fact, the relationship may be the other way round, with S 876 being a modified example of the original Orthodoxorum proem.46 Kelly also made the telling point that there is no reason why ‘Edgar A’ could not have been both an Abingdon scribe and one employed in royal service in the 960s, which would allow him to have adapted parts of the Orthodoxorum proem in the 960s.47 The importance of the Orthodoxorum charters is twofold. First, as I have said, they fit into the pattern of charters being used to publicly repudiate earlier royal acts, as Æthelred seems to have done in the 990s.48 The second concerns the nature of the proem itself. The proem concerns the fall, and meditates on the spiritual role of the Virgin Mary as mother of Christ, the birth of whom in some sense negates the fall. It is surely significant, as Kelly points out, that Abingdon, Pershore and Romsey, where the full Orthodoxorum proem was deployed, all had Marian dedications.49 Here, then, the proem is being used as a vehicle to reinforce the identity of these particular reform communities. I would be wary of making too much of this point, since the Orthodoxorum charters to an extent stand outside the diplomatic mainstream and the proem here seems to have a very specific use for a very small audience. Nevertheless, elements of the Orthodoxorum formulation were used elsewhere, shorn of their Marian overtones, and fit into a more general context of proems which describe the creation, common earlier in the tenth century.50 The removal of the Marian elements changes the thrust of the proem somewhat. In S 880 of AD 994, for instance, effectively the foundation charter of the see of Cornwall, the description of the creation and fall leads straight into an exaltation of Christ, followed by Æthelred’s grant of privileges to Bishop Ealdred.51 This has the effect of placing Æthelred’s actions, his dynasty and the English kingdom in a biblical context, fixing the place of the English in the divine plan and highlighting the English as successors to the peoples of the Bible.52 One final element concerning proems that needs to be addressed relates not to their contents as such, but to certain of the words used. Many words are used to describe the Almighty and his power: altitonans, altithronatis, for instance. Perhaps the most common words are, however, gubernator and rector. Turning, briefly, to royal styles, these titles also appear as styles from the reign of Athelstan onwards, often in the form ‘king of the English and governor and ruler over all the orb of Britain’ or ‘king and ruler over all the Isle of Britain’.53 As I have already suggested, these are not so much claims to pan-British overlordship as claims to the Bedan sense of the English as a divinely sanctioned people, hence the power of the English kings over Britain is described in comparable terms to that of the Almighty over creation. This, again, seems to be a powerful reiteration of the West Saxon dynastic image: their rule is not 46 47 48 49 50

Kelly, Abingdon, lxxxvii. Ibid., cxv–cxxi. See above, 113–14 and also S 876. Kelly, Abingdon, xciii. For instance, S 597, the proem of which narrates the history of mankind from the creation, through the fall to the incarnation (Kelly, Abingdon, lxxxviii). 51 C. Insley, ed., The Charters of Exeter, Crediton and St Germans, Anglo-Saxon Charters 10, Oxford forthcoming, no. 19. 52 Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’, 70–1. 53 S 450, 420, 493, 504, 506, 517a, 521, 522a–528, 530–5. There are a large number of variations on this basic theme which are used well into the early eleventh century.

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just that of kings, but of divinely sanctioned gubernatores. As Richard Abels has recently argued, this has its origins in Alfred’s attempt to redefine his power in new terms, terms that reflected his ambitions to rule over all the English, and developed by his tenth-century successors in their new and exalted position as kings of England.54 If it is true that the language and formulation of Anglo-Saxon charters had a pedagogical and ideological function in the tenth century, to create and sustain a political and religious agenda, then who was the audience? How were these charters used? These are far more difficult questions to answer. The logical audience for these charters was the lay and clerical elite of the English kingdom, the ‘tightly knit aristocracy bound to each other and the king through ties of kinship, marriage, lordship and close association’ that made up what could be called the ‘establishment’ of the English state in the tenth century.55 In some respects this was a remarkably cohesive and static elite: for much of the second half of the tenth century the same families held dominant positions at court and in the localities.56 A man like Ealdorman Byrhtnoth could have a career that stretched from the 950s to his death on the field at Maldon in 991 and his contemporary, Æthelweard the Chronicler, brother-in-law to King Eadwig and a distant kinsman of King Æthelred, could have an equally long career. Two of the sons of Æthelstan ‘Half King’ followed him as ealdormen while the Half King’s wife Ælfwynn fostered the young King Edgar.57 The same is true of the ecclesiastical elite: dynasties like that of Oda, Oscytel and Oswald and reformers such as Dunstan and Æthelwold all enjoyed long careers at court. It was also in some respects a highly cultured and literate elite and one which was highly aware of its divinely sanctioned mission to ‘further the progress of the kingdom of God on earth’.58 It is this elite who effectively validated the English state by buying into the image of its kings and who founded and patronised religious houses on a large scale in the second half of the tenth century. How the ideologies and identities articulated in royal charters were mediated is another difficult question. Were charters read aloud at meetings of the Witan? If so, who was able to understand them? These questions in turn raise further questions about the level and quality of education of members of the later tenth-century lay elite.59 The Latin of some of Æthelred’s charters, for instance, or of those of 54 55 56 57

R. Abels, Alfred the Great, London 1998, 169, 185–6. R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, Cambridge 1992, 22–3. Ibid., 21–6. C. R. Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half-King” and his Family’, ASE 2, 1973, 115–44, repr. in C. R. Hart, The Danelaw, 1992, 569–604. 58 Wormald, ‘Aethelred the Lawmaker’, 73. 59 The subject of lay Latin literacy in early medieval Europe is a problematic one. The most obvious conclusion, that Latin literacy was largely confined to the clerical elite, may not be entirely correct and there is enough evidence to suggest that at least some laymen did have access to a decent Latin education and were able to appreciate Latin literature. See M. Sot, ed., Haut Moyen Age: Culture, Education, Société. Etudes offerte a Pierre Riché, La Garenne-Colombes 1990, and P. Riché, Ecoles et enseignement dans le Haut Moyen Age, Paris 1989. See also M. Mostert, The Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury: a Study of the Ideas about Society and Law of the Tenth-Century Monastic Reform Movement, Hilversum 1987, 162–70, for an account of Abbo’s ideals of the kingly virtues, including knowledge of philosophy and the sciences. I am grateful to Katharine Keats-Rohan for these suggestions. See also V. Law, ‘The Study of Grammar’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. R. McKitterick, Cambridge 1994, 88–110; M. Garrison, ‘The Emergence of Carolingian Latin Literature and the Court of Charlemagne (780–814)’, in McKitterick, ibid., 111–40 at 129–40. See S. E. Kelly, ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word’, in R. McKitterick, The Uses of Literacy, 36–52 at 52–62, and Keynes, ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, 253–7, for the relationship between Latin and vernacular learning in England.

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‘Athelstan A’, is extremely complex and it would be difficult to maintain that many, if any, tenth-century laymen could understand such Latin. Then again, there are hints that some members of the lay elite did have access to high quality Latin learning. The obvious example is that of the chronicler Æthelweard who wrote, or got someone to write for him, in extremely ornate Latin.60 One might dismiss Æthelweard as unique, but there are other examples that suggest that some members of the late Anglo-Saxon lay elite were very cultured indeed. Bishop Ælfwold of Crediton left two books in his will, a Hrabanum and a martyrology, to his neighbour Ordulf, founder of Tavistock and King Æthelred’s uncle.61 Was Ordulf able to read these books? The answer to this question can never be known, but it is surely significant that the books were picked out by name in Ælfwold’s will and suggests that Ordulf, like Æthelweard, had very cultured tastes. In the context of the eleventh century, Elizabeth Tyler has pointed out the parallels between the Encomium Emmae Reginae and Vergil’s Aeneid.62 Again, it is possible that many of the allusions of the encomiast were lost on the lay members of his audience, but equally, knowledge of Vergil may have circulated in oral as well as literary form.63 We should not dismiss out of hand, then, the possibility that some members of the lay, as well as the ecclesiastical, elite were capable of understanding the ideas outlined in tenth-century charters. There are other ways in which Anglo-Saxon charters had meaning. Charters were, to some extent, quasi-liturgical documents, certainly in terms of much of their language and symbolism: the use of a pictorial invocation, the largely religious penalties for infringement, the whole tone of many charters gives them almost a homiletic aspect. A number of charters also survive in liturgical manuscripts:64 in this respect they seem very similar to Anglo-Saxon legal material, which also often survives in a liturgical context.65 Were charters treated as sacred objects, specially prized by their owners? Some of them clearly were: there are references to charters being placed on the altar, and on other occasions charters were bound or copied into gospel books.66 Charters were probably incorporated into formal ceremonies ‘marked by highly visible rituals’, underlining their status as religious objects.67 Another aspect of Anglo-Saxon charters which is seldom touched on is to what extent they mediated royal presence and charisma. Michael Clanchy has made the point that the proliferation of royal writs in the later twelfth century, from the reign of Henry II onwards, represents a ‘routinisation’ of royal charisma, in that there was an increasing demand for the royal presence to get justice, and the writ, produced on a large scale, was an institutional substitute for that presence.68 Surely Anglo-Saxon

60 M. Winterbottom, ‘The Style of Æthelweard’, Medium Ævum 36, 1967, 109–18; M. Lapidge, ‘The

Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature’, ASE 4, 1975, 67–111 at 97–8. 61 S 1492; M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke and D. Whitelock, eds, Councils and Synods, with Other Documents

Relating to the English Church, I: AD 871–1204, 2 parts, Oxford 1981, I, no. 51, 383–6; Insley, Exeter, no. 21. 62 E. M. Tyler, ‘ “The Eyes of the Beholders were Dazzled”: Treasure and Artifice in the Encomium Emmae Reginae’, Early Medieval Europe 8.2, 1998, 247–70 at 268–70. 63 Ibid., 269; M. J. Innes, ‘Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society’, Past and Present 158, 1998, 13–18. 64 Chaplais, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma’, 33–6; Kelly, ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 44–5. 65 Wormald, The Making of English Law, 190–7, 330–9. 66 Chaplais, ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma’, 33–6. 67 Kelly, ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society’, 44. 68 M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn, Oxford 1993, 66–7.

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charters can be viewed in a similar light: not routine as such but certainly embodying royal presence. This seems to be the case for the continent: Stuart Airlie describes a ninth-century St Gall charter in these terms ‘the aura of kings, both living and dead, suffuses this charter and the transaction it records’.69 The same is clearly true for English royal charters: one only has to look at a charter such as S 880, with its gilded first line and capitals, with the king’s name also picked out in gold, to see that it is imbued with a royal and religious ‘aura’ of the sort evoked by Airlie.70 No one would for a moment argue that English kings genuinely signed Anglo-Saxon charters, but the important thing here is not the fact that they did not but the fiction that they did. This is precisely the sort of substitute royal presence that Clanchy talks about for the writs of Henry II.

The Decline of the Diploma So far I have suggested that the Anglo-Saxon diploma in the tenth century was a cultural artefact as much as a land conveyance and one which, in the tenth-century, was ever-changing. The charter, like the law codes of the tenth-century kings, helped in the creation and sustaining of an ideological agenda and identity for the English state. It created a view of the English state underpinned by divine sanction, into which the great and the good of the tenth century were eager to buy as it validated their own position and adherence to the West-Saxon ruling house. The contrast with the eleventh century, certainly the period after 1020 is quite marked. There is a decline in the number of surviving charters: only 43 charters survive from the twenty-year reign of Cnut compared to 113 from the thirty-seven years of Æthelred II’s reign and even this compared badly to the 160 charters which survive from Edgar’s eighteen-year reign. Rather more were granted in the twenty-four-year reign of the Cnut’s successor-but-two, Edward the Confessor, with 64 charters surviving from the reign, although, as Fleming points out, a considerable number of these are of questionable authenticity.71 Although arguing from the absence of evidence is always problematic, it does not seem mere chance that fewer charters survive from Cnut’s reign, and none at all from the period between 1026 and 1031. A more arguable point concerns the quality and ‘style’ of the diplomatic of eleventh-century charters. The formulation of charters from the tenth century contained innovation and recycling in equal measure. Charter draftsmen were able to produce new and varied formulation as well as adapting and modifying older formulation. Much of the formulation in charters ascribed to ‘Edgar A’ was new in the 960s but equally ‘Edgar A’ used and adapted older models for royal styles. The same does not appear to be the case for the eleventh century. In many cases, eleventh century charters show a lesser degree of innovation in their formulation and certainly less willingness on the part of most charter draftsmen to experiment with formulation. 69 S. Airlie, ‘The Palace of Memory: the Carolingian Court as Political Centre’, in Courts and Regions in

Medieval Europe, ed. S. Rees-Jones, A. J. Minnis and R. Marks, York 2000, 1–20, at 11. 70 S 880 is hardly typical of surviving Anglo-Saxon single-sheets, since it is the only surviving example

with such gilding (although the altogether exceptional S 745, the New Minster refoundation charter, was written entirely in gold letters), but there are numerous examples of surviving single-sheets from the tenth century which are physically imposing and impressive documents. 71 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 53.

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There are undoubtedly exceptions to this. For instance, some of the charters produced at Exeter during the reign of the Confessor, under the aegis of Bishop Leofric are very distinctive, drawing, as Chaplais showed, on continental exemplars for some of their formulation.72 This may say more, however, about the background of Bishop Leofric and some of his cathedral chapter than about charter draftsmen more generally. If we turn to those Exeter charters surviving from the reign of Cnut, then they are much more derivative, in terms of their formulation: all are, to a considerable extent, based on earlier formulation.73 Exeter is not the rest of England and a handful of examples does not make a watertight case. Nevertheless, a comparison between diplomas from the last half of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh seems to suggest that the heyday of the charter, in terms of its diplomatic as well as the numbers granted (if survival is an index of the numbers granted) was the second half of the tenth century and the form was beginning to stagnate in the years after c.1010–20. The question as to why the Anglo-Saxon diploma in its tenth-century form began to die out is far harder to answer and no concrete answers can be advanced here, only suggestions for lines of further enquiry. By the end of the reign of the William the Conqueror, the diploma was a much more streamlined form, often dispensing with the long proem, opening instead with a general notification, presaging the writ charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.74 It has been suggested that the writ was the assassin of the diploma: the earliest surviving writs date from the reign of Cnut (although it is very likely that the writ had a long pre-history as an administrative instrument75) and the reign of the Confessor witnessed an explosion in the numbers of writs used to convey land.76 The writ was, supposedly, a more flexible instrument than the charter (probably true), and began to supplant the charter once grants of land started to involve judicial rights and therefore the need to notify the shire court that part of their jurisdiction had been removed. This may be part of the answer, even a great part of the answer, but by no means the whole. Writs and charters were fundamentally very different instruments and besides, there is evidence that the profits of justice and judicial rights, such as infangenetheof, could be granted by charter and were as early as the tenth century.77 Charters could also contain a notification element: one of the Exeter charters, for instance, S 880, contained a clause beginning patefacio nunc omnibus . . . This also underlines the point made at the beginning of

72 S 1003, S 1021, S 1027; P. Chaplais, ‘The Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas of

Exeter’, BIHR 39, 1966, 1–34 at 26–31, repr. in P. Chaplais, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration, London 1981, no. 15. 73 S 971 draws extensively on S 880, as does S 953 and S 954. S 963 is also based heavily on S 890. 74 Bates, Regesta, 68–75. 75 The first appearance of the writ is well known, in Alfred’s reference in his translation of St Augustine’s Soliloqies to a lord’s ærendgewrit and hys insegel (King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloqies, ed. T. A. Carnicelli, Cambridge MA 1969, 62). See also F. E. Harmer, ed., Anglo-Saxon Writs, Manchester 1952, 6–24, 34–7, and Chaplais, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery’. 76 S 985 is the earliest surviving writ. Eight writs survive from the reign of Cnut, of which four are of questionable authenticity. In contrast, there are over a hundred surviving writs, not all authentic, from the reign of Edward the Confessor. 77 S 405, a late tenth- or early eleventh-century interpolated copy of a charter of 930, contains a grant of the profits of justice. Whilst other parts of the charter have been rewritten, there seems to be no reason to doubt the authenticity of this clause, although Harmer did (Chaplais, ‘The Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas of Exeter’, addendum). S 953 of 1018, also at best an interpolated copy, contains a Latin version of an ‘infangenetheof’ clause (Insley, Exeter, nos 6, 22, 23).

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this paper that the draftsmen of Anglo-Saxon charters could adapt the charter to suit different circumstances. It seems then, that we must, in part, seek the reason for the demise of the Anglo-Saxon diploma elsewhere. I have argued above that charters had a very distinct ideological/pedagogic aspect and were designed to appeal to what was a relatively small but very powerful community, the lay and clerical elite of the tenth-century English state. As Fleming, Keynes and others have shown, this elite was in the process of fragmentation by the end of Æthelred’s reign.78 Cnut’s conquest of 1016 spelled the death knell for this elite; very few of the individuals or families that were influential before 1016 enjoyed the same measure of influence during Cnut’s reign.79 There were a few exceptions, the most obvious being Archbishop Wulfstan, but even Wulfstan was dead by 1023. Æthelweard, probably son-in-law of Æthelmær, himself son of Æthelweard the Chronicler, was ealdorman in the south-west in the very early years of Cnut’s reign, but he was exiled in 1020.80 In the midlands the family of Ealdorman Leofwine continued to enjoy power but the court landscape had, to a large degree, changed out of all recognition.81 Even those families, such as those of ealdorman Byrhtnoth, or Earl Uhtred which emerged from the years 1010–20 with their lands and possessions largely intact did not involve themselves in court life.82 Very few of the thegns prominent in the witness lists of Æthelred’s charters enjoyed the same degree of prominence at Cnut’s court. Essentially, the ‘establishment’ of the period after c.1020 was very different from before. This fragmentation of the tenth century establishment had a direct effect on the function of the charter, for a number of reasons. The elite of Cnut’s court, and indeed, that of Cnut’s sons and of Edward the Confessor had, to some extent, different priorities and a different mode of life.83 Large scale monastic foundation was much further down the agenda for the laity, certainly as a royally inspired programme. Compared to the spate of foundations in the later tenth century and first two decades of the eleventh, the period from Cnut’s accession to the Norman Conquest saw far fewer new foundations: Orc’s foundation of Abbotsbury, Earl Harold’s foundation/refoundation of Waltham and Earl Leofric’s foundation of Coventry. Moreover Coventry, founded by a member of one of the few surviving families from the tenth-century ‘establishment’, may indicate sensibilities which date back to the tenth century: ‘old style’ religious patronage rather than ‘new’, to use Fleming’s distinction.84 For a number of religious houses, the eleventh century saw a gradual decline in the level of landed patronage: some, such as Ramsey, had acquired the bulk of their endowment by the end of 78 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 21–52; Keynes, Diplomas, 209–28; idem, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, in The Reign of

Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. Rumble, Leicester 1994, 43–88. 79 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 48–9; A. Williams, ‘ “Cockles among the Wheat”: Danes and English in

the Western Midlands in the First Half of the Eleventh Century’, Midland History 11, 1986, 1–22; K. Mack, ‘Changing Thegns: Cnut’s Conquest and the English Aristocracy’, Albion 16, 1984, 375–87. 80 Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, 68–9. 81 S. Baxter, ‘The Earls of Mercia and their Commended Men in the Mid-Eleventh Century’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 23–46. Baxter has suggested (pers. comm.) that Ealdorman Leofwine was related to Æthelwine ‘Amicus Dei’, making the Leofwineson family one of the few survivors at court from the very top layer of the late tenth-century establishment. 82 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 47. 83 Fleming, ‘The New Wealth’, 15–22. 84 Ibid., 20–2. Fleming notes that Odda, founder of the chapel at Deerhurst, was equally committed to the Benedictine abbey of Pershore and chose to end his life there. See also A. Williams, Land, Power and Politics: the Family and Career of Odda of Deerhurst, Deerhurst 1996.

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Æthelred’s reign. Although Ealdorman Æthelweard founded Buckfast two years after Cnut’s accession, we should see this foundation as one of the last of the great tenth-century lay foundations, rather than as necessarily indicative of the interests of the rest of Cnut’s court. This is not to suggest that lay piety was in decline: far from it in fact. As Ann Williams has shown, lay piety was as important in the eleventh century as it was in the tenth.85 What can be suggested was that the character of that piety may have changed, again, a distinction drawn by Fleming.86 In part, then, the stagnation of the diploma may have been due to the changing character of religious patronage and the decline of monastic patronage. It also seems likely that Cnut was simply not interested in using the diploma as a vehicle to express dynastic identity in the way that his tenth-century predecessors were. The tenth-century kings were projecting a dynastic image and identity to which most of the elite, if not all, subscribed, and therefore subscribed to the view of the English past presented by Asser’s vita of Alfred and the various versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. By the end of the tenth century, there was probably some measure of consensus among the elite about the past, partly, I would argue, through the language and imagery of charters. By the end of the tenth century, the language and imagery of royal charters had become almost self-referential, drawing on the achievements and glories of the late ninth and early tenth centuries.87 It should also be remembered that the tenth century provides no surviving royal biography, although there may have been a now lost life of Athelstan.88 This may be indicative of relative stability and harmony among the elite in the later tenth century; effectively there was no need to spell out the past to reinforce the present, where there clearly was in the 890s and perhaps in the 930s. In contrast, the first sixty years of the eleventh century provides two royal biographies, the Encomium Emmae Reginae and the Vita Ædwardi Regis, which may be indicative of much more instability and competition among the elite.89 If it can be argued that political crisis or instability is one of the main forces behind the production of such writing, then the fact that there are two from the period 1016–66 should not necessarily be surprising. For the fragmented elite of the eleventh century there was much more room for contention of the

85 A. Williams, ‘A West-Country Magnate of the Eleventh Century: the Family, Estates and Patronage of

Beorhtric, son of Ælfgar’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: the Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 41–68; see also her essay ‘Thegnly Piety and Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Late Old English Kingdom’, in this volume. 86 Fleming, ‘The New Wealth’, 13–15. 87 For instance, the use of the sorts of royal style first used in the reign of Athelstan continued throughout the tenth century. The style ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’ (rex anglorum saxonum), which first appeared during the reigns of Alfred and Edward the Elder, also crops up in later tenth- and eleventh-century charters: S 479, 520, 549, 572, 590, 598, 606, 608, 624, 635, 636, 810, 931, 977, 1005, 1022, 1034. 88 M. Lapidge, ‘Some Latin Poems as Evidence for the Reign of Æthelstan’, ASE 9, 61–98; M. Wood, ‘The Making of King Æthelstan’s Empire: an English Charlemagne?’, in Ideal and Reality, ed. P. Wormald et al., 250–72; S. D. Keynes, ‘King Æthelstan’s Books’, in Learning and Literature in AngloSaxon England: Studies presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss, Cambridge 1985, 143–201. 89 Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. and trans. A. Campbell, Camden Society 3rd ser. 72, London 1949, repr. Cambridge 1998 with supplementary introduction by S. D. Keynes. The Vita Ædwardi is not strictly a royal biography, starting, as Barlow suggested, as a panegyric of the Godwin family and only turned into a biography of Edward after the king’s death (Vita Ædwardi, xiii). Nevertheless, if Barlow is correct and the purpose of Book 1 of the Vita Ædwardi was to pave the way for a Godwineson succession, it is still indicative of considerable instability within the mid eleventh-century elite.

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recent past. In his legislation, and the letters of 1019 and 1027, Cnut was keen to stress the continuities with the tenth-century past, but the Encomium, written after Cnut’s death, lays great stress on the Danish victory over the English. Clearly, then, as late as the 1040s, the early eleventh century was still contested territory. The eleventh century elite were no more factional or prone to bitter internal disputes than their tenth-century predecessors but the political framework in which these disputes took place had changed radically after 1016.90 Most of the royal successions between 899 and 1066 were contested in some way.91 The key difference between the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, is that succession disputes in the tenth century took place within a context of West Saxon dynastic legitimacy: all contenders for the throne were from the family of Æthelwulf. In the eleventh century, claimants to the throne were variously members of the family of Æthelwulf, the kings of Denmark, the kings of Norway, an English magnate and ultimately the duke of Normandy. In this climate, the charter, used to reinforce the dynastic identity of the West Saxon ruling house, had less of a place. Cnut and his sons had less interest in stressing the West Saxon past and unlike some of the key figures of the tenth century, the aristocrats of the eleventh century were not interested to trace their descent back to West Saxon kings. Essentially, one of the charter’s main functions, that of an ideological tool, had vanished and the form itself began to stagnate. The decline of the charter may also relate to and be a result of wider cultural and social changes among the eleventh-century elite. As Robin Fleming reminded this conference last year, there were fundamental differences between the outlook and interests of the elites of the tenth and eleventh century which can be seen in these eleventh-century royal biographies.92 As Fleming points out, Cnut’s court and that of the Confessor did not patronise the same religious houses as their predecessors and indeed employed their resources in very different ways.93 There is, as Elizabeth Tyler has shown, considerable emphasis in the Encomium on treasure and the ostentatious display of wealth: ‘the centrality of the display of treasure to the political meaning of the Encomium may point to the importance of display to Scandinavian and Danish lordship. According to the Encomiast, display instills loyalty and projects royal dignity, military might and imperial ambition.’94 In other words, some of the things that charters may also have been used for. The importance of treasure and display in the Encomium can also be paralleled in other eleventh century sources. The Vita Ædwardi Regis describes a ship given by Godwine to the king in the most spectacular terms: With what delight the festive lords held court, presented rival gifts and recognised their own illustrious patron, their own king. Much did they give, but overtopped them all Earl Godwin’s sterling bounty with this gift: A loaded ship, its slender lines raked up in a double prow, lay anchored on the Thames. With many rowing benches, the towering mast amidships looking down, equipped for six score fearsome warriors. A golden lion crowns the stern a winged and 90 For conflict within the tenth-century aristocracy, see A. Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum Gentis: the Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia’, ASE 10, 1982, 143–72, and Keynes, Diplomas, 163–86. 91 Only in 939, 946, 1040 and 1042 was the royal succession uncontested. 92 Fleming, ‘The New Wealth’. 93 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 51. 94 Tyler, ‘Treasure and Artifice’, 267–8.

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golden dragon at the prow affrights the sea and belches fire with triple tongue. Patrician purple pranks the hanging sail.95 To what extent this is a highly stylised description of Godwine’s gift is a moot point, and it shares similarities with the Encomiast’s description of ships, which in turn echo Vergil’s description of Aeneas’ ships.96 There is a similar description of the ship given by Godwine to Harthacnut in the Worcester Chronicle.97 Again the emphasis is on the decoration and again, Harthacnut’s ship was fully equipped, with gilded armour and weapons for its crew. The emphasis on display and visible wealth is quite marked. This is not to imply that tenth-century aristocrats did not give elaborate gifts or were not interested in display; they clearly were and one only has to think of the episode of Byrhtnoth’s arm rings, gold bands and decorated sword at Maldon, or the quantities of gold and silver in the will of Wulfric Spott to see this.98 To an extent, the apparent contrast between the tenth and eleventh centuries may be a function of the difference in the sources: there are no comparable tenth-century sources which might have contained exotic descriptions of ships. Equally, wills do not tend to dwell on florid descriptions of treasure, except in purely value-related terms. Bishop Ælfwold of Crediton (d.1008x1012) left a ship in his will, stating that he would wish to fit it out properly if time was allowed him.99 This fitting out may have entailed elaborate decoration, but his will is not necessarily the type of source to tell us this. Nevertheless, these eleventh-century texts might, as Tyler suggests, indicate a shift in emphasis in the court’s interests. This was an elite who did not necessarily plough all their capital into land but who turned some of it into portable wealth.100 Lay piety remained, as I have suggested, a highly important element of elite culture, but it may have been expressed in the eleventh century more through the giving of expensive gifts.101 There seem to be, for instance, no tenth-century parallels for the large decorated gold crosses given by Earl Tosti to Durham, Tofi the staller to Waltham and Earl Leofric to Evesham.102 We should also remember that, according to William of Poitiers, Godwine’s widow Gytha offered Harold’s weight in gold to recover the king’s body after Hastings.103 Assuming that Harold was a healthy, muscular adult, that is presumably between twelve and fifteen stones of gold. We could speculate further about this shift in emphasis and what Fleming has called the ‘new political 95 96 97 98

Vita Ædwardi, 12–13. Tyler, ‘Treasure and Artifice’, 260–5, 269–70. John of Worcester, ii, 530. D. Scragg, ‘The Battle of Maldon’, in The Battle of Maldon AD 991, ed. D. Scragg, Oxford 1991, 1–37 at 24, lines 160–1 of the poem. See also G. Owen-Crocker, ‘Hawks and Horse-Trappings: the Insignia of Rank’, in Scragg, Maldon, 220–37. For the will of Wulfric Spott, see S 1536; P. H. Sawyer, ed., The Charters of Burton Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 2, Oxford 1979, no. 29, 53–6 (trans. xv–xix); D. H. Whitelock, ed., Anglo-Saxon Wills, Cambridge 1930, no. 17, 45–51. 99 S 1492; Insley, Exeter, no. 21. 100 See J. Campbell, ‘The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England: Problems and Possibilities’, HSJ 1, 1989, 23–37, for the interchangeability of land and treasure in early medieval England. 101 Fleming, ‘The New Wealth’, 15. 102 Ibid., 13–14. 103 Gesta Guillelmi, 140 and 140 n. 3. As Chibnall points out, this element of the story can be directly compared with Priam’s offer of gold and gifts for the return of Hector’s body in the Iliad, and again raises questions about the circulation and reception of classical texts, either in written or oral form, in the eleventh century. It is also debateable whether Gytha really did offer this much gold. Even if she did not, however, it is important to remember that it was clearly plausible to William’s audience that she might have done so.

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style’ in the ‘rootless’ aristocracy of the eleventh century.104 Guy Halsall has argued, in relation to Merovingian burial custom, that increased display was indicative of considerable social competition and instability, hence the most lavishly furnished burials often occur on the fringes of the Merovingian kingdoms, where authority may have been more contested.105 Are we seeing the same thing happening in eleventh-century England, that increased emphasis on display reveals increased social competition and instability among the elite? To some extent this is borne out by the description of Godwine’s gift of a ship to Edward, which implies an element of competition amongst Edward’s courtiers to give the most spectacular gift to the king.106 The attitudes revealed in the Encomium may also mask wider insecurity and instability in landholding, which again may have played a part in the decline of the diploma. The first two decades of the eleventh century had been difficult ones for landowners, both lay and ecclesiastical. Æthelred II was more than willing to use forfeiture as a political tool and, as Wormald shows, his legislation illustrates the growing fiscal rights of the crown,107 while the heavy gelds of the last years of his reign and the first years of Cnut’s were a massive, quite probably ruinous, burden.108 Ken Lawson pointed out that the payment of geld was linked to title to land, so those landowners who struggled to pay were extremely vulnerable.109 This may have been how Ealdorman Eadric ‘Streona’, glossed by Hemming as the ‘acquisitor’ aquired his by-name. In Devon, Bishop Eadnoth of Crediton was forced to mortgage land at Crediton, presumably to pay the 1018 geld, while his neighbour, abbot Æthelwold of Exeter, complained to Cnut of the depredations of his reeves on Exeter’s lands, which the loss of Exeter priuilegiis antiquis had made vulnerable.110 It is possible that these insecurities and tenurial provoked a shift away from investment in land during the earlier years of the eleventh century. This essay has been necessarily speculative, especially in its second half, and its purpose has merely been to suggest some possible lines of enquiry on the functions of the charter. Much more work needs to be done, for instance, on comparing the language and imagery of Wulfstan or Ælfric with that of later tenth-century charters. The largely ecclesiastical bias of the surviving evidence may also distort any conclusions reached as to the function of the Anglo-Saxon solemn diploma. I would, however, draw out a number of tentative conclusions. The language of charters was a vital element of their function and like the legislation of the tenth-century kings, charters were powerful ideological tools. In the words of Patrick Wormald: ‘like the 104 Fleming, Kings and Lords, 103; idem, ‘The New Wealth’, 15–22. 105 G. R. W. Halsall, ‘Burial, Ritual and Merovingian Society’, in The Community, the Family and the

Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. J. Hill and M. Swan, Turnhout 1998, 325–38. 106 Above, 124–5; Vita Ædwardi, 12–13. 107 For forfeitures during Æthelred’s reign see above, n. 22; S 877, 883, 886, 892, 893, 896, 901, 918,

927, 934, 937, 939, 1501; and ASC, s.a. 986, 993, 1002, 1006, 1015. Wormald, ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, 48, 62–3. 108 J. Gillingham, ‘ “The Most Precious Jewel in the English Crown”: Levels of Taxation and Heregeld in the Early Eleventh Century’, EHR 104, 1989, 373–84; idem, ‘Chronicles and Coins as Evidence for Levels of Tribute and Taxation in Late Tenth- and Early Eleventh-Century England’, EHR 105, 1990, 939–50; K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR 99, 1984, 721–38; idem, ‘ “Those Stories Look True”: Levels of Taxation in the Reigns of Æthelred II and Cnut’, EHR 104, 1989, 385–406; idem, ‘Danegeld and Heregeld Once More’, EHR 105, 1990, 951–61. 109 Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld’, 723; idem, Cnut: the Danes in England in the Eleventh Century, London 1992, 191. 110 S 1387; S 954.

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Carolingians, the dynasty of Egbert laid claim to a kingship and an empire to which they did not have an unchallenged right and which they fought and lied long and hard with complete success to establish’.111 Charters, I would argue, were part of this lie. Secondly, the purpose of this argument has been to suggest that changes in diplomatic were part of wider political and cultural changes. The stagnation and decline of the diploma as a form may, therefore, point to wider, more fundamental shifts in late Anglo-Saxon political society.

111 Wormald, ‘Aethelred the Lawmaker’, 73.

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King Stephen and the Bishops

KING STEPHEN AND THE BISHOPS Stephen Marritt There has been much reassessment of Stephen’s reign in recent years but it has largely passed over the Church.1 Paul Dalton has now produced valuable evidence against the traditional understanding of the inadequacy of ecclesiastical and spiritual attempts to combat the evils of the anarchy, but there is still an almost standard interpretation of the relationship between King Stephen and his bishops, and of the importance, or lack of it, of the latter during the civil war.2 It can be shown that this model is dependent on a particular approach to the relationship between Church and State in the mid-twelfth century which is now more generally understood to be outmoded. Analysis of the evidence in the light of more modern understanding of that framework can suggest a significantly different and much more positive understanding of the association of the bishops with the king and the episcopal role during the civil war. Interpretation of the relationship usually begins with the so-called ‘Charter of Liberties’ issued to the Church within a few months of Stephen’s coronation. Its first clause has been understood as showing the extent to which his initial success was dependent on ecclesiastical support: ‘Ego Steph[anu]s dei gratia assensu cleri et populi in regem Anglie electus et a Will[elm]o Cantuar[iensi] archiepiscopo et Sancte Romane Ecclesie legato consecratus, et ab Innocentio Sancte Romane Sedis pontifice postmodum confirmatus, respectu et amore dei Sanctum Eccleisam liberam.’3 Stephen’s brother, the bishop of Winchester, and Roger bishop of Salisbury persuaded first the archbishop of Canterbury and then the magnates that oaths taken to Henry I and Empress Matilda as to the succession could be broken with impunity. Coronation by churchmen made his status permanent and would later both limit active opposition to his rule and maintain the principle of royal government. Important papal recognition came quickly too in a letter of 1136 and was reaffirmed in 1139. The contents of the charter were the price Stephen had to pay for that support. That price left Freeman indignant, the bishops had sworn fidelity to the king saving the liberties of the Church, ‘Such a form of oath, a form which we may be sure that any earlier king would have 1

I am grateful to Professor David Bates for his comments on a draft of this paper and to Professor John Gillingham for the opportunity to present it to the Battle Conference. 2 On the reign in general, K. Stringer, The Reign of Stephen, London 1993; D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen 1135–54, Harlow 2000; G. J. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165, Cambridge 2000. The standard work on the Anglo-Norman Church is Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154, London 1979. See also N. Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England, 1089–1135, Princeton 1958; M. Brett, The English Church under Henry I, Oxford 1975; H. R. Loyn, The English Church 940–1154, Harlow 2000. There is only one study of the Church in Stephen’s reign, C. Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, in The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King, Oxford 1994, 207–29, but Avrom Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, London 1956, is much more than a biography. P. Dalton, ‘Churchmen and the Promotion of Peace in King Stephen’s Reign’, Viator 31, 2000, 79–120. 3 Regesta iii, no. 271.

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cast aside with indignation, a form in which men made their duty as members of the commonwealth conditional on the observation of the vague and undefined privileges of one class, a form which might involve an appeal from the king and witan to a foreign power shows how low English kingship had fallen.’4 Bishop Stubbs was the first to compare it unfavourably with Henry I’s coronation charter.5 Since the latter was much more concerned with secular matters and gave much less away to the Church it could be inferred that the ecclesiastical rather than secular power worried Stephen most. Freeman and Stubbs approached the charter through a very English understanding of the twelfth-century European reform movement in the Church which emphasised conflict between Church and State. The former sought separation from the latter and a withdrawal from secular politics on the one hand, and much greater domestic autonomy and incorporation and increased association with a newly assertive papacy and the expanding influence of canon law on the other. Commitment to king on the part of individual churchmen excluded commitment to reform and vice versa. These developments could only be at great cost to kings who opposed them as far as they were able. Zachary Brooke’s is the classic statement of the English experience, ‘The English Church starts in 1066 with the view of its master, King William I; it had come by 1215 to the view of its new master, Pope Innocent III.’6 Anselm, Becket and Langton could be plotted as a line of progress with which both Archbishop Theobald, who held a legation and promoted canon lawyers and Becket, and John of Salisbury, who was also exiled for his allegiance to the papacy, correlated perfectly. In Stephen’s reign, the Church partly taking advantage of and partly searching for a replacement for a weak king, made progress across the board while royal authority declined. Round first showed that the ‘Charter of Liberties’ was not a general coronation charter but focused only on ecclesiastical matters and could not be compared with Henry I’s. Further, it made few real concessions.7 Nevertheless, many modern historians, including R. H. C. Davis and Frank Barlow, have followed Freeman’s interpretation. Barlow concluded that while the saving clause of the charter could be argued as taking ‘back most of what had been given away; even if it was no more than a sop to the royal dignity’ still, ‘Stephen’s surrender was abject’.8 Historians of the ducal Church in Normandy and of the Becket and post-Becket Churches in England, together with those of the European Churches, have long dismissed the influence of earlier conflicts and accepted both that churchmen could be committed to king and government and Church and papacy and that their relationship could be cooperative, positive and principled.9 It is only recently that Martin Brett has shown that the same was true in Henry I’s Church, while for the most part 4 5

E. Freeman, The Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols, London 1876, iv, 246–7. W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 6th edn, 3 vols, Oxford 1897, i, 326. Understanding of Stephen’s reign is often governed by interpretations of earlier and later reigns. See for discussion of this, Crouch, Reign, 342, and especially White’s reassessment of the 1150s, Restoration, passim. 6 Z. N. Brooke, The English Church and the Papacy, Cambridge 1932, 29. See also, D. Knowles, The Episcopal Colleagues of Archbishop Thomas Becket, Cambridge 1951, 7–9, 142–3. 7 J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: a Study of the Anarchy, London 1892, 25–6. 8 R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen, 3rd edn, London 1990, 29, 31–2; Barlow, English Church 1066–1154, 91–2, 304–6. 9 E.g. C. R. Cheney, From Becket to Langton, Manchester 1956, 21, 107, 139; B. Smalley, The Becket Controversy and the Schools, Oxford 1973, 165, 181–3. W. L. Warren, Henry II, London 1973, new edn 2000, reassesses the Anglo-Norman Church in this light but sees Stephen’s reign traditionally, 404–27.

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histories of Stephen’s reign still discuss the relationship within the older context.10 There are exceptions. Avrom Saltman long ago suggested that Archbishop Theobald was in fact consistently loyal to Stephen.11 More recently, Keith Stringer reinterpreted the seemingly traumatic last years of the relationship, Rheims, exile, interdict and the refusal of the Church to crown Eustace thus: ‘The independent political role taken by the bishops in 1152 was in essence forced on them by the crown’s inability to perform its protective function, a development they had hardly welcomed. It underlined that the Church, lacking an effective means of self defence needed a strong king as the only guarantee of public order, and thus had the paradoxical effect of reinforcing the traditional identity of interests.’12 Unfortunately, Stringer was constrained by space but he too seems to have returned to the older framework of understanding in the remainder of his discussion of the place of the Church during the civil war. Neither historian has been as influential as their approaches merit. More commonly, Stephen’s reign is now seen as an anomaly in the history of the relationship between Church and State in England rather than as an important period in its development. We are presented with a less militant Church trying to protect itself as legitimate secular authority collapsed, and withdrawing into neutrality or at best passive loyalty to the king out of weakness and inadequacy rather than principle.13 This approach is supported by some of the chronicle evidence. The Gesta Stephani attacks the bishops, ‘cowering in dastardly fear, bent like a reed shaken by the wind, and since their salt had no savour they did not rise up to resist or set themselves as a wall before the house of Israel’.14 William of Malmesbury stated Bishop Henry withdrew from politics after failing to broker peace in 1140.15 This view of the bishops is implicit in the lack of significance ascribed to them in studies not only of the politics but also of the Church itself during Stephen’s reign. Dalton’s reassessment assumes a purely spiritual and ecclesiastical character for the episcopacy and its authority.16 Stringer’s insight into the last years of the reign can be applied across the whole of it. The evidence suggests that rather than the reign being an anomaly in Church–State relations, the framework of principled cooperation between them which is accepted in the historiography of the surrounding periods applied then too. Reinterpetation of

10 M. Brett, ‘The Collectio Lanfranci and its Competitors’, in Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages: Essays

presented to Margaret Gibson, ed. L. Smith and B. Ward, London 1992, 157–74, 171. Patrick Wormald quoted Brett extensively, making clear the significance he ascribed to his comments, ‘Quadripartitus’ in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 111–47, 142. Even so, some still adhere to an older, simpler framework, see e.g. S. Mooers Christelow, ‘Chancellors and Curial Bishops: Ecclesiastical Promotions and Power in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS 22, 1999 (2000), 49–69, 53–65, where curial bishops are not allowed a religious sensibility or role. Barlow showed that they had both, English Church 1066–1154, 62–80. Brett’s last comment on Stephen’s reign was in 1975, English Church, 91, where he contrasted it with Henry I’s and saw the relationship as fundamentally changed. 11 Saltman, Theobald, London 1956, passim. 12 Stringer, Reign, 72. 13 Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, 212, 215; Stringer, Reign, 58, 66; Crouch, Reign, 97, 328. 14 Gesta Stephani, 155. 15 Historia Novella, 44–5. 16 David Crouch alone has recognised the need for incorporation of the bishop into local studies, ‘Earls and Bishops in Twelfth Century Leicestershire’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 37, 1993, 9–20; Reign, 239–42. N. E. Stacy has examined the internal problems caused by the civil war, ‘Henry of Blois and the Lordship of Glastonbury’, EHR 114, 1999, 1–33.

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royal charters provides a firm evidential basis for this proposition and allows reassessment of three other crucial elements of the traditional model: elections to sees, Church councils and, of course, the arrest of the bishops in 1139. Through analysis of all four it can be shown that the episcopacy of Stephen’s reign was much more committed to the king and much more active in the government of the kingdom than has hitherto been thought. This is neither to say that the relationship was perfect nor that it had any great success but these caveats do not detract from the importance of reassessment of the principles and motives behind it. Further, it does not have to entail that either Stephen’s control of the Church or its loyalty to him personally were much stronger than traditionally understood. If bishops were committed to the support and maintenance of legitimate authority then royal control was less essential and, as Stringer made clear, commitment could be to the system rather than the person. Historiographically, the absence of bishops from the attestation clauses of royal charters has been the most significant evidence for their withdrawal from both active allegiance to the king and active participation in politics after the arrest of the bishops in 1139.17 For example, the fact that William Turbe, bishop of Norwich, witnessed only five times for Stephen has been used as evidence of his neutrality.18 While Kenji Yoshitake showed that the immediate effect of the arrests had been exaggerated, he saw continued attendance as motivated by fear and necessity and withdrawal only postponed until Stephen’s capture in 1141.19 Not all have agreed with his findings and while this is unfortunate, it is the case that Yoshitake questioned the application but not the principle of a method of analysis which calculates loyalties and levels of activity on the basis of attestation statistics.20 This was once an important feature of the historiography of the Anglo-Norman period, but its validity has come under sustained attack in recent years. While there can be no doubt that there was a substantial decline in the number of episcopal attestations during the civil war, the significance of that fact can be overstressed.21 Further, the address clauses of those same charters suggest a different and more defensible picture. Witness lists could be truncated and interpolated and not all present need have attested. Yoshitake found four bishops who attended court between June 1139 and

17 Davis, King Stephen, 32, n. 26; T. Callahan Jnr, ‘The Arrest of the Bishops at Stephen’s Court: a Re-

assessment’, HSJ 4, 1992, 97–108, 100. William of Malmesbury’s comment that at Whitsun 1140 only one bishop attended the king, and he of a Norman see, ‘the others disliked coming or feared it’, supports this view, Historia Novella, 44. 18 C. Harper Bill, ‘Bishop William Turbe and the Diocese of Norwich, 1145–74’, ANS 7, 1984 (1985), 142–60, 145. 19 K. Yoshitake, ‘The Arrest of the Bishops in 1139 and its Consequences’, JMH 14, 1988, 97–114, 100, 107–9. 20 Callahan, ‘Arrest’ is a direct riposte, while E. King, ‘Introduction’, in Anarchy, ed. idem, 16–17 held to the older view. Modern orthodoxy recognises the importance of Yoshitake’s contribution, Crouch, Reign, 97, 328. 21 Callahan, ‘Arrest’, 102–3. Bishops witnessed only ten of the thirty or so charters issued between the arrest and the battle of Lincoln. Thirty-three of thirty-nine charters surviving from 1136 and nine from the first half of 1139 have episcopal attestations. For use of attestations see C. W. Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World, London 1986; C. A. Newman, The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: the Second Generation, Philadelphia 1988. For criticism, D. R. Bates, review of Hollister, Albion 19, 1987, 591–3, and ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: the Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. K. S. B. Keats Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 89–102, 89–93, 97–8, 100.

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December 1140 but do not appear in the attestation clauses of surviving royal charters.22 The vast majority of those charters were writs and these by this date had only one or two witnesses who were usually members of the immediate household or administration.23 Witness lists of writs did not have the symbolic importance that could be attached to those of the charters and diplomas of an earlier period, or even of Stephen’s reign. It is unwise therefore to compare in this way a civil war writ with a general confirmation from one of the king’s earliest councils.24 There are many fewer surviving charters from the civil war period and in any case there was no longer a court for bishops to attend – it had had to become a military household capable of rapid and continuous movement and having no set itinerary.25 Bishops of Chester had only rarely attended court in Henry I’s reign and the fact that Bishop Roger de Clinton witnessed only two charters before June 1139 and only one more thereafter could not be taken to signify his neutrality and withdrawal.26 In any case, the place of a bishop in a time of civil war and collapse of central government was in his diocese not at the centre. His duties were to his Church, his flock and to maintenance of peace and, as will be shown below, government. Indeed, given modern awareness of the importance of the local to an understanding of Stephen’s reign it is there too that episcopal activity might better be looked for. To shift attention from the witness list to the address clause is to shift focus from the centre to the locality. The significance of address clauses has also been doubted and because of their importance here this must be addressed. Graeme White argued for them being of minimal importance to chancery and beneficiary and questioned the capacity and willingness of those addressed for and the expectation of the king of action. Nevertheless, he did use them to calculate the extent to which Stephen’s earls served as his deputies.27 The status of the addressee can cause confusion. White understood a charter of the empress addressing William fitzAlan in Shropshire as signifying his position as sheriff with all the powers associated with that office. Marjorie Chibnall

22 Yoshitake, ‘Arrest’, 107–9. Yoshitake has five such bishops but Roger de Clinton’s receipt of two

charters granting him the church of Wolverhampton does not imply attendance. Roger’s charters are Regesta iii, nos 452–3. 23 E.g. T. A. M. Bishop, Scriptores Regis, Oxford 1960, 2–3; Royal Writs, 147; P. Chaplais, ‘The Seals and Original Charters of Henry I’, EHR 75, 1960, 260–75, 266. Callahan failed to make this distinction and directly contrasted post-arrest writs with later documents dealing with substantial subjects or issued on public occasions, ‘Arrest’, 108. E.g. Regesta iii, nos 183, 402, 511–12. 24 Royal Writs, 158; R. Mortimer, ‘The Charters of Henry II: What are the Criteria for Authenticity?’, ANS 12, 1989 (1990), 119–34, 121–2. Marie Faroux interpreted a gradual decline in episcopal attestations of Norman ducal charters as symptomatic of their declining political importance but David Bates has shown that this was a diplomatic development and that episcopal power remained important, ‘Le rôle des évêques dans l’élaboration des actes ducaux et royaux entre 1066 et 1087’, in Les évêques normands du XI siècle, ed. P. Bouet and F. Neveux, Caen 1995, 103–115, passim; Bates, ‘Prosopographical Study’, 95. 25 E.g. Gesta Stephani, 104; Historia Novella, 41. The problem was recognised but not addressed by Callahan, ‘Arrest’, 102. 26 Roger witnessed two charters before the outbreak of hostilities and one in 1146, but he had only witnessed three times in eight years under Henry I, Regesta ii, nos 1715, 1744, 1776; iii, nos 494, 947–8. Robert Pecche (1121–7), witnessed three immediately after his election and then only five more including two on the same occasion, Regesta ii, nos 1245, 1297, 1301, 1317–18, 1391, 1400, 1421. 27 White, Restoration, 65–6; idem, ‘Continuity in Government’ in Anarchy, ed. King, 117–43, 125, 127, 133.

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on the other hand felt that he held no office and had only a very limited capacity to fulfil Matilda’s wishes.28 Chibnall showed that the address clauses of the empress’s charters were a valuable tool in analysis of her understanding of her power. As Lady, Matilda understood her writ to run everywhere and addressed local officials in shires only nominally under her control.29 Dr Chibnall did not comment on the episcopal presence in address clauses but they follow the same pattern and therefore support her argument. Sixty-eight of Matilda’s charters included in the Regesta and issued during the civil war on English subjects survive. Forty-one are generally addressed and twenty-seven specifically. Of the latter, twenty-five date to her time in power. Only nine of the twenty-seven, all dating to that brief period, address bishops (four address the same one).30 A similar pattern is to be found in Duke Henry’s charters. Of sixty-five (within the same restrictions) all but ten are generally addressed and of those only two address bishops while a third is a letter asking Archbishop Theobald’s advice.31 In contrast, 187 of Stephen’s charters are addressed generally and 417 specifically, of which 211 include bishops. This is similar to the figures for Henry I of 249, 998 and 477 respectively.32 General address clauses were used indiscriminately across the charters of the empress and duke but relatively specifically in Stephen’s: in charters for the continent, extended general confirmations and very important grants or statements of policy.33 Where the king and the empress or duke issued duplicate charters the bishop might appear in his but not in theirs. When the king granted the sixty shillings of the alms of Peverel the priest to Osney abbey (1139–40) he addressed the bishop of Lincoln, while the empress made the same grant (1142–3) with a general address. A pair of duplicates for Godstow abbey issued by Stephen and Matilda both address the bishop. Matilda’s was issued while she was in power, but she did not address the bishop in a Godstow charter issued after she had been driven from London.34 Of the bishops, William Turbe of Norwich was addressed in nine and possibly ten charters. Robert de Sigillo at London was Matilda’s appointment and has been understood as opposed to Stephen’s interests.35 The fact that he witnessed only six of Stephen’s charters might seem to support this, but he was also addressed in fifteen or sixteen. Even Nigel of Ely was addressed in four. The only exception is Bishop Hilary of Chichester who is not addressed in any surviving royal charters.36 Bishop Alex28 Ibid., 129; M. Chibnall, ‘The Charters of the Empress Matilda’, in Law and Government in Medieval

England and Normandy, ed. Garnett and Hudson, 276–98, 87. 29 Exceptions, Regesta iii, no. 88 (1150–1) to the constable of Wallingford etc., and no. 461 (c.1148–51)

to William fitzAlan etc. 30 Regesta iii, nos 190, 368, 377, 644, 648, 697–8, 701, 897. 31 Regesta iii, nos 364, 420, 707. 32 These figures are calculated from the Regesta volumes. For a list of unpublished charters of Henry I,

see, S. L. Mooers Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralisation of Government under Henry I’, Albion 28, 1996, 197–228, 189–9. The pattern is slightly different, 12, 6, and 2, in N. Vincent, ‘New Charters of King Stephen with Some Reflections on the Royal Forests during the Anarchy’, EHR 114, 1999, 899–920, app. 1. 33 See for example a series of grants to Miles of Gloucester, Regesta iii, nos 386–90 and also 67, 144, 271, 327, 341, 452, 493–4, 583, 895–6, and for Norman parallels, D. Bates, ‘The Earliest Norman Writs’, EHR 100, 1985, 266–84, 273. 34 Regesta iii, nos 367–72. 35 E.g. Saltman, Theobald, 97. 36 Regesta iii, William, nos 110, 115, 176–7, 229, 234, 401–3 and, given its similarity to 401, 876.

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ander of Lincoln was addressed five times in charters for Lincolnshire between 1139 and 1141.37 He and his successor Robert de Chesney were addressed in four of the ten charters for Northamptonshire and eight of the twelve for Huntingdonshire for the civil war period.38 In the latter, Simon II de Senlis, whom White considered the only earl to serve Stephen, was only addressed twice by him.39 Nevertheless, both bishops have been understood to be neutral. This contrasts with those dioceses in or on the edge of Angevin dominion. No charters of Matilda or Henry addressing the bishops of Exeter, Hereford or Worcester survive from the civil war period. The bishop of Bath was only addressed when Matilda was in power. Both he and Exeter witnessed for Stephen, and both his and Worcester’s cathedrals received royal grants during the civil war.40 It is worth noting too that all of these except Hereford were not released from interdict after Theobald’s exile until relatively late. This led Saltman to describe them as part of the ‘hard core’ of the loyal Church.41 Only Jocelin at Salisbury received and witnessed charters of the empress and duke but this was in his fight for his rights to Devizes castle rather than in cooperation in government.42 On this basis it can be suggested that, first, address clauses themselves and, second, the episcopal presence in them were both significant. The latter was not simply a formulaic hangover or a gesture of respect to the leading ecclesiastical figure in the shire.43 Royal charters involved three parties, king, beneficiary and addressee. The king expected his authority to be recognised by those he addressed. The beneficiaries, whether they produced the charter themselves or requested it from some central source, would not have had the addressee included if it did not accept and look to his local power, practical and/or abstract, the right of the issuer to command him and his willingness to recognise that right. For the most part the empress and the duke were accepted neither as having the right to address nor as a legitimate source of authority by the episcopacy even in those areas long under their control. The evidence might also suggest that episcopal authority was associated with royal government in the regions. Continued episcopal presence in address clauses is evidence of involvement in what ‘continuity’ there was in local government during the civil war.44 Graeme White has recently noticed this but its extent and significance remain unexplored. There has been a similar underestimation of the importance of the episcopate in secular government in the localities in the historiography of Henry I’s reign but White has shown that it had considerable value for Henry II’s early government and this suggests it might be found earlier too. The failure to see this can be traced, I think, to the mistaken assumption that William I’s legislation reduced episcopal involve-

Robert, witnessing, nos 170–1 (unnamed), 183, 300, 402, 760; addressed, nos 511, 512–13 (by the queen), 535, 541 (by the queen), 542, 555, 565 and unnamed, 223, 501, 503 (by the queen), 504, 507–10, 520, 761, 769, 877, 915–16, 932 and Vincent, ‘New Charters’, possibly no. 10. Nigel, nos 138–9, 251, 842. 37 Regesta iii, nos 125, 290, 605–6, 655 and probably also 879. 38 Regesta iii, nos 613, 658–61, 878–96. 39 Regesta iii, nos 887–8; White, ‘Continuity in Government’, 133. 40 Regesta iii, nos 190, 402, 958, 511–12, 593, 784, 969, 991. 41 Saltman, Theobald, 28. 42 Crouch, Reign, 239–42. 43 W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, London 1987, 62; Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, 215. 44 On ‘continuity’ in government see especially, White, Restoration and his earlier article, ‘Continuity in Government’, 117–44.

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ment in the shire courts.45 Stenton had been confused by continuing episcopal appearances and had explained it by postulating a steady decline rather than immediate cessation of involvement.46 Colin Morris’s is the classic riposte to this interpretation: the legislation did nothing of the kind and bishops continued to be active. His work has not always been noted.47 Emphasis on Henry I’s new administrative kingship and the fact that the two best histories of Church and government under him recognised but chose not to discuss the bishops’ role may also have had some effect.48 Both too understood government at shire level to have become ‘enmeshed’, dependent upon and weakened by advancing central government. This was a crucial premise for Christopher Holdsworth’s assumption of the inadequacy of the episcopate on the eve of civil war.49 There is in fact considerable evidence of episcopal involvement in shire government in Henry’s reign and the Leges Henrici Primi assumes it.50 For the most part, as noted above, episcopal presence is simply passed over. It might also be understood as associated only with the accepted ecclesiastical authority of the bishop. Certainly, the vast majority of cases where the bishop is addressed deal with issues relating to monastic houses but this is also true of secular officials and even then the notice or action taken by the addressee is often as much secular as ecclesiastical. Robert de Sigillo at London was addressed on an exchange of land, on restoration of land seized by Geoffrey de Mandeville, on assarts and a fair that were not to be impleaded and in a confirmation that was to define a situation regardless of writs to the contrary.51 The bishop of Norwich and the sheriff of Suffolk were together ordered to make sure that a priest held a church of St Benet’s Holme by the same tenure as his father. Bishop William was notified too that a layman was to hold his inheritance in peace and that if the heirs of another laymen were to make a claim to a manor granted to Bury St Edmund’s, that claim was not to be heard.52 Royal justices heard a case in the garden of the episcopal palace.53 The bishop of Lincoln was informed that Eye Priory was to have justice concerning its church at Welbourne, ‘Mando vobis quod plenam justiciam faciatis.’ A grant to Newhouse from the royal demesne was to continue to be classed as retaining the exemptions associated with such land by the addressed officials including the bishop.54 Stephen ordered Thurstan de Montfort to reseise Thorney abbey of land he

45 Bates, Regesta, no. 129. 46 F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism 1066–1166, Ford Lectures of 1929, 2nd edn

1961, 107–9; W. L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, London 1987, 62; Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, 215. 47 C. Morris, ‘William I and the Church Courts’, EHR 82, 1967, 449–63. 48 Brett, English Church, 1, 113; J. Green, The Government of England under Henry I, Cambridge 1986, 3–4, 8–10. E. U. Crosby, ‘The Organization of the English Episcopate under Henry I’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 4, 1967, 1–88, does discuss episcopal involvement in secular affairs but is rarely referenced and should be approached warily. 49 Green, Government, 122; Brett, ‘The English Abbeys, their Tenants and the King (950–1150)’, Chiesa e mondo feudale nei secoli x–xii, 1992, Miscellanea del Centro di Studi medioevali 14, Milan 1995, 277–302, 297, where he is specifically discussing the bishops. Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, 215. 50 This is a subject in itself, but, briefly, e.g., Regesta ii, nos, 389, 729, 848, 1445, 1465, 1517–18, 1639, 1722–3, 1777, 1808–9, 1837. L. J. Downer, ed., Leges Henrici Primi, Oxford 1972, 98. 51 Regesta iii, nos 137, 218–19, 221–3, 535, 769; Vincent, ‘New Charters’, app. 1, nos 1, 10. 52 Regesta iii, nos 307a, 401, 670, 769. 53 English Lawsuits i, no. 331; H. M. Cam, ‘A Shiremoot of King Stephen’s Reign, 1148–53’, EHR 39, 1924, 369–71. 54 Regesta iii, nos 290, 605.

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had seized at Wing and if he did not do so, the bishop would. Thurstan did not and the bishop received his writ.55 As at Norwich there is supporting evidence for this role. Just before the battle of Lincoln, Alexander received the wardship of the Condet heir and possession of the family’s castle at Thorngate which Ranulf II of Chester might well have expected.56 Bishop Robert received back the justiciarship of county which had originally been granted to Robert Bloet.57 Bishop Robert and Bishop Walter at Lichfield both received mints and other grants in the last years of the civil war as part of an attempt to bolster their positions and reassert and stabilise government in their dioceses.58 Both dioceses are outside the boundaries usually ascribed to royal government and influence. Despite historiographical emphasis on conflict between ecclesiastical and royal law there too there was continued cooperation. The Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which can be understood as representative of the mentality of a working secular clerk, even perhaps a bishop of the 1120s or 1130s, still assumes the interdependence of the two powers.59 Bishop Gilbert Foliot of Hereford’s application to the king to defend the status of his cathedral sanctuary despite his Angevin sympathies shows that the Leges’ assumption that it remained legally an issue of joint jurisdiction was still valid at the end of the reign.60 Elsewhere, when three knights of Bury St Edmunds were accused of treason and the abbey defended against royal officials its right to prosecute them, the royal court found in its favour.61 Similarly, in a question of jurisdiction over a case involving Luton church, it was the royal court which found that the case belonged to the bishop.62 It should be emphasised that this episcopal contribution was at odds with the other types of government emphasised in modern historiography. Bishops did not work with Matilda’s government in the West Country. Magnate government has received a sympathetic press in recent studies and the complaints of churchmen against it pooh-poohed, but bishops were not satisfied with the ‘shadow of peace but not peace complete’ which it offered, did not accept its legitimacy, and worked against it where they could.63 The much more positive and practical relationship between bishops and king apparent in this reinterpretation of royal charter evidence is paralleled when elections and councils are reassessed.

55 Regesta iii, nos 885–8. In this instance, Alexander was not successful and the process was repeated in

the time of his successor. 56 Regesta iii, no. 472. On Ranulf’s activities in the county see, P. Dalton, ‘Aiming at the Impossible:

Ranulf II, Earl of Chester and Lincolnshire in the Reign of King Stephen’, in The Earldom of Chester and its Charters, ed. A. Thacker, Chester Archaeological Society 71, 1991, 109–34. 57 Regesta iii, no. 490. 58 Regesta iii, nos 456–9, 489, 491–2. 59 B. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: the Laws of Edward the Confessor, Philadelphia 1999, 37, 161, 163, 167–75. 60 M. Chibnall, ed., The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, Edinburgh 1956, 48–9; Saltman, Theobald, 38–43; C. N. L. Brooke and A. Morey, eds, The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, Cambridge 1967, nos 77, 93–6; White, Restoration, 16. 61 English Lawsuits, no. 331. 62 Ibid., no. 296. 63 E. King, ‘King Stephen and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy’, History 59, 1974, 180–94; idem, ‘The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign’, TRHS 5th ser. 34, 1984, 133–54; Stringer, Reign, 55–8; Crouch, Reign, 324–9; White, Restoration, 55–64. Gesta Stephani, 102, 158–60, 164, 214; Huntingdon, 728–34; ASC, s.a. 1137; W. Holtzmann, ed., Papsturkunden in England, 3 vols, Berlin and Gottingen 1930–53, ii, no. 36, iii, no. 58.

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Stephen’s apparent inability to influence episcopal elections has been seen as symptomatic of his loss of control over the Church and of a growing distinction between regnum and sacerdotium.64 The composition of the episcopate had been and in the future would be dominated by ex-royal clerks, king’s men whose actions and loyalties could be guaranteed and whose ecclesiastical views were old fashioned, but in this period freely elected, reformed churchmen who were politically neutral and keen to withdraw from involvement in secular affairs were becoming bishops. Professor Robert Bartlett has listed the comparative statistics. Ten of William I’s fifteen new bishops were royal clerks, six of William II’s eight, sixteen of Henry I’s twenty-eight and ten of Henry II’s twenty-eight but only one of Stephen’s nineteen.65 As with attestations to royal charters, the statistics look indisputable but calculating political activity and closeness to government on the basis of origins is simplistic and has long been recognised as such in studies of other periods. It should also be noted that there had been a growing number of non-royal clerks elected in the last ten years of Henry I’s reign.66 It has never been suggested that this represented a failing on the part of the king and there is perhaps therefore more continuity than change in Stephen’s reign. Robert de Sigillo’s election to London was in opposition to royal interests and Stephen would exclude him from London on his return to power, but Robert’s reception of writs and governmental activity show that they were reconciled and worked together. William Turbe’s has been understood as the most free of all the elections during the civil war period as he had been a monk and then prior of Norwich, was a committed reformer and a supporter of the cause of the martyred boy William against the county’s secular authorities. He also replaced an ex-royal clerk who had been forced to resign. Nevertheless, the royal charter evidence shows that rather than being neutral he was in fact committed to maintenance of government in the county and closely connected to the king. He was also trusted enough by Stephen to be sent to the papal council at Rheims. Similar caveats can be introduced in almost all the elections of the reign. Freely elected reforming bishops were not necessarily opposed to the king and secular government. Stephen did not control elections in the same way as the other Anglo-Norman kings, but new bishops were still committed to government by legitimate kingship and loyalty to his office was still strong. Nor did royal influence fade as completely as is sometimes assumed. Bishop Robert’s successor at London was Richard de Belmeis II who was archdeacon of Middlesex and whose family dominated the chapter of St Paul’s. This connection and past career have led to the assumption that his election was independent of royal influence. However, he paid Stephen for his place, and two other candidates, the city’s own and the abbot of Battle, were loyalist.67 Robert de Chesney was archdeacon of Leicester and had family connections to both sides in the civil war. His brother William was Stephen’s captain in

64 For potted biographies and each election see Saltman, Theobald, 90–152; Knowles, Episcopal Col-

leagues, 7–33; Barlow, English Church, 92–103. For Stephen’s loss, Brett, English Church, 104–5; Barlow, English Church, 100, 103; Stringer, Reign, 65; Holdsworth, ‘The Church’, 217. The exception was Crouch for whom Stephen simply did not care, Reign, 304. 65 R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225, Oxford 2000, 397. 66 Brett, English Church, 111–12. 67 Barlow, English Church, 101; Saltman, Theobald, 117–19; F. Neininger, ed., English Episcopal Acta, 15: London 1076–1187, London 1999, lviii–ix, where the full complexity of the election is well set out.

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Oxfordshire while his nephew was Gilbert Foliot.68 His election in 1148 has been understood as a free choice by a chapter looking for the advantages of neutrality those connections might provide, and his later career as fulfilling those hopes. Again the evidence of royal charters suggests a much more politically active and loyal bishop. Further, Robert spent the years before his election not in his archdeaconry but with his brother in Oxfordshire.69 Stephen was present at his consecration and would make grants to him and his cathedral for the remainder of the reign. Once he became bishop, Gilbert Foliot wrote asking him to use his influence with the king and Arnulf of Lisieux to urge him to change sides and join the duke.70 Several elections have been understood as influenced by Henry of Blois or Archbishop Theobald. These too were not necessarily in opposition to royal interests. Most obviously, Hilary of Chichester, a favourite of Rome and of Bishop Henry, would be consistently loyal to the king.71 Another protégé, Joscelin de Bohun of Salisbury, defended his lands and rights against the empress and the duke through the late 1140s and 1150s. Whether he was loyal to the king or not, in doing so he served royal interests.72 Little is known of Archbishop Theobald’s choices for Chester and Worcester, but the former received several grants including that of a mint from Stephen, while Angevin attacks on the city of Worcester begun on the death of Bishop Simon continued through the first years of John’s incumbency.73 Rochester had always been the prerogative of the archbishop.74 Only Durham might be understood as beyond any influence and as at Salisbury its politics were more influenced by regional than national issues. Nevertheless, the chapter’s consistent opposition to William Cumin, and its choice of first William St Barbe and then Hugh du Puiset suggest that despite Stephen’s inability to control elections there, they were not opposed to him and their actions were in no way against his interests.75 The elections of Gilbert Foliot in 1148 and Henry Murdac in 1147 were serious defeats for the king and government. The extent to which Stephen might have influenced the former is debatable, but at York the reformed Church and the king clashed and the king lost. Nevertheless, in both cases there is evidence of the continued positive connection between king and Church. The continued loyalty of the chapter and city of York, much of the regional nobility and some of the older religious houses, meant that the new archbishop was unable to exercise his authority or even enter the

68 For the family history see, H. E. Salter, ed., The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham, 2 vols, Oxford Historical Society, 1906–8, i, 411–23; A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, Cambridge 1963, 33–5, 44, 50; E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored, 1149–59, Woodbridge 1993, 50–3. 69 Eynsham Cartulary i, 78, 84, 163. 70 F. Barlow, ed., The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, Camden Society 3rd ser. 61, 1939, no. 4; A. Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, eds, The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, Cambridge 1967, no. 87. 71 H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Hilary, Bishop of Chichester (1147–1169) and Henry II’, EHR 78, 1963, 209–24, 211–13. 72 Crouch, Reign, 239–42; J. Hudson, Land Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England, Oxford 1994, 142–3. 73 Crouch, Reign, 256; Regesta iii, 456–9. 74 On the complicated history of the diocese through Stephen’s reign, see E. Flight, ‘John II, Bishop of Rochester, Did not Exist’, EHR 106, 1991, 921–31. 75 G. V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham, Cambridge 1956, 13–14; A. Young, ‘The Bishopric of Durham in Stephen’s reign’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich, Woodbridge 1994, 353–69.

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city.76 Elsewhere the civil war period saw an increase in the number of non-royal charters addressed to bishops, but Murdac received only very few and this suggests that his legitimacy was suspect.77 It was only when Murdac came to an agreement with the king that he was able to fulfil the duties of his office. Then he too would put the case for the coronation of Eustace at Rome. Foliot swore fealty to the king on his arrival in England and in the aftermath of this Archbishop Theobald set out to Duke Henry the Church’s commitment to the ruler approved by the papacy.78 Later, as mentioned above, Gilbert would turn to the king when the sanctuary rights of his cathedral were threatened. Gilbert’s conduct in the Becket controversy, like that of Arnulf of Lisieux, is best understood in terms of a belief in the cooperation between the two powers and in the legitimacy of both; his conduct in Stephen’s reign suggests he felt similarly then. There were an unprecedented eight, perhaps ten and maybe more, Church councils in Stephen’s reign and this too has been associated with growing autonomy and corporate strength in the Church in the context of inadequate royal government.79 Again, the contrast with Henry I’s reign is not as strong as might be assumed. Four were held in his last ten years and a series had just come to an end in Normandy. None of these have been interpreted as in opposition to royal authority.80 Alberic of Ostia’s legatine council of 1138 is considered the first of the new series of Stephen’s reign. However, the king was present, he made sure Theobald of Bec was elected as archbishop of Canterbury and that the abbots of Battle, Crowland and Shrewsbury were deposed.81 Little is known of the circumstances of the last two depositions but the first allowed the replacement of an enemy of the king by a loyalist who would support him throughout the civil war.82 Stephen attended three councils and almost certainly a fourth. He refused to attend one and was in captivity during another.83 If the legate Imar of Tusculum held a second council in 1145 then he almost certainly attended that too.84 If so, his absence from Imar’s first council should not be overstressed. Similarly, since he attended the 76 D. Knowles, ‘The Case of St William of York’, Cambridge Historical Journal 5, 1936, 162–77, repr. in The Historian and Character, Cambridge 1963, ch. 5, 76–97; Stringer, Reign, 65–6; P. Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship: Yorkshire 1066–1154, Cambridge 1994, 169–76. For opposition to Murdac among the religious see e.g. the 1148 election of a new abbot of Whitby. This election also has striking parallels with that of Gilbert Foliot. Archbishop Henry ordered it but the monks did not choose his favoured candidate and went to the king for confirmation: J. C. Atkinson, ed., Cartularium abbathiae de Whiteby, 2 vols, Surtees Society 69, 72, 1879–81, i, 8–9. 77 Early Yorkshire Charters, 12 vols, vols i–iii, ed. W. Farrer, Edinburgh 1914–16, vols, iv–xii, ed. C. T. Clay, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Ser., Extra Ser., 1935–65, passim. 78 Historia Pontificalis, 48–9. 79 D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, eds, Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, I, pt 2, Oxford 1981, [henceforth, CS] nos 137–8, 141–6, 150–1. 80 CS, nos 130, 132, 134, 136; Stubbs, Constitutional History i, 374–5; R. Foreville, ‘The Synod of the Province of Rouen in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to C. R. Cheney on his seventieth birthday, ed. C. N. L. Brooke, D. E. Luscombe, G. H. Martin and D. M. Owen, Cambridge 1976, 19–39. 81 CS, no. 139; M. Brett, ‘Warfare and its Restraints in England, 1066–1154’, in Militia Christi e Crociata nei secoli X–XIII, Miscellanea del Centro di Studi medioevali 13, 1992 for 1989, 129–44, 133–4. 82 Battle Chronicle, 139–42. John of Worcester iii, 261–2, is the sole source for their occurrence at the council. 83 CS, nos 141–2. 84 CS, nos 139, 144, 150, probably no. 143 (some have assumed his attendance, Crouch, Reign, 189) and if it took place, no. 146. See Regesta iii, no. 460, for Imar witnessing a royal charter.

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most important council of 1143, the fact that he did not attend the two others of that year may not be significant.85 It has been suggested that of the several large gatherings of bishops in the later 1140s some were councils; Stephen is to be found among them too.86 Further, each council was held within the area under Stephen’s control and therefore with his acquiescence and under his aegis. Interpretation of the councils has always been shaped by that of 1151 and especially its second canon: ‘Quia vero ecclesie per Angliam constitute occasione placitorum corone regis pertinentium attenuantur supramodum et destruuntur, nolumus eas sicut hactenus super eisdem placitis baronibus respondere. Ideoque precipimus quatinus huius nostre institutionis transgressoribus et terris eorum episcopi in quorum parrochiis fuerint iusticiam satagant ecclesiasticam exercere. Qua in re si episcopi neglegentes extiterint, ab eisdem damna ecclesiis illata requirantur.’ Historians have split on this. Either it is evidence of the Church withdrawing from royal courts in which it no longer had faith, or it refers only to those barons who had usurped royal rights and were holding illegal courts. Either it would rely on its own resources and its own courts, or the king’s court and rights were not in question and were reaffirmed. To some extent interpretation has been dependent on the wider contexts within which historians have understood the relationship between Church and State.87 Stephen’s presence and two other canons of the council make it unlikely that a serious attack on royal power occurred. The first canon insisted that the duty of the Church with regard to contributing to the building and supply of castles was only with regard to the king; baronial demands were illegal. The fifth stated that the Church would expect the king to exert his authority in support of its actions in cases where a person remained excommunicate for more than a year. The council of 1151 in fact reaffirmed the traditional relationship between the two powers. While the Church in trying to deal with problems posed by civil war and the collapse of secular government became much more assertive, it did so in cooperation with, and in support of, that government. Historiographically, the most important council of all and the defining event in the relationship between Stephen and the bishops was that held in the aftermath of the arrest of the bishops in 1139. The calling of a king before a Church council was a reversal of the norm and it is argued that he never recovered from his humiliation. It is believed too that arresting the bishops on trumped-up charges seriously undermined his legitimacy. A horrified Church withdrew and the governmental structure collapsed. Yoshitake showed that Stephen’s capture in 1141 was more important than 1139 in both respects. Modern studies have minimised the immediate effects of the council and stressed instead continuing cooperation until then.88 Nevertheless, the consequences of the arrests are still understood as postponed rather than non-existent. 85 CS, nos 145–6. 86 CS, no. 147 and preceding note. For numbers of bishops witnessing royal charters around this time,

Regesta iii, nos 183, 301–2, 402, 511–12, 760. 87 CS, no. 150. Brooke, English Church and the Papacy, 180–2; Barlow, English Church 1066–1154,

131; Brett, ‘Warfare and its Restraints’, 134; Crouch, Reign, 339, take the first view. The second is taken by Saltman, Theobald, 34; C. Holdsworth, ‘War and Peace in the Twelfth Century, the Reign of Stephen Reconsidered’, in War and Peace in the Middle Ages, ed. B. P. McGuire, Copenhagen 1987, 67–93, 82; Stringer, Reign, 64, 70. 88 Yoshitake, ‘Arrest’, passim; idem, ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR 103, 1988, 950–9; Stringer, Reign, 58, 66; Crouch, Reign, 97, 328.

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Of the major chronicles, however, only the author of the Gesta Stephani saw the arrests as the turning point in the reign. The Gesta, as R. H. C. Davis pointed out, was structured through the author’s ‘obsession’ with the status and office of the episcopacy.89 William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon place more emphasis on Matilda’s arrival in England.90 It is also dangerous to assume that the policies of Bishop Henry of Winchester appealed to the episcopacy as a whole; his support among his fellow churchmen was minimal but they were constrained to follow him by his legatine authority.91 Archbishop Theobald only appears at the settlement of the dispute and the archbishop of Rouen, who could stand up to Henry, found that the bishops had been rightly charged and that the king was within his rights. Similarly, in 1141 Theobald went first to the king before joining Henry with Matilda.92 Further, there is one aspect of the council that has been less extensively discussed – the potential power of the ritual associated with the resolution of the dispute. William of Malmesbury described it thus: ‘However, the legate and the archbishop did not fail to pursue the course that their duty prescribed, for they fell as suppliants at the king’s feet in his room and begged him to take pity on the church, pity on his soul and reputation and not suffer a divorce to be made inter regnum et sacerdotium.’93 Potter’s translation of this last phrase as ‘between monarchy and clergy’ has been retained by King in his revised edition of the Historia Novella. Exact translation is difficult but the phrase would have had more resonance to a mid-twelfth-century writer than this translation allows. Frank Barlow, in a learned summation of the Anglo-Norman use of the phrase, preferred ‘royal and priestly orders of government’.94 William used it in the context of the reform movement‘s conceptualisation of the two powers and their relationship. His description suggests that the event was, as Henry of Huntingdon described it, ‘awesome’.95 King understood this to be evidence of a split between Church and State; in fact it describes an attempt to maintain the connection for the greater good. It is also very similar to the ritual of ‘begging pardon and favour’ which Geoffrey Koziol has shown to be a crucial contribution of the French episcopate to the building of Capetian France.96 Supplication was there an important form of mediating political power, and clerical involvement differentiated royal from other secular power. Koziol has argued elsewhere that ritual and Christian kingship had only minimal importance in Anglo-Norman England and Karl Leyser suggested the same by comparison with the imperial evidence.97 Both views are part of a wider trend in Anglo-Norman historiography which emphasises the domination of a new centralised 89 90 91 92 93 94

R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Authorship of the Gesta Stephani’, EHR 77, 1962, 209–32, 223–4. Gesta Stephani, 51; Historia Novella, 34; Huntingdon, 723. Barlow, English Church, 1066–1154, 305. Saltman, Theobald, 16. Historia Novella, 34, 2nd edn, ed. King, Oxford 2000, 59. Barlow, English Church, 1066–1154, 269–71. He prefers for the most part not to translate at all which seems very sensible. For an introduction to a complex subject, C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy, Oxford 1989, 1, 17, 19–24, 230–3, 553–4. 95 Huntingdon, 727. 96 G. Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favour: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France, Ithaca 1992, 7–14, 45, 55, 130–1, 274. 97 G. Koziol, ‘England, France and the Problem of Sacrality in Twelfth Century Ritual’, in Cultures of Power, ed. T. Bisson, Philadelphia 1995, 134–49; K. Leyser, ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession, 1120–25’, ANS 13, 1990 (1991), 225–41, repr. in Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: the Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. T. Reuter, London 1994, 98–114, 104–5.

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administrative government and an administrative ideology of kingship, thereby marginalising their other forms and, by extension, those such as the bishops who were most important to their maintenance.98 This parallels the lack of recognition accorded the episcopacy’s continued place in government and also the assumption, referred to only in passing here, that ex-royal-clerk bishops lacked spiritual and ecclesiastical authority and power. In Capetian France, later Anglo-Saxon England and the early medieval Empire the episcopacy was a major force in maintaining kingship.99 William’s description of the legate and the archbishop at the king’s feet suggests that it was in Anglo-Norman England too and that the importance of the administrative has been exaggerated. A passage unique to the Gesta Stephani supports this proposition. According to the Gesta, the king did penance after the settlement of the dispute, ‘he softened the harshness of the Church’s severity by a humble submission and putting aside his royal garb, groaning in spirit and with a contrite heart, he humbly accepted the penance enjoined for his fault’.100 If a continued role for ritual is allowed then this might be seen as a counterpart to the abasement of the Church described by William in a process which also emphasised the piety of a Christian king. The other Church councils might be interpreted in the same way. They were almost the only public occasions and exemplars of legitimate institutional and hierarchical authority during the civil war period. They associated the king with the unquestioned Christian legitimacy of the Church and emphasised his involvement in it. Stephen’s need for crown wearings too suggests that he understood that he had to emphasise his royal authority and legitimacy as often as possible. Henry of Huntingdon saw Stephen’s declining fortunes in the early years of the reign paralleled in the ending of such events.101 The bishops played an important part in those crown wearings. Even if administrative kingship or chivalric kingship were more important elements in the maintenance of the authority of Henry I and Henry II, they would have been of less use to Stephen.102 The former had collapsed and the latter would not differentiate the king sufficiently from the rest of the secular elite. The Church councils of Stephen’s reign had multiple functions but common to all is the theme of the mutual support of the two powers. The theoretical and practical evidence both of royal charters and of the conduct of individual bishops after their election suggests a similar commitment to maintenance of royal authority as the only legitimate government of the kingdom. All three elements suggest an episcopacy 98

Most recently, C. W. Hollister, ‘Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth Century Renaissance’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth Century Renaissance, ed. idem, Woodbridge 1997, 1–17, 14; and directly applied to Stephen’s reign, Crouch, Reign, 17. 99 In addition to Koziol and Leyser see on late Anglo-Saxon England, e.g. H. R. Loyn, ‘Church and State in England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in Tenth Century Studies, ed. D. Parsons, London 1975, 94–109, 97, 100; P. Wormald, ‘Giving God and King their Due: Conflict and its Regulation in the Early English State’, in Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West, London 1999, 333–55, 337. 100 Gesta Stephani, 81. For early medieval parallels, J. L. Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of Rheims’, EHR 92, 1977, 241–79, repr. in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe, London 1986, 133–71, 135–6, and see now on the whole subject of royal penance S. Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, Woodbridge 2001, 174–84. 101 Gesta Stephani, 96–8; Historia Novella, 40; Huntingdon, 725, 749; W. Stubbs, ed., Gervase of Canterbury, Opera Historica, 2 vols, RS 1879–80, i, 123–4; Crouch, Reign, 189. 102 For chivalric kingship see J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 2nd edn, London 1963, 4, 5, 16; Koziol, ‘Sacrality’, 132–5. On chivalry and Stephen see valuable comments by Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: the Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217, Cambridge 1996, 49, n. 94.

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much more involved and positively active in the politics of the reign than has hitherto been recognised. This was neither particularly successful nor, as Stringer showed, did it have to be rooted in personal loyalty to Stephen; as it had been in the past, the system was more important than the person. Nevertheless, it was the basis for episcopal and royal conduct throughout the civil war and is crucial to assessment of both. Reinterpretation of the relationship between King Stephen and his bishops in the light of modern understanding of more general Church–State relations in the twelfth century suggests that it too must be approached within that framework rather than in an older fashioned one. Stephen’s reign was much less an anomaly in the history of the Anglo-Norman Church than is usually thought.

The Defence of Normandy 1193–8

THE DEFENCE OF NORMANDY 1193–8 Vincent Moss Many of the themes of this paper owe much to Maurice Powicke’s the Loss of Normandy.1 This still seminal text pioneered the use of pipe roll evidence in the analysis of warfare in Normandy in the 1190s – a theme that will be further developed in this paper.2 While Powicke was certainly interested in the conduct and character of the Angevin kings he was also centrally concerned with the interplay between them and the economic, military and financial circumstances in which they operated.3 It is this interplay that provides the focus of this paper.4 The successful defence of Normandy between 1193 and 1198 was, I wish to argue, critically dependent upon three factors: successful military leadership, the loyalty of the Norman aristocracy and a qualitative increase in revenue.5 They proved to be interrelated: revenue provided money to fight wars and provide patronage, military success strengthened ducal allegiance and made revenue raising easier while aristocratic loyalty provided the basis to recruit soldiers and raise additional money. In particular King Richard was able to overcome the potential conflict between rising taxation and political support. Every additional penny above the customary Carolingian revenue sources of the duchy of Normandy raised through tallages and forced loans can be seen as a vote of confidence by the Norman aristocracy in its duke.6 Thus when King John lost this confidence through leadership and military failings, chunks of the Norman aristocracy were neither prepared to fight for him nor provide additional revenue; hence decline in revenue and decline in political support dovetailed together in 1202–3.7 The defence of Normandy in 1193–4 depended on the

1

F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 2nd edn, Manchester 1961, 178–250. I would like to thank John Gillingham and Dan Power for their comments on this paper and Kathy Thompson who allowed me to see in advance the relevant section of Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France. The County of the Perche, 1000–1226, Woodbridge 2002. For a map showing the location of places mentioned in this essay see fig. 1 in D. Pitte, ‘Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie orientale (1196–1204)’, 164 below. 2 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 36–78, 178–250. 3 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 178–250, 297–303. 4 The figures in this article are in livres angevines (l.a.) which in the 1190s converted to pounds sterling at a ratio of 4 l.a. to £1. An average Norman bailliage (to commit an oxymoron) might have paid in 1197–8 between 1000 and 3000 l.a. into the Norman exchequer. 5 King Richard’s military leadership in Normandy has been well covered by the works of John Gillingham. Most recently see J. Gillingham, Richard I, London 1999, 269–321. 6 V. Moss, ‘Normandy and England in 1180: the Pipe Roll Evidence’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry, London 1994, 192–3; V. Moss, ‘The Norman Fiscal Revolution 1193–8’, in Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History 1130–1830, ed. M. Ormrod, M. Bonney and R. Bonney, Oxford 1999, 46–56. 7 V. D. Moss, ‘The Exchequer Rolls of King John’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church, Woodbridge 1999, 101, 103–16; D. Power, ‘King John and the Norman Aristocracy’, ibid., 117–36.

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basic loyalty of the Anglo-Norman and Norman aristocracy, but by 1195–6 military success, increased revenue and expanding aristocratic affiliation (both inside and outside the duchy) were generating the conditions of recovery.

The Crisis of 1193–4 In King Richard’s absence in 1193–4 Normandy faced a severe crisis with war on several fronts. On the 1197–8 Norman pipe roll we learn that three years previously Count John, in a time of war, had damaged the castle and mills in the bailliage of Gavray.8 The bailliages of Cerences and Tinchebrai as well as the bailliage of Mortain (except escheats) were missing from the 1194–5 roll, presumably because they were the site of military rebellion in 1193–4 and had not yet been re-integrated into the Norman administration when the 1194–5 roll was made.9 The value of the escheats worth roughly 340 l.a. from Mortain and the Avranchin may be a measure of the extent of support for the count of Mortain in these areas.10 While the count of Mortain’s supporters attacked in the south-west of the duchy the major thrust of the Capetian offensive took place in the east as forces broke through the Norman frontier, winning increased aristocratic affiliation as they advanced. The returns for Verneuil on the 1194–5 Norman pipe roll made no mention of the lands of the lords of L’Aigle or of a single one of their knights.11 But on the 1197–8 roll there were detailed returns from this area including a payment from William Baudran, one of the knights of the lords of L’Aigle.12 It is possible that the lords of L’Aigle supported Philip Augustus in 1193–4.13 Before his defection to Philip Augustus, the honor of Néhou belonged to the frontier magnate Richard de Vernon.14 The total of 760 l.a. worth of escheats from the bailliage of the Côtentin is especially illuminating since only half came from the honor of Néhou. It suggests that Richard de Vernon had important supporters in this area.15 In the Bessin the Norman pipe roll of 1194–5 recorded over 1400 l.a. worth of escheat revenue. A new ducal farm was created out of these resources which may well have been made up from the fees of the supporters of the count of Meulan and the L’Aigle family.16 Even Stephen de Longchamp, the brother of the chancellor, defected to the Capetian side in 1194.17 This is surprising since Stephen was a royal steward, had ac8 9

MRSN ii, 292–3. Powicke suggests that these bailliages were missing because in 1194–5 and 1197–8 they belonged to the count of Mortain (Loss of Normandy, 74–5), but Mortain clearly appears on the 1197–8 Norman pipe roll (MRSN ii, 356–7). 10 MRSN i, 215–16. 11 There were also no taxation records from the important Jewish community in this area, MRSN ii, 314–15. 12 MRSN ii, 315; AD Eure, D. Lenoir transcripts, Cartulaire de L’abbaye de Lire, 474. 13 An alliance at this time with the count of Mortain would also explain Gilbert’s later prominence as a supporter of King John: K. Thompson, ‘The Lords of Laigle’, ANS 18, 1995 (1996), 177–99. 14 MRSN i, 145. 15 To complete the picture Richard de Vernon was further deprived of 10 l.a. of land in Hauville in the bailliage between the Risle and the Seine, MRSN i, 143, 145, 148, 153. As far as I know the land of the Vernons in this area has never been the subject of any discussion. 16 MRSN i, 127–31, 262–72. 17 MRSN i, 132.

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companied King Richard on the third crusade and was allowed to marry an heiress c.1190.18 Stephen had a very scattered collection of fees and interests in Cailly in the bailliage of Roumois, Roquemont in the bailliage of Bray, Evreux and probably Falaise that were taken into ducal hands upon his defection.19 Perhaps, like the Rouvrays, the two Longchamp brothers decided to protect their lands by taking opposite sides in the dispute or alternatively Stephen was worried about the possible loss of his castle at Baudemont in the Vexin that he had recently gained by marriage.20 It is also worth noting that Stephen had a fee in Bellencombre in Caux, another site of warfare in 1193–4.21 In any event Stephen’s defection meant rather more than simply what the value his landholdings might suggest. When he returned to the Angevin camp in 1195 Stephen played a prominent military role and was given control of what was left of the prepositurae revenues in Bray and Lyons-la-Forêt in the Vexin.22 If Philip made the same use of him that Richard did later then his defection must have been a heavy blow. Nevertheless Richard had a number of factors that remained critically in his favour between 1193 and 1195. The escheats deep inside the duchy were the reflections of supporters and lands of various marcher barons and of the count of Mortain. No great magnate whose principal resources lay in the interior of the duchy went over to Philip Augustus. Nor did all of those who held land from the marcher barons support the rebellion. While the count of Meulan could cause trouble in Bayeux, most of his followers elsewhere failed to back his rebellion. The feudal topography of the Auge and Pont-Audemer area meant that two of the count of Meulan’s ‘honorial barons’, Robert de Harcourt and Robert Marmion, held between them ten knights’ fees and no other magnate except for the loyal Roger Bigot held more than three.23 As a result the two Roberts had a powerful strategic position in this area and both were active supporters of King Richard. The loyalty of a royal curialis like Robert de Harcourt is not surprising.24 But the stance of Robert Marmion is more difficult to explain. He had no reason to love King Richard since in 1189 the king had deprived him of the valuable position of the sheriff of Worcester and amerced him 1000 pounds sterling.25 Given his importance Philip Augustus should have offered him much, especially as Robert could have used his supporters in Fontenai-le-Marmion in the Caennais to open up yet another site of rebellion.26 Yet Robert remained loyal, presumably because whatever he thought of King Richard, he regarded Philip’s cause as unjust. For two years between 1195 and 1197 Robert Marmion was rewarded with a ducal

18 R. R. Heiser, ‘The Royal Familiares of Richard I’, Medieval Prosopography 10, 1998, 30–40; Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 334–5; MRSN i, 132. The reference to the land of Rokemont on the pipe roll together with the mention of Henry de Vere suggests that the marriage to Petronilla daughter of Osbert de Cailly must have taken place in 1190. 19 J. W. Baldwin et al., eds, Registres de Philippe Auguste i, Paris 1992, 67, 285; MRSN i, 132, 243; ii, 464. 20 For the Rouvrays see D. J. Power, ‘Between the Angevin and the Capetian Courts: John de Rouvray and the Knights of the Pays de Bray 1180–1225’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 361–84. 21 Baldwin, ed., Registres, 289; MRSN i, 137, 236. 22 MRSN ii, 417. 23 Baldwin, ed., Registres, 291–5. 24 R. V. Turner and R. R. Heiser, The Reign of Richard Lionheart, London 2000, 46, 80, 150. 25 Gillingham, Richard I, 115. 26 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 339.

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farm in Falaise where he also held fees and built up a considerable debt.27 As farm debts were generally collected with great efficiency by the Norman exchequer, the debts and the post should be regarded as ducal patronage. Thanks to this loyalty the areas of Auge and Pont-Audemer became valuable additional centres of high-level revenue collection. In 1194–5 the town of Pont-Audemer paid 438 l.a. of a forced loan set at 500 l.a.28 In the same fiscal year an entirely new baillage called, confusingly, Auge was established.29 Such was King Richard’s support that the king could start to sell off part of the forest lands of the count of Meulan in 1196–7.30 Aristocratic motivation can stem from many causes and it is quite possible that Robert de Meulan’s return to King Richard in 1197 was determined at least as much by this threat to his Norman lands as by the strength of the new alliances outside the duchy that the duke had constructed against Philip Augustus. The military campaign of John’s supporters in the Norman south-west proved to be a failure. No Norman castles were taken. The castle at Gavray was defended in, presumably, February 1194 by the Norman seneschal’s brother Henry fitz Ralph.31 While buildings including the ovens were destroyed, there was no damage to the external walls or keep. Richard took one further military precaution in this area in about May 1194 by granting Guy de Dives, a marshal of the royal household, custody of the castle and the bailliage.32 Philip Augustus did more damage in one raid against Dieppe than John’s supporters were able to do in this part of the duchy in 1193–4.33 Two figures were critical in the defence of Normandy in 1193–4. In the south-west the constable of Normandy, William du Hommet, probably led defensive operations. In 1190 King Richard had granted Poupeville and Varreville, both farms in the Côtentin, to the constable.34 In 1193 and perhaps for as much as two years previously William du Hommet also held the farms of the vicomté of Côtentin, St Marcouf, Ste Mère Eglise, Cherbourg, Valognes, Henneville, and both the prepositura and vicomté farms of Vire.35 Given that this large assemblage of lands was never held again by one individual in Angevin times, it seems more likely than not that this block of territory was granted to him for military and strategic reasons. A protective net was created that covered the vitally important port of Barfleur, while the castle at Vire overlooked Prince John’s lands in Mortain and Tinchebrai. This was probably only a small part of the constable’s role in the defence of Normandy since in 1194–5 William du Hommet paid over 705 l.a. out of a proffer of 4000 l.a. (the largest found on the Norman pipe rolls) for having peace concerning all his past debts as well as a debt owed from a lost legal case.36 Unfortunately given that the south-west of Normandy is an area of which

27 28 29 30 31 32

MRSN ii, 406–7; Baldwin, ed., Registres, 284. MRSN i, 200, 209. MRSN i, 280. MRSN ii, 484. MRSN i, 215–16. Heiser, ‘Royal Familiares’, 30–40; MRSN i, 197. The 1194–5 and 1197–8 retrospective references both point to the year 1194 so theoretically the sequence of events outlined above could be reversed, but it makes sense for a household official to have the post after King Richard arrived in Normandy and before the reconciliation with John. 33 MRSN ii, 471–2. 34 Baldwin, ed., Registres, 462–5. 35 MRSN i, 276–7. 36 MRSN i, 271.

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the chroniclers tell us little, we do not have details of the military actions taken by the constable. A better known defender of Normandy in 1193–4 was the earl of Leicester who led the defence of Rouen and as a reward was given the most significant form of fiscal patronage available in Normandy in the late 1190s. Once tallages and forced loans became the main source of Norman revenue, exemptions from them became the most worthwhile fiscal concession the duke could make.37 Exemptions from tallage therefore have a certain parallel with pardons for danegeld found on the 1129–30 English pipe roll of Henry I; except that they were even more rare.38 Indeed besides the earl of Leicester there were only three other recipients: William, the uncle of the count of Flanders, who owed his importance to his nephew; Hugh de Gournay in 1198 who was exempt for his lands in Arques (24l 6s l.a.), Caux (36l 7s l.a.) and Roumois (10l 6s l.a.); and the count of Eu who received 10 l.a. tallage exemption in Caux in 1198.39 In addition the latter was paid 50 l.a. in Argentan in 1195 and owed debts of 417 l.a. in 1198.40 Table I

Exemptions of the Earl of Leicester (in l.a.)41

Bailliage Other payments Falaise Caux 60 Lisieux Roumois Argentan Vaudreuil 10 Argences Blosseville Total 70

Tallage 138 94 81 56 35 28 18 10 460

Total 138 154 81 56 35 38 18 10 530

The vast bulk of these exemptions concerned the earl of Leicester (see Table 1). To have lands in no less than eight bailliages, and exemptions worth more than 80 pounds in three of them, made the earl unique. In fact these returns understate the earl of Leicester’s holdings in Normandy at this time. His great honour of Breteuil lay mostly in the bailliage of Evreux in which the earl was not exempt from tallages or loans while his holdings at Pacy were in Capetian hands.42 The stance of the earl of Leicester was crucial. The greatest Anglo-Norman magnate of Angevin times was prepared to defend Normandy actively, even at the cost of losing some of his own lands.

37 38 39 40 41

Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 46–56. J. Green, The Government of England under Henry I, Cambridge 1986, 69–75, 223–5. MRSN ii, 416, 429, 448. MRSN i, 210; ii, 420. MRSN ii, 329, 396, 400, 411, 416–17, 483, 487–8, 493. All exemptions are made de hominibus feudi sui followed by the amount. 42 D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: the Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 1986, 103.

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Taxation and Loyalty Vital in Richard’s later success was an almost fourfold rise in revenue in 1197–8 compared to 1179–80, combined with growing support amongst the aristocracy and the urban elites of the duchy.43 Increased affiliation was helped by the vast largesse Richard had at his disposal which by 1197–8 had led to the alienation of nearly half of the fixed revenue of the vicomté and prepositura farms and the sale of great chunks of ducal forest land.44 Most of approximately 27,000 l.a. of ducal revenue in 1179–80 came from the ducal farms, lands and wardships which made up 62% of revenue.45 Thus only 10,260 l.a. came from revenue collected outside the lands of the duke. In contrast, in 1197 roughly 80% of pipe roll revenue or nearly 80,000 l.a. came from ducal taxation.46 Thus taxpayers in 1197 were contributing ten times the amount they paid in 1179–80. Even without these figures the pressure of increasing taxation and war has already led historians to look for evidence of war weariness in the second half of the 1190s.47 Yet apart from the rather unsurprising fact that the archbishop of Rouen, whose lands were in the front line of the conflict, was rather unhappy, such evidence stubbornly fails to appear.48 One would have thought the merest hint of Norman war weariness and the well-informed Capetian royal chroniclers would have been rushing to make the most of it, but they say not a single word on the subject. We have a statement from Gerald of Wales about the transfer of the violent despotism of the Angevins from England to the duchy.49 But both Sir James Holt and Professor David Bates have expressed severe scepticism concerning this binary opposition between Angevin despotism and Capetian liberty.50 More recently Turner and Heiser have cited comments about Henry II’s behaviour in 1172–3 made by Ralph of Diss as a source for their own reading of the 1190s. According to Ralph, Henry II was trampling upon the necks of the proud and haughty, was dismantling or appropriating the castles of the country and was requiring . . . those who occupied properties which should have contributed to his treasury, to be content with their own patrimony.51 Now as it happens there is good evidence that the conflict in 1173–4 was an especially gruesome and violent affair. Such was the disruption caused by the revolt in 1173–4 that accounts from this time concerning Arques and Dieppe were first made at the exchequer six years later on the roll for 1179–80.52 In Verneuil and possibly Gisors damage to the castles was still causing a drop in revenue.53 There were numerous references to waste on the 1179–80 pipe roll which were all situated in

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 40–2, 46–56. Ibid., 44–5. Moss, ‘Normandy and England in 1180’, 194. Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 38–57. Turner and Heiser, Richard Lionheart, 180. Gillingham, Richard I, 344. ‘De principis instructione liber’, in Giraldi Cambrensis opera viii, 257–9. J. C. Holt, Magna Carta and Royal Government, London 1985, 64, 103; D. Bates, ‘The Rise and Fall of Normandy’, in Bates and Curry, England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, 19–37. 51 Diceto i, 371, cited in Turner and Heiser, The Reign of Richard Lionheart, 180. 52 MRSN i, 66–8. 53 MRSN i, 72, 84.

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areas subject to the revolt of the young king.54 In contrast there is little (but see above, 146) to suggest that war seriously disrupted the accounting of bailliages to the exchequer in 1194–5 or 1197–8. Arques raised the largest amount of revenue ever recorded from that area in 1197–8 despite previously being held in Capetian hands in 1194–5.55 The loss of ducal revenue due to war was proportionally greater (4.25%) in 1179–80 than that recorded in 1194–5 or 1197–8 (see below, 156), despite the fact that the resonance of the revolt of the young king in the accounts of the duchy must have considerably diminished over time.56 As Daniel Power has suggested, the loose associations and alliances of 1173–4 survived even when magnates were on different sides of the war in the 1190s.57 The events of the early 1170s were so disturbing that they long continued to weigh on men’s minds. Let us consider the one detailed contemporary Norman narrative we have for the 1190s, the anonymous annals of Jumièges.58 The text, it is true, is a very pro- Angevin source; the word proditores to describe those who rebel against the Angevins occurs with a regularity not found elsewhere.59 On the other hand the annalist, despite supporting Henry II in the revolt of the young king, paid him no great tribute on his death and the text was capable of making implicit criticism of King John.60 He referred to the vast sums of ransom money that Richard extracted from the duchy (‘infinitam pecuniam’), but did not make any condemnation of such measures in 1194–5 or in any other year.61 Instead the chronicle followed the sentence about the ransom with references to the fundamental loyalty of the citizens of Rouen and the Normans in defending the duchy. High taxation and loyalty were coupled together rather than counterpoised. The annalist did adopt an implicitly critical attitude to the treaty of Le Goulet.62 He drew attention to the fact that one day in 1199 fifteen counts were to be found at John’s court. He does not suggest that these people were there because of a profound and deep love for King John. Rather it was that ‘omnes contra regem Francorum coniuraverunt’.63 In the entry for 1200 the annalist noted that John made peace and then lists the long series of concessions the king made in order to have this peace without mentioning any possible advantages that the treaty of Le Goulet might have brought. Its important in this context to note that the annalist never suggests that

54 MRSN i, 60, 64, 74, 80. 55 MRSN i, 66–7, 90–1; ii, 420–9. 56 Amercements for making waste have been included in this total since they probably had a rough pro-

portional relationship to the damage done. It is quite possible that the above percentage underestimates the impact of the revolt of 1173–4 on Norman revenue. Why pardons were granted by a duke is not always clear to the historian, but it may not be an accident that over 98% of the approximately 1500 l.a. granted away in this manner by Henry II in 1179–80 were in the bailliages previously affected by the revolt of the young king; especially as a further 1.5% of pardons were recorded in Maine which was severely affected by this rebellion: MRSN i, 28, 63, 65, 74, 80, 91. 57 D. Power, ‘L’ Aristocratie Plantagenêt face aux conflits Capétiens–Angevins: l’exemple du traité de Louviers’, in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154–1224), ed. M. Aurell, Poiters 2001, 121–37. 58 J. Laporte, ed., Annales de l’Abbaye Royale de Saint-Pierre de Jumièges ii, Rouen 1954, 65–87. I have only considered the section of the chronicle written by the same monk between 1172 and 1200. The comments are thus especially important because they were not made with any advantage of hindsight. 59 Ibid., 69, 75, 87. 60 Ibid., 69, 71, 73 75, 77. 61 Ibid., 75, 77. 62 Ibid., 77. 63 Ibid., 77.

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Richard ever made peace either with the Saladin or with Philip Augustus. The problem of the peace that Richard made in 1195 was solved by the phrase ‘et modico tempore pax fuit regibus Francorum et Anglorum’.64 The peace of 1198 was ignored, perhaps because he thought it was made against Richard’s will. Only John, according to the chronicler, made peace and its price was explicitly stated in much detail. It is difficult to see how much further a very pro-Angevin chronicler could have gone in suggesting that the war should be continued without explicitly stating this assessment.

The War in a Comparative Context This acceptance of a vast rise in taxation and support for continued warfare can only be understood in the context of the kind of conflict fought in the second half of the 1190s. The density of castle construction in and beyond the Capetian/Angevin frontier and the loyalty of the Norman towns ensured that the war could only be attritional. Philip’s first advance towards Rouen in 1193 had to have been premised on an early panic driven surrender.65 Once this failed to occur he had little choice but to depart and to try to capture the castles that potentially threatened his rear.66 Despite all his problems in 1193 Richard had been able to station sixty knights at Moulins-la-Marche and Bonsmoulins, perhaps for offensive operations against the count of Perche.67 Even without the presence of the king, Normandy beyond the frontier had proved a tough nut to crack. Philip’s gains proved equally difficult to reverse; hence even after four years of war Richard had not quite restored the Norman frontier to where it was before he went on crusade. While the revolt of the young king had been a far more devastating affair, there were some similarities to 1193–4. In each case, the Norman frontier was broken through with relative ease, but dogged resistance beyond the border even without the presence of the king bogged down further advance.68 In each case, as the annalist of Jumièges pointed out, the fierce loyalty of urban Normandy behind the frontier was critical in making up for defections from the aristocracy.69 Indeed in an essentially inaccurate rhetorical move (which, in turn, allows us to enter the thought world of a Norman Angevin propagandist), the annalist analysed the developments of 1173–4 in social terms. On the side of the young king were those who had power while on the side of Henry II, apart from two aristocrats including the not very important Jordan Taisson, were the bishops, the poor and the urban communities of the duchy, all of whom had virtue on their side.70 The tiny sliver of truth in this is that of the four great counts of Normandy who head the list of secular figures on the list of Norman knight service in 1172, three (Leicester, Meulan, and Chester) supported the revolt of the young king.71 Henry II had managed to alienate not only his family, but also the greatest men of the duchy. It is just possible that the defence of the towns (as

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Ibid., 75. Gillingham, Richard I, 283–300. J. W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, Oxford 1986, 89. MRSN i, 244–6; K. Thompson, Power and Border Lordship, 117. W. L. Warren, Henry II, 2nd edn, London 1991, 124–8. Laporte, Annales, 69, 71, 75. Ibid., 69. H. Hall, ed., The Red Book of the Exchequer, RS 1897, ii, 626–7.

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in the 1190s) provided work for the poor and this might explain their support for Henry II. What is interesting in a comparative context is that in 1173–4, despite this combination of very serious aristocratic defections and a vastly destructive conflict, urban Normandy held out so well. It is also rather revealing of attitudes in late Angevin Normandy that a monk could find himself identifying with the towns. Both wars were a race to make the one quick knock blow which could win the Angevin Empire – the capture of Rouen. The war of 1202–3 was to represent a profound discontinuity with these earlier conflicts. King John was present on the continent for some time, the frontier fortifications strengthened by Château-Gaillard held out for a little longer, Philip avoided an immediate offensive against Rouen, but broke through elsewhere in the duchy as resistance collapsed.72

Military Spending 1194–8 Table 2

Military Contingent Expenditure in Normandy 1195 (in l.a.)73 knights knights/sergeants sergeants/foot knight/sergeants/crossbowmen balistarii Welsh Saracens Total

2480 1489 537 321 127 1305 126 6385

In 1194–5 and 1197–8 the number of Angevin troops involved in the war was small. We can try to turn the sums shown in Table 2 into the number of troops present in Normandy.74 If we allow 6d a day for foot soldiers, 1s 6d for mounted sergeants and balistarii and 4s for knights, then, on the basis of the 1195 fiscal allocation and assuming even division of mixed troop description, roughly 270 troops might have been put into the field for a year, or 540 for a period of six months. In practice this is likely to be an overestimate of the actual number, since bonus payments for success was a vital and common aspect of warfare and the figures in Table 2 record such payments.75 72 J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, London 2001, 102. 73 MRSN i, 136–8, 156, 221, 233, 236–9, 246, 252, 253, 270, 275. 74 Sir Maurice Powicke argued that knights were paid 6s a day, mounted sergeants 2s 6d, foot soldiers 8d

to 12d and the balistarii more varied sums (Loss of Normandy, 223–5). However, the most common Norman daily payment for John’s mounted sergeants was just 2s. Wages were not constant over time. In 1194–5 knights were paid 4s per day. The one reference we have for foot soldiers for this year shows a payment of almost 6d per day. In 1198 no foot soldiers were paid 12d per day, the most usual figure being 8d, but sometimes 10d per day. On the other hand the wages of knights had risen in this year to 6s per day and mounted sergeants were paid 2s 6d, MRSN i, 233, 238–9; ii, 314, 303, 410, 417, 484, 429, 447, 485, 547–8. 75 For example the sixty-five knights involved in the defence of Verneuil (twenty of them for almost 6 months) received additional rewards worth over 800 l.a. Master Gadre Ledrois, presumably responsible for fortifications, was also well rewarded: MRSN i, 236–9.

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Military Contingent Expenditure in Normandy 1198 (in l.a.)76 foot (including Welsh) mixed including balistarii knights/mounted sergeants military household balistarii mercenaries knights mounted sergeants Total

1858 1121 857 646 470 302 195 57 5506

Less money was spent on troops’ wages in Normandy in 1197–8, as Table 3 indicates. But due to the changes in the composition of this spending Richard, to use modern Pentagon parlance, could get more bangs for his bucks. In terms of the breakdown of expenditure recorded in Table three this would mean a maximum of 250 troops for a year or 500 for a six month period. Even if all this money was spent on foot soldiers, it would provide (assuming 8d a day) less than 453 troops on the ground throughout a year or 906 over a period of six months, and these estimates also take no account of recorded bonus payments. There are, in addition to these figures, sums found on the English pipe rolls for the sending of troops over the sea.77 Except in one case when some British troops were sent from England to Flanders, we do not know whether all these troops fought in Normandy or what proportion of them were stationed elsewhere in the Angevin Empire.78 In any event the money spent on troops that could have fought in Normandy on the 1194–5 and 1197–8 English pipe rolls totalled less than 100 l.a.79 The most difficult issue is the importance of the Norman feudal host since such knights could be paid by their lords for forty days and therefore would not appear on the ducal accounts for that time period. 681 knights were available for ducal military service in 1172.80 If one assumed all such knights were called for feudal service and were able to attend, this would work out at roughly seventy-five knights for forty days per year paid by lords rather than the duke. In practice since scutage was sometimes taken, fines were recorded for non-attendance and, at various points in time, major Norman magnates were in the Capetian camp, the number mobilised would have been very much smaller.81 76 MRSN ii, 300–3, 306–8, 310–12, 314, 327–8, 330, 334, 348, 350, 354, 361, 400, 410, 414, 417, 429,

444, 447, 455–7, 463, 482–5, 491, 493. 77 D. Stenton, ed., PR 1195, London 1929, xviii, 205; D. Stenton, ed., The Chancellor’s Roll of 1196,

London 1930, xviii, 41–2; D. Stenton, ed., PR 1197, London 1931, xxii–xxiii, 164; D. Stenton, ed., PR 1198, London 1932, xviii, 172, 224. 78 Given their specialist skills in forest warfare it is quite possible that the large number of Welsh troops sent overseas in 1195–6 were used in Brittany. Stenton, ed., Chancellor’s Roll, xviii, 41–2; Stenton, ed., PR 1197, xxii–xxiii, 164. 79 Even if one assumes that all troops sent overseas fought in Normandy and even if one takes an average yearly English pipe roll figure from 1194 to 1198 this still worked out at less than 200 l.a. per year spent in the surviving English records and this would make little difference to the small troop totals recorded in the Norman fiscal records. 80 J. Boussard, ‘L’enquête de 1172 sur les services de chevalier en Normandie’, Recueil de Travaux offert à M. Clovis Brunel, pt i, Paris 1955, 193–208. 81 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 217–18.

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A related issue concerns the extent of military service in the households of the great Norman magnates. Such retainers would have been paid by these great men rather than by the duke and therefore would not appear on the Norman pipe rolls. In theory, an even greater problem is poised by knight service owed in England to the monarch. In practice Richard did his best to avoid the use of a cumbersome feudal host by demanding a third of knight service in 1194, by asking barons based in England to serve with no more than seven knights in 1196 and also by taking scutage.82 The most interesting indication of what Richard wished to do was illustrated in a plan from 1197 to convert all English feudal service into the deployment of a force of three hundred knights on an annual basis.83 The plan fell through, but it above all expressed the needs of successful warfare in the 1190s – a permanent deployment of a core professional force of experienced fighters numbering hundreds rather than thousands. The likelihood is that Richard, despite the odd set-back, fought his war as he would have wished and that the very low number of troops implied in the Norman pipe rolls comes close to recording the reality of the military situation. The actual deployment of Angevin troops, with the exception of a hard-core group of troops consisting of the royal military household and specialist units, was not constant over each year. The regular truces probably temporary reduced the numbers deployed. Military organisation also changed over the years. The vast majority of payments in both 1195 and 1198 were made to small bands of soldiers, generally less than fifty in number.84 But by 1197–8 an important innovation had occurred at a tactical level. Three units of foot soldiers numbering 100, 140 and 200 troops respectively patrolled the March.85 These large infantry units may have had uses in siege warfare, mopping up operations and rearguard duties. The largest mobilisation of foot soldiers found on the Norman pipe rolls concerned guard duty. Sometime during its construction no less than 890 troops were stationed at Château-Gaillard for a week.86 Perhaps they were stationed there to deal with a Capetian raid on the yet to be finished castle. The royal military household provided a mobile strike force for Richard in battle. On the 1197–8 pipe roll they absorbed roughly 12% of Norman military wage expenditure, but this is likely to understate their significance.87 Something like the concept of a reserve stationed behind the frontier as distinct from a rearguard may explain some troop deployments. Richard’s Saracen mercenaries were stationed for a number of years in the forest of the Passeis.88 Presumably they were there both as a potential threat to the nearby lands of the count of Mortain and a force that could be moved to the Breton border when necessary. A deployment of troops well behind the frontier in the tower of Falaise was made in 1193–4 perhaps for similar reasons.89 For a very large set conflict it would have been possible to mobilise most of these different 82 Ibid., 212–13. 83 Ibid., 213. 84 MRSN i, 136, 233, 236–8, 240, 270; ii, 300–3, 307, 330, 334, 348, 350, 354, 361, 400, 410, 414, 429,

444, 455–7, 463, 482–5, 491. 85 MRSN ii, 327, 328, 417, 447, 493. 86 MRSN ii, 310. 87 MRSN ii, 301. The military household would have followed the king in his travels outside the duchy in

that year, but this would not necessarily have been so of other troops. Our records therefore do not compare like with like which means that the proportion of Angevin military spending allocated to the royal military household would have been greater than 12%. 88 MRSN i, 221; ii, 301, 350. 89 MRSN i, 270.

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military units to one place, but this is not the general picture of warfare. Sieges involving up to two hundred or so foot soldiers, raids involving knights and/or foot soldiers, mobile advances by the king with his military household and partial demobilisation for some troops in times of truce appear to be much more typical of the conduct of war in the 1190s.90 Except for the odd coastal raid, the war between 1194 and 1198 was confined to the frontier. In 1194–5 ducal revenue discounted for war damage came to roughly 1100 l.a. and five measures of grain which represents less than 3% of total revenue.91 This probably understates the amount of damage since a number of Norman bailliages were not present on the 1195 roll. However these missing bailliages were of no great fiscal significance and even if one makes the dubious assumption that the amount of war damage in these bailliages was double that elsewhere, then total war damage would still not account for more than 4% of revenue.92 On the 1198 Norman pipe roll war damage to ducal resources was valued at 100 l.a. (about 1% of total revenue).93 In addition over 580 l.a. worth of wine was granted to the archbishop of Rouen in compensation for damage done to his lands.94 The physical damage wrought to ducal resources in Normandy in the 1190s was limited and we have no reason to suppose that the damage done to private aristocratic resources was generally proportionally greater than that inflicted on the duke’s lands. As we have seen, war damage could disproportionately affect particular individuals and some of the resources of the marcher lords might well have been badly damaged. But the resources of the vast bulk of the aristocracy and the urban elite of the duchy were not damaged by war between 1194 and 1198. Most military expenditure found on the Norman pipe rolls in the 1190s was not payments for troops, but revenue spent upon capital building projects. In 1195 expenditure on castle construction came to roughly 5000 l.a. Most of this concerned the north-eastern frontier of the duchy; with work on fortifications spend elsewhere costing well under 100 l.a. Of the approximately 3900 l.a. which was spent in the north-eastern frontier, roughly 900 l.a. can be dated to 1193–4.95 In 1194–5 most of the spending was on the castles of Pont de l’Arche, Lyons-la-Forêt and Radepont.96 In addition another 388 l.a. was spent on the castles at Orival and Moulineaux.97 Elsewhere on the frontier 419 l.a. was expended over two years on castle work at Bonmoulins.98 At Bellencombre 300 l.a. was spent on castle construction or repair work.99 On the 1198 roll, castle expenditure had increased roughly twelvefold compared to that of 1194–5. Expenditure on castle repair and construction amounted to approxi-

90 MRSN i, 136, 233, 236–8, 240, 270; ii, 300–3, 307, 330, 334, 348, 350, 354, 361, 400, 410, 414, 417,

429, 444, 447, 455–7, 463, 482–5, 491, 493. 91 MRSN i, 155, 156, 235, 237. 92 Moss, ‘Exchequer Rolls of King John’, 110–11; Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 51–5; V. Moss,

‘Normandy and the Angevin Empire: a Study of the Norman Exchequer Rolls’, unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Cardiff 1997, 36–59. 93 MRSN ii, 292–3, 311, 482. 94 Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 44. 95 MRSN i, 134, 136,137. 96 MRSN i, 136–8, 156, 236, 237. 97 MRSN i, 136, 138. 98 MRSN i, 245, 246. 99 MRSN i, 137, 236.

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mately 58,000 l.a. The great bulk of this (almost 46,000 l.a.) was spent over two years on the construction of Château-Gaillard.100 This was backed up by spending at the related fortresses of Cléry and Boutavant worth over 900 l.a.101 New fortified castle residences for the king at Portejoie, Vatteville, Hauville, Moulineaux and Orival were constructed between 1195 and 1198 costing roughly 1500 l.a.102 The very scale of the spending at Château-Gaillard has tended to draw attention away from other expenditure in 1197–8. Over two years the massive sum of 5121 l.a. was spent on the repair of the walls of the town of Eu, a total greater than the entire 1194–5 expenditure on fortifications.103 At Gamaches (1600 l.a.) and Longchamp (480 l.a.), new advanced frontier castle outposts were constructed.104 At Radepont 250 l.a. was spent on the castle and a further 34 l.a. spent at Lyons-la-Forêt.105 Extensive spending also took place farther south-west on the frontier at Verneuil (701 l.a.), Courteilles (550 l.a. mainly in 1195–6) and Tillières-sur-Avre (400 l.a.).106 Additional spending consisted of 140 l.a. at Evreux, 50 l.a. at Argueil, and almost 100 l.a. on other castles, mostly in central Normandy.107

The Economic Impact of War The roughly 46,000 l.a. invested in the construction of Château-Gaillard alone must have been a huge stimulus to the economy. This money was expended on the wages of woodmen, carpenters, water carriers, hodmen, smiths, boltmakers, diggers, quarrymen, stone cutters, and lime workers, as well as on raw materials (stone, timber, metals, etc.) and transportation costs.108 The Château-Gaillard account on the Norman pipe roll of 1197–8 does not conform to modern categories of financial analysis and it is best to follow the approach of Professor Philippe Contamine and convert the account as a whole into days of labour.109 If we assume workers were paid 4d l.a. per day, then the construction of the castle and related fortresses would have, assuming 600 working days over two years, employed approximately 4660 workers.110 Besides providing employment, the wages of these workers must have created a massive demand for food, clothes and drink. This in turn would have stimulated production and employment in a multiplier effect. The end result was simply the construction of a new town whose population and resources, such as mills, ponds and 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

MRSN ii, 309–11. MRSN ii, 310. MRSN ii, 301, 311, 459–60, 483–5. MRSN ii, 385–6. MRSN ii, 300, 307, 310, 350. 600 l.a. of the Gamaches spending on fortifications dates from 1195–6. MRSN ii, 303, 447, 484, 494. MRSN ii, 300, 314–15. MRSN ii, 289, 301, 302, 315, 396, 421. MRSN ii, 309–11. P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1984, 110. Regrettably Professor Contamine’s figures are in error since his totals for expenditure on miners, porters and guards and their labours has not been converted from livres angevines to sterling, with the result that his total exceeds that actually spent on the castle by some £9000. His purpose in converting the account to sterling was to calculate the wages of labourers from that spent on English soldiers (ibid., 94). However Norman foot soldiers were not always paid the same as English ones and it is not tenable to believe labourers were paid such high sums. 110 This excludes saints’ days and Sundays, though whether they were worked during the interdict is completely unknown.

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markets, could have been utilised to provide revenue in the future. The 5000 l.a. spent on the construction of the walls of Eu must also have meant employment and the same can be said for the other 6000 l.a. spent on castle repair and construction.111 Such employment obviously drew many people into the towns from the countryside which generated increased prosperity. Sometimes public works, such as castle repair, were directly provided for paupers as at Caen in 1196–7.112 Outside Rouen the war created something like a shanty town known as the Seine Valley which was transformed from a group of farmers in 1179–80 to an area capable in 1197–8 of raising more in tallage than the bailliage of Ambrières.113 By 1200 this area was important enough to be classified a separate bailliage.114 In 1207 Philip Augustus in his charter for Rouen distinguished between those who lived inside and outside the walls of the city which again indicates the significance of the Seine Valley.115 Most wage expenditure was spent on payments to private individuals and these would not be recorded in the pipe rolls. Even so, we learn that sales of ducal wine and grain at Château-Gaillard were worth 227 l.a.116 War stimulated trade in other ways. In 1194–5 sales of salt, hides and wool at Dieppe, Verneuil and in the rest of the duchy were worth 1700 l.a.117 A grain market to supply Richard’s soldiers in the south was opened with the farmland of the Caennais exporting wheat, oats and barley to the army.118 Nearly 5500 l.a. worth of traditional ducal and recently escheated forest was sold.119 For the forest farm of Montfichet (the one area where we have detailed figures) Richard received the extraordinarily large sum of 1100 l.a. – roughly sixteen times its yearly revenue of 65 l.a. This sale price suggests a thriving land market.120 Then there was the production of the materials of war, staves, cable, war machines, armour, crossbow bolts, horses, boats and supplies for castles worth almost 2000 l.a., mainly constructed at Rouen, but sometimes at Caen.121 Plunder valued at 3000 l.a. also added to revenue and later to expenditure.122 Finally the money paid to knights and soldiers (over 11,500 l.a.) must have, to a great extent, been spent in the duchy and this too would have stimulated demand. Foreign mercenaries attacking your town were a bad thing; foreign mercenaries stationed on the frontier, but coming to spend their wages in your city were a positive economic asset. The presence of great Anglo-Norman magnates in the duchy meant even more spending.123 From just the

111 Only the remainder of the farm of the castle of Eu survived on the 1197–8 roll so the records probably understate the impact of this spending: MRSN ii, 385–6, 444. 112 MRSN ii, 350. 113 MRSN i, 92; ii, 308. 114 H. Legras, ‘Un fragment du rôle normand inédit de Jean Sans Terre’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 29, 1913 (1914), 27–8. 115 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 188. 116 MRSN ii, 309. 117 MRSN i, 235, 237. 118 MRSN i, 170–1, 185. 119 MRSN i, 138, 145, 146, 212, 260; ii, 294, 305, 371, 390, 392, 418, 459–61, 475. 120 It is possible that Richard’s forest sales could have actually, if unintentionally, helped the economy to cope with new demand. They often consisted of assarts or already cleared land and if those of 1192–3 and 1193–4 were of this type, then there is no reason why these acres should not have been producing grain in 1197–8. 121 MRSN i, 132, 134, 135, 136, 138, 154, 155, 156, 185, 210; ii, 301–6, 308, 355, 367–8, 371–3, 413–14, 420, 449–50, 457, 460, 462–4, 484, 493. 122 MRSN ii, 309, 311. 123 Gillingham, Richard I, 342.

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returns of the 1195 and 1198 Norman pipe rolls, the war poured over 75,000 l.a. into the economy compared to peacetime spending of about 5000 l.a. per annum.124

Angevin Revenue Superiority High taxation and loyalty could be combined because the war was good for business. It also meant that in 1197–8 the revenue of the Angevin Empire was greater than that of Capetian France. There are numerous ways to calculate pipe roll fiscal totals, some of which have a validity in a different context.125 My own approach is to assume as little as possible. One has to use the Capetian account of 1202 for comparative purposes for the 1190s, even though revenue totals must have been different in this time. What is less legitimate is to apply to the 1190s the detailed breakdown of Capetian revenue in 1202. Nicholas Barratt has excluded withdrawals from his totals whereas I have included some withdrawals from the chamber that are found in composite accounts whose source is the fiscal returns of Norman bailliages that otherwise (for entirely accidental reasons) do not survive.126 I have utilised the highest assessment of Capetian revenue that excludes the bulk of the surpluses held on the March (to include them would effectively count the same revenue twice), i.e. Baldwin’s total of 141,589 l.p. which includes the sum of 26,453 l.p. for the prisée des sergents.127 We are certain that so-called extraordinary forms of revenue were regularly collected in Angevin Normandy in the 1190s, but it is only probable that such forms of revenue were regularly collected in Capetian France.128 On the whole the figures calculated from this approach are marginally skewed in favour of the Capetians and this provides compensation for the fact that in calculating Angevin revenue, notice will be taken of those areas of this domain where no surviving fiscal accounts survive. From the Capetian sum of 141,589 l.p. I have deducted payments made for the livelihood of royal officials, fief-rents and pensions. Payments to ecclesiastical institutions in the form of tithes, alms, etc., as well as grants to hospitals for lepers will also be treated as fixed deductions and therefore subtracted from the total.129 Utilising Lot and Fawtier’s calculations this produces deductions of roughly 4600 l.p., leaving a figure for Capetian expendable income of just under 137,000 l.p. or about 200,000 l.a.130 Fixed deductions and grants from farms in Normandy in 1198 were worth approximately 7000 l.a. leaving an expendable income total of roughly 92,000 l.a. In England in 1198 expendable income worked out at roughly 92,000 l.a.131 Recorded

124 MRSN i, 1–106. 125 The best discussion is that of N. Barratt, ‘The Revenues of John and Philip Revisited’, in Church, ed.,

King John: New Interpretations, 75–99. Unfortunately the lack of records from the 1190s means that we cannot calculate ‘war revenue’. Most Angevin spending concerned castles rather than troops and we do not have a way of measuring the relative costs in labour and raw materials of castle building in Capetian France and Normandy. 126 Barratt, ‘The Revenues of John and Philip Revisited’, 75–99. 127 Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 153, n. 502. l.p. are livres parisis. 128 Ibid., 171–3; Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 46–56. 129 F. Lot and R. Fawtier, eds, Le premier budget de la monarchie française: Le Compte général de 1202–03, Paris 1932, clxxiii, clxxiv, clxxx. 130 Lot and Fawtier, Budget, 83, 111, 128, 129. 131 Barratt, ‘The Revenues of John and Philip Revisited’, 96.

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expendable income from England and Normandy therefore worked out at 184,000 l.a., just 16,000 l.a. short of the Capetian total. Irish expendable income has been estimated at 6000 l.a. which leaves a 10,000 l.a. gap.132 I remain broadly sceptical of claims for large sums of expendable revenue from greater Anjou and Aquitaine, but not to the extent of suggesting that they could not raise between them, in a time when the war was often being fought in these principalities, a total over 10,000 l.a. (a figure amounting to only about 11% of the expendable income of Normandy in 1198). In so far as one can be sure of anything in the realm of medieval revenue calculation, the Angevin Empire had by 1197–8 at least a moderate fiscal advantage over the Capetian monarchy in terms of expendable income. The mechanisms of Angevin recovery in Normandy generated their own potential problems. While highly successful, the Norman system of finance in the 1190s was new. It depended upon consent. Taking the duke’s own resources and other forms of revenue that were established at the latest by the time of Henry I, roughly 80% of Norman revenue in 1179–80 was so customary that even if Henry II had been the worst medieval tyrant in history it is difficult to see on what grounds people could have refused to pay.133 By contrast the granting away of much of the revenue of the farms and the sale of forest lands meant that by 1197–8 at most 20% of the revenue of Normandy was guaranteed to any duke.134 The net effect of the fiscal changes of the 1190s was to make the duke more dependent on consent to taxation and therefore to accentuate the importance of kingship. The economic impact of the war upon England was different from its effects in Normandy. In Normandy large sums of the king’s money such as that for the king’s ransom left the duchy, but large sums came in from England.135 But in England nearly all royal income went out of the country. As Jim Bolton has suggested, this drain of money must have had deflationary effects.136 With the exception of the development of Portsmouth, there is little evidence to suggest that the war created much employment in England.137 The contrast in the 1190s between people in London being too poor to pay tax and the war in Caen providing jobs for the paupers is a telling comparison.138 Even with its possibly mildly deflationary effects, Angevin taxation in the 1190s, compared to that of King John post 1207, was extremely limited.139 There was no tax revolt waiting to happen in England due to Richard’s fiscal extractions. Nonetheless the economic impact of war on England might explain the more cautious appreciation of Richard’s reign by many English chroniclers and in particular the abbot of Coggeshall’s desire for peace in 1200.140 All of the changes in Normandy in the 1190s were stimulated by the threat of Capetian France which, due to territorial expansion and administrative reform, had

132 133 134 135 136

Gillingham, Angevin Empire, 97. Moss, ‘Normandy and England in 1180’, 194. Moss, ‘Norman Fiscal Revolution’, 41–5, 50–6. MRSN i, 136; ii, 302. J. Bolton, ‘The English Economy in the Thirteenth Century’, in Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations, 28–40. 137 Gillingham, Richard I, 273–4. 138 MRSN ii, 350; Turner and Heiser, Richard Lionheart, 158. 139 N. Barratt, ‘The Revenues of King John’, EHR 111, 1996, 835–55. 140 D. Carpenter, ‘Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall’s Account of the Last Year of King Richard and the First Years of King John’, EHR 113, 1998, 1210–27.

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become a formidable foe.141 In the 1190s it for the first time raised revenue at least approaching that of the Angevin Empire.142 It is possible that some loose cultural hegemony had been established by the Capetian monarchy and the ties of homage that bound to it parts of the Angevin Empire gave plenty of diplomatic scope to an active, powerful ruler.143 Despite the sterling efforts of Henry II in the early 1170s, the existence of the Angevin Empire was under greater threat post 1190. But none of these factors made the fall of the Angevin Empire in 1203–4 inevitable. If the reel of history could be replayed we would find too many matters of contingency to be even reasonably certain. To take just one example, Philip Augustus might have been captured in the 1190s at Fréteval or Gisors. None of this is to reduce the history of the late Angevin Empire to chance. There was a change in the balance of forces in the 1190s with the rise of Capetian France, but it was not of such a degree as to make the fall of Normandy inevitable in 1203–4. The changes in the Norman system of finance, the new power of the Capetian monarchy and the broadly negative economic effect of warfare on England did mean that if the Angevin Empire was to survive, Richard had to be succeeded by a competent king. Maybe after a long and bitter struggle even a king with the lesser failings of a Henry III would have lost the duchy, but a leader with the skills of a Henry I or Edward I would almost certainly have held their own against Philip Augustus. But Richard was succeeded by John. In three short years a still reasonable inheritance (even if not quite as good as that of 1189) was transformed into a Capetian victory where much of Normandy surrendered in weeks.144 It is difficult to believe that John bore no decisive responsibility for this rout.

141 142 143 144

Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, 80–2, 137–76. Ibid., 77–191. Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 297–303. Moss, ‘Exchequer Rolls of King John’, 107–8; Power, ‘King John and the Norman Aristocracy’, 117–36; Gillingham, Angevin Empire, 100–2.

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Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie orientale

CHATEAU-GAILLARD DANS LA DEFENSE DE LA NORMANDIE ORIENTALE (1196–1204) Dominique Pitte Dans le conflit qui oppose Plantagenêts et Capétiens et qui a pour cadre la Normandie, la Seine est devenue, à partir de 1195, un secteur d’enjeux militaires primordiaux. Château-Gaillard va jouer, dans ce combat pour la maîtrise du fleuve, un rôle particulier. La décision de barrer le fleuve au niveau d’Andeli, prise par le souverain anglais, est le résultat d’une succession d’évènements, que nous évoquerons brièvement. Le 20 juillet 1189, Richard devient à Rouen duc de Normandie; il succède à Henri II, qui lui a également légué la couronne d’Angleterre. Des affaires extérieures éloignent rapidement le nouveau roi de ses possessions: il part en effet l’année suivante en Terre Sainte. En 1191, il se trouve en compagnie de Philippe Auguste devant Saint-Jean-d’Acre, qui capitule le 12 juillet. Le souverain français décide alors de rentrer à Paris, laissant Richard poursuivre seul une lutte dont l’objectif est la libération de Jérusalem. Revenu en France, Philippe s’attaque à la Normandie. Son entreprise est favorisée par la rivalité qui oppose Jean sans Terre à son frère et la captivité de Richard, fait prisonnier lors de son retour de croisade et retenu par l’empereur d’Allemagne jusqu’en février 1194. Au début de l’année 1193, il entre dans le duché à la tête d’une armée, s’empare d’Evreux, du Neubourg et du Vaudreuil (Fig. 1); il reconquiert le Vexin normand, soumet Neaufles, et Gisors en avril, mais se heurte le mois suivant à la résistance des Rouennais.1 A la fin de sa captivité, Richard est confronté à une situation militaire délicate, qu’il entreprend aussitôt de rétablir. Il entame une reconquête, desserre l’étau autour de Verneuil-sur-Avre, puis se porte en direction d’Evreux. Le traité de paix élaboré en décembre 1195 et confirmé à Gaillon au début de l’année suivante rend au souverain anglais Evreux et le Vaudreuil, dont les fortifications ont été au préalable ravagées par Philippe Auguste; le document entérine cependant la cession au roi de France d’importantes places fortes à la frontière orientale de la Normandie.2 La ligne de défense établie de longue date le long de l’Epte par les Normands reste rompue en plusieurs points: au nord, la forteresse de Neufmarché, qui contrôle depuis plus d’un siècle un point de passage de la rivière, a été confiée par Philippe Auguste à Guillaume de Gallande en 1195. Plus au sud, Gisors et Neaufles, auxquels vient 1 Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti, publiée par H. F. Delaborde, Œuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe Auguste, tome 1: Chroniques de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris 1882, cc. 89–94. 2 ‘Quitamus regi Franciae . . . Novum mercatum, Vernonem, Gallionem, Paciacum, Ivriacum, Nonencortem, cum castellariis eorum.’ Cartulaire normand de Philippe-Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint Louis et Philippe-le-Hardi, publié par L. Delisle, Caen 1882, no 1057.

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Fig. 1 Localisation des sites mentionnés dans cet article et celui de Vincent Moss (cartographie: Dominique Pitte; réalisation: Claire Beurion)

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Fig. 2 Le site de Château-Gaillard, aujourd’hui s’ajouter Dangu, sont sous le contrôle des Français et constituent une formidable base menaçant le duché. A peu de distance de là, Château-sur-Epte est passé sous le contrôle du roi de France depuis son incursion en Normandie en 1193. Au niveau de la Seine, la ville de Vernon a été remise en 1196 à Philippe Auguste. C’est une place forte de premier ordre, dotée d’un puissant château et entourée d’une enceinte. C’est surtout un point de passage du fleuve, avec un des rares ponts en pierre de l’époque.3 Nonancourt a changé plusieurs fois de mains avant d’être repris par Philippe Auguste, qui garde la maîtrise du cours supérieur de l’Eure, grâce aux forteresses d’Ivry et de Pacy. Entre cette rivière et la Seine, le château de Gaillon est situé à la pointe des positions françaises.4 Bien qu’il soit dans une phase dynamique, le roi d’Angleterre se doit de consolider ses positions. Le rôle de l’Echiquier de Normandie pour l’année 11985 donne une assez bonne vision des actions entreprises dans ce but, et qui sont de trois ordres: renforcement de forteresses existantes, aide financière à des seigneurs alliés pour qu’ils confortent leur position et construction d’ouvrages neufs. En arrière de l’Epte, deux lignes successives de défense se dessinent. La première, sensiblement parallèle à la rivière, passe par Longchamps et Gamaches. Le roi d’Angleterre a repris le contrôle des deux forteresses depuis le traité, comme le 3

Un article du traité de 1196 stipule que Richard de Vernon et son fils recevront une rente annuelle de 800 livres, pro castello Vernonis. 4 L’importance de cette place, que Richard disputera en vain au roi de France, nous semble avoir été sous-estimée. 5 Magnus Rotulus Scaccarii Normanniae anno Domini M. C. XCVIII, publié par M. M. Léchaudé d’Anisy et Charma, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. XVI, Paris 1852.

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confirme le rôle de 1198, qui stipule que le château de Longchamps et ses dépendances ont été ‘récupérés’. Le même document signale que 1700 livres sont consacrées ad operationes castri de Gamasches; cette somme importante s’explique par la position de la forteresse, qui fait face à Gisors, Neaufles et Dangu. Gamaches est de plus situé à égale distance de deux axes de circulation très anciens, qui convergent vers Rouen et traversent l’Andelle au niveau de Radepont.6 Au nord de Longchamps, Beauvoir constitue un poste d’observation unique. D’Argueil à Radepont, en passant par Lyons, plusieurs fortifications forment un second rideau défensif, de part et d’autre de l’Andelle.7 De l’autre côté de la Seine, le cours de l’Avre, est encore solidement défendu: 200 livres sont destinées au renforcement du château de Tillières, tandis que dans Verneuil, dont les murs ont été relevés, réside une importante garnison soldée. Sur l’Iton, la forteresse de Damville est renforcée par une barbacane en pierre.8 Les défenses d’Evreux, mises à mal par le roi de France, sont reconstruites et l’on trouve, dans le compte de 1198, mention de 190 livres utilisées à la réfection des fossés et des murs de la ville. Les forteresses de Conches et d’Acquigny renforcent le dispositif.9 La situation est dans ce secteur plus favorable qu’en 1194, année où Jean sans Terre avait abandonné à Philippe Auguste une partie de la région jusqu’au château de Chennebrun.10 Près de la jonction de la Seine et de l’Eure, la forteresse du Vaudreuil commande un secteur éminemment stratégique, qui a été le cadre de combats acharnés. Philippe Auguste rase le château avant de se retirer en 1194. L’ouvrage est immédiatement remis en état; les rôles de l’Echiquier pour les années 119511 et 1198 rendent compte de sommes considérables consacrées à ces travaux et à la solde de l’importante garnison présente sur le site. Un intérêt particulier est porté à la question du franchissement du fleuve et de la rivière, qui conditionne la manœuvre des troupes. C’est ainsi que 35 livres sont consacrées en 1198 à la réparation du pont de Léry, sur l’Eure. A Portejoie, un ouvrage fortifié, sur la Seine, vient s’ajouter à plusieurs bacs, qui étaient l’objet d’une garde permanente:12 sa construction et celle, en 1196, d’un château (celsam cum menibus arcem), en dépit des engagements de Richard,

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Le contrôle de ces axes devait être assuré directement par des fortifications comme Etrépagny. Les châteaux de Lyons et de Radepont sont souvent associés dans les comptes et font l’objet de travaux constants depuis 1195. L’origine du château de Radepont, dont l’édification est souvent attribuée à Richard Cœur de Lion, mériterait d’être confirmée. Près de la jonction de l’Andelle et de la Seine, se trouvait le château de Pont-Saint-Pierre, qui ne semble pas avoir joué un grand rôle à cette époque. 8 In operatione barbekenne de Damvill faciende de petra. Cette mention du matériau de construction est tout à fait intéressante: nous sommes en effet à une époque où la pierre se substitue au bois dans les fortifications, et nous retrouverons à plusieurs reprises cette précision attachée à des travaux exécutés dans des forteresses anciennes; citons également la réédification de la clôture de la basse-cour du château de Courteilles, à proximité de Verneuil (pro claudendo ballio de Corteilles de petra). 9 Conches et Acquigny dépendent des Tosny, alliés à Richard. 10 Delisle, Cartulaire normand, no 1055. Traité entre Jean, comte de Mortain et Philippe Auguste, Paris, Janvier 1194: ‘rex Francie debet habere . . . totam illam partem Normanniae qui est citra fluvium qui dicitur Itun, sicut idem fluvius currit, usque ad Chesnebrun, cum ipso Chesnebrun et pertinentiis suis; et castellum Vernolii, cum pertinentiis suis; et civitatem Ebroicensem, cum pertinenntiis suis, cum aliis castellis et munitionibus et terris citra Itum’. 11 Magnus Rotulus Scaccarii Normanniae de anno ab incarnatione Domini M. C. XCV., dans Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. XV, Paris 1846. 12 ‘In liberatione eorum qui custodiebant et ducebant 4er bacos apud Portu Gaudii priusquam pons factus esset.’ D’autres bacs sont signalés à peu de distance en aval, à Elbeuf et Oissel.

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provoquent l’indignation de Guillaume le Breton.13 Pont-de-l’Arche, enfin, constitue de longue date un point de franchissement du fleuve, sur lequel le souverain anglais a renforcé son contrôle.14 Richard Cœur de Lion a stabilisé ses positions et bloqué en de nombreux points les possibilités de progression du souverain français. Le problème de la maîtrise de la Seine reste cependant entier. Le texte du traité de 1195 stipule que le site d’Andeli ne pourra être fortifié (Andeliacum non poterit inforciari). Le manoir d’Andeli, pour reprendre la terminologie de l’époque, appartenait en effet à l’archevêque de Rouen; il était de ce fait considéré comme une zone neutre sur le plan militaire. C’est le roi de France qui profite le plus de cette disposition, les possibilités de défense directe du fleuve se trouvant, pour Richard, reportées très en aval, après la cession de Vernon. Situé au sommet d’un méandre de la Seine, dominé par de hautes falaises, Andeli est un lieu fortifiable, à peu de distance de la nouvelle frontière, qui passait, selon les termes du traité, entre le Vaudreuil et Gaillon.15 Le site devient rapidement un enjeu stratégique (Fig. 2). Conscient de l’intérêt de la place, Richard l’investit l’année même de la confirmation du traité. Il provoque ce faisant la colère de l’archevêque de Rouen, qui écrit à Raoul de Dicet, doyen de Saint-Paul de Londres, que Richard ‘s’est emparé de la majeure partie de son domaine’, qu’il a commencé à fortifier.16 N’ayant pu faire renoncer le roi à son coup de force, le prélat en appelle au pape Célestin III, devant lequel les parties comparaissent. Aux plaintes de Gautier, les députés de Richard répondent que c’est la volonté de défendre ses états qui a poussé Richard à fortifier l’île d’Andeli, parce que c’était un passage par où les Français avaient coutume d’entrer en Normandie.17 Le pape reconnaît qu’un roi a le droit de renforcer ses frontières contre les attaques de ses voisins, et autorise l’archevêque à échanger son domaine. C’est sur l’île d’Andeli que débutent les travaux de fortification (Fig. 3). Une enceinte de pierre, englobant un logis et peut-être une tour, y est érigée. Ce fort contrôle un pont: sur la rive droite, la tête de l’ouvrage est protégée par une petite agglomération créée de toutes pièces et entourée d’une enceinte défendue par des tours et précédée par un fossé (Cultura);18 l’espace qui la sépare du bourg d’Andeli est inondé (stagnum). Edifié au sommet de la falaise, le Château de la Roche (castrum de Roka), que les chroniqueurs qualifient bientôt de ‘Gaillard’, domine l’ensemble du dispositif. Au

13 Philippide (V, 70 et 75–6), publiée par H. F. Delaborde, Œuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe Auguste, tome 2: Philippide de Guillaume le Breton, Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris 1885. Le château de Portejoie semble avoir eu un rôle militaire et résidentiel, puisque l’évêque de Lincoln y séjourne à l’invitation de Richard en août 1198. L. Landon, The Itinerary of King Richard I, London 1935, 133. 14 Le 18 janvier 1195, Richard donne Conteville aux moines de Jumièges, en échange de Pontde-l’Arche. Delisle, Cartulaire normand, 39–40. 15 ‘Inter forteliciam Gallionis et forteliciam Vallis Rodollii in media via.’ Delisle, Cartulaire normand, no 1057. 16 ‘Maximam partem dominici nostri post Insulam nostram occupans, illud fossatis et barbacanis munire contendit’, Diceto ii, 149. 17 ‘Locum illum munierat ad defensionem terrae suae contra regem Franciae’, Howden, Chronica iv, 18. 18 La Culture occupe peut-être l’emplacement du port d’Andeli (portus andeleium) dont l’existence est révélée par plusieurs textes du XIIe siècle.

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pied de la forteresse, une triple rangée de pieux (palicium triplex) interdit toute navigation vers Rouen. La motte de Cléry19 et le fort de Boutavant servent d’avant-postes à ce dispositif. L’île située au niveau de Tosny porte encore la base d’une tour carrée qui correspond peut-être au fort de Boutavant. Guillaume le Breton explique que ce nom se référait à la volonté du souverain anglais de repousser (‘bouter en avant’) les Français afin de récupérer les territoires qu’il avait perdus.20 Sur la rive gauche du fleuve, la résidence de Roger de Tosny est fortifiée: cent livres prêtées par Richard sont consacrées à ces travaux.21 D’autres ouvrages, bretèches, hérissons, viennent compléter la défense de ce secteur, qui constitue l’un des points forts du complexe mis en place. La militarisation du site d’Andeli se fait sous la surveillance des Français, qui occupent des positions proches. En réponse à ces travaux, Philippe Auguste édifie à quelque distance en amont un bastion sur le fleuve, qu’il nomme, nous apprend Roger de Howden, le ‘Goulet’. Du côté anglais, les travaux sont menés avec une étonnante rapidité: rappelons que le ‘nouveau château de la Roche’ est cité dans la documentation dès 1197,22 soit un an après la prise en main du site d’Andeli. La mention, l’année suivante, de plâtre à recouvrir les cheminées et les sols dans le compte de construction de la forteresse, montre qu’à cette époque les travaux au sommet de la falaise sont très avancés.23 Nul doute que le souverain anglais ait supervisé lui-même les travaux: les chartes qu’il accorde en 1197–1198 indiquent qu’il ne s’est guère éloigné durant cette période de la vallée de la Seine. Le dispositif mis en place par Richard possède cependant deux points faibles: tout d’abord le plateau, qui domine le site au sud-est et qui se développe du côté français. Ce promontoire étant susceptible de servir de base à une attaque, Richard a voulu répondre à la menace en édifiant le Château de la Roche, qui fait en quelque sorte office de verrou. Ses défenses sont intégralement tournées vers le danger potentiel. Un premier mur, épais de deux mètres, relie la forteresse à la Culture. Une seconde muraille, percée d’une porte fortifiée, barre l’espace compris entre le pied de la falaise et la Seine et se prolonge par l’estacade. Ils forment à eux deux une sorte de sas protecteur en avant de la Culture (Fig. 4). La forteresse est organisée de façon à répondre à un seul scénario d’attaque, lancée

19 A Cléry, une motte entourée d’eau est généralement considérée comme le site fortifié par Richard, sur

la principale route menant à Andeli. La modestie de la place ne permet cependant pas de penser qu’elle ait pu avoir un rôle autre que de poste de surveillance. 20 ‘Edificavit aliam munitionem super ripam Sequanae quam vocavit Boutavant, quod sonat pulsu in anteriora, quasi diceret: Ad recuperandam terram meam in anteriora me extendo’ (Chronique, c. 111). Raoul de Coggeshall précise que Boutavant, tout comme l’île d’andeli, faisait partie de l’ancienne propriété de l’archevêque de Rouen (insula Andeli et Butavant, quae sunt in praedicta terra archiepiscopi), Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, XVIII, Paris 1822, p. 87 d; Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS 1875, 100. 21 ‘Rogerus de Toeneio 100 l. quas rex comodavit ei ad firmandum domum suam de Toeneio.’ 22 La charte d’échange avec l’archevêque, paraphée à Rouen le 16 octobre, mentionne le manoir d’Andeli ‘cum novo castello de Rupe’, Diceto ii, 155. 23 Les investigations archéologiques menées récemment sur le site ont livré des éléments confirmant cette rapidité d’exécution. En plusieurs points de la forteresse, le temps de séchage des maçonneries n’a pas été respecté, et l’on a pu constater à plusieurs reprises que la base des courtines s’était affaissée et avait été déformée sous le poids de la muraille trop vite élevée.

Fig. 3 Le complexe fortifié d’Andeli. Localisation des ouvrages mis en place par Richard Cœur de Lion

Fig. 4 Ce document, élaboré à partir de plans anciens, de données issues de fouilles archéologiques et des vestiges en élévation, montre l’articulation de Château-Gaillard par rapport aux ouvrages situés au niveau du fleuve. Les défenses de la forteresse sont tournées au sud-est vers le plateau qui domine le site. Les fossés protégeant le château ont été figurés en gris : ils se rattachent à une valleuse descendant vers la Seine, qui a servi aux Français pour s’approcher des murailles lors du siège de 1204 (dessin P. Caldéroni et D. Pitte)

Fig. 5 Essai de restitution du plan initial de Château-Gaillard. Les flèches correspondent au cheminement menant au donjon, à partir du Petit-Andely (dessin D. Pitte)

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à partir du plateau; elle semble de conception passive, conçue en une suite de retranchements, de l’ouvrage avancé, jusqu’à la tour-maîtresse (Fig. 5).24 La forme de la presqu’île de Bernières pose également des problèmes d’ordre stratégique. Cet isthme largement ouvert à la base favorise en effet une approche terrestre, à partir de Gaillon notamment. Il ne semble pas que Richard ait pris le soin ou ait eu la possibilité de pallier à cet inconvénient.25 Le roi de France ne s’attaquera pas au château du vivant de son concepteur. Au contraire, c’est à partir de ses positions confortées que Richard va poursuivre sa reconquête, avec pour objectif premier le Vexin. Les châteaux de Sérifontaine et de Dangu sont repris lors d’une campagne militaire lancée à l’automne 1198, et servent de bases à une incursion en Île-de-France. Les places de Courcelles et de Boury tombent, permettant un encerclement de Gisors. Quand Philippe se porte au secours du Vexin, Richard le surprend et l’oblige à se replier.26 Malgré le revers qui lui a été infligé, Philippe a atteint Gisors avec assez d’hommes d’armes pour résister à un assaut. Une trève est conclue, laissant le Vexin normand, à l’exception de Gisors, au roi d’Angleterre. La mort de Richard, le 6 avril 1199 devant Châlus, va mettre un point final au processus de reconquête. Dans le traité du Goulet signé en mai 1200, Philippe Auguste reconnaît Jean sans Terre comme successseur de Richard. Mais le rapport de force n’est plus le même: Philippe a profité de la mort de son rival pour s’emparer d’Evreux, d’Avrilly et d’Acquigny. S’appuyant en 1202 sur un refus de Jean de se rendre à une convocation, la cour de France juge que le roi d’Angleterre doit être privé des terres qu’il tient du roi de France. Philippe rassemble sans tarder une armée avec laquelle il investit Boutavant, qu’il démantèle. Il engage également une action contre les châteaux de la rive droite de la Seine, s’empare d’Argueil, Longchamps, Mortemer, la Ferté-SaintSamson et Lyons, tandis que Gournay tombe en juillet. Ces places fortes sont aussitôt réarmées, comme en témoigne le compte général des recettes et dépenses du roi de France pour 1202–3.27 Guillaume le Breton nous apprend que des modifications sont apportées au Château-Gaillard dans les premières années du XIIIe siècle. C’est à Jean, notamment, qu’il attribue la construction d’une chapelle, dans la partie sud de la basse-cour: il s’agit d’un bâtiment important, dont le sommet, précise le chroniqueur, dépasse celui de la courtine. La construction comportait deux niveaux, vraisemblablement éclairés par des rangées de fenêtres qui existent encore aujourd’hui.28 Les baies inférieures, 24 Nous avons développé ce point dans Château-Gaillard, découverte d’un patrimoine, Musée de

Vernon, 1995. On pourra voir dans la structure même du château, une source de faiblesse: le récit de Guillaume le Breton montre que les défenseurs n’eurent d’autre choix que d’effectuer deux retraits successifs jusqu’au donjon. Cette conception reflète plus le XIIe siècle qui s’achève, qu’elle ne préfigure l’ère qui s’ouvre: le donjon de Château-Gaillard ne nous offre-t-il pas une image encore proche de la motte? 25 Nous sommes dans une situation comparable à celle de Rouen, au sommet d’un méandre de la Seine, dont la base est cette fois verrouillée par les châteaux de Moulineaux et d’Orival. Ces deux forteresses font l’objet, dans les dernières années du XIIe siècle, d’attentions particulières de la part des ducs de Normandie: leur rôle dans la défense de la capitale normande est évident. A Andeli l’existence d’une défense de la base de la presqu’île de Bernières n’a jamais été prouvée. 26 On connaît l’épisode célèbre au cours duquel le roi de France échappe à la noyade à la suite de la rupture d’un pont sur l’Epte. 27 F. Lot et R. Fawtier, Le premier budget de la monarchie française. Le compte général de 1202–1203, Paris 1932. 28 Il s’agit d’une structure classique de chapelle érigée au-dessus d’un cellier.

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ouvertes de façon imprudente à la base de la muraille, joueront un rôle déterminant dans la chute de la forteresse en 1204. Les circonstances de la disparition d’Arthur de Bretagne favorisent les entreprises de Philippe contre le duché; les opérations militaires menées en 1203–4 vont utiliser les faiblesses du dispositif mis en place au niveau d’Andeli. Le roi de France a concentré ses troupes sur la rive gauche de la Seine: le château de Conches ne tarde pas à tomber et la forteresse du Vaudreuil n’oppose pas de résistance.29 Philippe peut désormais s’en prendre à Château-Gaillard. Il lui faut avant tout neutraliser les ouvrages satellites: la presqu’île de Bernières est bientôt occupée, comme nous l’apprend Guillaume le Breton, qui précise que la partie du pont du château de l’île ralliant la rive gauche est rompue à l’approche de l’ennemi. Le premier objectif des Français est de retrouver la maîtrise du fleuve: une équipe de nageurs, munis de haches, créent une brèche dans l’estacade. Le château de l’Ile est détruit peu après, par ces même nageurs, porteurs d’engins incendiaires.30 La reddition du fortin est suivie par celle de la Culture, dont les habitants sont partis se réfugier au château. Soucieux de soumettre définitivement les alentours, le roi de France se porte, à la fin du mois d’août 1203, devant Radepont, qui capitule après plusieurs semaines de siège: le souverain a désormais la maîtrise complète des deux rives du fleuve dans ce secteur. De retour à Andeli en automne, il met en place le blocus de la forteresse, qu’il entoure d’un double fossé destiné à prévenir toute fuite des assiégés, et empêcher tout secours extérieur. Les Français auraient pu poursuivre leur progression vers Rouen. Délaissée par Jean sans Terre, dont on apprend le départ en Angleterre en décembre, la forteresse n’était plus en mesure de jouer un rôle quelconque. Cependant, la résistance de l’ouvrage de Richard pouvait devenir emblématique et contrarier les projets de Philippe: c’est donc un symbole autant qu’une place militaire que l’on attaque. Le blocus tardant à venir à bout du château, le roi de France se résout à l’action au début de l’année 1204. C’est à partir du plateau qu’il lance sa première attaque: abrités derrière un chemin couvert, les soldats commencent à combler le fossé qui les sépare de la grosse tour de l’ouvrage avancé; des engins de jet empêchent les assiégés de s’opposer de manière efficace à cette entreprise. Dès qu’ils sont en mesure d’atteindre le pied de la tour, les mineurs creusent la roche sur laquelle la tour est assise et provoquent son effondrement. Les assaillants s’engouffrent dans la brèche et s’emparent de l’ouvrage avancé que les défenseurs ont évacué.31 La victoire n’est que partielle, les Anglais tenant encore la forteresse elle-même. Les Français ont remarqué l’existence de fenêtres basses, sur le front ouest du monument. L’un d’eux remonte, à la tête d’une petite troupe, une valleuse que les constructeurs du château ont eu l’imprudence d’intégrer au système de fossés qui l’entoure. Arrivés au pied de la chapelle, les soldats parviennent à s’y introduire et l’incendient, provoquant la panique des défenseurs qui vont se réfugier dans le donjon.32

29 Les circonstances de la reddition du Vaudreuil ont été discutées par P. Goujon dans son Histoire de la châtellenie et haute justice du Vaudreuil I, Evreux 1863. 30 Rigord situe la prise du château de l’Île dans le même temps que celles de Conches et du Vaudreuil: ‘(Rex Francorum) Conchas cepit et insulam Andeliaci et Vallem Ruolii’, Rigord, Gesta, c. 140. 31 Dans ce premier acte, les Français ont profité de l’angle trop aigu de la barbacane, et du peu de saillant des tours T2 et T3, l’ensemble ne pouvant constituer un front solide. 32 La prise du château par les latrines, que l’on trouve encore aujourd’hui dans nombre de publications, est une légende née au XIXe siècle d’une mauvaise interprétation de la Philippide. On ne peut pas

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La partie centrale du château étant reliée à la basse-cour par un pont dormant taillé dans la roche, les assaillants n’ont aucun mal à attaquer la porte de la seconde enceinte, qui cède devant les efforts conjugués des mineurs et d’un engin de jet. Le donjon n’offrant que peu de possibilités de résistance, la reddition totale de la forteresse intervient le 6 mars 1204. La défense du duché s’organise désormais dans le secteur autour de points disséminés comme Verneuil, Arques et Rouen. Les Rouennais, commandés par Pierre de Préaux, finissent par accepter une trève, mais capitulent le 24 juin 1204, alors que tout espoir de secours s’est évanoui; les redditions d’Arques et de Verneuil parachèvent la victoire française. Pour évaluer le rôle de Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie, il convient de distinguer deux périodes: celle qui a précédé la mort de Richard, et le début du règne de Jean sans Terre. Les châteaux de la Roche et de l’Île sont construits sur un site auquel le souverain anglais ne semble pas avoir porté d’attention particulière, tant qu’il était couvert en amont par Vernon. C’est la situation créée par le traité de 1195 qui confère au manoir d’Andeli une valeur stratégique. Au niveau de la nouvelle frontière, la neutralité du site garantissait au roi de France un avantage certain quant au contrôle du fleuve; on comprend dès lors que le statut particulier de ce territoire n’ait pas été d’un grand poids dans ce contexte. L’édification de Château-Gaillard et des ouvrages périphériques répond à un objectif militaire ponctuel: barrer la Seine; cependant, le site n’est pas choisi par Richard, il s’impose à lui. Il offre des opportunités sur le plan militaire (falaise dominant le fleuve, île sur la Seine), mais sa topographie rend sa défense problématique. L’urgence qu’il y a à entraver la navigation fluviale pousse le souverain anglais à diligenter les travaux: ils sont menés à terme en l’espace de deux ans. Il est possible que cette hâte ait été à l’origine d’erreurs stratégiques: nous sommes en présence d’un dispositif plûtôt compliqué, dominé par une énorme forteresse, édifiée à un emplacement peu favorable. Le complexe fortifié d’Andeli s’intègre cependant logiquement au système mis en place par Richard, en constitue un maillon essentiel, et bénéficie d’une dynamique à l’avantage du roi d’Angleterre. Le terme de maillon est ici primordial, car lorsque la chaîne va se rompre dans les premières années du XIIIe siècle, avec la prise des forteresses voisines, les faiblesses du site vont bien vite apparaître. Au moment où le Vaudreuil est neutralisé, la presqu’île de Bernières, mal défendue et sous la menace directe de Gaillon, a fourni une base idéale d’attaque aux Français, qui n’ont guère tardé à reprendre le contrôle du fleuve, malgré quelques tentatives de contre-attaques menées à partir du château;33 le plateau a ensuite procuré un avantage à Philippe dans son assaut. Isolée et délaissée par Jean sans Terre, la forteresse ne pouvait résister plus qu’elle ne l’a fait. On pourra enfin se demander s’il y a une adéquation entre les travaux entrepris par Richard et les objectifs militaires visés. Les sommes consacrées à la fortification reprocher à Richard l’existence de fenêtres dans la courtine ouest du château, puisque la chapelle semble être l’œuvre de Jean sans Terre. Par contre, le rattachement aux fossés de cette valleuse située en amont de l’estacade constitue une erreur que les Français ont su utiliser. Il était facile de remonter à couvert à partir de la Seine, jusqu’au pied des murailles (cf. Fig. 4). 33 L’éloignement de la forteresse par rapport au fleuve et à la Culture a constitué, dans ce contexte, un handicap.

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d’Andeli sont sans commune mesure avec celles investies à la même époque pour la défense de la frontière orientale du duché. Il est vrai que nous sommes en présence d’ouvrages créés ex nihilo; cependant, l’ampleur de la forteresse et sa magnificence34 paraissent disproportionnées en regard des objectifs poursuivis; elles ont été considérées par certains auteurs comme une démonstration de puissance. On ne peut nier le caractère ostentatoire du monument, sans pour cela suivre jusqu’au bout Christian Corvisier lorsqu’il affirme dans un article récent que Château-Gaillard constitue avant tout un ‘château-manifeste’ de l’égo de Richard.35

34 Les parties conservées témoignent d’une architecture très soignée. 35 C. Corvisier, ‘Château-Gaillard et son donjon. Une œuvre expérimentale de Richard Cœur de Lion’,

dans Les fortifications dans les domaines Plantagenêt XIIe–XIVe siècles, actes du colloque de Poitiers 11–13 novembre 1994, CESCM, Poitiers, 2000, 41–54.

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English Romanesque and the Empire

ENGLISH ROMANESQUE AND THE EMPIRE1 Richard Plant The view expressed by Sir Alfred Clapham of English romanesque architecture, that ‘Its affinities . . . are restricted, and architecturally at least it forms the full development of the Norman School untouched by other influences before the middle of the twelfth century’,2 is no longer a popular one. One can find articles or books suggesting forms derived from Burgundy, western France, Scandinavia, Italy and Spain on English romanesque,3 and often these claims are well founded. This paper will consider some architectural affinities with another area that has been suggested, the Holy Roman Empire. It is not my contention, however, that the architecture of the Empire was the decisive factor in the transformation of Norman architecture into its Anglo-Norman derivative. Indeed, one of the problems with this area of research has been that where similarities between the architecture of England and the Empire do exist, they rarely seem to settle into a regular pattern. What have been selected for consideration here are four instances of architectural borrowing, between which there seems to be very little overlap. Some observers have no time for the notion that the architecture of post-Conquest England was in any way related to the architecture of the Empire, later called the Holy Roman Empire. There are indeed fundamental differences in approach to church architecture, and this paper is concerned only with churches, between the two areas. The romanesque architecture in the Empire, at least before the twelfth century, is generally regarded as austere, perhaps a little unadventurous, certainly dependent on traditional forms, while that in England is frequently presented as being in the avant-garde of romanesque, its structures lightened, using three rather than two storeys, and almost playful in the use of pier forms, window designs and sculptural detailing. Clearly these judgements reflect modern concerns rather than medieval ones, though that is not to say that medieval observers did not notice differences in

1

I am most grateful to John Gilllingham for his invitation to speak at the Conference. The work in this paper is partly derived from my Ph.D. thesis, and my thanks go to the many people who have provided support and advice, but especially to Paul Crossley and Eric Fernie, my two supervisors, to Lindy Grant, Malcolm Thurlby and Johnny Mitchell. The research for this paper was partly funded by the Central Research Fund of the University of London. 2 A. W. Clapham, English Romanesque Architecture after the Conquest, Oxford 1934, v. 3 Many sources, not all compatible of course, have been found for the abbey churches at Gloucester and Tewkesbury: see the contributions in BAA Conference Transactions: Medieval Art and Architecture at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, Leeds 1985; Spain and western France appear to have had especial impact on the west of England: G. Zarnecki, ‘La sculpture romane des “marches galloises” ’, in L’architecture normande au Moyen Age I, ed. M. Baylé, Caen 1997, 91–109, and M. Thurlby, The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, Little Logaston 1999; for Italy, J. Meredith, ‘The Impact of Italy on the Romanesque Architectural Sculpture of England’, Ph.D. thesis, Yale University 1980.

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architectural style.4 Furthermore, even when no direct connection should be postulated, it is possible to see architects or masons in two different areas working along similar lines. An example of this tendency can be provided for the Empire and the Anglo-Norman world. The wall passage is first found in Normandy at Bernay, a building started before 1017 and finished by 1050, though the functional passage there gives little idea of the importance of the feature to later Anglo-Norman romanesque, in which it is almost a signature feature.5 However, there are also passages used more decoratively, and hence in a fashion more akin to later Anglo-Norman examples, on the west front at Trier cathedral begun in the 1030s. This is not to say that the Norman examples were derived from the ones in the Empire, since a plausible derivation from St Bénigne at Dijon has been proposed. However it is noticeable that at Trier the passages are used to give the wall an almost sculptural richness, while the passages at Bernay and Jumièges have a functional look, and in this Trier presages the variety of decorative effects used in Anglo-Norman architecture.6 This study will concentrate on more purposeful borrowings in post-Conquest English architecture. The use of Norman architectural models, or Norman models adapted in England, was, it seems, the natural choice for patrons, and when models were sought elsewhere, some motivation beyond architectural taste can often be inferred. There are exceptions to this, the cushion capital which will be briefly discussed below is the most conspicuous, though its ubiquity in post-Conquest architecture suggests it rapidly lost any foreign flavour that it may once have had. There were many means by which architectural features from the Empire could reach post-Conquest England. They could be survivals from Anglo-Saxon building practice, carried through Normandy, selected by patrons, or derived through other sorts of interaction, such as politics, trade and non-ecclesiastical immigration. Taking these in order, the first, while promising, is not very helpful; in the greater churches not much that is Anglo-Saxon in character survives in Anglo-Norman architecture, and what (debatably) does, is not especially closely related to the Empire.7 There were, however, fairly clear links between English pre-Conquest architecture and that in the Empire; the plan of Anglo-Saxon Canterbury cathedral (Fig. 1) was bipolar, that is to say it had apses at each end, as has the most celebrated Ottonian church, St Michael in Hildesheim (Fig. 2). The comparison stretches even to the use of flanking

4

Gervase of Canterbury is perhaps the most famous medieval commentator on stylistic shifts, but contemporary with our period note the comments of William of Malmesbury discussed in R. Allen Brown, ‘William of Malmesbury as an Architectural Historian’, in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire médiévale en l’honneur du Doyen Michel de Boüard, Geneva 1982, 9–16. 5 J. Bony, ‘La technique normande du mur épais’, Bulletin Monumental 98, 1939, 153–88; P. Héliot, ‘Les antécédents et les débuts des coursières anglo-normands et rhenanes’, CCM 2, 1959, 429–43. 6 C. Heitz, ‘Influences carolingiennes et ottonienes sur l’architecture religieuse normande’, in L’architecture normande I, ed. Baylé, 44; for St Bénigne, C. Malone, ‘Les fouilles de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon’, Bulletin Monumental 138, 1980, 253–91. External wall passages are the norm in romanesque in the Empire, but found only at St Albans in the tower and (blocked) on the west front of Ely Cathedral; it is the second row of arcading visible in Fig. 11. While it seems likely that this is an adaptation of the standard Norman form, see M. Thurlby, ‘L’abbatiale romane de St Alban’s’, in L’architecture normande I, ed. M. Baylé, 79–90. 7 Minor churches are a different case: E. C. Fernie, The Architecture of Norman England, Oxford 2000, 208–19; see also the article by Malcolm Thurlby in this volume for the surprising amount of Anglo-Saxon architectural ideas, and even fabric, which survived in churches of the second rank. For a recent extended argument in favour of Anglo-Saxon revival in post-Conquest great church architecture, L. Reilly, ‘The Emergence of Anglo-Norman Architecture: Durham Cathedral’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 335–51.

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Fig. 1 Anglo-Saxon Canterbury cathedral (Kevin Blockley, courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral and the Canterbury Archaeological Trust)

Fig. 2 St Michael’s Hildesheim (Eric Fernie)

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polygonal stair turrets at the west end of the church, and, while the date of the west end of Canterbury is unclear and may pre-date the Saxon monastery, as a building type these western apses are more common in the Empire.8 There is little sign of the Normans carrying on this tradition of bipolar churches after the Conquest; the sole example, Langford in Essex, retains only its western apse, the eastern one has been excavated and part of the springing remains embedded in later walling. There is no clear explanation why this small, unprepossessing, parish church should have been bipolar, it is a feature usually found in greater churches, though it may have marked the site of the font.9 Other elements from the Empire which did flourish after the Conquest have also been claimed to pre-date the conquest. One is the cushion capital, which is found in a group of towers in Lincolnshire, and a few elsewhere, of which the locus classicus is St Mary-le-Wigford in Lincoln. This church has cushion capitals in its tower openings, and an inscription identifying an Anglo-Saxon patron. It is not, however, a securely dated building, and while three tower openings have cushions, the fourth is a much more Norman-looking volute capital, with what looks like some prototype chevron. The volute capital particularly tends to suggest a date during the construction of the post-Conquest cathedral in Lincoln, and as a number of commentators have pointed out, most other examples claimed to pre-date the Conquest are open to similar objections.10 As will be argued presently the range of similarities between cushion capitals in England and the Empire suggest that new forms were imported after the Conquest, and in the event that supposed pre-Conquest capitals, or others as yet unidentified, prove to pre-date the Conquest, it will not negate the evidence for their continued derivation from the Empire. A more secure channel for architectural ideas from the Empire to England is Normandy itself, not least because most post-Conquest architecture is derived from that source. While this is not the principal area of concern of this paper there are a number of features which are common to the Empire and kingdom which are found first in Normandy. Of these much the most important is pier alternation, in which, in its simplest form, a column alternates with a square or compound pier, though the principle was greatly elaborated. The scheme was relatively widespread in architecture of the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the largest group, as outlined by Richard Gem, which definitely pre-date the building of Jumièges are in the Empire, and in addition to the buildings cited by Gem, Surbourg and perhaps Goslar, had an alternating system which did not feature a super arch linking the two larger supports, an important difference between most buildings in the Empire and Anglo-Norman

8

K. Blockley, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown, Canterbury Cathedral Nave: Archaeology, History, and Architecture, Canterbury 1997, 18–23, 106–11; H. Beseler and H. Roggenkamp, Die Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim, Berlin 1954; A. Mann, ‘Doppelchor und Stiftermemorie: zum Kunst- und Kultgeschichtliche Problem der Westchor’, Westfalischer Zeitschrift 111, 1961, 149–262. 9 VCH Essex I, London 1903, 443, 521 and 525; H. Laver, ‘Langford Church’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society ns 10, 1906, 10–13. 10 The chief proponent of the Anglo-Saxon cushion capital was H. M. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture III, Cambridge 1978, 1044–51; for St Mary, H. M. and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture I, Cambridge 1966, 391–3. For a contrary view, E. C. Fernie, The Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, London 1983, 163–4; G. Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England II, London 1925, 466–7 for the Lincoln church. See also R. Plant, ‘English Romanesque and the Holy Roman Empire’, Ph.D. thesis, Universty of London 1998, 49–53 for an extended treatment of individual examples cited by Taylor.

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realm.11 Jumièges is sometimes claimed as displaying a number of other features which were derived from the Empire, though these are less striking than pier alternation.12 The alternation of Jumièges was probably used in England before the Conquest at Westminster abbey, begun somewhat after Jumièges, and perhaps of more direct influence on later English buildings than Jumièges itself.13 There are other features in Norman architecture which have been explained by the contact with the Empire; the use of giant blind mural arcades at Speyer cathedral and at Mont-Saint-Michel is one example,14 and at Fécamp, as rebuilt around 990, a westwork has been reconstructed, largely based on a literary description.15 The patrons of the buildings considered here were mostly bishops or abbots. There were, in 1073, four Lotharingian to eight Norman bishops in England, and at least one of the Normans was educated in the Empire.16 This reflected not only a trend in the late Anglo-Saxon church, but also in the Norman church, where promising clerics were sometimes sent to Liège to further their education. The sort of patronal influence such bishops could exert is demonstrated by Ealdred, the last Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of York. He died in 1069 having crowned Harold, the Conqueror and Matilda. He went on a mission to Germany in 1054 for King Edward and stayed a year. Ealdred is recorded to have built churches at Gloucester and Beverley, neither of which survive, but his work at Beveley was described, and consisted of a new presbytery, a painted roof for the whole church, and a bronze, silver and gold pulpitum, with a cross above it ‘opere Theutonico fabrifactos’.17 Herman of Ramsbury, who came to England in the company of Edward the Confessor and became his chaplain, was, according to William of Malmesbury, Flemish,18 and Flanders was an area with both political and, seemingly, architectural links with the Empire. Herman became, after some vicissitudes, bishop of the combined sees of Sherborne and Ramsbury, and lived until 1078, by which time he had gained permission to move his see to Old Sarum and had started work on the new cathedral when he died. There are a number of others in the west of England; Leofric, bishop of Devon (1046–72), may have been educated in Liège, Giso bishop of Wells 11 R. Gem, ‘The Romanesque Rebuilding of Westminster Abbey’, ANS 3, 1980 (1981), 33–60. The alter-

nation at Goslar is often considered to be twelfth-century, but see the exhibition catalogue Das Reich der Salier, Sigmaringen 1992, 205, which implies that the simple alternation dates from the mid eleventhcentury building. 12 Heitz, ‘Influences carolingiennes’, 37–48. 13 Gem, ‘Romanesque Rebuilding’, 53–5, proposed that the alternation of supports found at Jumièges was derived in fact from Westminster, a proposal derived in part from some irregularities at the east end of the nave which he took to indicate a change of plan. It is an intriguing notion, but one which has been criticised by Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 94–6. 14 P. Heliot, ‘L’ordre colossal et les arcades murales dans les églises romanes’, Bulletin Monumental 115, 1957, 241–61; the form also turns up at Winchester and, in a modified form, at Tewkesbury. 15 A. Renoux, Fécamp: du palais ducale au palais de Dieu, Paris 1991, 453–62. 16 Lotharingian is a term sometimes loosely used; strictly it applies to the area of the lower Rhine and Meuse covered by the dioceses of Cologne, Liège and Cambrai (lower Lotharingia), and Trier, Metz, Toul and Verdun (upper Lotharingia). As an architectural zone for our period it is dealt with, with the inclusion of the diocese of Utrecht, by H. E. Kubach and A. Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst an Rhein und Maas, 4 vols, Berlin 1976 and 1989; J. Barrow, ‘English Cathedral Communities and Reform in the Late Tenth and the Eleventh Centuries’, Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich, Woodbridge 1994, 25–39; S. Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 205–13, with other examples not presented here. 17 The Historians of the Church of York I, ed. J. Raine, RS 1879, 353–4. 18 De gestis pontificum, 182.

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(1060–88) was from the vicinity of St Trond. Walter of Hereford seems to have been less remarkable in his life than in his death, but his successor Robert (1079–95), also of Lorraine, was altogether more interesting. He was a mathematician and astronomer, educated at Liège, who appeared in the obit book of the cathedral of that city, St Lambert. He is known to have built a church in imitation of Aachen which will be discussed presently.19 Thomas I of York (1070–1100) came from the cathedral of Bayeux. Like others from that cathedral, he was sent by Bishop Odo to further his education in Germany, possibly at Liège. Thomas had Walcher as his suffragan at Durham from 1071 to 1080 when Walcher was murdered, along with fellow Lotharingians, after becoming involved in a feud.20 There were other Lotharingian clergymen of lesser rank, Godfrey, prior of Winchester from 1082,21 was from Cambrai, the north-western tip of the Empire, and Walcher prior of Great Malvern was also from Lotharingia.22 One house at least was run along Lotharingian lines. Waltham abbey was a house endowed and rebuilt by Harold Godwinson, who introduced Adelard, a native of Liège and a former student at Utrecht, ‘so that he could establish . . . the rules, ordinances and customs, both ecclesiastical and secular, of the churches in which he himself had been educated’. The church which was built there, before the reconstruction in a reduced Durham style about 1120, is of a freakish plan, but the use of a continuous transept, that is a transept which has no subdividing arches on a north-south axis as is common in romanesque transepts, is much more in keeping with practice in the Empire – one still survives from Augsburg – than elsewhere in Europe.23 Its design, however, was uninfluential. With such a good haul of senior churchmen, one might almost expect to find a number of directly imported architectural features from the Empire. Sadly, if there is a common strand to the architectural activity of these bishops, it is a reluctance to rebuild their cathedrals. Of the Lotharingian, or Lotharingian-influenced, bishops only two seem to have tried to rebuild their cathedrals, a fact which may in itself be significant, but probably reflects more on the dynamism of the incoming Normans than the torper of the Lotharingians. One of those who rebuilt was Herman at Old Sarum and the other was Thomas at York, if reluctantly. His church will be discussed later, but Herman’s cathedral was one of the least successful post-Conquest rebuildings; modestly proportioned from the outset, it was for the most part replaced from the 1120s, and the site itself was abandoned in the thirteenth century. One section of the building that can be reconstructed with some confidence was the nave piers; they were of a uniform cruciform type, not a form which was widely found in the Empire at that time.24 The presence of so many bishops from the Empire may,

19 J. Barrow, ‘A Lotharingian in Hereford: Bishop Robert’s Reorganisation of the Church of Hereford

1079–1095’, BAA Conference Transactions: Medieval Art and Architecture at Hereford Cathedral, Leeds 1995, 29–49. 20 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 1887, 451. 21 ‘Annales Monasterii de Wintonia’, Annales Monastici II, ed. H. R. Luard, RS 1865, 33. 22 J. Nott, The Church and Monastery of Moche Malverne, Malvern 1885, 25–8. 23 Waltham, 28–9; P. J. Huggins and K. N. Bascombe, ‘Excavations at Waltham Abbey, 1985–91: Three Pre-Conquest Churches and Norman Evidence’, Arch. Journ. 149, 1992, 282–343. 24 R. Gem, ‘The First Romanesque Cathedral of Old Salisbury’, in Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context, ed. E. C. Fernie and P. Crossley, London 1990, 9–18.

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Fig. 3 Capital now in the crypt, Notre-Dame, Boulogne however, have indirectly fostered a climate in which borrowings from architecture in the Empire was possible. There were, of course, other channels of interaction, trade and politics for example,25 of which one possibility, to which I will return, is stone from Flanders. It is probable that masons followed the stone: Richard Gem has identified two masons with continental Germanic names: Blitherus,26 who worked in the Canterbury area, and (less certainly) Teignfrith at Westminster.27 Moving to the buildings themselves, and starting with small details, the only widespread feature of post-Conquest architecture in England that can be connected directly to the empire is the cushion capital. The neatest theory for their appearance is that of Richard Gem, who noted that columns, capitals and bases were imported from 25 Personal, political, ecclesiastical and trade links, all often intertwined, have been extensively investi-

gated recently by J. P. Huffmann, Family, Commerce, and Religion in London and Cologne, Cambridge 1998, esp. 9–23 and 199–216; idem, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy, Ann Arbor 2000, 25–56. B. Arnold, ‘England and Germany, 1050–1350’, in England and her Neighbours 1066–1453: Essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais, London 1989, ed. M. James and M. Vale, 43–51, comments that ‘the eleventh century saw the assimilation . . . of the Rhineland, the Low Countries, and south-east England into a single trading region’. 26 R. Gem, ‘Canterbury and the Cushion Capital: a Commentary on Passages from Goscelin’s “De Miraculis Sancti Augustini” ’, Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki I, ed. N. Stratford, Woodbridge 1987, 88–9. 27 Gem, ‘Romanesque Rebuilding’, 39.

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Fig. 4 Capital, Ely cathedral nave Boulogne to Canterbury, according to the Miracles of St Augustine.28 There are a number of possible objections to this as an explanation for the widespread use of the cushion in English romanesque. One is that Boulogne does not seem to have been an area where the cushion was the standard type, there is little evidence for their use, and what little there is (Fig. 3) is rather negative. A double cushion capital found loose in the crypt at Notre Dame in Boulogne has four bulbous elements, almost certainly derived from the cushion form, at its corners. The true cushion capital, however, uses the curved underside of the capital, known as the cone, to make the junction between the square upper part of the capital and the cylinder of the column below (Fig. 4). The Boulogne capital does not do this, rather the cushions sit on top of the chalice-shaped body of the capital, and the overall effect is as if a set of four cushions have been substituted for the volutes in a standard (for Normandy) volute capital. A second objection is more revealing; in England cushion capitals are both too widespread too quickly, and too diverse in form, to be explained by a single point of importation, or indeed exportation.29 Many of the types which appear in the Empire and England coincide, for example some capitals at Ely cathedral have raised fillets in the corners of the cones, as do those at, among many other places in the Empire, St Maria im Kapitol in Cologne (Fig. 5),30 begun in the mid eleventh century. More important is the scallop capital, the most frequently used variant on the cushion, first known from 28 Gem, ‘Canterbury and the Cushion Capital’. 29 A point first made by E. Cambridge, ‘Early Romanesque Architecture in North East England: A Style

and its Patrons’, Anglo-Norman Durham, 141–60, esp. 151. 30 Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst I, 557–68.

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Fig. 5 Capital from the crypt, St Maria im Kapitol, Cologne the church of St Lucius in Werden, again from the mid eleventh century, which after a few early experiments (at, for example, the Tower of London) became the commonest type of capital in English romanesque in the first half of the twelfth century. There are more types in common,31 and that all these different styles of capital could have been developed independently seems highly improbable. The most likely explanation for this variety is that these designs were transported by masons attracted to the great building boom in late eleventh- and early twelfth-century England, though this does not suffice to explain the use of the cushion capital in the first place. They seem to have suited the stripped down aesthetic of earlier English romanesque, in which one can find a sculptural play of geometric forms that is almost modernist in its purity. The use of the cushion capital at Speyer, one of the greatest buildings of the first half of the 31 Plant, ‘English Romanesque Architecture’, 60–4; in addition to those listed there the definition of the

shield with a cable moulding is found in the (roughly contemporary) crypts of Canterbury cathedral and of St Servatius in Quedlinburg.

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Fig. 6 Hereford bishop’s chapel, from Vetusta Monumenta I, 1747 eleventh century, or any other period, is the strongest possible argument against the view that the cushion capital was an expedient, or a choice dictated by the demands of mass production.32 The best-studied and, on the face of it, most easily understood building derived from the Empire is the now destroyed chapel built by Robert of Lorraine, he who was commemorated in Liège, bishop of Hereford. He built a chapel, which William of Malmesbury described as copied in its design from the basilica at Aachen, and which has commonly been associated with a building to the south of the cathedral destroyed in the eighteenth century and recorded before its destruction (Fig. 6). To make matters complicated, however, this building looks only a little like Aachen, and a great deal like another building type, the double chapel, a two-storeyed chapel, usually of nine bays, with hole in the vault of the middle bay of the lower storey through which a person of importance, bishop or emperor, could watch procedings below. The oldest surviving example is at Speyer, from around 1080, and therefore roughly contemporary with the Hereford chapel (Fig. 7). There were, however, examples at (probably) Paderborn, Goslar and Cologne before this, in other words at important centres, often with strong imperial connections. The date of the building recorded in the eighteenth century, its identity with that attributed to Robert and its status as a ‘copy’ of Aachen have recently been disputed; though the usual view remains that the building of the description and the drawing are one and the same.33 32 See, for example, the views of George Zarnecki expressed in English Romanesque Art 1066–1200, ed.

G. Zarnecki, J. Holt and T. Holland, London 1984, 147. 33 G. Bandmann, ‘Die Bischofskapelle in Hereford. Zur Nachwirkung der aachener Pfalzkapelle’, in

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Fig. 7 Speyer, double chapel This argument depends in part on a number of features which are unique to Hereford among double chapels; the niche at the front of the building, and the square form of the chancel at the east end, both features which can plausibly be derived from Aachen, and in part on stylistic grounds, the building fits more comfortably in a late eleventh-century milieu, rather than the mid twelfth century which has recently been proposed. Without pursuing this point much further,34 one or two points should be made. The first is that this chapel does not apparently copy any single German precedent, or if it does, that building was copied only in Hereford, which seems unlikely. The niche, while probably derived from Aachen, transforms its source, by the addition of multiple square orders. This is unlike portal design elsewhere in England at the time, or indeed later, with which it has sometimes been compared, and is like, in fact, only a few buildings in Germany, the portals of the cathedral of Speyer and collegiate church at Goslar being the most prominant. Richard Gem made a very good case for the mason being versed in the emerging Anglo-Norman tradition, but it is striking that he also must have known, or got to know, a range of buildings in the Empire; how that Festschrift H. von Einem, Berlin 1965, 7–26; R. Gem, ‘The Bishop’s Chapel at Hereford: the Roles of Patron and Craftsman’, in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, ed. S. Macready and F. H. Thompson, London 1986, 87–96; for a later date for the chapel, H. J. Böker, ‘The Bishop’s Chapel at Hereford and the Question of Architectural Copies in the Middle Ages’, Gesta 37, 1998, 44–54; on double chapels in general, see O. Schurer, ‘Romanische Doppelkapellen. Eine typengeschichtliche Untersuchung’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 5, 1929, 99–192. It should be said that recent literature does not question that the Hereford chapel belongs with the German group of chapels. 34 The author and Malcolm Thurlby are preparing a justification of the date of the building and its status as a ‘copy’of Aachen.

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knowledge might have been acquired it is hard to say.35 There is a similar case at the ruined church of North Elmham, which was once considered the Anglo-Saxon cathedral and is now considered the chapel of the bishops of Norwich.36 This has a continuous transept, as mentioned earlier a feature most often found in the Empire in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, towers in the angle between nave and transept, which also point to Germany, where they are found at Hirsau and Meissen, and a substantial west tower with (presumably) an upper chamber of some importance, perhaps a chapel, reached by an external round spiral staircase on the side of the tower. This last is an architectural form commonplace in what is now Belgium37 but rare in England or Normandy, and one which suggests design by someone most familiar with architecture in the Mosan region; the use of a continuous transept, perhaps suggests patronal choice, and, like the towers in the angle of transept and nave, is not a Mosan feature. There is sense with both these buildings that a model was chosen from the Empire when the patron wanted something exotic or impressive. Double chapels in the Empire were at that time confined to sites of some prestige, and served as archiepiscopal or imperial buildings. It is hard to imagine the bishop of somewhere as insignificant as Hereford getting away with something as pretentious as a double chapel in the Empire, and while in both cases we have a patron with some connection to the Empire, direct in the case of Robert at Hereford, perhaps through his Lotharingian father with the bishop of Norwich, in neither case did they simply select a familiar building, nor, in the case of Robert, one that was familiar from the locality of their place of origin.38 The building chosen as the model for much English romanesque architecture was St Etienne in Caen, one of the most perfect romanesque buildings, and not only a ducal foundation, but also the abbey of the first post-Conquest archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc. It is often presented as the typical Norman romanesque structure, though nothing surviving in Normandy matches it. It is clear, however, that a number of English buildings derived their architectural form, aisled in plan, with a three-storey elevation, the middle storey being a gallery and the upper one having a wall passage, either directly or indirectly from St Etienne. The most notable exception is the cathedral at York, and the reason might be the prolonged and embittered primacy dispute between the two archiepiscopal sees in England. This provides one of the clearest examples of the ecclesiastical rivalry which was surely one of the great motors of change in medieval architecture.39 The cathedral built by Thomas of Bayeux who, as has been noted, was sent to

35 Gem, ‘The Bishop’s Chapel’. 36 S. Heywood, ‘The Ruined Church of North Elmham’, Journ. BAA 135, 1983, 1–10; Fernie, Architec-

ture of Norman England, 236–9. 37 At, for example, Celles and Hastiere. The latter has, like North Elmham, a single rather than the more normal pair of stairs. 38 Cologne is the nearest place at which a double chapel has been found (as yet) in the Empire. For this chapel, relatively recently discovered, see A. Wolff, ‘St Johannis in Curia. Die erzbischöfliche Pfalzkapelle auf der Sudseite des kölner Domes und ihre Nachfolgenbauten’, in O. Doppelfeld and W. Weyres, Die Ausgrabungen in Dom zu Köln, Mainz 1980, 614–62, and K. Beukers, Die Ezzonen und ihre Stiftungen, Munster 1993, 189–92 for a revision of the dating. Herbert of Norwich: E. M. Belloe, ‘Herbert de Lozinga: an Enquiry into his Cognomen and Birthplace’, Norfolk Archaeology 8, 1879, 282–302. 39 A brief history of the primacy dispute is in F. Barlow, The English Church 1066–1154, London and New York 1979, 38–44. For an (extremely partisan) contemporary account, Hugh the Chanter, The History of the Church of York, trans. C. Johnson, London 1961.

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Fig. 8 York minster, plan of church (Crown Copyright) Liège for part of his education, has been almost totally replaced by later structures. What is left are its elaborate timber-laced foundations,40 though the plan of the church was mostly uncovered by excavations in the 1970s (Fig. 8). Three features may be of interest in the present context; the church was aisleless, it had an exceptionally long choir, and an unusual crypt. The aisleless nave measured about 13.7m wide; the walls were articulated on the outside by stepped buttresses. The inner order of these apparently turned over below the clerestorey to form giant mural arcades as only one order of the buttresses continued to the upper levels of the wall. Aisleless great churches are unusual in eleventh-century architecture; this is unique in England, but not unknown elsewhere in Europe. The area around Angers, whose early eleventh-century cathedral had no aisles, has been cited as a possible source for the use of this plan at York.41 There are also German examples, in Cologne at St Pantaleon and St Patrokli in Soest. The Cologne building, which retains part of its late tenth-century form, was smaller than York, though the widths of the two naves are comparable, with St Pantaleon measuring 12.45m internally. The external arcading at York and St Pantaleon, for which there is little evidence in the earlier Angevin churches, would have been similar. It was built by Otto the Great’s brother, Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke of Lorraine.42 Warren Sanderson has argued that the aisleless nave of St Pantaleon with its mural arcades is derived from Constantine’s great hall in Trier, and that Bruno by his patronage of ecclesiastic architecture sought also to stress his secular power.43 There is some

40 The excavations are published in D. Phillips, Excavations at York Minster II: The Cathedral of Archbishop Thomas of Bayeux, London 1985; the published reports have been supplemented by the holdings at the National Monuments Record. 41 E. C. Fernie, ‘The Effect of the Conquest on Norman Architectural Patronage’, in Romanesque Architecture: Design Meaning and Metrology, London 1995, 55, reprinted from ANS 9, 1986 (1987). 42 F. Mühlberg, Köln: St Pantaleon und sein Ort in der karolingischen und ottonischen Baukunst, Cologne 1989. 43 W. Sanderson, ‘The Sources and Significance of the Ottonian Church of Saint Pantaleon at Cologne’,

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evidence for an awareness of York’s history as a Roman,44 and indeed, like Trier, a Constantinian, centre. Constantine, who rebuilt Trier as the imperial capital of the north, was proclaimed Emperor at York. In a distorted form this fact appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Henry of Huntingdon.45 More telling, there are frequent dedications to St Helen in the area of York, rare elsewhere in Britain. Eleven of these contain romanesque masonry, and one (at Skipwith) Anglo-Saxon.46 Perhaps of the most significance for establishing a link between medieval York and its Constantinian past is the presence of three churches dedicated to St Helen in York itself: St Helen Stonegate, St Helen Fishergate, and finally the church of St Helen-on-the-Walls.47 Such an early and prestigious Roman Christian association might well be the sort of thing an archbishop would want to express architecturally. It may be that either the Trier basilica directly, or indirectly through St Pantaleon, informed the design of York minster, or it is possible that an antique precedent was sought more locally, and indeed some of Roman York may have survived into the eleventh century. Whether a model in the Empire or elsewhere was sought, the comparison with Bruno’s work in Cologne helps suggest the types of association which might have prompted the highly unusual appearance of the minster. The idea that the designer of the minster was looking to the Empire is reinforced, moreover, by the form of the east end. It seems the crossing was raised above the nave, and the choir still further above the crossing. Although the exact form of the choir is hard to reconstruct, it was, like the nave, aisleless. The choir screen seems to have been at the west end of the architectural choir, as foundations were found at this point.48 Although other English churches had had large choirs, York was exceptional, The church, though large, was not among the largest in England, the total length being just over 105m internally. What is very unusual, however, is the proportion of the total length taken up by the architectural choir, that is the area east of the crossing, which was 40.5m long, compared to 50.5m for the nave, and the confinement of the liturgical choir to the area east of the crossing.49 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 29, 1970, 83–96; his conclusions are broadly accepted by Mühlberg, Köln, 73. 44 It was described by William of Malmesbury as follows: ‘Secunda post cantuaria dignitatus est Eboracum, urbs ampla et metropolis, elegentiae Romanae preferens inditum. A duabus partibus Husae fluminus edificata includit medio sinu sui naves a Germania et Hibernia venientes.’ De Gestis Pontificum, 208. Trading connections with Germany, probably Cologne, could provide one means by which architectural ideas came to York. 45 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe, Harmondsworth 1966, 132; Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenway, OMT 1996, 61. 46 See the relevant volumes of The Buildings of England: N. Pevsner, Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Harmondsworth 1972, 293 (Kilnwick Percy), 350–1 (Stillingfleet), 363 (Welton); N. Pevsner, Yorkshire: the West Riding, Harmondsworth 1959, 87 (Austerfield), 101–2 (Bilton Ainstry), 150–1 (Burghwallis), 360 (Marr), 428–9 (Sandal Magna), 515–16 (Treeton); N. Pevsner, Yorkshire: the North Riding, Harmondsworth 1966, 60–1 (Amorterby), 338–9 (Sherrif Hutton). 47 VCH Yorkshire: the City of York, London 1961, 383–4 for St Helen Stonegate, first recorded 1235; ibid. 382 for St Helen Fishergate known from c.1090–1100, and J. R. Magilton, The Church of St Mary-on-the-Walls, Aldwark, Yorkshire Archaeological Trust 10/1, York 1980, for St Mary-on-the-Walls. 48 Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 94–5. 49 The usual position was under the tower and extending into the nave. The liturgical choir at Durham, begun in 1093 and York’s only suffragan, may also have been confined to the eastern arm: see T. Russo, ‘The Romanesque Rood Screen of Durham Cathedral: Content and Form’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 251–68; the second choir at Canterbury also contained the liturgical choir.

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Long, narrow, peninsular choirs, in other words choirs without aisles, are to be found in a number of mid eleventh-century Rhenish churches, such as St Andreas in Cologne.50 Closer in size to the choir of York was that of the imperial abbey church of Hersfeld, commenced after a fire in 1037 or 1038.51 Hersfeld also has an antique aspect, with a vast continuous transept, like early Christian basilicas in Rome, although at Hersfeld the inspiration for the transept may have been the more local, and decidedly Rome-inspired, abbey of Fulda. The long choir was raised on a huge hall crypt, which encroached only slightly into the transept. Thus the late eleventh-century cathedral at York had a nave which looks to be in the tradition of great Roman audience halls, rather than Anglo-Norman great churches, and a choir which recalls those in the Empire, both designed, one might suggest, to be away from the mainstream of great church design in England, to look different, grander and perhaps somewhat older. The third aspect is in some ways two aspects, both centring on the crypt. There was neither an arcade in the choir nor a hall type of crypt below it. However, the choir foundations formed two skins with a floor level at approximately outer ground level, forming a long ring-crypt, returning square at the east end.52 There are precedents for this: the plan of St Gall has been cited, and both Cologne cathedral and St Pantaleon had small examples at one stage, though perhaps closer in extent was that at the church in Meschede. Such long, semi-subterranean passages are unusual in architecture contemporary with York, and to construct a ring-crypt in the last quarter of the eleventh century is swimming hard against the current of English architecture, and indeed of European romanesque in general. It may be that in this too the builders of York minster were trying to stress the antique rights of their see. Since there was probably a ring-crypt at Anglo-Saxon Canterbury, related by the Canterbury monk Eadmer to the ring-crypt at St Peter’s in Rome,53 this could imitate an earlier building at York, or indeed be a reference to Old St Peter’s in Rome itself, source, according to York partisans, of the privileges of the archbishops of York, and martyrium of the minster’s patron saint. The construction of a ring-crypt implies a destination, the passage should lead to some altar, relic or other liturgical space and it may be that a small chamber, a loculus, also existed at York, whether under the apse, or immediately to the west of it; the excavations did not investigate this point.54 There is, however, a problem in this interpretation; York did not have the relics of a major saint, a lack illustrated by the canonisation of St William, a dubious candidate, in the thirteenth century. However, there is a

50 For these choirs in general see Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst IV, 106–7; A. Verbeek,

‘Romanische Chorformen in Köln und am Niederrhein’, in Baukunst des Mittelalters in Europa. Hans Erich Kubach zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. F. Much, Stuttgart 1988, 199–212, esp. 203–5. These churches also appear to closely resemble Bermondsey abbey, R. Gem, ‘The Romanesque Architecture of Old St Paul’s Cathedral and its Late Eleventh Century Context’, BAA Conference Transactions, London, Leeds 1990, 48–50, especially as in this case a peninsular choir appears to have been attatched to an aisled nave, and chapels flanked the east end of the choir. 51 J. Vonderau, Die Ausgrabungen an der Stiftskirche zu Hersfeld, Fulda 1925. 52 Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 92, 137–40. 53 A. Wilmart, ‘Eadmeri Cantuariensis Cantoris Nova Opuscula de Sanctorum Veneratione et Obsecratione’, Revue des sciences religieuses 15, 1935, 1–62. The text in question is ‘De Reliquiis Sancti Audoeni et Quorundam Aliorum Sanctorum Quae Cantuariae in Aecclesia Domini Salvatoris Habentur’ and the crypt is mentioned on p. 48. 54 Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 163, postulates a barrel-vaulted crypt under the apse.

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second anomaly about the York east end which must be considered. Some twenty feet to the east of the apse of Thomas’s church, fragmentary remains of another structure were found (not shown on the plan), with walls returning to meet the longitudinal walls of the choir, though it appears there would have been some misalignment where the two joined. There were substantial corner buttresses. This has generally been interpreted as a rebuilding of the choir, with a square end, after a fire in 1137.55 The late date for the masonry has been derived from the fact that it was obviously not the first thing built, the foundations cut compressed earth; that it is made from newly quarried stone, while most of the lower walls of the minster are from reused stone; and partly for the obvious reason that it is to the east of what otherwise appears to be the eastern apse. The middle point is the easiest to address. Although most of the lower masonry is reused, a small patch of the high level of the transept has survived, and is from freshly quarried stone.56 While this suggests that the construction of our eastern building is not at the beginning of the construction period, it does not have to be part of an entirely different building period. There are also problems with the interpetation of the building as a replacement for the apse. The first is the misalignment of the newer structure. Secondly, within the eastern structure and at exterior ground level there are the remains of a mortar bed for a floor reached, presumably, from the ring-crypt.57 The main apse of the church, however, has been destroyed to a level some 0.1m higher than this floor level,58 and it was the opinion of the excavator, Derek Phillips, that eastern structure and apse coexisted, and were indeed destroyed at the same time, when Archbishop Roger’s choir was built, and therefore before 1166.59 There is no need to presume, therefore, that the ‘new’ east end was a replacement for the apse, rather an adjunct, and its presence in the planning of the building, if not in actual masonry, from the outset would give purpose to the ring-crypt. There is also no reason to believe that it would rise to the full height of the building, and would more probably have formed a low extension, perhaps mainly below the level of the choir proper. Our sole reason for believing that it was not planned at the outset is that it was not begun first, as the easternmost part of the building so often was. The reason for this, however, was to bring the main liturgical space, which this, apparently, was not, into use as soon as possible. What I propose we have here is a subsidiary external crypt space, reached from the ring-crypt, and rising little above choir floor level. These kinds of buildings – outer crypts – were a particular feature of the Rhine55 This eastern structure is discussed briefly by Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 164–9, and

E. Gee, ‘Architectural History until 1290’, in A History of York Minster, ed. G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant, Oxford 1977, 121. Phillips produced a hypothetical course of events which involved the construction of narrow aisles in the choir on, as he admits, rather thin evidence. There is no evidence for the structure at choir level, and no evidence to indicate how, if at all, it would have connected with the choir. I benefited enormously from discussion with Mr Phillips. Since no excavation plan has ever been published of this area, this discussion is partly based on a sketch plan and excavation notes held at the National Monuments Record (on microfiche 55), and a plan provided to me by Mr Phillips. 56 Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 190–1. 57 A further disjunction between eastern structure and the body of the church might be noted; the tops of the foundations of the eastern structure were 0.46m lower than those of the body of the church, Phillips, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 164. 58 It might be objected that the paving on top of the mortared rubble would bring the levels to a similar height as the destroyed apse, but the apse as it remains is not suitable as a floor, and would require some sort of covering over it. 59 See Phillips’ reconstruction, The Cathedral of Thomas of Bayeux, 91.

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Meuse area in the eleventh century, although there were examples from other times at other places. There are surviving examples at Fosses in Belgium, in Holland at Susteren, and at Essen and at Werden, both in the Ruhr valley, dating from the middle years of the eleventh century.60 Much the most elegant of these is the outer crypt at Werden (Fig. 9), built under Abbot Gero (1050–63), and reached by way of an earlier ring-crypt,61 but all are more substantial than that proposed for York. The assumption that the York outer crypt was square ended, seems to be based solely on assumptions about the development of the east ends of English great churches, and in the absence of archaeological evidence it is impossible to say whether the York eastern structure had an apse or apses on its eastern wall. Certainly an apse would make the rather exiguous space more serviceable. A number of points about the group of continental outer crypts can be made in summary. Outer crypts were not subterranean, were often reached by passages leading from the transept and were generally either five- or three-aisled; occasionally they were of two storeys. Even when the outer crypt was part of the same building project as the choir it appended, it was often completed, or at least consecrated, some time after the consecration of the choir. This was definitely true at St Maximin, Stavelot, Prüm and St Hubert, and probably at Susteren. A very high proportion of these crypts had the central altar dedicated to the Virgin; the dedication is not known in all cases, and for some it is from a late source, but the outer crypts of St Denis, St Maximin and St Martin in Trier, Werden, Stavelot, Malmédy, St Hubert, Prüm, Neuweiler, Centula, Andenne, Gembloux, Fosses, and St-Laurent in Liège all had a main altar dedicated to the Virgin. Although outer crypts were sometimes used for relics, it is only in a minority of cases, and, Marian associations aside, they seem often to have been places of burial, either for revered elders of the community, or the builders of the crypt themselves; at Werden, for example, the outer crypt was used for the burial of the family and successors of its patron saint Liudiger. We have no clear liturgical information about the use of the outer crypt at York, though there was little provision for altars in the body of the church, but we can be pretty sure there were other English examples, not only pre-Conquest, as at Winchester, but also at Evesham. The archaeological record of this site is so confused as to be almost meaningless, but, as Fil Hearn recognised, the Evesham Chronicle makes a clear reference to an outer crypt. This is to be found in the writings of Thomas of Marlborough, monk, then dean, then prior and finally abbot (1229–36) of Evesham who wrote the Evesham Chronicle for the years when he was there. He discusses at some length the work he did to restore the church, the central tower of which fell in 1207, and mentions in passing a crypt, adjacent to the choir, and with five roofs, both features which suggest it was an outer crypt of a Mosan-Rhenish type.62 A more certain example, though never recognised as such, is the galilee at 60 R. Maere, ‘Cryptes au chevet dans les églises des anciens Pays Bas’, Bulletin Monumental 91, 1932, 81–119; A. Verbeek, ‘Die Aussenkrypta. Werden einer Bauform des frühen Mittelalters’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 13, 1950, 7–38. W. Sanderson, ‘Monastic Reform in Lorraine and the Architecture of the Outer Crypt’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 6/6, 1971; L-F. Génicot, ‘Les cryptes extérieures du pays Mosan au XIe siècle: reflet typologique du passé carolingien?’ CCM 22, 1979, 337–47. 61 See W. Zimmermann, Die Kirchen zu Essen-Werden, Essen 1959, 51–60, and L. Schaeffer and H. Clausen, ‘Neue Funden in der Abteikirche zu Werden’, Beiträge zur rhenischen Kunstgeschichte und Denkmalpflege II, Dusseldorf 1974, 293–320. 62 The excavation, such as it is, is in Vetusta Monumenta V, London 1835. The texts describing the building are in Chronicon Monasterii de Evesham, ed. W. D. Macray, RS 1863, 265, 269. M. F. Hearn, ‘The

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Fig. 9 Werden, abbey church, outer crypt Durham cathedral. Built by Bishop Hugh du Puiset (1153–95) before 1175, the galilee is a five-aisled structure situated at the west end of the church.63 However, it was built only after the failure to build some sort of structure at the east end, and Stuart Harrison has indicated that he believes that much of the material in the galilee which Rectangular Ambulatory in English Medieval Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 30, 1971, 187–208, recognised in the description an outer crypt, though seems to have got the wrong builder. The documentary history is presented in D. C. Cox, ‘The Building, Destruction and Excavation of Evesham Abbey: a Documentary History’, Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society 3rd ser. 12, 1990, 123–46. Hearn used the outer crypt to explain the rectangular ambulatory in English architecture, a contention which is open to a number of objections. 63 R. Halsey, ‘The Galilee Chapel’, BAA Conference Transactions: Medieval Art and Architecture at

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we see, splendid as it is, was part of the original scheme for an eastern extension, which would, therefore, have followed the same basic plan as the building as it now stands. The failure of this building was due either to geology or to St Cuthbert’s disapproval of the introduction of women so near his shrine. The latter is an indication that the first recorded use for the building, the provision of a Marian altar, was part of its original purpose, and suggests that the architectural similarity of the galilee to a mosan outer crypt was matched by a similar liturgical function. In the use of the west transept in England, we have what should be one of the more obvious borrowings from the architecture of the Empire, though it was radically transformed to conform with Anglo-Norman architectural practice. Three west transepts survive in the east of England, two in a battered condition, and there are the ruins of two more in Scotland. The fully surviving English example, at Peterborough, the result of a revision of plan,64 can reasonably be explained by the presence of the earlier transepts at Bury and Ely, which I will therefore deal with first. Great churches with two sets of transepts, at the east end and at the west end of the church, were relatively common in the Empire. The most celebrated example today is probably St Michael’s in Hildesheim (Figs 2, 12), in Saxony, the special foundation of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (993–1022).65 But this is principally an accident of survival, or, since much of the standing fabric is relatively modern, perhaps it is fairer to say of reconstruction. More are further west. An early example of a church with double transepts was Cologne cathedral, dedicated in 873, but started some decades earlier.66 The cathedral, which had a western and an eastern choir, and oriented apsidal chapels on both its transepts, was clearly of great importance for a number of great buildings in the lower Rhine and Mosan regions in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and can, in general terms, be seen as the root of the type of transepts found at Bury St Edmund’s and Ely. Cologne’s general scheme was followed by the cathedrals of Liège, started by Bishop Notger (972–1008) and consecrated in 1015,67 and of Verdun, built c.990–1024.68 There are a number of other churches, such as St Lebuinus in Deventer, St Pantaleon in Cologne, St Gertrude in Nivelles, and St Ursmer in Lobbes, which retain what appear to be western transepts, if in only fragmentary or heavily reconstructed form. Before the buildings in England, the double transept does not appear outside of the Empire, though there are some later examples in northern France. All the buildings in the Empire have differences from the English Durham Cathedral, Leeds 1980, 59–73; S. A. Harrison, ‘Observations on the Architecture of the Galilee Chapel’, Anglo-Norman Durham, 213–34. 64 L. Reilly, An Architectural History of Peterborough Cathedral, Oxford 1997, 87–111. For western transepts in general see J. P. McAleer, ‘Le problème du transept occidental en Grande-Bretagne’, CCM 34, 1991, 349–56. 65 Beseler and Roggenkamp, Die Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim; more recently J. Cramer, W. Jacobsen, D. von Winterfeld, ‘Die Michaeliskirche’, in Bernward von Hildesheim und das Zeitalter der Ottonen, ed. M. Brandt and E. Eggebrecht, I, Hildesheim 1993, 369–82. 66 The original articles on the excavation and interpretation of Carolingian Cologne cathedral can be found in O. Doppelfeld, W. Weyres et al., Die Ausgrabungen im Dom zu Köln, Mainz 1980. For recent summaries see W. Jacobsen, L. Schaefer and H. R. Sennhauser, Vorromanische Kirchenbauten, Nachtragsband, Munich 1991, 212–16, and Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst IV, 586–8 with bibliography. 67 L. Génicot, ‘La cathédrale notgerienne de St Lambert à Liège’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale des Monuments et Sites 17, 1970, 8–69; for more recent excavations, Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst IV, 608–9. 68 H. G. Marschall, Die Kathedrale von Verdun, Saarbrucken 1981, 69–92.

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Fig. 10 Ely cathedral, plan (Eric Fernie) examples, most importantly the presence of a western choir, but the treatment of the transepts in the Empire is quite diverse. At many the western transept was lower than the nave; at Lobbes and St Pantaleon the transepts were filled with galleries, with chapels at the west and an axial entrance underneath.69 The many differences between the Anglo-Norman west transepts and the examples in the Empire have caused disquiet among architectural historians looking for sources. There have been a number of different explanations for the appearance of the west transept in England, particularly for Ely (Figs 10, 11). One is that it was used because a western transept had appeared at the Anglo-Saxon predecessor to the new abbey. This interpretation, adopted by Sir Alfred Clapham, derives from a text describing the burial of Alfred Atheling (d.1036) ‘at the west end, by the steeple in the south porticus’.70 In favour of this interpretation is the specification of the south porticus, which implies there was probably a north porticus from which it was necessary to distinguish the place of burial. However, other Anglo-Saxon buildings, such as St Peter and Paul in Canterbury, part of the complex of churches at St Augustine’s, had laterally placed porticus flanking the western tower or narthex, and they did not project beyond the body of the church and were in no way transepts.71 The last Anglo-Saxon cathedral of which we have any knowledge, at Sherborne, had projecting porticus which in plan appear to have been western transepts, attached to a

69 Various aspects of the building at Lobbes, including its date, are controversial: S. Brigode,

‘L’architecture religieuse dans le Sud-Ouest de la Belgique. Pt 1, dès origines à la fin du XVe siècle’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale des Monuments et Sites 1, 1949, 85–353, esp. 111–30, and idem, ‘Les anciennes abbatiales et l’église carolingienne Saint-Ursmer de Lobbes’, Annales du congrès archéologique et historique de Tournai, 1949. Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst I, 677–81. For St Pantaleon, F. Mühlberg, Köln: St Pantaleon. 70 A. Clapham, English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest, Oxford 1930, 80. 71 H. M. and J. Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture I, Cambridge 1965, 132–42.

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Fig. 11 Ely cathedral, west transept

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church which also had eastern transepts. They could not have been true transepts, indeed hardly more than rooms at the west end of the nave. They were added to a pre-existent tower, which, for structural reasons, would probably preclude openings forming a crossing and they only communicated to the aisles through doorways which still partially exist. Added to this is the likelihood that at the first floor the tower once contained a chapel, the western arcade of which survived until the nineteenth century.72 Otherwise western transepts have been explained as abutments to the axial western towers that feature at both Bury and Ely.73 A possible objection to this view is that the galilee which projects from the west wall of the Ely transept is an addition of the thirteenth century.74 Twelfth-century decoration now concealed under its vault shows that there was no predecessor to the galilee, and it is unlikely that the tower would be so extravagantly abutted on three sides, and unsupported on the fourth. The presence of this decoration also negates the possibility that Ely once had, like a church in the Empire, a western choir.75 The western transepts of Bury and Ely were evidently important liturgical areas; there were four chapels in each, two on both the ground and first storeys. It is arguable that the greater architectural elaboration of the west transept at Ely, compared to the nave, indicates its greater liturgical importance, and certainly the evidence of a complex of liturgical spaces at the west end of Ely in the Anglo-Saxon era may have suggested a more elaborate than usual west front. There is some hint that the western transept at Ely replaced some of the liturgical functions of the eastern one. The corbels supporting the lintel over the entrance leading into the upper chapel in the south west transept has a type of incised decoration which is matched on a remodelled door in the north eastern transept, and on the so-called monks door next to the south eastern transept, though on the latter the feature is a restoration. The main, eastern, transepts, at Ely were originally built with galleries over their terminal bays, a feature not that uncommon in Anglo-Norman churches, and paralleled exactly, in the case of Ely, by the arrangement at Winchester.76 The function of these galleries is not entirely clear; use for choirs has been suggested, and for the display of relics.77 At some point, presumably at the same time as the remodelling of the doorways, the galleries were reduced to to simple bridges. Neither of the functions proposed above for galleries could easily be supplanted by the west transept; however, the upper levels of the eastern aisle of the transept at Winchester are arranged to hold altars, while those at Ely are not.78 Bury St Edmund’s now forms one of the most picturesque terraces of houses in

72 J. Gibb, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at Sherborne’, with an appendix by R. Gem, Arch. Journ. 135, 1975, 71–110. 73 McAleer ‘Le problème’. 74 H. Wharton, Anglia Sacra I, London 1691, 634. 75 A. Klukas, ‘Altaria Superiora: the Function and Significance of the Tribune in Anglo Norman Romanesque’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pittsburgh 1978, 379–84. 76 Both buildings also had aisles on the east and west sides of the transept; Symeon, the abbot in whose abbacy work on the abbey was begun, had been prior at Winchester and was the brother of the first Norman bishop of Winchester, Walkelin. 77 Heitz, ‘Influences carolingiennes’, 46. 78 J. Crook and Y. Kusaba, ‘The Transepts of Winchester Cathedral: Archaeological Evidence, Problems of Design, and Sequence of Construction’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, 1991, 297–8.

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Fig. 12 Hildesheim, St Michael England.79 The transept was very different from that of Ely; though it is conceivable that Ely was a simplification of Bury, indeed it is hard to imagine that the two occurred independently. Bury itself must have been a highly idiosyncratic structure, but survives now only as rubble core with the houses inserted into it. The recent restoration of the houses has made clearer some aspects of the structure, which underwent a number of transformations during the medieval period. The church was begun under Abbot Baldwin (1065–97), and the relics of St Edmund were translated into the church in 1096. The west transept must have been nearly complete, and certainly in use, by 1142, the date of the death of Bishop John of Rochester who dedicated the chapel of St Faith, the upper chapel on the north side.80 Completion of the towers, however, at Bury as at Ely, was delayed into the later part of the twelfth century. There were three deep porches in the thickness of the west wall at Bury. The transept behind 79 E. Fernie, ‘The Romanesque Church of Bury St Edmund’s Abbey’, BAA Conference Transactions:

Bury St Edmunds: Medieval Art, Architecture, Archaeology and Economy, Leeds 1998, 1–15; J. P. McAleer, ‘The West Front of the Church’, ibid., 22–33, and ‘The West Facade-Complex at the Abbey Church of Bury St Edmunds: a Description of the Evidence for its Reconstruction’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 30/2, 1998, 127–50, the latter with a detailed description of the remaining fabric. McAleer (‘West Front’, 27–8) asserts that the western transept must have resulted from an alteration of plan – a church dedicated to St Denis had to be cleared in order to make space for the transept. Against this Fernie notes how the transept fits with the proportional sytem of the building. It would not be a unique example of a great church extended over a smaller one; see, for example, Magdeburg Cathedral, E. Schubert, Der Magdeburger Dom, Berlin 1974, 21. 80 T. Arnold, Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey II, RS 1892, 4.

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was only open to the width of the nave and aisles, but there were apsed chapels on two storeys outside the line of the aisles, each separated from the transept behind by a double arcade. The upper chapels were relatively low in height, lower, in fact than the nave gallery. The chapels could indeed have occupied the same positions as they did if the nave elevation had continued uninterrupted to the west front. Outside these were two octagonal structures, linked by passages with the chapels; these were substantial structures, over 7m in diameter, while the stair vices at the ends of the transepts were held in the thickness of the wall. It was thought these were added around 1200, but McAleer has noted that there was no break in the masonry between the body of the transept and the octagons.81 The interior wall of the Bury west transept, as illuminated by McAleer, is also interesting. There are substantial niches in the east face of the west wall of the transept. How these are reconstructed is slightly problematical – there were medieval reconstructions before the dissolution, but it seems likely that the central one was apsidal in shape. If one reduced Bury to a set of features, a central western tower, porches on the west wall backed with niches, a pair of stacked chapels at the ends of the transept, a pair of octagonal structures beyond them, all the features can be found in the Empire, many of them indeed at Hildesheim, either St Michael (Figs 2, 12) (octagonal turrets, central tower, superimposed chapels at the end of the transept) or the cathedral, where there were niches back to back on the early eleventh-century western block, though they were handled somewhat differently. While this had been destroyed before the construction of Bury, there were other examples, such as the abbey church of St Maximin, which had three niches.82 There are many problems with these parallels. The principal difference between Bury and examples in the Empire, lack of western choir apart – and even this we can parallel at St Pantaleon, is the size of the octagons. They are unexplained and perhaps inexplicable, but tie in well with a tendency in English romanesque to transform sources, and produce buildings of some grandiloquence. Octagons, cylinders, or even other polygons flanking the western structure of great churches were relatively frequent in architecture in the Empire from at least the time of Gernode in the mid tenth century. The largest were at Heiligenberg, from the first third of the eleventh century,83 though as we have seen, there were polygonal structures at the west end of Anglo-Saxon Canterbury. The galleries at the end of the transepts of St Michael’s in Hildesheim served, at least in the eighteenth century, as angel choirs. There are no eastward apses to the galleries, only niches in the east walls.84 At St Lebuinus in Deventer, however, there were square-ended chapels to the

81 McAleer ‘West Front’, 26. 82 W. Jacobsen, U. Lobbedey and A. Kleine-Teshe, ‘Der hildesheimer Dom zur Zeit Bernwards’,

Bernward von Hildesheim und das Zeitalter der Ottonen, Hildesheim 1993, 299–311; J. Sistig, Die Architektur der Abteikirche St Maximin zu Trier im Lichte ottonischer Klosterreform, Kassel 1995. Perhaps the best-known building with niches placed back to back, the palace of Otto the Great at Magdeburg, has recently been shown to be of later date, and (probably) not a palace: B. Ludowici, ‘Archäologische Quellen zur Pfalz Ottos I in Magdeburg: Erste Ergebnisse der Auswertung der Grabungen 1959 bis 1968 auf der magdeburger Domplatz’, in Ottonische Neuanfänge: Symposion zur Ausstellung ‘Otto der Grosse, Magdeburg und Europa’, ed. B Schneidmüller and S. Weinfurter, Mainz 2001, 71–84. 83 H. Wischermann, Romanik in Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1987, 220–2. 84 G. Stracke, ‘St Michael zu Hildesheim: Überlegungen zur Anordnung der Altäre in der Bernwardbasilika des 11. Jahrhunderts’, in Kunstgeschichtliche Studien: Hugo Borger zum 70. Geburtstag, Weimar 1995, 69–83.

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east of the transepts, and probably a gallery inside the terminal wall.85 Abbot Baldwin had been prior at Leberau, or Lièpvre near Sélestat in Alsace,86 but nothing of the little we know of the church there suggests it as a source for the Bury west front.87 There is even less at Ely to suggest a means of transmission from the Empire. The transept, of which only the south arm survives, conforms more closely to a standard AngloNorman type, though both interior and exterior are highly decorated. This is not an indication of substantially later date than the rest of the building as recent examination of the fabric has shown.88 The abbey of Peterborough was rebuilt late, from about 1118, and was initially, or at least at an early stage, intended to be quite a modest structure. It was, however, extended during construction, and its intended two-tower facade expanded, by stages, into a western transept with two towers and colossal porch facade, a product which has had a mixed press since. The transept has little discernible function except as a frame on which to hang the facade. It is interesting that this is how the western transept was ultimately interpreted in England (and, indeed, at the two Scottish examples at Kelso and Kilwinning) and it seems probable that, along with whatever liturgical functions they may have served, display was a primary purpose for these structures. It is notable that early post-Conquest great churches have a variety of west fronts; while Canterbury cathedral and St Augustine’s adopted what is sometimes regarded as the standard solution of paired west towers, Winchester and Lincoln had large western blocks, the former known only through excavation and of dubious function, the latter still standing but the subject of vigorous debate.89 The liturgical function of the English western transepts could probably have been as successfully fulfilled by a different architectural form, and the selection of this motif at Ely, combined with some others from the Empire at Bury, is perhaps best read as an attempt to introduce something impressive and unusual. In all the cases dealt with here, with the exception of the cushion capital, if something is imported from the Empire, it is repackaged for use in England. This is true for the most directly copied imperial building we have, the Hereford bishop’s chapel, where Anglo-Norman vault forms were applied to a basic German scheme. The

85 A. van Deijk, Romaans Nederland, Amsterdam 1994, 44–50. Kubach and Verbeek, Romanische Baukunst I, 187–92. 86 For Baldwin see A. Gransden, ‘Baldwin, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds’, ANS 4, 1981 (1982), 65–76. 87 R. Will, ‘Données historiques et archéologiques sur la prieurale de Lièpvre’, Cahiers alsaciens d’archéologie, d’art et d’histoire 28, 1983, 83–98. 88 S. Ferguson, ‘The Romanesque Cathedral of Ely: an Archaeological Evaluation of its Construction’, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1986, 226–32 and 257–63; K. Fearn, P. Marshall and G. Simpson, ‘The South-West Transept of Ely Cathedral: Archaeological Interpretation’, University of Nottingham, n.d. 89 J. P. McAleer, ‘The Romanesque Façade of Winchester Cathedral, Part 1’, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society 49, 1993, 129–42, ‘Part 2’, ibid. 50, 1994, 153–68; F. Saxl, ‘Lincoln Cathedral: the Eleventh Century Design for the West Front’, Arch. Journ. 103, 1946, 105–18; R. Gem, ‘Lincoln Minster: Ecclesia Pulchra, Ecclesia Fortis’, BAA Conference Transactions: Medieval Art and Architecture at Lincoln Cathedral, Leeds 1986, 9–28; J. P. McAleer, ‘The Eleventh-Century Facade of Lincoln Cathedral: Saxl’s Theory of Byzantine Influence Reconsidered’, Architectura 14, 1984, 1–19; D. Stocker and A. Vince, ‘The Early Norman Castle at Lincoln and a Re-evaluation of the Original West Tower of Lincoln Cathedral’, Medieval Archaeology 41, 1997, 223–33; A. Quiney, ‘ “In Hoc Signo”: the West Front of Lincoln Cathedral’, Architectural History 44, 2001, 162–71. Lincoln bears a superficial resemblance in plan to the square western choirs of St Bartholomew in Liège and St Servais in Maastricht. The resemblance would be much strengthened if the doors inserted in the mid twelfth century were not replacements for earlier doors, but innovations, implying a liturgical re-ordering.

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scheme, however, was also embellished with features from a number of churches in the Empire, and it is interesting that along with the stylistic difference between buildings in England and those in the Empire we also find them derived from a multiplicity of sources, implying some sort of intimate knowledge of architecture in the Empire. The Empire was often sought as a source for the more pretentious type of building. In the case of York, and possibly Bury, unusual forms may have been selected to stress the importance or rights of the ecclesiastical institution housed in the church.90 Indeed one possible explanation for the use of motifs from the Empire in general might be as an assertion of the status of the new rulers of England, drawing on ideas from the most prestigious source in contemporary Europe. However, no building in England, the Hereford chapel apart, was simply based on German models. The diversity of the great churches built in a short period after the Conquest is one of the notable features of post-Conquest architecture. While we can only speculate on the reasons why particular building forms were chosen, the builders of the English great churches were avaricious for new ideas, to make their buildings in some way distinctive. This in turn led them to look beyond the confines of the duchy to the wider world and to the Empire.

90 Bury was coveted as a seat by the bishops of East Anglia before the move to Norwich – a move resisted

by the abbot and monks. The extension of the abbey by one bay has been seen as a direct response to the building of Norwich cathedral. S. Heywood, ‘Aspects of the Romanesque Church of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in their Regional Context’, BAA Conference Transactions: Bury St Edmunds, 16–21, esp. 19–20.

The Beginnings of Lambeth Palace

THE BEGINNINGS OF LAMBETH PALACE* Tim Tatton-Brown Introduction It is well-known that just over eight hundred years ago the archbishop of Canterbury became the owner of the manor of Lambeth, and that the principal documents relating to the acquisition of this manor from Rochester in 1197 still survive.1 What is less well-known is the complicated sequence of events, in the last decade of the twelfth century, that led eventually to the building of a large new London residence for Archbishop Stephen Langton. It is also surprising that the medieval topography of the Lambeth area, which lies directly opposite Westminster on the east side of the Thames, has been so little studied. An investigation of this topography is essential if the various buildings mentioned in the late twelfth-century documents are to be located and understood.

The First Church The manor of Lambeth is first described in detail in Domesday Book, where unusually we are told that ‘St Mary’s is a manor called LANCHEI [i.e. Lambeth]’ which was held by Countess Goda, King Edward’s sister. The church (ecclesia) is also specifically mentioned, and it is recorded that there was quite a large population (12 villains, 27 bordars, 2 slaves and 10 ‘burgesses in London’), and that the manor originally answered for 10 hides (in 1066) but now (1086) only for 2½ hides.2 Dr John Blair has suggested that this was a ‘collegiate minster’, perhaps founded by Godgifu, Edward the Confessors’s sister who had died in c.1056.3 She presumably endowed her church with the whole of the manor of Lambeth, and this large area of land

I am very grateful to the many people who made useful comments on the first draft of this paper (written early in 1999), especially Sir Howard Colvin, Professors Christopher Brooke, Nicholas Brooks, John Gillingham, Christopher Holdsworth, and Brian Kemp, and Drs John Blair, Martin Brett, Derek Keene, and Simon Thurley. I am also very grateful to my wife, Veronica, for efficiently word-processing the text several times, and to John Atherton Bowen for drawing up my rough plan. 1 They were brought together at the Society of Antiquaries on 31 January 1889 by W. H. St John Hope. See his note in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries 12, 1888–9, 291–301. The principal document is shown on the dust jacket of F. R. H. Du Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury, New York 1966. The Rochester documents are now in their archives, T54/1–3. See also J. Thorpe, Registrum Roffense, London 1769, 459–60, and C. R. Cheney and E. John, eds, English Episcopal Acta III, Canterbury 1193–1205, British Academy 1986, nos 370–3. 2 See Domesday Book (Surrey), ed. John Morris, Chichester 1975, 14. It is listed as ‘Terra ecclesiae de Lantheige’ in Brixton Hundred. 3 J. Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, Stroud 1991, 102. *

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extended southwards as far as Norwood.4 The site of Godgifu’s church of St Mary is almost certainly the same as the site of the later parish church of St Mary, but of the earlier building only a later medieval west tower survives today.5 Beneath this church, on what was slightly higher ground near the River Thames, the foundations of a major late Anglo-Saxon church may be found one day. Before the end of the eleventh century (perhaps in 1088) this church was given by King William Rufus to Rochester Cathedral, at a time when the bishop of Rochester, Gundulf, had continuous good relations with this difficult king.6 We are also told that at this time a gold and silver shrine, gospel books, rich crucifixes and other ornaments, all formerly belonging to Godgifu, were taken away to Rochester,7 and as John Blair suggests, this presumably marked the end of the ‘Minster’ church and its canons.8 Soon after this we hear of Lambeth being used for the first time as a London residence of the archbishop, when Gundulf had an exceptionally close relationship with his superior and friend, Archbishop Anselm.9 From 1096, for example, we know that Anselm held ordinations and a Council at Lambeth,10 and in 1108, just before his death, Gundulf formally gave the manor of Lambeth to the monks of Rochester ‘for their sustenance’, in return for an annual ‘provision-rent’ of 500 lampreys from the Thames, which were to be given to the bishop on St Andrew’s day.11 Gundulf’s successor, Ralph d’Escures (1108–14) went on to become archbishop, and in 1115 he performed a consecration there ‘in ecclesia hospitii sui apud Lamhetham’. This suggests that by this time the archbishop had a permanent house at Lambeth.12 The next bishop, Ernulf (1114–24), assessed the manor at one salmon (from the Thames beside the manor), which the monks were to eat annually in the refectory in memory of their benefactor, the good Bishop Gundulf.13 Later in the twelfth century, a dispute arose between the monks and the bishop over the ownership of the manor, but this need not be discussed here.14 More important is the fact that all the later twefth-century archbishops of Canterbury (except Thomas Becket) were already using the hospitium near the Rochester manor house as a London residence. It had its 4

It is still the area covered by the London Borough of Lambeth. By Domesday, however, the manor had been divided up, with Lambeth itself occupying only the northern third. 5 The rest of the church was rebuilt in 1851–2 by P. C. Hardwick. 6 See R. A. L. Smith, ‘The Place of Gundulf in the Anglo-Norman Church’, in Collected Papers, London 1947, 83–102; see also M. Brett, ‘The Church at Rochester, 604–1185’, in N. Yates, ed., Faith and Fabric: a History of Rochester Cathedral 604–1994, Woodbridge 1996, 13. 7 Thorpe, Registrum, 119. 8 Blair, Medieval Surrey, 102. 9 Before this Archbishop Lanfranc may have used his estate, centred on St Mary-le-Bow, in the city, as his London residence. The crypt of this church, dating from Lanfranc’s time, still survives. 10 C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Lambeth and London in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Annual Report of the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, 1972, 11–23, especially p. 15. See also S. Denne, Addenda to the History of Lambeth Palace, 1795, 176, and D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, eds, Councils and Synods I, 2, Oxford 1981, 662. 11 Thorpe, Registrum, 6. Dr Martin Brett, however, now suggests that this 1108 charter is a mid twelfth-century forgery. In that year (1108) also, as Professor Brooke has kindly pointed out to me, Anselm blessed the new abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury ‘apud Lambetham in capella Rofensis ecclesiae ubi tunc Anselmus erat hospitatus’, Eadmer, HN, 190. 12 ‘apud Lambetham’, Eadmer, HN, 235, and Whitelock et al., Councils and Synods, 715. I am again grateful to Professor Brooke for these references, which show that Lambeth already housed the permanent headquarters for the archbishop from at least this time. 13 Thorpe, Registrum, 6. 14 Ibid., 41–6, and Brett, ‘Church at Rochester’, 26.

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own chapel where many consecrations of bishops took place.15 It is clear that, as at most large manors in south-east England in the early twelfth century, a complex of residential (and, no doubt, farm) buildings for the Rochester monks had also grown up beside St Mary’s church, which had become a parish church, as well as the manorial chapel.16 These buildings were, of course, very close to the huge new royal great hall at Westminster on the other bank of the Thames.17

The New Collegiate Church On 16 December 1184, the monks of Canterbury were persuaded to elect Baldwin of Forde, the bishop of Worcester and a Cistercian monk, archbishop of Canterbury. He was enthroned in the magnificent new, barely completed, ‘Gothic’ cathedral of Canterbury on 19 May the following year, and by the end of that year he was also papal legate.18 In the same year he had had his clerk, Gilbert de Glanville, elected bishop of Rochester.19 Baldwin was a remarkable man who was to die of disease only five years later, in front of the walls of Acre in Palestine on the Third Crusade.20 In the short period of his archiepiscopate, which spanned the death of Henry II and the accession of Richard ‘Coeur de Lion’, he managed to be almost continuously in dispute with the monks at Canterbury Cathedral Priory.21 The dispute began in the spring of 1186 when the archbishop started to put in hand a scheme to build a large new collegiate church at Hackington just outside Canterbury. The monks, with good reason, saw this as a major threat to their rights and opposed it bitterly. They claimed that Baldwin intended to make a new provincial college which would elect the new archbishop, as the College of Cardinals elected the pope in Rome. They said that there were to be 60–70 prebendaries with much of the money required coming from Canterbury manors, and the monks exerted all the influence they could muster on the Pope to oppose the scheme. Baldwin in turn put the Cathedral Priory under siege and a titanic struggle ensued. This cannot be followed in detail here,22 suffice it to say that in November 1189 the Hackington site was given up and the whole scheme was trans-

15 W. Stubbs, Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, 2nd edn, Oxford 1896, 43–51, lists consecrations in the

following years: 1121 (2), 1125, 1133, 1143, 1152, 1175, 1180, 1186, 1188 and 1189. It should be noted that until 1238 the archbishop uniquely appointed the bishop of Rochester as both a diocesan and his suffragan, and that Bishop Walter (1148–82) was also the brother of Archbishop Theobald (1139–61). 16 Almost all the parish churches in Kent started as manorial chapels in the late eleventh century, see T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The Churches of Canterbury Diocese in the 11th Century’, in Minsters and Parish Churches: the Local Church in Transition, 950–1200, ed. J. Blair, Oxford 1988, 105–18. The archbishop’s hospitium may have been to the north-west of the Rochester complex, beside the River Thames. 17 Lambeth was less than half a mile due south-east of Westminster Hall. 18 Fasti, 1066–1300 II, Monastic Cathedrals, 1971, 5. 19 Ibid., 76. 20 For a fine new reassessment of his life see C. Holdsworth, ‘Baldwin of Forde, Cistercian and Archbishop of Canterbury’, Annual Report of the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, 1989, 13–31. 21 He also did many other things including going on a famous preaching tour of Wales in 1188. This tour was fully described by his companion, Gerald, in the well-known ‘Journey through Wales’. 22 For full details see W. Stubbs, ed., Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, 73, 2 vols, i, 1879–80, 332–594, and the introduction to Epistolae Cantuarienses (Epp. Cant.), in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I ii, RS 1865. See also D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1963, 316–26.

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The topography of Lambeth Palace (drawn by John Atherton Bowen)

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ferred to Lambeth. This was the time that the new king, Richard, was actively preparing to leave for the new Crusade with his archbishop. At Lambeth, Baldwin proposed to erect a new church and college on part of the curia, with an additional 24 acres and one perch of land added to it, which he obtained from the bishop, Gilbert de Glanville, and the monks of Rochester,23 in exchange for a becary (sheepwalk) in the parish of St James on the Isle of Grain at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent.24 The new Lambeth site was clearly beyond the curia to the north, and its position can still today be fairly closely located. The curia presumably refers to the earlier twelfth-century buildings close to Lambeth parish church which were discussed above. The centre of the new piece of ground for the archbishop’s church and college must have lain about 500 metres north and north-east of Lambeth parish church in the vicinity of the modern Royal Street.25 It is possible to suggest this location because in the exchange of manors in 1197 (see below), the new site of the bishop of Rochester’s London house is described as being a piece of ground next the church of the blessed martyrs Stephen and Thomas at Lambeth, eastward, continuing in length, towards the south 17 perches, and towards the north 18 perches and 3 feet, and towards the east 10 perches and 13 feet, and towards the west 11 perches and 9 feet.26 This site, with these exact dimensions, continued in use as the bishop’s London house, called ‘La Place’, until 1539 when it became the bishop of Carlisle’s London house. It was still the bishop of Carlisle’s property, though no longer his residence, in 1827 when it was described as ‘very ancient and much out of repair’.27 It was then demolished and the site was cut up into streets and houses, a few of which (on the eastern side) still remain.28 Unfortunately almost all of the rest of the site is now covered by the raised viaducts for the many railway lines leading into Waterloo station. Having located this site, which the 1197 charter describes as being eastwards ‘of the church of the blessed martyrs Stephen and Thomas’, it is not difficult to suggest that Baldwin’s new church, which was dedicated to Sts Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury, lay on a site immediately to the west, in an area which is today mostly derelict land just beyond the northern boundary of the ‘Archbishop’s Park’. This land, called Sowters or Southers Land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was outside the curia of Lambeth Palace until 1784, when part of it was taken into the curtilage to make a new kitchen garden.29 In 1839 the northern strip of the kitchen

23 Gilbert, formerly Baldwin’s clerk (according to Gervase) and now his suffragan, no doubt provided

great assistance with this scheme. See also Fasti, 1066–1300 II, 76. 24 Thorpe, Registrum, 434, and Epp. Cant., 547–8. 25 This street is now immediately to the east of the Accident and Emergency entrance to St Thomas’ Hos-

pital. 26 Thorpe, Registrum, 11, and Cheney and John, Episcopal Acta, no. 369. A perch is 5½ yards (17½ feet). 27 See Survey of London 23, St Mary, Lambeth, part 1, London 1951, 75. See also two maps of the prop-

erty in 1787 and 1796 in Lambeth Palace Library (TD 189 and 191). This site contains 2 acres and 1 perch. In Bishop Fisher’s time, just before the exchange with Carlisle, the house is confusingly called ‘Lambeth Marsh’. 28 The two streets were called Allen and Homer Streets. They are now, respectively, Centa and Virgil Streets. 29 This was for Archbishop John Moore (1783–1805). See the two fine (‘before’ and ‘after’) estate maps of 1783 and 1784 in Lambeth Palace Library (TD 217–18). There is also an even larger map of the whole manor of 1812 which shows the kitchen garden and its relationship to Carlisle House and gardens. The two

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garden site was redeveloped to make a new church of the Holy Trinity,30 a parsonage and a school. To the north of this a terrace of houses was built along the south side of Royal Street. The area was badly damaged in the last war and the church and neighbouring buildings were demolished in the 1950s, with most of the land now being either derelict or a car park.31 Somewhere in this area must be the foundations of Baldwin’s new collegiate church of Sts Stephen and Thomas and it is on the surrounding 24-acre site, then, that at the very beginning of 1190 Baldwin ordered his tents (perhaps for the crusade) to be pitched. The plan of the large new stone chapel, and of the clerks’ houses (mansiones), were also laid out at this time.32 Baldwin’s new precinct of over 24 acres must have occupied the whole of the area north of the original curia, between the Thames on the west and the bishop of Rochester’s house on the east. The northern boundary was perhaps just to the south of the modern Westminster Bridge Road on the edge of the low-lying Lambeth Marsh. This area of marsh only started to be developed after the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750. It is well shown before this on William Morgan’s map of 1682,33 where ‘The Marsh’ is shown covered by a mass of drainage ditches. On its south-eastern side is shown a street with houses and gardens on either side called, confusingly, ‘Lambeth Marsh’.34 This street, which is on slightly higher ground, survives to this day as Upper and Lower Marsh, just to the south-east of Waterloo Station. Its south-western end stops abruptly on the north side of the ‘Sowter lands’ mentioned above, and it is possible that this street ran originally to Baldwin’s collegiate church. In fact, it is also just possible that the settlement of Lambeth Marsh came into existence at the end of the twelfth century immediately outside the new archiepiscopal precinct.35 At the south-west end of Lambeth Marsh another road runs westwards towards the Thames. We know that this road was already in existence by the early fourteenth century because its route (from the Thames to the bishop of Rochester’s house) was the subject of a dispute between Rochester and Canterbury. This dispute was finally settled in 1357 when Archbishop Simon of Islip allowed his brother bishop of Rochester, John of Sheppey (at that time Treasurer of England), to build a ‘bridge’ (landing stage) at a place called Stangate.36 This is the well-known Stangate stairs, which was directly opposite Westminster stairs, and it was the most important ferry crossing of the Thames until the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750. The route from the bishop of Rochester’s house to Stangate stairs across the northern part of ‘Sowters Lands’ survived until well into the nineteenth century along Royal Street and, after a dog-leg in Upper Marsh, Stangate Street. It was finally cut off copies of this map in Lambeth Palace Library are TD 210–211. The palace area of this map is usefully reproduced in D. Gardiner, The Story of Lambeth Palace, London 1930, opp. p. 229. 30 The church was designed by Edward Blore. 31 The former school buildings to the west are now a Tibetan Buddhist centre. 32 Stubbs, Gervase ii, 405. 33 I. Darlington and J. Howgego, Printed Maps of London c.1553–1850, London 1964, no. 33, sheet 14. The whole area of parks and gardens belonging to the archbishop covered about 28 acres in 1784, see map TD 218 in Lambeth Palace Archives, reproduced in Tatton-Brown (note 58 below), 86. 34 The settlement of ‘Lamberth Marche’ is also very clearly shown, and named, on the earliest printed map of London by Francis Hogenberg of 1572, Darlington and Howgego, Printed Maps, no. 2. 35 One should also bear in mind that a more rapidly rising sea and river level in the thirteenth century would have caused the marsh land to be flooded. The river wall on the west (called the ‘Narrow Wall’ and now on the modern County Hall and South Bank sites) was, no doubt, built in the later Middle Ages to protect the marsh. 36 A. C. Ducarel, History and Antiquities of the Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, London 1785, 79.

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by the building of St Thomas’s Hospital on the new Albert Embankment in the 1860s,37 and Stangate Street itself has now gone beneath the modern accident and emergency centre and new wing of St Thomas’s Hospital.38 Returning to Archbishop Baldwin’s new church and college of canons of 1190, we have seen that this was to be in a very substantial new Close on at least 24 acres of land to the north of the old curia, with a large new church surrounded by the houses of the new canons.39 As it happens an even larger new ecclesiastical Close was being laid out at New Salisbury at almost exactly the same time.40 Here there was to be a new church and churchyard, surrounded by the bishop’s and canons’ houses, on a virgin site that was over three times the size of the Lambeth Close. It is tempting to see Baldwin’s scheme in a similar light and traces of the house plots as well as of the church may one day be found. It is also surely of great significance that the site near Lambeth was exactly opposite, and due east of, Westminster, with its large abbey and royal hall;41 a place that was now rapidly becoming the centre for government in England. Is it too fanciful to think that Baldwin’s ultimate plan was to have a new cathedral at Lambeth for England’s premier archbishop, which would replace Canterbury and its difficult Benedictine monks? This would finally bring to fruition Pope Gregory the Great’s scheme of six hundred years earlier, with metropolitan bishops in London and York.42 During the summer of 1190, and in the year after Archbishop Baldwin’s death (at Acre on 19 November 1190), work on constructing the new church and canons’ houses seems to have continued. In May 1192, however, Pope Celestine III ordered the closure of the church at Lambeth, but then less than a year afterwards, on 30 January 1193, he wrote again to the canons of Lambeth, giving them papal protection for their church and property. The first letter was, no doubt, due to the monks at Canterbury, while the second letter was almost certainly because the bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter, was in Rome at that time.43 He was Baldwin’s executor and had, as dean of York, been a canon designate of the original foundation, as Professor Cheney has pointed out. Later that year, after seeing Richard ‘Coeur de Lion’ in captivity in Germany, he returned to England, and in May 1193 he was elected archbishop of Canterbury.44 He also became justiciar, and seems to have been on good

37 See the ‘Albert Embankment Development Plan’ (1862–3) of the Metropolitan Board.of Works. 38 Sadly, the site does not appear to have been archaeologically investigated before the latest redevelop-

ment. 39 It is described in the contemporary charter (Cotton MS Dom. A. x. 9) as: ‘partem curiae apud Lambeth

. . . ex praeterea extra curiam viginta quatuor acras et unam perticatam . . . ad aedificandam ecclesiam in honorem beati martyris Thomae et aedificia canonicorum ibidem serviturorum extruenda . . .’, Thorpe, Registrum, 434, and Epp. Cant., 547–8. The archbishop’s charter is dated to the first year of Richard’s reign, presumably before 20 March 1190, when the exchange was confirmed by the king. 40 Although the church at Salisbury was not started until the beginning of Henry III’s reign, the plots for the canons’ houses were probably being marked out in the 1190s. See VCH Wiltshire iii, 1956, 165. Professor Brian Kemp is, however, less certain of this (pers. com.). 41 The eastern arm of the abbey had recently been rebuilt around a new shrine of St Edward the Confessor (dedicated in 1163). 42 Apart from the moving of Salisbury Cathedral, other radical schemes were also happening at the time, like the making of Glastonbury Abbey into a cathedral from 1196 to 1219, and the temporary replacement of monks by canons at Coventry Cathedral in the 1190s. See Knowles, Monastic Order, 322–30, Brooke, ‘Lambeth and London’, 16, and E. U. Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England, Cambridge 1994, 113. 43 C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter, Cambridge 1967, 38. 44 Ibid., 39.

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terms with the Canterbury monks for the next three years. Then, in the spring of 1196, Hubert decided to continue with the scheme for the new collegiate church at Lambeth, much to the consternation of the monks. The events of the next four years are chronicled in detail by the monk, Gervase of Canterbury,45 and we can be certain that by 1197 work was continuing on the new church. This was also the year in which the archbishop completed his famous exchange of manors (Darenth and Lambeth) with Bishop Gilbert and the monks of Rochester.46 As part of this exchange, the archbishop took over the rest of the Rochester monks’ curia beside the parish church of St Mary, and probably intended to make a much larger residence here. At the same time, as we have seen, the bishop of Rochester got a new residence on a two acre site to the east of the new church.47 It is possible, therefore, that in 1197 the archbishop was enlarging the whole site to incorporate within its ‘Close’ the regular house plots for himself and his suffragan of Rochester, just as was happening at this time in the new Close at Salisbury.48 The new scheme was underway by November 1197, but a new pope, the remarkable Innocent III, was elected the following year and he had soon been persuaded by the Canterbury monks to order the demolition of the buildings and the disbandment of the College of Canons.49 After several more stages, the archbishop agreed to the demolition on 27 January 1199,50 but wrote to the pope asking for permission to found a new college in honour of Sts Stephen and Thomas, on a new site at Lambeth.51 An agreement was finally sealed at Westminster, on 6 November 1200, which allowed the archbishop to build a new church for Premonstratensian canons, on a new site, with a maximum of twenty canons.52 This second stage of work on the collegiate church, therefore, lasted for about a year, and only by archaeological excavation will we find if Baldwin’s scheme was modified in any way for Hubert Walter. It would be particularly interesting to see if the foundations of the church itself were enlarged, or possibly made smaller, at this time. At the very large royal abbey at Faversham in Kent (founded for King Stephen in 1147), it was found, in an excavation in 1965, that the huge mid twelfth-century abbey church was considerably shortened on the east and west in c.1200.53 One would also like to know much more of the topography of the Close. Was there a large rectangular cemetery around the church, with the canons’ houses beyond this, as at Salisbury? Or was it a more irregular Close, as at Wells and Lincoln, for example? A series of archaeological excavations to rediscover the plan of this great aborted scheme of eight hundred years ago, on the east bank of the Thames directly opposite Westminster, is surely a priority for the twenty-first century. 45 He describes the site at Lambeth in 1196 as ‘a chapel and some small houses, and a suitable site close

to the city of London and near to the Royal Court which the Archbishop of Canterbury frequented on business of both Church and State’, quoted in Cheney, Hubert Walter, 138. 46 See note 1 above. This exchange was already first being negotiated early in 1196, see Cheney and John, Episcopal Acta, p. 40. 47 See note 27 above. 48 See note 40 above. 49 Cheney, Hubert Walter, 140 and 145, and Cheney and John, Episcopal Acta, nos 374–81. 50 Thorpe, Registrum, 466 and 475–6. 51 Cheney, Hubert Walter, 146. 52 Epp. Cant., 512–15. No consecration of Chrism or ordinations were to take place there. 53 B. Philp, Excavations at Faversham, 1965, West Wickham 1968, 7–18. A full history.of Faversham Abbey has, however, yet to be written.

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The Premonstratensian House and the Archbishop’s New London Residence As we have just seen, the final stage of the archbishop’s ‘redevelopment’ of the manor of Lambeth got under way in 1200, with the building of a new small house for Premonstratensian canons, that is regular canons of the Order of Prémontré. This was quite clearly to be a small claustral complex on a new site, and it seems highly likely that this small group of buildings was made on the site of the present Lambeth Palace, some one hundred or so metres due north of the parish church of St Mary. The evidence for this is principally the survival of a cloister at the core of the present palace,54 with on its north side a sunken rectangular building that was later to become the undercroft to the archbishop’s chapel. This undercroft has clear evidence within it that the lowest 3–4 feet of its walls are of an earlier build.55 These lower walls were only re-exposed in 1907, when the floor level was lowered to its original ground level. The filling was supposed to have been caused by flooding from the River Thames, but the architectural and archaeological evidence suggests to me that it was deliberately filled in, in the early thirteenth century.56 This undercroft may originally have been constructed for the refectory of the Premonstratensian monastery, and quite a close parallel can be found for it at the near-contemporary Premonstratensian abbey of St Radegund (founded in 1192–3) near Dover.57 The refectory undercroft, now preserved as the cellar to the Elizabethan farmhouse, is the only building around the cloister which has a vaulted undercroft and, like Lambeth, it also has the remains of massive buttresses with arches between them.58 If this is the correct interpretation, then the canons’ church must have been on the other (i.e. south) side of the cloister at Lambeth. The foundations, at the east and west ends, may therefore be found projecting out beyond the east and west sides of the north end of the later Great Hall.59 The only other possible evidence for the Premonstratensian house at Lambeth is the reference, in 1445, to the ‘Freresgarden’.60 This is, however, long after the canons had left Lambeth, and indeed we have no evidence that the canons remained at Lambeth after the death of Archbishop Hubert Walter on 13 July 1205. Hubert Walter had

54 This cloister was only finally demolished in the 1830s by Blore, see Survey of London, 23, 1951, 88. The outer walls of the cloister still survive on the north, and in part on the east and south. There is still, however, an open court at the centre of the present library buildings. 55 Unlike with all of the higher walls, there are no boulders of iron-cemented gravel-stone in the lowest rubble work. There is also a blocked doorway on the west, which is the only doorway into the undercroft at its original floor-level. See also P. M. Johnston, ‘The Crypt and Chapel of Lambeth Palace’, Surrey Archaeological Collections 32, 1919, 131–52. 56 Perhaps because the river level was rising. No record of the form of the filling that was removed in 1907 seems to have been made. There are, however, some photos in the Archbishop Davidson papers in Lambeth Palace Library (vol. 22, fos 10–11), which show quantities of stone rubble in the course of removal. I am grateful to Dr Richard Palmer, the Librarian and Archivist, for this information. Excavation work east of the chapel, in November 1999, was also able to show that the lowest walls of the undercroft pre-dated the large buttress foundations for the vault and chapel walls. 57 See W. H. St John Hope, ‘On the Praemonstratensian Abbey of St Radegund, Bradsole in Polton, near Dover’, Archaeologia Cantiana 14, 1882, 140–52. See also S. E. Winbolt, ‘St Radegund’s Abbey, Dover’, Archaeologia Cantiana 43, 1931, 187–98. Also, VCH Kent ii, 1926, 172. 58 See the plan in Hope, ‘Praemonstratensian Abbey’, opp. p. 144, also reproduced in T. Tatton-Brown, Lambeth Palace, a History of the Archbishops of Canterbury and their Houses, London 2000, 25. 59 However, a very small excavation, on the west side of the hall in 1980, only apparently found natural sand. See R. Densem, ‘Excavations at Lambeth Palace, 1980’, The London Archaeologist 4, no. 2, Spring 1981, 39–43. 60 Court Roll no. 573, quoted in Gardiner, Lambeth Palace, 51.

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himself founded another Premonstratensian house at West Dereham in Norfolk (on his own family property) in 1188, just before he became bishop of Salisbury, and it is clear that the Premonstratensians, or White Canons as they are popularly called, were undergoing a critical period in their existence in the last decade of the twelfth century and early years of the thirteenth century.61 By the time that Stephen Langton became archbishop, at Rome in December 1206, the canons may already have left Lambeth, and they certainly were not still there after the period of the great interdict (1208–14), and the return to England of Archbishop Langton. Hubert Walter was a key figure at the centre of government in England, in the later years of Richard I’s reign as chief justiciar (1193–8), and for the whole of the early part of John’s reign, as chancellor (1199–1205), and it seems highly likely that he would have started to build himself a prestigious residence at Lambeth at this time. He was also the man who first started to make detailed royal records, and set up a ‘central government archive’ at Westminster.62 It is therefore surprising that, as yet, we have no evidence for the buildings of his residence at Lambeth. It is certainly possible that he started to build the great hall on the south side of the cloister, and to convert the north range into the archbishop’s chapel, but the principal architectural features of the chapel itself must surely date to the time of Archbishop Langton. It is also worth noting that, at Canterbury, Hubert Walter seems to have started to build his vast great hall, and great chamber on a vaulted undercroft, in the last years of his life, after he was reconciled to the monks. The great aisled hall at Canterbury, which was of eight bays and 168 feet long by 64 feet wide, was by far the largest great hall in England after Westminster Hall.63 It truly reflects the power and status of Archbishops Walter and Langton, when they had so important a role in governing the kingdom. After the death of Hubert Walter in 1205, all building work must have stopped at both Canterbury and Lambeth. At his death, the archbishopric was heavily in debt, and though Cardinal Stephen Langton was elected in Rome by the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury the following year (on Pope Innocent III’s recommendation), he was not allowed to return to England for over six years.64 During most of this time, the country was under a papal interdict, and many of the bishops went into exile. Langton finally came to England in July 1213, and only after this could work at the archbishop’s London house (and at his huge Canterbury ‘palace’) be restarted. It is unlikely, however, that much was done between 1213 and 1218, and only after King John’s death (1216), the accession of the boy King Henry III, and the return of the archbishop from his second exile in 1218, would work have been restarted. With the return of stability early in the new reign, when once again the archbishop of Canterbury was a key figure in the running of the country, the building of the new chapel with its vaulted undercroft must have been carried on rapidly. The years following 1218 are remarkable for new, or restarted, building projects in England. 61 For the Premonstratensians see Knowles, Monastic Order, 205 and 360–2. Also, H. M. Colvin, The

White Canons in England, Oxford 1951. Sir Howard Colvin, however, believes that there is no documentary evidence to show that Hubert Walter started to build his Premonstratensian house at Lambeth, ibid., 135, and in a letter to the author (dated 19.12.1999). 62 Cheney, Hubert Walter, and M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066–1307, 2nd edn, Oxford 1993, 68–73. 63 See J. Rady, T. Tatton-Brown and J. A. Bowen, ‘The Archbishop’s Palace, Canterbury’, Journ. BAA 144, 1991, 1–60, esp. pp. 6–10. 64 See M. D. Knowles, ‘The Canterbury Election of 1205–6’, EHR 53, 1938, 211–20, and Acta Stephani Langton, ed. K. Major, Canterbury and York Society 50, 1950.

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These include the completion of the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, the start of the new Salisbury Cathedral, and the continuing of work at Wells Cathedral. The building of major new houses for the bishops of the latter two cathedrals was also put in hand at this time, and at Wells a very fine large chamber block, with a vaulted undercroft, still survives from this period.65 Over the next half century or so, almost all of the English bishops put up major new residences near their cathedrals, and the size of the great aisled hall usually reflects the status of the bishop concerned. During the thirteenth century most of the bishops were also building themselves large London houses, and this was where the archbishop of Canterbury led the way. Two of the most important residences, which quickly followed on from Archbishop Langton’s work at Lambeth, were the archbishop of York’s house at Whitehall and the bishop of Winchester’s great residence in Southwark.66 At Lambeth only the chapel block now survives,67 and this fine building must have been complete before Langton’s death in 1228. It seems inconceivable that a large new chamber block and aisled hall were not built at the same time, and I would suggest that the first large north–south hall on the south side of the cloister was constructed by Archbishop Langton in the 1220s. It was almost certainly an aisled hall, and at its north end, and probably extending up the east side of the cloister, there would have been a large chamber block at first floor level. Unfortunately the great hall, in its later medieval form, was totally demolished in c.1650, and the chamber block was completely removed by Blore, though he did keep its magnificent fourteenth-century roof.68 Only below-ground archaeology will one day reveal further details of these structures. An important figure in all the construction work mentioned above was the archbishop’s clerk, Elias de Dereham, who had first come to prominence under Hubert Walter. Matthew Paris describes him as one of the two incomparable designers (artifices) of the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury in 1220. He returned from exile in the same year as Archbishop Langton (1218), and almost immediately became involved with the great new cathedral at Salisbury as a resident canon and ‘Rector Fabrice’. On grounds of style alone, he is likely to have been the designer of the chapel at Lambeth, with its distinctive triple-lancet windows. His hand can also perhaps be seen in Bishop Jocelin’s great chamber block at Wells,69 already mentioned, and in the new chancel for the Temple Church in London. This latter building probably dates from the 1230s, 65 R. W. Dunning, ‘The Bishop’s Palace’, in Wells Cathedral, a History, ed. L. S. Colchester, 1982,

227–47. For the early thirteenth-century chamber block, see M. Wood, ‘13th-Century Domestic Architecture in England’, Arch. Journ. 105 Supplement, 1950, 74–5, and (for plans) E. Buckle in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 34, 1888, 54–95. 66 See S. Thurley, Whitehall Palace, an Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240–1648, New Haven and London 1999, and M. Carlin, ‘The Reconstruction of Winchester House, Southwark’, London Topographical Record 25, 1985, 33–57. 67 See Johnston, ‘Crypt and Chapel’. 68 Over what was later called the ‘Guard Room’. In the Parliamentary Survey of 1647 it is called ‘the great chamber’, while on the map of 1648 this room is called the ‘High Commission Court’, and this chamber and the ‘presence chamber’ to the north may well have been the thirteenth-century chamber block. 69 Rady et al., ‘The Archbishop’s Palace’. Elias had earlier been steward to Bishop Jocelin (1206–42) and a canon at Wells. For his career see A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘Master Elias of Dereham and the King’s Works’, Arch. Journ. 98, 1941, 1–35, and N. Vincent in Dictionary of National Biography, Missing Persons, Oxford 1993, 205–6. See also A. Hastings, Elias of Dereham, Architect of Salisbury Cathedral, 1997.

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and it was put up at a time when Elias was working for the young King Henry III. Perhaps the finest surviving example of Elias’ work for the king is, however, the great aisled hall at Winchester Castle, which was built between 1222 and 1235.70 At the same period, Elias may also have been helping to complete the archbishop’s huge great hall and chamber block at Canterbury, and to provide the archbishop with a new great hall at Lambeth. The great hall, as rebuilt by Archbishop Juxon after the Restoration (1660–3), now has internal dimensions of 93 feet by 38 feet. It is of seven bays, but lacks the original large buttery and pantry bay at the south end.71 Despite reconstruction in the late Middle Ages, it is more likely that the foundations of the present great hall lie on top of Archbishop Langton’s great hall. Once again, however, only archaeological excavation can solve this problem.72 Stephen Langton died on 9 July 1228, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral six days later.73 By this time a major London residence for the archbishop was permanently established on the present site after nearly forty years of constant change. This residence, which has only been called a ‘palace’ for the last couple of centuries, is almost exactly eight hundred years old and still the archbishop’s London home.

70 M. Biddle and B. Clayre, Winchester Castle and the Great Hall, Winchester 1983, 25. 71 For the plans see Royal Commission on Historic Monuments London II, West London, 1929, 79–86. 72 Excavations in advance of the making of the new reading room at Lambeth Palace Library were

carried out, just outside the north wall of the great hall in 1988, by the Museum of London. They have not yet been published. 73 See F. M. Powicke, Stephen Langton, Oxford 1928, 160. Among his executors were Elias de Dereham and Henry of Sandford, the bishop of Rochester, see Close Rolls, 1227–31, 110.

Ingelric, Count Eustace and the Foundation of St Martin-le-Grand

INGELRIC, COUNT EUSTACE AND THE FOUNDATION OF ST MARTIN-LE-GRAND1 Pamela Taylor This paper attempts to examine the interrelationship of the church of St Martin-le-Grand in London, its pre-Conquest founder, Ingelric, and Ingelric’s post-Conquest successor, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and to see if any further light can thus be shed on the other activities of the three protagonists. It centres particularly on three documents: William I’s confirmation, made to St Martin-le-Grand in 1067–8, Count Eustace’s restitution of some of its estates, made at some point between 1075 and 1085, and Domesday Book. The focus of the discussion, as of the documents, is therefore on landed endowments: ‘I think the answer lies in the soil’, one of the phrases immortalised in Beyond our Ken, has (with or without the Mummerset accent) always seemed an excellent motto for historians.2 This particular soil yields answers which, in emphasising the count’s power and St Martin’s weakness, seem reasonably consistent and convincing, but since much of the argument remains speculative, and includes a major attack on Domesday’s reliability, the debate is likely to continue. Each of the three parties is examined more or less in turn, beginning with St Martin’s. In the later middle ages St Martin-le-Grand was famous, or notorious, on two particular counts, as the country’s leading royal free chapel and as a special sanctuary, but it ended with a whimper: appropriated effectively in its entirety to Westminster Abbey in 1503 before final suppression in 1542. The appropriation had the benefit of saving some of the archive, which still lies at Westminster and includes two of my three documents. I begin with a comparison of the St Martin’s estates as recorded in these and in Domesday (see Appendix 1). William the Conqueror’s confirmation to St Martin’s was granted at Christmas 1067 but formally issued at his queen’s consecration at Whitsun 1068. It survives only in later copies, but despite some early doubts is now accepted as fully genuine.3 The text is categoric that Ingelric and his brother Eirard built St Martin’s out of their own income (redditibus) and that the lands being confirmed had been acquired by Ingelric

1

I am very grateful to the members of the Battle Conference, and particularly to Jennifer Ward, John Gillingham, Katharine Keats-Rohan, Chris Lewis and Richard Mortimer, for their comments and help. 2 The phrase was Kenneth Williams’, in the earthy role of Arthur Fallowfield. 3 Westminster Abbey Muniments (hereafter WAM) Book 5, fols 9r–10r, 29v–30v; for a partial transcript see Appendix 2; for the most recent printing of the complete text and detailed analysis see Bates, Regesta, no. 181; additionally, a fourteenth-century copy of the Latin text survives in WAM 13167, a St Martin’s charter roll which is not the source of the fifteenth-century WAM Book 5; and Bates’ MS K, BL Lansdowne 170, conflates this copy made for Sir Julius Caesar (1558–1636) with its source, Liber Fleetwood, compiled in 1576 from WAM Book 5 for Sir William Fleetwood, now Corporation of London Record Office MS Cust.11. I am grateful to Jennifer Ward for clarifying some of the estate identifications.

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in the time of Edward the Confessor. King William himself then also added some land (in fact part of Moorfields) immediately outside Cripplegate in London’s wall. Excluding the foundation site, this gives a total of twelve estates from Ingelric and one from the king. Count Eustace’s restitution, which again there seems no reason to doubt, was addressed to Bishop Hugh d’Orival of London and must therefore have been made between 1075 and 1085.4 It was published incompletely by Morant in 1768 and rather more fully but from an inaccurate sixteenth-century copy by Kempe in his Historical Notices of . . . St Martin-le-Grand in 1825, and a transcript is appended here (Appendix 3).5 The count announces that he is restoring Maldon, Good Easter, Tolleshunt, Benfleet, and Hoddesdon ‘and some smaller lands’, and that they are the lands which belonged to Ingelric and were said to belong to the deanship.6 He therefore covers five of Ingelric’s original twelve endowments, but passes over the other seven in conspicuous silence. The Domesday survey of 1086 occurred anything from one to ten years after Eustace had made his restitution, and it credits St Martin’s with only and precisely the five estates which he had promised to return. Equally strikingly, even these were not held entirely in chief. St Martin’s own breve is limited to Good Easter, while Tolleshunt, Maldon and Hoddesdon were held from the count. The fifth estate, the hide at South Benfleet, was entered only in Westminster Abbey’s breve: the abbey held a further seven and a quarter hides there, and claimed that the eighth hide had been transferred by Ingelric to St Martin’s, which still held it without the king’s order.7 In his edition of the Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, Professor Bates suggests that this Benfleet statement and the fact that St Martin’s was holding only the restituted estates indicate that King William’s confirmation ‘had no standing as confirmation of title’, and he instances two other early post-Conquest acta, a confirmation of Earl Ralph’s gifts to St Riquier and a writ in favour of Abbot Æthelwig of Evesham, which seem also to have been ignored. He is, of course, explaining events, but William did not habitually issue documents barely worth the parchment on which they were written, and specific reasons for each such overthrow have to be sought. Abbot Æthelwig’s writ simply extended protection to ten newly acquired estates, and

4

Bishop Hugh was elected after 29 August 1075 and died 12 January 1085: E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, eds, Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn, London 1986, 258. 5 WAM Book 5, fol. 18v; it is not in WAM 13167; the inaccurate copies are in Liber Fleetwood, fol. 110v, and from it BL Lansdowne 170, fols 61r–v. P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, 2 vols, Chelmsford 1768, i, 328 fn, who gives no source but seems to have been using the Westminster Abbey version; he omits not only some of the formulae but also the lands other than Maldon. A. J. Kempe, Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of St Martinle-Grand, London, London 1825, 179–80, English translation, 34–5. Kempe complained bitterly, iii–iv, of being denied access to the Westminster Abbey muniments and having therefore to rely on BL Lansdowne 170. In fortunate contrast, I wish to thank the current Keeper of the Muniments, Dr Richard Mortimer, for producing the documents and discussing them with me. There are no anachronisms in the restitution, and no features obviously designed to serve St Martin’s later interests. 6 Liber Fleetwood and therefore BL Lansdowne 170 and Kempe, Historical Notices, read decanatum pertinere debeant, but this is clearly a miscopying. The scilicet illas and therefore the rest of the phrase could conceivably refer only to the pociores terras but this is grammatically improbable and, in view of the whole tenor of the return, the dignity of the deanship, and the subsequent history of the foundation endowment, extremely unlikely. 7 Sine iussu regis: LDB, fol. 14a.

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it is not hard to see this as a temporary favour withdrawn after his death.8 Parallels could usefully be drawn between Æthelwig’s and Ingelric’s careers and acquisitions in the early post-Conquest years, but the two documents are not comparable. St Riquier’s was a full-scale charter, but was presumably lost along with the lands because of Earl Ralph’s revolt in 1075.9 But even if Ingelric too was disgraced, which I shall argue is not only unproven but unlikely, St Martin’s, in contrast to the alien St Riquier, could not lose its English endowment and survive. Although William obviously ceased to care particularly about protecting St Martin’s after Ingelric’s departure, the key factor in his decision to abandon it entirely is most likely to have been his urgent need to attract Count Eustace.10 The count was prevailed upon to rescue St Martin’s, but minimally. He restored only five of Ingelric’s endowments, and of the other seven only one was ever returned. This was Newarks Norton, mentioned neither in the restitution charter nor in Domesday but used to endow a prebend in 1158; it certainly belonged to the church by the early 1140s, but this is after St Martin’s fortunes were transformed, and therefore an uncertain guide to the eleventh-century position.11 Comparing the 1066 hidages and values also underlines the limited nature of the restitution: none of the restored estates was among the most valuable with which King William, and behind him Ingelric, averred St Martin’s had been endowed.12 Eustace’s restitution is silent about St Martin’s actual site, and also about King William’s gift of the land outside Cripplegate. The latter was however regranted to St Martin’s by the Conqueror, in a writ addressed to Bishop Hugh of London and Ralph Baynard which makes no mention of the 1067 grant.13 Both this and the count’s restitution were therefore made during the decade of Hugh’s episcopate, 1075–85, and both must have been a consequence of the transfer of all Ingelric’s endowment to Eustace and the abrogation of the 1067–8 charter, but whether they occurred together or separately is impossible to say. Eustace’s rehabilitation probably occurred between 1071 and 1074, meaning that there was anything between one and fourteen years’ delay before the king regranted the Cripplegate land – never in fact Ingelric’s – to St Martin’s.14 The foundation site would, of course, have fallen to the missing Domesday survey for London, but so too would the land outside Cripplegate since it does not appear within the Middlesex returns – a point of some interest since the extent of the city’s suburb at this stage is unclear.15 Henry I also restored the Cripplegate land to St 8 Bates, Regesta, no. 132; see also E. Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England 1066–1135, Woodbridge 1998, 136–8. 9 H. Cam, ‘The English Lands of the Abbey of St Riquier’, EHR 31, 1916, 443–7, at 446; Bates, Regesta, no. 259. 10 See below, 231–3. Bates, Regesta, no. 181, writes (at 597) that the charter’s ‘provisions seem to have been ignored when Ingelric’s estates were transferred to Count Eustace’. W. R. Powell, perhaps relying on Kempe, is misleading in stating that Ingelric’s lands ‘were seized’ by Eustace, ‘St Mary, Maldon and St Martin-Le-Grand, London’, Essex Archaeology and History 28, 1997, 142–50, at 142. 11 Queen Matilda gave Chrishall church in 1145x1147 but the main manor was not restored; for both see Powell, ‘St Mary, Maldon’, 147. 12 See Appendix 1. The TRE value of the other 7.25 h at Benfleet was £4. In both Stanford Rivers and Rivenhall the separately listed TRE holdings became united manors: R. B. Pugh, ed., VCH Essex iv, London 1956, 210; Morant, History and Antiquities ii, 146; it is possible that Ingelric had only granted one in either or both places to St Martin’s. 13 Bates, Regesta, no. 182. 14 On the reconciliation date see below, 232. 15 P. Taylor, ‘Clerkenwell and the Religious Foundations of Jordan de Bricett: a Re-examination’, Histor-

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Martin’s, this time after William II had taken it from the church because of a dispute between himself and Count Eustace (ceperet de ecclesia pro discordia inter eum et comitem Eustacium), an act which once again suggests both royal and comital high-handedness with the St Martin’s endowment.16 St Martin’s initial inability to achieve sufficient parturition is of course one of the key issues. The 1068 confirmation instructed the canons to choose one of their number to be the guardian (procuratorem et custodem) and distributor of their worldly goods, thus freeing the others to devote themselves to prayer (and, although the charter omits to mention it, to royal service).17 This was the system which presumably obtained until the formation of the prebends in 1158, and was also the origin, or more probably confirmation, of the deanship; since secular colleges were normally so headed (and were very much the preferred foundation mode of the period), it is highly likely that Ingelric acted as dean ab initio.18 Eustace’s restitution stated that the restored estates were Ingelric’s but had pertained to the deanship, and referred to Ingelric as St Martin’s patron (patronus) – a handy elision of roles, for even Eustace was not powerful enough to become dean; in the charter confirming the formation of the prebends in 1158, the bishop of Winchester is named as dean and Count William of Boulogne as advocate (advocatus).19 Although there was no prebendal system at St Martin’s until 1158, some degree of separation of the mensa of the head of an institution was such a long-established tradition and eleventh-century commonplace that its dean probably had at least some separate endowment from the beginning. At adjacent St Paul’s there was no prebendal system by 1086, but the division between the bishop and canons had proceeded further than at any other see, to the point where the canons held most of their properties in chief.20 Explanations of this precocity usually focus on St Paul’s location and interconnection with royal bureaucracy, factors equally applicable to St Martin’s. It is therefore possible that the count was speaking literally when he promised to restore the estates of the deanship, and that it was he rather than Ingelric who misappropriated the rest. Ingelric doubtless treated St Martin’s as his Eigenkirche, but there is no evidence that his foundation grants were fictive. Eustace’s restitution proves that there had been a specific dedicated endowment, and one in conformity with the list of estates given in William’s confirmation. This in turn stated that Ingelric had purchased the whole endowment, the twelve estates rather than the residual five, in the ical Research 63, 1990, 17–28, at 18–19; GDB, fol. 128a records the canons of St Paul’s holding ten cottagers with 9 acres ‘at Bishopsgate’, but their land at Moorfields is not entered. 16 The eum is clear in WAM 1316 and WAM Book 5 and its copies, and M. Reddan, in VCH London i, ed. W. Page, London 1909, 555, also reads it as such; Johnson and Cronne, Regesta ii, no. 556, must have read eos since they cite only WAM Book 5 and BL Lansdowne 170 but summarise ‘took from the church on account of the discord between them and Count Eustace’. This affects the sense significantly, and Professor Bates’ use of the Johnson and Cronne version in his discussion of the Conqueror’s writ (Bates, Regesta i, no. 182) is therefore flawed. 17 Bates, Regesta, no. 181. 18 On the deanship see VCH London i, 564–5; R. H. C. Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand and the Anarchy, 1135–54’, London Topographical Record 23, 1974, 9–26, at 21–4. 19 VCH London i, 556–7. 20 Domesday Book, passim; C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Composition of the Chapter of St Paul’s: 1086–1163’, Cambridge Historical Journal 10, 1951, 111–32; M. Gibbs, ed., Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul, London, Camden Society 3rd ser. 58, 1939, introduction; D. Keene et al., ed., History of St Paul’s Cathedral, 604–2004, Yale forthcoming 2004; E. U. Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in TwelfthCentury England, Cambridge 1994, is not entirely reliable on St Paul’s.

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time of King Edward, a specific declaration that has to be taken seriously. The endowment may have been piecemeal (the traditional but unsubstantiated foundation date is c.1056), and partly solicited from other donors, but had any of the estates been acquired within the previous fifteen months, neither William nor Ingelric would have had any reason to conceal the fact, and neither would it have weakened Ingelric’s title.21 John Gillingham suggested in discussion that the fact that William’s confirmation charter distributed the listed estates between two different sections might mean that only those covered in the first were acquired TRE, and that the second section may have been an interpolation made between Christmas 1067, when the charter was first enacted (peracta), and Whitsun 1068 when the revised version was formally issued. His suggestion has the obvious merit of explaining the hidages in the second section, but to remove it from government by the earlier passage on Ingelric and Eirard’s donation seems to me to put more weight on some uncertain punctuation than it can safely bear. The relevant passage is given in Appendix 2, and shows how minor, and inevitable, editorial decisions about standardisation can sometimes affect meaning. The contrast between the two sections is considerably stronger in Bates’ edition of the Latin text, because he favours full stops over semi-colons, than it is in either Stevenson’s Latin text or in the Old English version. In all cases too the contrast is far less than between this sentence and the next, detailing William’s additional grant of the land at Cripplegate and introduced by the far stronger Praeterea vero (Furthermore). Other explanations of the split are possible, not least that the last three estates, two of them church-related and the third outside Essex, were oddities. It is also worth noting that the split is barely visible in the Old English version which, even though it must count as subsidiary, was not only written by a scribe entirely at home in the language, but in its various differences of word order and emphasis reveals a valuable independent version, not a simple translation. Either way, not only was at least the bulk of the endowment acquired TRE, but it is also surely unlikely that William would have affected to believe that St Martin’s had been built TRE if the construction had been going on under his eyes and occupying the attention of his clerks. It is far easier to see Eustace’s restitution as a compromise, restoring the minimum necessary to keep St Martin’s afloat, but with neither the ‘council of certain wise and just men’ nor the penitence they induced totally effective; and the count’s petulant assertion of his right to have retained the estates is surely also a strong point in favour of the document’s authenticity.22 Located in London and possibly awash with royal clerks, St Martin’s ought to have been able to field a significant lobby; whether or not its endowment had previously been split between the dean and the rest, Eustace’s ability to retain the lion’s share is another tribute to his power. The ease with which St Martin’s could be disregarded is particularly interesting because it bears on the still unresolved question of its initial importance. While Stenton called it ‘that not very distinguished church’, R. H. C. Davis argued that its

21 T. Tanner, Notitia Monastica, 1st edn, 1744, 296, gives the foundation date; the first edition of W.

Dugdale, Monasticum Anglicanum, London 1673, Colleges section, 26–7, is limited to a copy of the confirmation charter; the revised 1830 edn, 1323, quotes Tanner. 22 Kempe’s translation of the restitution charter, Historical Notices, 34, runs ‘I, therefore, induced by repentance, and the counsel of certain wise and just men . . .’, but the Latin order firmly places repentance after counsel, see Appendix 3.

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later preeminence may have existed ab initio, because it was founded on part of the royal palace complex, dismembered when Edward the Confessor moved out to Westminster, and was thus a replacement of the previous internal royal chapel rather than an entirely new foundation.23 Constraints of space prevent a detailed examination of the issue, but in summary, the strongest tradition concerning the abandoned palace site comes from Matthew Paris, who says that among the churches which Abbot Paul of St Albans (1077–93) gained in London, he exchanged St Alban [Wood Street] with Westminster Abbey for an unspecified different patronage ‘for some unknown reason . . . for it had been the chapel of King Offa [our] founder, whose royal palace it continued to be. But through neglect and inactivity that whole place became packed with inferior occupation of the neighbouring citizens, into small lodgings, but retaining the ancient liberty.’24 Partly because of this, the palace complex has usually been placed slightly north-east of St Martin’s, but most recently Derek Keene has supported Davis’s suggestion that it was probably on the St Martin’s site, immediately north of St Paul’s.25 Keene’s arguments are wide-ranging and include the lack of archaeological evidence further north, but I am reluctant to abandon the St Albans account, which is set in one of those detailed passages which usually represent solid sourcing, and makes no claim either for long tenure or for restitution. The description of the palace site’s dismemberment fits the known, and to St Albans immaterial, chronology, and if St Alban Wood Street had been the royal chapel, a sentimental request for its transfer to Westminster would be understandable.26 Even if the link with the palace site were, or becomes, proven, however, it would still be essential to demonstrate marks of immediate royal favour or status. The fact that St Martin’s and Westminster became the two London houses with special sanctuary might seem suggestive, but Isobel Thornley has shown that while Westminster’s claim, based on the Confessor’s shrine, began in the twelfth century, St Martin’s was entirely a fourteenth-century concoction, an amazingly successful extension of

23 Stenton, personal communication quoted in L. C. Loyd, ‘The Date of the Creation of the Earldom of

Shrewsbury’, in GEC, xi, London 1949, 156–7; Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand’. 24 ‘Et plures ecclesiae in Londoniis, quarum unum donationem, scilicet, Sancti Albani, pro patronatu

alterius, nescitur qua consideratione. Fuit autem Capella Regis Offae, fundatoris, cui fuit continuum suum regale palatium. Sed incuria sequacium, et desidia, omnis locus ille, improba occupatione civium vicinorum, in parvum mansum, libertatem tamen antiquam retinentem, coartatur’, H. T. Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani a Thoma Walsingham (A.D. 793–1401) compilata, 3 vols, RS 1867–9, i, 55; the text is identical in W. Wats, ed., Mathei Parisiensis Opera, London 1686, 1002. Paris made his profession in 1217 and died in 1259; on his work, which relied heavily on earlier sources, and the degree of its veracity, see especially R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris, Cambridge 1958, reissued 1979; A. Gransden, Historical Writings in England, i: c.550–1307, London 1974, 359–77; P. Taylor, ‘The Early St Albans Endowment and its Chroniclers’, Historical Research 68, 1995, 119–42. 25 D. Keene, ‘New Thoughts on the Royal Palace in Pre-Conquest London’, presidential address to London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Feb. 2000; I am grateful to Professor Keene for showing me a copy and for discussion. For the suggested Aldermanbury/ Cripplegate fort location, T. Dyson and J. Schofield, ‘Saxon London’, in Anglo-Saxon Towns, ed. J. Haslam, Chichester 1984, 285–313; see also W. Page, London, its Origin and Early Development, London 1923, 140–7, 279–80. 26 Although the abbey and palace were of course separate institutions; Staeningahaga, or the parish of St Mary Staining, also within the fort and putative palace area and adjacent to St Alban Wood Street, was given to the abbey by Edward the Confessor, Dyson and Schofield, ‘Saxon London’, 306. Richard Mortimer comments that while no early references have been found to a household chapel at Westminster, it is hard to see how the household there could have functioned without one.

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normal city soke-right. In her words, ‘the judicial independence which was the true basis of special sanctuary was absent’.27 The only detailed study of the royal chapels as a group, although primarily concerned with the later survival of their spiritual liberties, shows that by the twelfth century they fell into two categories, the larger ones, established as secular colleges, and the smaller, based within specific household departments. Many of the former had never have been directly attached to the household, but were originally minsters within royal manors.28 St Martin’s, however, seems to fit neither group: a clerical petition of 1295 listed ‘at least fourteen’ royal chapels, ending with ‘and the church of St Martin-le-Grand London, which is not by ancient standing one of these chapels but was granted by prelates to William Rufus, son of the Conqueror . . .’; the detail is manifestly wrong, but noting how many of St Martin’s churches were acquired piecemeal in the century after the Conquest, Denton concluded that the petition was basically correct, that St Martin’s was ‘a new royal free chapel, distinct from the chapels of ancient standing’, and that it was the London location that caused the ‘peculiarly close attachment to the royal household . . .’29 Other comparisons seem to support this. Edward and William each gave a major royal chapel to a favoured clerk – Bosham and Wolverhampton to Osbern and Samson respectively – but both were direct grants.30 William’s confirmation to St Martin’s speaks only of Ingelric’s TRE construction, without any hint of royal involvement. The relevance of St Martin at Dover, the royal chapel apparently founded by King Wihtred of Kent c.700 and regularly cited in connection with the London St Martin’s, is also dubious.31 With the word ‘chapel’ deriving from the repository in which the early Frankish kings stored St Martin’s residuum of his famously divided cape, or cappella, he might well always have been patron of choice for a foundation associated with the royal household, but a choice as obvious to Ingelric, a royal clerk and of continental origin, as to earlier kings.32 The scale of the original church might have provided clues, but is lost beyond knowing. The buildings were extended in the twelfth century and vanished rapidly after the suppression in 1542, and although some traces have been uncovered, particularly in 1818 when the site was being redeveloped for the General Post Office (including a stone coffin and a coin of Constantine), their partial recording is inconclusive.33 Nor, of course, can we fare any better with fixtures and fittings. There must 27 I. Thornley, ‘Sanctuary in Medieval London’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association ns 38, 1932, 293–315, quote at 313; Davis accepts her arguments but then lapses in his wish to prove early royal status, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand’, 10, 24. 28 J. H. Denton, English Royal Free Chapels 1000–1300, Manchester 1970; he is not cited by Davis. 29 Denton, English Royal Free Chapels (citing Councils and Synods ii, 1146) 1, 28, 40. 30 Denton, English Royal Free Chapels, 44–5, 41–2; M. F. Smith, ‘The Preferment of Royal Clerks in the Reign of Edward the Confessor’, HSJ 9, 1997 (in fact 2001), 159–73, esp. 165–7, 171–2; delay in publication meant that I did not have the benefit of reading this article before drafting my own. 31 Kempe, Historical Notices, 3, doubtless rightly assumed that Tanner, Notitia, 296, in stating that Wihtred founded the London St Martin’s, simply confused the two; no London link is mentioned in C. R. Haines, Dover Priory: a History of the Priory of St Mary the Virgin, and the New Work, Cambridge 1930, or Denton, English Royal Free Chapels, 57–66. 32 Denton, English Royal Free Chapels, 8, citing Du Cange s.v. capella; S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 185–212, at 218, fn 200, takes the brothers’ choice of dedication, as well as their own names, as suggestive of Frankish origin. 33 VCH London i, 556; Kempe, Historical Notices, frontispiece, 6–8, illus. opposite 88, 212; J. B. Gardiner, ‘Observations on Some Ruins Recently Exposed in St Martin’s-le-Grand, in Clearing the Ground for a

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have been relics, whether primary or secondary, within the altars, and the usual interest in treasures of bones, gold and silver, but no early references survive.34 Lists of saints’ resting places concentrated on whole bodies rather than fragments, and St Martin rested more or less intact at Tours, although the imaginatively comprehensive Waltham Abbey collection claimed a bone.35 The silence is the more disappointing given the importance placed on custodianship of relics in the hierarchy of the royal chaplains: it would be extremely helpful to know if the Confessor gave some foundation pieces, and if so, how generously.36 Thanks to its sanctuary, however, the extent of the St Martin’s site has been convincingly mapped.37 So substantial an area of prime property, coupled with the Conqueror’s highly public confirmation and further gift of strategically important land, have to be seen as marks of royal favour – even though the centuries-long royal protection racket of confirmations always fed on insecurity, never more justified than in the aftermath of the Conquest, confirmation at a coronation was far from available to all – but this is not direct sponsorship on any remarkable scale. Compared to the endowment of Westminster or Waltham, or the transfers of minsters to favoured clerks, both Edward and William’s patronage of St Martin’s look distinctly low-key.38 William’s patronage was also notably short-lived. Although Ingelric was able to achieve the confirmation charter – and it is a nice thought that had Eustace not already rebelled he would probably have featured among its starry witnesses – the king offered no further protection. Ingelric vanished from the scene at some point after Easter 1069, and Eustace was probably reconciled between 1071 and 1074, presumably after protracted negotiation. Whether or not William had the time or wish to exploit St Martin’s directly, he certainly chose not to protect it from the count – and his delay in restoring the Cripplegate land has already been mentioned. There was indeed a special royal connection, but not until a couple of generations later, when the Honour of Boulogne passed with Eustace’s granddaughter Matilda to her husband, the future King Stephen, and remained with the royal family thereafter. Stephen and Matilda had devotional and familial reason to favour St Martin’s, as well as appreciating its location.39 The lateness of the link explains the discrepancy New Post-Office’, Archaeologia 19, 1821, 253–62; the original behind Gardiner’s illustration and an unpublished ink wash sketch are in the Society of Antiquaries’ London red portfolio III. Kempe’s apparent assumption that the lid of the stone coffin had been the marble gravestone inscribed † WSRC, dug up in 1672 and reported in Bayford’s Collections Concerning London, BL Add. MS 1106, seems insecure. 34 I am grateful to Alan Thacker for discussion of foundation relics. The bishop of Durham gave part of St Cuthbert’s shroud in 1171x1189 but that is probably a sign of the church’s later importance, WAM 13167; VCH London i, 556. 35 N. Rogers, ‘The Waltham Abbey Relic List’, in England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. Hicks, Stamford 1992, 157–81; the ‘os de Sancto Martino’ is on 180; D. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting Places in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 7, 1978, 61–93. 36 Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 189–91, although the bulk of his discussion refers to an earlier period. 37 M. Honeybourne, ‘The Sanctuary Boundaries of Westminster and the College of St Martin-le-Grand’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, ns 38, 1932, 316–33; her map is reproduced in Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand’, 11. There were earlier adjustments along the southern boundary with St Paul’s: Keene, ‘New Thoughts’. 38 On Westminster, see B. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1977; on Waltham, R. Ransford, ed., The Early Charters of the Augustinian Canons of Waltham Abbey, Essex 1062–1230, Woodbridge 1989, xxiii–iv. 39 See VCH London i, 558. Use of the canons of the royal chapel of Saint-Cande-le-Vieux in Rouen has been likened to that of St Martin-le-Grand, but there is no indication that it started earlier than the reign of

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between the earlier difficulties and later prominence. In the 1070s St Martin’s had no special status, and this was so whatever the circumstances of Ingelric’s departure. It is to Ingelric that I now turn. Ingelric’s family background is unknown, but his name, which occurs in the forms Ingelric and Engelric, is Continental-German, as too, apparently, is that of his brother, Eirard.40 It seems highly likely that he or they were among the continental clerks attracted to England at this period.41 The realisation that Ingelric was a priest, made by Stevenson, swept away the speculations, sometimes masquerading as statements, of earlier historians and antiquaries; with varying degrees of reluctance, we have to discard the notions that he was a thegn, Earl of Essex, or the father of one of the Conqueror’s mistresses.42 He witnessed four charters in the years 1066/7–1069, but no known pre-Conquest ones; this is not particularly surprising: surviving charters are rare, and other known royal clerks, including Giso until he became a bishop, are similarly absent.43 He did not himself make it to bishop, and if there is anything in Mary Frances Smith’s suggestion that royal clerks in line for sees were often given rich churches in their future dioceses, then he was not in the running.44 There are, however, two major pieces of evidence of Ingelric’s considerable pre-Conquest status. The first is his ability to found St Martin’s, which, even if not initially in the premier league, was far from negligible. The second comes from Domesday Book. The Domesday evidence of course gives no timescale of pre-Conquest estate acquisition, a particularly interesting point for a priest and foreigner with no land to inherit. It also almost certainly understates Ingelric’s TRE holdings, a problem to which I return below. Nevertheless what it records is substantial: even without the twelve estates of the St Martin’s endowment, whose 1066 value was something over £104, Ingelric’s TRE properties were valued at £60, or well above the thegnly level of

Henry I: M. Chibnall, ‘Normandy’, in The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King, Oxford 1994, 107; C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions, Harvard Historical Studies 24, 1918, 51–4, 110; I am grateful to Dr Chibnall for these references. 40 Ing/Engelric is listed in T. Forssner, Continental-German Personal Names in England in Old and Middle English Times, Uppsala 1916, 74; O. von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3, Uppsala 1937, 247; for the general background see C. Clark in Words, Names and History: Writings of Cecily Clark, ed. P. Jackson, Cambridge 1995. Domesday forms are listed in K. S. B. Keats-Rohan and D. E. Thornton, Domesday Names, Woodbridge 1997, 73. No Eirards or variants are recorded in DB. 41 Although the recruitment of foreign clerks was nothing new: Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 187–8; on the Lotharingians, S. Keynes, ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 203–71, at 205–13, who does not include Ingelric; see also Smith, ‘The Preferment’. 42 W. H. Stevenson, ‘An Old-English Charter of William the Conqueror in Favour of St Martin’sle-Grand, London, AD 1068’, EHR 11, 1896, 731–44; J. H. Round, ‘Ingelric the Priest and Albert of Lotharingia’, in his The Commune of London and Other Studies, London 1899, 28–38; Morant, History and Antiquities i, 328 (thegn), ii, 458 (nobleman), ii, 536 (a noble Saxon related to the king); Kempe, Historical Notices, 9 (earl); the eventful career of his supposed daughter, allegedly married off to Ranulf Peverel to provide a father for William’s bastard son, William Peverel, was floated by Robert Glover in Dugdale’s Baronage but blown out of the water by E. A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest iii, Oxford 1869, 656. 43 Keynes, ‘Giso’, 210, 227; Smith, ‘The Preferment’, 164–5. 44 Smith, ‘The Preferment’, 165–9. Including the St Martin’s lands, Ingelric’s only concentration of TRE holdings was in Essex, where the Norman William was installed as bishop in 1051; his largest single estate, Tring, was royal rather than minster land, and valuable though it was (see below), a drop in the ocean of the diocese of Lincoln.

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£40.45 They were also widely spread. He held one substantial manor in Essex, seven-hide Langenhoe valued at £17, as well as two hides at Iltney, one at Orsett held of the bishop of London, and one at Gravesend, in fact in Kent though entered in Essex, and held of Harold; the total Essex value was £18 10s.46 There were also two smallish estates in Suffolk, at Little Finborough and Buxhall, worth a further 90s and bringing the total to £23.47 The remaining £37 came from just two manors, both considerably further west: Newnham Murren in Oxfordshire and Tring in Hertfordshire. There is in fact a slight question mark over Newnham Murren, assessed at ten hides and £12, both because it was held in 1086 by Milo Crispin not Eustace and because the form of the name is Ingelri, but even if it is excluded, the value of Ingelric’s recorded holdings is still £48.48 And there is absolutely no doubt about the remaining estate, Tring in Hertfordshire, assessed in 1066 at an enormous thirty-nine hides and valued at £25, £2 more than all the Essex and Suffolk lands together and £8 more than the second-most valuable estate, Langenhoe. Tring is obviously therefore worth a closer look, although, predictably, this is easier said than done. There are no pre-Domesday references, and the early history of the whole Hertfordshire area is outstandingly obscure: the shire was entirely a tenth-century creation, largely taken out of Middlesex but probably also including on the west some or all of an earlier Chiltern region – and Tring is firmly within the Chilterns. In these reshired areas it is particularly difficult to recover the earlier administrative pattern of royal tuns and their surrounding estates, but both the size and strategic position of Tring would strongly suggest a major royal holding.49 Also, and conclusively, in 1086 there was still a Tring Hundred, and the type of the eponymous royal township with its attached hundred is therefore firmly established.50 The Hertfordshire hundreds were an early tenth-century creation, and at that time Tring must surely have been in royal hands. Did Ingelric then receive it directly from the king, at one remove, or at several? Probably not at several: the hidage was still so large in 1066 that the usual attritions of the land market had not substantially come into play, and it may be indicative that 45 See P. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor, Oxford 1997, although his tables are often maximal. 46 LDB, fols 26b, 27b–28a. 47 LDB, fols 303a–b; the Buxhall entry in fact fails to distinguish between TRE and TRW ownership, but since it immediately follows Little Finborough, where Ingelric is stated to have held TRE, it is reasonable to assume that the more summary ‘Ingelric held’ also means TRE. 48 GDB, fol. 159c; one of the five references to Ingelric in connexion with Tring, Hertfordshire, uses the form Engelri: GDB, fol. 142a. 49 T. Williamson, The Origins of Hertfordshire, Manchester 2000, is essential reading for the county as a whole but largely omits Tring. See also the 1 inch OS England sheet 238, 1888 edn, republished with an introduction in the Godfrey Edition, 1997; S. Richards, A History of Tring, Tring 1974; S. Hastie, A Hertfordshire Valley, Kings Langley 1996; P. Sawyer, ‘The Royal Tun in Pre-Conquest England’, in Idea and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed. P. Wormald, Oxford 1983, 273–99. I am grateful to John Blair for confirming the absence of useful references to Tring’s church, although its dedication, to SS Peter and Paul is often early; see also N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire, London 1953, 252–3; Richards, 35, wrongly implies a DB reference; Williamson, 166–72, speculates on the pattern of church recording in the Herts. DB and suggests that it is meaningful, but overlooks the circuit dimension. 50 The hundred vanished at some point between 1191 and 1402, see F. R. Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’, in The Hertfordshire Domesday, ed. A. Williams and G. H. Martin, London 1991, 37–46; also H. M. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England: Collected Studies in Local Administration and Topography, Cambridge 1944, repr. London 1963, 64–90.

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none of the three sub-tenancies could be alienated from Tring. Also, at a time when such things were easily adjusted, it was still the head of the hundred.51 Thereafter we founder again on general ignorance of the county. King William held a reasonable number of estates there in 1086, but apart from Hertford itself only one, Bayford, is said to have been held by King Edward, and even that had previously been held by Earl Tosti. All the others had been held by Earl Harold or his men, and all were associated with the manor of Hitchin, another manerium cum hundredo and on every possible indicator a major early royal estate.52 Since Round noticed them in Essex, it has been accepted that Harold’s endowment included numerous royal estates, presumably alienated directly to the Godwines.53 This is also likely in Hertfordshire, where several holdings besides Hitchin held by Harold or his men are particularly likely to have been royal.54 One might almost say that if Ingelric had not been holding Tring TRE, Harold would surely have done so. More certainly, Ingelric’s tenure of thirty-nine hides intact suggests a recent royal or Godwineson donation and is a concrete indication that he was indeed an influential figure at Edward’s court. One final point about Tring: the estate was not used to endow St Martin’s, nor did the presumed minster become the home of a refounded college. Ingelric held firmly onto his most valuable estate. Since Ingelric’s miscellaneous smaller holdings may well have been purchased, they are unhelpful for patronage networks, the only slight exceptions being the single hides at Gravesend and Orsett, held of Harold and the bishop of London respectively. His lands, and especially Tring, do however raise the more general issues of levels of remuneration and service. It is clear that a successful royal clerk could expect handsome rewards, whether in lands or the wherewithal to buy them, and that this was a long-established tradition.55 It is also obvious that this was a necessary part of the absence of distinction between temporal and religious administration. Like any bishop, any successful royal clerk expected income from cash and land as well as from benefices, and equally expected deployment in external roles. But obvious as this is, it is perhaps still too easy to focus only on either lay or ecclesiastical officials, and to overlook the similarity of their roles, rewards and, often, lifestyles. Many of James Campbell’s descriptions of the activities and rewards of temporal royal agents in ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’ apply equally well to 51 Berkhamsted, held TRE by a thegn of Harold’s, would earlier have been an alternative centre: GDB,

fol. 136c; Williamson, The Origins, 122. 52 GDB, fols 132b–133b. The name Hitchin presumably derives from the Hicce, assessed at 300 hides in

the Tribal Hidage; Tring was probably within the 4000-hide area of the Cilternsætan: see Williamson, The Origins, 63–4, 101–6. 53 H. A. Doubleday and W. Page, eds, VCH Essex i, London 1903, 336–7; Round deals with Hitchin and Harold in W. Page, ed., VCH Herts. i, London 1902, 272–3, but without considering the wider point; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, Cambridge 1991, Part I. 54 Berkhamsted, Amwell, Hertingfordbury, GDB, fols 136c, 138b–c; Williamson, The Origins, 122, 126, 66. 55 Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, esp. 188, 191–2, 195–6; Smith, ‘The Preferment’; on Asser’s rewards from King Alfred, J. Campbell, ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred’, in Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State, London 2000, 129–55, esp. 139–40, repr. from The Inheritance of Historiography, 350–900, ed. C. Holdsworth and T. P. Wiseman, Exeter 1986, 115–35; on the land market in general, and the importance of treasure as opposed to land, Campbell, ‘The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England: Problems and Possibilities’, The Anglo-Saxon State, 227–45, reprinted from HSJ 1, 1989, 23–37; for a tabulation of Ely Abbey’s tenth-century endowment from the Libellus Æthelwoldi, C. R. Hart, The Early Charters of Eastern England, Leicester 1966, 213–30.

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the royal clerks. His section on legati, for instance, rises from a discussion of thegnly duties but, as he says, the Domesday commissioners were also called legati, and so, probably, was Ingelric in his post-Conquest activity.56 Equally, although only reeves and townsmen are instanced, this passage could have been written for Ingelric and his ilk: ‘Office brought the opportunity for enrichment; in a country so wealthy as eleventh-century England there must have been many such opportunities. A, perhaps the, principal means of advance in that society was very likely through performing administrative functions. The most remunerative service must have been that of the crown.’57 Nor is the Conqueror’s ready deployment of his newly acquired clerks at all surprising: whatever the differences between Anglo-Saxon and Norman administrative practices, the use of ecclesiastics was hardly one of them.58 Before moving on to Ingelric’s post-Conquest career, however, a further and fundamental problem remains: the rare ability to check Domesday against the St Martin’s evidence reveals some alarming discrepancies. As Appendix 1 shows, Domesday’s account of the TRE ownership regularly names what must have been Ingelric’s predecessors, and his own connection is sometimes omitted or only tangentially mentioned. If Domesday is taken at face value, Ingelric never had any involvement at all with Good Easter, Tolleshunt, Hoddesdon, Rivenhall or Ongar. Yet we know that this is untrue, not only because of the St Martin’s confirmation but because Eustace’s restitution included three of them: Good Easter, Tolleshunt and Hoddesdon. Worse still, the problem extends to the distinction between TRE and TRW. It is normally taken for granted that in the standard formula ‘A TRE, afterwards (post/postea) B, now (modo) C’, the afterwards refers primarily to the Conquest, yet on two of the St Martin’s foundation estates, Maldon and Bendysh Hall, and also one of the two in Stanford Rivers, we are given a named Anglo-Saxon holder before 1066, afterwards Ingelric, and now the count. But again, Ingelric’s TRE involvement is attested not only by the 1067–8 confirmation but by Eustace’s restitution of one of the three, Maldon. The hide at Benfleet also fits this pattern: although it is in the 1067–8 confirmation, Domesday asserts that the whole eight-hide estate had belonged to St Mary’s Benfleet TRE and then been given to Westminster Abbey by King William. And even though John Gillingham’s suggestion (see above) that Benfleet and Maldon could have been post-Conquest acquisitions, if correct, affects two of these four examples, it also strengthens the acceptance of Bendysh Hall as one of Ingelric’s TRE endowments.59 56 In Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State, 201–25, at 217–18, reprinted from Domesday Studies, ed. J. C.

Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 201–18. 57 Ibid., 222. This is not to imply that Professor Campbell ignores the linkages between the ecclesiastical

and secular worlds: other chapters, esp. 7, ‘England, c.991’, illuminate other aspects of their interconnectedness. See also Campbell, ‘Was it Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison’, The AngloSaxon State, 191–2, reprinted from England and her Neighbours 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale, London 1989, 1–17; R. Fleming, ‘Rural Elites and Urban Communities in Late-Saxon England’, Past and Present 141, Nov. 1993, 3–37. Current work on late Anglo-Saxon conspicuous consumption concentrates on the laity: R. Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 1–22; C. Senecal, ‘Keeping up with the Godwinesons: in Pursuit of Aristocratic Status in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ibid., 251–66. 58 On Odo of Bayeux, the high priest of crossover, see D. Bates, ‘The Character and Career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (1049/50–1097)’, Speculum 50, 1975, 1–20; for the use of the bishop of Worcester, abbot of Evesham and Regenbald in a Worcestershire dispute, Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 210–11. 59 For the usual assumption see e.g. W. Page, ed., VCH Norfolk ii, London 1906, 38; the Phillimore translation of the Stanford Rivers entry ‘Stanfort tenuit Leuuinus TRE et post Ingelric’ as ‘Leofwin, and later

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The remaining references are at best laconic. Chrishall and the second Stanford manor had been held TRE by Ingvar and Aelfric’s father respectively, but were held in 1086 by the count as of Ingelric’s fee (de feudo Ingelrici). At Fobbing, the transition was apparently from Brictmer the king’s thegn directly to Eustace, but Ingelric had added in twenty-two free men and their land, which implies possession of the main manor.60 Such self-evident omissions and inconsistencies are another reason for doubting Domesday rather than the St Martin’s sources. Equally, despite a few specific statements that an estate had not come from Ingelric, and some of the laconic references indicating that his previous ownership was unremarkable, it cannot be argued that citing his possession was considered unnecessary. The terms of Domesday meant that the title to each estate had to be given, and Ingelric was duly cited in a large number of the Essex entries. Moreover, no county was an island, both Ingelric and Eustace held lands elsewhere, and not even in the historian’s, or Ingelric’s, wildest dreams can he have been the count’s predecessor everywhere. Eustace and Ingelric were obviously exceptional, but these findings do of course raise a more general anxiety. How many other similar transpositions and silences are there likely to be? There is certainly a comparable economy with the truth over Waltham Holy Cross in Essex, assigned by Domesday to Harold TRE and the bishop of Durham in 1086, in convenient omission of Harold’s donation of it to his refoundation there c.1060.61 Is such destabilising uncertainty simply discouraging or at all stimulating? In Ingelric’s case, discouraging. Domesday’s omissions and post-datings of his involvement with the St Martin’s estates remove any faith in the phraseology of the rest of Count Eustace’s breve. The formulae ‘afterwards Ingelric’ or ‘of Ingelric’s fee’ occur in other Essex entries, as do manors where his only known connection is through the act of adding in free men, but the lacunae revealed by the St Martin’s evidence make it impossible to tell how many estates he ever actually held, and, except in cases where an illegal invasion is mentioned, which of his acquisitions were pre- and which post-Conquest (a point to which I return below, p. 229). The uncertainty also removes any conclusive identification of likely rural residences, but on this a few points remain worth making. Ingelric was presumably always primarily resident within the royal household or, after its foundation, at St Martin’s, but he might well have fancied a country retreat, or in 1066–9 a base for some of his other activities. Sally Harvey’s suggestion that the chief residential manors of post-Conquest lords can sometimes be spotted in Domesday by their concentration of demesne ploughs and slaves can also be applied up to a point to pre-Conquest ones.62 On these criteria, and even allowing that the poor Chiltern soil lowered the amount of ploughing at Tring, it is Langenhoe in Essex, Ingelric’s second-most valuable estate TRE, which was by far his most likely rural caput.63 Count Eustace had a far larger selection. Round suggested that his first choice of an Engelric, held Stanford before 1066’ is misleading, A. Rumble, ed., Domesday Book 32 Essex, Chichester 1983, 20, 43. On the airbrushing of Harold, C. P. Lewis, ‘Joining the Dots: a Methodology for Identifying the English in Domesday Book’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 68–87. 60 Brictmer’s estates were forfeit while Ingelric was still active: see below, 228–9. 61 LDB, fol. 15v; R. Ransford, ed., The Early Charters, xxiv, charters 1, 10. 62 S. Harvey, ‘The Extent and Profitability of Demesne Agriculture in England in the Later Eleventh Century’, in Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in honour of R. H. Hilton, ed. T. H. Aston et al., Cambridge 1963, 45–72. 63 On Tring, W. Page, ed., VCH Herts ii, London 1908, 281. Rob Liddiard commented in discussion that

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Essex caput was at Chipping Ongar, hence its castle, and that this small estate was amalgamated with the adjacent larger ones at Stanford Rivers, but he did not mention that these were among the estates which the count had failed to return to St Martin’s.64 Whether or not his suggestion is correct, it was Witham, still a major royal manor in 1086 but given soon afterwards to the count, which became the undoubted Essex centre of the Honour of Boulogne.65 Kempe, struggling to reconcile Ingelric’s supposed Anglo-Saxon earldom and 1066 forfeiture with the St Martin’s confirmation, hazarded that after Hastings ‘Ingelric, and perhaps his brother Girard, devoted themselves to a religious life within the walls of their foundation’.66 Anyone less cloistered in the early post-Conquest period it is actually fairly hard to imagine. Indeed, it was precisely because of his active role as a royal household priest that Ingelric was able to gain St Martin’s its confirmation charter and allied royal grant at Cripplegate. As Simon Keynes has admirably demonstrated, this is one of a group of four diplomas in which Ingelric was involved: for St Martin’s as donor, and in grants to the abbeys of Jumièges and Peterborough and to Leofric, bishop of Exeter as witness.67 I shall not repeat his article here, but the directly relevant conclusions are that there are considerable stylistic similarities; that Ingelric’s position in the witness lists suggests that he was one of the household involved in the charters’ production; and that all four fall within a narrow date range: Jumièges and Peterborough 1066x1067, St Martin Whitsun 1068, Exeter 1069, probably at Easter (around 13 April) and certainly little later. Ingelric was also given a wider role as a royal commissioner. In two famous entries the Suffolk Domesday records that the abbot of Bury had put land in pledge at Stonham and Ixworth Thorpe, the former by Ingelric’s grant when the English redeemed their lands and the latter to the king’s barons, namely William, Bishop of London, Ingelric and Ralph the Staller.68 Whatever the extent of this much debated redemption, the entries are at least unambiguous in showing Ingelric acting as a royal agent.69 Similarly, an entry in Ranulph brother of Ilger’s breve under Falkenham records that Ranulph, Ingelric, and Ralph Pinel had taken delivery on the king’s behalf choosing the second-most valuable estate as caput was far from uncommon. There are no signs that Langenhoe had ever been a minster church. 64 J. H. Round, ‘The Honour of Ongar’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society ns 7, 1900, 142–52; R. B. Pugh, ed., VCH Essex iv, London 1956, 159, 210. 65 LDB, fols 1b–2a; Morant, History and Antiquities ii, 106. Round, VCH Essex i, 343–4; Page, London, cites several late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century I(nquisitiones) P(ost) M(ortem) to support his statement that St Martin’s remained the only honorial centre, but even one of those he instances, as well as several others, make it plain that honorial courts continued to be held at both St Martin’s and Witham, and that suit could be owed at either or both: Cal. IPM Henry III i, nos 572, 661, 808; Cal. IPM Edward I ii, nos 50, 602, 605, 610, 636; Cal. IPM Edward II v, nos 207, 216, 507. This was despite Stephen’s donation of Witham to the Templars: Morant, History and Antiquities; R. H. Britnell, ‘The Making of Witham’, History Studies 1, 1968, 13–21. 66 Kempe, Historical Notices, 10, though see also 34. 67 S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 218–20; Bates, Regesta, nos 159, 216, where one mid fourteenth-century cartulary copy has Ingeluus rather than Ingelri[us], 181, 138. 68 LDB, fols 360b, 367b. 69 Both refer to Bury estates, and Freeman’s extrapolation to a universal redemption was challenged by his contemporaries, and also in considerable detail by D. C. Douglas, Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales viii, London 1932, xcvi–xcix; Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge 1995, 8–10, thinks the redemption affected mainly East Anglia and Wessex, and gives detail; on Bury see also Bates, Regesta, nos 159, 216, in both of which Ingelric was involved.

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of portions of Brictmer’s extensive lands.70 Curiously, all these three entries occur in Suffolk, where Ingelric seems only to have had two smallish estates TRE and added one, Elvedon, TRW;71 moreover he does not seem to have acquired any further lands in Hertfordshire or Oxfordshire, and even allowing for airbrushing, in none of these three counties was Eustace a major landholder. Nor did Ingelric use or abuse his position to expand into any new shires. Instead, he chose to specialise in collecting Essex. It is in fact probable that the portions of Brictmer’s lands recorded under Falkenham extended into Essex, where the description of Ralph Pinel’s only holding, Great Bromley, seems to be related: this had also been Brictmer’s, and on two occasions Ralph ‘gave of his dues to the king’s officials [ministris] when the king sent his commissioners [legatos] into this land’.72 Ingelric may well therefore also have acted as an agent in Essex, but we cannot prove it, and neither, therefore, the standard assumption that he directly abused his powers.73 Since Ranulph, Ingelric and Ralph do not seem to have taken delivery of all Brictmer’s lands, and there was undoubtedly more than one Brictmer around, we cannot even guess whether any of the count’s four possible Essex estates entered by this route; but the only substantial one, five-hide Fobbing, though from the right Brictmer, was in the St Martin’s confirmation charter and therefore presumably did not.74 If Ingelric’s TRW performance across Essex cannot be proven to be directly connected with his role as a royal agent, nor is there any other obvious single factor: his acquisitions were widely spread across the county (although absent from the hundreds down the western edge and south-western corner) and had been held by a heterogeneous range of predecessors. With Domesday’s treatment so unreliable, a straight tally of his post-Conquest acquisitions is impossible, but despite the warning of Benfleet, where Westminster Abbey and the local jurors ignored the earlier legitimacy embodied in King William’s confirmation with their bald assertion that the hide given by Ingelric remained with St Martin’s sine iussu regis, two categories of entry seem fairly trustworthy – specific references to Ingelric’s post-Conquest seizure, and/or to the acquisition and adding into main manors of the lands of small free- and soke-men. These yield a total of twenty-four entries using the words occupavit, invasit, abstulit or adiunxit, plus one case where the hundred knew not by what right. Because of the various confusions discussed above, relying on any total of the neutral entries (about twenty are given) is pointless, but it must also be highly questionable whether an accurate distinction was maintained between the neutral and pejorative categories, and if not, whether the inaccuracies were all in one direction. With Ingelric not there to defend himself and Eustace enjoying a grant so all-embracing that he could be completely unworried about the circumstances or legitimacy of his predecessor’s acquisitions, there was no incentive for accuracy. There are also, of course, the usual discrepancies: Ingelric’s illicit annexation of Newland Hall out of Harold’s

70 71 72 73

LDB, fols 423b–424a. LDB, fols 303a–b; for the assumption that Buxhall was a TRE holding, see above, n. 47. LDB, fol. 97b. The strength of the association is probably overdrawn in Williams, The English, 13, and is only implicit in Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, 218, which she cites. 74 Identified as a king’s thegn at Fobbing; the others were ‘a free man’ holding half a hide at Harlow, and two unspecified Brictmers with 40 acres apiece in Laver and Fyfield, LDB, fols 26a, 27b, 31a. Eustace held nothing previously of Brictmer’s in Suffolk, LDB, fols 303a–b.

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(royal) manor of Writtle, is assessed at two hides in the king’s breve and at three in the count’s.75 In Winstree Hundred the losses to Ingelric of two sokemen with half a hide and thirty acres reported by St Ouen, and of half a hide in Little Wigborough reported by Hamo the Steward, presumably equal his additions to Langenhoe, later Eustace’s only holding in Winstree, even though they have become two hides held by one freeman and half a hide held by three freemen TRE.76 Whatever the unreliability of individual entries, however, the cumulative picture is consistent and convincing. In Essex, although only in Essex, Ingelric was an active member of the new kleptocracy, not least through the annexation of estates of small freemen and sokemen to his own manors, a well-known general phenomenon across the whole of East Anglia and Essex.77 One unusually precise entry would be hard to challenge: the return for the royal manor of Stanway states that Raymond Gerard, Roger of Poitou and Ingelric had each removed a tenant with his land.78 All Ingelric’s estate acquisitions and activities as a royal commissioner are undated, leaving the only certain dates his witnessing of the four charters, the latest around Easter 1069. There has been a tendency to assume that the early exit indicates disgrace, but this assumption may well have survived unexamined from the earlier belief that he was an English thegn – the link is explicit in Kempe, and continued by Page even though he knew him to have been a clerk.79 It is less than obvious why a favoured clerical survivor, probably foreign, and standing only to benefit from the widening expropriation of the English, should have been driven to revolt.80 It is also tempting to argue that so spectacular a fall from grace would have been reported, whether by chroniclers or in the Liber Eliensis, but given the vagaries of such reporting, probably a temptation to be avoided. Ingelric’s estates do seem to have reverted in toto to the crown, but it is far from certain that this indicates disfavour, since it seems likely that grants both to household chaplains and to extranei – and if not to all foreigners, then certainly to those who died without local kin – were normally only for life.81 Ingelric’s estates fell usefully into Count Eustace’s lap, but there is no sign that he was displaced for his successor. If the traditional date is correct, he had acquired sufficient status and estates to found St Martin’s by c.1056, and may well simply have died between Easter 1069 and the early

75 76 77 78

LDB, fols 5b, 31a. LDB, fols 22a, 55b, 27b–28a. Fleming, Kings and Lords; Williams, The English. LDB, fol. 4b; on this occasion Raymond and Roger’s removals were definitely villeins, Ingelric’s probably so. 79 Kempe, Historical Notices, 9–10, although, as noted above, he seems to have thought the transfer of everything other than St Martin’s occurred in 1066; Page, London, 71, 143; Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand’, 12, assumes death. 80 For the general chronology of expropriation see Williams, The English, 18–23; on the contrast between the ease with which most bishops came to terms with the Conqueror and the greater English identification of most abbots, Keynes, ‘Giso’, 241. 81 Freeman, Norman Conquest ii, revised 2nd edn, 1870, 447; Keynes, ‘Giso’, 231; Page explains the descent of Albert of Lorraine’s lands as the result of his remaining in minor orders and marrying, London, 146–7; Keynes assumes that the lands Regenbald acquired as a royal priest reverted while those which he held privately were his to dispose of, but gives no examples of the latter; he implies that the Cirencester minster lands probably reverted: ‘Regenbald’, 212. Minsters could have been a distinct category: for the granting of Congresbury and Banwell to successive royal priests see Smith, ‘The Preferment’, 165.

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1070s; his co-commissioners on the Bury estates, both also active well before the Conquest, were dead by 1070 and 1075 respectively.82 There are two suggested later sightings, but both are dubious. A canon Engelbric was holding one hide one virgate of land in Stepney from the bishop of London in 1086 as in 1066, and the coincidence of holy orders and a near-London location has led to the suggestion, and sometimes assertion, that Engelbric was Ingelric. But although the I and E are interchangeable, none of the onomastic authorities ever elides the forms with and without the central ‘b’, thus saving us the difficulty of explaining what might have happened to Ingelric between 1069 and 1086, and how he could have retained this canonry while losing everything else (including Orsett, also held from the bishop TRE) to Count Eustace.83 Finally, an Igelsrice is entered in the Durham Liber Vitae, but occurs in a list written, and probably also accumulated, in the twelfth century.84 Last and greatest is Count Eustace, although not in his treatment here: his wider career stretches far beyond my remit, and has been explored by others.85 I want only to offer brief comments on two interrelated aspects: his English endowment and his power over the Conqueror. In 1086 Eustace was holding land in eleven counties, mostly in the east Midlands and East Anglia: Bedford, Cambridge, Essex, Hertford, Huntingdon, Oxford, Norfolk and Suffolk, but also in Kent, Surrey and Somerset; additionally, his wife Ida was holding three estates in Dorset, as well as one each in Somerset and Surrey.86 By far the majority of the estates were in Essex, eighty-six as opposed to sixty-four in the other eleven counties together, but the spread and value were enormous, and even in Essex (and even allowing for underrecording) Ingelric was one of many predecessors. Other blocks are obvious: all seven Bedfordshire estates had come from Alfwold, a king’s thegn; Alward and Godith contributed considerably to the Hertfordshire total; Ulveva had held all the three Dorset manors and two of the Somerset ones, and so on.87 But there were also numerous lesser predecessors, and a few far greater: both the Kent estates had been Earl Godwin’s, and thus,

82 The DB entry for Eccles in Norfolk strongly suggests that Ralph had died before Bishop Æthelmær’s deposition in April 1070: LDB, fol. 194; VCH Norfolk ii, 11–12; his son, Earl Ralph the younger, duly inherited until his rebellion and forfeiture in 1075: A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge 1956, 463–4; for Bishop William, Fryde et al., Handbook of Chronology, 29. 83 GDB, fol. 127c; the Phillimore edition, John Morris, ed., Domesday Book, 11 Middlesex, Chichester 1975, 3, 6, translates Engelbric as Englebert; Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Names, 247, has separate entries for Engelric and Engelbert, giving the St Paul’s canon as the only example of the latter; there was in fact also an Ingelbert in Dorset, GDB, fol. 77a. H. Ellis, A General Introduction to Domesday Book, 2 vols, London 1833, ii, 106–7 under ‘E’ treats Engelbric and Engelric separately; under ‘I’, ii, 152, he records an ‘Ingelricus de Sancto Paulo Londoniae’, apparently as a surname, but his reference is to LDB, fol. 32b, which gives ‘quod tenuit Ingelricus de Sancto Paulo Lond’. On Canon Engelbric, Fasti,1066–1300, I. St Paul’s, London, 89, gives a cautious ‘Possibly to be identified with . . .’ The caution is missing in e.g. C. N. L. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800–1216: the Shaping of a City, London 1975, 310; Domesday People, 188. 84 J. Stevenson, ed., Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, Surtees Society 13, London 1841, 58, following, curiously, an Engelbur; I am grateful to Simon Keynes for advice on the probable date. 85 Most specifically by H. J. Tanner, ‘The Expansion of the Power and Influence of the Counts of Boulogne under Eustace II’, ANS 14, 1991 (1992), 251–86. 86 The estates are tabulated in Tanner, ‘The Expansion’, Appendix B. 87 Purleigh in Essex was specifically not of Ingelric’s fee: LDB, fol. 27b. Stevington, Beds., is ascribed to Adeloldus rather than Aluuoldus, but also a king’s thegn and almost certainly identical, GDB, fol. 211b.

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXIV

presumably, Harold’s, and at £40 each in 1086 were two of the three most valuable (the third, also worth £40, was Stanford Rivers, one of St Martin’s lost estates). Although Eustace was rewarded for his participation at Hastings, we have no idea which estates he then obtained, and all were forfeit after his revolt in 1067.88 Given the countervailing pressures, it is unlikely that any were set aside for the prodigal’s uncertain return, and equally we know that Ingelric’s cannot originally have been available. At the time of the reconciliation, probably in 1071x1074, the king must have trawled deeply through everything he had to hand. Essex Domesday states that Orsett and Gravesend, which Ingelric had been holding from the bishop of London and Earl Harold respectively, although held by Eustace, were not part of the count’s ‘hundred manors’, but the other totals of course fail to tally.89 It is certainly likely that had the reconciliation occurred after Earl Ralph’s revolt or Queen Edith’s death, both in 1075, Eustace’s portfolio would have looked substantially different.90 He did in fact hold one of Edith’s manors, Rivenhall in Essex, but this could have been either a later gift from William or a far earlier one from Edith, since a Rivenhall manor was confirmed to St Martin’s in 1067–8, but Domesday simply reported that the count’s two estates there had been held respectively by Edith and Earl Harold TRE.91 Evidence of the removal dates of any of the count’s other predecessors might help narrow the possible reconciliation period. Ingelric’s latest dated appearance is around Easter 1069, and although previous depredations are a possibility, there does seem to have been a slight dispersal of his holding. In 1086 the count challenged Richard fitz Gilbert over a seizure which was probably post-Ingelric: ‘Withgar, Richard’s predecessor, annexed thirty acres [at Bendysh Hall, Essex] after the king came to this land. Later on Ingelric had it. The Hundred testifies that it belonged to Ingelric’s fee, but up to now Richard has held it.’92 Equally interestingly, Eustace did not challenge, or even mention, the seven hides removed from Tring by Count Robert of Mortain, of which Robert was holding six and two-thirds by 1086 and Mainou the Breton the remaining third.93 Similarly, he did not challenge Milo Crispin for Newnham Murren in Oxfordshire, although it had probably belonged to ‘his’ Ingelric. Eustace received most but not quite all of Ingelric’s holding, and had to accept most of what was lost as a fait accompli. This suggests a short interim and a specific settlement, and the latter is confirmed by the aggrieved self-justification in his restitution to St Martin’s. Eustace also received tax concessions: the hidage reduction from which he benefited in Surrey 88 Gesta Guillelmi, 184–5; on Eustace’s possible hope of his first wife’s lands, Tanner, ‘The Expansion’, 273; J. H. Round, ‘The Counts of Boulogne as English Lords’, in his Studies in Peerage and Family History, Westminster 1901, 147–80. 89 LDB, fols 9b, 26b; VCH Essex i, 344. 90 F. Barlow, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, in Studies in International History, ed. K. Bourne and D. C. Watt, London 1967, 35–67, at 46, gives 1072–4 for the restitution; J. H. Round shows Eustace had been restored by the time of the Ely placitum of 1072x1075, ‘Ely and her Despoilers (1072–5)’, in his Feudal England, London 1909, 459–6; Tanner, ‘The Expansion’, 275, and personal communication, suggests 1071. I owe the suggestion of Earl Ralph to Chris Lewis. If William of Poitiers’ reference to the reconciliation is not a later addition, this would slightly narrow the range of 1071–7 for his writing given in Gesta Guillelmi, xx–xxi, 184–5; see also R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and his History of William the Conqueror’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Oxford 1981, 71–100. 91 LDB, fol. 27a. 92 LDB, fol. 102b. 93 The loss from Tring is mentioned in four entries within the count of Mortain’s breve as well as in Mainou’s solitary holding, and for once the numbers add up correctly: GDB, fols 136c–d, 142a.

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233

was general, but this was not the case in Hertfordshire, where Tring was assessed at thirty-nine hides TRE, had lost seven to the count of Mortain, but was assessed at five and a quarter in 1086.94 Eustace’s estates provide overwhelming evidence of William’s desire for reconciliation. Unlike lesser mortals, the count’s 1067 revolt (not to mention the previous years of intermittent hostility) constituted no impediment. Increased awareness of the constantly shifting European alliances within which both William and his Norman and Anglo-Saxon predecessors operated have made this entirely explicable, offering a rationale extending well beyond help at Hastings.95 Eustace was not an unruly vassal but an equal and independent agent, with Boulogne’s location ensuring that he had always either to be a friend or an extremely dangerous enemy.96 Consequent ties of marriage, protection and wardship, linking William and Eustace through shared female relatives, are currently being disinterred.97 Unlike other beneficiaries, the count could also never have been expected to make his base in England. Hence his vast and widely spread re-endowment, lacking any complete territorial block that would have required his direct supervision, and enjoyed without any of the regular court appearances and commitments that mark the other top ten barons.98 Hence too, surely, his cavalier attitude to St Martin’s.

94 J. H. Round in VCH Surrey i, ed. H. E. Malden, London 1902, 276–9; J. A. Green, ‘The Last Century

of Danegeld’, EHR 96, 1981, 241–58; Tring, GDB, fol. 137b. 95 On the count’s probable role at Hastings, Barlow, ‘The Carmen’; S. A. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry:

Why Eustace, Odo and William?’ ANS 12, 1989 (1990), 7–28; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Portrait of a People: Domesday Prosopography or “Norman Barons Revisited” ’, in Domesday Book, ed. E. Hallam and D. Bates, Stroud 2001. 96 The literature is vast; apart from Tanner, ‘The Expansion’ and sources there cited, see especially P. Grierson, ‘The Relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS 23, 1941, 71–112; K. DeVries, The Norwegian Invasion of 1066, Woodbridge 1999. On the lack of hierarchy between the words earl, count and duke, C. P. Lewis, ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, ANS 13, 1990 (1991), 207–23. 97 Elizabeth van Houts, personal communication, thinks that Eustace acted as guardian for both Countess Judith and Adelaide II of Aumale. Keats-Rohan, ‘Portrait of a People’, emphasises the role of Judith, niece to both William and Eustace, in protecting the Picard and Artesian settlement after Eustace’s rebellion; I am grateful to Dr Keats-Rohan for showing me her paper before publication, and for her agreement that Eustace’s 1086 endowment reflects not simply his role in 1066 but also Boulogne’s continuing potential threat. 98 His fee does not fit the categories analysed in Fleming, Kings and Lords, 161–3, and D. Roffe, Domesday: the Inquest and the Book, Oxford 2000, 20–2, nor his behaviour the patterns analysed in C. Warren Hollister, ‘Magnates and “Curiales” in Early Norman England’, in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World, London 1986, 97–115, reprinted from Viator 4, 1973, 115–22; idem, ‘The Greater Domesday Tenants in Chief’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 219–48; W. J. Corbett, ‘The Development of the Duchy of Normandy and the Norman Conquest of England’, in The Cambridge Medieval History v, ed. J. R. Tanner, C. W. Previté-Orton and Z. N. Brooke, Cambridge 1926, 505–13.

APPENDIX 1 The Twelve St Martin’s Foundation Estates as recorded in the confirmation, Count Eustace’s restitution, and Domesday Book E Eustace; I Ingelric; St M St Martin-le-Grand William I’s confirmation 1067–8

Count Eustace’s restitution 1075x1085

1066 holder

DOMESDAY BOOK Intermediate 1086 1086 Size in hides 1066 value references holder sub-holder and acres in £ DB folio LDB

Essex 1

Good Easter with berewick of Mashbury

Easter

Aelmer, royal thegn

St M; outlier E

4h 50a + outlier 0.5h 20a

8

20b

2

Newarks Norton in High Ongar

3A

Stanford Rivers

Leofwin

post I

E

9h

24

30b

3B

Stanford Rivers

Aelfric’s father

I’s fee

E

1h 80a

2

30b

4

Fobbing

Brictmer, royal thegn

I added free men

E

5h

20

26a

5

Bendysh Hall

Ledmer

post I

E

4.5h

11

34a

6

Chrishall

Ingver

I’s fee

E

6h

15

33a–b

7

Tolleshunt Knights

8A

Tolleshunt

Wulfric

E

Rivenhall

Queen Edith

8B

Rivenhall

9

Chipping Ongar

10

[South] Benfleet, 1h

Benfleet

St Mary’s +6

11

Maldon, church + 2h

Maldon with church and appurtenances

1 free man

St M

1h 35a

1.10s

32a

E

2.5h

9

27a

Harold

E

1h 15a

3

27a

Aethelgyth

E

1h

5

30b–31a

I gave to St M

St M99

1h

postea I

E

St M

1.75h100

14a 4

GDB

Herts 12

29a–b

Hoddesdon, 1h

99 Not in St Martin’s breve. 100 No mention of church.

Hoddesdon

Godith, Asgar’s ‘man’

E

St M

1h

2

137c

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Anglo-Norman Studies XXIV APPENDIX 2 The Section Concerning the St Martin’s Endowment in William I’s Confirmation, 1067–8101

A. Latin text of the complete section, from Stevenson. . . . ego Will[elmus], Dei disposicione et consanguinitatis hereditate Anglorum basileus, Normannorumque dux et rector, cuisdam fidelis mei, Ingelrici scilicet, peticioni adquiescens, archiepiscoporum, episcoporum, abbatum, comitum, et universorum procerum meorum sacro consilio parens, omnes possessiones terrarum, quas tempore venerabilis ac dilectissimi cognati et predecessoris mei Regis Edwardi idem Ingelr[icus] acquisierat, pro ipsius insignissimi Regis anime salute, necnon et peccatorum meorum remissione, concedo et regia auctoritate imperpetuum corroboro eo confirmo Deo et ecclesie Beati Martini, quam infra muros London’ sitam prefatus Ingelricus et Eirardus frater eius de propriis suis redditibus, in delictorum suorum remedium, honorabiliter ad Dei laudem et canonicalem regulam imperpetuum servandam et tenendam construxerunt. Sunt igitur hec terrarum nomina: Ester in Estsexa, cum berewica de Maisseberia, et Nortona, et Stanford, et Fobbinge, et Benedisc, et Cristeshala, et Tolesfunte, et Ruwenhala, et Angra, cum appendiciis suis, et cum pratis et pascuis, silvis, molendinis, et omnibus ad eas pertinentibus; et in Benfleota .I. hidam et in Hoddesdona .I. hidam; ecclesiam quoque de Mealdona, cum .II. hidis terre et decimis, et omnibus ei pertinentibus. Preterea vero, ex mea parte dono et concedo eidem ecclesie, pro redempcione animarum patris et matris mee, totam terram et moram extra posterulam, que dicitur ‘Cripelesgata,’ ex utraque parte posterule, videlicet ab aquilonari cornu muri civitatis, sicut rivulus foncium ibi prope fluencium ipsam a muro discriminat, usque in aquam currentem, que ingreditur civitatem. Concedo etiam ei omnes ecclesias et omnes decimas, terras quoque et domos, quas fideles Christi infra London’ vel extra iam dedere, vel in futuram donabuntur. B. Latin text of the list of estates, from Bates. Sunt igitur hec terrarum nomina: Ester in Estsexa, cum berewica de Maisseb(er)ia, et Nortona, et Stanford, et Fobbinge, et Benedisc, et Cristeshala, et Tolesfonte, et Ruwenhala, et Angra, cum appendiciis suis, et cum pratis et pascuis, silvis, molendinis, et omnibus ad eas pertinentibus. Et in Benifleota i hidam, et in Hoddesdona i hidam, ecclesiam quoque de Mealdona, cum ii hidis terre et decimis, et omnibus ei pertinentibus. Preterea vero . . .

101 W. H. Stevenson, ‘An Old-English Charter of William the Conqueror in favour of St Martin’sle-Grand, London AD 1068’, EHR 11, 1896, 740–1; Bates, Regesta, no. 181; no original text survives.

Ingelric, Count Eustace and the Foundation of St Martin-le-Grand

237

C. Old English text of the list of estates, from Stevenson. Bates uses lower case without dots for numerals, and a sign for ‘and’, which therefore loses the upper case on the And after fersce, but is otherwise identical. . . . þæt is Estre in Eastsexa, mid þære berewica æt Mæisbyrig, and Nortone, and Stanford, and Fobbinge, and Benedsic, and Cristeshala, and Tolesfunte, and Reuenhala, and Angra, and in Benfleot[e] .I. hide, and in Hoddesdone .I. hide, and eac þa cyrican in Mealdune, mid .II. hidan landes and þær[e] teoðinge, and mid eallan þingun þe þærto belimpað, on wude and on felde, on sealte and on fersce. And þærto eake on minre healfe . . .

APPENDIX 3 Count Eustace’s Restitution, 1075x1085 Transcript from WAM Book 5, fol.18v; / / indicates letters added above the line with omission marks. Eustachius Comes Bolonie H[ugoni] London Episcopo omnibus/que/ ecclesie sancte fidelibus salutem. Quoniam ex evangelio audivimus qui recipit prophetam in nomine prophete, mercedem iusti recipiet. Similiter et qui iustum in nomine justi, mercedem iusti recipiet. Ego igitur quorun/dam/ sapiencium et justorum virorum acquiescens concilio, ac penitencia ductus, ecclesie beati Martini et canonicis et pro possessionibus suis a me sibi sublatis satisfacere disposui, et licet secundum donacionem regis Willelmi tenuras omnes que fuerunt Ingelrici, quas cum eadem ecclesia suscepi tanquam proprias retinere possem, saluti mee anime ac conjugis mee L.[recte Ide] et filiorum meorum Eustachii et G.[alfridi] et aliorum consulens ac animarum nostrarum requiei providere has subscriptas terras ecclesie et Canonicis beati Martini omnino liberas et quiete tenendas donare ac reddere disposui. Videlicet terram de Meldona et ecclesiam sancte Marie cum omnibus ei pertinentibus et Estram atque Tolleshuntam ac Beneflet et Hoddesdonam et que pociores terras scilicet illas que proprie fuerunt Ingelrici et decanatui pertinere dicebantur michi retinui. Volo et concedo quod ecclesia et Canonici teneant supradictas terras ita libere et omnimode quietas sicut Ingelricus una die et una nocte quiecius illas tenuit, et sicut ego ipse post eum illas habebam in dominio meo, et sicut eciam terram de propria mensa mea. Siquis filiorum meorum aut parentum instinctu diaboli aliquid voluerit demere aut libertates /ecclesie/ infringere seu minuere, sit a consorcio dei et beati Martini et nostre amicicia segregatus. Testes autem de hoc sunt multi, Arnulphus dapifer, Humbertus caluus, et multi alii de eius familia.

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Minor Cruciform Churches in Norman England and Wales

MINOR CRUCIFORM CHURCHES IN NORMAN ENGLAND AND WALES Malcolm Thurlby INTRODUCTION This paper examines some cruciform churches which are here called ‘minor’ so as to differentiate them from the ‘major’ cathedral and monastic churches built in Norman England on a huge scale that emulated Constantinian basilicas in Rome.1 The majority of them are aisleless, some have one nave aisle, others two, and on rare occasions the presbytery is aisled. Many have been gathered together by John Blair in a series of articles that deal with former Anglo-Saxon minster churches.2 Blair’s starting point was a careful analysis of references to ‘superior’ churches in Domesday Book which he supplemented with various documentary sources and analysis of the fabric of a select number of churches. The aim here is to examine the fabric of some of the ex-minster churches listed by Blair and to consider other Norman cruciform churches for which there is little or no documentary evidence. Our starting point is the architectural scene for our building type in 1066. This involves introducing certain pre- or immediately post-Conquest churches and their counterpart in Normandy. We then consider two churches, possibly from the time of Edward the Confessor, which have not received sufficient recognition. There follow two case studies where the core of the Anglo-Saxon church has been elaborately rebuilt in the twelfth century. Different associations of minor cruciform churches are examined: early collegiate and monastic establishments, cenotaphs and relics of saints, churches connected with bishops, Benedictine priories and nunneries, and Augustinian priories. Finally, some later medieval churches built on former minster sites are analyzed to see how they might reveal the form of their Anglo-Saxon and Norman predecessors. No attempt is made to find new documentation for former minster churches. Rather, emphasis is placed on reading the fabric of the churches, although documentation is included where it elucidates our understanding of the work. I should like to thank John Blair, Carol Davidson-Cragoe, Eric Fernie, Jill Franklin, Chris Lewis, Karen Lundgren, Emma Mason, Richard Plant, David Robinson and Ann Williams for their help with and/or comments on aspects of this paper. Responsibility for the opinions expressed belongs with the author. 1 Eric Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, Oxford 2000, with further references. 2 John Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches in Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book: a Reassessment, ed. Peter Sawyer, London 1985, 104–42; idem, ‘Minster Churches in the Landscape’, in Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. D. Hooke, Oxford 1988, 35–58; idem, Early Medieval Surrey: Landholding, Church and Settlement before 1300, Stroud 1991; idem, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minsters: a Topographical Review’, in Pastoral Care before the Parish, ed. John Blair and Richard Sharpe, Leicester 1992, 226–66; idem, ‘Churches in the Early English Landscape: Social and Cultural Contexts’, in Church Archaeology: Research Directions for the Future, ed. John Blair and Carol Pyrah, CBA Research Report 104, 1996, 6–18; idem, ‘Clerical Communities and Parochial Space: the Planning of Urban Mother Churches in the Twelfth and Thirteenth *

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Anglo-Saxon Cruciform Churches The church of St Mary in Castro, Dover (Kent), is a classic example of a pre-Conquest minster church.3 It has a crossing tower with an aisleless nave of the same width, a narrower, square-ended chancel and even narrower porticus to the north and south offset towards the east in relation to the crossing tower. The arches to the porticus are not original. The round-headed east and west crossing arches have two orders; the outer is continuous while the inner order springs from a richly moulded impost. The south doorway is about two-thirds the way down the nave and a later north doorway is placed to the west of the south doorway. In the north porticus there is a narrow doorway towards the west end of the terminal wall. The axial west tower incorporates a Roman lighthouse and formerly communicated with a wooden gallery at the west end of the nave. At Domesday, Breamore (Hants) was held by the king and there was a priest but there is no documentary indication of the superior status of the church.4 It is similar in plan to St Mary-in-Castro at Dover although slightly smaller in scale. The angles of the tower are salient to the east but not to the west where the nave is the same width, a trait of some post-Conquest royal chapels which, in turn, may suggest the high status of this church.5 The east and west crossing arches are late medieval but the low, narrow arches to the porticus are original and may suggest those lost at Dover. Holy Trinity, Great Paxton (Hunts.), is associated with the manor held by Edward the Confessor.6 The crossing measures twenty feet east to west, and eighteen feet north to south, and this rectangular plan is taken up in many Anglo-Norman crossings in great churches.7 Only the plain, single-order, round-headed, north crossing arch is original. It is of a monumental scale far in excess of Breamore. A western crossing arch is normally reconstructed but instead it is possible that there was a wooden screen that rose to carry a central wooden tower.8 A western ‘crossing’ arch was frequently omitted in pre-Conquest cruciform churches, as the next four examples indicate, as well as in a number of Norman churches discussed below. At Worth (Sussex) the east wall of the aisleless nave is dominated by the monumental, single-order chancel arch that sits on muscular, semi-circular responds topped with block capitals and framed with a pilaster strip.9 The arches to the north and south Centuries’, in The Church in the Medieval Town, ed. G. Rosser and T. Slater, Aldershot 1998, 272–94. See also M. J. Franklin, ‘The Identification of Minsters in the Midlands’, ANS 7, 1984 (1985), 69–88; Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape, London 1989, 282–3; Sarah Foot, ‘Anglo-Saxon Minsters: a Review of Terminology’, in Pastoral Care before the Parish, ed. Blair and Sharpe, 212–25. 3 H. M. Taylor and Joan Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 2 vols, Cambridge 1965, 214–17; Eric Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, London 1983, 115; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 121; C. A. Ralegh Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, Arch. Journ. 130, 1973, 120–40 at 131–3. 4 Domesday Book, Hampshire, ed. Julian Munby, Chichester 1982, 1.37; Taylor and Taylor, AngloSaxon Architecture, 94–6; Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, 127–8; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 113–14. 5 Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 236–9. 6 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 484–8; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 129–34; Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, 133; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 113. 7 Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 129, 257. 8 Richard Plant kindly draws my attention to the absence of a western arch in the crossing of St Pantaleon, Cologne; F. Mühlberg, Köln, St Pantaleon und sein Ort in der karolingischen und ottonischen Baukunst, Cologne 1989. 9 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 688–93; Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, 137; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 152–3.

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porticus are smaller, although still large by Anglo-Saxon standards, and have plain responds with squared imposts rather than the columnar articulation of the chancel arch. This is a clear architectural expression of the difference in importance of the chancel with the high altar, and the secondary altar spaces in the porticus. Aside from these arches there is nothing to articulate the ‘crossing’. There is an altar niche in the east wall of the south porticus (Fig. 1), a feature met elsewhere both before and after the Conquest. The details of the mouldings and capitals of the chancel arch at Stoughton (Sussex) strongly suggest a late eleventh-century date but in terms of the juxtaposition of the porticus to the nave it belongs with Worth.10 The same was probably true of Hadstock (Essex), and Stanton Lacy (Salop), where the ‘crossing’ area has been rebuilt.11 A Small Cruciform Church in Normandy The cruciform church of Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau at Domfront (Orne) has a one-bay square chancel and semi-circular apse to the east, short transept arms the same height as the chancel and nave with apsidal chapels, and an aisled nave of two storeys.12 The church is ashlar-built and the tower does not have salient angles. The apses have semi-domes and the chancel is groin vaulted and richly articulated with wall arcading. The transept, crossing, nave and aisles are or were wood-roofed. Two Cruciform Churches Possibly from the Time of Edward the Confessor Wimborne Minster was established as a royal free chapel under secular canons. Patricia Coulstock has gathered evidence for a revival of religious life at Wimborne under Edward the Confessor (1042–66), and observed that Maurice, bishop of London (1085–1108), and his predecessor, Bishop Hugh (1075–85), were also successively deans of Wimborne.13 In light of this it would seem that the early fabric dates from the time of Edward the Confessor or soon after the Conquest.14 The southern half of the north transept, complete with the stair turret and much of the corresponding half of the south transept, remain from the eleventh-century church. In the east wall of the north transept there is an altar niche as in the south porticus of Worth. The crossing tower was rebuilt in the late twelfth century but the salient angles betray retention of the pre-Conquest plan. Also, the semi-circular east and west

10 Domesday Book, Sussex, trans. and ed. J. Morris, Chichester 1976, Land of Earl Roger 11.37: The Earl

holds Stoughton in Lordship himself. In this manor is a church to which 1½ hides belong. A priest has ½ a plough there; the value of this is £4. 11 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 272–5, 569–71; Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, 134; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 169–70; Warwick Rodwell, ‘The Archaeological Investigation of Hadstock Church, Essex: an Interim Report’, Antiqs. Journ. 55, 1976, 55–71; Eric Fernie, ‘The Responds and Dating of St Botolph’s, Hadstock’, Journ. BAA 136, 1983, 62–73. 12 Lucien Musset, Normandie romane, I, La Basse Normandie, 2nd edn, La Pierre-qui-Vire (Yonne) 1975, 211–15, pls 88–91. 13 Patricia H. Coulstock, The Collegiate Church of Wimborne Minster, Woodbridge 1993, 98–9. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (hereafter RCHM) Dorset, v, East Dorset, 1975, 78–83, plan on 79, plans of growth of church on 80–1. 14 Malcolm Thurlby, ‘Aspects of Romanesque Architecture in Dorset: Wimborne Minster, Sherborne Abbey, Forde Abbey chapter house, and St Mary’s, Maiden Newton’, Proceedings of the Dorset Archaeological and Natural History Society 122, 2000.

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crossing arches are wider than those to the north and south and to keep the apices level the north and south arches are stilted. The remodeling of the crossing was accompanied by a new western bay for the presbytery with aisles and an aisled nave of four bays. The narrow eastern bay of the nave probably marked the western extremity of the canons’ church with the nave having parochial use. It is possible that it reflects the position of a doorway in the earlier aisleless church as at Bicester (Oxon.) and Dorchester (Oxon.). Following the removal of the cathedral to Lincoln (1072/5), Bishop Remigius installed secular canons at Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxon.) which in turn were replaced with Augustinian canons around 1140 by Bishop Alexander.15 It is generally accepted that the north wall of the former aisleless nave and almost the full extent of the eastern arm, the western crossing arch and doorway in the west wall of the north transept date from, or soon after, Alexander’s time. There has been no such agreement on the date of the plain, single-order, round-headed north and south crossing arches, and dates from the pre-Conquest to the eighteenth century have been suggested.16 Yet the non-radial voussoirs of these arches indicate Anglo-Saxon construction, and the tooling of the stones accords with an eleventh-century date.17 There is a narrow chamfer in the arch which continues into the upper third of the jamb. It then reappears on the lower third of the west jamb but not on the east (Figs 2 and 3). Such a chamfer is unusual but is paralleled on the chancel arch at Coln Rogers (Glos.) and the arch from the north chapel to the north nave aisle at Stoke Charity (Hants), both probably from the second half of the eleventh century.18 The break in the chamfer at Dorchester is explained by reconstructing an arch from the top of the lower chamfer. This results in 15 Nicholas Doggett, ‘The Anglo-Saxon See and Cathedral of Dorchester-on-Thames: the Evidence

Reconsidered’, Oxoniensia 51, 1986, 49–61; VCH, Oxfordshire vii, 1962, 52–61, plan on 57. The History of Dorchester, Oxfordshire: British Earthworks – Roman Camp – Bishopric, and the Architectural History of the Church, compiled from the best authorities, with a general introduction by John Henry Parker, London 1882. VCH, Oxfordshire ii, 1907, 87. 16 Thomas Barns, ‘Dorchester in British and Roman Times: with some further Remarks on the Architectural History of the Abbey Church’, in Parker, History of Dorchester, xxxiii–xlviii at xlvi, observed that the north and south crossing arches have been called Saxon, Norman, Cromwellian and Georgian; Barns regards them as thirteenth century and Decorated. E. A. Freeman, ‘On the Architectural History of the Abbey Church of Dorchester’, in Parker, History of Dorchester, 33–92 at 55, thought that no part of the church was pre-1140. Rev. H. Addington, ‘Some Account of the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, Dorchester, Oxfordshire’, in Parker, History of Dorchester, 6, stated that the north and south crossing arches were ‘evidently cut through the Norman walls, in a rude and abrupt manner; the string course plainly proves such to have been the case, as it is continued for about a yard beyond these arches, to the termination of the Norman walls, which have been cut through and left unfinished. These two plain arches were probably constructed in the time of Charles II, at which time the church underwent considerable repairs, having sustained much damage in the civil wars.’ H. Colvin in VCH, Oxfordshire vii, 1962, 58, observed that the earliest parts of the present building are late twelfth century. The north and south crossing arches are of uncertain date: ‘As they cut through the string course which marks the 12th-century work internally they cannot be earlier than the surviving W arch, and in their present form may even be of post-Reformation date. On the other hand their western responds rest on chamfered bases continuous with those of the western arch, thus demonstrating their 12th-century origin.’ Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, Oxfordshire, Harmondsworth 1974, 577, thought that they may have been rebuilt in the alterations of 1633 and observed that ‘they now cut into the C12 string on either side. Part of the bases of their responds, however, seems to be C12 and may represent the original transept arches.’ He added in a footnote: ‘Another alternative commonly suggested is that here were low arches to the N and S belonging to a Saxon church which were retained when the church was rebuilt in the C12.’ 17 I owe this observation to Eric Fernie: Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 210. 18 For Coln Rogers, see Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 168–70.

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a two-storey arrangement as in the chancel of Deerhurst priory church (Figs 3 and 4). The absence of the chamfer on the lower third of the east respond of the arches makes it unlikely that the lower arch was the same scale as the upper arch. Moreover, the ledges against the east responds of the arches have been convincingly interpreted as altar tables.19 It follows that there were two openings from the crossing into the ground floor of the transepts; a chamfered doorway to the west and an unchamfered opening to the east which incorporated an altar against its eastern jamb. Turning to the exterior, there are some long-and-short quoins immured in the north wall at a point equivalent with the north-west angle of a putative crossing tower. Two Remodelled Anglo-Saxon Cruciform Churches Cholsey (Berks.) was founded as a Benedictine priory c.986–997.20 The core of the original aisleless cruciform church is retained, as witnessed on the south-east, north-east and north-west angles of the crossing tower with the long-and-short quoins (Figs 5 and 6). The illustration detailing the south-east angle also shows a clear break in the type of rubble facing to the tower at the level of the gable of the roofs (Fig. 6). The three-order crossing arches are a product of a remodeling after Henry I’s gift of the church to Reading abbey; the heads on a south capital of the west crossing arch relate to the nimbed figures on a capital from Reading abbey cloister.21 The twelfth-century remodeling included the transepts, formerly with apsidal chapels, and the south doorway of the nave. The Norman remodeling of the church may not have increased its size, with the exception of the transept chapels but, as at Wimborne Minster, gave it a Norman appearance. Analogous retention of the core of a pre-Conquest church is witnessed at Hook Norton (Oxon.). In the angle of chancel and north transept there are long-and-short quoins of the former pre-Conquest tower or nave.22 Whether this was a minster church or whether it was located elsewhere to serve the royal vill is not certain.23 Inside, the two-bay Norman chancel has vault corbels at the west end; in the east wall there is a niche for a reliquary and on the south wall remains of a contemporary piscina and sedilia, and at the west end of the north wall there is another niche (Fig. 7). The Norman north transept is largely extant although shorn of its apsidal chapel of which the south jamb and springer are immured in the east wall. The large scale of the easternmost piers of the nave arcades reflects the former western crossing piers of the Norman church although, as at Great Paxton, there are no signs of there having been a western crossing arch (Fig. 7).

19 Doggett, ‘Anglo-Saxon Dorchester’, 59. 20 Richard Gem, ‘Anglo-Saxon Architecture of the 10th and 11th Centuries’, in The Golden Age of

Anglo-Saxon Art, ed. Janet Backhouse, D. H. Turner and Leslie Webster, London 1984, 139–42 at 139; David Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, London 1971, 62. 21 B. R. Kemp, ed., Reading Abbey Cartularies, 2 vols, Camden Society 4th ser. 31 and 33, London 1986, 1.16. The Cholsey capital is illustrated in Malcolm Thurlby, The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, Logaston (Herefs.) 1999, repr. with additions 2000, fig. 38. For the Reading abbey capital, see T. S. R. Boase, English Art 1100–1216, Oxford 1953, pl. 21c. 22 John Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, Stroud 1994, 66, 136, 198 n. 214. 23 John Blair, ‘Hook Norton, Regia Villa’, Oxoniensia 51, 1986, 63–7; idem, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 66.

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Early Post-Conquest Collegiate and Priory Churches The former collegiate church of St Nicholas, Bramber (Sussex), was founded by William de Braose before 1073. Between 1080 and 1083 it was given to St Florent at Saumur.24 Erected immediately to the south-east of the castle, the crossing tower and short, aisleless, nave of the former cruciform church remain. The ashlar facing of the crossing and the form of the Caen-stone capitals reflect Norman sources.25 The rectangular crossing (18ft 3in. E–W, 20ft 9in. N–S) does not follow Norman precedent and the two-order crossing arches with continuous outer order and non-continuous inner order recall St Mary-in-Castro, Dover (Fig. 8). The Benedictine priory church at Lastingham (Yorks.) was founded from Whitby in 1078 and abandoned by the monks in 1085.26 Its plan is closely related to Notre-Dame-sur-l’Eau, Domfront, with an apsidal east end, a one-bay, groin-vaulted sanctuary, formerly unaisled transepts and a two-storey aisled nave. Just the appearance of cushion capitals in the crypt is a non-Norman feature. Bromfield (Salop) was a wealthy pre-Conquest minster of royal foundation referred to in a writ of Edward the Confessor of 1060 or 1061 as ‘St Mary’s minster’.27 At Domesday it is listed under St Mary’s church, Shrewsbury, although this is probably an error.28 In 1155 it became a Benedictine priory dependent on Gloucester. The architectural remains of the ‘crossing’ suggest a c.1100 date. The east arch has single nook shafts with variants on volute capitals which are figurated to the north, that carry a heavy roll moulding in the arch like the south transept chapel arch at Worcester cathedral (1084–9). The north arch is plain, of two orders, on chamfered imposts.29 The south arch has gone and, following a pre-Conquest tradition, there was never a western crossing arch. Reflections of the Anglo-Saxon tradition are also evident in the former aisleless cruciform church at Norton (Co. Durham), which probably dates from the introduction of the canons displaced from Durham cathedral by Bishop Carilef in 1083.30 The priory church of St Mary at Monmouth was founded by William fitz Baderon before 1086 as a dependency of St Florent, Saumur, and was dedicated in 1101–2.31 The present church is largely nineteenth century but it retains a Romanesque axial 24 VCH, Sussex ii, 1907, 60; E. F. Salmon, ‘St Nicholas, Bramber’, Sussex Archaeological Collections

73, 1932, 187–91. 25 George Zarnecki, English Romanesque Sculpture 1066–1140, London 1951, 26–7, ill. 12; idem, ‘1066

and Architectural Sculpture’, PBA 52, 1966, 87–104, reprinted in idem, Studies in Romanesque Sculpture, London 1979, I, 87–104. 26 Richard Gem and Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Early Monastic Church of Lastingham’, in Yorkshire Monasticism: Archaeology, Art and Architecture, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions xvi, ed. Lawrence R. Hoey, 1995, 31–9. 27 F. E. Harmer, ‘A Bromfield and a Coventry Writ of King Edward the Confessor’, in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickens, ed. P. Clemoes, London 1959, 89–103. 28 Domesday Book, Shropshire, ed. Frank and Caroline Thorn, Chichester 1980, 3d6, 3d7; VCH, Shropshire i, 1908, 291–2. 29 R. W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire v, London 1868, 207–24, esp. 210–12; John Blair, ‘Bromfield Priory’, Arch. Journ. 138, 1981, 29–31, plan fig. 8 on 30. 30 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 465–70; Eric Cambridge, ‘Early Romanesque Architecture in North-East England: a Style and its Patrons’, in Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich, Woodbridge 1994, 141–60 at 145–8. 31 Cal. Docs France, nos 1133 and 1138; A. Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales 1066–1216, Woodbridge 1989, 106.

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west tower, and the west respond of the former north nave arcade in the form of a squat column of a west country tradition.32 A nineteenth-century print after a 1684 drawing depicts a ruined crossing with low, plain, single-order arch to the transept filling the entire width of the crossing and an aisleless chancel. Architectural Cenotaphs and Shrines for Anglo-Saxon Saints Lindisfarne priory church is a miniature version of the great Romanesque cathedral of Durham and just as Durham cathedral is St Cuthbert’s architectural shrine, so Lindisfarne is his architectural cenotaph.33 Similarly, the seventh-century Mercian princesses, Kyneburga and Kyneswith, whose bodies were taken by Abbot Aelfsige (1006/7–42) from Castor (Northants) to Peterborough abbey, are commemorated in the cruciform church at Castor, which was dedicated in 1124.34 Here the crossing is surmounted by the most elaborate tower of any minor church in England and one in which attention to fine detail surpasses even the crossing towers of Norwich cathedral and Tewkesbury abbey. Such embellishment suggests association with a shrine of precious metal and gems.35 St Nicholas at East Dereham (Norfolk) preserves elements of a rich twelfth-century cruciform church.36 Wihtburg, the royal saint and founder of the abbey of East Dereham, was buried there but Aethelwold took her body to Ely in the late tenth century when he refounded Ely and possessed Dereham.37 At Minster-in-Thanet both the church of the former grange of St Augustine’s and the present parish church of St Mary may be seen to commemorate St Mildred, former abbess of Minster, whose body was taken to St Augustine’s, Canterbury, by Abbot Aelfstan (1023/7–1045/6). While the crossing, transepts, and chancel of St Mary’s are early Gothic, the nave and aisles were executed around 1160–80.38 Given that it would be impossible to add an aisled nave to a narrower building to the east, it is virtually certain that the Romanesque church had transepts. The five-bay nave arcades cut through the walls of an earlier aisleless nave which, in the two western bays, are significantly thicker than further east. This suggests a massive westwork in the manner of Brook, Borden, Brabourne, Leeds and St Margaret-at-Cliffe (Kent). Elsewhere, Wimborne had the royal sisters and former abbesses of Wimborne, St Cuthburga and St Cwenburga, while Bicester (Oxon.) boasted St Eadburg.39 At Bicester the ‘crossing’ has an east arch with two plain orders while the north and south arches are single order, all on plain jambs with imposts with quirked hollow chamfers 32 John Newman, The Buildings of Wales, Gwent/Monmouthshire, London 2000, 395–6. 33 A. Hamilton Thompson, Lindisfarne Priory, London 1949; Eric Cambridge, Lindisfarne Priory and

Holy Island, London 1988. Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Roles of the Patron and the Master Mason in the First Design of Durham Cathedral’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, 161–84. 34 VCH, Northamptonshire ii, 1906, 478–82, plan on 479; David Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford 1989, 202. 35 This suggestion was made by Jean Gardiner in ‘The Parish Church of St Kyneburgha, Castor as Architectural Reliquary’, unpublished MA Major Research Paper, York University, Ontario, 1997. 36 Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, North-West and South Norfolk, Harmondsworth 1962, 141–2. 37 Rollason, Saints and Relics, 209–10. 38 Tim Tatton-Brown, ‘The Churches of the Canterbury Diocese in the 11th Century’, in Minsters and Parish Churches: the Local Church in Transition, ed. John Blair, Oxford 1988, 105–18, at 110 and 118 n. 51; [Alfred] Clapham, ‘Minster Church’, Arch. Journ. 86, 1930, 268–70, plan on 269. D. W. Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 7, 1978, 61–93 at 73–4. 39 Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, 93; Coulstock, Wimborne, 61.

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(Fig. 9). In keeping with some pre-Conquest churches, there is no western crossing arch and the continuation of this tradition is also suggested by the transept arms which read like big, low porticus. Be that as it may, on the exterior of the north-east angle of the north transept there is a chevron string course, a feature unlikely to appear in the area before 1110. Chevron also appears in the aisle spandrels of the north nave arcade which indicates that originally this was an outside wall. Immediately to the west of the north crossing arch is a low triangular-headed doorway – a feature often associated with Anglo-Saxon architecture – that communicates with the present north nave aisle. Originally, this would have given direct access to the liturgical choir that extended through the ‘crossing’. It is also possible that there was a similar doorway adjacent in the west wall of the north transept, as at Dorchester-on-Thames.40 The pilaster buttresses at the eastern angles of the chancel suggest a twelfth-century date. St Cuthman is connected with the collegiate church of Steyning (Sussex) which belonged to the Norman abbey of Fécamp.41 Of the Norman cruciform church the arch from the south transept to the south nave aisle remains from the early twelfth century but its counterpart in the north transept, the western crossing arch and the nave and aisles date from c.1160.42 The arch from the north transept to the north nave aisle is unusual in having rich chevron ornament on the east face but none on the west face. This disposition contrasts with the arch from the south nave aisle to the south transept on which there is an angle roll moulding on the outer order of the west face but nothing on the equivalent order to the east. Given the frequency with which the ornamentation of arches in Norman England announces entry into a significant space – as on chancel arches – the arrangement at Steyning is likely to reflect liturgical practice, possibly procession from the north transept to the north nave aisle. St Beornwald’s, Bampton (Oxon.), retains an early Norman, round-headed chancel arch with chip-carving on the west face like La Trinité at Caen.43 The church was made cruciform c.1160–80 with sharply pointed crossing arches and a passage in the north wall of the ringers’ chamber of crossing tower in which the two east bays open into the north transept presumably to overlook the shrine of St Beornwald. St Dionia (Dioma) is listed at Charlbury (Oxon.) where the rectangular east pier of the north nave arcade suggests an opening into a transept, and the walls separating the north and south nave aisles from the eastern chapels may mark the former east walls of the transepts.44

40 Evidence for a passage around the north-west crossing pier from the east end of the architectural nave

to the north transepts around has been excavated at the Augustinian priories of Kirkham and Norton. See below, note 84, for references. 41 Domesday Book, Sussex, ed. Janet Mothersill, Chichester 1976, 5.2; VCH, Sussex ii, 1907, 122; Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, 93. 42 Malcolm Thurlby and Yoshio Kusaba, ‘The Nave of St Andrew at Steyning and Design Variety in Romanesque Architecture in Britain’, Gesta 30/2, 1991, 163–75. 43 John Blair, ‘Saint Beornwald of Bampton’, Oxoniensia 49, 1984, 47–55. VCH, Oxfordshire xiii, 1996, plan on 54. c.1080–1130 chancel arch. 44 Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, 91; VCH, Oxfordshire x, 1972, 151 with plan; Pevsner, Buildings of England, Oxfordshire, 527.

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Cruciform Churches Associated with Bishops At Domesday, North Newbald (Yorks.) was held by Archbishop Thomas of York and there was a church and priest.45 There remain the aisleless nave, crossing and transepts, less their apsidal chapels, from the Norman church. The chancel is thirteenth century. The church is built of ashlar, a mark of high status and/or a very ambitious patron, has a carved corbel table, north and south nave doorways – the latter from its richness seemingly the principal entrance to the church – and a smaller doorway in each of the transept terminal walls. These are offset towards the west in the manner of St Mary-in-Castro at Dover and in the north porticus of St Laurence at Bradfordon-Avon (Wilts.), and their placement may suggest indicate the continuation of pre-Conquest liturgical practice.46 There is a similar doorway in the north transept at Bromyard (Herefs.), a minster church in the ninth century which is recorded at Domesday under Hereford cathedral with two priests with 1 hide of land, and a chaplain with 1 hide and 3 virgates.47 The Norman church has been largely remodeled but the present north and south nave doorways probably come from the twelfthcentury aisleless nave.48 St Mary’s, Stow (Lincs.), which belonged to the bishop of Lincoln, has a complex architectural history but retains in the transepts and crossing the plan of the pre-Conquest church.49 The elaborately moulded crossing arches probably date from the time of Bishop Remigius (1072–92). The aisleless nave boasts three doorways, north, south and west, the north and south being set just to the east of centre. A similar arrangement occurs at Lambourn (Berks.) later in the twelfth century. Today, a thirteenth-century font is positioned in the centre of the western part of the nave and it is tempting to surmise that this reflects the location of the baptistery in the twelfth century. There is an analogous arrangement with a twelfth-century font and north, south and west doorways in the aisleless nave at Iffley (Oxon.). In the east wall of the north transept there is an altar niche in the manner of Worth. The manor of East Meon (Hants) was the property of the crown until Henry II granted it, together with all the churches belonging to it, to the church of Winchester (1154–61).50 The present church probably dates from this time under the patronage of Henry of Blois who also gave the font. St Andrew’s, Farnham (Surrey), which at Domesday was held by Osbern of Eu from the Bishop of Winchester, has been reconstructed in its twelfth-century state by John Blair.51 Bishops Cleeve (Glos.) and Ripple (Worcs.) were superior churches of the bishop of Worcester.52 Both have an aisled nave with a west doorway, Bishops Cleeve has a 45 Domesday Book, Yorkshire, ed. Margaret L. Faull and Marie Stinson, Chichester 1986, 2B6 North and

South Newbald. John Bilson, ‘Newbald Church’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 21, 1911, 1–42. 46 H. M. Taylor, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chapel at Bradford-on-Avon’, Arch. Journ. 130, 1973, 141–71. 47 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 422; Domesday Book, Herefordshire, ed. Frank

and Caroline Thorn, Chichester 1983, 2.29. Later in the twelfth century there are similarly placed transept doorways at St Mary’s, Shrewsbury. 48 RCHM, Herefordshire, II, East, London 1932, 36–8, plan on 37, pl. 13. 49 Domesday Book, Lincolnshire, ed. Philip Morgan and Caroline Thorn, Chichester 1986, 7.1. Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 584–93; Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 124–7. 50 Domesday Book, Hampshire, 1.16: Bishop Walkelin holds 6 hides and 1 virgate of this manor’s land with a church. VCH, Hampshire iii, 1908, 73, plan on 72. 51 Domesday Book, Surrey, trans. and ed. John Morris, Chichester 1975, 3.1: value £6, with 1 hide which it has in Hampshire. Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, 97, plan on 98, fig. 27. 52 Domesday Book, Gloucestershire, ed. and trans. J. S. Moore, Chichester 1982, 3.7; VCH,

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south doorway with an elaborate porch, while Ripple has a north and south doorway. Both churches have doorways from the nave aisles to the transepts, as at Ewenny priory and St David’s cathedral. This suggests a clear separation of the nave from the crossing and transepts, the parish church from the canons. Ripple formerly had a vaulted crossing with angle shafts in white stone as in the late twelfth-century work at Worcester cathedral, and the west face of both the east and west crossing arches are more richly articulated than the north and south arches of the crossing. The crossing at Bishops Cleeve was also planned for a vault, and the pointed crossing arches are narrower on the north and south than to the east and west. There are altar niches in the east wall of the transepts at Ripple as at Worth and Milborne Port. At Domesday, Gnosall (Staffs.) was held of the king by clerks or secular priests, presumbly serving a small minster but it was given by King Stephen to the bishop of Lichfield.53 Of the Norman ashlar-built, aisleless, cruciform church there remains the crossing and south transept. The western crossing arch is richly decorated in three orders, in contrast to the other crossing arches that have a single order to the crossing with a simple angle roll. This suggests that there was an altar under the crossing as there probably was at Bishops Cleeve and Ripple. The sill of the arch above the western crossing arch is too low to have given access to the roof space of the Norman church so presumably it opened on to a wooden gallery. The west wall of the south transept has a dado arcade and a triforium that leads from a vice in the south-west angle of the transept to the crossing as at Ewenny priory. Crediton (Devon) was the seat of the bishopric between 909 and 1050 when it was moved to Exeter and twelve canons were placed at Crediton.54 The present church has a cruciform plan that may reflect the pre-Conquest church given the salient angles of the crossing. The crossing and parts of both transepts date from the mid twelfth century and relate closely to Exeter cathedral, not least in the use of pointed crossing arches.55 There are single-order pointed arches from the transepts to both nave and presbytery aisles. Domesday records that in the city of Stafford the king has thirteen prebendary canons.56 Two churches, St Mary’s and St Chad’s, were given by Stephen in 1136 to the bishop and cathedral churches of Coventry and Lichfield, and the bishop’s possession of them confirmed by the pope in 1139, 1144 and 1152.57 There is no Norman fabric at St Mary’s but much remains of Romanesque St Chad’s, although heavily restored. The crossing survives largely intact, albeit modified in the fourteenth century, the north and south walls of the aisleless chancel and four bays of the aisled nave.58

Gloucestershire viii, 1968, plan on 21; Domesday Book, Worcestershire, ed. Frank and Caroline Thorn, Chichester 1982, 2.31. 53 VCH, Staffordshire iv, 1958, 113, plan 129; J. H. Denton, English Royal Free Chapels 1100–1300, Manchester 1970, 69–71. 54 C. A. R. Radford, ‘Crediton Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross’, Arch. Journ. 114, 1957, 140–1, plan on 140. 55 Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Romanesque Cathedral of St Mary and St Peter at Exeter’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Exeter Cathedral, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions xi, ed. Francis Kelly, 1991, 19–34 at 57. 56 Domesday Book, Staffordshire, ed. John Morris, Chichester 1976, 6.1. 57 VCH, Staffordshire iii, 1970, 303. 58 M. Fisher and A. Baker, Stafford’s Hidden Gem, St Chad’s Church, Greengate Street: a History and Guide, Stafford 2000.

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Churches with Royal Associations A number of minor cruciform churches have royal associations. Melbourne (Derbys.) was a royal chapel of Henry I.59 Milborne Port (Somerset) was probably built for the royal clerk, Reinbald.60 Godalming (Surrey) has been discussed by John Blair.61 St Mary’s, Guildford (Surrey), was held by the king.62 The church was not originally cruciform. The low arches to the north and south transepts cut through the stripwork of the tower of the earlier church and also rendered redundant the windows in the north and south walls.63 At Burnham Overy (Norfolk) the arches from the crossing to the nave and chancel are remarkably narrow as at pre-Conquest Wooton Wawen (Warks.).64 At Colyton (Devon) the pointed arches of the crossing relate to Exeter cathedral.65 Around 1170–90 aisles were added to the aisleless Norman nave at Calne (Wilts.).66 The rhythm of the arcades is not straightforward; the four western bays have plain, two-order, round-headed arches with a billet hood carried on short columns and scalloped capitals. The eastern bay is wider and has a moulded pointed arch with a dog-tooth hood mould. The western crossing piers are contemporary and are elongated on an east–west axis and make no provision for a western crossing arch. At Domesday, Gilbert son of Solomon held Meppershall (Beds.) from the king and in the time of Henry II the advowson was presented to Lenton priory.67 The Norman crossing has single-order arches which are plain except for the west face of the west arch which has angle roll moulding. There is an arched recess for an altar in the east wall of the north transept but only the north springer of its counterpart in the south transept. The two-bay chancel has pilaster buttresses that may belong to the Romanesque church or to a late twelfth-century rebuilding. Benedictine Priory Churches Stogursey (Somerset) was founded 1100x1107 by William de Falaise and his wife Geva and granted to Lonlay.68 The rectangular crossing is longer north to south than

59 Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 239–42. 60 Radford, ‘Pre-Conquest Minster Churches’, 135–6; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 134; S.

Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 185–222; Richard Gem, ‘The English Parish Church in the 11th and Early 12th Centuries: a Great Rebuilding?’ in Minsters and Parish Churches: the Local Church in Transition 950–1200, ed. John Blair, Oxford 1988, 21–30 at 27; Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 214. 61 Domesday Book, Surrey, 1.14: Ranulf Flambard holds the church of this manor, to which 3 hides belong. Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, 97–9, plan on 98, fig. 27. 62 Domesday Book, Surrey, 1.1a. 63 J. H. Parker, ‘The Church of St Mary, Guildford’, Arch. Journ. 29, 1872, 170–80; VCH, Surrey iii, 1911, 563–9; Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 266–8. 64 Domesday Book, Norfolk, ed. Philippa Brown, Chichester 1984, 1.147; Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 685–8. 65 Domesday Book, Devon, ed., Caroline and Frank Thorn, Chichester 1985, 1.13: mention of church with ½ virgate of land, value 5s. Thurlby, ‘Romanesque Cathedral of Exeter’, 29. 66 Domesday Book, Wiltshire, ed. Caroline and Frank Thorn, Chichester 1979, 1.1: King Edward held it. Nigel holds the church of this manor from the king, with 6 hides of land. Land for 5 ploughs. 67 Domesday Book, Bedfordshire, trans. and ed. John Morris, Chichester 1977, 48.1; VCH, Bedfordshire ii, 1908, 288, plan on 291. 68 T. D. Tremlett and Noel Blakiston, Stogursey Charters, Somerset Record Society 61, 1946 (1949), 1

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east to west, as at Bramber, but the capitals depend on Norman models (Fig. 10).69 Just the superstructure of the crossing tower remains from the Norman priory church of Great Yarmouth (Norfolk).70 The pilaster strips owe more to a pre-Conquest tradition than to the contemporary progressive at Norwich cathedral. The former Benedictine priory church at Ewenny (Glamorgan), founded by William de Londres between 1116 and 1126, is one of the best-preserved small priory churches of the period.71 The square-ended, aisleless presbytery is three bays in length and is fully vaulted with a quadripartite rib vault in the eastern bay to serve as a ciborium above the high altar and a barrel vault in the western bays with alternating transverse arches and ribs. In the south wall there is the heavily restored piscina and there are distinct traces of the original painted masonry in the eastern bay and on the south wall.72 The aisleless transepts have or had two staggered square ended, barrel-vaulted chapels to the east. In contrast to the sanctuary, the transepts, nave and north aisle are wood roofed. At Monk Sherborne, or Pamber, priory (Hants) there are low crossing arches with a lantern above. The west crossing arch is the only one to be decorated with roll mouldings to the outer order, otherwise the two-order arches are plain and sit on plain jambs. The church was consecrated by William Giffard, bishop of Winchester (1107–29), and the surviving fabric accords with this date.73 Of the alien priory of Hatfield Broad Oak (Essex), founded c.1135, just the western crossing piers and the north wall of the aisleless nave survive.74 Benedictine Nunneries West Malling (Kent) was founded about 1090 and dedicated in 1106.75 The aisleless cruciform church is known largely from excavation, although the west front, with arcaded turrets related to Rochester cathedral, and a bay and a half of the north wall of the nave survive.76 Of the former Benedictine nunnery at Usk just the crossing and the south wall of the former aisleless nave remain. Above the eastern crossing arch to the east there is the clear trace of the former Romanesque chancel vault, although there is insufficient to determine its exact form. The foundation date is debated but the chamfered, two-order, round-headed windows to the ringers’ chamber of the crossing tower suggest a date in the second half of the twelfth century.77 Nuneaton (Warks.) no. 1. Grant by Willaim de Faleisia and Geva his wife of the church of St Andrew of Stogursey to the church of St Mary of Lonlay: VCH, Somerset vi, 1992, 155. 69 Maylis Baylé, ‘Les chapiteaux de Stogursey (Somerset) ancien prieuré de Lonlay l’Abbaye’, Bulletin Monumental 138, 1980, 405–16. 70 Herbert de Losinga, bishop of Norwich (1094–1119), built the church of St Nicholas before 1101 and granted it as a cell to Norwich Cathedral (Norwich Charters no. 112; G. Thurlow, Great Yarmouth Priory and Parish Church, Great Yarmouth 1961, 6). 71 Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Romanesque Priory Church of St Michael at Ewenny’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47, 1988, 281–94. 72 I owe the information on the wall painting at Ewenny to David Park. 73 VCH, Hampshire iv, 1911, 236, plan on 235. 74 VCH, Essex iii, 182; RCHM, Essex ii, 1921, 116–20, plan on 117. 75 F. H. Fairweather, ‘The Abbey of St Mary, Malling, Kent’, Arch. Journ. 88, 1931, 175–92. 76 R. Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Religious Women, London and New York 1994, 52, plan, fig 13. 77 Stephen W. Williams, ‘Architectural Notes upon Usk Church, Monmouthshire’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 5th ser. 3, 1886, 90–3, and David H. Williams, ‘Usk Nunnery’, The Monmouthshire Antiquary

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was founded c.1155 for Benedictine nuns of the order of Fontevrault.78 Of the twelfth-century church there are the lower sections of the north, south and west crossing piers designed by the so-called West Country school of masons.79 Whiteladies at Brewood (Salop) was founded for Cistercian nuns in the late twelfth century.80 It has an aisleless square-ended chancel and nave with short transept arms but with no differentiation of the crossing, just arches through the north and south walls and no eastern or western crossing arches. Augustinian and Early Cistercian Churches A significant number of Augustinian priory churches adopted an aisleless cruciform plan. Ironically the two best-preserved examples did not long remain Augustinian. Leonard Stanley (Glos.) was founded as an Augustinian house 1121–30 by Roger de Berkeley II, but in 1146 Roger de Berkeley III gave the church to Benedictine Gloucester as a cell.81 The church has a rectangular crossing as at Stogursey. The nave and transepts are wood roofed but the two-bay chancel was intended for a vault. The Augustinian priory of Portchester was established before the end of 1128, but the site soon became inconvenient and c.1148 the canons moved to Southwick.82 The church was elaborately conceived with dado arcades in the chancel and transepts and four-part vaults planned for these spaces albeit not built. Lilleshall priory (Salop), which was founded in 1148, was fully vaulted although work on the nave was not completed until the thirteenth century.83 Here the high altar is marked architecturally with a six-part vault as opposed to the four-part vaults in the western bays. Kenilworth (Warks.) and Kirkham (Yorks.), both founded c.1122; undated Haughmond (Salop); Norton (Cheshire), c.1134; Thornholme (Lincs.), probably founded by King Stephen; Wigmore (Herefs.) founded 1172–9; Conishead (Lancs.), founded 1180–7; and probably Bridlington (Yorks.), founded 1114, had aisleless cruciform plans.84 Ivychurch priory (Wilts.), founded on the site of a former minster 4, 1980, 44–5, name Richard de Clare (d.1135) as founder. David Williams states that the church dates from the early twelfth century, and that Richard’s son, Gilbert (d.1152), continued the development of the establishment. A. G. Mein, Norman Usk: the Birth of a Town, Usk 1986, 35–45 dates the foundation 1154–70. 78 VCH, Warwickshire ii, 1908, 66; Hilary Jenkinson, Some Account of St Mary’s Priory, Nuneaton, and of the Restored Church, London 1922; David Andrews et al., ‘The Archaeology and Topography of Nuneaton Priory’, Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society Transactions 91, 1981, 55–81. 79 Harold Brakspear, ‘A West Country School of Masons’, Archaeologia 81, 1931, 1–18, pl. X. 80 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 279. 81 C. Swynnerton, ‘The Priory of St Leonard of Stanley, Co. Gloucester, in the light of recent discoveries, documentary and structural’, Archaeologia 71, 1921, 119–226. 82 Emma Mason, ‘The King, the Chamberlain and Southwick Priory’, BIHR 53, 1980, 1–10; D. Baker, A. Borg and B. W. Cunliffe, Excavations at Portchester Castle III, Report of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London xxxiv, 1977, 97–120. 83 S. E. Rigold, Lilleshall Abbey, London 1969. 84 E. Carey-Hill, ‘Kenilworth Abbey’, Birmingham Archaeological Society Transactions 52, 1927, 184–227; Glyn Coppack, Stuart Harrison and Colin Hayfield, ‘Kirkham Priory: the Architecture and Archaeology of an Augustinian House’, Journ. BAA 148, 1995, 55–136; J. J. West, Med. Arch. 24, 1980, 240, plan on 241; J. Patrick Greene, Norton Priory: the Archaeology of a Medieval House, Cambridge 1989; Monasticon vi, 554; Harold Brakspear, ‘Wigmore Abbey’, Arch. Journ. 90, 1933, 26–51; P. V. Kelly, ‘Excavations at Conishead Priory’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 25, 1930, 149–65; Jill Franklin, ‘Bridlington Priory: an Augustinian Church and Cloister in the Twelfth Century’, in Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire,

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church either in the time of King Stephen or King Henry II, was similar but with a three-bay south aisle, while Keynsham (Somerset), founded 1166/7, had a north nave aisle.85 At some point in the twelfth century St Mary’s, Hemel Hempstead (Herts.), seems to have been granted by the king to the canons of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, for in 1201 they paid a fine of 200 marks for the confirmation of the grant.86 The grandeur of the fabric is appropriate for an urban collegiate church. It has a two-bay, rib-vaulted chancel and to the north of the western bay is a narrow room also rib-vaulted in two bays now entered off the north transept which may have originally served as a chapel. The crossing has richly moulded, round-headed arches, and in the terminal wall of the south transept there is a fourteenth-century doorway set towards the west as at North Newbald. The aisled nave has six bays the unique articulation of which has been analyzed by Eric Fernie.87 The west doorway is original, but the north and south nave doorways are later. The details relate closely to St Albans abbey, the Temple church in London and the nearby Augustinian priory at Dunstable.88 Penmon (Anglesey) was a pre-Conquest clas church which was probably remodeled in the time of Gruffydd ap Cynan, king of Gwynedd (d.1137).89 At this time the affiliation of the clergy is not recorded although by 1414, if not by 1221, the house was Augustinian.90 The west crossing arch is richly decorated to mark entry from the nave to a more important space and perhaps an altar placed under the crossing (Fig. 11). More unusually, the south crossing arch is also lavishly decorated and the south and west walls of this transept have chevron-arched dado arcades (Figs 11 and 12). This indicates a special use, possibly as a repository for a relic, although none is recorded, or for the burial of a patron. An interesting analogue for the richly ornamented arch to the south transept opposite a plain arch to the north transept is at Burpham (Sussex). British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions ix, ed. Christopher Wilson, Leeds 1989, 44–61. 85 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 161; VCH, Wiltshire iii, 1956, 289; Harold Brakspear, ‘Ivychurch Priory’, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 46, 1934, 433–40, plan opp. 436; Barbara Lowe et al., ‘Keynsham Abbey Excavations 1961–85’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 131, 1987, 81–156; Christopher Wilson, ‘The Sources of the Late Twelfth-Century Work at Worcester Cathedral’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Cathedral, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions i, ed. G. Popper, 1978, 80–90. 86 Domesday Book, Hertfordshire, ed. and trans. John Morris, Chichester 1976: Land of the Count of Mortain; 15.10: Count holds himself, 10 hides, Land for 30 ploughs, Value £22. No mention of church or priest. At some point in the twelfth century the church of Hemel Hempstead seems to have been granted by the king to the canons of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, for in 1201 they paid a fine of 200 marks for the confirmation of the grant (VCH, Hertfordshire ii, 1908, 227; E. A. Webb, The Records of St Bartholomew’s Priory and of the Church and Parish of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, 2 vols, Oxford 1921, i, 365). RCHM, Hertfordshire, 1911, 109–11, plan on 111. 87 Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 227–8. 88 Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Place of St Albans in Sculpture and Architecture in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century’, in Alban and St Albans, Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions xxiv, ed. Martin Henig and Phillip Lindley, Leeds 2001, 162–75 at 166–72. 89 John Edward Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols, London 1912, 468; C. N. Johns, ‘The Celtic Monasteries of North Wales’, Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society 21, 1960, 14–43; ibid. 23, 1962, 129–3; Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire, Anglesey, London 1937, 119–21, plan on 120. 90 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 170.

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The early Cistercian houses of Waverley (Surrey) (1128), Tintern (Monmouthshire), Fountains (1132) and possibly Dore (Herefs.) had aisleless cruciform plans with a square-ended chancel and square chapels off the transepts.91 Churches Belonging to Monasteries At Pirton (Herts.), where the crossing tower was rebuilt by Pearson (1876–7) after the collapse of the original in 1874, the transepts originally had eastern apses. At Domesday Pirton was held by Ralph de Limesy and a priest is recorded.92 He gave the church of Pirton with the tithes of his lands there to the priory of St Mary, Hertford, which he founded as a cell of St Albans. In 1116 Henry I granted to St Peter and the abbot and monks of Hyde (Winchester) in free and perpetual alms, the churches of Alton and Kingsclere.93 At Alton (Hants) just the crossing survives from the Norman church with heavy roll mouldings in the arches and richly carved capitals of c.1100 closely related to work in Normandy.94 At Kingsclere (Hants) the aisleless nave has blocked north and south doorways, and a west doorway from the 1848 restoration, crossing and transepts.95 There is a small doorway in the west wall of the south transept adjacent to the stair turret. The west faces of the east and west crossing arches have rich decoration related to the crossing tower at Winchester cathedral and Portchester priory. The crossing of St Mary’s, St Briavels (Glos.), has pointed arches of three orders, the outer two continuous with roll-and-hollow mouldings, the inner chamfered in the arch on coursed shafts and either trumpet scallop or moulded capitals. Similar mouldings appear in the pointed arch between the south transept and the south nave aisle. However, the five-bay south nave arcade has plain, single-order, round-headed arches on short columns with waterleaf and scalloped capitals. The arches of the south nave arcade and the crossing could not appear more different but the waterleaf capital in the east column of the nave arcade suggests a date between 1165 and 1190. The closest parallel for the crossing arches is in the presbytery of Abbey Dore, probably after 1186.96 It is therefore possible that the crossing and south nave arcade are contemporary and that the difference in style reflects a difference in use; congregation in the nave and altar under the crossing. St Briavels was dedicated by the bishop of Hereford and confirmed to the abbey of Lire (Eure) as a chapel of Lydney church, probably in the 1160s. This followed a tussle for ownership of St Briavels between Lire and St Florent at Saumur which was ended between 1164 and 1166 when the bishop of Worcester, who arbitrated between Lire and St Florent, confirmed Lire’s right to the church.97 It is tempting to date the building soon after this which in terms of style may

91 Richard Halsey, ‘The Earliest Architecture of the Cistercians in England’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. Christopher Norton and David Park, Cambridge 1986, 65–85. Stuart Harrison and Malcolm Thurlby, ‘An Architectural History’, in A Definitive History of Dore Abbey, ed. Ron Shoesmith and Ruth Richardson, Logaston (Herefs.) 1997, 45–62 at 47, fig. 19. 92 Domesday Book, Hertfordshire, trans. and ed. John Morris, Chichester 1976, 23.3. 93 Regesta ii, no. 1126 [1116 Feb 2?]. 94 Maylis Baylé, Les origines et les premiers developpements de la sculpture romane en Normandie. Art en Basse-Normandie, 100, Caen n.d., 60, 100, 141, 220 n. 310, pls 542–3. 95 VCH, Hampshire iv, 261–4, plan on 262. 96 Harrison and Thurlby, ‘Architectural History’, 56. 97 VCH, Gloucestershire v, 1996, 269.

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be explained by the use of roll-and-hollow mouldings as at Keynsham abbey after 1166–7. At Domesday, Rye (Sussex) was held by the abbot of Fécamp from the king.98 There were five churches which paid 64s. Architectural evidence suggests that the present parish church was superior.99 The pilaster buttresses on the east wall prove that the Norman chancel was as long as the present one. Inside, in the east wall are two round-headed recesses for reliquaries, like the one at Hook Norton.100 In the west wall of the north transept a plain, two-step, round-headed arch communicates with the nave aisle, and to the north of this arch is a two-bay dado arcade with embattled arches. The scalloped capitals here are typologically earlier than the crockets in the west wall of the south transept which are unlikely before the rebuilding of Canterbury cathedral choir (1175–84). Hospital and Templar Churches St Gregory’s hospital church at Canterbury was founded by Lanfranc in 1086/7 to minister to the hospital of St John. It was aisleless with a rectangular chancel and two flanking three-cell transeptal chapels.101 The hospital church of St Cross, Winchester, was founded by Bishop Henry of Blois in 1136, although work on the main body of the church was probably not commenced until Henry’s return from Cluny in 1158.102 The church has a cruciform plan with two-bay, aisleless transepts, an aisled presbytery of two bays and an aisled nave of three bays. The church is rib-vaulted throughout and has a three-storey elevation in the presbytery, a feature usually only found in great churches. The incredibly varied decoration relates to Romsey abbey, Easton, Stoke Charity and Winchfield (Hants), Dorchester (Oxon.) and Steyning (Sussex).103 At Domesday, Weston (Herts.) was held by William of Eu, had land for twenty-three ploughs, thirty-three villagers and two priests and a value of £20.104 The estate eventually passed to Gilbert de Clare (d.1148) who was created first Earl of Pembroke by King Stephen and who gave the church to the Knights Templars.105 The aisleless Norman cruciform church, which probably dates 1135–48, seems to derive from a pre-Conquest predecessor given the salient eastern angles of the crossing tower.106 The unmoulded crossing arches are low and of a single order. The billet ornament on the abacus of the north-east crossing capitals and the stylized foliage on the abacus of the east respond of the south crossing arch accord with the c.1140 date.

98 99 100 101

Domesday Book, Sussex, trans. and ed. John Morris, 5.1. VCH, Sussex ix, 1937, plan on 58. VCH, Sussex ix, 57. T. Tatton-Brown, ‘The Beginnings of St Gregory’s Priory and St John’s Hospital in Canterbury’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe, London and Rio Grande (Ohio) 1995, 41–52. 102 Yoshio Kusaba, The Architectural History of the Church of the Hospital of St Cross in Winchester, Ann Arbor 1983. 103 Malcolm Thurlby and Yoshio Kusaba, ‘The Nave of St Andrew at Steyning and Design Variety in Romanesque Architecture in Britain’, Gesta 30/2, 1991, 163–75. 104 Domesday Book, Hertfordshire, 28.4. 105 VCH, Hertfordshire iii, 176. 106 RCHM, Hertfordshire, 237.

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Reconstructing Norman Cruciform Churches from Remodelled Fabrics The approach adopted here essentially follows that established by Richard Gem in his study of the pre-Conquest fabric of Nether Wallop (Hants), a minster church of Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin.107 Gem identified the former ‘crossing’ area of the preConquest minster with reference to the large piers at the east end of the nave arcade from which he was able to infer the scale of the former transepts. Something similar may be seen at Corsham (Wilts.) where the larger eastern piers and eastern bay of the nave arcades mark the area of the former crossing tower (Fig. 13).108 In addition, the large western piers of the late twelfth-century nave arcades probably indicate the former existence of an axial western tower (Fig. 13). Whether these towers reflect a pre- or early post-Conquest church is a moot point. The same plan was used at Pickering (Yorks.).109 Here the western tower of the twelfth-century church survives and the rectangular pier at the east end of the nave arcade, plus the wider bay there that opens into the transepts, suggests a twelfth-century crossing, albeit one without a western crossing arch and therefore probably a wooden crossing tower (Fig. 14). Petersfield (Hants) is not listed in Domesday but it may have been included under Mapledurham which was held by the king in lordship and records a church.110 The Norman church has been much reworked but clear evidence remains for its basic form. The east wall of the crossing tower remains to its full height complete with lavish articulation closely related to the interior of the post-1107 crossing tower of Winchester cathedral, and to Portchester priory (Hants) (Fig. 15).111 The tower is dismantled but the south and north walls of the south and north aisles retain herringbone masonry that belonged to the aisleless transepts of the Norman church (Fig. 16). The west tower is Norman which results in a plan with a central axial and west tower like St Mary-in-Castro, Dover, and St Vorles at Châtillon-sur-Seine (Côte d’Or) (Figs 16 and 17).112 The collegiate church of St Edith at Tamworth (Staffs.) was founded in the tenth century and had a full prebendal system introduced in the 1130s by Roger de Clinton, bishop of Coventry.113 It has been suggested that the plinth of the north-west crossing pier towards the nave remains from the pre-Conquest church but it is contiguous with the Norman work in the crossing.114 The north and south arches remain from the rectangular Romanesque crossing as well as the scars from the wider east and west arches (Figs 18–20). The masonry of the north and south walls of the chancel is Romanesque, demonstrating that the eastern extent of the church was established in the twelfth century. Similarly, in the spandrels of the nave arcades the ashlar is Romanesque, while the wide nave aisles continue the terminal walls of the Norman transepts. At Melksham (Wilts.) the extent of the nave and chancel was set in Norman

107 Richard Gem and Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘A “Winchester School” Wall-Painting at Nether Wallop, Hampshire’, ASE 9, 1981, 115–36; Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 121. 108 Harold Brakspear, The Church of St Bartholomew at Corsham in Wiltshire, Devizes 1924. 109 Domesday Book, Yorkshire, 1Y4; SN, D11. 110 Domesday Book, Hampshire, 1.8; VCH, Hampshire iii, 1908, 116, 118–19. 111 The interior of Winchester cathedral crossing tower is illustrated in R. Birt, The Glories of Winchester Cathedral, London n.d., 84. Baker, Borg and Cunliffe, Excavations at Porchester Castle III, 113–14. 112 Fernie, Architecture of the Anglo-Saxons, 134. 113 VCH, Staffordshire iii, 1970, 141, 309–10; Charles Ferrers and R. Palmer, The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Tamworth in the County of Stafford, Tamworth 1871. 114 Robert Sherlock, ‘St Editha’s Church, Tamworth’, Arch. Journ. 120, 1963, 295–6, plan on 296.

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times.115 This is determined by the pilaster buttresses and billet string of the square-ended chancel plus the ghost of the internal dado arcade, and the chevron string on the west wall of the south aisle of the nave formerly the west wall of the Norman nave. The configuration of elements inside also suggests a remodeled Norman cruciform church. St John’s, Devizes (Wilts.), possibly served as a chapel to the castle built by Bishop Roger of Salisbury, although there is debate as to whether it was commenced by Roger or dates from the 1150s.116 Architectural details do not resolve the matter as parallels range from Roger’s work at Sarum through Leonard Stanley, Gloucester cathedral chapter house and Malmesbury abbey. There is a richly articulated, two-bay rib-vaulted chancel and a rectangular crossing tower with pointed arches to north and south, round-headed to east and west. This is an adaptation of Wimborne Minster and ultimately a pre-Conquest tradition. The rectangular crossing is reflected in the later medieval fabric of the former minster church of Westbury (Wilts) (Figs 21–23).117 This reading is supported in another former minster church at Warminster (Wilts.) where the crossing tower is also rectangular. Here in restoration an altar niche of the Norman church was revealed in the east wall of the north transept in the tradition of Wimborne Minster (Fig. 24). These examples demonstrate the importance of looking at the later medieval fabric of documented minster churches when considering the form of pre-Conquest and Norman churches. At Stoke Charity (Hants) the arch from the present north chapel to the north nave aisle was formerly the western crossing arch of a small eleventh-century cruciform church, and there is the springer of the southern crossing arch immured in the south wall of the chapel/north wall of the chancel. At Iwerne Minster (Dorset) the Romanesque arch from the Norman north nave aisle to the transept suggests the former existence of a Norman transept although today the transept is thirteenth century.118 Some Other Norman Cruciform Churches The Domesday entry for Nether Avon (Wilts.) records that Nigel the Doctor holds the church of this manor with one hide, but the church itself is derelict and the roof so damaged that it is almost a ruin.119 Today the west tower is extant with evidence of porticus to the north, south and west. In terms of planning this is pre-Conquest but the volute capital betrays a link with Normandy. The Taylors suggest that the present Early English ‘nave probably replaces an earlier one on much the same site’.120 Other twelfth-century variants of this plan with a west tower and north and south porticus occur at St Leonard’s, Seaford (Sussex) and St Nicholas’s, New Romney (Kent). St Paul’s, Bedford, is documented as an important collegiate church at Domesday 115 Domesday Book, Wiltshire, ed. Caroline and Frank Thorn, Chichester 1979, 1.12: Rummold the Priest holds the church. 1 hide. 116 Blair, ‘Clerical Communities’, 277; VCH, Wiltshire x, 1975, 237, 265, 289; R. A. Stalley, ‘A TwelfthCentury Patron of Architecture: a Study of the Buildings Erected by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury’, Journ. BAA 3rd ser. 34, 1971, 62–83 at 81. 117 Domesday Book, Wiltshire, 1.16. 118 RCHM, Dorset, IV, North, 1972, plan on 36. 119 Domesday Book, Wiltshire, 1.18; John Blair, ‘Local Churches in Domesday Book and Before’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 265–78 at 273–4, dates the tower c.1090. Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 456–9. 120 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 456.

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but nothing of the present cruciform church is earlier than the thirteenth century.121 St Mary’s, Bedford, however, preserved the restored crossing and south transept of the Norman cruciform church which suggests superior status. As at Stafford, perhaps there were two collegiate churches in the town. Something similar may explain Nether Poppleton (Yorks.) recorded at Domesday as held by Osbern de Arches.122 There is no mention of church or priest. But Blair records a superior church at Upper Poppleton so it is possible that this church is associated with it.123 The Norman church of Westham (Sussex) was built just outside the west gate of Pevensey. Today, just the south transept remains, entered through an unmoulded, single-order arch, plus a blocked arch to a former apsidal chapel. Tufa quoins indicate an early date as at Lanfranc’s cathedral at Canterbury. Elsewhere in Sussex, a small but elaborate cruciform church has been excavated at Bargham.124 At Horsted Keynes the crossing has three plain, single-order, round-headed Norman arches. The chancel arch is taller and wider than those to the north and south. The western crossing arch is fourteenth century. At East Dean, near Chichester, there is a Norman crossing with plain round-headed arches, remodeled at the west to a segmental form. St Mary’s, Battle, preserves the south crossing arch of the Norman cruciform church. The architectural pretension of St Nicholas, Old Shoreham, and St Mary-deHaura, New Shoreham (Sussex), suggests superior status. Old Shoreham preserves an elaborate crossing, north and south aisleless transepts shorn of their apsidal chapels, and an aisleless nave. The nave incorporates the remains of a pre-Conquest west porch or tower.125 In it there is a blocked north doorway and there is another blocked doorway halfway along the length of the original nave north wall. In the south wall there is a further blocked doorway with plain tympanum halfway along the combined length of the nave and westwork. This juxtaposition suggests that the two north doorways belong to the pre-Conquest fabric, while the south doorway is part of a Norman remodeling. The plainness of the south doorway contrasts with the richly doorway in the west wall of the south transept. Its small scale suggests it was a priests’ door. The crossing is richly decorated with ornament applied to the west faces of the east and west crossing arches and to the south face of the north arch and the north face of the south arch. This emphasis on the crossing area suggests liturgical importance and likely an altar there. St Mary de Haura, New Shoreham, famed for its late twelfth-century five-bay, three-storey, aisled chancel, also preserves interesting remains of the mid twelfthcentury cruciform church. There is the crossing and aisleless transept less apsidal chapels and the one bay of the two-storey nave minus its aisles. The articulation of the crossing is unusual in that the western arch extends the full height of the building and its three orders are richly decorated. The other three arches also boast three orders but they are plain and the arches are low. What the liturgical significance of this was is a matter of guesswork; was it a matter of having a major altar under the crossing or

121 122 123 124

Domesday Book, Bedfordshire, 4.9, 13.1, 53.32. Domesday Book, Yorkshire, 25W14. Blair, ‘Secular Minster Churches’, 111. A. Barr-Hamilton, ‘The Excavation of Bargham Church Site’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 99, 1961, 38–65. 125 Taylor and Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 544–5; Richard Gem, ‘The Church of St Nicholas, Old Shoreham; the Church of St Mary de Haura, New Shoreham’, Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute Summer Meeting, Arch. Journ. 142, 1985, 21–3.

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rather that the large ornamented arch announced the canons’ church as opposed to the parish church in the nave? There are very grand crossings at St Clement’s, Sandwich (Kent) and at Attleborough (Norfolk). Attleborough formerly had a rib-vaulted chancel and the details of the crossing relate to Norwich cathedral.126 There are two richly articulated arches superposed above the west crossing arch which suggests that there was a double gallery towards the nave. A church and priest are recorded at Bicker (Lincs.) on the land of Count Alan, and the archbishop of York also held land there.127 There is a thirteenth-century crossing and transepts but the richly articulated, two-bay, Norman nave with aisles suggests that the cruciform plan already existed. Gosberton (Lincs.) was held at Domesday by the bishop of Lincoln with no mention of church or priest.128 Sections of the west crossing piers there provide evidence for a Norman cruciform church. Two churches in Suffolk are at opposite ends of the minor cruciform type. At Eyke the crossing tower has salient eastern angles. The east and west crossing arches are richly carved on two orders on their west faces, while the north and south crossing arches are smaller and plain and reflect pre-Conquest tradition, as does the rectangular plan of the crossing. It has been mooted that the church at Orford (Suffolk) was collegiate and may be attributed to Wimar, chaplain of Henry II c.1166 and 1170, but there is no documentation for either.129 The large scale of the church and the three-storey elevation suggest superior status. The aisled presbytery with rib-vaulted aisles recalls St Frideswide’s, Oxford, and New Shoreham. Conclusion Former Anglo-Saxon minster churches generally upheld superior status after the Conquest whether associated with a cathedral or monastery or refounded as an Augustinian or Benedictine priory. Aspects of design continued from pre-Conquest times, and features like the placement of transept doorways, suggest some continuity of liturgical practice. Be that as it may, the Norman rebuilding or remodeling of these churches usually imbued the building with a new and increased sense of grandeur. The new building need not have been on a larger scale but the monumentality and style emulated ‘great-church’ architecture and proclaimed the imposition of Norman rule.130 Association with Anglo-Saxon saints is also allied with major centres like Winchester, Ely, Bury St Edmunds and Durham. Study of Northamptonshire parish

126 Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Influence of Norwich Cathedral on Romanesque Architecture in East Anglia’, in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096–1996, ed. Ian Atherton, Eric Fernie, Christopher Harper-Bill and Hassell Smith, London and Rio Grande 1996, 136–57 at 153–4. 127 Domesday Book, Lincolnshire, ed. Philip Morgan and Caroline Thorn, Chichester 1986, 2.30, 12.75. 128 Domesday Book, Lincolnshire, 7.36. 129 Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, 459; F. H. Fairweather, ‘Excavations in the Ruined Choir of the Church of St Bartholomew, Orford, Suffolk’, Antiqs. Journ. 14, 1934, 170–6; E. A. H. Rahbula, ‘St Bartholomew’s Church, Orford’, Arch. Journ. 108, 1951, 148–50, plan on 149. 130 On William of Malmesbury’s awareness of architectural style, see R. Allen Brown, ‘William of Malmesbury as an Architectural Historian’, in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire médiévale en l’honneur du Doyen Michel de Boüard, Geneva 1982, 9–16. See also, Richard Gem, ‘A Great Rebuilding?’ in Minsters and Parish Churches, ed. Blair, 21–30; Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 20. On the impact of Norman architecture, see Eric Fernie, ‘The Effect of the Norman Conquest on Norman Architectural Patronage’, ANS 9, 1986 (1987), 72–85.

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churches has yielded evidence for twenty Norman cruciform churches.131 Elsewhere the list has been expanded by detecting evidence for Anglo-Saxon or Norman work in cruciform churches rebuilt in the later middle ages. The degree to which later cruciform churches reflect former minster status is a question that requires more research, but application of the approach adopted in this paper should yield results. A narrow nave may suggest the retention of a pre-Conquest nave, larger piers in an otherwise regular nave arcade may point to the former existence of a crossing and/or tower, while wide aisles may represent the extension of the terminal walls of the transepts. Where documentation exists for an eleventh-century superior church it seems likely that the adoption of a cruciform plan reflects the original, as at St Cuthbert’s at Darlington, or St Mary’s at Aylesbury. Where there is a post-1200 cruciform church without either documentary or archaeological evidence of earlier fabric, the evidence must be treated with caution.

131 Fernie, Architecture of Norman England, 225.

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Fig. 1 Worth (Sussex), St Nicholas, S porticus, interior to SE

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Fig. 2 Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxon.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to W from presbytery

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Fig. 3 Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxon.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to ESE from nave

Fig. 4 Deerhurst (Glos.), St Mary, presbytery, interior to E

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Fig. 5 Cholsey (Berks.), St Mary, exterior from SW

Fig. 6 Cholsey (Berks.), St Mary, crossing tower, detail SE angle

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Fig. 7 Hook Norton (Oxon.), St Peter, interior to W

Fig. 8 Bramber (Sussex), St Nicholas, interior to E

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Fig. 9 Bicester (Oxon.), St Eadburg, ‘crossing’, interior to E

Fig. 10 Stogursey (Somerset), St Andrew, crossing to S

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Fig. 11 Penmon Priory (Anglesey), crossing, interior to SE

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Fig. 12 Penmon Priory (Anglesey) S transept, interior to S

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Fig. 13 Corsham (Wilts.), St Bartholomew, interior to E

Fig. 14 Pickering (Yorks.), St Peter and St Paul, interior to E

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Fig. 15 Petersfield (Hants), St Peter, former crossing, interior to E

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Fig. 16 Petersfield (Hants), St Peter, exterior from S

Fig. 17 Châtillon-sur-Seine (Cote d’Or), St Vorles, exterior from WSW

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Fig. 18 Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, interior to E

Fig. 19 Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, presbytery, interior to E

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Fig. 20 Tamworth (Staffs.), St Edith, interior to SW from presbytery

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Fig. 21 Devizes (Wilts.), St John, crossing, exterior from SW

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Fig. 22 Westbury (Wilts.), All Saints, exterior from SE

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Fig. 23 Westbury (Wilts.), All Saints, crossing, interior from NW

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Fig. 24 Warminster (Wilts.), St Denys, N transept, interior to NE