Anglo-Norman Studies XXV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2002 [25] 0851159419, 9780851159416, 9781846150197

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ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXV: PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2002

John Gillingham, Editor

THE BOYDELL PRESS

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2002

The Battle Conference celebrated its quarter-centenary in 2002 in Glasgow, and this volume, while ranging from Norman Sicily to Scandinavia, has a particular focus on Scottish themes. There are five papers on aspects of Scottish history from the eleventh to the early thirteenth century: on kings and their followers, and on the border abbey churches. Charters (Norman, Anglo-Norman and Scottish) represent another focus. In addition to papers discussing problems of authenticity and the implications of forgery, several others use charter evidence to shed new light on royal and aristocratic values and on critical periods in the history of William the Conqueror and the Marshal earls. Three papers take a comparative look at past and present interpretations of law and law codes in England, Scotland and Scandinavia; and there are also investigations of contemporary historians’ perceptions of the Jews and Byzantium.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of J. O. Prestwich (26.6.1914–25.1.2003): historian of the Anglo-Norman realm and teacher of both R. Allen Brown, the founding editor of Anglo-Norman Studies, and of the present editor.

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XXV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2002

Edited by John Gillingham

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© by contributors 2002, 2003 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 2003 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 0 85115 941 9

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 The Conqueror’s Adolescence David Bates Knowledge of Byzantine History in the West: the Norman Historians (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries) Michael Angold Companions of the Atheling G. W. S. Barrow The Absence of Regnal Years from the Dating Clause of Charters of Kings of Scots, 1195–1222 Dauvit Broun St Albans, Westminster and Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past Julia Crick The Architectural Context of the Border Abbey Churches in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Richard Fawcett Predatory Kinship Revisited Michael H. Gelting Legal Aspects of Scottish Charter Diplomatic in the Twelfth Century: a Comparative Approach John Hudson ‘Faith in the one God flowed over you from the Jews, the sons of the patriarchs and the prophets’: William of Newburgh’s Writings on Anti-Jewish Violence M. J. Kennedy Anglo-Norman Lay Charters, 1066–c.1100: a Diplomatic Approach Richard Mortimer The Instituta Cnuti and the Translation of English Law Bruce O’Brien The French Interests of the Marshal Earls of Striguil and Pembroke, 1189–1234 Daniel Power Settlement and Integration: the Establishment of an Aristocracy in Scotland (1124–1214) Nigel M. Webb

vi vii ix 1 19 35 47 65 85 107 121 139 153 177 199 227

ILLUSTRATIONS St Albans, Westminster and Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past Plate 1 Plate 2

Offa’s purported grant of Aldenham to Westminster, AD 785 (WAM III (S 124)) Edgar’s purported confirmation to Westminster of lands between the Tyburn and the Fleet, AD 951 for ?959 (WAM V (S 670))

69 78

The Architectural Context of the Border Abbey Churches Fig. 1

Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11

Sketch plans of the Border abbeys: 1. Coldingham Priory, the first church; 2. Kelso Abbey; 3. Jedburgh Abbey as probably first planned; 4. Melrose Abbey, the first church; 5. Jedburgh Abbey, the late medieval church; 6. Dryburgh Abbey Kelso Abbey, the north-west transept and west vestibule from the north Kelso Abbey, the south side of the nave Sketches of internal elevations of the Border abbeys: 1. Kelso Abbey nave; 2. Jedburgh Abbey choir; 3. Jedburgh Abbey nave; 4. Coldingham Priory choir; 5. Dryburgh Abbey north transept Melrose Abbey from the west, including the remains of the west front of the first church Jedburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir Jedburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir and presbytery Coldingham Priory, the east end of the choir Jedburgh Abbey, the nave from the east Jedburgh Abbey, a crocket cap of the nave arcade Dryburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir and north transept

96

97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

The French Interests of the Marshal Earls Map Table I Table II

Normandy and north-east Brittany in the early thirteenth century The succession to the Giffard inheritance (1189) The marriages and claims of Gervaise de Dinan

202 204 212

EDITOR’S PREFACE In its twenty-fifth year the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies made its now customary quinquennial excursion, on this occasion to Glasgow from 25 to 30 July 2002, at the invitation of Professor David Bates. All the papers printed in this volume were delivered there, either in Glasgow University’s Kelvin Conference Centre or in the neo-Gothic splendours of its main building. For generous help in meeting the costs incurred in organising and holding the conference we are grateful to both the British Academy and the University of Glasgow. Members of the conference enjoyed a day and a half of visits, an afternoon at Bothwell Castle (where we were guided by Dr Alan Rutherford) and to Glasgow Cathedral (guided by Dr Richard Fawcett), and then a full day’s outing to the Border abbeys. Richard Fawcett gave the paper on the Border abbeys printed here, guided us round Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose and Dryburgh abbeys and enlivened the whole journey with his knowledge of Scottish buildings of all periods. We also visited a splendid exhibition of manuscripts kindly arranged just for us by Julie Gardham of the Special Collections, Glasgow University Library. Our thanks to them all. Organising the Battle Conference in those years when it does not meet in Battle is inevitably more complicated than usual. Behind the scenes and for well over a year ahead, Pam Nye, the secretary of Glasgow University’s Medieval History Department, worked administrative wonders to ensure that everything went smoothly. David Bates’s own contribution to the success of the conference was huge, both before the conference and during it, both behind the scenes and on stage. It will not often happen that the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecturer also chooses to sit at the reception desk, welcoming and registering all new arrivals. For their assistance with the mechanics of this, as well as for ferrying people to and from the airport, we are grateful to three of the department’s postgraduate students: Maxime Guilmin, Neil Strevett and Vanessa Traill. The year away from Battle provided a break with the Battle tradition of sunny weather, so we were fortunate that our accommodation was in Wolfson Hall, immediately adjoining the Kelvin Conference Centre. A massive storm on the last evening brought all road, rail and air services into and out of Glasgow to a halt which meant that quite a few members stayed on for a night longer than they had intended. But the kitchen and bar staff of Wolfson Hall made such heroic efforts to get into work that our last night in Glasgow proved to be a highly enjoyable one. We are very grateful to Alison Clark and to all her staff for making this possible. And we were fortunate too that the generally overcast weather relented throughout our day’s outing to the Border abbeys, permitting a memorable picnic lunch in the ruins of Melrose abbey. For their invaluable help in keeping our website (www.battleconference.com) running, and in getting this year’s volume into print on schedule, I am much indebted to Vanda Andrews, Helen Barber, Alison Coles, Pam Cope, Pru Harrison and to Boydell & Brewer’s editorial director, Caroline Palmer. The Proceedings of the Battle Conferences always run the better thanks to the editorial director’s re-assuring presence at the conferences themselves, both at Battle and elsewhere. John Gillingham

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ABBREVIATIONS AA SS Actes Henri II AD ANS Antiqs. Journ. Arch. Journ. ASC ASC, Swanton ASE BAA BAR Bates, Regesta Battle Chronicle BIHR BL BN Cal. Docs France Cal. Pat. Rolls Carmen CCCM CCM CCSL CNRS Complete Peerage De gestis pontificum Diceto DNB Domesday Book

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 1909–27 Archives Départementales Anglo-Norman Studies The Antiquaries Journal (Society of Antiquaries of London) Archaeological Journal (Royal Archaeological Institute) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock et al., London 1969 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. Swanton, London 1996 Anglo-Saxon England British Archaeological Association British Archaeological Reports Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: the Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates, Oxford 1998 The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. Eleanor Searle, OMT, 1980 Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Bibliothèque Nationale Calendar of Documents preserved in France . . ., i, 918–1216, ed. J. H. Round, HMSO, 1899 Calendar of Patent Rolls, HMSO, 1891– The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. F. Barlow, OMT, 1999 Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis Cahiers de civilisation médiévale Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout 1953– Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, 13 vols in 14, London 1910–59 William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS, 1870 Radulphi de Diceto Opera Historica. The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, 1876 Dictionary of National Biography Domesday Book, seu liber censualis . . ., i, ii, ed. A. Farley, 2 vols, ‘Record Commission’, 1783; iii, iv, ed. H. Ellis, 1816

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 Historical Review English Lawsuits English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, 2 vols, Selden Society CVI–CVII, 1990–91 EYC Early Yorkshire Charters, i–iii, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1914–16), and iv–xii, ed. C. T. Clay, Yorks. Archaeological Soc., Record Soc., extra series I–X, 1935–65 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 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 XXI, 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 Regis Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi et Ricardi Primi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, 1867 Howlett, Chronicles Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, RS, 1884–9 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 Domesday People

Lanfranc’s Letters Liebermann Med. Arch. MGH MGH SRG 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. SHR Torigni Trans. TRHS

The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. H. Clover and M. Gibson, OMT, 1979 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols, Halle 1903–16 Medieval Archaeology Monumenta Germaniae Historica MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum Scholarum MGH 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 Howlett, Chronicles, 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 and H. A. Cronne, Oxford 1956; iii, ed. H. A. Cronne and 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; revised edn, ed. S. E. Kelly et al., available online at www.trin.cam.ac.uk/chartwww. Société des Anciens Textes Français series Scottish Historical Review The Chronicle of Robert de Torigni, in Howlett, Chronicles, vol. 4 Transactions Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

VCH Vita Ædwardi Wace Waltham

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

The Conqueror’s Adolescence

R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture

THE CONQUEROR’S ADOLESCENCE David Bates It is a great honour to be asked to give this lecture and a privilege to be able to do so in my own University. The Battle Conference is now so much an established institution that it is important to remember how radical and exciting Allen Brown’s foundation of the conference was for all of us who were around when the first one was held in 1978. My own first Battle Conference was in 1981 and, although I have not been as regular an attender as I would have liked in the last decade, I have always been present in spirit. My personal gain from the friendships and collaborations formed as a direct result of the Battle Conference is an inestimable one and one which I would wish to acknowledge publicly. More broadly, the good fellowship and intellectual contacts which have formed among those who have been present at the conferences have been of immense importance for the subject which Allen held so dear. We are all profoundly in his debt. I was reminded at the conference by John Gillingham that William of Poitiers’ portrayal of the youthful William armed and ready for the fray was one of Allen’s favourite passages and one which he quoted frequently. It is for this reason particularly appropriate that I devote this year’s Memorial Lecture to the Conqueror’s adolescence. Before turning to my subject, however, I must also put on record the curious coincidence, drawn to my attention by Archie Duncan, that this Memorial Lecture was given in the room which was once the History Class Room of the University of Glasgow – it is now the Senate Room – where the young D. C. Douglas would in all likelihood have given his earliest lectures as a University teacher.1 Approaches to the Conqueror’s childhood and adolescence have of course changed since Freeman wrote that William ‘came to his Duchy with every disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, with turbulent barons to hold in check and envious neighbours to guard against . . .’2 Yet ideas of the kind which the quotation epitomises remained deeply influential throughout the twentieth century. David Douglas in particular echoed

1

This paper owes a great deal to my Glasgow colleague Stuart Airlie’s work on early medieval politics and specifically on the subject of political legitimacy. I would like to use this paper as an opportunity to express thanks for the stimulus of discussions which have taken place over several years. I have discussed aspects of this lecture with many people and must in particular thank Helen Bates, Elisabeth van Houts, Véronique Gazeau, Pierre Bauduin, Jinty Nelson, Dominique Rouet, Sam Cohn and Matthew Strickland for their assistance. I have benefited greatly from comments on an earlier draft by Marjorie Chibnall and Kathleen Thompson. I should also like to thank John Gillingham and the Trustees of the R. Allen Brown Memorial Trust for inviting me to give the 2002 Memorial Lecture. This paper was written during the tenure of a Marc Fitch British Academy Research Readership. 2 E. A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its causes and its results, 6 vols, Oxford 1867–79, ii, 169.

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Freeman in his general approach.3 Michel de Boüard wrote that in no other state of the time in Christian Europe would a bastard have succeeded without protestations from churchmen.4 Some have considered that the extent of the disorder during William’s early years should not be exaggerated, often taking their cue from an important, yet in some respects frustrating, contribution by Michel de Boüard. There are different opinions on when William started to rule, with both De Boüard and Frank Barlow differing from the majority approach and saying that William was taking an independent role from1042.5 In a few typically trenchant and insightful, if sometimes misinformed, pages, Dominique Barthélemy has set the episode in a much wider context, as a result arguing for a reduction in both the significance of William’s illegitimate birth and the scale of disorder.6 In general, the period of William’s late childhood and adolescence has in any case tended over the years to carry the baggage of every fashionable approach to medieval political disorder.7 In this respect, I am of course as guilty as anyone else. Furthermore, links have been made between William’s experiences in these years and the formation of both his personality and his regime. Frank Barlow, in a memorable piece of prose of which what follows is only an excerpt, has, for example, written that William ‘learned to survive in a society riddled with intrigue and deceit. His experiences made him a man who believed in guile, failing which, force. He was distrustful and secretive and gave his confidence to few whom he had not known long and tested extensively.’8 The ‘hardened through adversity’ and ‘scarred by childhood experiences’ school of developmental psychology predominates in the literature.9 I have written in the same vein myself.10 There is certainly no modern consensus about how we should interpret the Conqueror’s adolescence. There is not even a clear view of events, and both medieval politics and developmental psychology are differently viewed nowadays from when the major modern books on William were written. With its preference for the term ‘minority’, modern historical writing has arguably gone against the cultural grain of the contemporary sources. It has also used it with considerable flexibility.11 It is 3

Note, for example, ‘shocking disorder’, ‘dramatic horror’ and ‘the feudal families were becoming ever more desperately involved in an internecine struggle with each other’, D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror, London 1964, 40–4. 4 M. de Boüard, Guillaume le Conquérant, Paris 1984, 91. 5 Michel de Boüard was clear that recovery began in 1042, Guillaume le Conquérant, 120–2. His ideas were first clearly set out in M. de Boüard, ‘Sur les origines de la Trêve de Dieu en Normandie’, Annales de Normandie 9, 1959, 174–5. Also in favour of limited disruption are H. R. Loyn, The Norman Conquest, 3rd edn, London 1982, 35–6; R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, London 1969, 58, note 205. F. Barlow, William I and the Norman Conquest, London 1965, 11, is the only modern authority explicitly to share de Boüard’s view that William was taking an independent role from 1042. 6 D. Barthélemy, L’an mil et la paix de Dieu. La France chrétienne et féodale, 980–1060, Paris 1999, 524–30. 7 See the discussion by Matthew Bennett, ‘Violence in Eleventh-Century Normandy: feud, warfare and politics’, in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall, Woodbridge 1998, 126–40. 8 See the characteristically incisive portrait in Barlow, William I, 12. 9 Loyn, Norman Conquest, 32, provides the ‘hardened by adversity’ quotation. Douglas remarked that ‘it is not surprising that these years left a lasting impression on the character of the boy who was chiefly involved’ and ‘doubtless his character had been bitterly annealed during his terrible childhood, and during the years when in youth he had waged against odds his long war for survival’, William the Conqueror, 40, 374. 10 D. Bates, William the Conqueror, new edition, Stroud 2001, 36–40, 120–1. 11 Thus, for Douglas William’s minority came to an end with the victory at Val-ès-Dunes, William the Conqueror, 52. Likewise, Bates, William, 36–40. For the minority continued to 1054, J. Le Maho, ‘Fortifications de siège et “contre-châteaux” en Normandie (XIe–XIIe s.)’, Château Gaillard 19, 2000, 181.

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surely better to view William’s personal and political development in terms of the developmental life-cycle which his contemporaries used. The individual life-cycle, with all its physiological and psychological complexities, was the central developmental framework within which William’s contemporaries located a life. For all its manifest uncertainties of meaning, the term adolescentia was regularly used in all our sources and was clearly understood by them as a technical term.12 In this scenario, the moment when William was deemed to pass from childhood to adolescence and the date when he was invested with arms have to be turning-points of fundamental importance. No one has tried systematically to bring the literary sources and the charter evidence into focus with one another. In particular, some of the dates assigned to charters by Marie Fauroux need to be reexamined. The reappraisal of the dates of some of the major literary sources by Elisabeth van Houts needs to be taken account of and the differences between them require far more attention than they have up until now received. Much other relevant material has simply not been used and one important source, Archbishop Malger’s synodal letter, appears not to have been systematically studied since the early years of the eighteenth century. In particular, the contrast between the narrative which seems to me to emerge from nearcontemporary sources needs to be set against Orderic’s famous, but to my mind misleading, statement that because he was a bastard, William was despised by the indigenous nobility and especially by the descendants of the Dukes Richard.13 The earliest source for the disturbances which occurred in the first years of William’s reign, the Inventio et Miracula sancti Vulfranni, completed by 1053–4, states clearly that they happened during his childhood.14 William of Jumièges, whose evidence must be particularly valuable because Elisabeth van Houts’ demonstration that he began writing in the early 1050s makes him much more a contemporary of the events he describes than was once thought,15 says that William made his uncle count of Arques ‘when the duke was flourishing in adolescence’.16 He identified the duke as a youth at the time of the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes.17 In contrast, the death of Count Gilbert occurred while William was still a puer, which, both from the sequence of events and other usages elsewhere, I take to mean a male child rather than an adolescent.18 Jumièges clearly believed that William’s first active military role was the capture of Falaise from Thurstan Goz, which is usually dated to c.1043, when the duke might well have been around sixteen years of age.19 In dealing with Henry I’s earlier attack on Tillières-sur-Avre, he says that the decision not to resist was taken by ‘the Normans’ and consistently describes William as a puer, whereas for the 12 Isidore of Seville, whose Etymologiae were well known to the authors of our main sources, provided the clear statement that adolescentia lasted from the ages of fourteen to twenty-eight. For William of Jumièges and Isidore, Jumièges, i, pp. xxvii, xxxvi. 13 Jumièges, ii, 96. 14 ‘Preterea discordia principum inter se conflictantium propter predicti principis pueritiam Nortmanorum patriam uehementer atterebat, ferro rapinis et flammis urentibus cuncta longe et lateque incursabat’, Inventio et Miracula sancti Vulfranni, ed. Dom. J. Laporte, Rouen 1938, 52. On the date of the Inventio, see E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Historiography and Hagiography at Saint-Wandrille: the Inventio et Miracula sancti Vulfranni’, ANS 12, 1989 (1990), 237–8 (reprinted in History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, 1000–1200, Aldershot 1999). 15 Jumièges, i, pp. xxxii–xxxv. 16 ‘Hic enim Willelmus a duce iam in adolescentia pollente comitatum Talogi percipiens’, Jumièges, ii, 102. 17 ‘Igitur dux, iam flore uernans gratissime iuuentutis’, Jumièges, ii, 120. 18 Gilbert is described as ‘tutor ipsius pueri sed domini’, Jumièges, ii, 92. 19 Jumièges, ii, 100–02. For the suggested date, Jumièges, ii, 101, note 6.

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Falaise campaign, it was William who called an army together and laid siege to the town.20 The life-cycle transformation therefore took place between the two events. He also says that in his youth, William began to devote himself wholeheartedly to the worship of God and to choose his counsellors wisely, and that, although still in his youth, William had passed the end of adolescence when his marriage started to be discussed. Life-cycle language also appears in charters. One, dating from before 1040, describes William as a boy and another, arguably written by William of Jumièges and dating from 1038, says that William was in the process of starting to rule over Normandy.21 If c.1043 is the correct date for the Falaise campaign – it cannot be more than a year or so out – then it is reasonable to suggest a date for William’s coming-of-age of around 1042.22 Hugh of Flavigny’s statement that William had a vivid memory of Richard de Sainte-Vanne, who may well have visited Normandy in 1042, points in the same direction.23 So too does the charter recording his earliest grants to his father’s great monastic foundation at Cerisy-la-Forêt.24 All guardianship arrangements do appear to have ceased by that time, albeit in a grisly way since all of those nominated had by then been killed. My own guess would be that William was judged to be adolescent soon after the violence which deprived him of his second guardian Count Gilbert. This may be confirmed by Orderic’s statement that William selected Ralph de Gacé as his guardian (tutor) and commander of his forces after Gilbert’s death.25 And although William of Poitiers is somewhat unclear on the chronology of William’s adolescence, he very obviously believed that he began to rule when he was knighted, and he explicitly says that this preceded Val-ès-Dunes by some considerable time.26 Interesting, but more problematic as an indicator of chronology, is the statement in the mid-1050s collection of miracles of St Catherine that a peace council was held when ducal authority was recovering after Normandy had torn itself apart for seven years.27 What briefly of the child? It had been common practice for centuries for young

20

Jumièges, ii, 100. Note ‘Cuius fraudes animi ob salutem pueri uitare cupientes’ and ‘ducem puerum’, Jumièges, ii, 100. 21 ‘comes prefatus puer videlicet Willelmus’, Fauroux, no. 95; ‘Quo tempore, monarchiam regni Nortmannorum Vuillelmus, Rotberti comitis filius, obtinebat’, Fauroux, no. 92. 22 1042 is also the date chosen by Barlow, William I, 11, and de Boüard, Guillaume le Conquérant, 120–1. Fauroux, no. 100, an original charter which records a grant by Count William of Arques to the abbey of Jumièges, must date to William’s adolescence, but to before 1044, since it mentions Abbot Robert of Jumièges who became bishop of London in 1044. 23 Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, ed. G. Pertz, MGH SS, viii, 407; cf. Barthélemy, La paix de Dieu, 529, note 1. 24 Fauroux, no. 99. The appearance of Mathilda among the signa is incompatible with the dating-clause of 20 April 1042. The normal diplomatic of an extensive confirmation charter of this kind would indicate a document which started to be written in 1042 and was amended over time, Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes caennaises, ed. L. Musset, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie xxxvii, 1967, 25–35; D. Bates, ‘Les chartes de confirmation et les pancartes normandes du règne de Guillaume le Conquérant’, in Pancartes monastiques des XIe et XIIe siècles, ed. M. Parisse, P. Pégeot and B.-M. Tock, Turnhout 1998, 95–109. 25 ‘Rodulfum de Wacceio ex consultu maiorum sibi tutorem eligit, et principem militie Normannorum constituit’, Jumièges, ii, 98. 26 Gesta Guillelmi, 8. 27 ‘Eodem quoque tempore in potentia ducis sui tota invicem saeviente Normannia, . . . hoc etiam septem annis fieret, dum eorum dux in vires resurgeret’, ‘Sanctae Catharinae virginis et martyris Translatio et Miracula Rothomagensia’, ed. A. Poncelet, Analecta Bollandiana 22, 1903, 438. This well known passage, written in the 1050s, strikes me as somewhat obscure, even though it can be interpreted in favour of a date of 1042.

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male members of the aristocracy to take on a long-term partner with whom they did not go through a full marriage ceremony of the kind increasingly required by the Church.28 Such a partner might in due course be supplanted by a wife, or might form a ménage à trois with one. The sons of both unions might be considered as potential heirs. That William was thought of in these terms is shown by his being given a name chosen from the ducal family’s stock of names and by the advancement at court of Herleva’s relatives; the latter is convincing evidence that Herleva remained at court with her son. William travelled around Normandy with his father’s court and grew up in the duke’s household, sharing the company of other nobles such as his cousin Guy, the son of his father’s sister Adeliza.29 There are aspects of the young William’s childhood which must have been complex, most notably the probable brief marriage between his father and Cnut’s sister Estrith.30 But the charter evidence shows convincingly that William was treated as a potential heir in the exactly the same way that his deceased uncle Richard III had been treated.31 Likewise, the succession arrangements made when his father departed on pilgrimage not only followed contemporary norms, but were exceptionally thorough; the involvement of King Henry I and both Flemish and Breton kin is especially notable, indicating that neighbours as well as Normandy’s aristocracy were expected to guarantee the duchy’s stability during what was expected to be a long absence on Robert’s part.32 The guardianship arrangements are somewhat obscure, but, however the evidence is interpreted, the selection of high-status kin was entirely appropriate.33 Discussions and disagreements about legitimacy, broadly defined, succession and rule had of course been a central feature of politics for generations by the early eleventh century.34 The evidence cited above surely indicates that those around Duke Robert were well aware of the complexities of the situation, and that the young William was taken through a process of legitimation which aimed to remove any notion that he was disqualified by his birth. By analogy with earlier cases, as well as with the almost contemporary, but more complex, English succession to Cnut, there might have been discussions about legitimacy, but, if there were, we know nothing of 28

See above all, Stuart Airlie, ‘Private Bodies and the Body Politic in the Divorce Case of Lothar II’, Past and Present 161, 1998, 14–20; Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, Oxford 1997, 66–75. 29 Fauroux, nos 60, 67, 68, 80, 85, 88, 89. Some of William’s appearances in his father’s charters might be later interpolations, but certainly not all of them. See further, below, note 31. For William and Guy’s up-bringing at court, Jumièges, ii, 120; Gesta Guillelmi, 8. 30 Rodvlfi Glabri Historiarvm Libri Qvinqve, ed. J. France, OMT, 1989, 204. On this and other matters, see my forthcoming book in the Yale English Monarchs series. 31 Five apparently early appearances by William in ducal charters look like later additions of a kind common in charters of this period (Fauroux, nos 60, 66, 67, 68, 88). Entirely convincing, however, are attestations to one charter for the abbey of Saint-Wandrille, dateable only to between 1029 and 1035, one for the abbey of Fécamp, dateable to 1031/2 to 1035 and one for Saint-Pierre of Préaux, which must date from early 1035 (Fauroux, nos 80, 85, 89). On the Fécamp diploma, see further S. D. Keynes, ‘The Æthelings in Normandy’, ANS 13, 1990 (1991), 188–90. 32 Baldwin IV, count of Flanders, was at Fécamp shortly before Robert’s departure, Fauroux, no. 90. Count Alan of Brittany was one of William’s named guardians (see below, note 33) and his brother Eudo was active in Normandy before 1037, Antiquus Cartularius ecclesiae Baiocensis (Livre Noir), ed. V. Bourrienne, 2 vols, Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, Rouen and Paris 1902–3, i, no. 21. For the main narrative accounts, Jumièges, ii, 80; Gesta Regum, i, 426; Rodvlfi Glabri Historiarvm Libri Qvinqve, 204. 33 The evidence is collected in Jumièges, ii, 81, note 6. There is some obscurity about which guardians were active when. See further my forthcoming book. 34 See especially, Airlie, ‘Private Bodies’, 3–38. See also Stuart Airlie, ‘The Nearly Men: Boso of Vienne and Arnulf of Bavaria’, in Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe: Concepts, Origins, Transformations, ed. Anne J. Duggan, Woodbridge 2000, 25–41.

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them.35 The contemporary sources which comment on William’s birth do not see it as an impediment to rule. For Ralph Glaber, it was the frequency with which the sons of concubines ruled in Normandy which deserved comment. But, as he pointed out, on a very broad view, this sort of thing had been happening since the time of the Roman Empire.36 In inventing the phrase more Danico to describe the domestic arrangements of earlier Norman rulers analogous to those of William’s parents, William of Jumièges was presumably saying that they had a long and very respectable tradition behind them, even if, in the 1050s they might well be becoming less acceptable in the eyes of churchmen.37 The range of contemporary references to William as a bastard in non-Norman sources contemporary with his life-time shows beyond doubt that his beginnings were well known.38 They need not, however, be interpreted as evidence that he was thought to be weak or in some way unfitted to rule. The powerful often attract defamatory comments; this is quite likely to have happened – mostly at a discreet distance – as his power increased. That William’s bastardy features much more prominently in the twelfth-century likes of Orderic and Wace is no surprise, not only because they lived in different times, but also because William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers, both of whom were seeking to legitimate William’s rule, had compelling and logical reasons for not mentioning it. In this scenario, Orderic’s comments in particular must be set very firmly alongside those of his contemporary William of Malmesbury who wrote that William’s parents had lived for a while as if they were a lawfully married couple, something which in both earlier practice and indeed in twelfth-century canon law could well have legitimated their offspring.39 The two historians’ statements represent conflicting strands in twelfth-century perceptions of morality and legitimacy.40 To treat Orderic as the primary authority for how the eleventh century viewed the situation, as is surely too often done, is simply wrong. He may even have changed his mind later (as is only too normal over a life-time!), since in a passage completed by c.1136 he explained the troubles of William’s early years in terms of another of his topoi, the innate turbulence of the duchy’s aristocracy.41 To the general assumption that Normandy remained peaceful until after the death of Archbishop Robert of Rouen on 16 March 1037, we should add that his replacement as archbishop by William’s uncle Malger and at Evreux, where he had effectively been count, by his son Richard represents the continuation of the established process whereby office and property of this kind were distributed among the ruler’s closest kin. The small number of charters surviving from the first years of William’s life indicate a purposeful continuation of the policies of his father’s reign, and even

35 36 37

Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 237–41. Glaber, 204. Jumièges, i, 58, 78. On this topic I have benefited from reading Nicholas Webber, ‘The Evolution of Norman Identity, 911–1154’, University of Birmingham PhD thesis, 2002. 38 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii, 645–50. 39 Gesta Regum, i, 426 (‘et aliquandiu iustae uxoris loco habuit’). At the same place, Malmesbury also notes that William was born ‘ex concubina’. The fact that the phrase was taken from Suetonius surely makes no difference here. The statement in Wace, pt 3, lines 2895–6, that William was for a time brought up at Falaise does not contradict this. Wace in any case puts a strong emphasis on the strength of the relationship and on Robert’s paternal role. 40 See the commentary in J. A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago and London 1987, 299–300. 41 Orderic, i, 158.

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efforts to right some of the perceived wrongs of that time.42 A further element of continuity from before 1035 was the regime’s continued support for the English exiles.43 The wars among the Norman aristocracy during the late 1030s and early 1040s were the low-point of William’s childhood. In general, they look to have been driven by a mixture of local territorial disputes and rivalries for control over the young duke. The conflict between Hugh I de Montfort and Walkelin de Ferrières, which was probably driven by local factors, dates from this period.44 The warfare involving the Montgomerys, well analysed by Kathleen Thompson, looks to have been particularly long drawn out and brutal, involving a military campaign on which Count Alan died in 1040, the exile of Roger I de Montgomery, and the infamous killing of Osbern the steward in the young William’s chamber at Le Vaudreuil by one of Roger’s sons. The origins of the conflict may well have lain in court politics and, in particular, in Roger’s removal from the vicomté of the Hiémois in favour of Thurstan Goz. The war was a long, if episodic, one, lasting at least from 1040 until 1042, and probably beyond.45 The death of Count Gilbert resulted from both court and local territorial politics. It was plotted by Ralph de Gacé, a son of Archbishop Robert of Rouen, and Robert fitz Giroie, whose family had a long-standing dispute with Gilbert concerning Le Sap.46 Ralph’s subsequent appearance as the leader of William’s army suggests a palace coup. In contrast to the warfare involving the Montgomerys, this episode looks to have been relatively short and its resolution clear-cut. This difficult period also saw King Henry I pay off an old score by demolishing the castle of Tillières-sur-Avre and, more seriously, the erosion of Norman power around Sées and Alençon which had been established there by William’s grandfather and father.47 Osbern’s murder, be it noted, is the only occasion when we have specific evidence that William’s person was in danger. And even here, the evidence of a charter which mentions someone else who was fatally injured at the time clearly indicates a murderous brawl rather than the surreptitious assassination described by Orderic.48 Orderic’s oft-quoted statement that William’s life was in danger and that he had to be hidden away by his maternal uncle occurs in the highly rhetorical death-bed speech which he attributes to William.49 While its emphasis on the role of maternal kin is undoubtedly justified, it might well otherwise be an exaggeration, or at least an assessment of one specific episode rather than of a lengthy period. In general, the

42

Fauroux, no. 95. The restoration of property to the bishopric of Bayeux before Archbishop Robert’s death may well represent an act of restitution after Bishop Hugh’s quarrel with Duke Robert, Jumièges, ii, 52; Antiquus Cartularius ecclesiae Baiocensis, i, no. 21. On this whole subject, see further my forthcoming book. 43 Keynes, ‘Æthelings in Normandy’, 196–8. 44 Jumièges, ii, 92. Jumièges clearly places this warfare before the death of Count Gilbert, which occurred ‘non longe post’. 45 Kathleen Thompson, ‘The Norman Aristocracy before 1066: the example of the Montgomerys’, Historical Research 60, 1987, 257–8. 46 The main source for these events is Orderic, Jumièges, ii, 94; Orderic, ii, 24. See also J.-M. Maillefer, ‘Une famille aristocratique aux confins de la Normandie: les Géré au XIe siècle’, in Autour du pouvoir ducal normand Xe–XIIe siècles, ed. L. Musset et al., Cahiers des Annales de Normandie 17, Caen 1985, 201–2. 47 For Tillières-sur-Avre, see now Pierre Bauduin, ‘La frontière normande aux Xe–XIe siècles: origine et maîtrisse politique de la frontière sur les confins de la Haute Normandie (911–1087)’, thèse de doctorat de l’Université de Caen Basse-Normandie 1997–8, 236–44. For the second, G. Louise, La seigneurie de Bellême Xe–XIIe siècles, 2 vols, Flers 1992–3, i, 290–5, 343–50. 48 Fauroux, no. 96. 49 Orderic, iv, 82.

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evidence indicates factional conflict intended to control, rather than supplant, the young duke. The idea that William’s survival owed something to divine providence was, however, well-established in the early twelfth century, and William of Malmesbury, who rarely agrees with Orderic on anything on this period, goes along this line.50 The murder of one of William’s tutors must indicate that the court was at least for a time a dangerous place.51 With respect to Orderic’s general views on this period, it is, however, hard to see that any of the troubles were caused by William’s illegitimacy or by the supposed discontent among the descendants of Dukes Richard I, II or III; Orderic himself does not directly associate any of the violence with William’s bastardy and two of Richard I’s descendants, his son Count Gilbert and his son-in-law Count Alan, died fighting on the young duke’s behalf. Ducal authority and influence were unquestionably in retreat in some sectors of the duchy during these times. It looks as if William’s guardians were for a time unable to defend the duchy effectively, although ultimately the losses were confined to the peripheries and to recently acquired territory. The warfare unquestionably disrupted large areas of southern and central Normandy; the standard military practice of devastating the countryside makes conflict on this scale an entirely justifiable explanation for the comment about widespread destruction in the Inventio et Miracula sancti Vulfranni.52 Of the two great eleventh-century masculine rites of passage, William undoubtedly managed the military one without difficulty. His later record makes it inconceivable that it could have been otherwise. The sexual rite of passage of adolescence was possibly more problematic. If William of Malmesbury is to be believed, the adolescent William abstained from all sexual activity to the extent that he was thought to be impotent.53 I cannot be the first person to be perplexed by Malmesbury’s brilliant facility to produce stories which, even if they are not true, feel as if they could be. In this case, his statement may just be a colourful version of William of Poitiers’s topos that the young William was moderate in all his indulgences.54 Yet the absence of known bastards – surely something on which both Orderic and Malmesbury would have commented – supports it, or at the least the likelihood that he restrained from the promiscuity normally associated with an eleventh-century aristocrat’s youth. If we accept the story, William would fit a model of masculinity well established in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and one which was prevalent at the Norman court; of an older generation, Edward the Confessor is a likely example, while William’s protégé Simon, Count of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin, is a certain example from the next one.55 Also, although the sources for the peace council at Caen are once more a subject of controversy, one of them does appear to show that the adolescent William already possessed a capacity for theatrical religious self-abasement.56 The political implications of possible psychosomatic sexual hang-ups or of penitential abstinence 50

Gesta Regum, i, 426. See also ‘The Brevis Relatio de Guillelmo nobilissimo comite Normannnorum, written by a monk of Battle Abbey’, ed. E. M. C. van Houts in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, Camden Miscellany 34, Cambridge 1997, 27. 51 Jumièges, ii, 92. 52 See above, note 14. 53 ‘Preter ceteras uirtutes, precipue in prima adolescentia castitatem suspexit, in tantum ut publice sereretur nichil illum in femina posse’, Gesta Regum, i, 500. In the same place Malmesbury maintains that William had to be persuaded to marry. 54 ‘iuuentutis in primordio moderatissimum uirum agens’, Gesta Guillelmi, 30. 55 See in general, Janet L. Nelson, ‘Monks, Secular Men and Masculinity, c.900’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley, London and New York 1999, 121–42. 56 ‘Miracula sancti Audoeni’, in AA SS, August, iv, 836.

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for the young William need hardly be spelt out. For the youthful head of a regime which had recently experienced difficulties and which was struggling to come to terms with them, sexual inactivity prompted thoughts of future uncertainty about the succession and invited an attempt to depose him. The repulse inflicted on Henry I at Falaise was probably the first of the successes for the adolescent William and those supporting him. It is notable that William of Jumièges’ statement that the duke’s army fought with exceptional energy went uncorrected by Orderic, who did, however, feel that he should insert that William was assisted by Ralph de Gacé.57 The situation in southern Normandy which provoked Thurstan Goz’s supposed treachery may well have been more complex than Jumièges’ somewhat elliptical narrative implies; Thurstan must have been motivated by concern about the growing disorder around Alençon and Bellême and a belief that the adolescent William and those supporting him were not capable of helping him.58 It is possible too that he was being harassed from the north by the sons of Roger I de Montgomery. In these circumstances he could well have calculated that Henry I, who was theoretically the lord of the Bellême family, was a better bet. Henry himself had good reason to mistrust the young William and his entourage, since the duchy had provided a refuge for some of the rebels defeated by Henry in 1041.59 An analysis of this kind, based on the supposition that Thurstan chose the wrong route to objectives which were essentially the same as William’s is supported by the rapidity with which Thurstan and his family were restored to favour by the adult William.60 A logical deduction is that these events mark the start of the attempts by William and those around him to get to grips with the set-backs in the south of the duchy which had occurred since Robert I’s time. By 1046 this process had advanced so far that William’s support was being actively canvassed. An original charter which must date from 1046 indicates the presence at a gathering, which probably took place at Rouen, of Bishop Ivo of Sées and Count Hugh IV of Maine.61 Since Ivo had been effectively excluded from his see by his brother William Talvas, one purpose of the discussions which their presence implies, and which also appear to have involved Count William of Arques, Archbishop Malger, Roger de Beaumont and Roger de Montgomery, must have been an intervention against William Talvas. Since Count Hugh was about to defy Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou – at the time probably absent from Anjou – he too must have been on the look-out for allies.62 A further success which dates from this period was the containment of the war between the Beaumont and Tosny families. Traditionally dated to c.1040, this conflict must be later in date than this since Roger de Tosny was still alive after William had reached adolescence.63 As a result, some aspects of the earliest account, Orderic’s interpolation into the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, are likely to be 57 58 59 60 61

Jumièges, ii, 100–02. For the situation in general, Louise, La seigneurie de Bellême, i, 341–3. D. Bates, Normandy before 1066, London and New York 1982, 74. Jumièges, ii, 102. Fauroux, no. 107. Contrary to Marie Fauroux’s suggestion, this charter must date from 1046, since it is attested by Bishop William of Evreux, appointed in that year, and Guy, count of Brionne (‘S. Widonis filius (sic) Raynoldi’), who had revolted by the end of the year. The presence among the signa of members of the Rouen chapter and the fact that its beneficiary is the abbey of Saint-Ouen strongly suggests that it was confirmed at Rouen. 62 On Count Hugh’s situation, R. Latouche, Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le Xe et le XIe siècle, Paris 1910, 27–8; O. Guillot, Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle, 2 vols, Paris 1972, i, 65–6. 63 Fauroux, no. 100. See also Fauroux, no. 102. For the traditional date, L. Musset, ‘Aux origines d’une classe dirigeante: les Tosny’, Francia 5, 1977, 55.

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mistaken; it is unlikely, for example, that William was a puer at the time of the war. More importantly, his statement that Roger thought William’s illegitimacy intolerable and refused to serve him is unlikely to be correct since Roger had made no objection for a long period after 1035; a more likely cause is long-standing territorial disputes with Humphrey de Vieilles and his family.64 The Tosny and their allies the Grandmesnils, badly beaten by Humphrey’s son Roger de Beaumont, were propped up by neighbours who were also powerful at court, with Roger de Tosny’s widow marrying Ralph de Gacé’s brother Richard, count of Evreux, and exercising a protectorate over her young son Ralph, and Robert de Grandmesnil’s widow marrying another of Ralph’s brothers. The pacification of this feud is an eloquent commentary on the capacity of William and those around him to contain conflict, and also an excellent illustration of how it was done. Roger de Beaumont, who disappears from charters until the mid-1040s, may well have been the short-term loser.65 This Beaumont-Tosny war also illuminates well a modern conclusion that wars of this kind were ‘self-regulating’. As in the case of the other conflicts, the extraction of a suitable vengeance would appear to have been the way to bring matters to a conclusion.66 The sequel to these events was, however, different and is arguably an eloquent commentary on conditions prevailing during William’s adolescence. Orderic reports that the ‘Beaumont’, Humphrey de Vieilles’ son Robert, was killed in revenge by Roger de Clères, one of the great barons of the Tosny honour. Although Orderic implies that Robert’s death, like the others, occurred during the early 1040s, the killing actually took place after 1054, over a decade after the original war, without any discernible impact on the fortunes of Roger de Clères.67 Behind this delayed retaliatory killing lurk circumstances of which we are entirely unaware. But it must surely point to a court in which factional tensions must at the least have been latent, and show that the adolescent William and those around him had put a stop to the localised warfare of the earlier period. Although the charters of the period do present problems of interpretation, the vast majority unquestionably belong to the genre of document which can be used to indicate the political complexion of the ducal entourage.68 The names which recur again and again in them are Archbishop Malger, Nigel the vicomte of the Cotentin, Ralph Taisson and Godfrey vicomte of Arques, the son of Goscelin vicomte of Rouen (and possibly Arques).69 The majority of the bishops of Normandy were also veterans

64

For Orderic’s statement of Roger’s motives, Jumièges, ii, 94–6. For alternative suggestions, Musset, ‘Les Tosny’, 55; Bates, Normandy, 101. 65 See below, note 91. 66 See most recently, Bennett, ‘Violence in Eleventh-Century Normandy’, 135–6. See especially, J. Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 34–8. 67 Orderic, iii, 88; iv, 302. See V. Gazeau, ‘Monachisme et aristocratie au XIe siècle: l’exemple de la famille de Beaumont’, thèse de Doctorat de troisième cycle, University of Caen, 1986–7, 138–42. Dominique Rouet has pointed out to me that Robert’s death must have taken place after 1054 because of his role in an agreement reached between the monks of Saint-Pierre des Préaux and Geoffrey Dastin, AD Eure, H711, fols 121v, 138v. 68 On this subject, D. Bates, ‘The Prosopographical Study of Anglo-Norman Royal Charters’, in Medieval Prosopography: the Roots and Branches of Power in France and England from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries, ed. Katharine Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 89–102. 69 Malger: Fauroux, nos 88, 95, 98, 100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 110, 112; Nigel: Fauroux, nos 93, 95, 98, 100, 103, 104, 110, 111; Ralph Taisson: Fauroux, nos 93, 98, 100, 103, 105, 110; Godfrey: Fauroux, nos 93, 98, 100, 102, 103, 110, 111. It is unclear which if two Nigels, father or son, appears. The presence of ‘Niellus iuvenis’ in a list of testes dating from between 1035 and 1041 suggests that father may have

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appointed in Richard II’s reign. This arguably predominant group was one which, even allowing for changes of generation, was emphatically a continuation of the court circle of the time of William’s father and indeed his grandfather. It shows beyond doubt that, whatever changes may have been taking place elsewhere, the ducal court remained the centre of Norman political society. Into this profoundly traditional entourage were inserted around the start of William’s adolescence some members of a younger generation, most notably his uncle William of Arques and his cousin Guy and more distant kinsman William ‘Busac’, who received respectively Gilbert’s comtés of Brionne and Eu. These individuals unquestionably used their dominance at court to advance clients and to consolidate local power. This is most clearly seen in the appointments to bishoprics. William, appointed to Evreux in 1046, was a member of the Fleitel family, who were connected to both William of Arques and Ralph de Gacé.70 Geoffrey obtained Coutances in 1048–9 through the local influence of kinsmen and through simony, while it is quite likely that the appointment of Hugh to Lisieux was connected with the power of the family of the counts of Eu in central and southern Normandy, as well as with their eminence as close ducal kin.71 All three cases illuminate very well the complexities involved in judging these times. Quite clearly they indicate a regionalisation of effective power in the hands of the dominant group at court. But just because these bishops were not chosen by the ruler alone does not mean that they were bad appointments; hindsight shows that none of them was a poor choice, and one among them was after all to become one of the greatest of the makers of the Anglo-Norman realm. Episcopal action was unquestionably an important element in the recovery of authority by William and those around him. Archbishop Malger’s synodal letter, customarily dated to c.1045, but possibly earlier than this, is a full and carefully worked condemnation of the evils of the times and in particular of simony.72 Canonical authority is extensively and properly deployed. The preamble to the canons deplores the weakness of recent rulers, in contrast to their predecessors.73 A notable feature is the condemnation of those who seek episcopal office through favour at court or through influence with the prince.74 This text merits much more study than it has ever been given. It demonstrates the bishops involved playing a role traditional in the Carolingian West for centuries, criticising secular authority when it was deficient, succeeded son in the later 1030s (Fauroux, no. 111). The general point is in any case unaffected. For some brief comments on Godfrey, J.-M. Bouvris, ‘Contribution à une étude de l’institution vicomtale en Normandie au XIe siècle. L’exemple de la partie orientale du Duché: Les vicomtes de Rouen et de Fécamp’, in Musset et al., Autour du pouvoir ducal, 155. 70 For the family as tenants of Count William, AD Seine-Maritime, 16 H14, fol. 319r. According to Robert of Torigni, Ralph de Gacé married a daughter of Gerard Fleitel, Jumièges, ii, 268. 71 On Geoffrey’s appointment, J. Le Patourel, ‘Geoffrey of Montbray, Bishop of Coutances, 1049–1093’, EHR 59, 1944, 133–4. For the lands of the counts of Eu in central Normandy, Louise, La seigneurie de Bellême, i, 144. 72 For the text, Concilia Rotomagensis Provinciae, ed. G. Bessin, Rouen 1717, 40–2; reprinted in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. J. D. Mansi, Venice 1774, xix, cols 751–4. The council must date to before the death of Bishop Hugh of Evreux on 20 April 1046. See for now, R. Foreville, ‘The Synod of the Province of Rouen in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. C. N. L. Brooke et al., Cambridge 1976, 27–8. 73 ‘Quoniam sanctissimi fratres sanctam matrem ecclesiam a primo sui honoris et tranquilitatis statu penitus immutatem videmus, partim sublatis e vita bonis principibus, partim ignaris et imbecillibus successoribus . . .’, Mansi, xix, col. 751. 74 ‘Ut illa perniciosa consuetudo et inexplebilis avaritiae corruptelae funditus eradicetur, qua multos perniciosa munera undecumque collegisse audivimus, quibus principem regni et familiares eius corrumpere valeant, ut ad episcopatus honorem valeant pervenire’, Mansi, xix, col. 752.

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and seeking to reinforce it through ecclesiastical means. On the other hand, the fact that the letter was drawn up by only three bishops, all of whom would have been based in Rouen or its neighbourhood, suggests the regionalisation of power and its disintegrative impact on central authority. The determined application of episcopal authority expressed itself in other ways during William’s adolescence. Archbishop Malger’s anathemas appear in several charters of the period, a novelty in Norman charters and another archetypical feature of a world in which the secular power needed support.75 Many qualities of the regime of William’s adolescence are readily grasped through the extant charters of Count William of Arques, a man whose career epitomises the problems of interpreting the Conqueror’s adolescence. His title, ‘William count by the grace of God, son of Richard II, duke of the Normans’, which appears in similar form in documents for several beneficiaries, and must therefore represent a personal preference, exudes pretentiousness and sense of his own importance within the ducal kindred.76 On 1 August 1047 in the castle at Fécamp he restored an estate granted to the abbey by Richard II, and subsequently plundered by Goscelin vicomte of Arques and Rouen. The estate concerned was indeed very near to Arques, but the action was a ducal one, as indeed are the form and presentation of the diploma recording the process.77 Count William also appears on occasion in charters acting alongside William in a way which is quite without parallel.78 Such evidence up to a point confirms several aspects of William of Poitiers’ damning assessment, in particular that Count William attempted to increase his lands and, much less convincingly because Duke William confirmed numerous charters for the region, that he attempted to exclude William from Normandy east of the Seine.79 Yet, if we abandon any sense of an affront to ducal authority of a kind which the adult Conqueror would undoubtedly not have tolerated, we see in Count William’s charters a concern for public order, extensive monastic patronage, the restoration of property claimed to have been lost during the Norman settlements and the righting of recent wrongs. And his undoubted local power is shown by the charters to have been validated by ducal authority.80 Even Count William’s marriage to a sister of Enguerrand II, count of Ponthieu, which must have taken place by 1045 at the latest, involved the stabilisation of the duchy’s eastern frontier, since the counts of Ponthieu had seized

75

See, for example, AD Seine-Maritime, 14 H189; F. Lot, Etudes critiques sur l’abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, Paris 1913, recueil des chartes, no. 26. See Fauroux, nos 109, 112, where the anathemas are in both cases omitted, thus concealing the nature of both documents. Malger’s prohibition is associated with a ducal confirmation in Fauroux, no. 134. 76 The specific example is taken from Fécamp, Musée de La Bénédictine, MS no. 8 (printed, not entirely accurately, in Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, ed. E. Martène and U. Durand, Paris 1717, i, cols 166–8). See also, Fauroux, nos 100, 103; Lot, Saint-Wandrille, recueil des chartes, no. 15. 77 Fécamp, Musée de La Bénédictine, MS no. 8. For the earlier history of the estate involved, which was at Saintigny, Fauroux, nos 54, 72, 85. 78 ‘. . . auctoritatem suam dederunt comes Nortmannorum Willelmus et patruus eius, idemque comes Archarum Willelmus’, Fauroux, no. 108; ‘per manum Vuillelmi Northmannorum marchionis, et Vuillelmi patrui eius, videlicet Archis tunc temporis comitis, cuius in territorio et comitatu idem alodum habetur’, Fauroux, no. 124. Although this second charter dates from 1051, which is strictly speaking outside the period covered in this paper, Count William’s continued prominence surely serves only to emphasise the point being made. 79 Gesta Guillelmi, 34. For charters for the region east of the Seine confirmed by William in the 1040s, Fauroux, nos 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 112, 115, 118, 119. 80 Fauroux, nos 100, 112; Fécamp, Musée de La Bénédictine, MS no. 8; Lot, Saint-Wandrille, recueil des chartes, no. 15.

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land around Aumale in Robert I’s time.81 Such appeasement of an aggressive encroachment on to Norman territory is again something which the adult William would have disapproved of. Yet at the time, and for some years afterwards, he would appear to have approved of the policy since his own half-sister Adelaide was married to Enguerrand II in c.1050.82 In Count William’s career, we see beyond doubt both the ‘overmighty’ figure of a time when a ruler was young and the regionalisation of power which is often associated with such a time. Yet, if he was unfaithful and hostile from the beginning, as Poitiers suggests, it is surprising how often he is seen acting in concert with the duke and how well the adolescent William did in his despite. So surprising indeed as to make Poitiers’ condemnation seem more like the damnatio memoriae of a defeated rebel than an objective assessment of an interesting career. As a son of Richard II, Count William could also fit Orderic’s characterisation of the permanently disgruntled kinsman who despised the duke because he was a bastard. Yet if he felt that way, eighteen years is a very long time to wait before rebelling, especially since the charters demonstrate so effectively a constructive and supportive, if in some ways self-serving, career. And to delay a rebellion fueled by those motives until William was an adult in well-nigh full control of his duchy seems tactically odd, to say the least. Both Jumièges and Poitiers explain Count Guy’s revolt and the break-down of 1046 in terms of disloyalty and ambition. Orderic, according to his custom, adds some comments about Guy’s objections to William’s illegitimacy.83 Guy’s transfer of the large fortified site and former ducal stronghold of Le Homme (now L’Isle-Marie) from his mother to Nigel the vicomte of the Cotentin looks like the sort of local coup arranged by two dominant individuals at court to reinforce the local power of one of them; Le Homme is very close to Guy’s base of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. We are again looking at a regionalisation of power, but in this case one which was constructed in defiance of ducal authority. The transfer probably may indicate that the revolt had been some considerable time in the making; it certainly demonstrates a strong and in context long-standing alliance between two of the dominant political figures of William’s adolescence.84 Of Guy’s supporters, William of Jumièges names only Nigel, implying perhaps that these two were the central figures. William of Poitiers also names Nigel and adds Rannulf vicomte of the Bessin and Haimo Dentatus.85 Wace added Grimoult du Plessis-Grimoult and Ralph Taisson, although the latter subsequently changed sides.86 All five were magnates with predominantly, if not exclusively western Norman interests; the most easterly was indeed Ralph Taisson whose main lands lay around Thury-Harcourt to the south of Caen. Although all the early accounts of the campaign are brief and uninformative, with the colourful 81

For Count William’s marriage, see Orderic in Jumièges, ii, 104. His charter for Fécamp of 1047 refers to his sons (‘pro anima . . . filiorum meorum’), Fécamp, Musée de La Bénédictine, MS no. 8. Conditions around Aumale are considered in detail in Bauduin, La frontière normande, 404–14. 82 On this marriage, see now, Bauduin, La frontière normande, 416; cf. Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1988, 324, note 20. 83 Jumièges, ii, 120; Gesta Guillelmi, 8; Orderic, ii, 82. 84 For the story of Le Homme, Actes pour les abbayes caennaises, no. 21; Bates, Regesta, no. 58. On the site, see Florence Delacampagne, ‘Seigneurs, fiefs et mottes du Cotentin (Xe–XIIe siècles). Etude historique et topographique’, Archéologie Médiévale 12, 1982, 199–200. On its history, see further E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Les femmes dans l’histoire du duché de Normandie’, Tabularia, forthcoming. 85 Jumièges, ii, 120–2; Gesta Guillelmi, 8–12. 86 For Grimoult, Wace, pt 3, lines 3557, 3777. For Ralph Taisson, Wace, pt 3, lines 3845–914.

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narrative supplied in the second half of the twelfth century by Wace adding details which often seem plausible, it looks as if Guy mustered his forces in the north of the Cotentin, perhaps at Le Homme. Wace’s story that William had to flee from Valognes, which is very near to both Le Homme and Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, could suggest that he attempted a preemptive strike which went badly wrong.87 We should undoubtedly accept that King Henry was William’s saviour at Val-ès-Dunes.88 But everything, including the obviously pre-arranged rendezvous in western Normandy implied by William of Jumièges’ statement that Henry marched his army through the Hiémois, indicates a purposefully conducted campaign on William’s part and that he held the strategic initiative.89 It is in any case unlikely that Henry would have chosen to back him if he was not convinced of his abilities. The war of 1046–7 was unquestionably a quarrel between kinsmen and one whose origins can be located at court. All involved were prominent in the charters of William’s adolescence. There is indeed something rather bizarre about the interpretation of the events as a great conflict between the Scandinavian traditions of Lower Normandy and the increasingly French ones of Upper Normandy. Regional difference there undoubtedly was, but an army led by prominent curial figures with predominantly French personal names, all of whom were in one way or another protégés of the Norman rulers is a most unconvincing expression of its supposedly deeply entrenched character. William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers both convey the impression that Guy had a great deal of support, but do so in unspecific terms. Jumièges is as usual less dramatic than Poitiers, who goes so far as to say that the greater part of Normandy was disloyal.90 Neither author’s statements are incompatible with the notion that a lot of people were waiting to see what happened. It is in truth just as impossible to know which Normans fought on William’s side at Val-ès-Dunes as to know who might have supported the rebels if they been allowed to advance further east; the fact that the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes was something of a rout suggests that opposition to William, while it may have been potentially menacing, was distinctly soft-centred. The appearance in ducal charters in the mid-1040s for the first time of William fitz Osbern, Roger II de Montgomery and Roger de Beaumont may well point to William’s personal likes beginning to assert themselves.91 At the same time, Nigel the vicomte seems to be fading away, as perhaps too was Ralph

87 88

Wace, pt 3, lines 3640–62. On Henry’s and William’s respective contributions, J. Gillingham, ‘William the Bastard at War’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. L. Nelson, Woodbridge 1988, 143. 89 Jumièges, ii, 120. 90 ‘plurimos proceres uelut Absalon ab eius fidelitate cepit auertere et in sue perfidie uoragine complicare’, Jumièges, ii, 120; ‘sequebatur impietatis uexillum pars Normanniae maior’, Gesta Guillelmi, 10. 91 For Roger II’s restoration, Thompson, ‘The Montgomerys’, 260. Roger de Beaumont is notably absent from the charters of the early 1040s, not appearing until 1046–7, Fauroux, no. 106. There is a lot of evidence to show that William fitz Osbern was under his mother’s guardianship until the mid-1040s, Fauroux, nos 118, 119 (both of which must be in the first half of the dating period suggested by Marie Fauroux); Cartulaire de la Sainte-Trinité-du-Mont de Rouen, ed. A. Deville, in Cartulaire de Saint-Bertin, ed. B. E. C. Guérard, Paris 1840, no. LIV; M.-J. Le Cacheux, ‘Histoire de l’abbaye de Saint-Amand de Rouen des origines à la fin du XVIe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 44, 1936, pièces justificatives, no. 2. William first appears independently in Fauroux, nos 106 and 113; the limits of the latter must be 1043x1046 because Guy of Brionne appears among the signa. Fauroux, no. 96, in which William and Roger de Beaumont both appear, does not have to date from the date of Osbern the steward’s death.

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Taisson.92 This is as close as we can come to locating the causes of a break-down of a regime which, for all its deficiencies in comparison with the Conqueror’s adult rule, had supported the adolescent William to some effect. In 1046–7, we see the maturing William emerging clearly as a political and a military force, choosing his own inner circle and campaigning with confidence. William of Jumièges’ statement that William had left adolescence behind by the time that his marriage was being discussed is not necessarily at odds with William of Poitiers’ view that William was still an adolescent at the time of the siege of Mouliherne, which is customarily dated to the autumn of 1049.93 Not only is the accepted date for the siege somewhat insecure, it is not clear which stage of the marriage negotiations Jumièges was referring to. Also, while Poitiers clearly saw issues of power, maturity and prowess in life-cycle terms, his conception of the developmental life-cycle had much of the fuzziness of our own. For him, for example, William was capable of an adult’s morality while still a child and was physically a man while still a youth.94 The energy with which William pushed forward his power immediately after Val-ès-Dunes suggests a duchy which was in large measure under control, and a young man moving in a hurry from adolescence to adulthood. His attendance and prominent role among very prestigious company at Henry I’s court at Senlis at Whitsun 1048, followed by the Mouliherne campaign and the strong Norman representation at the papal council of Rheims, must signal Normandy’s restoration to its normal place in northern French politics.95 Marriage negotiations with Count Baldwin of Flanders surely began at Senlis. William’s presence at the king’s court was undoubtedly part of a consolidation of Normandy’s relations with powers to the east of the duchy. Subsequently, on 30 October 1048, for example, he restored a church in Normandy to the great abbey of Saint-Riquier in Ponthieu and used the occasion to obtain relics of St Vigor from that abbey for his father’s eponymous religious foundation of Saint-Vigor of Cerisy. The affairs of the lands to the south of the duchy must also have been under discussion at this time, since Arnulf, son of William Talvas, and his uncle Ivo, lord of Bellême, were also in William’s company on 30 October, presumably seeking his help.96 David Douglas’ suggestion, apparently based on William of Poitiers’ statement that the duke punished the citizens of Rouen for their disloyalty, that the whole of Upper Normandy may have passed out of William’s control for two years around the time of Val-ès-Dunes is much too extreme.97 What we know of the years 1048 and 1049 show that the siege of Brionne lasted for a long time, not because it was difficult, but because William astutely calculated that his time was better spent opening up new opportunities and that Guy could be left to stew. The installation at Rouen of William’s henchman Roger de Beaumont as vicomte at the latest by c.1050 undoubt-

92 93 94

Both are notably absent from documents dating from 1046, Fauroux, nos 106, 107, 108. Jumièges, ii, 128; Gesta Guillelmi, 16. ‘Cum ab illa ad aetatem hanc, uel si maius a pueritia pernoueris eius actus, tute, sicuti uere potes, affirmabis per eum nunquam societatis ius aut amicitiae fuisse uiolatum’, Gesta Guillelmi, 16–18. See also, ibid., 6. 95 Fauroux, no. 114. On the assembly, see J. Dhondt, ‘Henri Ier, l’Empire et l’Anjou (1034–1056)’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 25, 1946–7, 96; Bauduin, La frontière normande, 417–18. 96 Fauroux, no. 115; Hariulf, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Riquier, ed. F. Lot, Paris 1894, 225, 228. There is debate about whether Ivo, who is described in the charter as ‘Yvo de Belismo’, should be identified as Ivo II, brother of William de Bellême, or as Ivo III, bishop of Sées, his son, K. Thompson, ‘Family and Influence to the south of Normandy in the eleventh century: the lordship of Bellême’, JMH 11, 1985, 218–19; Louise, La seigneurie de Bellême, i, 355. 97 Gesta Guillelmi, 12; Douglas, William the Conqueror, 55.

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edly put a stop to any difficulties there.98 Yet for all that Val-ès-Dunes was a significant turning-point, there were also continuities from earlier times. The episcopal appointments of Geoffrey of Coutances, Hugh of Lisieux and indeed Odo to Bayeux in late 1049 or early 1050 were very much old-style ones typical of recent years. Some of William of Arques’ most prominent appearances in charters date from post-Val-ès-Dunes as do some of his brother Archbishop Malger’s anathemas. The marriage arranged for William’s half-sister Adelaide shows that he was still following policies approved by Count William.99 The turn-coat Ralph Taisson remained prominent.100 The relative absence of structural change underlines both how much the revolt of 1046–7 was a factional court-based one and how far many of the powerful figures of William’s early adolescence retained central and local power into his early adult years. The politics of the late 1030s and the 1040s in Normandy conform to the norms of many similar episodes in the early history of the medieval West. As very frequently happened, the kin rallied round a designated successor. In such circumstances, there was often discourse about legitimacy, but in this case great care was taken to buttress the position of a young heir to whom there was at that time no obvious alternative. In William’s late childhood and early adolescence, the paternal kin proceeded for a time to fight among themselves. The expansion of the estates of the most powerful members of the Norman aristocracy at the expense of neighbours and monasteries had been going on for some time. That it continued in the late 1030s and early 1040s and in the circumstances caused some localised warfare is no surprise. Yet by the general rules of such situations, key members of William’s family showed notable restraint. Uncles were often a particular threat, but William’s remained conspicuously loyal and were in fact for a very long time notably helpful. The maternal kin provided constant support, although unable to control events. This was a standard pattern.101 Orderic’s statement that the Norman aristocracy despised the bastard William cannot be correct. And even if he was correct – as I suspect he was not – in believing that William’s legitimacy was an important issue and a reason for challenging him, then it is clear that there was almost always a strong dominant majority among the aristocracy who supported him and, even in the tense time of 1046–47, never a powerful movement to remove him. If both the violence and the discourse about legitimacy conform to contemporary norms, it seems to me highly unlikely that William was profoundly scarred by the events of his childhood and adolescence, or indeed that what occurred necessarily shaped his personality in specific ways. Disturbing episodes there certainly were, but it is very clear that he received a great deal of support and that his education continued well on into adolescence. I would indeed venture the view that we should abandon the established opinion that he was poorly educated.102 A vast subject, with a bibliography which dwarfs that of the Norman Conquest, Developmental Psychology now in any case puts the emphasis on genetic predisposition and a range of protective factors as well as environmental conditioning in the formation of a 98 99 100

AD Eure, H711, fol. 137r. See further, Bouvris, ‘Les vicomtes de Rouen et de Fécamp’, 159–60. See above, 12–13. Fauroux, nos 115, 122; AD Seine-Maritime, 14 H189; L. Musset, ‘Actes inédits du onzième siècle, V: Autour des origines de Saint-Etienne de Fontenay’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 56, 1961–2, 15–19. 101 See the commentary in Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: the King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages, Athens (Georgia) 1983, 152–65. 102 See further my forthcoming book. It should be noted that William continued to have a tutor well into adolescence, Fauroux, nos 100, 103.

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personality. The adolescent and adult development of children who have survived some of the most horrific experiences that the twentieth century has managed to create are remarkably diverse. In William’s case, the range of what are called ‘protective factors’ strikes me as notably wide.103 The one arguably pathological incident, the infamous mutilation of the defenders of Alençon, might well have resulted from repressed anger at his shameful parentage. More plausibly, however, it was an act of vengeance for an insult aimed at his much-loved maternal kindred. It should also not be forgotten that the brutality did bring both the siege and an arduous campaign to a speedy conclusion. Ultimately the hardness and ruthlessness of William the Conqueror are beyond doubt. A hard childhood and adolescence can toughen, just as they can pathologise. But experiences at that time cannot be assumed to have fundamentally influenced the development of the Conqueror’s personality. The scale of disruption during the period is ultimately impossible to assess with total conviction. In comparison with other such periods – Robert Curthose’s rule in Normandy between 1087 and 1106 and the civil war in England between Stephen and Mathilda – the main contemporary writers lack detachment, later ones lack information and local sources are slender. More will undoubtedly be clarified by the current CNRS-funded research project on eleventh-century Norman charters in progress at the University of Caen. A view of William’s adolescence as a time of limited disruption when power was regionalised, but still underpinned by a place at court, dovetails with the view that the famous passage in William of Jumièges referring to the construction of fortifications is a reference to relatively small-scale earthworks.104 And with Cassandra Potts’ recent demonstration that the so-called feast on monastic lands was carefully orchestrated by the dukes and the central religious direction supplied by Upper Norman monasteries was never threatened.105 In other words, Norman society was not brutalised at this time.106 And, while a re-ordering of the ducal kindred manifestly did take place, I see no predetermined cooperation in the 1040s between the descendants of Gunnor’s kin, but rather a much more eclectic selection by the duke of favoured companions and a crisscrossing of kindred as new alliances were formed.107 The contributions of all those around the adolescent William must ultimately be assessed in the context of William of Jumièges’ notable display of candour when he wrote that he dare not mention the names of some of the fomentors of the disorder of the late 1030s and early 1040s, since at the time that he was writing, they claimed to be William’s most loyal supporters.108 In the end, it was the adult William the Conqueror who defined what was meant by loyalty. If ever there was a subject on which History was written by the winners, it is the Conqueror’s adolescence. Few who were prominent in his early years prospered later. If doubts remain about whether we should dispel the dark shadows which David Douglas’s William the Conqueror in particular has cast over the Conqueror’s adolescence, and indeed over most of the history of Normandy before 1066, and instead 103

On this immense topic, I have found acquaintance with the writings of Sir Michael Rutter particularly illuminating. See in particular Michael Rutter, ‘Resilience Concepts and Findings: Implications for Family Therapy’, Journal of Family Therapy 21, 1999, 119–44. 104 On this controversial subject, see most recently Le Maho, ‘Fortifications de siège’, 182, for comments on the crucial word agger. 105 Cassandra Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy, Woodbridge 1997, 105–32. 106 Cf. Bates, Normandy, 99–121. 107 Cf. Searle, Predatory Kinship, 100–5, 182–9. 108 Jumièges, ii, 92.

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interpret the period in much more positive terms, then we can glance briefly at the 1050s.109 Was this decade really a ‘struggle for survival’? Would Edward the Confessor have offered William the succession if he had had significant doubts about the future? One easily defeated revolt by two uncles between 1049 and 1066 are the sort of conditions most rulers pray for. Did those tough characters Henry I and Geoffrey Martel ally against William because they thought him a weakling who could be easily disposed of, or because they were frightened of what he might achieve? And why did the Norman aristocracy rally to William so rapidly in 1053–4 against Henry I’s and Geoffrey Martel’s invasion? Why indeed did William of Jumièges in the early 1050s believe that it was worth creating a continuous history of the Norman dukes up until William’s time? The man who attracted such remarkably wide support in 1066 for a very risky venture was an extremely successful campaigner with a full twenty-five years of steady success behind him.

109

Note: Normandy ‘was lapsing into fell disorder’; ‘It is indeed a matter of some wonder that the young duke survived the troubles of his minority’; ‘Until after 1054 his survival was always in some doubt’, Douglas, William the Conqueror, 41, 44, 53. His pessimism is shared by, among others, Lucien Musset: ‘. . . au cours des troubles prolongés de sa jeunesse (1035–vers 1050) et eut ensuite, jusqu’aux années 1060 au moins, bien d’autres préoccupations’, L. Musset, ‘Le mécénat des princes normands au XIe siècle’, in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age, ed. X. Barral I Altet, 3 vols, Paris 1986–90, ii, 125.

Knowledge of Byzantine History in the West

KNOWLEDGE OF BYZANTINE HISTORY IN THE WEST: THE NORMAN HISTORIANS (ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES) Michael Angold What Western historians knew about Byzantine history at any given point in the middle ages provides a rough and ready guide to the standing of Byzantium in the West. It is an approach that requires refinement. It will be more effective if the chronological span is reduced in such a way as to cover significant developments in relations between Byzantium and the West. It equally makes sense to take a group of historians, who will reflect the interests of a particular area or people. On this occasion that group is self-selecting. It comes in the shape of the Norman historians from William of Jumièges to William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis; from William of Apulia to the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum. One of the advantages of such a selection is that their histories straddle the great divide of the first crusade, which proved to be a watershed in Byzantium’s relations with the West. They also straddle another divide: that between the northern and the Mediterranean lands of the medieval West. But this immediately prompts a question: in the light of the question mark that hangs over the Norman identity, did these ‘Norman’ historians constitute a distinct group? What is it that unites them? Paradoxically, it is the charge brought against them that they were artificially attempting to create a Norman identity.1 This has been levelled at Orderic Vitalis, who spent much of his life in the Norman monastery of St Evroul; it has equally been made against southern Italian historians, such as Amato of Monte Cassino and Godfrey of Malaterra. However weakly based this Norman identity may have been, the historians themselves saw links and common features that united Normans wherever they might be settled. The ‘Norman historians’ of the south were all too aware of their northern origins, while those who stayed behind took an interest in the activities of their compatriots in southern Italy and Sicily. The circumstances of these conquests in the south alerted the ‘Norman historians’ to the importance of Byzantium, which they might otherwise have been able to ignore. But the framework they were operating in was different from that existing earlier. To illustrate this, I shall take as a starting point an Italian historian of the tenth century, Liutprand of Cremona (c.920–c.972).2 I shall limit myself to Liutprand’s

1

L. Boehm, ‘Nomen gentis Normannorum: Der Aufstieg der Normannen im Spiegel der normannischen Historiographie’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 16, 1968, 623–704; R. H. C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth, London 1976, esp. 49–69; G. A. Loud, ‘The Gens Normannorum – Myth or Reality’, ANS 4, 1981 (1982), 104–16, but see K. B. Wolf, Making History: the Normans and their Historians in Eleventh-Century Italy, Philadelphia 1995, 3–4, 172–5. 2 Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia, ed. P. Chiesa, CCCM CLVI, Turnhout 1998. See J. N. Sutherland, Liudprand of Cremona, Bishop, Diplomat, Historian, Spoleto 1988; K. Leyser, ‘Ends and Means in Liudprand of Cremona’, in Byzantium and the West c.850–c.1200, ed. J. Howard-Johnston, Amsterdam

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Antapodosis, which was quarried for details of Byzantine history by generations of medieval historians. His De Legatione, in which he described his experiences as ambassador to the Byzantine court in 968, by contrast does not seem to have been much used. Not a single medieval manuscript survives.3 The Antapodosis is very much a history of Liutprand’s own times. There is a strongly personal element to it. Liutprand explains that he has chosen the title that he has – Antapodosis literally translates as recompense or even retribution – as a way of paying back Berengar II of Ivrea, king of Italy (950–62), and his Jezabel of a wife Willa.4 For reasons never explained, Berengar dismissed him from his service in 950 after his return from his first embassy to Constantinople. Liutprand was forced into exile, where his diplomatic skills recommended him to Otto I. The breadth of his treatment of the contemporary scene can be explained by the range of his contacts and by his extensive diplomatic experience, which included at least three trips to Constantinople as an ambassador. Liutprand knew enough Greek to show off about it. He was well informed about Byzantine affairs. His treatment of Byzantine history and personalities in the Antapodosis is generally sympathetic. He presents the Byzantine court as a place of wonders and he often gives a humorous twist to episodes of Byzantine history, but underlying this is an appropriate sense of respect. The contrast with the presentation in the De Legatione has often been remarked. Liutprand’s initial acquaintance with Byzantium came at the end of the Carolingian dispensation, when the last Carolingians had effectively dropped their imperial claims, but when the notion of Empire persisted in Italy to the ideological advantage of Byzantium. By the time Liutprand came to write the De Legatione, Otto I had resurrected western claims to Empire with his imperial coronation at Rome in 962. The anti-Byzantine tone of the De Legatione served to mollify Otto I and to protect Liutprand against suspicions that he had failed to make an effective defence at the Byzantine court of his master’s imperial status. Liutprand is probably the fullest western source for contemporary Byzantine affairs, but like earlier writers he was working within an imperial framework. Whether it meant rivalry or cooperation, it ensured that Byzantium was a focus of western interest. If you look through most western universal chronicles – Sigebert of Gembloux (d.1112) is a good example – it is striking how relatively well informed they are about Byzantine history to the mid-tenth century, and how patchy their knowledge is thereafter. Liutprand makes the difference. Sigebert, for example, made very good use of Liutprand. His account of the Russian expedition under Prince Igor against Constantinople goes back to Liutprand, as does his well informed narrative about the overthrow of Romanus Lecapenus by his sons and the eventual accession of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Sigebert also derived from Liutprand the detail that in his years of exclusion Constantine had to earn his keep as a painter.5 But Sigebert has absolutely nothing on the reign of Basil II. He fails even to record his death. Liutprand for all his wit and elegance represented an old perspective, as becomes clear from an examination of the early eleventh-century histories of Ademar of Chabannes and Ralf Glaber. They may not have been such talented or stylish

1988, 119–43; H. Mayr-Harting, ‘Liutprand of Cremona’s Account of his Legation to Constantinople and Ottonian Imperial Strategy’, EHR 116, 2001, 539–56. 3 Liudprand, ed. Chiesa, LXXXVII–XC. By contrast there are at least fifteen medieval manuscripts of the Antapodosis. 4 Liudprand, ed. Chiesa, III, 1: 68.104–27. 5 Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronica, MGH SS VI, Hanover 1844, 346–8. Cf. Liudprand, ed. Chiesa, III, 37: 86.613–14; V, 15: 131.289–327; V, 21–25:135–8.

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historians as Liutprand, but they were working within a new historical framework – one which was to influence the ‘Norman historians’. Although Ralf outlived Ademar by several years, they were more or less contemporaries and were working at roughly the same time in the early eleventh century, but in different parts of France: Ademar in Aquitaine at Angoulême and Limoges; Glaber in Burgundy at Auxerre, Dijon and Cluny. Though, as has often been noted, there are similarities between the two works, the original concepts lying behind them were very different. Ademar set about writing a local chronicle going back to the last days of the Roman Empire. It was divided into three books. It was only the last section – Book III, caps. 31–70 – which represents a history of his own times. In the rest of the chronicle he is reasonably true to the sources that he was following. He arranges them intelligently and adds his own comments. The result has been described as ‘brilliant but wayward history’.6 Ademar’s chronicle went through various stages. The final version has a series of interpolations, which begin to turn it into a universal history rather than a local chronicle. However, its origins as a local chronicle mean that an imperial perspective on history is muted.7 Ralf Glaber was far more ambitious. He set out to write a Universal History, inspired by the ‘many events which occurred with unusual frequency about the millennium of the Incarnation of Christ our Saviour’.8 He picked up on a series of themes that would become of the greatest importance as the eleventh century wore on: the centrality of Jerusalem, apocalypticism, anti-semitism, the Normans in southern Italy, the struggles of the Christians in Spain, the eastern frontier against the Slavs. Glaber was anxious to impress upon his readers that Latin Christendom was entering a new era, one in which the old imperial order has broken down. He traces this first to the division of the Empire between Rome and Constantinople. The result was that ‘later little by little each part became the more accustomed to being diminished, that is until it befell that it was sorely pressed upon by wars, so that it became narrower and a foreigner sought to rule it’. Government turned into tyranny.9 There followed a series of invasions, which were proof of the breakdown of the old order. Glaber’s histories have a different and very complicated perspective, compared say with Liutprand. He is interested in Christendom rather than the Empire. He pays a great deal of attention to the enemies that assail Christendom from all sides. He is encouraged that Christians were holding their own, if often with difficulty. He recounts the attack of al-Mansur on the Christians of Navarre. He notes the casualties the latter suffered, but insists that victory eventually went to the Christians. He adds: ‘During these long wars many religious in the Christian armies were killed; they had longed to fight for love of their brothers, not for any vain glory of renown and pomp.’10 Glaber also singles out the adventures of the Normans in southern Italy. He emphasises that their leader Rodulf was acting under papal auspices. He has Pope Benedict VIII (1012–24) telling the Normans ‘how angry he felt about the Greek

6

J. Gillingham, ‘Ademar of Chabannes and the History of Aquitaine in the Reign of Charles the Bald’, in Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, ed. M. Gibson and J. Nelson, BAR 101, Oxford 1981, 314. 7 Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, ed. P. Bourgain, CCCM CXXIX, Turnhout 1999, vii–x, lxiii–lxix, lxxx–c; R. Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History. Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034, Cambridge, Mass., 1995. 8 Five Books of Histories [Rodvlfi Glabri Historiarum Libri Quinque], ed. and trans. J. France, Oxford 1989, 2–3. 9 Ibid., 30–1. 10 Ibid., 82–3.

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invasion of the Roman Empire, deploring the fact that there was no one in all his lands who could repel this foreign nation.’11 Is this then how the Byzantines emerge from the pages of Glaber’s Histories – foreigners who pose a threat to the papacy? It has to be said that the Norman episode apart Glaber pays relatively little attention to the Byzantines. But there is one important exception. Glaber is the main source for the overtures made in 1024 by the Byzantine patriarch Eustathios – with the support of the Emperor Basil II – to Pope John XIX (1024–32). There was a call for recognition by the papacy of the title ‘oecumenical’ used by the patriarchs of Constantinople since the sixth century. There was also a request about the subordination of the Greek sees of southern Italy to the jurisdiction of the patriarch. The intention was clearly to put an end to the tensions that had characterised the pontificate of Benedict VIII. There were westerners who interpreted these requests as a demand to divide the Christian church between Rome and Constantinople. Glaber’s mentor William of Volpiano, abbot of St Bénigne at Dijon, despatched a letter to the pope – very probably drafted by Glaber. He admitted that the Roman Empire was divided, but the unity of the Christian church had to be maintained because ‘the power of binding and loosing in heaven and earth is attached by inviolable gift to the office of St Peter’.12 The Byzantine proposals were being presented as a threat to papal authority and the unity of the church. The pope listened to William’s advice and the proposals were rejected. There were certainly other pressures about which we are not informed. So far Glaber has created an image of the Greeks that has little to commend it. He notes with disapproval their use of money to get their own way. À propos the Greeks he quotes the saying: ‘Break an iron wall with a handful of gold.’13 On the other hand, Glaber does not impugn their faith. He remarks with admiration that the Greeks never spit in church, which was not always the case in the Latin church.14 He also has details of the mission of Ulric, bishop of Orleans, carried out for the Capetian king Robert II (996–1031) at the court of the Emperor Constantine VIII (1025–28). The bishop brought back as a gift of the Byzantine emperor a substantial part of the true cross together with silken hangings.15 But these details are only incidental to his account of the bishop’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where the miracle of the Holy Fire provides the centrepiece of the narrative. Any consideration of the place of Byzantium in Glaber’s Histories has to take into account the significant shift of focus to Jerusalem. One of the central episodes of the Histories is the destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre by al-Hakim in 1009. Its importance being enhanced by its closeness to the millennium and the theme of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although not on the same scale as Glaber’s Histories Ademar’s Chronicle anticipates some of Glaber’s themes and episodes. Ademar took part in the 1033 pilgrimage to Jerusalem to coincide with the millennium of the crucifixion. Glaber noted the popularity of pilgrimage to Jerusalem at this time.16 Ademar left his library to the monastery of St Martial at Limoges, which has been taken as a sign that he intended to die at Jerusalem, which is exactly what he did. Ademar has many of the key episodes that interested Glaber, though their versions usually differed. He 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ibid., 98–9. Ibid., 174–5. Ibid., 172–3. Ibid., 224–5. Ibid., 202–3. Ademar, III, 68.

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includes the story of al-Hakim’s destruction of the church of the Holy Sepulchre.17 He also includes an account of the Normans in southern Italy.18 He adds some interesting details that distance his narrative from that of Glaber. He knows that the Normans were defeated by the Varangian guard. He noted that, as punishment, for three years the Byzantines imprisoned any Western pilgrims passing through the Empire.19 This may not be strictly accurate but it is an interesting link made between the Normans in southern Italy and pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The section on the Normans is an interpolation that Ademar added to the original text of the chronicle. There are three other related interpolations, first noted by R. L. Wolff.20 The first is an account of the assassination of Nicephorus Phokas;21 then there are details of Basil II’s campaigns against the Bulgarians and the Georgians.22 Finally, Ademar adds to his account of the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem a story about the monastery of St Catherine’s on Mount Sinai.23 This enabled Wolff to identify Ademar’s informant: none other than St Symeon of Trier, who had originally been a monk of Sinai. He had been sent by his abbot to collect alms in the West. On his return he fell in with the pilgrimage organised by Richard of St Vanne in 1026. Among the participants on that pilgrimage were the count of Angoulême and the abbot of the monastery of St Cybard at Angoulême, where Ademar was then a monk. Symeon made a special trip to Angoulême in 1027 to bring news of the pilgrims.24 The information that the Sinai monk was able to supply did much to extend the scope of Ademar’s chronicle. It is relatively simple to see why he included the information about the Normans in southern Italy and the Byzantine reaction to their presence, just as it is with the story about Sinai. They fitted with his general concerns. It is much more difficult to understand the purpose behind the two specifically Byzantine anecdotes. The account of the assassination of Nicephorus Phokas is misplaced chronologically to the extent that it follows a discussion of the dynastic history of the French crown down to the accession of Louis d’Outremer in 936. The most likely reason why Ademar included this snippet of Byzantine history at this point in his Chronicle was that it offered him a chance to make a comparison between French and Byzantine dynastic politics. The other addition about Basil II follows on from a brief account of the death of Hugh Capet and the succession of his son Robert, who was presented as a ruler of great piety and humility – ‘in humility similar to king David’. The point of the entry about Basil II was that in return for his victories over the Bulgarians, he had vowed to live as a monk and he was true to his word. It looks as though Ademar saw Byzantium as some kind of counterpoint to the French monarchy. What emerges from Ademar and Ralf Glaber is a distinctively new approach to Byzantium. It is foreign to Latin interests and in many respects a threat, but one that cannot be ignored. It has to be fitted into a perspective which saw Christendom in relation to the enemies of the faith and which highlighted Christian success against outsiders. The increased emphasis on Jerusalem found in both chroniclers also meant

17 18 19 20

Ibid., III, 47. Ibid., III, 55. Ibid., III, 55. R. L. Wolff, ‘How the News was Brought from Byzantium to Angoulême; or, The Pursuit of a Hare in an Ox Cart’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 4, 1978, 139–89. 21 Ademar, III, 22.5 22 Ibid., III, 32. 23 Ibid., III, 47. 24 Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, 372.

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that to an extent Byzantium could be by-passed. Both Glaber and Ademar continued to use the terminology of Empire, but this was for want of anything better. Both accepted that the old imperial order first set in place by Constantine and then revived in a slightly different form by Charlemagne had passed. Byzantium’s relevance was consequently much reduced; and to judge by Glaber its importance to the West revolved around a relationship with the papacy rather than the western Empire. Both Ademar and Glaber singled out the Normans as a dynamic new element of medieval history. They dealt with their ravages along the Channel coasts, but still more attention was paid to their role along the frontiers of Christendom in southern Italy and Spain. There is an element of a self-fulfilling prophesy. The Normans duly secured control of southern Italy and Sicily, as well as conquering England. By the end of the eleventh century Norman historians were plotting the achievements of their compatriots in different parts of Christendom. Though there were plenty of contacts between the various Norman settlers and an acute awareness of each other’s achievements, the interests of the historians of the Norman conquests in Italy and Sicily were rather different from those of their counterparts in the North.25 In the first place, they were brought face to face with the problem that Glaber and Ademar sketched but failed to resolve: where did Byzantium fit into their scheme of things? William of Apulia, Amatus of Monte Cassino, and Geoffrey Malaterra tackled the problem in different ways. It was of least interest to Malaterra because his history is largely devoted to the conquest of Sicily by Roger the Great Count. The work was dedicated to his superior Anger, abbot of the monastery of St Agatha and first Norman bishop of Catania, and goes down to the year 1098, closing with Roger’s so called concordat with Urban II. It is assumed that it was completed soon after this and probably before the death of Roger in 1101. Almost nothing is known about Geoffrey Malaterra, apart from the fact that he came ‘a transmontanis partibus’.26 This presumably means that he was a Norman by birth. His abbot and bishop Anger began his career in the Calabrian monastery of Sant’Eufemia, which had close connections with Normandy.27 At least indirectly through Anger, Geoffrey belonged to that monastic network which helped to unite the different Norman territories. There is no evidence to support the assertion that Geoffrey was originally a monk of St Evroul in Normandy.28 The earliest of these Norman historians was Amatus of Monte Cassino, who was not of Norman origin, but saw fit to write a history of the Normans because of their benefactions to his abbey. He took his history down to the death of Richard of Capua in 1078 and completed the work around 1080. He gives due attention to the deeds of Robert Guiscard who was a generous benefactor, but his focus is increasingly directed to the Normans of Capua and Guiscard’s dealing with his brother-in-law Gisulf, the last Lombard prince of Salerno. He assimilates the Normans to the rhythms of Lombard history.29 William of Apulia was the Norman historian who paid most attention to the question of Byzantium. He was formidably well informed about 25

See O. Capitani in The Normans in Sicily and Southern Italy, Oxford 1977, 1–46; Wolf, Making History, 87–171. 26 Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius, ed. E. Pontieri, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores V, 1, Bologna 1928, 3.15. 27 Ibid., 89.17–23. Anger is described as ‘natione Britonem’. 28 Made by E. Pontieri in ibid., IV–V. Cf. Wolf, Making History, 143–4. 29 Amatus of Monte Cassino, Storia de’ Normanni volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. V. de Bartholomaeis, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 76, Rome 1935, XXII–LXXIV. Cf. D. Clementi, ‘Stepping Stones in the Making of the “Regno” ’, Bollettino del istituo storico italiano per il medio evo 90, 1982/83, 227–93.

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contemporary Byzantine history. Nothing is known about his background. It is only an assumption that he was of Norman origin. He completed his verse history of Robert Guiscard at the very end of the eleventh century and dedicated it to Roger Borsa and Pope Urban II. His view – one shared by Amatus of Monte Cassino – was that it was divinely ordained that the Greeks should lose Apulia to the Normans, ‘who were renowned for their equestrian prowess’.30 Their military ferocity and skill was seen as singling them out for divine favour. William noted that those Normans who entered Byzantine service were deprived of their innate ferocity.31 At one level William is presenting the Normans as the spearhead of a new order, which would replace the failed Empires, be they German or Byzantine. He gives due place to the Investiture of Melfi as a sanction for the Norman conquests. He emphasises that the Normans were acting as servants of the papacy and in the best interests of Christendom.32 Amatus of Monte Cassino ignores the Investiture of Melfi. He is content to record Robert Guiscard’s conquests in Apulia and Calabria that occurred in the aftermath of the investiture. He concedes that Guiscard was helped in all his enterprises by the hand of God. He therefore ‘repented of the sins he had committed in the past and guarded against present and future sins. Accordingly he began to love the church of God and to revere the priesthood.’33 The message is the same: Guiscard is acting in the Christian interest. William of Apulia casts doubts on the purity of the Byzantines’ Christian faith, when he notes the presence of heretics in the ranks of the army they sent against the Normans in 1041. It is not some generalised accusation. William gives a very precise account of their beliefs, which enables us to identify them as Armenians.34 He has a long narrative stressing the respect shown by the Normans to Pope Leo IX after their victory at Civitate (1053), but he does not go on to consider one of its consequences: the mission of Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople in 1054.35 In other words, he is not inclined to impugn the orthodoxy of the Byzantines themselves. He does, however, spend a great deal of time on the battle of Mantzikert and is a capital source for the battle.36 As far as his treatment of Byzantium is concerned this is the central episode. The emperor Romanos Diogenes is treated as a hero, and Michael Doukas is presented as the villain. His reign sealed the fate of the Greeks, ‘because he preferred a life of leisure to the pursuit of war; those seduced by lascivious delights are prey to shameful procrastination’.37 Amatus of Monte Cassino equally stresses the importance of the defeat at Mantzikert. His account belongs to the opening section where he sketches the achievements of the Normans in England and in Spain and in Byzantium, where the defeat at Mantzikert and its aftermath is made to revolve around the figure of Russell Balliol. His treatment reveals the depths of Greek perfidy. ‘As often as not the Greeks are able to vanquish their enemies by perfidious argument or subtle treachery.’38 Both William of Apulia and Amatus of Monte Cassino present Byzantium’s decline as the result of moral failures. Amatus’s treatment of Byzantium is largely confined to a few chapters of the first book. It provides him with a way of not fully 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

William of Apulia, La Geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. M. Mathieu, Palermo 1961, I.1–6. Ibid., V.389–90. Ibid., II.384–405. Amatus of Monte Cassino, IV, xvii.9–15. William of Apulia, I.334–9. Ibid., II.257–66. M. Mathieu, ‘Une source négligée de la bataille de Mantzikert, les Gesta Roberti Wiscardi’, Byzantion 20, 1950, 89–103. 37 William of Apulia, III.3–6. 38 Amatus of Monte Cassino, I, xv.4–5.

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facing up to the problem presented by Byzantium. His history stops well before Robert Guiscard’s invasion of Byzantium, which once again highlighted the problem of Byzantium. William of Apulia explained the cause of war in terms of the internal politics of Byzantium, which led to Michael VII losing his throne. As an afterthought he added that this upset Guiscard’s daughter Helena, who was married to the Byzantine emperor’s son and heir. Otherwise, William of Apulia ignored this marriage alliance as a cause of war, in contrast to Malaterra, who explained the coup against Michael VII in terms of this marriage. This was the sole cause of his downfall. ‘The Greeks feared that if any heirs produced by a wife of our people grew to maturity in the palace, it would give our people free access; and a people naturally inclined to luxury and pleasure rather than warlike pursuits would be overwhelmed by the strenuitas of our lot.’39 The Emperor Michael was forcibly tonsured and immured in a monastery. He sent somebody to Robert Guiscard asking him for help in recovery the Empire. He was then able to flee to southern Italy, where Guiscard took up his cause, but only in his own interest. He intended to use the Emperor Michael as a cover which would allow him to seize the Empire by force. So when he was informed that the man was an imposter he continued with his plans.40 William of Apulia equally makes no bones about the man being an imposter. He is also clear that Guiscard supported him to justify his expedition against the Byzantine Empire.41 William of Apulia and to a lesser extent Malaterra provide full and accurate accounts of the Norman invasion of the Byzantine Empire. Malaterra deals with Guiscard’s death more or less in passing, while it is the climax of William of Apulia’s last book. The historian puts his thoughts into the mouth of Sikelgaita, Guiscard’s wife. She is terrified that the Greeks will take the opportunity to attack now that Guiscard is dead, because they had only been restrained by their fear of him. Equally, he had given his own people such confidence that they feared nobody. ‘With you gone’, Sikelgaita moaned, ‘the spirit of audacity will desert your people.’42 William therefore sums up his hero’s life in personal terms. Malaterra does not even do this. They were faced with a problem that they failed to resolve: was Byzantium a legitimate target for Norman prowess? William of Apulia consistently refers to Byzantium as ‘imperium sanctum’.43 The German emperor he refers to as ‘rex’.44 He therefore privileges the Byzantine Empire. It might have suffered because of the laxity of its emperors, but it was capable of revival. There had been hopes of Romanos Diogenes, but still more so under Guiscard’s opponent Alexius I Comnenus, whom William of Apulia idealises. ‘He was possessed of a shrewd mind and was a good’ – strenuus is the word used – ‘warrior, renowned for his bravery and of distinguished lineage . . . However difficult he never flinched from any undertaking on behalf of the Holy Empire.’45 He was a worthy opponent of Robert Guiscard. It would have been easy to demonise or denigrate him but William never does this. He contents himself with a remark to the effect that Alexius left the battlefield at Dyrrachion in the autumn of 1081 wounded and in tears because he had been defeated by an enemy inferior in numbers and resources and had been deprived of the

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Geoffrey Malaterra, III, xiii.31–4. Ibid., III, xiii.4–21. William of Apulia, IV.162–5, 169–70. Ibid., V.302–23. E.g. ibid., I.515. E.g. ibid., IV.567. Ibid., IV.82–7.

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hoped for victory.46 Malaterra is harsher. He has Alexius fleeing terrified from the battlefield rather than stand and face the Norman onslaught.47 Two years later he was again guilty of failing to stand up to the Normans, this time commanded by Bohemund.48 Malaterra records the exchange of embassies between Urban II and Alexius I at the beginning of the former’s pontificate. Alexius proposed a General Council to be held at Constantinople to resolve outstanding issues between Rome and Constantinople and thus put an end to schism. The pope consulted Roger the Great Count on the matter. His advice was that the pope should accept the offer and go to Constantinople. Urban II was not able to follow this advice, not because of any prejudice against Byzantium, but because of his enemies in Rome, where his position was under threat from supporters of the anti-pope Clement III.49 At last the question of the religious differences between Rome and Constantinople has been raised by a Norman historian. It was done in a positive way, which suggested that these differences were capable of solution, but this was only because the Normans had fulfilled their historical role as servants of the papacy and had brought back under papal jurisdiction the territories of southern Italy and Sicily that rightfully belong to the papacy. The implication of Malaterra’s interest in ecclesiastical negotiations with Byzantium is that the Normans have exceeded their rights by attacking the Byzantine Empire, but they still have a role in ensuring that the schism separating the two churches is brought to an end. William of Apulia did not condemn the invasion of the Byzantine Empire, but he saw that Robert Guiscard’s death brought a chapter to an end. The Normans had been instrumental in driving the Byzantines out of southern Italy. Henceforward their field of action was to be southern Italy and Sicily, which were legitimately theirs; it was not to be the Byzantine Empire, which constituted a legitimate Christian polity. That, at least, is the implication of William of Apulia’s insistence on identifying Byzantium as the Holy Empire. Its importance to William of Apulia is reflected in the way that he begins each book of his History with some detail or episode of Byzantine history. This was part of the way that despite a changed historical perspective he, along with the other Norman historians of the South, was able to give renewed relevance to Byzantium. One cannot possibly expect the same degree of accurate information about or interest in Byzantine history among the Norman historians of the North. However, the Norman connections meant that there was access to a great deal more information about Byzantium in Normandy than had been the case earlier. There was also a greater awareness of Byzantium, which is to be found in the most unexpected places. It would be natural, for instance, to assume that William of Poitiers has nothing to say about Byzantium in his History of William the Conqueror, but far from it. He insists that the Conqueror’s marriage to a daughter of the count of Flanders was given added glory because the count was related to the nobility of Constantinople.50 This may well be the case either through some Ottonian connection or more probably through the marriage of Henry I of France (1031–60) to a Kievan princess.51 Even so, the ties

46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., IV.420–4. Geoffrey Malaterra, III, xxvii.10–12. Ibid., III, xxxix.27–8. Ibid., IV, xiii.92–3. Gesta Guillelmi, 30. Her connection with Byzantium was through her sister-in-law, who was certainly a Byzantine princess and very probably a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55): D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, London 1971, 255–6. William the Conqueror’s father-in-law

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would be distant in the extreme. The interesting thing is that they were now thought worth dusting down. In similar fashion when William sent presents to Pope Alexander II (1061–73) they were described as the sort appreciated at Byzantium.52 But strangest of all was the way William of Poitiers emphasised his protagonist’s credentials for greatness, by suggesting that ‘Noble and spacious Constantinople, the ruler of many kings, wished to have him as a neighbour and friend, with whose military aid it could face down the power of Babylon.’53 William of Poitiers was aware of Byzantium as setting some sort of standard against which a ruler such as William the Conqueror needed to measure himself. It shows the prestige that it still enjoyed. This comes as a bit of a suprise because William of Poitiers was writing around 1077, when the condition of Byzantium was parlous because of the breakdown it suffered in the aftermath of the battle of Manzikert (1071). The changing estimation of Byzantium among Norman historians can be best followed in the successive recensions of William of Jumièges. William of Jumièges set about rewriting and updating Dudo of St Quentin’s Customs and Deeds of the first duke of Normandy in the 1050s – some twenty years before William of Poitiers was writing. At this stage he shows scant interest in Byzantine affairs. Even his account of Duke Robert I’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem and his death and burial at Nicaea on the return journey shows little awareness of Byzantium.54 However, in the subsequent rewritings of William of Jumièges’ Deeds of the Norman Dukes Byzantium is given a much more prominent place. In a version (B), produced between 1097 and 1100, the story of Duke Robert’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem is greatly expanded. Now the duke is received by the Emperor in the city of Constantinople. He deliberately entered the city on a mule shod with gold to give the lie to the Greek calumny that the Franks were greedy for gold. He behaved with perfect decorum, seeking permission from the emperor to cross Asia Minor. His refusal to accept the rich presents provided by the emperor was done out of a desire to show that he had no need of the emperor’s generosity, which caused offence. He was left without even wood for a fire. He therefore used nut shells, which won over the emperor impressed by Frankish skill and ingenuity.55 This tale serves a similar purpose to the Byzantine material in William of Poitiers: to show that the Normans measure up to and even surpass the standards demanded by the Byzantines. It is of some interest that the interpolator should even have considered including a story like this. Its details derive from epic and were clearly unhistorical. There has been a certain amount of debate as to whether Duke Robert was ever received by the Byzantine emperor of the day.56 Around this time plenty of other noble pilgrims passed through Constantinople, but there is no record of their being received at the Byzantine court. On the other hand, King Robert of France had recently sent Ulric, bishop of Orleans, on an embassy to the Byzantine court, where he received rich gifts from the emperor. We owe this detail to Ralf Glaber, who follows this with a reference to Duke Robert’s pilgrimage and his death at Nicaea.57 There is a significant was Baldwin V of Flanders, who was in his turn a brother-in-law of Henry I of France. If this is the connection to Byzantium that William of Poitiers is adducing, it is very remote. 52 Gesta Guillelmi, 152. 53 Ibid., 96. 54 Jumièges, ii, 84. 55 Ibid., ii, 82–5. 56 R. Louis, ‘À propos du pèlerinage de Robert le Libéral’, Byzantion 27, 1958, 391–419; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Normandy and Byzantium in the Eleventh Century’, Byzantion 55, 1985, 544–59. Cf. K. Ciggaar, ‘Byzantine Marginalia to the Norman Conquest’, ANS 9, 1986 (1987), 43–69. 57 Ralph Glaber, 202–4.

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detail in the interpolation to William of Jumiège’s account: the Byzantine emperor was supposed to have mistaken Duke Robert for King Robert of France. There is no doubt that the former went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died in 1035 on the return journey at Nicaea. What is in doubt is his reception by the Byzantine Emperor at Constantinople. It is more than likely that knowledge of a slightly earlier embassy from the French king to the Byzantine court was then elaborated with the help of various motifs culled from the epic tradition into a narrative of Duke Robert’s stay at Constantinople. It was in keeping with the prestige of his son William the Conqueror, whose decision taken towards the end of his life to bring back Duke Robert’s body from Nicaea will have occasioned a new interest in the latter’s deeds.58 It cannot be purely accidental that his nobility and ingenuity were underlined by an episode that occurred in Constantinople rather than one which emphasised Jerusalem. A new version of William of Jumièges’ Deeds of the Norman Dukes was prepared by Orderic Vitalis and completed by 1109. The connections of his abbey of St Evroul with the monastery of St Euphemia in Calabria allowed him to include some brief details of the Norman progress in southern Italy, but this interest is largely incidental and dependent on personal connections.59 In the same way, the abbey’s links to the Bellême family explain his inclusion of an account of Ivo III of Bellême’s visit to Constantinople in 1049 or 1050. Ivo was not only the head of the most powerful local family; he was also bishop of neighbouring Sées. He was sternly criticised by Pope Leo IX at the council of Reims (1049) for allowing his cathedral to be burnt down. He promised to rebuild it. To which end he travelled to Constantinople, where he had relatives, who provided him with substantial funds. He also acquired a relic of the Holy Cross as a gift from the emperor.60 This was a story that bore out many others, which emphasised not only the wealth of Constantinople, but also the precious relics that could be obtained there. Unlike the interpolation about the pilgrimage of Duke Robert, there is nothing inherently unlikely about Orderic’s addition. The interest of William of Jumièges’ history is that when taken with William of Poitiers it shows Byzantium regaining interest and respect on the eve of the first crusade. Orderic’s edition of William of Jumièges was his apprenticeship to the historian’s craft and provided the foundation of his immensely ambitious Ecclesiastical History, which he began around 1114 soon after he had completed work on William of Jumièges. He did not finally bring it to completion until 1141, though the bulk of the work was done between 1123 and 1137. It was a universal history that centred on the monastery of St Evroul. The network of connections that it built up via patrons and daughter houses provided a framework of information which turned an Ecclesiastical History into a Norman history. He provides a much fuller and more considered account of the Normans in the south than he did in his version of William of Jumièges. This in turn meant that he was forced to get to grips with Byzantine history. He is full of praise for Alexius I Comnenus who ‘was a wise and upright man, brave and generous and universally beloved. . . . [He] reigned with firmness and dignity in prosperity and adversity for thirty years. He was a man of great wisdom, merciful to the poor, a brave and illustrious warrior who was genial to his soldiers, open-handed in giving, and a most diligent servant of the divine law.’61 At this point, Orderic introduces the story that he cherished Robert Guiscard’s daughters, who 58 59 60

Gesta Regum, i, 504–5. Jumièges, ii, 152–9. Ibid., ii, 116–19. On the Bellême family, see D. Bates, Normandy before 1066, Harlow 1982, esp. 78–81. 61 Orderic, iv, 11–21.

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became his handmaidens, washing his hands and combing his beard. At some point he sent them back to Roger the Great Count, who enjoyed his favour. The favourable image of Alexius owed something to the English in his service. Orderic recorded that they guarded the palace and the treasury and continue to serve the Holy Empire.62 The terminology he was using suggests knowledge of William of Apulia. Orderic subscribed to the idea that Alexius was divinely protected: ‘It is clearly demonstrated to all thinking men that none can overthrow or destroy a man defended and cherished by God.’63 The proof came when the Norman armies melted away after the death of Robert Guiscard. Orderic provides us with a deathbed speech, in which Guiscard assures his followers that they have been blessed with divine favour. He insists that he had invaded Byzantium at the request of the Emperor Michael Doukas, but it was his wish to subjugate Constantinople ‘which is held by an effeminate race given up to luxury and wantonness’, but only as a first step to the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turks.64 Orderic Vitalis has injected into this speech post-first-crusade assumptions. These were to have profound implications for his subsequent treatment of Alexius I Comnenus. In complete contrast to earlier sections of his Ecclesiastical History his account of the first crusade sketches a bitterly hostile portrait of the Byzantine Emperor. Alexius Comnenus plots against the pilgrims and harrasses their passage.65 Orderic begins to refer to the crusaders as ‘the Christians’ in contrast to the Greeks. For example, it was ‘the Christians’ who were not allowed to plunder Nicaea and thus ‘experienced the deceitful ways of the Emperor to their cost’.66 Orderic may have been a prisoner of his sources, but only up to a point. He was capable of exercising independent judgement. His account of Bohemund’s 1107–8 expedition against Byzantium is one of the most detailed that has survived. It probably owed something to eyewitness accounts, but it is not entirely favourable to Bohemund.67 Orderic concludes his narrative with Bohemund’s followers remonstrating with their leader: they beg him to make peace with Alexius, for they had no cause to attack the Holy Empire: no hereditary right; no prophetic justification. It was clear that God’s hand was against them: ‘Only lust to rule in the dominions of another’, they protested, ‘induced you to undertake so difficult a task.’68 This was not a signal for the rehabilitation of Byzantium and its emperor. Instead, they more or less disappear from Orderic’s field of vision. He makes only fleeting reference to Alexius I Comnenus’s death, where one might have expected a substantial obituary of one of the great rulers of his time.69 Byzantium was only of intermittent interest to Orderic. He was heavily dependent for his views on his informants, whence a certain inconsistency in his estimate of Byzantium, but at least his views represented in broad terms those of the Norman ascendancy. It is instructive to compare his treatment of Byzantium with that of his contemporary, William of Malmesbury. To quote Marjorie Chibnall: ‘When Orderic’s work is compared with that of William of Malmesbury, the reader is struck

62 63 64 65 66 67

Ibid., ii, 202. Ibid., iv, 17. Ibid., iv, 33–5. Ibid., v, 43–7. Ibid., v, 57–9. G. Rösch, ‘Der “Kreuzzug” Bohemunds gegen Dyrrhachion 1107/1108 in der lateinischen Tradition des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 26, 1984, 181–90. 68 Orderic, vi, 103–5. 69 Ibid., vi, 133.

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by the number of episodes and topics that are treated by both writers in a similar way, but always with individual variations.’70 These similarities suggest the inclusion here of William of Malmesbury along with the Norman historians, even though he was writing a history of The Deeds of the English kings and though of Norman descent is not strictly speaking a Norman historian. Surprisingly perhaps William of Malmesbury has little to say about the emigration of the English to Byzantium. He mentions in passing that Alexius I Comnenus respected the good faith of the English, numbered them among his special friends and bequeathed this affection for them to his son.71 But this scarcely counted for much beside his cunning and treachery and the harm that he did to the crusaders. William’s account of the Norman invasion of Byzantium under Guiscard and Bohemond is far less favourable to Alexius than that contained in the Norman historians. Alexius was only able to deal with the Normans by deceit. He won over Guiscard’s wife by promising to make her his empress and she was persuaded to bring about her husband’s death through the use of poison.72 William of Malmesbury is well informed about Byzantine history and Byzantine emperors, but he is far less generous than his Norman counterparts. He sees Byzantium under threat from the forces of Islam and suffering from a rapid turnover of rulers.73 His view of Byzantium is coloured by his presentation of the first crusade, where Alexius I Comnenus is painted in the blackest colours. His account owes much to the first version of Fulcher of Chartres’ narrative of the first crusade.74 But he adds information of his own and he includes descriptions of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem. His description of Constantinople is in many ways an antiquarian exercise which he has preferred to Fulcher of Chartres’ accurate eye-witness description of the city. He provides his own version of the foundation legend of Constantinople, where something is made of Constantine’s British birth. He supplies a reasonably accurate list of the emperors of Constantinople with the odd comment. Finally, he provides a short list of some of the city’s most precious relics.75 More or less in passing he mentions the length of the walls as twenty miles and has the detail that the water supply comes by underground channels from the Danube. He claimed that on set days the sluices were opened and the streets cleaned. His description of Constantinople remains very perplexing.76 It is far less accurate and relevant, not to mention flattering, than that provided by his source Fulcher of Chartres. Constantinople has, however, given William of Malmesbury the opportunity to show off his antiquarian learning. Not for nothing is the first text he quotes from St Aldhelm, one of Malmesbury’s giants. It is almost as though William was trying to cut Constantinople down to size through a display of antiquarian knowledge. To conclude: to the tenth century the idea of Empire provided a framework of reference for the assimilation of Byzantine history by historians in the service of western emperors, be they Carolingian or Ottonian. However, this became increasingly unsatisfactory for French historians for whom imperial theory meant very little. It also lost its attractions for many church historians as the reformed papacy drifted

70 71 72 73 74

Ibid., i, 89. Gesta Regum, i, 412–13. Ibid., i, 484–5, 610–11. Ibid., i, 412–13. R. Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury, Historian of Crusade’, Reading Medieval Studies 23, 1997, 121–34. 75 Gesta Regum, i, 623–9. 76 Cf. A. Grabois, ‘The Description of Jerusalem by William of Malmesbury: a Mirror of the Holy Land’s Presence in the Anglo-Norman Mind’, ANS 13, 1990 (1991), 145–56.

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away from the imperial idea. It suggested an indifference to Byzantine history which was reinforced by the new interest in Jerusalem. But the problem of Byzantium did not go away. The Norman penetration of southern Italy gave it renewed importance. The favourable assessment made by Norman historians of Alexius I Comnenus’s aims and abilities helped to prepare the ground for the first crusade. The contacts between the Normans north and south ensured that a much better knowledge of Byzantine history was available in France on the eve of the first crusade than had been the case even twenty years earlier. It raised expectations, which ended in disappointment. The passage and experience of the first crusade tilted western opinion against Byzantium. The histories of Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, written some twenty years after the crusade, plot the way in which the positive judgements made on Byzantium and its rulers gave way to a much darker picture. The first signs of the change of attitude are evident from the pen of another Norman historian from the south of Italy. This was the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum. All that can safely be said is that he travelled east with Bohemond. His history was the earliest narrative of the first crusade. The bulk of the text deals with events up to the final conquest of Antioch at the end of June 1098. He may have taken advantage of the stay at Antioch which followed to write up this section of his history. It was certainly finished by 1101.77 The immediacy of his narrative has always been recognised as one of its great virtues. Its value was quickly recognised by the first generation of crusade historians and its judgements and opinions were influential. There you see the prejudice against the Emperor Alexius. ‘Iniquus’, ‘infelix’, ‘plenus vana et iniqua cogitatione’ are the epithets that he applies to Alexius, whom he presents as deliberately seeking to do the crusaders harm.78 Equally, he refers to the crusaders either as Christians or the people or knights of Christ.79 This set up a clear division between the crusaders and their Byzantine hosts. The author of the Gesta Francorum reflects the disenchantment among the rank and file of the first crusade with the Byzantine emperor. It can hardly be explained entirely in terms of Bohemund’s propaganda against Alexius I Comnenus. As Jonathan Shepard has demonstrated, Bohemund was much closer to Alexius in the opening stages of the first crusade than anybody in either camp wished to remember.80 In any case, Bohemund had gone down in the estimate of the author of the Gesta Francorum, who was unwilling to overlook his failure to participate in the march south to Jerusalem. Distrust of the Greeks and their emperor is not likely to have had its roots in the views and self-interest of the crusade leaders, who were generally well disposed to Alexius; it stemmed rather from the awareness on the part of the rank and file that they were the army of Christ – a spiritual elect. Alexius had failed to honour his obligations to them. It was not so much that the Byzantine Emperor had not come to their rescue during the siege of Antioch, but more that he had failed to respond to their invitation to take over the city, once they had conquered it.81 His previous actions towards the crusaders were interpreted in the light of this betrayal of his trust.

77 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. R. Hill, Oxford 1962, ix–xvi; J. France, Victory in the East: a Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge 1994, 374–8. 78 Gesta Francorum, I (iii): p. 6.13, 22; II (v): p. 10.1; II (viii): p. 17.5. 79 E.g. ibid., I (ii): p. 3.4, 19; I (ii): p. 5.4; I (iii): p. 6.24–5; I (iv): p. 7.7; I (iv), p. 9.12; II (v): p. 11.7; II (vi): p. 11.21. 80 J. Shepard, ‘When Greek Meets Greek: Alexius Comnenus and Bohemond in 1097–8’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 12, 1988, 185–277. 81 Gesta Francorum, X (xxx): p. 72.5–13.

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In the aftermath of the conquest of Antioch, the combination of Byzantine indifference and of division among the crusade leadership left the expedition without clear direction. It is recognised that at this dangerous juncture it was the determination of the rank and file to push on to Jerusalem that restored cohesion to the crusade.82 Rather than resort to outright criticism of the leaders of the crusade, it was easier to shift the blame to the Byzantine emperor. The author of the Gesta Francorum was only reflecting the attitudes of the rank and file, but the success of the crusade meant that these acquired authority and currency. They injected an anti-Byzantine bias into subsequent narratives of the crusade, which the ‘Norman historians’ quickly picked up.

82

France, Victory in the East, 297–324, esp. 310–11.

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Companions of the Atheling

COMPANIONS OF THE ATHELING G. W. S. Barrow First, a little dramatis personae and chronology.1 Edmund Ironside, heroic son of Æthelraed ‘Unraed’, who died in 1016, left two very young sons – possibly twins – who fell into the hands of Cnut. Cnut despatched the boys to his half-brother King Olaf of Sweden, perhaps intending them to be put to death, perhaps hoping they would simply disappear. Olaf’s daughter had married Jaroslav the Great, duke of Novgorod and prince of Kiev, and the boys probably grew up at his court, to which the Christian claimant to the throne of Hungary, Andrew, came as refugee and suppliant in the late 1030s or early 1040s. The two young English royals, Edmund and Edward, accompanied Andrew to Hungary, evidently serving in his army; Edmund must soon have died, about the year 1046, that Andrew was elected king of Hungary. (It is worth noting that Andrew’s sons were named Solomon and David.) The Christian court of Hungary was in fairly close touch with the emperors in Germany, Saxons and Salians, although relations were not always friendly. The German royal court was well-informed about England, and took an interest in the House of Wessex, whose most obvious legitimate heir, if Edward the Confessor had no children, was Edward, the Hungarian exile. Even before Andrew was recognised as king of Hungary it seems that a wife had been found for Edward within the larger German royal family. This was Agatha, daughter of Liudolf, count of Brunswick, granddaughter of Gisela of Swabia whose third (and last) husband was the Emperor Conrad II (d.1039).2 Gisela herself survived until February 1043. Agatha was thus a first cousin (of the half blood) of the Emperor Henry III (1039–56). There could not be better evidence of how seriously the German monarchy viewed the West Saxon royal dynasty. Edward and Agatha had three children, all apparently born in Hungary: Margaret in the later 1040s, Christina and Edgar a few years later. Their father brought his wife and children to England in 1057, but died within the year. So much for the actors who set the scene. I now jump forward nine years. The Confessor has died, Harold of Wessex has been chosen king, the claims of Edgar the Atheling have been passed over, presumably because of age and because he lacked what we now have to call a ‘proven track record’. From our point of view, the 1

For statements in the opening paragraphs I have relied on the following authorities: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a revised translation, ed. D. Whitelock with D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker, London 1961; F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn, Oxford 1947; F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, London 1970; S. Weinfurter, Herrschaft und Reich der Salier: Grundlinien einer Umbruchzeit, Sigmaringen 1992; Szabolcs de Vajay, ‘Agatha, Mother of Saint Margaret Queen of Scotland’, Duquesne Review, Pittsburgh 1962, 71–87; G. Györffy, König Stephan der Heilige, Budapest 1988; K. Leyser, ‘England and the Empire in the Early Twelfth Century’, TRHS 5th ser. 10, 1960, 61–83, esp. p. 62. For important economic links between England and Germany, see, inter alia, P. H. Sawyer, ‘The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century’, TRHS 5th ser. 15, 1965, 145–64, esp. pp. 160–4. 2 Weinfurter, Herrschaft und Reich der Salier, Stammtafel at end; de Vajay, ‘Agatha, Mother of Saint Margaret’, 72–3.

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chronology of the next few years is not easy to establish firmly. After Hastings the Atheling was acclaimed as king in London but never crowned; he soon submitted to Duke William and in 1067 was taken to Normandy. Back in England by the end of the year, he fled north with his mother and two sisters in the summer of 1068, joining an unknown but apparently substantial number of northern English notables. These included Waltheof son of Earl Siward (d.1055), Merleswein, sheriff of Lincoln, an immensely wealthy landowner right across England, and Cospatric son of Maldred, grandson (through his mother) of Uhtred, almost the last earl of north Northumbria of the old ‘House of Bamburgh’. These men were nobles of native or Anglo-Danish family and descent who calculated, surely correctly, that they might have much to lose by tamely submitting to the Conqueror. (In the end, Earl Waltheof did submit, but within eight years had been lured into a plot against the king and was beheaded at Winchester.) As for Cospatric, it could be argued that William I was remarkably forbearing, entrusting the rule of north Northumbria to him twice – in 1069 and 1071 – before the earl’s persistent recidivism put an end to any further co-operation or co-existence. Even then, however, it is noteworthy that when the Conqueror extracted homage from Malcolm III at Abernethy in 1072, with the corollary that Edgar Atheling must leave Scotland, we hear of no demand for Cospatric’s expulsion.3 If we exclude Saint Margaret as a special case, Earl Cospatric was unquestionably the greatest among the Atheling’s companions. He was ancestor of a comital dynasty, that of Dunbar, which rivalled the family of Stewart in producing male heirs over eight generations, father to son, and a further two generations of collateral male descent (c.1072–1455).4 I do not believe that Cospatric son of Maldred was nephew of Duncan I king of Scots. If anyone can prove that Skene’s guess was right, I will gladly eat humble pie.5 Unless and until such proof is forthcoming I shall prefer to believe that Maldred was simply the son of a Northumbrian thegn, who had struck it rich. Merleswein sheriff of Lincoln is a much less conspicuous figure.6 In 1066 he held substantial estates in Devon, Somerset, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and he was still acquiring land on the eve of the conquest. King Harold Godwinesson made him custodian of northern England. He witnessed an act of William I given before the end of 1067.7 We have no proof that after 1068 he stayed in Scotland; by 1086, however, much of his land had been acquired by Ralph Paganel or Paynell. Consider, also, the following evidence, surely relevant even if tantalisingly fragmentary. Some time after 1150 Colban (i.e. Kolbeinn) succeeded Gartnait as earl of Buchan, having 3

A. O. Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, London 1908, 95. Cospatric’s tenure of the earldom of Northumbria cannot be dated precisely, but when William I deprived him of it for the last time, apparently in 1072, he does not seem to have insisted that Cospatric should stay out of Scotland. 4 Complete Peerage, iv, 503–5. 5 W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland: a History of Ancient Alban, 2nd edn, Edinburgh 1886–90, i, 394, n. 18. Skene’s guess, accepted in Complete Peerage (iv, 504, n.(b)), has been followed by a substantial majority of scholars who have written on this period, e.g. A. Dunbar, Scottish Kings, 2nd edn, Edinburgh 1906, 15; A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, Edinburgh 1922, i, 577; ii, 39; W. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North, Chapel Hill 1979, 40–1, 108. 6 Kapelle, ibid., 105 notes Merleswein’s role as governor of Yorkshire under Harold II in 1066, but otherwise deals only with the part played by Merleswein in the armed resistance to William I, 1067–70. Sir Henry Ellis includes a note on Merleswein in his General Introduction to Domesday Book, 2 vols, London 1833, ii, 185, and makes it clear that all the references to Merleswein in the survey are to the same individual. See also The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey, ed. C. W. Foster and T. Longley, Lincoln Record Society, 1924, repr. 1976, references indexed under ‘Merlosuen’; O. von Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Names in Domesday Book, Uppsala 1937, 326, s.v. ‘Maerle-Sveinn’. 7 Bates, Regesta, no. 216.

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married Gartnait’s daughter Eve.8 Through this marriage the earldom of Buchan descended to Fergus and to Marjorie daughter of Fergus, who (as is well known) married William Comyn.9 In 1172 or 1173 King William I infeft Merleswein (without patronymic) in the lands of Ardross in east Fife for one knight’s service, ‘as my other knights most freely hold their feus’.10 Also in the 1170s, Merleswein son of Colban gave the church of Kennoway in Fife to St Andrews cathedral priory, a gift confirmed by his son Merleswein.11 The charters of both Merlesweins were witnessed by Earl Colban of Buchan. Marjorie daughter of Fergus, as countess of Buchan, and her husband William Comyn, confirmed the grant of Kennoway kirk to St Andrews.12 Even though the available documents do not elucidate the relationship of Earl Colban to the family which numbered at least two Merlesweins between c.1170 and c.1200,13 nevertheless it does not seem rash to connect a Scottish earl possessing one Scandinavian name to Fife landowners who obviously treasured another Scandinavian or part-Scandinavian name, and all of them to the wealthy Merleswein of the ‘time of King Edward’. It may be mere coincidence that the heiress with whom the knight-service barony of Ardross passed to Sir John de Soules in the 1280s was named Margaret, as was the countess in her own right who brought the earldom of Buchan to the Comyns.14 We now come to Uviet the White, a companion of Malcolm III’s eldest son Duncan rather than of the Atheling – but, as R. L. Graeme Ritchie showed persuasively nearly half a century ago,15 King Duncan II and Edgar Atheling were firm friends, and (however odd it may seem) Duncan himself could be regarded as a companion of the Atheling. Uviet is a modified form of the OE personal name Wulfgeat, ‘wolf of the Geatas’. Olof von Feilitzen’s invaluable list of pre-Conquest personal names in Domesday Book shows that while a Wulfgeat or Ulviet held a substantial estate in the East Riding of Yorkshire TRE, the name was more popular in the midlands and the south.16 It would be a great help if we knew whereabouts Duncan’s lengthy exile from Scotland (1072–91) was spent. As a prospective king, as a presumably ambitious young knight, from 1087 onwards, and as by all accounts well-liked and personable, Duncan of Scotland would surely have gathered round 8 9

Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 180. Scots Peerage, ed. J. B. Paul, 9 vols, Edinburgh 1904–14, ii, 251–2. The Scandinavian origin of Earl Colban (‘Colbeyn’) seems to be confirmed by the fact that one of his sons was named Magnus (Illustrations of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, Spalding Club, ii, 1847, 427–8). I accept the hint dropped in the Handbook of British Chronology, Royal Historical Society, London 1986, 502, that ‘Roger’ is a fictitious earl of Buchan arising from mis-copying. Rogerus on p. 370 of Liber Cartarum Prioratus S. Andree in Scotia, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1841 [= St Andrews Liber] appears in the MS as Rogus with mark of suspension above the g; the scribe may have misinterpreted an original Fgus with mark of suspension following the F. 10 Regesta Regum Scottorum, ii (The Acts of William I King of Scots, 1165–1214), ed. G. W. S. Barrow and W. W. Scott, Edinburgh 1971, no. 137. For Merleswein’s importance as a baron in attendance on the king, especially in Fife, 1153–c.1173, see ibid. and Regesta Regum Scottorum, i (The Acts of Malcolm IV King of Scots, 1153–65), ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Edinburgh 1960, passim, references in indices. 11 St Andrews Liber, 258–60. 12 St Andrews Liber, 251, 253. 13 St Andrews Liber, 258–9; The Scottish Tradition, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Edinburgh 1974, 25 (where, in the statement that Waltheof son of Merleswein was the son of the Merleswein infeft by William the Lion, ‘son’ should be corrected to ‘grandson’). 14 The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, Record Commission, 12 vols, Edinburgh 1814–75, i, 445 (red). 15 R. L. G. Ritchie, The Normans in Scotland, Edinburgh 1954, 58, 61. 16 von Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Names s.v. Wulfgeat. The normal form in Domesday Book is Ulviet or Uviet.

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him a circle of friends and young hopefuls, among whom there might easily have been Anglo-Saxons of good family, with an aptitude for warfare. If we are searching for such an Anglo-Saxon and stay with Domesday record, there seem to be three constellations of names which hint at a possible solution. First, there is the East Riding of Yorkshire Wulfgeat (Ulviet), who held his substantial estate before 1066 chiefly in the Wolds.17 Our Uviet would have to have been a son or grandson, since he survived until the 1130s or even ’40s. Secondly, we have a king’s thegn in Dorset named Wulviet who held one hide at Wimborne and another at Blandford in King Edward’s time, which he was still holding in 1086.18 If he is to be identified with Wulviet the king’s thegn who had held Shitterton in Bere Regis as an estate of five hides TRE but had lost it before 108619 then we might be tempted to see a family with a grievance, but again it would need to be a son or grandson who attached himself to Duncan of Scotland. Finally, we may note the existence in Worcestershire of a substantial thegnly dynasty using the name Wulfgeat in several generations and connected with the cathedral church of Worcester and the abbey of Evesham. In 1047 or 1048 one Wulfgeat granted Witton in Droitwich to Evesham, on the occasion of his son Ælfgeat becoming a monk in the abbey.20 A few years later Ealdred bishop of Worcester granted to Wulfgeat, almost certainly the same man, the Cotswold estate of Ditchford in Blockley by a lease of three lives.21 Bishop Ealdred was sent to Germany in 1054 to urge the Emperor Henry III to bring Edward the Atheling and his family from Hungary so that they could come to England.22 Although Ealdred was unsuccessful in 1054, the Atheling did come in 1057. It is not inconceivable that the well-established Worcestershire thegn Wulfgeat made the acquaintance of the Atheling’s family at that time. If his son and heir was the Wulfgeat who in 1086 held a single hide of ‘freeland’ in Eldersfield in west Worcestershire, probably as the tenant of William Fitz Osbern,23 then the family had certainly come down in the world. When Malcolm Ceann-mór was killed at Alnwick in November 1093 the Scots raised his brother Donald – Domnall Bàn – to the throne, probably following what had been the succession customs since the ninth century. With some support from William Rufus, to whom he had given knight-service, Duncan, Malcolm Ceann-mór’s eldest son, dislodged Domnall Bàn temporarily and made himself king – we know him as Duncan II.24 His reign was very brief, only a few months, for Domnall Bàn recovered his power and Duncan was slain by Maelpetair ruler of the Mearns.25 Duncan’s sole surviving charter, famously granting Tynninghame and neighbouring lands to the monks of Durham, was witnessed, almost last, by Uuiget, 17

For the substantial holdings of Wulfgeat (Ulfiet, Uluiet), TRE, in the East Riding at Cherry Burton, Great Kelk, Garton in the Wolds, North Cave and Leconfield see VCH, York, ii (1912), 215a–b, 256b, 262a. 18 VCH, Dorset, i, 84, 84b. 19 Exon Domesday, fol. 31b, ‘Scetra’ = Shitterton in Bere Regis Hundred, now altered to Sitterton for prudish reasons. 20 VCH, Worcestershire, i, 319b, ‘in the fifth year of King Edward’s reign’. 21 S, no. 1409. 22 ASC, s.a. 1054; John of Worcester, 575–7. In 1054 there were hostilities between King Andrew and the Germans. 23 VCH, Worcs., i, 322b. 24 Anderson, Scottish Annals, 118–19; Ritchie, Normans in Scotland, 60–3. 25 Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 90. For evidence illustrating the statement in version G of the Scottish Chronicle that Duncan II was killed in the Mearns by the local mórmaer Maelpetair son of Loren, see A. Macquarrie, Innes Review 47, 1996, 100, 106, 108.

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i.e. Wulfgeat or Uviet.26 Uviet the White witnessed (last but one) King Edgar’s charter granting Swinton in Berwickshire to Durham,27 and Ufieth witnessed (last but two) Alexander I’s principal charter for Scone.28 There are enough references to Uviet the White in David I’s reign to prove that he was closely associated with the royal court or household, that he was generously endowed as lord of Treverlen (i.e. Duddingston beside Edinburgh),29 and that after losing Treverlen to the king’s new abbeys of Kelso and Holyrood he had lands enough in other parts of Scotland to found two landowning dynasties of Uviets or Eviots, one of which, the Eviots of Balhousie beside Perth, endured until the seventeenth century.30 One small clue, I believe, pins Uviet the White down as a companion of King Duncan II. In 1128 or thereabouts David I confirmed to his new abbey of Dunfermline all the property and privileges given by himself and by members of his family since the monastery had been founded as a priory by Malcolm III and St Margaret in the 1070s or ’80s.31 Among the early endowments was the gift by his half-brother Duncan of ‘two touns named Luscar’, i.e. Luscar and Craigluscar two miles west of Dunfermline.32 By the thirteenth century the way in which the two Luscars were differentiated was to call one of them Luscar Eviot(h).33 It is clear that Dunfermline Abbey acknowledged that the Uvieth or Eviot family enjoyed a tenurial right in one of the two Luscars. In 1315 the male line of the better-endowed branch of the Uvieths or Eviots ended with the death of Sir David Ovioth, leaving two daughters as co-heirs.34 Luscar Eviot was duly partitioned between Christian and Margaret, who both married Bissets. The Uvieth or Eviot interest in Luscar, which belonged to Duncan II whose only known charter was witnessed by Uviet (the White), surely cannot be coincidence. This group of companions of the Atheling must be a fairly small fraction of the total. We are still in a relatively poorly documented period of Scottish history. ‘Big 26

A. C. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, Glasgow 1905, no. 12; A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The Earliest Scottish Charters’, SHR 37, 1958, 119. See also idem, ‘Yes, the Earliest Scottish Charters’, ibid. 78, 1999, 1–38, where fig. 2, p. 8, gives a photograph of Duncan II’s charter. 27 Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 20 (‘Uniaet Thwite’, for which read Uuiaet Hwite). 28 Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 36 (reading Ufieth for Usieth). 29 G. W. S. Barrow, ed., The Charters of King David I, Woodbridge 1999, nos 70, 147 (p. 124, col. 2), and elsewhere passim, references in index. See also G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Treverlen, Duddingston and Arthur’s Seat’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 30, 1959, 1–9. 30 I have dealt with the history of this family in an address to the Scottish Record Society (1994, as yet unpublished). It is not practicable to give all the relevant evidence here, but the following references are helpful in tracing Uvieth/Eviot family history: Regesta Regum Scottorum, i and ii, references in indices, s.vv. Uviet(h), Oviet; Liber de Scon, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1843, nos 56, 57, 106; Liber S. Crucis, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1840, no. 66; Hist. MSS Commission, 6th Report, I, Appendix, p. 690; Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, i, no. 205. There are frequent references to the Eviots of Balhousie (beside Perth) in R. Milne, ed., The Blackfriars of Perth, Edinburgh 1893, and in M. I. Stavert, ed., The Perth Guildry Book, 1452–1601, Scottish Record Society ns 19, 1993. 31 Charters of David I, no. 33 (p. 70, col. 2). 32 NG refs. NT 053895 (Luscar), NT 066908 (Craigluscar). East Luscar is immediately north of Luscar House. Duncan’s gift was probably made in 1094, but he could have acquired Luscar in 1091 when he seems to have visited Scotland in the company of Edgar the Atheling. At this juncture the two men, as Professor Barlow has put it, ‘were adventurers hoping for an improvement in their fortunes’. See F. Barlow, William Rufus, New Haven and London 2000, 295. 33 Registrum de Dunfermelyn, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1842, no. 309 (an act of 1254 involving Sir Alexander Uvyeth, lord of Coulter and some time sheriff of Lanark); no. 382, of 1347, involving one of the two heiresses of Sir David ‘Hunyoth’ (= Uvyoth), both referring to Luscareviot(h); pp. 436, 439 showing that ‘Luscur Eueat’ was distinct from ‘Luscer Wester’. Notes on pp. 477, 495 suggest identity between Luscar Evioth and Lochend, the location of which I do not know. 34 Hist. MSS Comm., 6th Report, Appendix, p. 690.

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fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.’ We know of a few of the bigger fleas, scarcely anything of the little or lesser varieties. Five further figures must complete my story, of whom two give rise to questions as yet unanswered and perhaps unanswerable. Æthelwine,35 who succeeded his brother Æthelric as bishop of Durham in 1056, seems to have fled to Scotland as an outlaw in 1069. He travelled to Ely two years later in the company of Siward Bearn, attracted by the gallant – but forlorn – resistance put up by Hereward the Wake. Æthelwine, Earl Morcar and all the leaders except Hereward submitted to the Conqueror; Æthelwine was confined to the abbey of Abingdon, where he died. Siward Bearn,36 apparently a substantial landowner in 1066, remains a somewhat shadowy personage. Attempts to connect him with Siward Digera the Dane, whom Edward the Confessor made earl of Northumbria, have not seemed convincing. The Yorkshire editors of the Phillimore version of Domesday suggest that Siward Bearn was a grandson of Earl Uhtred of the old house of Bamburgh,37 but they do not explain why, if that was the case, Siward had such a thoroughly Danish name. In any event, Siward Bearn, like Bishop Æthelwine, went to join Hereward the Wake in Ely and then submitted to the Conqueror.38 Held prisoner in Normandy till 1087, he did not return to Scotland, nor did he found any dynasty there.39 My third companion, among the five with whom I conclude, is Edward son of Siward, described by Orderic Vitalis as King David I’s kinsman.40 Ann Williams, in her splendid study of The English and the Norman Conquest, has established his place in the pre- and post-Conquest scheme of things.41 Siward son of Æthelgar was a substantial Shropshire landowner whom Domesday calls ‘a thegn and a kinsman of King Edward’. Orderic, himself a Shropshire lad, says that Siward and his brother were great-grandsons (pronepotes) of King Æthelraed II. Dr Williams shows that this relationship can be explained only if Æthelgar father of Siward was the son or son-in-law of King Æthelraed’s daughter Edith (Eadgyth) by Eadric ‘Streona’, the treacherous earl of Mercia.42 Although Siward’s son Edward, who was still of fighting age in 1130 and probably survived into the earlier ’40s, is not likely to have been born much before the mid ’80s of the eleventh century, we may reasonably include him among at least the second wave of companions of the Atheling. He must have demonstrated military

35

For Æthelwine see ASC, 132, 150, 154, and Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie, ed. and trans. David Rollason, OMT, 2000, 160–3, 170–5, 192–5 (consistently called Egelwinus, not Ethelwinus). 36 For Siward Bearn see Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge 1995, 34, 40, 54 and chapter III. His numerous occurrences in Domesday Book, if referring to one individual, show that he was a wealthy landowner before 1066. 37 Domesday Book: Yorkshire, ed. M. L. Faull and M. Stinson, Chichester 1986, 30 part 2, Biographies of Tenants, ‘Sigvarthbarn’. 38 ASC, 154. 39 F. Barlow, William Rufus, London 1983, 50. Because Siward Bearn, as far as we know, had no further connection with Scotland, I have not discussed the evidence, kindly provided by Dr Williams, that Siward may have joined the crusaders in the eastern Mediterranean. See C. Fell, ‘The Icelandic Saga of Edward the Confessor: its Version of the Anglo-Saxon Emigration to Byzantium’, ASE 3, 1973, 183–6; J. Godfrey, ‘The Defeated Anglo-Saxons Take Service with the Byzantine Emperor’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 69. 40 Orderic, iv, 276–7. 41 Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 93–6. 42 Ibid., 91. In a letter of 23 January 2002 Dr Williams kindly explains that the descent required to make Siward a great-grandson of King Æthelred could be through either a son or a daughter of Edith and Eadric ‘Streona’.

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skill above the average to appear as King Alexander I’s constable in the second decade of the twelfth century. The king of Scots took part in Henry I’s campaign against the princes of Gwynedd and Powys in 1114.43 Perhaps the Shropshire thegn, aware of his kinship with Alexander, seized his opportunity on this occasion and offered his services. Edward was credited by Orderic with the important victory over Angus of Moray fought at Stracathro in Angus in the early summer of 1130.44 Edward son of Siward, great-great-grandson of Æthelraed the Unready, is not known to have left any heirs; the constableship had passed, even before Edward’s death, to the faithful Hugh de Morville, not likely to have been a kinsman. Knightly prowess was conspicuous in the career of my next companion, Robert Godwinesson. R. L. G. Ritchie rescued Robert from oblivion nearly fifty years ago,45 although Freeman knew about him much earlier.46 He was the son of an English knight named Godwine apparently connected with Winchester. In Rufus’s reign Godwine sprang to the defence of Edgar the Atheling when he was falsely accused of treason. The accuser, Orgar, was assailed by Godwine so vigorously that he died of his wounds. Freeman acutely observed that in 1086 Godwine held nearly 8 hides of Edgar the Atheling at Barkway and Hormead in north Hertfordshire.47 Eleven years later, in 1097, the Atheling took his nephew and namesake to Scotland to challenge Domnall Bàn for the throne.48 Just as Godwine had boldly championed the Atheling so now his son Robert displayed outstanding bravery on behalf of the Atheling’s nephew. Accompanied by two fellow-knights, fortified by a vision of Saint Cuthbert and with the saint’s banner held aloft, Robert attacked and overwhelmed a group of picked warriors who were stationed in front of Domnall Bàn’s host as special challengers. Witnessing their dramatic downfall, the host simply fled the field, leaving Edgar with an almost bloodless victory, followed by inauguration as king. Rewarding Saint Cuthbert was easy. With impetuous generosity, the two shires of Berwick upon Tweed and Coldingham were simply bestowed on the church of Durham, or, rather, given to its bishop, the brutal and licentious Ranulf Flambard. Rewarding Robert was also easy: he was granted a fief in Lothian, surely in the Merse of Berwickshire, where he promptly began to erect a castle, i.e. a motte. The new king of Scots went south, presumably to thank his protector Rufus, but by the time he was back in Scotland it was to discover that the local peasantry had ganged up against Robert Godwinesson and had handed him over to the rapacious Bishop Flambard who imprisoned him in Durham Castle. As soon as King Edgar returned, he had Robert released and promptly revoked his prodigal gifts to Durham. Robert went off to Jerusalem, whence he never returned, being captured at Ramallah and martyred at Cairo. The problem with this stirring tale of derring-do is that as narrated here it cannot be true, or at least not wholly true. Professor Archie Duncan established as long ago as 1958 – and has reiterated as recently as 1999 – that King Edgar gave Coldingham 43

Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 36, 49; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 144–5; R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change, Oxford 1987, 43–4. Alexander I’s army was active in North Wales, along with Richard earl of Chester, son of Earl Hugh (1101–20). 44 Orderic, iv, 276–9. 45 Ritchie, The Normans in Scotland, 95–6, 98. 46 E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry I, 2 vols, Oxford 1882, ii, 115–18, 120–2. 47 Scotichronicon by Walter Bower in Latin and English, ed. D. E. R. Watt and others, iii, Edinburgh 1995, 89, 99, 101; Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus, ii, 616–18. 48 ASC, 175.

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and Berwick to the church and monks of Durham in August 1095, over two years before he was actually made king of Scots.49 The bishop who received the gift was not the worldly Ranulf Flambard but the clever and courtly William de Saint-Calais, founder of Durham Cathedral and possibly the only begetter of Domesday Book.50 Flambard in any case did not receive the bishopric till June 1099. Either Robert Godwinesson took more than two years to build his motte or King Edgar was much slower to reward him than Fordun’s story suggests. It sounds, incidentally, as though the unfinished castle was located just north of the River Tweed, perhaps in the area of Upsettlington or Horndean. One of these days its remains might be discovered. The monks of Durham kept Coldinghamshire, but Bishop Flambard was deprived of Berwick, luckily for the future history of Scotland.51 The last individual I wish to include in my list cannot be classified as a companion of the Atheling. The excuse for putting him in at all must be that he seems to illustrate a tendency which may be traced from 1066 to the 1170s and which, as far as I can see, is neither illusory nor fictitious. The individual is Osbert son of Siward of Arden and the tendency is for substantial English families of Old English or Anglo-Scandinavian stock to seek their fortune in Scotland and specifically in the service of the king of Scots. Osbert’s father Siward was the son of Thorkill of Warwick, a remarkable survivor of the great débacle, presumably an Anglo-Scandinavian.52 Osbert’s own estate was Kingsbury, east of Sutton Coldfield and a long way north of Arden. He may have held other properties, and his benefactions to religious houses ranged surprisingly widely, taking in Thorney in the fens and Markyate in the Chilterns as well as Stoneleigh Abbey nearer home in central Warwickshire. Osbert’s earliest recorded appearance in the following of David of Scotland dates to the early 1120s. Somewhat surprisingly, it shows Osbert among the witnesses of David’s famous inquest into the property of Glasgow cathedral.53 He appears again around 1136, witnessing David I’s foundation charter for the Cistercians of Melrose.54 One may perhaps speculate that Osbert would have been ready to settle in southern Scotland – or at any rate to add a Scottish estate to his English ones – if the opportunity had offered itself. King David could be prodigal in his dispersal of royal demesne, but he was either not able or not prepared to confiscate the estates of the native landowners of the Borders in order to reward foreign incomers, however eager these might be to offer their services. Thus Stewarts and Bruces, Morvilles, Avenels, Lindsays and Souleses might be certain of a share in the king’s generosity and of their place in Scottish history, but de Broys and Grimbalds, de Braoses and Engaines did not secure a foothold – nor, apparently, did the pre-Conquest Ardens. For a long time to come, historians will argue as to the nature of what has commonly been called the Gothic Revival. Few would dispute the full flood of revival in the church buildings of Augustus Pugin, but that is not until the 1830s or ’40s. Comparably late, and unquestionably ‘Gothick’, was that great romantic wash-out of August 1839, the Eglinton Tournament. Would we feel so convinced about revival in the case of Strawberry Hill of the 1750s or see it merely as a joke or

49 50

Duncan, Earliest Scottish Charters, 103–18; idem, ‘Yes, the Earliest’, 1–38. William de Saint-Calais died on Wednesday 2 January 1096 (Symeon of Durham, Libellus, 254–5). For his probably decisive role in the making of Domesday Book see P. Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in J. C. Holt, ed., Domesday Studies, Woodbridge 1987, 65–77. 51 Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. Watt, iii, 98–101. 52 Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, 8, 11, 26, 98–9, 103–5, 163, 196, 209. 53 Charters of David I, no. 15 (p. 60, col. 1), datable to 1120–4. 54 Ibid., no. 120 (p. 111, col. 1), datable to c.1136.

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architectural jeu d’esprit? But then what do we make of Inveraray Castle,55 begun (by an English architect) in the earlier 1740s? Professor Charles McKean has lately demonstrated56 how Janus-like Inveraray is – in one direction Roger Morris and William and John Adam were pushing forward with somewhat false notions of medieval magnatial power, in the opposite direction Morris at least was reproducing Patrick Smyth’s ‘bonny strong house’ of Methven near Perth, an exceedingly plain rectangular building of the 1670s but embellished at each corner with a ‘medieval’ round tower. It seems to me that just as the Gentry were always rising so the Gothic was always reviving. There can surely be no doubt whatever that one manifestation of Gothic revival lay in the field of pedigree-making, titles of honour and the elaboration of heraldry. All that was clearly there in both England and Scotland in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and the creation of the order of baronet by King James VI and I might almost be taken as the symbol of this Gothic enthusiasm for a chivalrous and chivalric past which had perhaps never quite existed. I do not know who it was in England who first boasted that his ancestors ‘came with the Conqueror’ or who claimed this for other families. If it was one of the antiquaries or heralds of Tudor times he was not first in the field. Famously, in the 1270s, John earl Warenne had rebuffed the Quo Waranto inquisitors by producing a rusty sword and telling them that that was his warrant: ‘My ancestors came with William the Bastard and conquered their lands with the sword.’57 There was no element of revival here, Gothic or otherwise – the earl was dealing in plain fact; his sword was to be tested twenty years later, when he and his army were vanquished by William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. The Scots had no wish to be outdone by the English in the antiquity of their claims; they too had their antiquaries and their heralds. But for his ancestors to have come with the Conqueror could be no proper boast for a Scots lord or gentleman – it was better to have been a companion of the Atheling or Saint Margaret. The heraldry expert Alexander Nisbet (1657–1725) exploited this desire for an illustrious ancestry in his System of Heraldry (1722),58 which in turn owed much to the polymath lawyer Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, whose armorial treatise was published in 1680.59 But if we look for the source of this learning and to some extent Gothic fantasising we find it in no other than the Dundonian Hector Boece, humanist and friend of Erasmus, principal of the new university of Aberdeen, hardly the kind of man to usher in any Gothic Revival. His Scotorum historia was published at Paris in 1526,60 long before the Elizabethan and Jacobean heralds and genealogists were busy in England fabricating pedigrees and concocting bogus coats of arms. Moreover, Boece himself was born in the 1460s, so if we think of him as reinventing the middle ages we are surely in difficulties.

55

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Argyll, an Inventory of the Monuments 7, Mid Argyll and Cowal, 1992, 370. Roger Morris died in 1749, William Adam in 1748; John Adam was in charge 1749–61. 56 C. McKean, The Scottish Chateau, Stroud 2001, 258. 57 F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, Oxford 1953, 521 and n. 2. M. Prestwich, Edward I, London 1988, 259–62, seems inclined to give more credence to the Warenne story than did Sir Maurice Powicke. 58 I have used the Mercat Press reprint of the 1816 edition of Nisbet, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1984. 59 Reprinted in The Works of George Mackenzie, with many learned treatises etc., 2 vols, Edinburgh 1716–22. 60 Scotorum Historiae a prima gentis origine etc. etc. . . . impensis autem nobilis et praedocti viri Hectoris Boethii Deidonani a quo sunt et condita et edita, Paris 1526.

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What Boece has to say may be summed up as follows.61 Malcolm III – Maelcoluim Ceannmór – brought in the earliest Scottish surnames. After he had conquered England, William the Bastard proscribed all those he judged to be friends of Edgar the Atheling, who fled to Scotland, where they were welcomed and given land. Their surnames were: Lindsay, Vaux, Ramsay, Lovel, Touris [Towers, connected with Inverleith?],62 Prestoun, Sandelandis, Bissart [= Bisset], Soulis, Wardlaw, Maxol [= Maxwell], and many others unspecified. Many also, Boece tells us, came with Margaret from Hungary – Crichton, Fotheringham, Giffard, Maule, Borthwick. There were also, surely much more convincingly, families from France: Fraser, Sinclair, Boswell, Mowat, Montgomery, Campbell, Boyce, Betoun, Taillefer (Telfer?) and Bothwell. The lists duly appear in Boece’s translators, Bellenden and Stewart, not without copying errors.63 They were also picked up by John Leslie, whose popular History of Scotland (1578) owes much to Boece. After giving Boece’s brief list of Hungarian immigrants Leslie, perhaps not surprisingly, adds: ‘amang quhom war Bartholmew Leslie, quha throuch nobilitie and stout courage was honorable amang the rest, quhais quicknes of Ingine, ablenes of mynd, valzeantnes of body and fercenes of force, King Malcolme meruelet sa mekle, that in seiging the castell of Edinburgh and in all battellis of ony affecte, he usit his Ingine. Of this hous of the Leslies are sprung up, mony baith vertuous, bauld and victorious.’64 It is interesting to see that Bishop Leslie believed that the earliest known ancestor of his family was called Bartholomew. The earliest Leslie known to record scholars is Malcolm son of Bertolf, Bertold or Bartolf, flourishing at the end of the twelfth century,65 and there can be little doubt that the unfamiliar Bartolf, probably Flemish, underlies Leslie’s Bartholomew. I return to Alexander Nisbet, who made full use of both Boece and Leslie and indeed embellished Leslie’s story of his ancestor Bartholomew. He was, says Nisbet, ‘the son of Walter de Leshlin, from a castle so called in Hungary where he was born, and a near friend to Margaret, Queen to Malcolm Canmore, who came to Scotland with her, and got several lands there.’66 Nisbet throws in the families of Drummond, Edmonstone of that ilk and Livingston of Callendar.67 He also has the Melvilles coming from Hungary,68 but that is because John Bellenden, who translated Boece’s Latin into Scots for the benefit of King James V, mistook the name Maul for

61 62

Bk 12, fol. CCLXIIIIv, fol. CCLXVIv. G. F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland, New York 1946, s.v. Towers. This family is believed to have settled in Scotland in the fourteenth century. 63 The history and chronicles of Scotland, written in Latin by Hector Boece canon of Aberdeen, and translated by John Bellenden, archdean of Moray and canon of Ross, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1821, ii, 280–1; William Stewart, The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland, ed. W. B. Turnbull, RS, 1858, ii, 674–5. 64 The historie of Scotland wrytten first in Latin by the most reuerend and worthy Jhone Leslie, and translated in Scottish by Father James Dalrymple, ed. E. G. Cody, 2 vols, Scottish Text Society, 1888, i, 311. 65 The Chartulary of the Abbey of Lindores, ed. J. Dowden, Scottish History Society, 1903, 262, 284; K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, Edinburgh 1985, 84, 87–8. 66 Nisbet, System of Heraldry, ii, 86. 67 Ibid., 60, 241, 388. Nisbet evidently took his statements about Drummond and Livingston from the Genealogical Notes on Ancient Scottish Families made by (Sir) George Mackenzie, thought to have been written in the 1670s, Edinburgh: Lyon Office, MS LL 23, pp. 41–3, 108–111. Mackenzie’s Notes have never been published, and I would like to thank Dr Jean Munro for bringing them to my attention. Unfortunately Mackenzie seldom if ever gives the source of any of his statements, but it is clear that he used Hector Boece. 68 Nisbet, System of Heraldry, 28.

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Melville.69 It is surely of interest to reflect that of the eight candidates I have enumerated as companions of the Atheling, either directly or at one remove, not one is mentioned by Boece or his followers. It is of course easy to feel impatience with all the genealogical rubbish which I have briefly sketched. What always used to surprise me was the sheer endurance of the rubbish in what passed for scholarly publications. Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms (1846–1931),70 was the general editor and a principal inspirer of the Scots Peerage, published in nine volumes between 1904 and 1914.71 We can hardly doubt that the publishers and the great majority of contributors intended the Scots Peerage to be a work of the highest standards of scholarship recognised a century ago. Yet at the beginning of the article on Drummond in volume VII we find this identification of the family’s founder: ‘Maurice, a Hungarian of noble birth who commanded the Dromond or fast ship in which Edgar the Atheling and his sister Margaret came to Scotland’.72 The author was Lady Edith Drummond. To be fair, Lady Edith would have found this nonsense in George Mackenzie’s unpublished genealogical notes73 which, perhaps understandably, give no source for the Drummond story. Before we feel any sense of superiority we might reflect that in 2002 just as much as in 1902 we do not treat historical evidence or critical analysis of that evidence on the same footing as we treat evidence from the world of pure or applied science.

Postscript I am grateful to Mr A. Hodge for pointing out that the chronicle preserved at Huntingdon Priory, from which extracts were provided for Edward I in 1291, states that Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, was father of Margaret queen of Scots and Edgar (the Atheling) and that Edgar was father of Margaret, of whom was born Henry called Lupellus, i.e. Lovel. Margaret’s mother is not named, but Margaret herself was evidently married to Ralph Lovel II of Castle Cary, secondly to Thomas de Londres, both of whom held estates in southern Scotland. See F. Palgrave, Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland (London 1837), 100; Anderson, Early Sources, ii, 28; Regesta Regum Scottorum, ii, 164, 166, 179, 199, 241.

69 70

Bellenden, The history and chronicles, ii, 281. Boece (as cited in n. 60), fol. CCLXVI, has Maul. Balfour Paul was not included in the Dictionary of National Biography, and the Scottish Historical Review had ceased publication before his death. An obituary notice appeared in The Scotsman, 16 September 1931. 71 The Scots Peerage, founded on Wood’s edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, containing an historical and genealogical account of the nobility of that kingdom, ed. Sir James Balfour Paul, Lord Lyon King of Arms, 9 vols, Edinburgh 1904–14. The first two volumes were reviewed by Vicary Gibbs, with comparative leniency, in SHR 3, 1906, 79–84. 72 Scots Peerage, vii, 1910, 28. This article, ‘Drummond, Earl of Perth’, was the work of Lady Edith Drummond. 73 Edinburgh: Lyon Office, MS LL 23, p. 42.

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The Absence of Regnal Years from Charters of Kings of Scots

THE ABSENCE OF REGNAL YEARS FROM THE DATING CLAUSE OF CHARTERS OF KINGS OF SCOTS, 1195–12221 Dauvit Broun The year 1195 witnessed a clutch of curious decisions by William I. Although these were not directly related to each other, they were all concerned in different ways with Scotland’s interaction with England. The most striking decision is relayed to us by Roger of Howden,2 who tells us, during his account of events in June 1195, that in this year King William fell ill in the royal ‘vill’ at Clackmannan, and decided that Otto of Brunswick, King Richard I’s nephew, should marry his eldest daughter, Margaret, and succeed him as king of Scots, despite the fact that there was already a male heir, William’s brother, David earl of Huntingdon.3 This, it transpires, was an imaginative attempt to break the impasse over William’s claim to Northumbria, which William had pressed unsuccessfully while staying at Richard I’s court the previous year.4 The plan faltered in the end only when William’s queen, Ermengarde, became pregnant and William hoped for a son.5 The second decision is much less surprising: this was the renewal of the Scottish coinage recorded in the Chronicle of Melrose in its annal for 1195.6 As a result, pennies produced in Scottish mints once again resembled English pennies, whose design had been altered in the recoinage of 1180, featuring a double short cross on 1

I am very grateful to Huw Pryce for providing full and helpful references which have greatly improved my discussion of the charters of rulers of Gwynedd, and for reading through the paper and offering helpful comments, and to Keith Stringer for saving me from grievous error. I am also grateful to John Hudson for discussion of some key points. I remain, of course, responsible for any blemishes or shortcomings. I am also very grateful to Nerys Ann Jones for her continuing support and encouragement, and for making her intimate knowledge of Prydydd y Moch available to me. 2 Howden himself became directly involved: A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Roger of Howden and Scotland, 1187–1201’, in Church, Chronicle and Learning in Medieval and Early Renaissance Scotland. Essays Presented to Donald Watt on the Occasion of the Completion of the Publication of Bower’s Scotichronicon, ed. Barbara E. Crawford, Edinburgh 1999, 135–59, at 139; John Gillingham, ‘The Travels of Roger of Howden and his Views of the Irish, Scots and Welsh’, ANS 20 1997 (1998), 151–69, at 158. 3 Howden, Chronica iii, 298–9; translated in A. O. Anderson, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers A.D.500–1286, London 1908, reprinted with foreword and corrections by M. O. Anderson, Stamford 1991, 315. 4 Howden, Chronica iii, 243, 249–50; Anderson, Scottish Annals, 311, 314. The plan was that Otto and Margaret and their heirs should be given Northumbria and the county of Carlisle, and that, in the meantime, William would gain possession of Northumbria and the county of Carlisle and Richard would hold Lothian in lieu of Otto. 5 Howden, Chronica iii, 308; Anderson, Scottish Annals, 316. Presumably it had dawned on William, now that consciousness of his own mortality had receded after the shock of his illness at Clackmannan, that his plan would mean that any son he might have in the future would be barred from succeeding him as king, a situation that would almost certainly have been politically and personally unbearable. 6 A. O. and M. O. Anderson, eds, The Chronicle of Melrose from the Cottonian Manuscript, Faustina B ix in the British Museum: a complete and full-size facsimile in collotype, London 1936, 49; A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. 500–1286, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1922, ii, 343.

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the reverse.7 The change is perfectly understandable, given that most coin in circulation in Scotland was English. What is curious is why it was decided upon in 1195, and not earlier.8 It is notable that later changes in the design of English pennies were reproduced much more promptly.9 The third curious decision takes us back to Clackmannan, probably shortly after Easter.10 There, probably by 17 April, a standard form of dating royal charters was determined which, with some very rare exceptions, was adhered to until it began to be modified in 1221. This, like the recoinage, also involved a delayed adoption of English practice; the particular puzzle here, though, is why English example was not followed more diligently. From the outset of Richard I’s reign (even before his coronation on 3 September 1189),11 English royal charters conferring or confirming perpetuities concluded with a dating clause giving the place, the day of the month, and the regnal year; this was preceded by a statement, beginning with the words per manum, identifying the chancery official who produced the charter. It has long been recognised that this was, in effect, a less elaborate version of the dating clause in papal solemn privileges and that something very similar was found in French royal diplomas.12 Before Richard I’s reign it had been customary for royal charters to finish with a place-date only; a time-date was a rare luxury, appearing only sporadically, and in various forms. There are also a few charters with a per manum clause towards the end of Henry II’s reign.13 The practice adopted by Scottish royal clerks was a much less elaborate version of Richard I’s dating clause. From then on, with only one or two exceptions before the end of William’s reign, royal charters were given a time-date as well as the usual place-date.14 The time-date, however, consisted of only the day of the month (e.g. 29 July): there are no examples where the day of month is followed by the regnal year or the year of the Incarnation. Professor Barrow has shown, moreover, that for the remainder of William’s reign the day of month time-date almost always took the same form in those charters which survive as contemporary single sheets.15 There is

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I. A. Stewart, The Scottish Coinage, with Supplement, London 1967, 10, 12. The Scottish penny was not an exact copy of the English: it had stars in the angles of the cross, rather than a cross of pellets. 8 This was potentially more serious than, say, the delay in putting King Alexander II’s head on Scottish silver pennies: William’s head continued to be struck for about fifteen years after his death: see J. D. Bateson, Coinage in Scotland, London 1997, 42–3. Presumably a King William penny would have looked perfectly authentic to Scottish traders and consumers in Alexander II’s reign, regardless of whether it had been minted in 1200 or 1240. 9 Stewart, The Scottish Coinage, 16, 18, 20. The next major change in design in English pennies, the adoption of a long double cross in 1247, was implemented in Scotland in 1250. There was even less of a delay between the introduction of the single long cross penny by Edward I in 1279 and its adoption in Scotland. 10 Easter Day was 2 April: King William would presumably have celebrated this in a major church, rather than at Clackmannan. 11 Pierre Chaplais, English Royal Documents King John–King Henry VI, 1199–1461, Oxford 1971, 14. 12 C. R. Cheney, English Bishops’ Chanceries 1100–1250, Manchester 1950, 86–7. 13 Chaplais, English Royal Documents, 14; V. H. Galbraith, ‘Seven Charters of Henry II at Lincoln Cathedral’, Antiqs. Journ. 12, 1932, 269–78. 14 G. W. S. Barrow, ed., with the collaboration of W. W. Scott, Regesta Regum Scottorum ii, The Acts of William I King of Scots 1165–1214, Edinburgh 1971, 82. The only certain exception is no. 405, datable to 1198x1200, a re-grant of lands to William son of Philip de Valognes (who had been William’s chamberlain). It survives as a contemporary single sheet by a royal scribe identified by Geoffrey Barrow as Hugh de Sigillo (ibid., 89). The omission appears to have been a simple oversight. Professor Duncan’s redating of no. 365 to late 1195 (Duncan, ‘Roger of Howden and Scotland’, 135–9) would make this another exception. See below, 55–6, for further discussion of this pivotal charter. 15 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 82. The form is of the type v. die Maii.

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only one example of a per manum clause, which, instead of preceding the dating clause (as in English royal charters), follows it; indeed, it has been placed at the foot of the document and appears detached from the rest of the text.16 Another highly unusual feature in this particular charter is that the per manum clause is followed by the year of the Incarnation, which is thus quite separate from the day of month. Before the simple time-date was adopted in 1195, William’s charters had only ever sported a place-date: earlier sporadic and varied attempts to supply a time-date were abandoned in William’s reign.17 It is likely that the last extant charter before the adoption of a time-date is the one with a Clackmannan place-date which Professor Barrow suggests, in his edition of William’s acta, was produced in ‘1195?’, publishing it immediately before the first charter with a time-date.18 This can be affirmed as a likely terminus post quem not only by the Clackmannan place-date (previous charters with a Clackmannan place-date are no later than about 1170),19 but by the fact that the witness list includes two individuals who otherwise appear frequently in royal charters with the new time-date formula: this charter is the only occasion in which William de Valognes, who succeeded his father, Philip, as king’s chamberlain in 1215, and Alexander son of Thor, sheriff of Clackmannan, are found in a royal charter without a time-date.20 Before we get too attached to Clackmannan’s special place in the history of Scottish diplomatic, however, it should be stressed that the nature of the dating clause makes it possible that the charter dated ‘at Clackmannan, on 17 April’, regarded as the first extant example of this time-date, was not from 1195: it could conceivably be as late as 1199.21 It is necessary to note, therefore, that the earliest certain example of a charter with the new time-date is one produced at Jedburgh on 4 July 1195.22 There can be little doubt that the new standard dating clause in Scottish royal charters was adopted in the light of recent practice in Richard I’s chancery. It may be guessed that William’s entourage in his two visits to Richard’s court would have had the opportunity to become aware of English chancery practice; certainly William, on each occasion, departed with a document from Richard I in his hands (the Quitclaim of Canterbury, 5 December 1189, and a letter patent of 17 April 1194 establishing

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Ibid., no. 434. This bears comparison with contemporary French royal diplomas: see A. Giry, Manuel de Diplomatique, Paris 1894, 755. I am grateful to Huw Pryce for this suggestion. There is one episcopal charter (of Bishop Roger of St Andrews, 17 June 1200) which has the complete set of per manum clause, date of month, and pontifical year: Thomas Thomson, ed., Liber Cartarum Prioratus Sancti Andree in Scotia, Edinburgh 1841, 153–4. Important studies of Scottish episcopal charters are N. F. Shead, ‘Scottish Bishops’ Acta before c.1250: St Andrews and Glasgow’, in Die Diplomatik der Bischofsurkunde vor 1250, ed. C. Haidacher and W. Köfler, Innsbruck 1995; and idem, ‘The Household and Chancery of the Bishops of Dunkeld, 1160s–1249’, in Church, Chronicle and Learning, ed. Barbara E. Crawford, 123–34. The dating clause of some English episcopal charters was modelled on that of royal charters, especially where the bishop had been a chancery official: see, for example, David M. Smith, ed., English Episcopal Acta iv, Lincoln 1186–1206, London 1986, xxxviii, and B. R. Kemp, ed., English Episcopal Acta, 18, Salisbury 1078–1217, London 1999, cii. The earliest examples are from the mid-1190s: see Cheney, English Bishops’ Chanceries, 83–5. 17 G. W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages, London 1992, 100. 18 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 375: it survives as a contemporary single sheet, and is the earliest attributed by Barrow to the royal scribe, Hugh de Sigillo (ibid., 89). Unfortunately this is the same scribe who accidentally omitted the time-date on one occasion: see n. 14, above. 19 Ibid., nos 102 (1165x72) and 103 (1165x70). 20 Ibid., ad indicem. For Alexander as sheriff of Clackmannan, see ibid., 64, n. 90. 21 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 376. It is witnessed by Hugh, the chancellor, who died on 10 July 1199. 22 Ibid., no. 379.

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arrangements for future visits of a king of Scots to the English royal court).23 Both documents, of course, sported the new English dating clause complete with regnal year as well as the day of the month. Now, it might not seem too odd that, when this dating clause was adopted and adapted by the Scottish royal chapel, the per manum clause was deemed to be dispensable. It appears very strange, however, that it was decided to eschew the regnal year completely, even in the most formal charters. The possibility cannot be denied absolutely that an occasional example might once have existed, like the lone surviving instance of the per manum clause. Nonetheless, in the face of the unanimous evidence of all 145 extant charter-texts for the remainder of William’s reign (50 of which are contemporary single sheets), and the 53 extant charter-texts of Alexander II before the dating clause began to be modified in 1221, it would not be unduly rash to assume that it was consciously determined that the regnal year should be avoided, and that this was adhered to scrupulously until the time-date came under review in 1221. The only serious attempt hitherto to account for the adoption of a time-date in Scottish royal charters serves, if anything, to heighten the sense that the failure to use regnal years was a curiously perverse decision. Geoffrey Barrow has commented that ‘it seems impossible to explain this practice [of using a time-date] save on the assumption that from this point in the reign onwards the clerks of the chapel began to copy acts on rolls which were made up, or freshly headed, for each regnal year’.24 Professor Barrow goes on, however, to note that ‘the form in which it was added . . . must have been slightly inadequate even for contemporary clerks’.25 If part of the intention was to provide a way of authenticating charters by enabling any single sheet to be matched with an enrolled copy, then this would, indeed, have been made unnecessarily difficult by omitting the regnal year from the single sheet itself. It would be a mistake, though, to put too much weight on this. It should be noted, for example, that safeguarding against forgery cannot have been the chief purpose of the patent rolls and close rolls maintained by the English chancery in the early thirteenth century; the close rolls were filled with copies of documents which typically included only the day of the month, and not the regnal year. The regnal year was also frequently omitted from the documents enrolled in the patent rolls. It was only in the third (and earliest) of the rolls maintained by the English chancery, the charter rolls, that each item was consistently adorned with the regnal year.26 The existence of some Scottish administrative records by 1195 is not in question. Unfortunately, this is impossible to quantify, given that all such records were lost when Edward I attempted to ship them down to England; but an inventory of the holdings in Edinburgh Castle was made in 1296 under the direction of Hugh Cressingham, Edward I’s treasurer in Scotland.27 One item can certainly be identified as earlier than 1200, and it can be inferred from another that records may have been kept as early as 1182 (if not earlier).28 Not surprisingly Treasurer Cressingham’s 23 Published in E. L. G. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328, London 1965, repr. Oxford 1970, 12–23. 24 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 58. 25 Ibid., 82. 26 Nonetheless, Henry III in 1272 felt able to pronounce that if the dating clause of a certain letter patent did not agree with his itinerary, then the document must be false: Chaplais, English Royal Documents, 18. 27 Thomas Thomson and Cosmo Innes, eds, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland i, Edinburgh 1844, 117–18. 28 The ‘roll of Abbot Archibald’ (concerned with ‘ancient renders in money and ancient waitings’) must refer to Archibald, abbot of Dunfermline from probably 1178 until his death in 1198, who appears in a number of charters as someone active on the king’s business: Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 58–9. The other item

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inventory is concerned principally with records of royal revenue. If we want to find any detail about rolls of other types of document, it is necessary to turn to an even more jejune inventory of the documents in Edinburgh Castle, compiled in 1292.29 Here mention is made of a large roll containing sixty-two ‘pieces’ which included, inter alia, copies of charters and confirmations by ‘various kings’; and another roll, consisting of twelve membranes, concerning ‘ancient charters’ and other documents from the reigns of William I and Alexander II.30 This is all very frustrating. It might be added, though, that where there is reference to the date of any rolls (and this is confined to those concerning royal revenue), there is no indication that regnal years were used. A.D. dates are the order of the day, except for one roll (at least) in which dates were also given according to a nineteen-year cycle.31 Even if it was agreed that some charters, at least, were enrolled from some point in King William’s reign onwards, it is questionable whether this can bear the burden of explaining the adoption of a time-date in Scottish royal charters. The adoption of time-dates by the English chancery has no obvious relationship with the practice of keeping copies. The first of the charter rolls belongs to the first year of John’s reign (1199–1200); a separate roll for letters patent was not begun until John’s third year; and the earliest extant roll for letters close, which is incomplete, is for John’s second year.32 The rolls of ancient charters are another kettle of fish: whatever their purpose was, it cannot be said to represent a systematic attempt at enrolment.33 The practice of giving each document issued by the chancery a time-date, initiated by Richard I, does not, therefore, have any apparent relationship with record keeping. There can, in any event, be no explanation within the practical concerns of day-to-day administration for the conscientious omission of regnal years by Scottish royal scribes. This, and indeed the whole issue of the adoption of a time-date as a regular feature of royal charters, naturally inhabits the world of charter diplomatic rather than recordkeeping. Thankfully, this means that the problem can be investigated by examining a considerable body of texts, and a critical mass of contemporary single sheets plus some well-preserved seals, rather than by groping in the inadequate traces of a lost archive. The most relevant background here is the development of Scottish royal charters in relation to their model, the charters of English kings. From the earliest charter of a Scottish king which may be discerned as the work of a royal scribe, it is clear that English royal charters provided ready-made exemplars of what a document in a king’s name might contain and what it might look like.34 A notable example of this in William’s reign is the adoption of Dei gratia in the royal style sometime between August 1173 and December 1174 soon after it had been adopted in English royal

is seven pieces containing accounts from 1202 to 1215, beginning with what is described as the ‘twentieth account of Philip’ (at which point some text has been lost): see ibid., 58, and esp. A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom, Edinburgh 1975, 214. 29 Thomson and Innes, eds, The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland i, 113–17 (with facsimile between 112 and 113). 30 Ibid., 114. 31 The earliest extant administrative records are some accounts for 1262–6: John Stuart with George Burnett, eds, The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. i, A.D. 1264–1359, Edinburgh 1878, 1–34. 32 Chaplais, English Royal Documents, 4, n. 1, where it is suggested that the series of close rolls may have begun in John’s first year. 33 Lionel Landon, ed., The Cartæ Antiquæ, Rolls 1–10, Printed from the Original MSS, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society vol. lv (ns vol. xvii), London 1939, xiii–xvii. 34 Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, 102.

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charters sometime between May 1172 and February 1173.35 Professor Barrow has regarded this change as ‘prompted by the king of Scots’ desire to demonstrate that he was as much a true king as Henry fitzEmpress’.36 Certainly, it is particularly poignant that the earliest use of the new royal style in an extant single sheet by one of King William’s scribes has Northampton as its place-date, which suggests, as Professor Barrow has pointed out, that the charter was produced sometime in December 1174 when William was on his way back from his humiliation at Falaise.37 As is well known, William had there agreed to become Henry II’s vassal for Scotland in a treaty in which a careful contrast was made throughout its prose between Henry as dominus rex and William as rex.38 There are, however, dangers in interpreting any change in charter practice in isolation. For example, later in the same decade Scottish royal clerks were not slow to follow their English counterparts in abandoning the ‘racial address’, which is last found in current use in a charter which may probably be dated to 1179.39 Professor Donaldson took this to mean that the ‘various races’ had now become ‘simply subjects of the king of Scots, and therefore themselves Scots’.40 This would anticipate a development which, in the English south-east of Scotland, is attested in the Chronicle of Melrose a century later.41 A less dramatic, but surely more plausible interpretation would be that here, as in other instances where the more intimate twists and turns of English chancery practice have been followed, the main concern was that a Scottish royal charter should maximise its credibility by conforming with the readily apparent exemplar of royal authority provided by documents of the English Crown. A similar motivation could also account for the adoption of Dei gratia so soon after it became a regular feature of English chancery practice. Given the importance of English royal charters as a model, it is especially noteworthy when Scottish practice appears deliberately to have chosen a different course. A particularly striking example, as far as the charter text is concerned, is the increasing preference in the reigns of David I and Mael Coluim IV for probis hominibus in the address as the catch-all term for the king’s subjects, rather than fidelibus suis favoured by English chancery scribes.42 It is difficult to determine the 35 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 75–6 (where the earlier sporadic appearance of Dei gratia is also noted); Actes Henri II introduction, 12–38. 36 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 76. 37 Ibid., no. 146 (comment). 38 Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, 28. 39 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 77; for England see Actes Henri II introduction, 208. The charter of probably 1179 is Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 218, which must date from sometime after Arnold was blessed as abbot of Melrose on 6 January 1179: D. E. R. Watt and N. F. Shead, The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries, Edinburgh 2001, 149. The charter confirms Walter the Steward’s grants to Paisley, and is unlikely therefore to be much later than Walter’s death in 1177. An isolated late example of the racial address is no. 507 (c.1212); this feature has been inherited from its model (no. 179, with editorial date-limits of 1173xc.1191), of which it is almost an exact copy (except for the witnesses and place-date). This charter is discussed in more detail below, 55. 40 Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: the Shaping of a Nation, 3rd edn, Nairn 1993, 23. Note also Alexander Grant, ‘Aspects of National Consciousness in Medieval Scotland’, in Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism in the European Past, ed. Claus Bjørn, Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer, Copenhagen 1994, 68–95, who comments (at 79) that this change ‘reflects the development of Scottishness and, south of the Border, Englishness which transcended ethnic and linguistic origins’. 41 Dauvit Broun, ‘Defining Scotland and the Scots before the Wars of Independence’, in Image and Identity: the Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages, ed. Dauvit Broun, Richard Finlay and Michael Lynch, Edinburgh 1998, 4–17, at 9. 42 G. W. S. Barrow, ed., Regesta Regum Scottorum i, The Acts of Malcolm IV King of Scots 1153–1165, together with Scottish Royal Acts prior to 1153 not included in Sir Archibald Lawrie’s ‘Early Scottish

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significance of this. It is much easier, however, to appreciate differences in the visual representation of kingship on the seal. Professor Duncan has pointed out that, although the design of the portrayal of the king was modelled on the English royal seal, William I and his son Alexander II (1214–49) were represented without a crown: indeed, it is likely that neither Alexander I (1107–24), David I (1124–53) nor Mael Coluim IV (1153–65) sported a crown on their seals either.43 It is also striking that the legend advertised them as Deo rectore rex Scottorum, ‘by God the ruler, king of Scots’, rather than Dei gratia, ‘by the grace of God’, as in the English royal seal, and, as we have seen, despite the fact that Dei gratia had become part of the standard royal style in the charter text itself from no later than December 1174 onwards.44 Professor Duncan makes the convincing suggestion that the avoidance of Dei gratia on the seal in conjunction with the lack of a crown on the depiction of the king in majesty ‘indicates that the designer of the seal had in mind the absence of anointing and coronation from the ceremony of royal inauguration’.45 It might be objected that the lack of coronation and anointment did not prevent Alexander III (1249–86) from sporting a crown on his seals, or from Dei gratia replacing Deo rectore in the remarkable small seal which was created for his minority.46 It has been argued, however, that Alexander III’s inauguration, far from being ‘in all its main features derived from a pre-twelfth century situation’,47 was carefully choreographed in order to make up for the fact that the pope had refused to grant anointment and coronation;48 this, for instance, could explain why the king was taken not to the moothill, but to a cross in the graveyard, to be placed on the Stone of Scone, and also why the earls and other nobles laid their garments at the feet of the newly enthroned king, calling to mind the inauguration of King Jehu in the Book of Kings, in which we are told that the people took off their cloaks and placed it under Jehu’s feet as soon as Jehu was announced as anointed by God as king over Israel.49 By this stage there was evidently a conviction Charters’, Edinburgh 1960, 73. It remained a standard phrase through to the reigns of William II and Anne: Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, 104. Another important difference is that, although rex Anglie replaced rex Anglorum as the English royal style from 1199, rex Scottorum was retained by Scottish kings (with the exception of John, 1292–1304). For discussion, see Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, 35–6. 43 There is some controversy about whether there is a crown depicted on the matrix of the seal used by Alexander I, reused for David I, and copied for Mael Coluim IV. The best extant example is of Alexander I. According to W. de Gray Birch, History of Scottish Seals, vol. i, Stirling and London 1905, 19, Alexander I wears a ‘close-fitting, cap-shaped crown’, adding that ‘the details of the crown are very indistinct’. J. H. Stevenson and M. Wood, Scottish Heraldic Seals, Glasgow 1940, vol. i, 3, refer simply to a ‘small crown’. Most recently, G. W. S. Barrow, The Charters of King David I: the Written Acts of David I King of Scots, 1124–53 and of his son Henry Earl of Northumberland, 1139–52, Woodbridge 1999, 30, refers to David I as depicted crowned on his seal. Professor Duncan, however, has stated that Alexander I on his seal ‘wears a simple hair-band with meaningless pendants’: Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom, 553. I have examined Professor Duncan’s slide of Alexander I’s seal, and am inclined to agree with him that there is no crown. I am grateful to John Hudson for bringing this problem to my attention. 44 Duncan, Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom, 553. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 556; Grant G. Simpson, ‘Kingship in Minature: a Seal of Minority of Alexander III, 1249–1257’, in Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community. Essays Presented to G. W. S. Barrow, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer, Edinburgh 1993, 131–9. 47 John Bannerman, ‘The King’s Poet and the Inauguration of Alexander III’, SHR 68, 1989, 120–49, at 133; quoted in Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours, 37. 48 Dauvit Broun, ‘The Origin of the Stone of Scone as a National Icon’, in The Stone of Destiny, ed. David Breeze, Thomas Owen Clancy and Richard Welander, Edinburgh, forthcoming. 49 2 Kings 9, verses 12–13: Broun, ‘The Origin of the Stone of Scone’, 192. The biblical parallel was first noticed in James Cooper, Four Scottish Coronations, Special Issue of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society and the Glasgow Ecclesiological Society, Aberdeen 1902, 9; he also suggested a parallel with the reception the disciples gave Christ described in Matthew 21, verse 8.

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among those closest to the kingship that the king of Scots should be portrayed as a king in the fullest sense, enjoying all the established symbols of royal dignity insofar as this could be engineered in the face of the papacy’s failure to cooperate.50 As far as the absence of coronation and anointment is concerned, it might be objected that this was beyond the control of the Scots; it might therefore be dangerous to see the lack of a crowned king and avoidance of Dei gratia in the seal’s legend before 1249 as indicative of limited aspirations, rather than simply a willingness to accept reality. A charter-text, however, offered a variety of opportunities to indicate kingship in the fullest sense in ways which need not have been limited by the lack of coronation and anointment; moreover, it seems that there was greater freedom of expression, insofar as it was obviously deemed appropriate to adopt Dei gratia as a regular feature in the charter-text but not on the seal. If there was a consistent desire to present King William as the equal of the king of England, then there was certainly scope to do so. The overall impression, however, is that King William and his chapel of scribes did not see themselves as in the same league as the English king. For example, the adoption of Dei gratia in the royal style must be balanced against a failure to employ the first person plural, the ‘royal we’, which was a routine feature of the charters of Richard I and his successors, lending greater dignity to the written utterances of the monarch.51 Again, Scottish royal scribes cannot have been ignorant of this development, and would surely have appreciated its significance. The fact, then, that King William persisted until the end of his reign in speaking in the first person singular in his charters, with only very few exceptions, suggests that the Scottish royal chapel had consciously decided not to recalibrate the prose of royal charters in this way, and were ready to accept that, in this respect at least, the king of Scots would appear a notch lower than the king of England. Unfortunately matters cannot be allowed to rest there. There are some exceptions to the use of the singular ‘I’ and ‘my’ which it would be indecent to ignore, and which demand some explanation. This is particularly pressing in the case of one charter where the ‘royal we’ is pervasive. This charter (which I will refer to as no. 493, its number in Barrow’s edition of William’s acta) has led to the suggestion that there was a time when ‘the royal chapel had made a firm decision to change from the older singular usage to the newer plural usage’.52 The charter is dated at Stirling on 22 June, probably 1210, and confirms agreements between Melrose and Kelso abbeys. What makes no. 493 particularly significant is that it survives as a contemporary single sheet by a royal scribe. If this does show a change of policy, however, Professor Barrow acknowledges that it must have been brief. If we follow Barrow’s chronological arrangement of the charters, then there are no further examples of the plural of majesty in the nine charters after no. 493 surviving as contemporary single sheets produced by royal scribes: moreover, all nine are by the same scribe as no. 493 itself.53 An examination of the very few other charters of King William which use the first person plural suggests another explanation for its appearance in no. 493; namely that a draft text, including the plural of majesty, was produced elsewhere and was taken to 50

It has been pointed out that this includes the depiction of Alexander III holding a sceptre on his ‘seal of minority’, a feature absent from Scottish royal seals since 1107: Simpson, ‘Kingship in Miniature’, 138. 51 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 82–3; Chaplais, English Royal Documents, 13 and n. 6. 52 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 83. 53 The scribe has been identified by Barrow as Gilbert of Stirling, whose career in the royal chapel spanned more than twenty-five years, beginning in the late 1190s: ibid., 90.

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the royal chapel for copying and sealing. (By this stage all charters appear to have been produced physically by the royal chapel: see below.) This would imply that some of the king’s subjects were prepared to go further than the royal chapel itself in the dignity accorded to their king in the prose of these charters. Leaving no. 493 aside, there are four other charters with the plural of majesty (not including one which is suspect and another which has the plural form inconsistently in the first dispositive clause, and the singular in the second).54 Three of the four are for the bishop of Glasgow and his cathedral establishment, and were evidently drafted by Glasgow clerks. This is obvious in one case, dated at Roxburgh and datable to sometime in or between 1189 and 1195,55 because the text is so untypical: it is, in Geoffrey Barrow’s words, ‘couched in an altogether unusually rhetorical style and could almost be said to constitute one long harangue’.56 The two other Glasgow examples, one dated at Jedburgh with date limits of 1173 and c.1191, the other at Stirling on 6 July, probably 1212,57 are almost verbatim copies of a charter of Mael Coluim IV whose harangue betrays the text’s origins in the scriptorium of the beneficiary, rather than the royal chapel.58 It would appear that, in these cases, the text was presented on each occasion by the bishop and copied by a royal scribe (if it was not simply recopied by one of the bishop’s clerks and presented for sealing), with only the witness list and dating clause being cast afresh. The fourth and final example is a charter which poses some problems which have recently come under Professor Duncan’s scrutiny.59 This is a confirmation of Bishop Jocelin of Glasgow’s grant of a church to Melrose on the king’s advice following a dispute between the king and the bishop over patronage. Its place-date is Melrose. Professor Barrow gives it a date-range of 1193x1195, with a tentative preference for 1193, while Professor Duncan has argued for late 1195, after 10 September, despite the lack of a time-date and other hidden difficulties.60 The dating is important because the scribe has been 54

Ibid., 83. The suspect charter is no. 505 (a letter to King John of England in an English chancery hand of the mid-thirteenth century); the charter with both plural and singular usage is no. 388, and survives only in Thomson and Innes, ed., The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland i, 89. Barrow notes (in his comment on no. 388) that the substance of the charter, addressed to Geoffrey Blundus and the burgesses of Inverness, resembles a Flemish liberty more than an English one; this observation relates to its first dispositive sentence in particular. He also notes that a Geoffrey Blundus was a citizen of London in the household of Richard I’s chancellor. Could a draft of the first dispositive sentence have been produced on behalf of Geoffrey and his Flemish colleagues, which reflected their expectations of royal prose? 55 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 316. 56 Ibid., 79. 57 Ibid., nos 179 and 507. 58 Ibid., 79: the archetype is Barrow, ed., Regesta i, no. 258. 59 Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 365, where it is noted (in the comment) that this seems to confirm a transaction noted in the Chronicle of Melrose s.a. 1193, although the confirmation by Glasgow cathedral chapter cannot be earlier than 10 September 1195. Duncan, ‘Roger of Howden and Scotland’, 138–9 (see next note for discussion). 60 Professor Duncan’s argument is that it was produced on the same occasion as the charter by Bishop Jocelin (surviving in duplicate contemporary single sheets) and the charter of Glasgow cathedral chapter relating to the same transaction (Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber Cartarum Sancte Marie de Melros, Edinburgh 1837, nos 121 and 122); the latter must date from after 10 September and before early December 1195. The crux, he argues, is that the seals on all these documents, including the royal charter, have been finished in the same way, and that this is ‘unique’ compared with other examples of William’s seal in the Melrose archive. The Melrose comparison would not, however, be relevant if (as is likely) the charters were produced by Glasgow scribes (as the royal charter probably was). As far as the royal charter itself is concerned, there are two unanswered difficulties (beyond the lack of a time-date). One hinges on the scribe, and is discussed in n. 62, below. The other is the appearance of Walter de Berkeley, rather than Philip de Valognes, as royal chamberlain in the witness list. Philip de Valognes (who is also a witness) was chamberlain c.1193–1214 (Barrow, Regesta ii, 33): the date c.1193 for the end of Berkeley’s tenure of office, of

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identified as Gervase, who began his career as a clerk of Bishop Jocelin before transferring to the royal chapel ‘c.1194–5’.61 Is this, then, an example of Gervase’s work as an episcopal clerk or a royal scribe? The simplest answer may lie in the clear attempt to give the script the appearance of a papal document, something which would be more in character for an episcopal clerk than a royal scribe.62 Certainly the influence of a papal model would be sufficient to explain the unusual use of the plural of majesty. According to this line of argument this would be another example of a royal charter drafted by a Glasgow clerk featuring the plural usage. Returning again to no. 493, there is one internal feature which could lend weight to the suggestion that the text was drafted by someone outside the royal chapel. This is found in the witness list, where King William’s sons, Alexander and Robert of London, are each referred to as filius domini regis. The usual formula is filius meus (which would have become filius noster in this case). The choice of words would at least be consistent with a document drafted by someone who was unaccustomed to speaking for the king, as it were, and who naturally referred to him in an objective way, rather than in the first person as royal clerks had learnt to do. It would be difficult to insist on this feature as certain evidence that a text was drafted outside the royal chapel.63 It is instructive, however, in the case of King William’s brother David and his son Alexander, at least, that out of the seventy royal charters in which they appear as a witness, they are described as ‘the king’s brother’ or ‘the king’s son’ (rather than ‘my brother’ or ‘my son’) in only five. Four of these five charters were almost certainly drafted by the beneficiary. Two are even in the hand of a beneficiary’s scribe (the same Melrose scribe in both cases);64 the other two (which survive only as cartulary copies) are general confirmations for religious houses (Dunfermline and Arbroath) which are each modelled very closely on previous general confirmations,65 which points to a scenario similar to that suggested above for the Glasgow charters repeating an earlier text; moreover, the general confirmation for Dunfermline is, uniquely for William I, in the form of a diploma, a type favoured by Dunfermline for this kind of document.66 The only example that cannot be accounted for so confidently as a text drafted outside the royal chapel is a confirmation of a

course, is based on this charter. The suggestion that Valognes replaced Berkeley before 1195 is consistent, however, with his appearance as chamberlain in five charters without time-dates (none can be earlier than 1189), and with his appearance as chamberlain in four (possibly five) charters which were probably produced in and between 17 April and 17 September 1195. (In fact, he is chamberlain in what is likely to be the last extant charter before the time-date was introduced, as well as the probable first with a time-date: ibid., nos 375 and 376.) 61 Ibid., 88–9. 62 This is not broached directly in Duncan, ‘Roger of Howden and Scotland’, 138–9; however, he asks ‘Is there defiance or mockery in the way the king’s charter . . . apes the pope’s bull?’, which must mean that he regards Gervase as still an episcopal, not a royal, clerk. But this creates a problem for Duncan’s dating of this charter. If Gervase only became a royal clerk sometime in (or after) late 1195, then it would need to be explained why eight of the eleven single sheets in his hand, which he could only have produced as a royal scribe, have no time-date. 63 Note Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 209, a charter of 1178x95 confirming land held of Arbroath abbey by the king’s brewer, in which Robert of London appears in the witness list as filius regis. It survives only as a copy in an Arbroath cartulary. It is not inconceivable that this was produced by an Arbroath scribe, but there is no particular reason, beyond the use of filius regis, for suggesting that it was. 64 Ibid., nos 264 and 265. Barrow (at 88) comments that the scribe has affinities to other Melrose hands. No other royal charters are attributed to him. 65 Ibid., no. 513 (based on no. 197), and no. 30 (compare with Barrow, ed., Regesta i, no. 118). 66 See comment in ibid., 59–60; also Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 69.

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grant to Huntingdon priory in the first years of William’s reign; this also survives only as a cartulary copy.67 The lack of the regnal year in Scottish royal charters, after a time-date was adopted as a standard feature, can therefore be explained as a carefully calibrated statement of the kingship’s status. It was not simply that English chancery practice was followed only minimally. The key here is an important variation in the dating clause of papal documents (which was imitated by Richard I’s chancery), whereby the pontifical year was used consistently only for solemn privileges and grants of perpetuities. Ephemeral letters and instructions, in contrast, were typically endowed with a shorter dating clause in which the time-date was reduced to the day of the month. By the end of the twelfth century, therefore, the royal household would have been accustomed to associate time-date restricted to the day of month with documents of lesser significance emanating from the ultimate authority in Christendom. This, then, indicates where the Scottish kingship placed itself in the spectrum of prestige and authority: it did not claim to be a supreme power, but regarded itself as a kingship nonetheless, exhibiting a lesser kind of dignity in the diplomatic of its charters. This has obvious implications for what the adoption of the regnal year in Alexander II’s charters signified. It is noteworthy, moreover, that this occurred at about the same time as the plural of majesty became a regular feature: indeed, anno regni nostri was the formula used in the earliest charters which featured the regnal year in the time-date. Before examining this in a little more detail I should warn that the infrastructure for studying Alexander II’s charters has not yet been developed to the same exceptional standard of scholarship as Geoffrey Barrow has achieved for the charters of David I and his grandsons; the good news, though, is that the task of producing the Regesta Regum Scottorum volume for Alexander II is in the masterly hands of Keith Stringer. Until that is published, the best guide remains the Handlist of the Acts of Alexander II, 1214–1249 compiled by James Scoular, published in 1959. Although this is the product of a thorough trawl through all the obvious sources, it is possible that the odd charter may have been missed. The precise detail in what follows should therefore be regarded as provisional until the publication of Stringer’s Regesta Regum Scottorum vol. iii. It should also be said at the outset that the first extant document in Alexander II’s name to bear a regnal year cannot be regarded as representing a change of practice by the king’s chapel. This was a written undertaking Alexander gave to Henry III of England, at York on 15 June 1220, which was paired with a written undertaking by Henry to Alexander.68 Both documents are identical in terms of their diplomatic, which conforms with English practice, and were presumably drafted at the same time by an English chancery clerk. A year later Alexander was back in York, marrying Joanna, Henry III’s sister, on Saturday 19 June 1221. It is in connection with this occasion that we see the first clear sign of dissatisfaction with the dating-clause used by the royal chapel since 1195. On 18 June the tocher assigned by Alexander to Joanna was recorded in a charter which, as well as having the day of the month, had the novelty of an Anno Domini date in its time-date.69 This was not a flash in the pan. The same combination of AD date and day of the month was used in the next three charters in Scoular’s 67 68

Ibid., no. 51 (1165x71). Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera, Conventiones, Literæ et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica inter Reges Anglie et Alios . . ., vol. i, London 1704, 240–1. 69 James Scoular, Handlist of the Acts of Alexander II, 1214–1249, Edinburgh 1959, 16; Rymer, ed., Foedera i, 252.

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hand-list, each for a different beneficiary: the last was on 22 February 1222.70 By 20 April 1222 a new practice had been established: the regnal year displaced the AD date, and thereafter (at long last) it became a standard feature of the dating-clause of royal charters.71 A few months later the transition to a fuller expression of royalty was achieved when the plural of majesty was adopted as a standard feature after 10 July and in or before 21 July 1222.72 Finally, it is noteworthy that the regnal year appears regularly on brieves from at least 10 April 1224.73 There is, unfortunately, no way of telling whether there are any extant brieves from between April 1222 and April 1224 which lacked the regnal year: very few brieves survive, and among those that do survive from the first decade of Alexander’s reign, there are two which have been assigned date-limits of 1215x1225 by Scoular.74 At the end of this period of transition, from no later than mid-June 1221 to mid-July 1222, Alexander II’s charters had not become a carbon copy of current English chancery practice: for example, no attempt was made to introduce a per manum clause into the dating clause. Nonetheless, his written utterances had become that of a king in the fullest sense, at least insofar as the charter-text was concerned: on his seal, of course, Alexander remained uncrowned. The fact that the regnal year was adopted only after nearly a year’s experimentation with the AD date might, however, suggest that there was some hesitation. Once the ball was set rolling, though, it did not stop where it had arrived in mid-July 1222. The dating clause itself was altered so that the regnal year was no longer anno regni nostri but became anno regni domini regis: at first this formula was deployed intermittently, but by 24 April 1229 it had became a consistent feature.75 This was an indigenous development, without an English parallel, and remained a consistent feature for the remainder of Alexander II’s reign (although it did not long outlast it).76 An important perspective on these changes is offered by a brief consideration of the charters of the rulers of Gwynedd. They also attempted to improve the dignity of their charters, but did not go as far as Alexander II. What they did, and what they did not do, reinforces the impression that the consistent use of a time-date, and particularly the regnal year, was regarded as particularly significant in the period under review. It must be admitted, however, that the documents of the rulers of Gwynedd cannot be discussed with the same ease as those of their Scottish counterparts. There 70 Scoular, Handlist, 16–17; Cosmo Innes, ed., Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, Edinburgh 1837, no. 52 and Cartae Originales no. 4; Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1848–56, vol. i, no. 131. 71 Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber S. Marie de Calchou, Edinburgh 1846, no. 7; Scoular, Handlist, 17–49 (note that the undated acts, ibid., 50–4, are undated because the text is defective, most commonly because the witness list is lost and, along with it, the dating clause: see ibid., 1). 72 The earliest extant charter in which this had become a standard feature was produced on 21 July 1222, at Kinross (J. Raine, ed., The History and Antiquities of North Durham, London 1852, Appendix, no. 63, where the date is mistakenly given as 26 July: I am grateful to Keith Stringer for the correct date). The previous charter was produced on 10 July 1222 at Roxburgh (Innes, ed., Liber S. Marie de Calchou, no. 183). A rare return to the first person singular is found in an unpublished charter dated 5 April 1223 (Scoular, Handlist, no. 69): I am grateful to Keith Stringer for pointing this out to me. 73 Scoular, Handlist, 20; Innes, ed., Liber S. Marie de Calchou, nos 6, 16, 393, a brieve against poinding goods of Kelso abbey. 74 Scoular, Handlist, 11; Innes, ed., Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc i, nos 105 and 106. They have the same place- and time-date, and were presumably issued on the same occasion. 75 Innes, ed., Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc i, no. 110. I am very grateful to Keith Stringer for informing me in detail about the ‘stop go’ deployment of anno regni domini regis from its first extant appearance in a pair of unpublished charters of 5 November 1223 (Scoular, Handlist, nos 75 and 76). 76 The last example, as far as I am aware, is a charter of 23 April 1252: Joseph Robertson, ed., Liber Collegii Nostre Domini . . . Accedunt Munimenta Fratrum Predicatorum de Glasgu, Edinburgh 1846, 149.

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are much fewer charter-texts, let alone contemporary single sheets, to work with.77 Also, the most unusual (and interesting) documents diplomatically are often the most problematic.78 Nevertheless, two significant developments are discernible in charters relating to perpetuities. The first is the use of the plural of majesty in nearly all charters from the early thirteenth century.79 The second is the consistent use from the 1240s of a time-date consisting of the day of the month (according to either ecclesiastical or Roman calendar) and AD date; there are earlier examples in 1221, 1229, 1237 and 1238, but these are all for the same beneficiary, the priory of Ynys Lannog (Priestholm),80 and may only be taken to reflect what Ynys Lannog thought was appropriate for the ruler of Gwynedd’s documents.81 (It will be recalled that some Scottish church establishments may have endowed the king of Scots with more dignified prose than did the king’s scribes.) Two charters must, however, be mentioned, because they give the year of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s principate as well as day of the month and AD date.82 Both are for the abbey of Aberconwy, and were purportedly produced on the same occasion. Charles Insley has recently shown that neither is likely to be authentic as they stand.83 The dignity of a year of principate, moreover, is balanced by another charter in Llywelyn’s name with a remarkable dating-clause: ‘at Rhuthin in the octave of St Martin in the tenth year of the reign of Henry the younger, king of England’, i.e. 18 November 1225. The dating by the king of England’s regnal year is a striking statement of subordination, comparable with the occasional use of the king of Scots’ regnal year in private charters in Scotland during William’s reign.84 77

See comments in David Stephenson, The Governance of Gwynedd, Cardiff 1984, 27. The scholarly infrastructure has improved with the appearance of K. L. Maund, Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers 1132–1283, Cardiff 1996, which is an important initial step in the edition of the acta of native Welsh rulers which is being prepared by Huw Pryce. 78 See below. 79 Stephenson, Governance of Gwynedd, 27 n. 5, 201; Keith Williams-Jones, ‘Llywelyn’s Charter to Cymer Abbey in 1209’, Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society 3, 1957, 45–78. See also Charles Insley, ‘From Rex Wallie to Princeps Wallie: Charters and State Formation in Thirteenth-Century Wales’, in The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser, London 2000, 179–96, at 189. 80 Stephenson, Governance of Gwynedd, 202–3. 81 There is also a letter patent confirming Ednyfed Fychan’s purchase of lands, dated 1 May 1230: Maund, Handlist, no. 137. I am grateful to Huw Pryce for pointing this out to me. 82 ‘7th of the Ides of January 1198, in the tenth year of my principate’, i.e. 7 January 1199, making them (on the face of it) the earliest extant charters of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. (The date has been repeatedly misrendered as the 6th of the Ides of January: I am grateful to Huw Pryce for correcting this.) David Stephenson (Governance of Gwynedd, 199) has suggested that the principate-year may have been calculated from when Llywelyn ‘started to assert his rights to a share of Gwynedd’. 83 Charles Insley, ‘Fact and Fiction in Thirteenth-Century Gwynedd: the Aberconwy Charters’, Studia Celtica 33, 1999, 235–50. David Stephenson (Governance of Gwynedd, 199–200) argued that the first can be regarded as an authentic act of that date, and the second ‘may represent a rather later document’. It has been pointed out that two victories for Llywelyn on 6 January 1199 are celebrated in the poem Canu Mawr i Lywelyn by Prydydd y Moch: A. D. Carr, ‘Prydydd y Moch, Ymateb Hanesydd’, in Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1989, at 165. (I am grateful to Huw Pryce for this reference.) It is not inconceivable, therefore, that there was originally an act dated 7 January 1199 for Aberconwy in which Llywelyn demonstrated his newly advanced position. The unprecedented dating by year of principate remains deeply suspect, however. 84 For example, Earl Gille Brigte of Strathearn’s foundation charter for Inchaffray, which has an elaborate dating-clause: William A. Lindsay, John Dowden and J. Maitland Thomson, eds, Charters, Bulls and Other Documents Relating to the Abbey of Inchaffray, Edinburgh 1908, no. 9. An exotic example is a charter of Richard, abbot of Kelso, and the convent of Kelso, for Melrose, which is dated ‘at Kelso, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1208, in the forty-third year of the reign of our lord, William, king of Scots, and the tenth year from the birth of Alexander, son of King William’: Innes, ed., Liber Sancte Marie de Melros 2 vols, Edinburgh 1837, i, no. 146.

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Again, however, there are doubts about authenticity. The most recent assessment is that ‘the probable incompatibility of the prince’s style with the dating clause renders the document’s authenticity suspect’, particularly with regard to the protocol or the dating clause.85 Although Llywelyn ap Iorwerth anticipated the use of the plural of majesty by Scottish kings, therefore, it is striking that anything like a policy towards including a time-date only became established very much later. The time-date that was eventually adopted, moreover, was of a kind (with some variation in how the day was identified) that was beginning, by the 1240s, to catch on in private charters in Scotland: for example, in a charter of Richard of Leicester, burgess of Perth, in 1240,86 a charter of Maol Domhnaich, earl of Lennox, in 1238,87 and another charter by Affrica, lady of Strathnith, in 1227.88 Some, if not all of these are likely to have been drafted by the beneficiary. By the time Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was at the zenith of his power in 1267 it was becoming common for private documents in Scotland to be adorned with dating-clauses which were as dignified as those in the charters of the ‘Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon’. It might be objected that the absence of the year of his principate from the standard dating clause of the ruler of Gwynedd’s charters may be linked in some way to the fact that king-lists were not maintained in Wales in this period or earlier.89 In a culture where reign-lengths were not calculated, the regnal year might not have come to consciousness in the dating of a charter as readily as in Scotland, where not only was the king-list an established genre, but the current king’s regnal year might be known in as ‘remote’ a place as Deer.90 The existence of the year of principate in two Aberconwy charters, regardless of their status, may go some way towards allaying such doubts (for they were almost certainly produced at Aberconwy itself, albeit probably c.1283 and 1284x1332 respectively). As far as the special importance of the regnal year for Alexander II is concerned, however, there is, fortunately, a clear indication that he at that time wished to advance his status far higher than any ruler of Gwynedd is known to have dreamt of attempting. Sometime early in 1221 James of St Victor, the pope’s legate de latere for Scotland and Ireland, arrived in Scotland, holding a council at Perth on 9–12 February, and leaving sometime after 21 April 1221.91 At some point (it is not clear when) Alexander diverted the legate’s gaze from ecclesiastical concerns with a bold request: that he should crown him king. The legate contacted Pope Honorius for instructions. Honorius’s response survives, and was a bitter blow to Alexander. Not only was coronation refused, but the legate was told that this was none of his business 85

Huw Pryce, ed., with the assistance of Charles Insley, The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120–1283, forthcoming, no. 134. I am grateful to Huw Pryce for sending me a copy of his unpublished edition and discussion of this charter. Huw Pryce has drawn my attention to examples of documents by other Welsh rulers which have been dated by the regnal year of the king of England: letters patent of Dafydd ap Llywelyn in 1241 (Maund, Handlist, nos 364–6, 368), and a charter of Gwenwynwyn of south Powys where the AD date is coupled with the second year of Richard I (G. C. G. Thomas, ed., The Charters of the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell, Aberystwyth 1997, no. 14). 86 Lindsay et al., eds, Charters, Bulls and Other Documents Relating to the Abbey of Inchaffray, no. 69. 87 Cosmo Innes, ed., Registrum Monasterii de Passelet, Edinburgh 1832, 160–1. Note the use of the plural of majesty here and in a later document of Earl Maol Domhnaich (ibid., 171–2, dated 1250). 88 Cosmo Innes, ed., Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1843, i, no. 142. 89 D. N. Dumville, ‘Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists’, in Early Medieval Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and I. N. Wood, Leeds 1977, 72–104, at 96–7. 90 Kenneth H. Jackson, The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, Cambridge 1982, 31 (trans. at 34). 91 Paul C. Ferguson, Medieval Papal Representatives in Scotland: Legates, Nuncios, and JudgesDelegate, 1125–1286, Edinburgh 1997, 86.

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because the king of Scotland was said to be subject to the king of England; the matter was up to the king of England and his councillors to decide.92 Paul Ferguson has pointed out that Honorius’s reply is one of four undated letters recorded among those of June 1221 in the register for Honorius’s fifth year.93 It is not certainly known, therefore, when Alexander would have become aware of the pope’s answer. It may safely be assumed, however, that the adoption of the regnal year and plural of majesty in 1222 was effected after the pope’s blunt affirmation of Alexander’s inferior status had been thoroughly digested. This incident might also offer a more precise understanding of Alexander’s conception of his kingship at this time. It will be recalled that some hesitation was discerned in the assumption of the trappings of full kingship in the text of Alexander’s charters. Perhaps this could be explained as a reaction to the rebuff from the pope. Professor Duncan has emphasised, however, that Alexander did not seek coronation and anointment, but coronation alone;94 this contrasts with a request to the papacy thirty years later, in which both coronation and anointment were specified.95 It appears, then, that in early 1221 Alexander may not have been aiming for exactly the same degree of dignity as that enjoyed by the king of England.96 Again, the significance of this can be debated: he must have known that politically he had no chance of persuading the pope to grant him coronation and anointment. Nonetheless, it is possible overall to view Alexander in 1221–2 as feeling his way towards an outcome that was initially uncertain, and to contrast this with the confident assertiveness of those in charge of government at the beginning of Alexander III’s reign, who clearly had no doubts that their monarch was as much a king as any other in Christendom. To conclude: the addition of a time-date in 1195, which seems superficially to be so odd when taken on its own, can most readily be understood by being considered alongside the changes to the time-date in 1221–2 rather than by being examined in the light of the fragmentary evidence for enrolments by the Scottish chapel in the late twelfth century. The case for seeing the evolution of the dating clause as first-and-foremost a matter of diplomatic can also be justified by the close association between the introduction of the plural of majesty and the adoption of the regnal year as standard features of Scottish royal charters. To say this is not, however, to say that these are simply disinterested changes in clerical fashion whose greatest virtue for historians is that it supplies a mechanism for testing the ‘authenticity’ of charters. I would argue, rather, that they give us unprecedented access to how the king and his household regarded their own kingship. Although the process of producing a charter can, as we have seen, be far from straightforward, there can be no doubt that a new standard feature would only have been initiated on the chancellor’s authority. Our understanding of the significance of these changing perceptions of kingship would be enhanced if a convincing political context could be found for them. This is difficult to achieve. It might be argued that the kingship’s status was most likely to be 92 93 94

Ibid., 87–8; Joseph Robertson, ed., Concilia Scoticana, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1866, i, xlv n. 2. Ferguson, Medieval Papal Representatives in Scotland, 87 n. 145. A. A. M. Duncan, article in The Stone of Destiny, ed. David Breeze, Thomas O. Clancy and Richard Welander, Edinburgh forthcoming. I am grateful to Professor Duncan for allowing me to see this article before its publication. 95 M. Bloch, ‘An Unknown Testimony on the History of Coronation in Scotland’, SHR 23, 1925–6, 105–6; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, 58–9 (which shows that the request was made not long before April 1251). 96 Note Bloch’s comment that ‘the unction, and the unction only, was thought to be able to confer on kings a truly sacred character’: Bloch, ‘An Unknown Testimony’, at 105.

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reappraised when relations with England were particularly topical, as they were to some extent in 1195, and certainly were at the time of Alexander’s marriage to Henry III’s sister. In any case, a redefinition of the status of the Scottish kingship must inherently involve its relationship with kings of England, not least because they consistently sought to limit Scottish aspirations. Nevertheless, these changes cannot be represented in a two-dimensional way as simply a Scottish response to English dominance, culminating in defiant declarations of sovereignty at the outset of Alexander III’s reign. Alexander II, in fact, had been treated as Henry III’s equal throughout the protracted negotiations leading to his marriage to Joanna. The inauguration of a boy king nearly thirty years later would have been an anxious time for those in government, but their fears are likely to have been fuelled by domestic considerations as much as by any imagined threat from the English king. There is, moreover, no apparent connection between relations with England and the change from anno regni nostri to anno domini regis in April 1229. It should not be forgotten, of course, that the main audience for charters was domestic. It may be significant, therefore, that the new time-date in 1195 could be seen as part of a review of clerical practice in the chapel which was responsible for another important innovation at about this time. Professor Barrow has shown that all William’s charters in the final decades of his reign which survive as contemporary single sheets were scribed by royal clerks. From April 1195 (including the charter immediately prior to the adoption of the time-date) up to William’s death in December 1214 there are fifty-one ‘originals’, representing a third of all known charters from this period: all of them are by six royal scribes.97 It appears that, at some point, it was insisted that all royal charters should be scribed (at least) in the royal chapel. Any hope of dating this decision with any precision is unfortunately bedevilled not only by the issue of the uneven survival of originals but also by the lack of the time-date before April 1195. There is some indication, however, that it had occurred sometime between 1193 and April 1196.98 Although a specific context for each and every change seems elusive, it may still be valid to sketch a broad brush-stroke background. In the light of what Rees Davies has recently taught us about the dominant role within Britain and Ireland exercised by Henry II and subsequent kings of England it should come as no surprise that William I was viewed by his household, and presumably saw himself, as in a lower league of kingship.99 Rees Davies has emphasised, however, that the nature of this dominance had begun to change fundamentally when William’s submission in 97

Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, 88–90. Hand Dc is identified in three charters (not four, as ibid., 89; no. 295 is a later cartulary copy). The other five scribes are Da (13 examples), Db (8 examples; Barrow suggests that Db may be the same hand as Da), Dd (11 examples), De (5 examples), Df (28 examples, not including no. 495 which is not an original). 98 The best approach is to examine the most significant collections of ‘originals’ from the archives of beneficiaries and find the narrowest date-range within a single archive between the latest royal charter produced by the beneficiary and the first subsequent charter by a royal scribe. According to this method, the key royal charters belong to Melrose: there is one, datable to between 1189 and 1193, which is probably by a Melrose scribe (Barrow, ed., Regesta ii, no. 364): the scribe, designated ‘Cc’ by Barrow (ibid., 88), is identified in three royal charters for Melrose and (less certainly, I suspect) in one other which Barrow regarded as showing the ‘greatest variations from the rest, and is comparable with Bc and even Ak’ (ibid.). There is also a royal charter of a gift to Melrose which could be by an episcopal rather than a royal clerk: this is ibid., no. 365, for which see above, 56. The next Melrose charter certainly by a royal scribe can be dated with some confidence to 16 April 1196 (ibid., no. 386). 99 R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: the Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100–1300, Cambridge 1990; idem, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343, Oxford 2000.

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December 1174 was recorded in writing.100 What was spelt out for everyone to read was how, for the first time, the independence of a subordinate kingdom had been systematically subverted. No longer was the king of Scots deemed ‘in his kingdom to be all things alone, . . . [unwilling to] endure that any authority have the least power in any matter, without his control’ (to quote a contemporary’s assessment of Alexander I’s view of what it meant to be king of Scots).101 The king of England now sought to bind not just William to him, but also William’s subjects, and to insist that no-one could escape his justice by fleeing to Scotland. The distinction between overkingship and kingship was fading rapidly; a new pattern had emerged whereby a ruler who submitted to the king of England would have to make some formal recognition of superior jurisdiction. It might, perhaps, be thought that the tendency to view overkingship as having a jurisdictional element would have provoked a reaction in the way subordinate kingships presented themselves. There can be no doubt that Alexander I’s dictum that the king in his kingdom should be all things alone was shared by William and Alexander II, as seen, for example, in their dealings with the Church.102 It was not until the reign of Alexander III, however, that this was articulated as a full and clear statement of Scottish sovereignty, when an attempt to achieve coronation and anointment was made, the image of the king was remodelled on his seal, and the royal inauguration was adapted to portray the new king as divinely ordained. This, however, seems to have been inconceivable for King William and his household. They seem, rather, to have hankered after the old pattern of subordinate kingship and overkingship, as if the clock had been turned back once the objectionable ‘Treaty of Falaise’ had been rescinded. Even when the kingship’s status was reappraised in 1221–2, it may not be too fanciful to see in the step-by-step enhancement of royal diplomatic the uncertain dawning of a new idea: that Scotland was a sovereign kingdom. It has often been observed, most recently by Rees Davies in The First English Empire, that Scotland came ‘fully of age as a country’ during the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III.103 The changes in the dating clause of royal charters can offer a rough-and-ready index of this process in terms of the self-perception of those at the heart of government. It also suggests that the failure of a monarchy of Britain to develop in this period from an established pattern of overkingship was due not so much to the stridently English ideology of English power, as Rees Davies has emphasised, but to the consolidation of a jurisdictional conception of kingship which, in due course, underpinned both Edward I’s vision of a kingdom of Britain and also a new sense of Scottishness which had the potential to withstand English conquest.

100

See esp. Rees Davies, ‘ “Keeping the natives in order”: the English King and the “Celtic” Rulers 1066–1216’, Peritia 10, 1996, 212–24. 101 Martin Rule, ed., Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia, London 1884, 285; Anderson, Scottish Annals, 144. Eadmer was reporting advice he was given by Bishop John of Glasgow and two Canterbury monks. For discussion, see Dauvit Broun, ‘The Church and the Origins of Scottish Independence in the Twelfth Century’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 31, 2001, 1–35 at 14–15. 102 As is evident, for example, by their dealings with the Church: William I had a protracted struggle over the appointment of a bishop of St Andrews, while Alexander II enforced royal jurisdiction in property disputes which had hitherto been open to resolution by the Church. For both, see e.g. Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom, 270–4, 289–90. 103 Davies, The First English Empire, 80–1.

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St Albans, Westminster and Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past

ST ALBANS, WESTMINSTER AND SOME TWELFTH-CENTURY VIEWS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON PAST Julia Crick More than fifty years ago Vivian Galbraith sketched in a single paragraph a scene of frenetic historical industry in the generations after the Norman Conquest.1 The heightened curiosity about the Anglo-Saxon past in the early twelfth century, though bound up with the wider intellectual renaissance of the age, had, like all such movements, a local and practical basis. All over Europe princes were hammering into shape well-run states and striving to overcome the intense localism of a still largely customary society.2 Meanwhile, in England ‘On all sides there was a movement to record the facts in writing, and the Domesday Inquest was only the largest of many royal efforts to move towards a written law . . . The great bishoprics were driven to find or to make documentary proof for their immemorial estates . . . For these reasons the twelfth century was the hey-day of forgery . . .’ He went on ‘To this age belongs the bitter struggle between the archbishops of Canterbury and York . . . and the contests of the great “exempt” abbeys, like St Edmundsbury, with their diocesans.’ In certain respects the evidence to be discussed in this paper merely reinforces the generalisations which Galbraith set out so picturesquely half a century ago. The historical activities of the communities of twelfth-century St Albans and Westminster illustrate with particular clarity the ‘local and practical basis’ of ‘curiosity about the Anglo-Saxon past’, and they were orchestrated in direct response to pressures of the sort to which he alluded, namely the need for title to estates and defence against diocesan aggrandisement. But the cases of St Albans and Westminster also suggest something else: that the brilliance and sheer bulk of writing about the pre-Conquest past which survives from post-Conquest England has cast the preceding period into shadow. The extent of the indebtedness of twelfth-century monastic historians to earlier written tradition is easily underestimated. In the last few generations much reflection on the historical culture of post-Conquest England has broadly conformed to Galbraith’s depiction.3 The 1

For generous help in the preparation of the written version of this paper I am grateful to Drs Sarah Hamilton and Richard Mortimer for commenting on drafts; to Professors David Dumville and Jane Sayers for discussion of the palaeography of the forgeries; to Professor Simon Keynes for allowing me to see work in advance of publication; and to the staff of the library of Westminster Abbey. 2 V. H. Galbraith, Historical Research in Medieval England, Creighton Lecture 1949, London 1951, reprinted in Kings and Chroniclers: Essays in English Medieval History, London 1982, XI, 24. 3 R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 4: The Sense of the Past’, TRHS 5th ser. 23, 1973, 243–63; J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon History, London 1986, 209–28; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn, Oxford 1993, especially 25–43, 323. Aspects have been confirmed by empirical study: M. Brett, ‘Forgery at Rochester’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler

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production of history, both narrative and documentary, in English monasteries in the century after the Conquest has been understood as an exceptional phenomenon born out of the particular circumstances of those years: a reflex against encroachment by secular and ecclesiastical trespassers, a consequence of cultural change – ‘essentially a product of the movement from memory to written record’4 – or more simply a peculiarly English manifestation of intellectual currents on the Continent.5 Assessments of surviving evidence have reinforced the message that late Anglo-Saxon England produced no equivalent displays of historical creativity. Disappointment has been expressed about the lack of narrative histories,6 while the forging of pre-Conquest charters has sometimes been viewed as a particularly post-Conquest phenomenon.7 But institutional historical thinking in the twelfth century, exceptional in the quality and quantity of its surviving products as it was, can be situated in a wider context. Although quickened by the various forces which Galbraith described, it owes more than a little to the historical thinking of the eleventh and even the tenth century. In the twelfth century the communities of St Albans and Westminster found it necessary to order and defend their past as never before, but not for the reasons which we have come to associate with post-Conquest forgery;8 both communities worked from pre-Conquest written evidence and neither acted without precedent, however tenuously applied. Curiosity about the Anglo-Saxon past had already been heightened, after a period of rupture at least as damaging to English monastic culture as the Norman Conquest itself, after the viking wars of the late ninth century, when institutions went to the wall, or lost their networks of patronage, their archives, their continuity of abbatial succession. In the late tenth century the response of communities seeking to recover their losses was not so very different from that of their twelfth-century successors and, indeed, in certain respects striking continuities can be observed across 1066. St Albans and Westminster, while famous for their history-writing in the thirteenth century, to judge from the evidence of their pre-Conquest charters, both forged and authentic, had a long history of lodging claims in the remote past. In this paper then, the twelfth-century views of the pre-Conquest past with which I shall be concerned are located not in narrative histories, where they have often been sought, but in spurious pre-Conquest charters.9 The data come from a notorious Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica: München, 16. – 19. September 1986, 6 vols, Hanover 1988–9, iii, 397–412; J. Sayers, ‘ “Original”, Cartulary and Chronicle: the Case of the Abbey of Evesham’, in ibid., 371–95. 4 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 323, elaborating Christopher Brooke, ‘Approaches to Medieval Forgery’, in his Medieval Church and Society: Collected Essays, London 1971, 100–20, at 115. See also Stephen D. White’s review of Clanchy in Speculum 72, 1997, 131–3. Elisabeth van Houts has recently stressed the importance of non-written tradition in the post-Conquest written record: Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200, London 1999. 5 R. W. Southern, ‘The Place of England in the Twelfth Century Renaissance’, in his Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, Oxford 1970, 158–80, at 160–2 (the volume was dedicated to Galbraith); Rodney M. Thomson, ‘England and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Past and Present 101, 1983, 3–21, especially 10–11, reprinted in his England and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, Aldershot 1988, XIX; Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, esp. 211. 6 Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, 215. 7 Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 28. For other views see Nicholas Brooks cited in Brooke, ‘Approaches’, 115 n. 31 and also below, n. 89. Also Adrian Morey and C. N. L. Brooke, eds, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, Cambridge 1965, 127–30. 8 Above, n. 4. 9 Southern stressed the importance of looking beyond histories to charters to find evidence of historical revival (‘Aspects’, 249), although his advice has not always been heeded (Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, 215).

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centre of forgery and a relatively unknown one, and my aim is to investigate how and why alleged pre-Conquest precedent was constructed and deployed at both in the twelfth century. The two centres were clearly linked, but how, when and why remains to be seen. Indeed, on the nature of the connection hangs any consideration of the earlier history of written claims at either house.

Forgery at Twelfth-Century Westminster and St Albans When Vivian Galbraith used his Creighton lecture of 1949 to reflect on historical research in twelfth-century England, he can have had Westminster only dimly in his sights and St Albans not at all. Westminster had been associated with the production of forged pre-Conquest documents since at least the 1890s10 and certain of its products had been investigated and dated in succeeding years11 but it was a series of studies published in the space of a single decade (1952–1962) which demonstrated the productivity and the dazzling effrontery of the Westminster atelier at it height and established Westminster as the locus classicus of English monastic forgery in the twelfth century. Florence Harmer laid the ground in her discussion of spurious Anglo-Saxon writs and pre-Conquest diplomas from the house.12 Five years later Bishop and Chaplais fixed this activity in the mid-twelfth century by identifying behind fourteen forged writs of Edward and the Conqueror for Westminster, Coventry and Gloucester a single scribe who also copied a charter of Laurence of Westminster (1158–73).13 Finally, in 1962 came Pierre Chaplais’ famous article in which he attributed the drafting of a number of these documents to Osbert de Clare, prior of Westminster, author of the Vita Edwardi, who in 1139 had unsuccessfully petitioned the curia for the Confessor’s canonisation.14 Chaplais also significantly extended the output and range of the Westminster scribe already credited with the production of forged texts, assigning to him the manufacture of two single sheets in the names of Dunstan and Edgar, copied ‘in a completely artificial hand’ and carrying seals.15 Since then, the corpus of forged writs and charters attributed to the Westminster of Osbert de Clare’s time has been further examined and extended,16 the institutional

10 A. S. Napier and W. H. Stevenson, eds, The Crawford Collection of Early Charters and Documents, 2 vols, Oxford 1895, 88–102. 11 J. Armitage Robertson, John Flete’s History of Westminster Abbey, Cambridge 1909, 12–13; Marc Bloch, ‘La vie de S. Eduoard le Confesseur par Osbert de Clare’, Analecta Bollandiana 41, 1923, 5–131. 12 Florence E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, Manchester 1952, 289–92. 13 T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais, eds, Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D. 1100 Presented to Vivian Hunter Galbraith, Oxford 1957, xxii n. 1. 14 P. Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, Abbots of Westminster (1121–1157)’, in A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, ed. Patricia M. Barnes and C. F. Slade, London 1962, 89–110. 15 Ibid., 97. Now discussed by T. A. Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries as Evidence for Earlier Seals: the Case of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. N. Ramsay, M. Sparks and T. Tatton-Brown, Woodbridge 1992, 299–310. While the charters of Edgar and Dunstan are indubitably in the same hand, I cannot identify any other Westminster products as the work of the same scribe. 16 For discussion of the Conqueror’s writs see Bates, ed. Regesta, nos 290, 293–4, 301, 304, 312, 316, 318–19, 321–2, 335; for facsimiles of some of the supposed Anglo-Saxon charters see Simon Keynes, ed., Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Charters, London 1992, nos 37–9; for discussion of the forged seals see Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’; for a list of spuria see Emma Mason with Jennifer Bray, eds, Westminster Abbey Charters 1066–c.1214, London Record Society 25, 1988, 321–2.

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history of the monastery elucidated,17 and the wider context of medieval monastic forgery explored,18 but the most arresting development for the purposes of this investigation concerns the interpretation of the imitation pre-Conquest charters. In 1992 T. A. Heslop published a discussion of the seals of the feigned pre-Conquest originals of Edgar and Dunstan, in which he reconstructed the logic of the forger’s attempts to create a seal for Dunstan, commending the ‘historical awareness’ demonstrated therein, despite its anachronism.19 Heslop detected behind it close attention to earlier documents, ‘a tribute to the developing temporal consciousness of the twelfthcentury renaissance’, an argument which may be extended to the script of the two documents. For the feigned tenth-century originals, whose script has been described as histrionic, artificial, and variously condemned as eccentric, were written in a bold and quite successful approximation of Insular minuscule. The close observation of pre-Conquest models may be detected more clearly still in the case of a third feigned original, a purported diploma of 785, in which Offa, king of Mercia (757–96), is made to grant Aldenham, Herts., to St Peter and the plebs Dei at Westminster (see Plate 1).20 Its peculiar script had caused fluctuating dates to be assigned to its production.21 Sawyer reported a date of s. xi/xii. Heslop boldly associated it with the Dunstan charter on the grounds of script and ruling, thus convincingly establishing a twelfth-century date.22 He did not recognise the script type, though. For the diploma of Offa was not simply, as Heslop suggested, in a more informal version of the same script but in a recognisable imitation of a late eighth or perhaps early ninth-century hand.23 It thus alerts us to a degree of historical sensibility in the presentation of texts whose contents proclaim a post-Conquest origin. The Westminster forgers knew and imitated pre-Conquest written documents.24 The circumstances which inspired the monks of Westminster to such creative heights fit broadly within the range of possibilities outlined by Galbraith. Title to estates is a clear imperative. The prolix charters of the Confessor behind which Chaplais identified the hand of Osbert de Clare relay the histories of entire lists of

17

Barbara Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1977; Gervase Rosser, Medieval Westminster 1200–1540, Oxford 1989, and Emma Mason, Westminster Abbey and its People, c.1050–c.1216, Woodbridge 1996. 18 In the papers from the Munich conference on forgery: Fälschungen im Mittelalter, see above, n. 3. 19 S 774, S 1293: Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 308, 310. 20 S 124, MS 2. London, Westminster Abbey Muniments (hereafter WAM) III. For facsimiles see Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, plate 54b; William Basevi Sanders, ed., Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 3 vols, Southampton 1878–84, ii, Westminster 2, no. 2; Edward Carpenter, ed., A House of Kings: the History of Westminster Abbey, London 1966, plate 1. 21 For an eleventh-century date see Mason and Bray, eds, Westminster Abbey Charters, 9. For comments on the script see Napier and Stevenson, eds, The Crawford Collection, 89; Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 301. 22 ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 301, 301 n. 7, plate 54a. The ruling, on the dorse, with narrow parallel vertical bounding lines, can just be made out on WAM III. I would not follow Heslop in assigning the two documents to the same scribe. The use of the papal tittle in the Offa-forgery, although not in the others, connects the hand with that of other Westminster productions of the mid-twelfth century: compare London, Westminster Abbey, WAM VI (S 1450), WAM II (S 124 MS 1) and below, n. 56. For other English documents of mid-twelfth-century date displaying symptoms of influence from the papal chancery see Jane E. Sayers, ‘The Influence of Papal Documents on English Documents before 1305’, in Papsturkunde und europäisches Urkundenwesen: Studien zu ihrer formalen und rechtlichen Kohärenz vom 11. bis 15. Jahrhundert, ed. P. Herde and H. Jakobs, Cologne 1999, 161–99, at 163, plates 3A and 3B. Sanders compared elements of the formulation with S 1293 and hence an Osbertian forgery (the description of Westminster as a locus terribilis and the use of flauesco as a verb of attestation): Facsimiles, ii, xx. 23 Compare, for example, Sanders, Facsimiles, iii, nos 5, 7–8, 12 (S 123, S 155, S 41, S 178). 24 I hope to pursue the question of twelfth-century facsimile charters in a future study.

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Plate 1. Offa’s purported grant of Aldenham to Westminster, AD 785: WAM III (S 124) (Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster) estates.25 Heslop noted that especial care was expended on charters relating to one estate in particular, Aldenham in Hertfordshire, the subject of the imitation charter of Offa and the centre of a long running dispute with Westminster’s neighbour, St Albans.26 The need to secure exemption from the bishop of London proved a further stimulus to forgery and Westminster’s spurious Anglo-Saxon charters were well larded with appropriately antique prohibitions against encroachment by the 25 26

S 1040, S 1041, S 1043. Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 308 and nn. 35–6. On Aldenham, see Ada Elizabeth Levett, Studies in Manorial History, ed. H. M. Cam, M. Coate and L. S. Sutherland, Oxford 1938, 130; Mason, Westminster Abbey, 53, 71, 76; Mason and Bray, eds, Westminster Abbey Charters, nos 161, 281, 318, 333; Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 313–16; Bates, Regesta, no. 294.

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bishop of London.27 A third aspiration was more particular to Westminster, its bid to establish its status as a royal church in perpetuity and to secure the canonisation of Edward. By common consent Osbert’s charters of Edward were produced before his visit to Rome to petition the curia for Edward’s canonisation.28 Meanwhile, up the road at St Albans – quite literally, as Watling Street functioned as the artery running through the estates of both houses – we can observe the much less spectacular remnants of some different twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past. In 1163 the abbot of St Albans was obliged to produce his charters for inspection by Henry II.29 Although we have no detailed account of what the charters were, the inspection was occasioned by a protest against a series of papal privileges granted as confirmations of charters of Kings Offa, Ecgfrith his son, Æthelred II and Henry I, recognisable as known texts.30 Only one of the pre-Conquest diplomas survives in its original form (Æthelred’s grant of Oxhey, 1007) but it, together with single sheets of Æthelred, Offa and Ecgfrith, genuine, interpolated and forged, now lost, were copied into a cartulary which reached its final form some time after 1156.31 Thanks to a remarkably full and faithful transcript of this lost cartulary produced in the seventeenth century, the Bollandist manuscript located in Brussels by Simon Keynes just over a decade ago,32 it is possible to reconstruct with some degree of certainty not only what these charters contained but what they looked like. It shows that by the middle of the twelfth century St Albans had three forged charters of Offa to set alongside Westminster’s single example.33 These gave title to the most valuable of the abbey’s estates,34 notably the core endowment of thirty-four hides near St Albans itself, in Cashio. They also staked a claim of a different sort, one of equal importance to the community’s fortunes. Two of the Offa forgeries laid claim to extensive immunity from royal and episcopal interference, claims which were elaborated and defended by the community for the rest of its institutional existence.35 St Albans’ pre-Conquest portfolio also bore some physical resemblance to material being produced at Westminster at approximately the same time. Regrettably no feigned originals for St Albans survive as single sheets but it is clear from surviving witnesses that the cartulary into which the community’s pre-Conquest documents were copied, like the Westminster charters of St Dunstan and Edgar, was written in imitative Insular minuscule. Simon Keynes has drawn attention to the chrismons which introduced some of the charters, the so-called pax

27

For example, the second charter of Edward (S 1011) and great charter of Dunstan (S 1293), discussed by Bernhard W. Scholz, ‘Two Forged Charters from the Abbey of Westminster and their Relationship with St Denis’, EHR 76, 1961, 466–75. 28 Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters’, 95; Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10, 1987 (1988), 185–222, 198. 29 H. T. Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, RS, 3 vols, London 1867–9, i, 137–57. 30 Papsturkunden in England, ed. W. Holtzmann, 3 vols, Berlin 1930–52 (hereafter PUE) iii, nos 5, 43, 68, 100. Simon Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, ASE 22, 1993, 253–79, esp. 271; Julia Crick, ed., Charters of St Albans, Anglo-Saxon Charters x, Oxford forthcoming. For discussion of the campaign see Jane Sayers, ‘Papal Privileges for St Albans Abbey and its Dependencies’, in The Study of Medieval Records: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Major, ed. D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey, Oxford 1971, 57–84. 31 Crick, Charters, introduction. 32 Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary’. 33 S 136, S 136A, S 138. 34 Cashio, Herts.; Winslow, Bucks. 35 S 136, 138. On the immunity clauses see Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary’, 263–4, 271; for the later history see Julia Crick, ‘Liberty and Fraternity: Creating and Defending the Liberty of St Albans’, in Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. Anthony Musson, Woodbridge 2001, 91–103.

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chrismon, which appears in charters from the reign of Æthelred II onwards: the manuscript-witnesses to the lost cartulary show that it was employed with splendid anachronism in the Offa and Ecgfrith charters.36 But, it appears, the Westminster forgers also had a penchant for the pax chrismon: Heslop noted its appearance on the Great Charter of Dunstan.37 None of these features in isolation need indicate more than generic resemblance. To take the crudest available measure – judging from extant manuscript copies – in the twelfth century at least five other centres possessed forgeries attributed to Offa38 and a further three had forgeries in his name copied in the later Middle Ages.39 More or less elaborate imitations of pre-Conquest script were employed in the copying of purported pre-Conquest documents at twelfth-century Worcester, Eynsham, and Evesham, and perhaps, too, at Canterbury.40 But with diplomatic equivalences the net begins to close. Phrases commonly associated with Westminster forgeries pepper certain St Albans documents; donors make grants for the good of their animula, pro stabilitate regni, mention is made of the fiscus regalis, the immunity clauses of the Offa charters include mention of iudices. None of these occurences is unique to the two archives41 but one unmistakable verbal parallel connects St Albans with Westminster: Æthelred’s diploma of 1005 in favour of St Albans, whose formulation has been accepted as broadly allowable by Simon Keynes, was improved by the interpolation of an exemption clause found in four Westminster charters, two associated with Osbert de Clare.42 This exemption clause is of some importance. It conferred on the entire possessio of the monastery exemption from the common burdens and from any possible royal or diocesan interference or that of any other man. Although it is inscribed almost verbatim in the documentary record of both houses, in both being designated a libertas, the claims of the communities of Westminster and St Albans embodied one significant difference. At St Albans the libertas protected the monastery’s estates at the gift of King Offa and continued to be associated with him.43 In the forged charters of twelfth-century Westminster, on the other 36

Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary’, 263–4 (S 136, S 138, S 150, S 151). Simon Keynes, ‘An Interpretation of the Pacx, Pax and Paxs Pennies’, ASE 7, 1978, 165–73. 37 Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 306. A different version occurs less anachronistically in an Evesham pseudo-original copy of a fabricated diploma of the Confessor, S 1026, as Keynes observed: Facsimiles, 10 and plate 35. 38 Christ Church Canterbury (S 110, 111, 132), Evesham (S 112, 115), Rochester (S 105), Saint-Denis (S 133), Worcester (S 104, 107, 108, 117, 118, 121, 126, 145, 147). Some survive in tenth- and eleventh-cerntury form. 39 Chertsey (S 127), Crowland (S 135), St Augustine’s Canterbury (S 140). 40 S 911 (Eynsham), S 731 (Worcester), S 1026 (Evesham). On the more complicated case of Canterbury, where the pseudo-originals only survive in later medieval facsimile, see Susan Elisabeth Kelly, ‘Some Forgeries in the Archive of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury’, Fälschungen, IV, 347–69, esp. 357. For reproductions of surviving examples see H. E. Salter, ed., The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham, 2 vols, Oxford Historical Society 49, 51, Oxford 1907–8, i, facing p. xxxii, and Keynes, Facsimiles, nos 40, 35. For a forged papal privilege of 713 for Evesham see Sayers, ‘ “Original”, Cartulary and Chronicle’, 377 and plate 1. On the use of Insular script in the twelfth century for Old English see Neil Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, 2nd edn, Oxford 1990, xxvi–xxvii; David N. Dumville, ‘Specimina Codicum Palaeoanglicorum’, in Collection of Essays in Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies October 2001, Osaka 2001, 1–24. 41 All can be found in other disreputable charters, for example from St Peter’s, Ghent. Compare S 728, S 1002, S 1015, also S 796, S 1037. 42 S 774, S 1000, S 1031, also S 1450: Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge 1980, 109 n. 75, also 109–110, 260–1. The connection was first noticed by Napier and Stevenson, eds, The Crawford Collection, 99–100. The clause is printed below, Appendix. 43 Discussed by Crick, ‘Liberty’.

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hand, the same libertas, in almost identical form, was associated with royal gift more generally: bestowed by King Edgar as a renewal of Offa’s grant or conferred by Edward the Confessor as the restoration of a pristina libertas not associated with Offa at all.44 At this juncture, twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past become a little more complicated. We need to backtrack at little and review the circumstances which prompted interest in the pre-Conquest past at twelfth-century St Albans. At St Albans as at Westminster, and indeed at so many other pre-Conquest foundations, the community’s archival research in the twelfth century was directed at one major goal: exemption from diocesan control.45 The monks of Westminster faced encroachment from the bishop of London: according to Westminster’s first acceptable papal privilege, in 1133 Innocent I authorised Henry I to take the abbey under his protection and exclude it from the bishop’s control.46 The community at St Albans fought a brilliantly successful campaign for exemption from the attentions of the bishop of Lincoln, evident a little earlier than at Westminster, in a series of papal bulls beginning in 1122, and culminating in bulls issued by Adrian IV in 1156, 1157,47 which incurred the indignation of the bishop of Lincoln, and ultimately Henry II’s famous inspection of St Albans’ documents in 1163. By the time of the production of the St Albans cartulary not long before or after this event, it seems that the community had sought to improve their hand with the assistance of their neighbours at Westminster. It remains to be seen what the nature of this assistance was and in what circumstances it was secured – whether through active cooperation at one extreme or unauthorised copying at the other. At first sight, the explanation for the resemblance between the two archives might seem straightforward. The notable dexterity in handling the pre-Conquest and immediate post-Conquest past displayed by Westminster monks has been viewed as something of a tradeable commodity. Ramsey, Ely, Coventry, and Gloucester acquired forged charters and writs produced by Westminster draftsmen and scribes in the name of tenth- and eleventh-century kings of England and it has become customary to refer to a school of forgery and a professional atelier at Westminster and to talk of forging cartels.48 St Albans might then be added to the list of Anglo-Saxon foundations which benefitted from the services of the Westminster forgery factory in the twelfth century. One might construct an argument to this effect on the basis of diplomatic, especially the recurrent exemption clause, and perhaps even on the basis of palaeography. Opportunities certainly existed for friendly interchange. Osbert de Clare, upon whom much of the Westminster forgery has been fastened, wrote to Abbot Geoffrey de Gorham of St Albans in terms of affection and deference.49 The St Albans house-history, the Gesta abbatum, makes much of Abbot Laurence of Westminster, who had been a monk at St Albans under the care of Geoffrey de Gorham’s relative and eventual successor, Robert, who presided over the community in the crucial years 1151–66, a period which saw the granting of the liberty by Adrian IV and its successful defence against the challenge of the bishop of Lincoln in 1163.50 In 1163

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

S 1450, S 774 (Edgar); S 1040 (Edward). Above, n. 35. PUE i, no. 17. Above, n. 30. Bishop and Chaplais, eds, English Royal Writs, xxii; Heslop, ‘Twelfth-Century Forgeries’, 309. E. W. Williamson, ed., The Letters of Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster, Oxford 1929, Letter 32. ‘ex gremio huius ecclesiae assumptus est’: Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum, i, 159. In 1166, Abbot Laurence was present at Abbot Robert’s death and burial, ibid., i, 182.

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Laurence, as abbot of Westminster, had spoken on behalf of St Albans at the hearing at Westminster when St Albans’ claims to exemption had been upheld, opening proceedings by providing an account of the ancient dignity of the church of St Albans, the sanctity of the place and the evil of the disturbance which was plaguing the monks’ peace.51 During Laurence’s abbatiate, Westminster’s forging activities were far from over. Indeed, the scribe whom Bishop and Chaplais identified as responsible for copying many of Westminster’s forged writs, a list later extended to included the facsimile forgeries of Edgar, Dunstan, and even Offa, also wrote one of Laurence’s charters.52 It is not difficult to envisage some friendly collaboration at the time of the challenge to St Albans’ dignities and the compilation of the lost cartulary, the improving of St Albans’ portfolio at the hands of the professionals. But Westminster influence at the time of Laurence does not provide a sufficient explanation for the resemblance between the two sets of charters. In the first place the charters of St Albans inspected at Westminster in 1163 differed from the feigned single sheets produced at contemporary Westminster in a significant particular. Certain forged diplomas attributed to Osbert de Clare, including the charters of Dunstan and Edgar famously bore seals.53 The monks of Westminster even created a seal of Dunstan for the purpose of authenticating his Great Charter, as Heslop has discussed. When Henry II inspected St Albans’ charters in 1163, during the dispute of exemption from the control of the bishop of Lincoln, their lack of seals nearly jeopardised the community’s case. The author of the Gesta abbatum pointedly put a speech into the king’s mouth: ‘What are the Lincoln people complaining about, saying that unsealed charters are of no account. See here! My grandfather’s seal is the seal of all the original charters whose confirmation is contained in his charter.’54 Thus, confirmation of the abbey’s charters by Henry I obviated the need for seals, or so it was claimed. One wonders where this story left the monks of Westminster who at the time of the Gesta’s composition still owned and used sealed purportedly tenth-century charters.55 Secondly, the chronology of forgery at the two centres has yet to be worked out. Westminster has the better documented history of forgery. More than twenty spurious writs and diplomas have been associated with Westminster in the abbatiates of Herbert (1121–36), Gervase (1138–57) and Laurence (1158–73), although how many of these can or should be associated with Osbert de Clare or the notorious Westminster scribe remains unclear.56 Not only have the hands responsible for the copying of the forgeries still to be worked out satisfactorily, but abbatial charters and 51 52

Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum, i, 150. Above, nn. 13, 22. I have not verified the identification. The institutional politics of St Albans and its Westminster connections at this time have been discussed by Rachel M. Koopmans, ‘The Conclusion of Christina of Markyate’s Vita’, JEH 51, 2000, 663–98 at 685–94. 53 The pseudo-original of Offa, S 124 (WAM III), was unsealed. 54 ‘ “Quid est quod mussitant Lincolnienses, dicentes privilegia, non sigillata, nullius esse momenti? Ecce! Sigillum avi mei sigillum est omnium chartarum originalium, quarum confirmatio in eius charta continetur” ’: Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum, i, 151. 55 Richard of Cirencester, writing in the later fourteenth century, had evidently seen the pseudo-original of Dunstan, for example: John E. B. Mayor, ed., Ricardi de Cirencestria Speculum Historiale de Gestis Regum Angliae from the Copy in the Public Library, Cambridge, RS, 2 vols, London 1863–9, ii, 110. The charter was invoked in 1222: Lawrence E. Tanner, ‘The Nature and Use of the Westminster Abbey Muniments’, TRHS 4th ser. 19, 1936, 43–80, at 53. 56 Certain features recur in these charters, notably some apparently imitated from the practices of the papal chancery, but more than one scribe was involved in this work and identification with scribes of the charters of the abbots of Westminster cannot always be relied upon. A dating to the second and third quarters of the twelfth century remains probable.

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the known chronology of Osbert’s life provide an imperfect framework for dating the forgeries.57 Furthermore, certain significant forgeries produced on behalf of the community at Westminster bear no signs of Osbert’s draftsmanship. The terms of Edgar’s liberty, for example, occur in a Westminster charter much less flamboyant than the theatrical tours de force associated with Osbert. Whereas Osbert’s productions are learned and eclectic – he used charters of Saint-Denis and False Decretals, for example58 – the copyist of the charter in question departed in only a few particulars, admittedly very significant ones, from the pre-Conquest texts in front of him. The charter, which Napier and Stevenson designated the intermediate charter of Edgar, takes the form of a composite charter in Edgar’s name laying claim to a sequence of estates granted or recovered in the tenth century;59 the draftsman provided an improved copy of four pre-Conquest grants, transcribed end to end.60 The fact that three of them exist in pre-Conquest form allows us to detect limited but significant interpolation, including the terms of the liberty associated with Edgar (or alternatively, at St Albans, with Offa).61 Indeed, this document provides a useful reminder of a more routine kind of historical activity at Westminster in which extant texts provide the basis for claims being lodged. A comparable example, using some of the same pre-Conquest charters, is the so-called Telligraphus of Æthelred, a forged diploma in Æthelred’s name, really a narrative account of the acquisition of certain estates. Although certainly a forgery – it owes much to a diploma of Æthelred in favour of Sherborne – it appears to belong to a relatively early stage in Westminster’s institutional aspirations. The immunity clause is modest, reserving the common burdens, far from the wholescale exemptions claimed in twelfth-century versions of Anglo-Saxon charters or even in the Wheathampstead charter of 1060 copied in a contemporary hand.62 Whether or not the Telligraphus could be placed so early – and I doubt it – forgery was a fact in eleventh-century Westminster. Florence Harmer noted that the community at Westminster was charged with the production of forged title as early as 1086 when Domesday inquisitors in Essex recorded that the monks of Westminster had used a forged writ to claim land at Fanton.63 The archival connection between Westminster and St Albans is complicated, then. We have no evidence that Osbert de Clare drafted material for St Albans but strong evidence that Westminster phraseology influenced improvers of St Albans charters. Someone at St Albans fortified one of their Offa forgeries using a Bull of Adrian IV granted in favour of the abbey in 1156;64 something similar could have happened on the same or a different occasion using a Westminster charter. Moreover, twelfth57

The charters provide only a terminus post quem. Some could be later copies. The beginning and end of Osbert’s association with Westminster cannot be dated. He looms into view, mid-career, in the 1120s, his latest datable correspondence belongs to the 1150s but the date of his death is unknown: Williamson, ed., The Letters, nos 34, 36. Armitage Robinson, ‘Introduction: a Sketch of Osbert’s Career’, ibid., 1–20, esp. 2, 19. 58 Scholz, ‘Two Forged Charters’. 59 Napier and Stevenson, eds, The Crawford Collection, 99. On composite charters see David Bates, Re-ordering the Past and Negotiating the Present in Stenton’s First Century, The Stenton Lecture 1999, Reading 2000, 12, 14. 60 S 1450, MS 3. On the scribe see below, n. 76. 61 S 670, S 1450, MS 1, 2. 62 S 894. See Keynes, The Diplomas, 122 n. 125; Harvey, Westminster Abbey, 22–3; P. M. Korhammer, ‘The Origin of the Bosworth Psalter’, ASE 2, 1973, 173–87, esp. 184. Now also Simon Keynes, ‘Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster, and Bishop of Sherborne (993–1002)’, in St Wulfsige and the Sherborne Abbey Millennium 998–1998, ed. K. Barker, D. Hinton and A. Hunt, forthcoming [2003]. 63 Domesday Book ii, 14, Essex 6.4: Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 105. 64 Crick, ed., Charters, no. 3 (S 138).

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century claims at St Albans, no less than at Westminster, need to be approached with circumspection. The community at St Albans secured papal confirmation of extensive immunity claims as early as 112265 and there are grounds for believing that forgery was happening before the Conquest at St Albans.66 This brings us to a further aspect of the connection between the two houses. St Albans was as much a rival as a client of Westminster. At the time of Domesday Book, its endowment, like that of Westminster, was centred on a jumble of estates bordering Watling Street and no clear frontier could be drawn between the two: the abbot of St Albans claimed land in Middlesex and the abbot of Westminster owned estates very close to St Albans itself, to the south and north. Three estates in particular repay investigation, Aldenham, Wheathampstead, and one called Lotheresleage, probably part of Westminster’s Domesday manor of Hendon.67 The combined evidence of Westminster and St Albans charters indicates that these estates lay adjacent to or close by St Albans property. Wheathampstead bordered St Albans’ estate at Flamstead, to judge from shared boundary marks in the descriptions of the estates of both.68 The tenth-century bounds which survive for Lotheresleage69 describe an area in Hendon which marches with woodland granted to St Albans in a charter of Æthelred70 and the property of St Albans is specifically mentioned in bounds for Lotheresleage in a purported grant of King Eadwig, surviving in twelfth-century form.71 No bounds are preserved for the Aldenham estate but it must have lain in close proximity to the collection of St Albans estates in Cashio hundred. In the thirteenth century the anomalous legal position of the Westminster manor of Aldenham occasioned a dispute between the two abbots, a compromise being reached in 1256, by which the township of Aldenham was ordered to do suit at the Hundred of Cashio.72 Such strategically placed estates needed careful defence. To judge from its portfolio of extant charters, the monks of Westminster had a single pre-Conquest single sheet relating to Wheathampstead, otherwise they were reliant on post-Conquest copies and forgeries, including the mock original of Offa, which gave title to Aldenham, and the lists of estates recorded in the Osbertian forgeries which included Aldenham (charters of Dunstan, Edgar, Edward), Lotheresleage (Dunstan, Edgar), and Wheathampstead (Edward), as well as the post-Conquest copy of a Lotheresleage charter with some claim to authenticity. Three aspects of the purportedly Anglo-Saxon charters of these three estates may be reviewed in the light of the St Albans evidence. The first is diplomatic. These charters provide the context for the development and deployment of the immunity clause which has featured repeatedly in this discussion (below, Appendix). A preliminary version is found in the Wheathampstead charter of 1060, which survives as a

65 66

PUE iii, no. 5, compare above, n. 30. Julia Crick, ‘Offa, Ælfric and the Refoundation of St Albans’, in Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, ed. Martin Henig and Phillip Lindley, BAA Conference Transactions 24, 2001, 78–84. 67 J. E. B. Gover, Allen Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Middlesex apart from the City of London, Cambridge 1942, 219–21. 68 S 1031, S 912. 69 S 1451. The main text of the charter appears to have been tampered with after the charter was copied in the tenth century. Only the bounds remain in the original script. 70 Boundary marks shared: Totteridge, Grendel’s gate, the drain, S 912. See also Margaret Gelling, Early Charters of the Thames Valley, Leicester 1979, no 220. 71 S 645. 72 Levett, Studies, 130.

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contemporary single sheet.73 The more developed form appears in Westminster’s twelfth-century composite charter in which three tenth-century single sheets, for Tyburn-Fleet, Lotheresleage and Hampstead were run together in improved form.74 This version of the clause was interpolated into a St Albans charter of 1005 which, among other things, concerns woodland in Hendon bordering the Lotheresleage estate.75 Thus, in unknown circumstances, an enhanced exemption clause came into play in the charters of rival institutions relating to neighbouring estates. The second connection is palaeographical. The scribe of Westminster’s composite charter of Edgar deserves notice. He also copied a purportedly tenth-century charter relating to Lotheresleage and features in his hand bear comparison with that of the scribe of the Lewes charter of Abbot Gervase of Westminster, whom Chaplais credited with the production of the bulk of forged material associated with Westminster.76 The third parallel is historical, or perhaps pseudo-historical. I mentioned that by the third quarter of the twelfth century St Albans had three forged charters of Offa to Westminster’s one. Westminster’s relates to Aldenham, while two of St Albans’ give title to Cashio, the core territory around St Albans, near to Aldenham and Wheathampstead, and to Stanmore, a lost estate identified as bordering Lotheresleage.77 Thus rival houses had forgeries attributing to a single king title to neighbouring estates. In such circumstances monks of Westminster appear to have acted as catalysts for, rather than suppliers of, forgery.

The Pre-Conquest Evidence If we are to begin to make sense of the claims and counter-claims being lodged at Westminster and St Albans, in particular the association made between King Offa and the granting of core estates and privileges, it is necessary to look back before the twelfth century, the so-called heyday of forgery, and before the Norman Conquest. Two single sheets, one copied in the late tenth century, the other in the early eleventh, provide striking testimony to interest in the early Anglo-Saxon past at both houses before the Norman Conquest. The St Albans document, dated 1007, takes the form of an authentic and original diploma of Æthelred II in which he is made to confirm to the community estates originally given by King Offa and purchased by Archbishop Ælfric (995–1005) and his brother Abbot Leofric.78 Ælfric had preceded his brother as abbot of St Albans and he appears to have restored the community after a long period of obscurity. One avowed goal of restoration, at least according to three charters secured from King Æthelred, was the purchase of estates formerly part of an endowment made by King Offa.79 The Westminster evidence survives in slightly earlier form, in a charter written in a formal grade of Square minuscule seen in West73 74 75 76

S 1031. Keynes, Facsimiles, no. 22. Other versions occur in the Osbertian forgeries S 1040 and S 774. S 912. S 645. The scribe was able to write several grades of chancery-influenced bookhand and to deploy two types of Insular minuscule (compare the bounds of S 670 and the other charters). He appears to have been responsible for the copying of S 645 (compare the Insular minuscule), and one or even both versions of the Aldenham diploma forged in Offa’s name. Chaplais made neither identification but he did note the prevalence of this scribe in Westminster forgeries and dated his output by reference to a charter of Abbot Gervase: ‘The Original Charters’, 97, plate 9 a–d. I have not checked all of Chaplais’ identifications. 77 S 136, 136A. The third Offa-forgery, S 138, concerns lands in Buckinghamshire. Compare above, p. 70. 78 S 916. Crick, ed., Charters, no. 11. Keynes, ‘A Lost Cartulary’, 272–4. 79 Crick, ‘Offa’.

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minster documents of the 970s and 980s (see Plate 2).80 It describes with engaging candour a process closely analogous to that described at St Albans. Archbishop Dunstan purchased a donation (‘empta est donatio’) from King Edgar in which he restored to Westminster land allegedly once granted by Offa: five hides to the north and east of the abbey, between the Tyburn and the Fleet. The document is a tissue of inconsistent statements, widely regarded as a forgery.81 Dunstan is remembered for his restoration of Westminster, perhaps achieved while he was bishop of London,82 but Edgar was not on the throne in 951, when this document purports to have been drawn up, and neither was Dunstan archbishop, as he is styled therein. Likewise Archbishop Wulfred, who features in the charter as Offa’s contemporary, was consecrated archbishop in 805, nine years after Offa’s death. Moreover, the estate described, the zone immediately adjacent to the abbey, effectively Lundenwic, is hardly likely to have been Offa’s to give away.83 The Tyburn charter, as an indisputably tenth-century artefact, together with the St Albans document, offers prime evidence for the imaginative reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon past in the century before the Norman Conquest. Not only is Offa presented as effectively granting the site of the abbey, as forged charters alleged he had done at St Albans, but his grant took a specific form. It was recorded ‘in antiquo telligrapho libertatis’ which Offa gave to the monastery when, at Archbishop Wulfred’s behest, he ordered charters of restoration throughout all the kingdoms of the English. Edgar then made over this liberty to Dunstan for the restoration of the church’s fabric and religious life. These are statements whose potential was worked through at Westminster in succeeding centuries. First, the telligraphus. Telligraphus is a graeco-Latin hybrid which translates land boc: tellus graphus. Telligraphus belongs particularly to the vocabulary of Westminster draftsmen, employed in the famous post-Conquest forgeries,84 found in the late medieval endorsements of the Westminster charters,85 currently academic shorthand for the composite charters of Æthelred, Edward and William.86 But it is not a Westminster coinage. Although a rare word in English diplomatic at this date it occurs in one prior context: in two dispute settlements from the Canterbury archive, both surviving in contemporary form, one from the council of Kingston in 838 presided over by Archbishop Ceolnoth, the other from the council of Clofesho in 825, under Archbishop Wulfred.87 Next, the libertas associated with the telligraphus which Edgar commended to Dunstan. At this stage in Westminster’s history the draftsman provided no elaboration of the term. Libertas occurs relatively commonly in English charters from the ninth century onwards, as a description of documents and of their contents. But when the Tyburn charter was copied in the twelfth century the nature of the libertas was not left in doubt: as we have seen, the copyist included a clause granting full immunity, a clause found in embryonic form in the Wheathampstead charter of 1060, similar to that found in the forged charters of Edgar attributed to 80

S 670. Compare the script of the Sunbury charter, S 702 (London, WAM X), discussed by Korhammer, ‘The Origin of the Bosworth Psalter’, 182–7, plate IVb. 81 See Napier and Stevenson, eds, The Crawford Collection, 90. 82 N. P. Brooks, ‘The Career of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, 1–23, at 22. 83 See S. E. Kelly, ed., The Charters of St Pauls, Anglo-Saxon Charters, Oxford forthcoming, introduction. The area was mapped by Rosser, Medieval Westminster, figure 3 and Margaret Gelling, ‘The Boundaries of the Westminster Charters’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society ns 11, pt 3, 1954, 101–4, esp. 4. On the early history of Westminster see now Keynes, ‘Wulfsige’. 84 S 774, S 1039, S 1295. 85 S 645, S 702, S 794a, S 805, S 1248. 86 For example, Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 290–1. 87 S 1436, S 1438.

Plate 2. Edgar’s purported confirmation to Westminster of lands between the Tyburn and the Fleet, AD 951 for ?959: WAM V (S 670) (Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster)

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Osbert de Clare, but closer still to that found at St Albans.88 There is another parallel with St Albans. Grants of libertas occur in acceptable pre-Conquest charters even in association with named individuals, but grants of libertas associated with Offa are very rare indeed. Three examples survive in pre-Conquest form: Westminster’s tenth-century Tyburn charter, St Albans’ diploma of Æthelred of 1007, both already discussed here, and a third, a charter of Archbishop Wulfred of 811, surviving as a contemporary single sheet, in which reference was made to a grant of land which Wulfred’s predecessor Æthelheard had acquired from Offa with full libertas, just as Edgar commended to Dunstan the libertas of the land between the Tyburn and the Fleet, north-east of Westminster. So what connects late tenth-century Westminster with early ninth-century Kent? Why does a spurious charter of Edgar resemble in three significant particulars – the telligraphus, the libertas, Wulfred himself – material produced 150 years earlier for a different religious house? The answer lies most probably in the archive of Christ Church Canterbury, where Wulfred’s charters were preserved and where, as Nicholas Brooks has shown, in the time of Dunstan’s predecessor, Oda, and probably under Dunstan himself, documents were being concocted.89 Their draftsmen reconstructed history from written texts such as the Vita Wilfridi, much as Westminster draftsmen in the twelfth century are reported to have done. The script of the Westminster charter betrays no antiquarian touches but it does bear comparison with that of other Westminster charters and the hands of liturgical manuscripts associated with Dunstan himself, or at least with Canterbury.90 If the Tyburn charter was produced in the late tenth century using Canterbury models from the early ninth, how to explain the parallels with St Albans? I see no direct borrowing from the Westminster example at this stage. Telligraphus never entered the St Albans documentary record. The libertas of Offa could come quite independently from the Christ Church archive in the time of Ælfric, who retained the abbacy of St Albans after he became archbishop in 995. Indeed, apart from the borrowed immunity clause in an Æthelredian diploma, the history of Offa and the libertas associated with him appear to have gone their separate ways in the two houses. At St Albans, Offa was a central figure, inseparable from the exemption granted in the twelfth century later known as the liberty.91 At Westminster, Offa was accorded a lesser role institutionally speaking. He was remembered in additions to the mortuary roll of Abbot Vitalis but when the Tyburn charter was calendared in the so-called Telligraphus of Æthelred, which predates the enhanced immunity claims seen in the mid-twelfth century, Offa’s contribution was edited out.92 In conclusion, the case of St Albans serves as a reminder that it is safer to regard the monks of Westminster as leading exponents, rather than isolated practitioners, of the art of manipulating the Anglo-Saxon past in the twelfth century. Although the activities of the monks of Westminster mark the extreme of hands-on antiquarianism of the mid-twelfth century, they were not alone and we should perhaps view their output as

88 89

Below, Appendix. Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066, Leicester 1984, 232–6, 240–3, 319. 90 Above, n. 80. Compare also Jane Rosenthal, ‘The Pontifical of St Dunstan’, in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, 143–63, esp. 145–6. 91 Crick, ‘Liberty’. 92 S 894. On the mortuary roll see Vita Ædwardi, 156–7.

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part of a spectrum of monastic antiquarian activity at whose more theoretical and scholarly end we might place a figure such as William of Malmesbury.93 Indeed, the notion of central production does not fit comfortably with well attested patterns of monastic forgery, in which traditions become magnified in the cause of competition, especially during a dispute, between two parties which belong to the same close institutional, cultural, and social network: the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of St Davids and Llandaff.94 To judge from the evidence of the archives of St Albans and Westminster, two communities appear to have been tinkering with the pre-Conquest past and not one: we see small-scale contamination rather than whole-scale borrowing. The wider context supports this interpretation. Relations between St Albans and Westminster were marked by mutual suspicion and conflict as often as cameraderie. Their abbots clashed repeatedly and over the space of a century about possession of Aldenham. Furthermore, we have yet to establish when and how the borrowing took place. Much could antedate, or indeed postdate, the spate of forging for which Westminster is renowned, in the second quarter of the twelfth century: the outer limits of this activity span the century after the Conquest.95 The distribution of charters suggests that the borrowing may have been connected with the geography of the estates, the fact that the communities at Westminster and St Albans were proprietors with neighbouring interests, but we lack firm evidence to this effect. Thirdly, much more is based on written tradition than one might suppose. Westminster forgers used Anglo-Saxon single sheets – like the first charter of Edgar – but they chose to summarise the grants and run them together with others rather than to produce enhanced copies as was the case at St Albans. At both institutions draftsmen were consciously processing a written past as much as recording unwritten tradition.96 Finally, we need to take the long view of historical claims. Alongside the familiar signs of intervention in the historical record after the Conquest there sits an earlier body of evidence, much less spectacular in its physical appearance, but no less imaginative and no less indebted to archival tradition. Here there are fewer signs of mutual indebtedness. The two communities apparently independently alluded to events alleged to have taken place a century or more earlier, apparently drawing on a combination of written and unwritten sources. Richard Southern, in his final Presidential address to the Royal Historical Society, suggested that alienation and rupture prompted historical research.97 Post-Conquest England furnished him with most of his examples but he looked briefly at the effects of the Reformation as well.98 The charters of pre-Conquest St Albans, Westminster and other Anglo-Saxon foundations suggest a third period which needs to be considered in similar vein, the generations immediately after the monastic reform of the tenth century when foundations looked to their documentary records and found them wanting.99 The loss felt should not be underestimated. The monks of St Albans

93 94 95

See Southern, ‘Aspects’, 249–50, 253–6. Compare Galbraith as n. 2. Taking as outer limits the production of S 1031 with the embryonic version of the exemption clause in 1060, and the production of the St Albans cartulary after 1156. 96 Compare the observations of Bates on Westminster, Regesta, 373. 97 Southern, ‘Aspects’, 244–6. 98 Southern, ‘Aspects’, 256–61. 99 For another example see Robin Fleming, ‘Christchurch’s Sisters and Brothers: an Edition and Discussion of Canterbury’s Obituary Lists’, in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Memory of Denis L. T. Bethell, ed. M. A. Meyer, London 1993, 115–53 at 122.

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forged charters of Offa to repair the damage while those of Westminster sought in another archive remedy for the gap in their records. The Conquest caused no such wholescale dissipation of archival material. When, in the late fourteenth century a monk of Westminster, Richard of Cirencester, retold the history of his community, he not only transcribed Osbert de Clare’s forged charters of Edgar, Dunstan and Edward100 but he plundered the account of Dunstan’s foundation given in Sulcard’s Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii, composed c.1080.101 In the two extant manuscripts of the Prologus, Sulcard’s account of Dunstan’s foundation is complicated by the presence of a mysterious Archbishop Alfred, whom Sulcard’s baffled editor identified tentatively as Ælfsige, archbishop in 958/9.102 In the sole manuscript of Richard of Cirencester’s work, the problem is solved. The ghostly Alfred is none other than Wulfred.103 Wulfred’s appearance in Sulcard’s Prologus, and his reappearance three hundred years later in the work of Richard of Cirencester commemorates fittingly the tenth-century forgery which marks the beginning of surviving written record at his house.

APPENDIX The Immunity Claims of Westminster and St Albans The link between the Westminster and St Albans charters can be observed most clearly in claims to extensive immunities made at both houses. An embryonic version occurs in an apparently acceptable Westminster charter of 1060. The developed form occurs in forged pre-Conquest diplomas attributed to Osbert de Clare (S 774, 1040) but also in an improved version of a pre-Conquest charter (S 670), copied at Westminster in the mid-twelfth century into a composite charter, the so-called intermediate charter of Edgar (S 1450). This version resembles almost exactly one found in a forged diploma of the Confessor attributed to Osbert (S 1040) and is closely paralleled by a clause interpolated into a St Albans diploma of 1005 (S 912). Comparison of the three texts suggests that the Osbertian document was not the source of the St Albans document, rather the intermediate charter of Edgar. This has the unique error ‘Nullus [sit]’, rather than ‘nullis [sit/est]’, but like S 912 and the early S 1031, expeditio appears in the genitive, rather than the ablative as in S 1040. The other Osbertian version, S 774, which follows S 912, S 1450 and S 1031 at this point, cannot be the source of the St Albans version as comparison of the last phrase of the shared material confirms. The power accorded to the abbot in most witnesses is reassigned to the monks in S 774, an appropriately Osbertian development.104 In the accompanying table, the text of the St Albans interpolation appears on the

100

S 774, S 1293, S 1041. Mayor, ed., Ricardi de Cirencestria Speculum historiale ii, 96–110, 234–6, 241–9. 101 Ibid. ii, 94. Bernhard W. Scholz, ‘Sulcard of Westminster: “Prologus de Construccione Westmonasterii” ’, Traditio 20, 1964, 59–91. 102 Chapter 3. Scholz, ‘Sulcard’, 86 and 67. 103 Mayor, ed., Ricardi de Cirencestria Speculum historiale ii, 94. 104 Compare Armitage Robinson, ‘Introduction’, 5–7; Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters’, 95–6.

S 1031 (AD 1060) Contemporary single sheet

Ita ut nullis sit umquam grauatum honeribus. scilicet nec expeditionis nec pontis et arcis edificamine. nec iuris regalis fragmine. nec furis aprehensione. Et ut omnia simul comprehendam. nil debet exsolui. uel regis preposito. uel episcopi. uel ducis. uel ullius hominis. Sed omnia debita exsoluant iugiter. qui in ipsa dominatione fuerint. ad supradictum sanctum locum.

S 1450 (AD 951) Forgery, surviving as s. xii single sheet

S 1040 (AD 1065) Forgery, attributed to Osbert, surviving as s. xiv copy

S 774 (AD 969) Forgery, attributed to Osbert, surviving as s. xii single sheet

S 912 (AD 1005) Acceptable diploma with significant interpolation, surviving in s. xiii copy

Et ut ne quis presentium uel magis futurorum ambiget que sit illa libertas quam amabiliter et firmiter concedo omnimodis cuncta illius monasterii possessio nullus sit umquam grauata honeribus scilicet nec expeditionis, nec pontis et archis edificamine, nec iuris regalis fragmine, nec furis apprehensione. Et ideo ut omnia simul comprehendam, nil debet exsolui uel regis preposito uel episcopi uel ducis uel ullius hominis sed omnia debita exsoluant iugiter qui in ipsa dominatione fuerint ad supradictum sanctum locum secundum quod ordinauerit abbas qui ipso prefuerit cenobio.

Et ut ne quis praesentium vel magis futurorum ambiget quae sit illa libertas, quam amabiliter et firmiter concedo: omnimodis cuncta illius monasterii possessio nullis sit unquam gravata oneribus, scilicet nec expeditione, nec pontis et arcis aedificamine, nec iuris regalis fragmine, nec furis apprehensione. Et ideo, ut omnia simul comprehendam, nil debet exsolvi vel regis praeposito, vel episcopi, vel ducis, vel ullius hominis, sed omnia debita exsolvant iugiter, qui in ipsa dominatione fuerint, ad supradictum sanctum locum, secundum quod ordinaverit abbas qui ipso praefuerit coenobio.

Et ne quis presentium uel magis futurorum ambiget que sit illa libertas quam amabiliter et firmiter concedo, omnimodis cuncta illius monasterii possessio nullis sit unquam grauata honeribus nec expeditionis, nec pontis et arcis edificamine, nec iuris regalis fragmine, nec furis apprehensione . et ut omnia simul comprehendam, nil debet exsolui nec regi, nec regis preposito, uel episcopo, uel duci uel ulli homini, sed omnia debita exsoluant iugiter qui in ipsa damnatione fuerint ad supradictum sanctum locum secundum quod ordinauerint fratres eiusdem cenobii.

Et ne forte quis presentium uel magis futurorum ambiget que sit illa libertas, qua ipsum cenobium rex beniuolus Offa ditauit et egomet nunc confirmando renouaui, dicam plane, quia omnimodis cuncta illius monasterii possessio nullis est obnoxia fascis, scilicet nec expeditionis, nec pontis et arcis edificamine, nec iuris regalis fragmine, nec furis apprehensione. Et ut omnia simul comprehendam nil debet exsolui uel regis preposito uel episcopi uel ducis uel ullius hominis sed omne debitum exsoluant iugiter qui in ipsa possessione fuerint ad predicti martyris mausoleum secundum quod ordinauerit abbas qui ipso prefuerit cenobio.

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right displayed alongside four Westminster versions: the earliest attested version, in the Wheathampstead diploma of 1060, the interpolated version found in the intermediate charter of Edgar, and two Osbertian forgeries.105 The text shared between the Westminster and St Albans version is indicated by underlining.

105

The texts of S 1031, 1450, 774, and 912 have been checked against photographs or the original. S 1040 has been printed only once, in the eighteenth century by R. Widmore, An Enquiry into the time of the First Foundation of Westminster Abbey, 1743, Appendix, no. 2, which I have not consulted. My text is derived from The New Regesta Regum Anglorum, devised by Sean Miller (http: //www.trin.cam.ac.uk/ chartwww/).

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The Architectural Context of the Border Abbey Churches

THE ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT OF THE BORDER ABBEY CHURCHES IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES Richard Fawcett The grouping of major monastic houses along Scotland’s border with England must always have been one of the most impressive concentrations of medieval church architecture to be found anywhere in Britain, and several of them have retained highly imposing structural remains. The Augustinian abbey at Jedburgh has preserved the shell of its church, and the plan of its conventual buildings has been recovered and laid out following excavation.1 At Dryburgh the Premonstratensian abbey in a loop of the Tweed survives as an outstandingly beautiful, if fragmentary, ruin. Of Kelso’s Tironensian abbey the chief remains are the greater part of its extraordinary western crossing and transept, which stand almost to full height. The Cistercian abbey of Melrose has much of those parts of the magnificent late medieval church that had been completed by the Reformation, together with the excavated footings of one of the most extensive complexes of conventual buildings to have been archaeologically explored in Scotland. The choir of Coldingham’s Benedictine priory is still roofed and in use as the parish church, and there are significant portions of its conventual buildings. In addition, there are the remains of a number of smaller foundations. Parts of the Cistercian nunnery church of St Bothans are to be detected in the parish church of Abbey St Bathans. Fragments of another Cistercian nunnery, at Eccles, may be seen around the garden walls of a house adjacent to the parish church. Peebles Trinitarian friary has the shell of the western two-thirds of its church and the footings of the main nucleus of its monastic buildings. The site of Jedburgh Observant Franciscan friary has recently been excavated, and its foundations are displayed in a public garden.2 One reason that a number of these churches have survived as well as they have is because parish worship continued to be housed in parts of them after the Reformation, a function that two of them still accommodate. The parochial use of the others came to an end in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: in 1773 at Kelso, in 1784 at Peebles, in 1808 at Melrose, and in 1875 at Jedburgh. But by that stage growing interest in medieval architecture meant that efforts were then made to preserve what had survived. Indeed, at Melrose and Jedburgh a wish on the part of enlightened land owners to conserve and allow the remains to be seen to better advantage was one of the motives for providing new parish churches elsewhere; those owners were the duke of Buccleuch at the former and the marquess of Lothian at the latter. In this paper attention will be concentrated particularly on what must always have 1

John Lewis and Gordon Ewart, Jedburgh Abbey, the Archaeology and Architecture, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Monograph 10, Edinburgh 1995. 2 Piers Dixon, Jerry O’Sullivan and Ian Rogers, Archaeological Excavations at Jedburgh Friary 1983–1992, Edinburgh 2000.

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been the five most impressive monastic churches of the group: those at the abbeys of Dryburgh, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose and at the priory of Coldingham. Many of these houses may have been successors to earlier foundations, even if they were not necessarily on the original sites. The predecessor of Coldingham had been the double monastery of Colodaesburg, founded by St Aebbe in the seventh century on a headland about three kilometres to the north.3 St Modan is traditionally thought to have based his missionary activity at Dryburgh in the seventh century, though that is open to doubt. Bishop Ecgred is said to have established a community at Gedwearde, the predecessor of Jedburgh in about 830, having granted two vills of that name to Lindisfarne.4 At Old Melrose, about four kilometres east of the medieval abbey, there was a monastery founded by St Aidan in the mid-seventh century, where St Cuthbert first took the habit in 651.5 A wish to re-establish continuity of monastic observance may therefore have been at least one motive behind the foundation of some of these houses. The main exception in this is Kelso, which was relocated from Selkirk, perhaps in order to be close to the great royal castle of Roxburgh, though neither Selkirk nor Kelso is known to have been associated with religious life at an earlier date. The earliest of the churches about which anything is known with some degree of certainty was at Coldingham, the shire of which was granted to Durham by King Edgar in about 1098. Edgar is known to have been present at the dedication of a church there in about 1100.6 At that time the church was not yet home to a monastic community, and it probably only achieved the status of a priory shortly before the first recorded reference to a prior in about 1147.7 The first church was superseded by a larger building later in the twelfth century, but from excavations carried out in the 1850s, when the later church was undergoing restoration, it appears to have been an elongated rectangle with an eastern apse and a western tower (Fig. 1.1), the footings of the latter being now exposed to the west of the surviving part of the later church.8 The wide western arch of the tower suggests a nave may have been planned, though no evidence of its construction is recorded as having been found. The likelihood that one was never built is indicated by the way in which the conventual buildings were most unusually located against the choir rather than the nave of the later church, suggesting that when the priory was established its buildings were set against what had already been built. So far as the plan of the church is concerned, there may be partial parallels with an apsed chancel added to a small church built by St Margaret at Dunfermline, in the place where she had married Malcolm III in about 1069, traces of which were discovered below the floor level of the later nave in 1916.9 It was to this church that she introduced from Canterbury what is thought to have been Scotland’s first community of Benedictines. If her church consisted of the two rectangular

3

Leslie Alcock, Elizabeth A. Alcock and Sally M. Foster, ‘Reconnnaissance Excavations on Early Historic Fortifications and Other Royal Sites in Scotland, 1974–84, Excavations near St Abb’s Head, Berwickshire, 1980’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 116, 1986, 255–79. 4 Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum, in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, RS, 1882–5, i, 52–3. 5 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, OMT, 1969, 430. 6 J. Raine, The History and Antiquities of North Durham, London 1852, app. ix and iv. 7 Registrum de Dunfermelyn, ed. Cosmo Innes, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1842, no. 4. 8 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Berwickshire, 2nd edn, Edinburgh 1915, 35–43. 9 Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan, Edinburgh 1933, 106–7.

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compartments that form the western part of the church investigated in 1916, it is possible that the apsed chancel added to that church was the work of Edgar. He is known to have re-established a Benedictine community there with a fresh infusion of monks from Canterbury,10 the original group of monks having been dispersed in the troubles that followed the death of Malcolm III in 1093. If there is something a little tentative about the establishment of a priory at Coldingham, the other great Border abbeys were founded in an altogether different spirit, and the prime mover behind most of them was David I, both before and after he became king in 1124.11 Their grouping along the Border towards England has the appearance of a carefully calculated expression of the new vigour that was being breathed into the Scottish church under David’s energetic leadership. It was perhaps also intended as a statement that would have left little room for doubt about his views on the metropolitan claims of the archbishops of York within Scotland. Yet, while David was anxious to establish the independence of the Scottish Church from the predatory interests of York, it was almost inevitable that he should draw many of his ideas for his revitalised Church from his experience in England. As the sixth and youngest of the sons of Malcolm III and St Margaret, it must have been assumed that he had little prospect of succeeding to the Scottish throne. Having accompanied his sister Matilda to England at the time of her marriage to Henry I in 1100, he stayed and enjoyed the vast estates of the honour of Huntingdon that came with the wife provided by his brother-in-law. His standing as the holder of extensive lands, together with his close involvement in the life of the English court, must have meant that there was little that could not become known to one with a deep interest in the church as an institution, or in the buildings that were being provided for it. David certainly had that interest. At a time when Scotland had few masons of its own capable of erecting structures of sufficient scale and in the idiom that was becoming universal for great churches across Europe, it was also natural that he should look to the buildings he came to know best for masons to design and construct the large numbers of new churches that were to be required as part of his programme for the Church in Scotland. At the same time, it is clear that David’s interests extended beyond England. It has to be said that, although it was later asserted that he recruited some of his craftsmen from continental Europe,12 there is little direct evidence to support this in the surviving buildings that were raised for him. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that he was closely aware of ecclesiastical developments within continental Europe, and this is corroborated by the origins of some of the communities he established. The Tironensians of Selkirk, who were later moved to Kelso, but who were established as early as about 1113, came from Tiron itself,13 which David was later to visit. His patronage of this order, in which he was to be followed by several members of the Scottish royal house, is particularly striking, since it was not widely patronised elsewhere either in England or wider Europe. It may be that he was demonstrating some measure of independence of his English mentors in favouring an order that they overlooked. But whatever the case, it has been shown that the monks of Selkirk must have been the first ‘reformed’ community to be established anywhere in Britain.14 The 10 11

A. C. Lawrie, ed., Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, Glasgow 1905, no. xxv. G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Royal House and the Religious Orders’ and ‘Benedictines, Tironensians and Cistercians’, in The Kingdom of the Scots, London 1973, 165–87 and 188–211. 12 The Rites of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society, Durham, London and Edinburgh 1903, 24–5. 13 Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum, ii, 247. 14 Barrow, ‘Benedictines, Tironensians and Cistercians’, 199.

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Augustinians who were established at Jedburgh jointly by David and Bishop John of Glasgow, in about 1138, are thought to have been brought from Saint-Quentin at Beauvais,15 one of the order’s leading intellectual centres. His brother, Alexander I, had already patronised these apostles of Gregorian reform in the foundation of Scone in about 1120, to which he brought canons from Nostell; but it has been suggested that the foundation of the community at Jedburgh may have been intended to mark a reconciliation with the papacy after a particularly bruising period of confrontation with York.16 The Cistercians, who were given their first Scottish home at Melrose in 1136, were brought from the northern English missionary house of Rievaulx,17 This was at a time when, under the leadership of Abbot William, who had earlier been a member of Clairvaux, Rievaulx was in the closest contact with the Burgundian headquarters of the order. In his patronage of the Cistercians David must certainly have been influenced by his old friend, St Ailred, and his own step-son, St Waltheof, was to become second abbot of Melrose in 1148. There was nothing small-minded behind such a programme of foundations, and this is also abundantly evident in the architecture that was created as the setting for their worship. In many ways the most remarkable of the churches built for the Border abbeys must have been that of Kelso.18 It may have been started even before the move from Selkirk in 1128, though the surviving parts appear not to have been finished until the earlier thirteenth century, when the western tower was evidently completed. What survives are the two western bays on the south side of the nave, a pair of western transepts with a tower over their crossing with the main body of the church, and an aisle-less western vestibule which rises to the same height as the nave’s central vessel. The most striking aspect of this design is the double-cross plan, which was unique in Scotland so far as is known (Figs 1.2, 2). Excavation in 1971 located what was thought to be evidence for the south-west pier of the east crossing, indicating that the aisled nave was six bays long,19 but nothing has been found to clarify the plan of the presbytery and eastern transepts. However, a description of the church dating from 1517 in the Vatican archives confirms the double-cross plan and records that, as might have been expected, the high altar and monastic choir at the east end were divided from the parochial nave by a screen and rood loft.20 That description also confirms that the church had a wooden roof, and that there were pyramidal roofs to the towers. The idea of the double-cross plan for major religious houses goes back at least to the years around 800, and the churches associated with the Carolingian monastic reforms of St Benedict of Aniane, as illustrated by the important church of St Riquier at Centula. The idea was explored further in a number of major churches along the Rhine valley in the years after 1000, and further east as at Hildesheim St Michael.21 It

15 16 17 18

Barrow, ‘The Royal House and the Religious Orders’, 180. Barrow, ‘The Royal House and the Religious Orders’, 180. Chronica de Mailros, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1835, 70. The most detailed published account of the abbey is in Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Roxburghshire, Edinburgh 1956, ii, 240–6. The author’s own views on the architecture of all the Border abbeys will be set out more fully in John Dunbar, Katherine Cruft and Richard Fawcett, The Buildings of Scotland: the Scottish Borders, New Haven and London forthcoming. 19 Christopher J. Tabraham, ‘Excavations at Kelso Abbey’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 114, 1984, 365–404. 20 Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum Historiam Illustrantia, ed. A. Theiner, Rome 1864, dccccxxvii. 21 Louis Grodecki, L’architecture Ottonienne, Paris 1958, 185–249.

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is tempting to suspect that what may have been regarded as the imperial connotations of such a plan were particularly attractive to David at one of the churches that proclaimed his intention to be independent of the English Church. In some support of this, it might also be possible that imperial aspirations were being expressed more subtly in the diaper-pattern decoration of the gable above the principal lay entrance in the north transept, with its reminiscences of Roman opus reticulatum masonry (Fig. 2); such classical quotations had earlier been prominently displayed on the triumphal arch at the entrance to the Carolingian abbey at Lorsch of about 800. In the continental versions of churches with western transepts, however, those transepts were sometimes associated with a second choir, or with a great westwork entrance block that offered a rather different appearance from that at Kelso. On balance, whatever the ultimate inspiration for the idea of the double transepts, a more immediate intermediary for Kelso was possibly one of the abbeys of the eastern counties which also had western transepts, such as Bury St Edmunds, begun in 1081, or Ely, begun in 1082. Yet even they do not altogether foreshadow the approach taken at Kelso, where the central vessel was continued without break through the west crossing into a full-height vestibule. While it is possible that a vestibule had been planned for Ely from an early stage, and one was eventually built in the thirteenth century, there it was unlike Kelso in being completely separated off from the nave. Bearing this in mind, it seems that David was entirely content for his masons to develop their own fresh approaches on the basis of the prototypes from which they were drawing their initial inspiration. This is also apparent in the design of the internal elevation of Kelso’s nave. We cannot know the extent to which the nave as we now see it was a continuation of the original design in the earlier parts of the building. The first parts to have been built would have been the presbytery and the monastic choir, the latter presumably extending down into the east bays of the nave. After that the less urgently required parts could be completed more slowly. Nevertheless, the massive and basically cylindrical nave arcade piers are unlikely to have been started much later than the eastern parts, though changes of detailing in the two upper storeys of the surviving part of the nave show that they were only completed over a period of decades (Figs 3, 4.1).22 It is therefore possible that there were significant changes from the original design not only in the details but in the overall forms. A particularly unusual feature of the nave is the total lack of any obvious vertical division into bays above the level of the arcade. Both the triforium and clearstorey stages have continuous small arcades in front of wall passages and, though the pairs of clearstorey windows respect the bays as established by the arcades, the arches at that level march along without any punctuation above the piers. At triforium level there is nothing at all that respects the bay rhythm. In some ways the treatment of the upper parts of the elevation is comparable with that in the nave at St John’s Collegiate Church in Chester, where the upper storeys were also only completed over an extended period, and where they similarly have tightly spaced small-scale arcades in front of wall passages. But Chester differs from Kelso in having clear bay divisions in the form of robust wall shafts rising through the upper storeys. Again, it seems that the Kelso masons were choosing to establish an independent line. If we are to seek elsewhere for major churches in which the bay system was disregarded at mid-height, an approach that is at least 22

This change is seen particularly clearly in the introduction of later capital types in the upper storeys. Water-leaf caps are first introduced amongst the scallop caps at triforium level, while at clearstorey level there are mainly water-leaf and crocket caps. The moulded details in the upper storeys also become progressively more delicately treated.

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superficially comparable is to be found in a number of early twelfth-century churches around the area of the Loire Valley. In the choirs of Saint-Genou and Saint-Benoit sur-Loire, for example, the middle storey is treated essentially as a decorative band of arcading. However, there is nothing else at Kelso to suggest an awareness of the churches of that area, and it seems unlikely there was any direct borrowing. So far as we know, Kelso did not have any close architectural followers in its overall design. However, it might be mentioned that the Tironensian house of Kilwinning, founded some time between the 1160s and 1180s, had a form of western transept as a result of the way the nave opened into the two west towers through tall arches,23 and there could have been some influence from Kelso in this. A wish to open up the spaces below the towers is perhaps also seen in the way that at Arbroath Abbey, a Tironensian daughter house of Kelso, the lower storeys of the western towers were unvaulted, and the gallery arches were thus essentially a flying screen. But this latter is very far removed from the expression of space in Kelso’s western transept. Moving on to Melrose, of the church founded by David I in 1136 and dedicated in 1146, the only parts to have survived the intended total rebuilding of the church after the destruction of 1385 were the bottom courses of the west front, together with fragments of the rather later narthex (Fig. 5).24 All that these remnants indicate is that, as might be expected for an early church of the Cistercians, it was a building of the greatest architectural austerity, with not even the most rudimentary mouldings to relieve the simplicity of the main doorway. But, if we know very little about the overall design of the church at Melrose, the plan at least has been established through excavation (Fig. 1.4). It was a development on the standard ‘Bernardine’ type first developed in the order’s original home in Burgundy, and then adopted at so many earlier twelfth-century Cistercian houses across Europe, in which a short rectangular presbytery is flanked by a row of chapels on the east side of each transept, west of which is a nave that is long enough to accommodate choirs for both the monks and the conversi. However, the plan at Melrose shows a variant on this theme that links it particularly with its mother house of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire; this is seen in the way that the chapels immediately flanking the presbytery step forward beyond those to each side. This variant has been known for some time to have been employed in the earlier churches at Fountains Abbey, but it is now also known to have been adopted for the church at Rievaulx itself,25 and it is therefore highly likely that it was masons from Yorkshire who were brought up to build Melrose. Structurally the most complete of the Border abbey churches is that at Jedburgh, where much of the monastic choir and nave are still standing.26 It is a very complex building, with striking differences of design between presbytery, choir and nave, and this reminds us that, where we only have a small part of a building, as at Kelso, we may have a very incomplete picture of any diversity there may have been in its appearance when complete. Jedburgh’s church was presumably laid out soon after the foundation in about 1138. The plan as originally built had a square-ended presbytery, which was slightly shorter than the one whose lower walls we now see, an aisled choir of two bays, and transepts with an apsidal chapel on the east side of each (Fig. 1.3). Straight east ends were not very common at this period, and the plan at 23

J. Philip McAleer, ‘Towards an Architectural History of Kilwinning Abbey’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 125, 1995, 813–80. 24 Royal Commission, Roxburghshire, ii, 265–91. 25 Peter Fergusson and Stuart Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey, New Haven and London 1999, 48–51. 26 Royal Commission, Roxburghshire, i, 194–209.

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Jedburgh could be ultimately indebted to that at Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire, of about 1100. There may have been other intermediaries, however; since Southwell was a collegiate church of the archbishops of York, with whom David I and Bishop John of Glasgow were having such problems at this time, it might have been rather unexpected for the idea to be taken directly from there. The most striking feature of the first work on the choir is its internal elevations, in which the gallery is given the appearance of being suspended within arcade arches carried on giant cylindrical piers that rise through those two storeys (Figs 4.2, 6). The closest surviving parallel for this type of design is at the nunnery church of Romsey in Hampshire. David’s aunt Christina was a nun at Romsey, and David had stayed there with his sister, Matilda, when he went down with her before her marriage to Henry I in 1100. Unfortunately, it is not known when the building of Romsey was started. The relevant parts certainly cannot have been designed by 1100 and, though it seems likely that David would have retained contacts with the abbey, it is perhaps more likely that the idea was taken from elsewhere. Earlier examples of this type of elevation almost certainly existed in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey,27 which was founded in about 1087, but where the arrangement was lost in an extensive remodelling of the early fourteenth century. There may have been another example of the type at Reading Abbey, which was founded in 1121, though the evidence for this is rather less certain.28 Nevertheless, the possibility of a connection with Reading is supported by the continuing interest that David I evidently took in what had been one of his brother-in-law’s most important foundations, and it was from Reading that monks were brought to David’s foundation on the Isle of May.29 A particular problem at Jedburgh is the question of whether or not it was originally intended to have a clearstorey above the arcades and galleries. The disproportionately high one that is now seen dates from the end of the twelfth century, and was part of a somewhat ungainly attempt to raise the choir wall heads to the same height as the new nave that was being built by then. There is certainly evidence for an earlier clearstorey on the north side immediately adjacent to the central tower, though its details look rather later than those of the arcade and gallery below, while showing kinship both with strengthening arches inserted into the rear of the north choir gallery and with a rather squat clearstorey added over the south transept. On this evidence it is arguable that the first clearstorey may have been started only shortly before the one we now see, being abandoned when it was decided to build a taller clearstorey that would give the choir the same height as the nave that was by then nearing completion.30 The possibility that there was originally no clearstorey over the choir could also be supported by what we know of the projecting unaisled section of the presbytery as it was extended in the later twelfth century. Excavation in 1990 has shown that this part 27

Richard Halsey, ‘Tewkesbury Abbey: Some Recent Observations’ and Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Elevations of the Romanesque Abbey Churches of St Mary at Tewkesbury and St Peter at Gloucester’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, BAA Conference Transactions for 1981, Leeds 1985, 16–35 and 36–51. 28 Halsey, ‘Tewkesbury Abbey’. 29 A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Documents Relating to the Priory of the Isle of May’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 90, 1956–7, 52–80. 30 The evidence is discussed more fully in Richard Fawcett, ‘The Architectural Development of the Abbey Church’, in Lewis and Ewart Jedburgh Abbey (it should be noted that illustrations 112 and 113 have been transposed). The counter-argument, in favour of a clearstorey having been intended from the start, is set out in Malcolm Thurlby, ‘Jedburgh Abbey Church: the Romanesque Fabric’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 125, 1995, 793–812.

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was rebuilt with its east wall only a very little further east than the original,31 and it seems likely that it was structural problems at the east end of the church, possibly resulting from the steep slope of the ground to the east and south, that were the reason for this very limited extension and rebuilding. From a combination of the surviving fabric (Fig. 7) and early views, we know that the rebuilt presbytery had decorative blind arcading along its lower walls, and upper walls with a mural passage fronted by an arcade that stepped up and down around the windows. Although the later clearstorey over the choir must certainly have been extended along the presbytery, the design of this presbytery would have appeared complete without a clearstorey and, as already suggested for the choir, it may not initially have been intended to have one. The closest analogy for the type of design seen in the later twelfth-century presbytery at Jedburgh is the choir of Coldingham Priory, which also has blind arcading along the lower walls, albeit heavily restored in its present state, and a stepping arcade in front of the wall passage at the level of the windows (Figs 4.4, 8). It would be useful to have a firmer indication of when the rebuilding of Coldingham was started, both for our understanding of Coldingham itself and to help us date the comparable work at Jedburgh a little more closely. It is frequently said to date from after an attack by King John of 1216, though the architectural detail, which is of very high quality and unlikely to be retardataire, suggests it must have been started some decades earlier than that. There is a statement in the Aberdeen Breviary that in 1188 St Aebbe appeared in a vision to a monk called Henry, ordering that he should build an oratory for her,32 and it would be very attractive to link this with the start of work at Coldingham. Regrettably, the Aberdeen Breviary is not a generally reliable source on architectural matters. The approach to the design of aisle-less elevations seen at both Coldingham and in the presbytery of Jedburgh was not something that was developed in isolation. Again we are reminded that what was happening in Scotland was very closely linked to developments in England, though by the later twelfth century those links are increasingly often with northern than with southern England, and there is a sense that, whatever periodic political differences there might have been, Lowland Scotland and northern England had essentially become two parts of a single architectural province. Designs in which an arcaded wall passage open onto a high level of windows above an unpierced lower wall can be found in a secular context as early as the hall built by William Rufus at Westminster in the 1090s. But ecclesiastical parallels that are closer in scale and date to Coldingham are to be found in the Yorkshire Benedictine nunnery church of Nun Monkton, and the Benedictine priory church of St Bees in Cumberland. A common ultimate source for some of the ideas might perhaps be identified in the slightly earlier nave built at Ripon Minster by Bishop Roger of Pont l’Evêque, though the scale and complexity of Ripon’s nave resulted in a rather different end product. Returning to Jedburgh, the first building campaigns had probably concentrated on the presbytery, choir and transepts, together with enough of the east end of the nave to enclose the canons’ choir and to abut the lower storey of the central tower. But when work was eventually re-started on the nave around the last quarter of the twelfth century, a completely new design was worked out which largely ignored the scale and detailing of everything that had gone before, and which must have necessi-

31 32

Lewis and Ewart, Jedburgh Abbey, 80–1. Breviarium Aberdonense, ed. William Blew, Bannatyne Club, London 1854, Feast of St Ebba.

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tated the demolition of the short section of nave already built.33 The new design has relatively tall arcades carried on clustered-shaft piers, above which is a high gallery stage (Figs 4.3, 9). The design of the clearstorey appears to have been modified in the course of construction, and it is now difficult to be certain what was first intended. However, it seems probable that something higher had been initially planned, and it may be that, at the same time that it was decided to heighten the choir clearstorey, it was also decided to make that over the nave lower, in order to ensure that the two parts rose to the same height on each side of the central tower.34 A number of the leading features of this type of design had been introduced into England from eastern France by the Cistercian order of monks, who were using them in some of their northern houses by the 1150s, as at Kirkstall.35 They were then quickly taken up in the churches of other orders. These features, including clustered shaft piers, pointed arches and certain types of foliate capitals, were possibly first introduced into Scotland at St Andrews Cathedral, where rebuilding was started soon after 1160.36 Although the evidence there is now very fragmentary and potentially open to varying interpretations, the relative proportions of the three storeys, and in particular the high gallery,37 together with the use of clustered shaft piers, suggests that St Andrews could have been a larger version of what we see at Jedburgh. It was perhaps even the direct prototype for much of what is to be seen at arcade and gallery level of Jedburgh’s nave. Nevertheless, it would be unusual for a major building to draw its entire inspiration from just one prototype, and there are also strong pointers to the likelihood that ideas were reaching Jedburgh from a variety of other sources. The west front, with its single large round-arched window flanked on each side by decorative blind arcading, must surely have taken its lead from the slightly earlier west front of Kelso. At the same time, other details point to ideas coming directly from north Yorkshire and, once again, we are reminded of the continuing vitality of the contacts with northern England. A noteworthy feature of the Jedburgh arcades is the capitals, some of which have richly carved variants of succulent water-leaf and crocket foliage (Fig. 10) that have their closest counterpart at the Cistercian abbey of Byland.38 It is a fascinating aspect of changing attitudes within the Cistercian order at this time that water-leaf capitals, which had first been favoured for their extreme simplicity, were taking on a far more complex appearance as architectural elegance came to be deemed as more acceptable than had earlier been the case. In this connection it is important to note that Jedburgh, St Andrews and Byland were all architecturally inter-related in a variety of ways, and other buildings that had much in common with them included Arbroath Abbey in Scotland and Hexham and Lanercost Priories in England. The Border was certainly no barrier to the free flow of architectural ideas, and it is likely that craftsmen at all of these sites were continuing close contact with each other. 33

The arcade bases in the two eastern bays of the nave are of a slightly later type than those further west, suggesting that this part was built last, and there are other changes of detail which support this. 34 At the west end of the nave the external face of the clearstorey has a truncated arch springing which appears to have been intended to rise higher and to embrace the openings in each bay; there are also pilaster-like projections between each bay of the clearstorey which could have been intended to support such embracing arches. 35 John Bilson, ‘The Architecture of the Cistercians, with special reference to some of their earlier churches in England’, Archaeological Journal 66, 1909, 185–280. 36 Andrew of Wyntoun, the Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ed. D. Laing, Edinburgh 1872–9, iv, 426–7. 37 This assumes that the relative proportions of the three storeys in the aisled section of the choir were the same as those for which there is still evidence in the aisle-less presbytery. 38 Tessa Garton, ‘The Transitional Sculpture of Jedburgh Abbey’, in N. Stratford, ed., Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki, Woodbridge 1987, 69–81.

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We must now briefly consider Dryburgh Abbey, the only non-royal foundation among the major Border abbeys. Founded in 1150 by Hugh de Moreville, Constable of Scotland,39 with a community of Premonstratensians assumed to have been brought up from Alnwick, this was probably the last of the churches of the Border abbeys to be started. Building was evidently long postponed, and was a protracted process once started. The community which first took possession of the site in 1152 must presumably have been initially housed in temporary structures for some decades. The first effort to raise permanent buildings would appear to have been invested in the east conventual range, which housed much of the community’s more important domestic accommodation. Nevertheless, similarities between the base courses of the east conventual range and those around the east end of the church indicate they were probably laid out around the same time, though work on the church may not have been pressed ahead in earnest until the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Once started, the costs of constructing the church evidently overstretched the community’s ability to pay, if what was being said about the heavy debts of the house in 1242 is to be accepted at face value.40 The plan of the church was in some ways like that of Jedburgh’s, with an aisle-less presbytery, an aisled choir of two bays, and transepts projecting one bay beyond the choir aisles with a chapel aisle on the east side of each (Fig. 1.6). But its immediate source was more likely to have been Dryburgh’s own mother house of Alnwick, where excavations in the 1880s revealed what appears to have been a comparable arrangement, with the two bays of the aisled choir evidently leading directly into a chapel off the outer bay of each transept.41 The elevations of the choir and transepts may not have been finally determined for some years, since the architectural evidence points to the outer walls of the interlinked choir and transept chapels having been built before the arcade piers which supported the high walls of the central vessel.42 As eventually completed, the treatment of the arcade and clearstorey levels is fairly standard for the first half of the thirteenth century, with an open arcade running in front of the mural passage of the latter. What is more unusual is the treatment of the middle storey, where there are cusped circlets within depressed containing arches, rather than the more usual series of open arches (Figs 4.5, 11). There appear to be no close parallels for this treatment, though there are partial similarities in a number of buildings, including the north transept at Hereford Cathedral, for example, where work was probably started in about 1250. This similarity is seen in the circular windows of the outer walls of the galleries, as well as in the internal form of the clearstorey windows at Hereford. It is perhaps unlikely that there was any direct link between Dryburgh and Hereford, however. Although the de Morevilles had themselves maintained extensive English connections, which might conceivably have explained such a link, the male line of the family had died out in 1196,43 and it is difficult to think of anything else that might have explained such a connection. The partial similarity of approach seen at the two buildings should probably be seen as no more than an illustration of the fact that the 39 40

Chronica de Mailros, 74. In that year Bishop David de Bernham of St Andrews allowed the canons to serve their appropriated churches because of debts caused by building and hospitality. Liber S. Marie de Dryburgh, ed. William Fraser, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh 1847, no. 38. 41 W. H. St John Hope, ‘On the Premonstratensian Abbey of St Mary, Alnwick, Northumberland’, Arch. Journ. 44, 1887, 337–46. 42 The arcade responds, which are coursed in with the walls of the chapels, are of an earlier type than the free-standing arcade and crossing piers. 43 Keith Stringer, ‘The Early Lords of Lauderdale, Dryburgh Abbey and St Andrews Priory at Northampton’, in Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland, Edinburgh 1985, 49.

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artistic climate in the thirteenth century made it perfectly possible for related designs to be developed at buildings that were widely separated across the British Isles. In that sense, what we see at Dryburgh is a yet further illustration of the complex interchange of architectural ideas into which Scotland had been drawn since the revival of the church in the early twelfth century under David I, even if the nature of this inter-change had been undergoing continuous re-evaluation since then. From a relationship in which Scotland had inevitably started off essentially a debtor, since its own architectural resources in the early twelfth century were simply unequal to the new demands being placed on it, it had developed into one in which the vastly widened range of opportunities being made available in Scotland was resulting in a far more equal partnership. By the later twelfth century masons working in Scotland were perfectly well able to formulate their own variants on current themes to meet the specific needs of their patrons, while it seems that, whatever their national origins may have been, they were as ready to work either to the south or the north of the Border. This close architectural inter-relationship with England was continued to the end of the thirteenth century. But it was then dramatically broken as a result of the wars with England that began with Edward I’s devastating series of attacks on Scotland in the 1290s, and that were to result in a long break in major church building operations. As a coda to the foregoing discussion, it should perhaps be said that, although the prime architectural importance of the Border abbeys as a group is the churches that were built for them in the twelfth century, and to a lesser extent in the thirteenth century, one of them at least is of outstanding significance for our understanding of late medieval architecture in Scotland. When church building began to gather a renewed momentum towards the end of the fourteenth century, one of the most important indicators of the way things were to go in the later middle ages was successive phases of the complete rebuilding of one of the churches we have already considered, that at Melrose. This rebuilding was necessitated by an English attack in 1385, following which an even larger church was started than that of 1136 (Fig. 5), almost certainly to the design of English masons. This might have suggested to contemporaries that the old links with the southern kingdom were to be reestablished, with Scotland making haste to catch up with the latest English architectural fashions in much the same way that it had in the early twelfth century. But in fact those English designers at Melrose were soon replaced, and there is little more than occasional evidence of English masons having worked in Scotland again before the later middle ages. At Melrose they were initially superseded by French masons, one of whom left a list in the south transept of his various other works in Scotland, and several of these can still be identified. Soon after that, however, Scottish masons in their turn appear to have taken over the reins at Melrose, at a time when we find an altogether new architectural synthesis emerging. Those contributing to this synthesis appear to have been willing to look beyond England so as to take some account of architectural thinking in parts of continental Europe, and especially in the Low Countries and France. However, Scotland was never again to have such close artistic links with a single country as it had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Intriguingly enough, this new synthesis also appears to have taken cognisance of earlier Scottish approaches to design, and there might conceivably have been an element of almost defiant nationalism underlying this, at a time when some strikingly nationalistic accounts of Scottish history were being put together. But, whatever the sources, the buildings that resulted from this transformation of attitudes were perhaps more completely sui generis than those produced at any other phase of Scotland’s architectural history.

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Fig. 1. Sketch plans of the Border abbeys: 1. Coldingham Priory, the first church; 2. Kelso Abbey; 3. Jedburgh Abbey as probably first planned; 4. Melrose Abbey, the first church; 5. Jedburgh Abbey, the late medieval church; 6. Dryburgh Abbey. (Author)

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Fig. 2. Kelso Abbey, the north-west transept and west vestibule from the north (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 3. Kelso Abbey, the south side of the nave (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 4. Sketches of internal elevations of the Border abbeys: 1. Kelso Abbey nave; 2. Jedburgh Abbey choir; 3. Jedburgh Abbey nave; 4. Coldingham Priory choir; 5. Dryburgh Abbey north transept. (Author)

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Fig. 5. Melrose Abbey from the west; the remains of the west front of the first church are in the foreground (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 6. Jedburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 7. Jedburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir and presbytery (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 8. Coldingham Priory, the east end of the choir (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 9. Jedburgh Abbey, the nave from the east (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 10. Jedburgh Abbey, a crocket cap of the nave arcade (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

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Fig. 11. Dryburgh Abbey, the north side of the choir and north transept (© Crown Copyright, reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland)

Predatory Kinship Revisited

PREDATORY KINSHIP REVISITED Michael H. Gelting If I have chosen the title of my paper to refer to Eleanor Searle’s book Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power,1 it is not that I believe that work to reflect current consensus on Norman society in the tenth and eleventh centuries.2 Searle’s book is replete with interesting observations on the functioning of kinship as a political instrument during those centuries, but she ultimately fails in her attempt to demonstrate that the Normans were in this respect somehow different from their – supposedly more ‘feudal’ – Frankish neighbours.3 What interests me here is the basic assumption at the root of her hypothesis, viz. that Scandinavian society in the so-called Viking Age was essentially structured by kinship solidarities. It is noteworthy that Searle only adduces a couple of specific references in support of this assumption. Her case rests just as much upon general notions of the structure of ‘early Germanic societies’, and ultimately it presupposes that the kin-based nature of early Scandinavian society is common knowledge.4 Historiographically speaking, Searle seems to be right on this point. If not in positive terms, through the assertion of Viking Age Scandinavian society as being based upon kinship structures,5 then at least negatively, by historians taking for granted that Scandinavia can be safely left out when discussing feudal society in the high Middle Ages.6 There is a persistent conception of Scandinavian alterity whose historiographical origins might be well worth pondering. Nineteenth-century German legal historians saw the Scandinavian law books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as comparatively pure expressions of age-old Germanic traditions,7 among which the liberty and equality of all free men were seen as highly important. This idea was enthusiastically adopted by Scandinavian scholars, even when they were fiercely anti-German like the Danish national and liberal historians.8 The subsequent demise 1 2

Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066, Berkeley 1988. For positive but critical reviews of Searle’s book, see e.g. David Bates in Speculum 65, 1990, 145–7; Robin Chapman Stacey, ‘Beowulf and the Bureaucrats’, Journal of British Studies 30, 1991, 83–99, at 96–9. 3 Cf. Michael H. Gelting, ‘Military Organization, Social Power and State Formation in Denmark, 11th–13th Century’, in Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD 1–1300: Papers from an International Research Seminar at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 2–4 May 1996, ed. A. Nørgård Jørgensen and B. L. Clausen, Copenhagen 1997, Publications from the National Museum [PNM], Studies in Archaeology & History 2, 48–54, at 52 with n. 52. 4 Searle, Predatory Kinship, 8–11, 159–77. 5 Cf. Birgit Sawyer, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones: Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scandinavia, Oxford 2000, 71. 6 E.g. Timothy Reuter, ‘The Feudal Revolution: Comment 3’, Past and Present 155, 1997, 177–95, at 189. 7 Elsa Sjöholm, Gesetze als Quellen mittelalterlicher Geschichte des Nordens, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis/Stockholm Studies in History 21, Stockholm 1977, 25. 8 The Danish historiography has been usefully summarised by Helge Paludan, ‘ “Vor danske Montesquieu”: Historiografiske iagttagelser vedrørende dansk middelalderforsknings opfattelse af

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of the Germanistic construct has certainly affected Scandinavian legal history too, but it has proved remarkably difficult for Scandinavian medievalists at large to revise the general conception of high medieval Scandinavian society that was based on the Germanistic theses.9 Even nowadays, Scandinavian nationalism is deplorably strong and keen to stress national separateness from the rest of the world. The illusion of an originally free and egalitarian peasantry has been dispelled, but the idea of a Scandinavian Sonderweg has found refuge in the concept of a kin-based society that, moreover, never developed feudal institutional forms. This concept has often been bolstered by a somewhat uncritical reception of Jack Goody’s work on marriage and family structures in the Middle Ages.10 From the point of view of international research, the picture of Scandinavian society in the high Middle Ages is seriously skewed by the understandable fascination of the Icelandic sagas, so much more exotic than any other texts preserved from Scandinavia’s medieval culture. The sagas that have found greatest favour with literary scholars as well as historians are the so-called family sagas, which are – as appears from the epithet – centered upon the vicissitudes of individual aristocratic families during Iceland’s early centuries. But by taking place in a society without a monarchical head, even without anything that might be termed a state – a feature which I suspect may have contributed to the subject’s popularity with American scholars11 – these sagas belong in a setting that is highly atypical of Scandinavia as well as of the rest of Europe.12 If we are to look critically at the foundations for the notion of Scandinavian alterity during the high Middle Ages, we have to focus upon the three Scandinavian realms: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Due to the bent of my own research, I will base my reflections mainly on the Danish material. The Scandinavian law books from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries13 are crucial for the notion of an originally kinship-based Scandinavian society.14 The traditional view of these texts is that most of them are more or less spontaneous compilations made by legal practitioners. They are therefore assumed to reflect ancient custom, although a custom that was gradually changing under the combined

fæstevæsenets opkomst’, Historie: Jyske Samlinger ns 13, 1980, 1–32; Helge Paludan, ‘Lighedens lov? Træk af dansk historieskrivnings syn på den sociale opbygning af landskabslovenes samfund gennem 200 år’, in Jydske Lov 750 år, ed. O. Fenger and Chr. R. Jansen, Viborg 1991, 51–64. 9 As pointed out by Elsa Sjöholm, the strong Marxist influence on Scandinavian historical writing in the 1970s and 1980s tended to preserve the old Germanistic theses that were current in Marx’s day. Elsa Sjöholm, Sveriges medeltidslagar: Europeisk rättstradition i politisk omvandling, Rättshistoriskt bibliotek 41, Lund 1988, 46–9. 10 E.g. Helge Paludan, Familia og familie: To europæiske kulturelementers møde i højmiddelalderens Danmark, Aarhus 1995. 11 Cf. e.g. the quotation from W. P. Ker placed as motto of the book by Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga, Berkeley etc. 1982, v. 12 This is not to say that the study of the Icelandic sagas is irrelevant for our understanding of widespread patterns of social interaction such as the feud. Works like Byock, Feud, and William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland, Chicago 1990, to name but two, are widely cited far beyond the specific field of Norse studies. 13 The earliest parts of the Norwegian law books purport to have been written in the first half of the eleventh century. It is an open question to what extent this claim may be correct. The texts cannot be demonstrated to have been in existence before the mid-twelfth century. 14 Birgit and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500, The Nordic Series 17, Minneapolis/London 1993, 17–21. The standard editions are, for Denmark: Danmarks gamle landskabslove med kirkelovene [DGL], ed. J. Brøndum-Nielsen and P. J. Jørgensen, 8 vols and supplement, Copenhagen 1932–61; for Norway: Norges gamle Love, ed. R. Keyser and P. A. Munch, vols 1–2, Christiania 1846–8; for Sweden: Samling af Sweriges gamla lagar, ed. H. S. Collin and C. J. Schlyter, 13 vols, Stockholm 1827–77.

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influence of canon and Roman law and of increasing royal power.15 Only the two national law codes of Norway, from 1274, and Sweden, from c.1350, the Danish Assizes of Jutland, from 1241, and two comparatively late Swedish provincial laws (Uppland, 1296, and Södermanland, 1327) are manifestly the product of royal legislation. On this assumption, the important functions assigned to the extended kin in these laws are taken to reflect ancient custom that was slowly being eroded by the Church and royal power, both eager to weaken and dissolve the strong aristocratic kin-groups that stood in the way of their own ambitions. However, the exact nature of the relationship between the early law books and royal and ecclesiastical power has never been thoroughly elucidated, and in fact the idea that these compilations were created more or less independently seems rather dubious. In Denmark, the oldest part of the so-called Arvebog og Orbodemål (Book of Inheritance and cases that may not be settled by composition) is probably to be identified with an otherwise unknown law code issued by King Valdemar I in 1170,16 and the rest of the law books, dating from the first half of the thirteenth century, are likely to represent stages in an abortive project for a national codification, of which the Assizes of Jutland too were a part.17 As for the Norwegian and Swedish law books, it is difficult to figure out the exact context of their first compilation, but it is noteworthy that subsequent additions to them came in the form of royal decrees18 and, in Norway, to some extent as episcopal statutes.19 If the role of royal power in the creation of these texts was greater than traditionally assumed, we will have to re-think the whole question of distinguishing between innovative and customary elements in the laws. Actually the most fruitful way to look at the problem would seem to be the one advocated by the Swedish legal historian Elsa Sjöholm, who claims that all the law texts should be seen as the political outcome of a mediation between the interests of different power groups at the moment of codification.20 Ultimately looking at the laws through such optics makes nonsense of the characterisation of any part of the laws as ‘customary’: if earlier legal customs were carried over into the laws, it was because they served the present-day interests of some powerful group, not because of the weight of custom as a value in itself. At most, ‘customary’ elements might have survived in fields that were considered to be politically irrelevant. In the case of kinship, it is not necessary to accept the construct of an original ‘kinship society’ in order to see that kinship was indeed politically highly important in Scandinavia in the high Middle Ages, just as it was in the rest of Europe. Defining the legal functions of kinship must therefore have been a crucial part of the process of codification. Of course this was also the view of the traditional interpretation: the lay aristocracy struggled to retain as much as possible of traditional kinship solidarity,

15 16 17

Sjöholm, Sveriges medeltidslagar, 34–8. Ole Fenger, ‘Jydske Lov og de øvrige danske landskabslove’, in Jydske Lov 750 år, 37–50, at 41–7. Michael H. Gelting, ‘Skånske Lov og Jyske Lov: Danmarks første kommissionsbetænkning og Danmarks første retsplejelov’, in Jura & Historie: Festskrift til Inger Dübeck som forsker, ed. Lise Dybdahl, Henrik Dam and Finn Taksøe-Jensen, Copenhagen 2003. 18 Grethe Authén Blom, ‘Retterbot’, in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder [KLNM], 22 vols, Copenhagen etc.1956–78, vol. 14, cols 108–14; Gerhard Hafström, ‘Konungs edsöre’, in KLNM, vol. 9, col. 93. 19 The so-called Gullfjær (‘golden quill’) introduced by Archbishop Øystein of Nidaros in the 1160s or 1170s as a modernisation of the church laws in the Frostathing Law. Trygve Knudsen, ‘Gullfjær’, in KLNM, vol. 5, cols 593–4. 20 Sjöholm, Sveriges medeltidslagar, chap. 1, esp. 21–5. I find Sjöholm’s theoretical approach valid even though her conclusions are open to serious criticism.

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while kings and churchmen endeavoured to reduce it.21 It should be noted, however, that this interpretation was based not so much upon an analysis of the law texts as upon an ideal model of early Germanic social structures that has since been emptied of most of its substance. The problem has to be reconsidered from scratch, without any preconceptions about the evolution of Scandinavian society and law in the high Middle Ages. This is a difficult proposition, because the written evidence pre-dating the law books is extremely scanty. At least, that is, if we restrict ourselves to written sources in the Latin tradition, whether in Latin or in the vernacular. The Swedish historian Birgit Sawyer has recently proposed to interpret the tenth- and eleventh-century Scandinavian rune-stones as statements of claims to inheritance.22 As she points out, these memorial inscriptions are peculiar in that they systematically name the person or persons raising the stone before naming the deceased person or persons to whose memory they are dedicated. In many cases the relationship between the stone-raisers and the deceased is specified, and it is usually a close kinship relation.23 It is only fair to say that Birgit Sawyer’s hypothesis has not been met with universal acclaim. The stones explicitly mentioning inheritance constitute the tiniest of fractions of the entire corpus, and the most important instance, the Hillersjö inscription, to which I shall return shortly, is in several ways atypical. Inscriptions that are highly unlikely to have anything to do with inheritance are at least as common: stones raised by a king to the memory of one of his followers,24 by a guild to one of its members,25 by a freed slave to his former master,26 as a commemoration of the conversion of a province,27 and even the peculiar case of the Swedish aristocrat Jarlabanki who raised a whole series of stones to his own glory.28 Probably the very idea of interpreting the rune-stones as outright claims to inheritance in a legal sense is a reflection of the enduring influence of legal history on the study of early Scandinavian history, making it extremely difficult to imagine an oral society that could not refer to a fixed textual body of laws.29 Yet that is probably exactly what we have to visualise. We have to face the fact that we have next to no knowledge of what the law was like before it was written down in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that it is extremely doubtful to what extent the legal procedures described even by the 21

A particularly clear-cut example is Arne Odd Johnsen, Fra ættesamfunn til statssamfunn, Oslo 1948. The traditional interpretation remains influential, as shown by Paludan, Familia og familie (see n. 10 above). 22 Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-Stones, esp. 47–59. 23 Ibid., 19–20. 24 The Hedeby stone (Schleswig, in medieval Denmark), raised by a King Sven, probably Sven Forkbeard (c.986/7–1014); Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 101. 25 The Norwegian Skadberg stone; ibid., 55. This is, incidentally, one of the few stones to mention inheritance explicitly: ‘Members of the ale-guild raised this stone in memory of Skarde when they drank his “inheritance ale”.’ However, the guild members could hardly have been Skarde’s ‘natural’ heirs. 26 The Hørning stone (Jutland, Denmark); ibid., 206. 27 The stone on the island Frösön in Jämtland (Sweden); ibid., 150. 28 Ibid., 137–9. 29 The idea that the law had to be a fixed body of text seems to be as old as the written laws themselves. In Iceland and parts of Sweden, the medieval law books claim that the tenor of the laws had originally been transmitted orally by a succession of ‘lawmen’ or ‘law-speakers’ who had the duty of reciting them to the people in the main annual thing-assembly. Cf. Gerhard Hafström, Yrjö Blomstedt, Torfinn Tobiassen and Magnús Már Lárusson, ‘Lagman’, in KLNM, vol. 10, cols 150–63, and Magnús Már Lárusson, art. ‘Lögsögumaðr’, in KLNM, vol. 11, col. 137. Cf. Michael H. Gelting, ‘Odelsrett – lovbydelse – bördsrätt – retrait lignager: Kindred and Land in the Nordic Countries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Family, Marriage and Property Devolution in the Middle Ages, ed. L. I. Hansen, Tromsø 2000, 133–65, at 142.

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earliest laws may be projected backwards in time. Yet the vast majority of the stones were raised by people who would also have been the deceased person’s heirs according to the medieval law books, and it does not seem an unreasonable proposition that the obligation to commemorate a deceased person would primarily rest with his or her heirs. This is not sufficient to consider the rune-stones as outright expressions of legal claims, but it does suggest a link between inheritance and stone-raising. Thus the rune-stones are indeed likely to constitute a rich and hitherto untapped source for Scandinavian inheritance customs in the centuries preceding the law books, although the interpretation of their evidence may be less straightforward than claimed by Birgit Sawyer. At least she is perfectly justified in pointing out that the regional differences in sponsorship patterns in the rune-stone material are so glaring that they must have some significance,30 and the most likely explanation is that these differences had something to do with inheritance customs. Perhaps the best test of her hypothesis is to see how it fits in with other evidence. On the basis of Birgit Sawyer’s hypothesis, what the rune-stones seem to reveal is a society dominated by heirs, which is something quite different from the concept of a society constituted by more or less clan-like extended kin-groups. This may seem perilously close to being a circular argument, but a few corroborative indications may be adduced. In the first place, memorial inscriptions were never sponsored by extended kin groups; apart from the rare types of exceptions already mentioned, the stones were always raised by people who would, according to the later law books, have been entitled to inherit.31 Secondly, a few inscriptions do explicitly mention inheritance, the most remarkable example being the Swedish Hillersjö inscription detailing how, through a series of reverse inheritances, the widow Gerlög ended up by uniting in her hands the possessions of three different male lines.32 Another Swedish example, the Malsta stone, recounts the ancestry of the deceased man over five generations, i.e. probably more than a century back, including some female ancestors.33 This is particularly intriguing, since the inscription explicitly states that the deceased had acquired the land on which the stone was raised; presumably the land had not come into his possession by inheritance from his long line of ancestors. But then why mention them in the inscription? Possibly Rich-Gylfe, as the deceased was called, based the legitimacy of his acquisition upon being descended from an earlier possessor of the land, who would then be the woman Thora, the most distant ancestor named on the stone. If this were so, it might be a remarkably early instance of something akin to the Scandinavian custom usually designated by the Norwegian word odelsrett, the obligation on the part of the seller of inherited land to give a first option to his kinsmen.34 It may not be irrelevant that the stone is ostentatiously Christian, the inscription being placed in a snake-shaped band encircling a Christian cross. This hypothesis introduces another legal feature that has loomed large in the construct of an originally kin-based Scandinavian society, since the odelsrett has been seen as a vestige of an ancient system of collective ownership by the kin group. It may be useful to detail the different roles of kinship as they appear in the twelfthand thirteenth-century law texts. Apart from inheritance and marriage, which are

30 31 32 33 34

Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 2. Ibid., chap. 3.II and 4. Ibid., 49–51. Ibid., 82. Cf. Gelting, ‘Odelsrett’, where I have argued that the custom as it is known from the Scandinavian law books may have been a recent innovation.

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evidently questions of paramount importance in the laws, the most important ways that kinship intervenes are the following: i. ii. iii.

The odelsrett, the right of first option in the case of sale of inherited land. Collective responsibility on the part of the kinsmen of both parties in cases of homicide.35 In some laws, particularly the Assizes of Jutland, the use of verdict by a jury chosen among the defendant’s kinsmen. However, since this feature was obviously a novelty introduced after the condemnation of ordeals by the Fourth Lateran Council, I shall not discuss it any further.36

As for inheritance, Birgit Sawyer has suggested that the runic evidence indicates some kind of impartible inheritance as the dominant pattern in most of Scandinavia, especially Denmark and Norway, while a few Swedish regions seem to have applied a system of partible inheritance. She hesitates as to whether this difference should be seen as indicative of regional differences in inheritance customs or whether it rather reflects differences between social groups.37 The enormous number of rune-stones from the regions with apparently partible inheritance – the Swedish provinces of Uppland, Södermanland, and Öland, which together have more than half of the extant inscriptions in the whole of Scandinavia – suggests that such memorials were used there by a considerably larger social group than, for example, in Denmark and Norway, where rune-stones are comparatively few and probably restricted to a fairly small aristocracy. In fact, as Birgit Sawyer points out, there are indications both in the runic material and in the medieval written evidence that originally there was some freedom of choice in appointing one person as the principal heir.38 Further evidence may be adduced to support this view. A correspondence in the early 1170s between Pope Alexander III and the Swedish king, church, and people seems to indicate that it was licit for land owners to leave all of their possessions to the Church, to the detriment of their natural heirs. The pope condemned this practice and advocated the Augustinian solution of adopting Christ as a co-heir. This meant that testamentary gifts to the Church should correspond to the part taken by each individual heir.39 That was actually the solution adopted by the Danish and most of the Swedish laws, while Norwegian, Icelandic, and some Swedish laws limited such gifts to a fixed proportion of the inheritance.40 However, in order to be applicable, such a rule demanded laws of inheritance that pre-determined the individual shares, i.e. a system of forced partible inheritance, excluding the possibility of favouring one of the potential heirs. This, too, was the solution adopted by the laws.41 The only freedom of choice conceded to the land owner in matters of inheritance was the faculty of including illegitimate children among his heirs by a formal recognition; and this was obviously a concession to the reluctance of lay society to accept the Church’s distinction between legitimate and illegitimate offspring,42 a point of view 35

Cf. Ole Fenger, Fejde og mandebod: Studier over slægtsansvaret i germansk og gammeldansk ret, Copenhagen 1971, 396–434. 36 Ditlev Tamm, Dansk retshistorie, 2nd edn, n.p. 1996, 44–52. 37 Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 83–4, cf. 152–4. 38 Ibid., 72–3. 39 Gelting, ‘Odelsrett’, 137–40. 40 Lars Hamre, Erik Ulsig, Jerker Rosén, Kauko Pirinen and Magnús Már Lárusson, ‘Donasjon’, in KLNM, vol. 3, col. 224–233; Lars Hamre, Jakob Benediktsson, Herluf Nielsen and Jan Liedgren, ‘Sjelegave’, in KLNM, vol. 15, cols 310–15. 41 Stig Iuul and Kauko Pirinen, ‘Arveret’, in KLNM, vol. 1, cols 258–67. 42 Ibid. Various solutions were adopted in the individual laws.

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that was, moreover, not entirely without support among canon lawyers at the time of codification of the Scandinavian law books.43 Scandinavian rules of inheritance as we know them from the laws were thus shaped by ecclesiastical influence. Ecclesiastical influence, based in this as in so much else upon Roman civil law, may also be safely assumed to have been the motive force behind the increasing rights of women to a share in the inheritance. The rules of inheritance in the early law books, particularly in Norway, apply a kinship system with a preference for male heirs, and if the rune-stone evidence is accepted, this was the dominant system in most of Scandinavia in the tenth and eleventh centuries.44 The later laws eliminate the postponement of female heirs. The change seems to have been most radical in Denmark, where the earlier system of kinship itself was replaced in all the laws by a parentelic system. The practical implication of the change was that in the parentelic system all descendants took precedence over collaterals and ascendants, while in the earlier system close collaterals and ascendants excluded more distant descendants. None of the laws, however, conceded full equality to female heirs, since a sister’s portion was consistently calculated as half of a brother’s part.45 The advancement of the inheritance rights of women is often interpreted as a means to split up aristocratic landholdings,46 but I think it is more likely that it was a means to guarantee the indissolubility of marriage. The improvement of women’s inheritance rights seems to have created new problems, as is suggested by an article in the Assizes of Jutland introducing legal procedures to force brothers to find husbands for their sisters instead of keeping them unmarried in their households.47 If the Church had such momentous influence on a crucial question like rules of inheritance, it is reasonable to ask whether the same might have been the case in other legal fields where kinship was involved. As for the odelsrett, I have argued elsewhere that this right was a wholesale innovation in the early Scandinavian law books, thus being almost exactly contemporaneous with the introduction of the functionally similar procedure of retrait lignager in French customary law at the beginning of the thirteenth century.48 This does not mean that the odelsrett was not preceded by notions of a right on the part of kinsmen to approve of alienations of inherited lands. There are a few indications that at least in Denmark, such ‘laudation’ by kinsmen was practised in the twelfth century, just as in western France, where the custom has been studied extensively by Stephen D. White.49 But it must be emphasised that this right had nothing to do with an original collective ownership by the kindred; rather it should be seen as an actualisation of the reciprocal obligations obtaining between close kinsmen. Curiously, however, the rules applying to odelsrett did not match those determining the devolution of inheritance. While inheritance might pass into other male lines through reverse inheritance, the odelsrett system strictly applied the principle of paterna paternis,

43 44 45 46

James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago/London 1987, 409. Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 71–91. Iuul and Pirinen, ‘Arveret’. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, Cambridge 1983, 64–8, cf. 118–23. 47 Bk 1, ch. 8; DGL, vol. 2, 38–41. 48 Gelting, ‘Odelsrett’. 49 Ibid., 143; Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints: the Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150, Chapel Hill/London 1988.

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materna maternis.50 This fact tends to support the idea of a recent origin of the rules as they are laid down in the Scandinavian law books, since the principle, though widely disseminated throughout ‘feudal’ Europe, does not seem to occur before the eleventh century.51 In the Scandinavian laws, moreover, the kin-group entitled to raise claims based on the odelsrett was defined by the same boundaries as the canonical incest prohibitions.52 I suggest that while the notions at the root of the odelsrett were ancient, the right as it is known from the law books was defined and extended to a much larger kin-group under the influence of the Church. Moreover, the odelsrett tended to be strengthened, not weakened, in the course of the thirteenth century.53 The same hypothesis would seem to be warranted in the case of the blood feud. Of course the notion of a duty to avenge a kinsman who had been killed was not new and had certainly not been introduced by the Church. But the idea of collective responsibility on the part of the kin of the killer as well as of the dead man seems to have been redefined under the influence of the Church.54 Again, the limit of kin responsibility was defined in accordance with the canonical incest prohibitions, and the arithmetical calculation of the parts of the compensation to be paid or received by each kinsman according to the degree of his kinship with the killer or the deceased – not to speak of the extremely complicated rules applied in some laws to the case where a man was a kinsman of both parties55 – have a distinctly bureaucratic flavour.56 The novelty of such complicated arrangements, and the unwanted consequences of such an extension of the definition of kinship, is suggested by the Danish king Cnut VI’s decree on homicides in Scania from the year 1200.57 The king condemned the abuses to which the rules concerning kin responsibility had given rise: under the pretext of this obligation, killers extorted sums exceeding the amount of the compensation due, even from people not legally obliged to contribute. Thus – to cite the royal decree – they enriched themselves by the means that ought to have impoverished them.58 To avoid this, the king changed the procedures, so that the collection of the compensation was not left to the killer himself. This looks like an amendment due to unforeseen consequences of recent legislation.59 I suspect that traditional notions of vengeance are better represented by the statutes of St Canute’s guild in Flensburg, loosely dated to c.1200:60 if an outsider killed a guild-brother in the presence of other guild-brothers, the latter, together with the dead man’s heir, were to avenge the killing if they could. If no heir were present, the guild-brothers were to detain the killer and force him to pay compensation; only if he

50 Knut Robberstad, Magnús Már Lárusson and Gerhard Hafström, ‘Odelsrett’, in KLNM, vol. 12, cols 493–503, esp. col. 497. 51 Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, vol. 3, Le droit familial, Paris 1968, 381, cf. 387–8. 52 Gelting, ‘Odelsrett’, 134–5, 149. 53 Ibid., 144–7. 54 The essential study of the Danish material is Fenger, Fejde og mandebod. 55 E.g. the Law (or Customary) of Scania, cited in Michael H. Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace and the Canonical Incest Prohibitions: Making Sense of an Absurdity?’, in Nordic Perspectives on Medieval Canon Law, ed. M. Korpiola, Publications of Matthias Calonius Society 2, Saarijärvi 1999, 93–124, at 116. 56 Cf. Sjöholm, Sveriges medeltidslagar, 195–8. 57 Diplomatarium Danicum, ser. 1, vol. 4, 1200–1210, ed. N. Skyum-Nielsen, Copenhagen 1958, no. 24, 43–7. 58 ‘. . . efficiuntur unde depauperari debuerant locupletes.’ Ibid., 45. 59 Cf. Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace’, 116. 60 Cf. Christoph Anz, Gilden im mittelalterlichen Skandinavien, Veröffentlichungen des Max-PlanckInstituts für Geschichte 139, Göttingen 1998, 190.

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was unable to pay could the law of talion be applied.61 While the statutes obviously reflect the preference for compensation over feud in the laws,62 I suspect that the explicit mentioning of the dead man’s heir is significant: previously, vengeance was understood to be not a matter for any kinsman, but an obligation incumbent specifically on the principal heir. Other kinsmen – for whom guild-brothers here act as substitutes – did have a moral obligation to assist the heir, but it was the heir who had the responsibility to take the initiative. This is consonant with my interpretation of high medieval Scandinavian society as a society of heirs rather than of kinsmen. If this was the original understanding of the blood feud, there was no need for a precise definition of the kindred; those men who assisted the avenging heir would thereby show that they defined themselves as his kinsmen and friends, while other men within the same degrees of formal relationship with the avenger might hold aloof and thereby define themselves, if not as non-kin, then at least as un-friends.63 This would be quite in line with the mechanisms of solidarity and conflict that may be found all over Europe in those centuries – and, incidentally, also with the dramatic pattern in many of the Icelandic family sagas. In a society functioning along such lines, a man would be dependent upon a complex social network, not only of kinsmen, but also of friends, clients, and patrons. Indeed, if I am right in seeing Scandinavian societies in the high Middle Ages as societies of heirs, a man’s worst enemies might often be his co-heirs, and thus close kinsmen. Kinship had to be reinforced by other ties in order to be a dependable political resource.64 I contend, then, that the Scandinavian law books are largely a product of an attempt by the Church, backed by royal power, to transform kinship from an ideologically highly valued but ambiguous, negotiable, and malleable social construct into a well-defined legal principle assigning precisely defined rights and obligations to every man within a legally defined kinship group. The main purpose would seem to have been to eliminate occasions for friction and conflict by replacing choice and negotiation with precise and elaborate rules, and by assigning collective responsibility to extended kin-groups in order to make them keep unruly heads under control. In this, the Church followed the same policies as it did all over Europe. Thus the extraordinarily extended model of kinship that was applied in the Scandinavian law books did not spring from ancient native tradition. It had been elaborated in a setting that was part Carolingian, part Italian.65 It seems to reflect the Italian family clans studied by Jacques Heers much better than anything that may be found in Scandi61

Danmarks Gilde- og Lavsskraaer fra Middelalderen, ed. C. Nyrop, vol. 1, Copenhagen 1899–1900, 7 (no. 3, ch. 1). 62 In the statutes of St Canute’s guild in Odense, conventionally dated c.1245, which appear to represent a general confirmation of the statutes of the Danish St Canute’s guilds by King Eric Ploughpenny (1241–50), the guild-brothers are obliged to help the slain man’s heir to obtain compensation; there is no longer any mention of a duty to avenge the killing. Ibid., 21 (no. 5, ch. 4). 63 It may be significant that the statutes of St Canute’s guild in Malmö, of 1256, although maintaining the guild-brothers’ duty to avenge the killing, have dropped the explicit mention of the (principal) heir. This might be understood as a consequence of the law books’ system of generalised kinship solidarity. These statutes represent a general reform of the statutes of the Danish St Canute’s guilds. Ibid., 35 (no. 7, ch. 1), cf. 32–3 (no. 6). 64 Michael H. Gelting, ‘Féodalisation sans féodalité dans le Danemark médiéval: une question mal posée?’, in Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus / Présence du féodalisme et présent de la féodalité / The Presence of Feudalism, ed. N. Fryde, P. Monnet and O. G. Oexle, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 173, Göttingen 2002, 137–51, at 145; cf. Lars Hermanson, Släkt, vänner och makt: En studie av elitens politiska kultur i 1100–talets Danmark, Avhandlingar från Historiska Institutionen i Göteborg 24, Göteborg 2000. 65 Cf. Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace’, 98–107.

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navia.66 The only extended kin-group in Scandinavian medieval history to have deployed some kind of wide-ranging solidarity based on kinship was the Danish family descended from the powerful aristocrat Skjalm the White, who lived around 1100.67 But this kin-group’s coherence was apparently maintained by its members’ ties with the family’s monastic foundation of Sorø,68 and its solidarity was mainly expressed through its success in keeping the two wealthiest episcopal sees of Denmark in the hands of its members, all lines combined, for more than a century.69 It was very largely an ecclesiastical affair. If my interpretation of the previously mentioned Malsta stone is correct – for other interpretations are equally possible – it might be an early instance of such an ecclesiastically inspired extension of the kin group. To sum up so far: Eleanor Searle was certainly right in seeing early Norman kinship as ‘predatory’. Being an important social and political construct in the whole of Europe, kinship might be used, inter alia, for supporting predation; indeed, in societies where inheritance was of paramount importance, it might also become the locus of predation. But there was nothing particularly Scandinavian, or even Germanic, about this function of kinship. If elaborate rules connected with kinship loom large in the medieval Scandinavian law books, it was because the Church tried to force a fluid social practice of kinship into a system of binding rules. Some of these rules were actually applied; some were ignored; and some were turned to other purposes, even to the point of supporting practices that the Church sought to combat.70 And the roots of the system of extended kinship that the Church sought to apply are quite likely to have been Mediterranean. By no means were they Nordic. My conclusion, then, nicely parallels Susan Reynolds’ thesis about institutional feudalism in her important book Fiefs and Vassals: if historians have cherished the construct of a Scandinavian ‘kinship society’ in the high Middle Ages, it is because they have projected backwards in time a legal and institutional system that was actually a product of a conscious legal, political, and ideological project initiated in the second half of the twelfth century. It is even adumbrated in the conclusion of Susan Reynolds’ book: When, after writing my chapters on France, I started on Italy, I discovered that the rule that allowed property that the alienator had acquired for himself to be alienated more freely than what he had inherited did not seem to apply there as it did in France. I later discovered that references to it in Germany only seemed to occur from about 1200. What I had accepted as a natural and common-sense rule that presumably applied everywhere and that I had read into the earliest references to acquisitions in the Frankish sources, may not have been anything of the sort. It needs more investigation than I have given it.71

66 Jacques Heers, Le clan familial au Moyen Age: Etude sur les structures politiques et sociales des milieux urbains, Paris 1974. 67 Marianne Johansen and Helle Halding, Thi de var af stor slægt: Om Hvideslægten og Kongemagt i Danmarks Højmiddelalder, Ebeltoft 2001; Michael Kræmmer, Den hvide klan: Absalon, hans slægt og hans tid, n.p. 1999. 68 Thomas Hill, Könige, Fürsten und Klöster: Studien zu den dänischen Klostergründungen des 12. Jahrhunderts, Kieler Werkstücke, ser. A, Beiträge zur schleswig-holsteinischen und skandinavischen Geschichte 4, Frankfurt am Main 1992, 206–77; Johansen and Halding, Thi de var af stor slægt, 35–49. 69 Johansen and Halding, Thi de var af stor slægt, 65–79. 70 Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace’, 115. 71 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: the Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford 1994, 480.

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Being concerned with fiefs and vassals, Susan Reynolds of course left Scandinavia out of her investigation, since it is well known that feudal law never was applied in Scandinavia except for the apanages of the royal family, particularly in Denmark.72 But it will be noticed that her observation is directly relevant to the question of the origins of the odelsrett that I have been discussing in this paper. This convergence is suggestive. It suggests that our understanding of all of the high medieval European societies is deeply coloured by a grand, pan-European ideological project of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, aiming at instilling order and predictability in societies that were perceived by the literate class who created the written evidence to have the opposite qualities: disorder and arbitrariness. To shape order, they used ideologically validated elements present in the societies with which they had to deal. Only in some regions, which happened to be those that came to be Europe’s core regions, did fiefs and vassalage have such a role. But kinship was ideologically important everywhere. That is why the rules concerning kinship in the Scandinavian law books have remarkably close parallels all over so-called ‘feudal’ Europe. Indeed, because he is so meticulous in providing a running commentary to the rules, Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Coutumes de Beauvaisis may be usefully adduced to illuminate points in the Scandinavian law books.73 It is only because fiefs and vassalage in Scandinavia had not been developed to a point where they might constitute a lever for creating order and predictability that kinship has come to loom so much larger in Scandinavian historiography than in that of ‘feudal’ Europe. If this is so, it is doubtful whether the absence of feodo-vassalic forms in Scandinavia in the high Middle Ages is sufficient to posit any radical difference between Scandinavian and, for example, northern French societies during the centuries preceding the Scandinavian law books and the French coutumiers. The anthropologically inspired interpretations of French society in the tenth and eleventh centuries that have been appearing over the last decades may be more directly relevant to understanding Scandinavian society at the same time than is usually imagined.74 At the very least we may say that the ideological project that was pursued in the Scandinavian law books was the same as in the rest of Europe. One point in Susan Reynolds’ observation might seem to constitute a difficulty: if my hypothesis that the model of kinship behind the rules of the Scandinavian law books was actually of Mediterranean origin should be correct – and for the moment it is no more than a hunch – why then did the northern restrictions on the alienation of inherited land not apply in Italy?75 I will propose some tentative reflections on this question, reflections that in their present form are no more than a template for future research. In the Mediterranean area – at least in Italy – large aristocratic kin-groups with a strongly agnatic definition tended to operate as political units.76 Any attempt to create social peace had to influence the behaviour of these groupings if it were to have a chance of succeeding. In northern Europe, kin-groups were smaller, less precisely defined, and more fluctuating. In order to be useful for creating stability and order, they had to be extended, given a precise definition, and bound together internally with material and moral rights and obligations. 72

Cf. Kr. Erslev, ‘Europæisk Feudalisme og dansk Lensvæsen’, Historisk Tidsskrift ser. 7 vol. 2, 1899, 247–305 (repr. in Kr. Erslev, Historiske Afhandlinger, vol. 2, Copenhagen 1937, 1–41). 73 Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace’, 114–16. 74 Cf. Gelting, ‘Féodalisation’, 145–9. 75 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 208–9; Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du Droit privé, vol. 2, Les Biens, 2nd edn, Paris 1971, 426–7 (cf. 438–9). 76 Cf. Heers, Le clan familial, 247–54.

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There were some pre-existing features that might be used for this purpose. On the one hand, the custom of laudatio parentum shows that the notion that close kinsmen might or even ought to have a say in the alienation of land was current in northern Europe during the centuries before the wave of codification from the late twelfth century onwards. Only, as Stephen D. White’s research has shown, it is difficult to square this practice with any fixed inheritance rules. Its social logic seems to have been more nebulous.77 On the other hand, if pre-codification Scandinavian society is to be seen as a society of heirs, this interpretation might just as well be applied to the rest of northern Europe.78 But inheritance normally only involved fairly close kin. If the purpose of codification was to create order and predictability, in short social peace, by extending kinship solidarity – not restricting it – these two notions might be combined to create a feeling of community and solidarity within a much wider kin-group. This involved transforming the laudatio parentum into a preferential right of acquisition based upon the definition of a kinsman as a potential heir, even to the highly improbable seventh, later fourth, canonical degree of kinship; extending precisely defined collective obligations in cases of blood feud to the same vast kin-group; and bolstering the whole construction ideologically by tying the definition of kinship to the canonical incest prohibitions based upon the Augustinian argument that marriage, being instituted to diffuse charity throughout society, should not be used where kinship already created an obligation of mutual charity. This last point was of course no less relevant in the Italian setting.79 The whole complex of rules has such a strong theoretical and ideological flavour that it is surprising that historians should ever have considered them to have represented actual social practice.80 As we have seen, some of them positively backfired and had to be modified; and this was nowhere more obvious than in the linchpin of the entire construction, the canonical incest prohibitions, which had to be brought back to more manageable proportions by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. But some elements did prove useful and survived for centuries, especially those elements that assigned well-defined material rights to specific groups of persons. In Scandinavia, the inheritance rules of the law books, which I have argued were part of the same ideological construction, do seem to have been generally accepted; and in Norway the odelsrett still survives, albeit in a much attenuated form, as a cherished national relic.81 To conclude: Our main sources for Scandinavian social structures in the high Middle Ages, the twelfth- and thirteenth-century law books, must be interpreted as part of a common European trend to create a new kind of social order and predictability through comprehensive and systematic legislation. Hence their value as evidence of what earlier Scandinavian society looked like is highly doubtful. What may be discerned of that earlier society does not look remarkably different from the 77 78

White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints, 84–5, 124–9. Cf. Georges Duby, ‘Lignage, noblesse et chevalerie au XIIe siècle dans la région mâconnaise: Une révision’, Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 27, 1972, 803–23, repr. in Georges Duby, Hommes et structures du moyen âge: Recueil d’articles, Le savoir historique 1, Paris/La Haye 1973, 395–422, at 405. 79 Gelting, ‘Marriage, Peace’. 80 Cf. Peter Sawyer, ‘The Bloodfeud in Fact and Fiction’, in Tradition og historieskrivning: Kilderne til Nordens ældste historie, ed. K. Hastrup and P. Meulengracht Sørensen, Acta Jutlandica 63:2 / Humanistisk Serie 61, Aarhus 1987, 27–38. 81 Interestingly, the Norwegian king’s attempt to introduce the odelsrett in Iceland in the thirteenth century foundered upon the determined resistance of the Icelanders, but it was tacitly incorporated into Icelandic law in the sixteenth century. Robberstad, Lárusson and Hafström, ‘Odelsrett’, cols 500–2.

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rest of northern Europe. Kinship was important, but it was too fluid and too conflict-ridden to constitute the sole glue of Scandinavian or any other northern European society. The relevance of specifically Scandinavian elements for the Anglo-Norman experience may be very limited indeed. In our continuing work on the fascinating texts that the medieval Scandinavian law books are, we ought to focus rather less upon their dubious evidence about previously existing customs, and much more upon them as part of the ideological shaping and transformation of Latin Christendom. And in studying that process, it will be crucially important to dispel the widespread misunderstanding that the Church was an enemy of kinship solidarity.

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Legal Aspects of Scottish Charter Diplomatic

LEGAL ASPECTS OF SCOTTISH CHARTER DIPLOMATIC IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH John Hudson Just over a century ago, F. W. Maitland was in correspondence with George Neilson, and at various points expressed his growing interest in the medieval development of Scots Law. He stated that ‘I have long had the dream that Scotland is the link between England and Normandy’, and ‘If I had another life I would spend much of it among your Scotch documents, and this for the sake of England.’1 A comparative study of English and Scottish legal development in the middle ages remains highly desirable, and not merely for the sake of England. The present paper is very much a preliminary study of the Scottish material, using English, and occasionally other, charters to highlight significant characteristics.2 I concentrate on forms of land-holding which were to be central to Scots common law, not providing a full survey of the various forms of land tenure which existed in twelfth-century Scotland.3 There are limited precedents for such a study. Hector MacQueen’s essential book on Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland concentrates on courts and on legal procedures rather than on the perceptions of land-holding as revealed by charters; his English equivalents are Milsom and van Caenegem rather than Holt.4 The closest parallel to my approach is Keith Stringer’s article on ‘The charters of David, earl of Huntingdon and lord of Garioch: a study of Anglo-Scottish diplomatic’.5 The most obvious differences are that my corpus of charters is larger, my range of interest narrower.

1

P. N. R. Zutshi, ed., The Letters of Frederic William Maitland, vol. ii, Selden Society, Supplementary Series 11, 1995, nos 178, 187. I would like to thank Dauvit Broun, Archie Duncan, and Hector MacQueen for commenting on a draft of this paper. 2 On England, see J. G. H. Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England, Oxford 1994; aspects of charter diplomatic are more fully covered in my ‘Legal Aspects of Seignorial Control of Land in the Century after the Norman Conquest’ (D.Phil., Oxford 1988). On Brittany, see below, 124–5, 128. Comparison with Norman and other French material would also, of course, be highly desirable. 3 G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History, Oxford 1980, 138 points out that, in contrast to the situation in Lothian, Fife and Moray, for example, ‘the earliest knight-service infeftment in the west highlands dates from 1240’. For other areas, note the important comments of C. J. Neville, ‘Charter Writing and the Exercise of Lordship in Thirteenth Century Scotland’, in Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. A. J. Musson, Woodbridge 2001, 67–89. 4 H. L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland, Edinburgh 1993; S. F. C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism, Cambridge 1976; R. C. van Caenegem, ed., Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill, Selden Society 77, 1958–9; J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England’, TRHS 5th ser. 32–5, 1982–5. Note, however, MacQueen, Common Law, 248: ‘It is difficult to determine what norms applied to the lord-tenant relationship in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries by which failure to do justice might be determined; but it does seem appropriate to say that there were norms, even if their content was not precisely defined. Our best evidence of these norms is the charters in which the relationship was formally expressed.’ 5 Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland, ed. K. J. Stringer, Edinburgh 1985, 72–101.

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I have examined over a thousand twelfth-century charters, including all the royal charters of the period. A few, particularly of the early charters, are modelled on Anglo-Norman or Norman diploma form. The vast majority are in letter form, and may be referred to as writ charters. These become increasingly explicit about the terms of grants. To take an unusually marked example, compare David I’s grant of Annandale to Robert Bruce in 1124 and William the Lion’s confirmation of the same in 1165x73: the latter alone mentions the grantor and grantee’s heirs, uses the phrase ‘feu and heritage’, specifies services, excepts royal rights from the grant.6 Yet it remains uncertain how far the actual grants differed, how far the document was simply providing a more specific record. Furthermore, gifts could be made without a written record.7 How clear an indication does a charter give even of the oral terms of the gift which it records, let alone of other gifts never committed to writing? Likewise, whose legal ideas do charters reveal, even so far as they are revealing? For example, were the ideas the scribe’s, the grantor’s or the grantee’s? Beneficiary drafting was common in the earlier part of our period,8 and continued for some royal and many private charters. Even in the case of a great magnate such as David of Huntingdon in the latter part of the twelfth century some of his charters were beneficiary drafted, some written by the earl’s own scribes.9 Numerous other problems arise from the constitution of the sample. The authenticity of early charters is often hard to determine, in part because of the lack of other contemporary examples which might establish norms of diplomatic practice. I have included both originals and cartulary copies, whilst being aware of the possible diplomatic pollution of the latter by later phraseology. Even by including copies, however, one is working with only a limited proportion of what was once produced.10 Stringer, in his study of the lords of Galloway, points out that ‘it can readily be deduced from other monastic sources that the Galloways were munificent founders and patrons of monasteries in south-west Scotland, where they established, or helped to establish, as many as seven or eight religious houses; but none of these has left a surviving cartulary and practically all their early records have perished’.11 We cannot be sure whether the survival rate was similar for documents from royal and non-royal grantors, but we can be fairly certain that a disproportionate number of charters for lay grantees have been lost.12 And it is a tautology, but still a point of significance, that the vast majority of ephemeral documents have been lost. These include docu6 G. W. S. Barrow, ed., The Charters of King David I, Woodbridge 1999, no. 16; G. W. S. Barrow et al., eds, Regesta Regum Scottorum [RRS], Edinburgh 1960–present, ii, no. 80. 7 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 75: ‘The donatio, the solemn oral declaration in the presence of responsible witnesses, was valid in itself; and without doubt there were still many transactions for which charters were never expedited.’ 8 See e.g. Charters of David I, 24; note also RRS ii, 70; D. Broun, The Charters of Gaelic Scotland and Ireland in the Early and Central Middle Ages, Cambridge 1995, 11 n. 35. Note also Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 10: ‘the main producers of charters are likely to have been monasteries – and mostly for their own benefit. Cynthia Neville’s analysis of Earl Gille Brigte’s charters has led her to conclude that they were produced by the canons of Inchaffray if they or a lay individual were the beneficiary. If this was true of Earl Gille Brigte, it was doubtless true of any other earl in this period.’ See also Neville, ‘Charter Writing’. 9 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 78–80. 10 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 74, suggests of Earl David of Huntingdon, perhaps with some exaggeration at least regarding land grants, that ‘We can be quite sure that his extant acts represent only a tiny proportion of those passed under his seal.’ 11 K. J. Stringer, ‘Acts of Lordship: the Records of the Lords of Galloway to 1234’, in Freedom and Authority: Scotland c.1050–c.1650. Historical and Historiographical Essays presented to Grant G. Simpson, ed. T. Brotherstone and D. Ditchburn, East Linton 2000, 203. 12 See Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 7.

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ments which – on the reasonable assumption that they existed – would have considerable significance for this study, for example records of life-grants of land.13 Problems of survival clearly affect our assessment of the chronology of the development of charter use and phraseology in Scotland. It is really only from the second quarter of the twelfth century that even royal documents survive in sufficient numbers for reasonably significant analysis to be undertaken.14 The preceding fifty to seventy-five years, which saw certain key developments in legal aspects of English charter phraseology, are therefore obscure in Scotland.15 There are also geographical difficulties with my sample. As already pointed out, charter survival is better in some areas than others, and I am concentrating on areas where Anglo-French practices were having significant effect in the twelfth century.16 A further problem arises particularly in relation to the kings of Scots. Should one include all their charters, including those concerning their southern English lands, or just those concerning lands in modern Scotland, or also those concerning lands or beneficiaries in the far north of modern England? My policy has been to exclude the southern English documents, but include those from the far north. The inclusion of the latter reflects the fact that not a few were issued in Scotland, and that beneficiaries south of the Tweed received lands to the north of it.17 The vast majority of surviving documents concern grants to the church. Ideas concerning grants to lay beneficiaries have to be gleaned from a very small sample.18 This is a matter of both survival and production. It is moreover possible that many, at least of early lay charters, hide the unusual circumstances which produced them.19 Charters more generally may hide the true circumstances or nature of the grant, for example sales being presented as gifts.20 Elsewhere, such background is sometimes revealed by other sources, most notably monastic narratives and, in England, Domesday Book. For less well documented areas such as Scotland, we can only seek to remember the extent of our ignorance. Similar problems will recur when, in the closing stages of the paper, I consider legal development more broadly. Our limited knowledge of early estate histories makes it hard to establish the practical security of inheritance, or whether land granted was inheritance or acquisition. We can tell fairly little of jurisdiction or of disputing methods, for example the extent of resort to

13 14

On life-grants in England, see Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 97–101. G. Donaldson, ‘Aspects of Early Scottish Conveyancing’, supplementary to Formulary of Old Scots Legal Documents, ed. P. Gouldesbrough, Stair Society 36, 1985, 155, suggested that charters might well have been issued for institutions in Scotland at least as early as the 1090s. However, D. Broun, ‘The Writing of Charters in Scotland and Ireland in the Twelfth Century’, in Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society, ed. K. Heidecker, Turnhout 2000, 113–31, powerfully argues for an early twelfth-century beginning for charters to beneficiaries in Scotland. 15 See Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, esp. 77–97. 16 See above, 121–2. 17 Note the particular complexities of grants involving Durham and Coldingham; e.g. Charters of David I, nos 31, 32. 18 Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 6–7, points out that 150 of Malcolm IV’s 161 charters relate to the church; of 76 north of the Forth and south of the Mounth, 70 were for the church or individual clerics, of which 64 were for the benefit of monasteries founded, re-founded, or raised to abbey status by himself or by David I. 19 Note P. R. Hyams, ‘The Charter as a Source for the Early Common Law’, Journal of Legal History 12, 1991, 176. 20 For an explicit mention of purchase of land in twelfth-century Scotland, see Charters of David I, no. 193. Note also A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the Making of the Kingdom, Edinburgh 1975, 411.

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violence.21 But before that, I return to the charters, and certain legal aspects of their diplomatic. Our first concern is dispositive clauses, and the verbs used to describe the granting of land. These verbs usually, although not invariably, appear in the past tense, be it the indicative or the infinitive.22 This practice has been taken as evidence that the charter was a retrospective record rather than being or representing the grant itself. This, however, may be to exaggerate the significance of charter wording. It is not uncommon for a charter first to use the past tense for dispositive verbs but later to shift to the present tense.23 Moreover, some charters do refer to documents as making grants; notably a charter of Robert Avenel for Melrose stated that ‘dedi . . . et incartaui’ certain lands to the monks.24 There probably were at least some twelfth-century people who drew a less clear distinction between grant and record than do modern legal historians. Scottish royal charters generally follow a consistent pattern in their choice of dispositive verbs for particular types of grant, a pattern similar to that in English charters.25 New gifts used dare, often complemented by concedere and confirmare, the last frequently being supplemented by a reference to the charter.26 Confirmations, both of predecessors’ gifts and of those by other donors, normally used concedere and confirmare.27 Non-royal charters, particularly for early in the period, are too few to allow firm conclusions. They show throughout the century some signs of greater variation in usage. In 1196x1200, Roland son of Uhtred, the constable of the kings of Scots, ‘gave and granted and by my present charter confirmed to Alan of St Clair and his wife Matilda of Windsor, and their heirs who come from them, that land which William de Morville gave them’. One might have expected this to have been treated as a confirmation rather than a gift, although it should be noted that the land was to be held by the grantees from Roland and his heirs ‘in mariagium’.28 Numbers even of royal charters recording regrants to a tenant’s heir are small. They suggest that use of reddere et confirmare was normal, at least into the reign of William the Lion,29 when concedere et confirmare also appears.30 However, there were also exceptions to this pattern, both in royal and non-royal charters. David, marischal of the king of Scots, ‘gave and granted and by this my charter confirmed’

21 22 23

Note Charters of David I, no. 44, for land being held by force. On jurisdiction, see below, 133. For an exception, see e.g. RRS i, no. 243. See e.g. A. C. Lawrie, ed., Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, Glasgow 1905, no. 211; RRS ii, no. 8; Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree in Scotia, Bannatyne Club 69, 1841, 128. 24 Liber Sancte Marie de Melros, 2 vols, Bannatyne Club 56, 1837, no. 39; this appears to be a composite text, the earliest layer possibly from the early 1160s, the surviving form from 1185. See also e.g. RRS ii, nos 82, 83, 367; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 28. 25 The starting point for studies of granting verbs should be S. E. Thorne, ‘English Feudalism and Estates in Land’, Cambridge Law Journal 17, 1959, 193–209; see the comments in Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 72–7. 26 Note, however, e.g. Charters of David I, nos 181, 213; RRS i, no. 251; in these charters the absence of dare is the main evidence that the grants recorded were not new gifts. 27 See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 91, 139, 153; RRS ii, nos 9, 266. See, however, Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 31; Charters of David I, nos 65, 84; RRS ii, nos 106, 175. 28 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 29. Note also the use of dare in Liber de Melros, nos 41 (where usage is inconsistent), 44, 45; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 271. For continuing oddities elsewhere, see e.g. J. Everard and M. Jones, eds, The Charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her Family, 1171–1221, Woodbridge 1999, no. C39, which uses dare et concedere for a confirmation of a husband’s gift. 29 Charters of David I, no. 83; RRS ii, no. 405. 30 RRS ii, nos 269, 390 – confirmare is again supplemented by reference to the charter.

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to William Lunnoc fisheries which William’s father had held.31 Unfortunately, in this, as in a large proportion of other cases, we know insufficient of the estate history to be sure that the charter records a simple succession on unchanged terms.32 This may explain why there appear to be a larger proportion of exceptional cases in Scotland than in England. Overall, though, the pattern for Scotland does seem to resemble that in England, where concedere et confirmare grew more common after 1150.33 How far the choice of verbs, and chronological changes in patterns of such choices, reflect legal control of land must be uncertain. Geoffrey Barrow has commented of the use of reddere for simple successions as late as William the Lion’s reign that ‘such caution, though not very commonly displayed, suggests that the feudalists were anxious to hold back the tide which was rapidly turning “in fee and heritage” into “for ever” ’.34 My own view, based on English charters, is that reddere already suggested that the heir’s position was one of considerable strength.35 What, then, of the appearance of inheritance language in Scottish charters? The key formula here is that a grant was to the grantee and his heirs;36 other vocabulary such as hereditarie or hereditario iure seems relatively uncommon.37 Mention of the grantee’s heirs is notably absent in some early charters for laymen, like David I’s gift of Annandale to Robert Bruce.38 As already suggested, this need not indicate that the grant was not heritable, and charters soon started to make explicit that grants were for a man and his heirs.39 There were also cases where grants were recorded to a man and his heir, in the singular. Were these explicit grants for two lives? It seems unlikely. One such by David I was also said to be ‘in feu and heritage’, another states that the land was to be held as best as any of the king’s barons hold; both statements indicate a heritable gift, not one for a fixed term.40 Charter scribes distinguished with some care between words based on heres and those based on successor. For laymen, successor was used primarily in pro anima clauses, probably to indicate that the recipients of prayers were to be a wider group of relatives than simply the grantor’s heirs.41 For clerics, in contrast, successor was the

31

Liber de Melros, no. 21; see also RRS ii, no. 42. William the Lion used the same dispositive phrase in granting land in feu and heritage to Walter son of Walter Scott, as Walter’s father’s charter witnessed: RRS ii, no. 404. However, the last phrase may suggest that this was not a royal regrant but a royal confirmation of a family gift, from Walter Scott to his son Walter. 32 For an instance where we can tell that the charter was the product of particular circumstances, see RRS ii, no. 84. Note also the discussion of the relationship of dispositive verbs and granting circumstances in Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 86. 33 Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 72–7. 34 G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Scots Charter’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R. I. Moore, London 1985, 154. 35 Land, Law, and Lordship, 77. 36 Note that in all warrandice clauses in my sample the obligation is said to rest on the grantor and his heirs: e.g. Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 23; Liber de Melros, nos 6, 26, 29; Charters of David I, no. 177. 37 Although note e.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 12 (hereditarie in the royal title); RRS i, nos 175, 184, ii, no. 48; cf. e.g. Everard and Jones, Brittany, nos Ge18, C29. 38 Charters of David I, no. 16, on which see above, 122. 39 See e.g. Charters of David I, no. 83, from 1139x1140. 40 Charters of David I, nos 210 and 53 respectively; compare the latter also with no. 54. See also RRS i, no. 120, ii, no. 59; Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 369–70; Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 97 n. 154. 41 See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 37, 66; RRS i, no. 213, ii, no. 29; use of inheritance language is unusual in such clauses, but see Charters of David I, no. 120; RRS ii, nos 159, 290; Liber de Melros, nos 65, 66. For exceptional uses of succession language with regards laymen, see Charters of David I, nos 33, 172 (both referring to successors to the throne); RRS ii, no. 66; D. E. Easson and A. Macdonald, eds, Charters of the Abbey of Inchcolm, Scottish Historical Society 3rd ser. 32, 1938, no. 3. Note also use of the verb succedere, e.g. Charters of David I, no. 183.

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standard word; following Gregorian reform, clerics were not meant to have heirs, at least not to their ecclesiastical positions and possessions.42 The contrast is exemplified by charters recording quitclaims from William the Lion and his heirs to a bishop and his successors.43 Likewise perpetuity language was extremely common in grants to churches, carefully avoided in grants to the laity, with the rare exception of a quitclaim.44 Rather, many heritable grants came to be specified as in feudo et hereditate, in the language of English law ‘in fee and inheritance’, in Scots law ‘in feu and heritage’. In Normandy the phrase in feudo appears in ducal charters shortly before 1066, and it is used in late eleventh-century England. Between 1107 and 1116 Henry I made a grant ‘in fee and inheritance’, and the formula started to become common in charters of the 1120s.45 In Scotland in 1136x1137, a pair of royal charters concerning the grant of Swinton, Berwickshire, to Ernulf of Morwick use the words ‘in feu’ and ‘in feu and in heritage’.46 Then in c.1150 David I’s charter recording a gift to Walter of Ryedale includes the words ‘for him and his heirs to hold of me and my heirs in feu and heritage’, the type of formula which would be normal for such grants.47 Similar wording was included in non-royal charters.48 The widespread nature of such holding is illustrated by charters of William the Lion, for example that to Henry son of Gregory the clerk, ‘for him and his heirs to hold of me and my heirs in feu and heritage . . . as my other knights hold their feus from me . . .’49 English charters also record grants ‘in fee farm’, heritable grants for rent. Charters explicitly in feu ferme appear less common in twelfth-century Scotland. William the Lion did make such a grant but both the lands concerned and the beneficiary were in Northumbria.50 Uhtred son of Fergus, lord of Galloway, granted Kirkgunzeon, Kirkcudbrightshire, to Holm Cultram abbey, Cumberland, ‘in feodifirmam’, although oddly his son Roland’s later grant of the same also included the phrase ‘in perpetual alms’.51 Melrose received pasture in Innerwick, East Lothian, ‘in feudam firmam’ for 10s a year.52 The scarcity of such formulae in Scotland before the thirteenth century may reflect the limited number of surviving charters below the top level of lay society, or the increasing number of instances of grants ‘in feu and heritage’ in return not for knight service, as was usual,53 but for money rent.54

42

See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 55, 119, 180; RRS i, no. 195, ii, no. 139; Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 45; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 73. 43 RRS ii, nos 212, 217; see also no. 236. 44 RRS ii, no. 295. Cf. the quotation from Barrow, ‘Scots Charter’, 154, above, 125. 45 Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 94. 46 Charters of David I, nos 53, 54. 47 Charters of David I, no. 177; see also no. 194. 48 E.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 200; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 9. 49 RRS ii, no. 43; see also nos 42, 137. See also Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 129–30, for a group of very standardised charters issued by Malcolm earl of Fife (1204–28), using the formula ‘for one knight’s (or half a knight’s) service, as freely as any knight holds his feu (or land) of any earl or baron in the realm of Scotland’. 50 RRS ii, no. 79. 51 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, nos 7, 15. 52 Liber de Melros, no. 61. Note also Abbot Arnold of Kelso making a grant ‘in liberum firmum feudum’; Liber S. Marie de Calchou, 2 vols, Bannatyne Club 82, 1846, no. 102. 53 RRS i, nos 175, 255; ii, nos 42, 43, 80, 84, 85, 116, 135, 140, 147, etc. 54 E.g. RRS ii, nos 133, 152, 196, 311 (half a stone of wax), 330, 340, 411, 415 (pepper), 422; Liber de Calchou, nos 107, 111, 115. Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 392–8, 401–4, provides a very useful treatment of the holding of feus for rent, but is not so concerned with the charter phrase used to describe tenure in feu ferme.

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Most notable of the exceptional uses of feu language are grants by David I to the Church ‘in feu and alms’.55 Such seems a surprising confusion of lay and ecclesiastical forms of land-holding. A significant number of charters also refer to the church holding from the grantor and his, or her, heirs, a formulation which tended to be avoided in England.56 In Scotland, such phrases on occasion appeared both in royal and non-royal charters throughout the twelfth century,57 even when the charter also stressed that the church was to hold the grant as freely as they held their other alms.58 Sometimes episcopal confirmations cut out reference to tenure from the grantor and his heirs, suggesting that it was considered improper for ecclesiastical land holding.59 Other such confirmations, however, retain the reference to tenure from the grantor.60 The impression, then, is of limits to the care with which lay and ecclesiastical landholding were distinguished. Nevertheless, in most cases tenure language was avoided for grants to the church. Such practice matches the distinction generally made regarding perpetuity language, and that between grants to laymen ‘in feu and heritage’ and grants to the church ‘in alms’.61 The shortage of early charters conceals any shift from inheritance to alms language in gifts to the church, a process of which traces can be seen in England.62 Some of the earliest charters of the Scottish kings do not use alms language where it might be expected.63 Other early charters simply use the formula in elemosina(m).64 As with inheritance language, the absence of a statement that land was given or was to be held ‘in alms’ may be a sign of the less explicit nature of early charters rather than a real legal difference from later practice. In 1150x1152, for example, Earl Henry, son of David I, granted a toft outwith the wall of Roxburgh to Dryburgh abbey. The charter makes no reference to the grant being made ‘in alms’ but ends by stating that the church is to have the toft ‘as my free alms’.65 The main development after the earliest charters was the increasing use of adjectives to emphasise the nature of the alms. In perpetuam elemosinam appeared by 1128x1136, and perpetuam remained the most common adjective.66 Into the reign of Malcolm it generally stood alone, but even before then and increasingly thereafter might be supplemented most often by liberam, sometimes by puram or quietam.67 These adjectives could also 55 Charters of David I, nos 81, 161; see also no. 184. Note RRS ii, no. 351, recording King William, in 1189x1195, giving his son Robert of London a full toft in his burgh of Montrose, to hold in free burgage from him and his heirs ‘in feu and heritage’. 56 See e.g. J. G. H. Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Charters’, in A. Thacker, ed., The Earldom of Chester and its Charters, Chester 1991, 167. 57 Charters of David I, nos 162, 165, 205, 212, 213; RRS i, nos 106, 156, 157, 260; RRS ii, nos 373, 393; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, nos 6, 28; Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 208; Liber de Melros, nos 6, 37, 59. Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 376, notes such phraseology, but perhaps underplays its frequency. 58 RRS ii, nos 74, 91. 59 See Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 197; cf. no. 196. 60 E.g. Liber de Melros, no. 5. 61 Grants in feu and heritage were also distinguished from other types of grants to lay people, for example in maritagium: RRS i, no. 190, ii, no. 320; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 29; note also Charters of David I, no. 119, a grant ‘in firmam forestam’. 62 Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 88–90. 63 E.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 18; Charters of David I, nos 15, 99, 167. 64 See e.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 12, 19, 22; Charters of David I, nos 19, 21, 34, 48; note also one of the early St Andrews notitiae which, in the thirteenth-century Latin translation, stated that King Edgar made a grant ‘in elemosinam’: Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 115. 65 Charters of David I, no. 191. 66 Charters of David I, no. 38; see also e.g. nos 44, 56, 57; Lawrie, Earliest Scottish Charters, no. 152. 67 Charters of David I, nos 121, 130, 147, 181, 205; RRS i, no. 235, ii, no. 91. Note also ‘in permanentem elemosinam’: RRS i, nos 182, 219, 253.

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appear by themselves, or in combinations without perpetuam.68 Most common of the three adjective combinations was in liberam et puram et perpetuam elemosinam.69 Examples of more than three qualifying adjectives before elemosinam are rare in Scotland, as elsewhere, but do occur.70 As Stringer and others have suggested, the adjectives appear not to have had very specific individual meanings.71 Those used could vary within a single charter,72 or between different charters written at the same time concerning the same gift.73 So far we have been concerned about the ways in which grants were held by the recipients. What of the actual making of the grant, and in particular any requirement or practice of receiving consent to alienation? Prelates, in part in response to the tenets of canon law, sought their chapter or convent’s consent to alienation.74 Men sometimes made grants jointly with their wives, or recorded their wives’ assent to alienation;75 this may have been particularly the case when the land concerned was brought to the marriage as the woman’s inheritance. Occasionally the advice of great men or of barons is mentioned, but this was far from standard form.76 Notably, diploma form documents, devoted for example to general confirmations, quite frequently described the assent of a wide and varied group. David I confirmed his own and his predecessors’ gifts to Dunfermline with the assent of his son Henry and his wife Matilda, with the confirmation and testimony of bishops, earls and barons of his realm, and with the clergy and people agreeing.77 Only very rarely do such extensive consents appear in writ-charters.78 Diplomatic convention influenced the recording of a practice often assumed to have legal significance.79 Stringer, in his study of Earl David of Huntingdon’s charters, states that ‘whenever a tenant alienated property, the earl’s express approval was required in order to make the gift valid’.80 I am very doubtful that such a requirement can be demonstrated, or existed. Mentions of seignorial consent are actually quite unusual in charters.81 Perhaps in royal burghs, the king’s permission was needed before a man 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

E.g. RRS i, nos 172, 216, 251; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 252. RRS i, no. 129 is an early example. RRS ii, no. 327; Everard and Jones, Brittany, Ge16, C67. Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 88. Charters of David I, no. 183; RRS i, no. 194. Charters of David I, nos 120, 121. E.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 92, 173; Liber de Melros, no. 51; Liber de Calchou, nos 102, 117; see also Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 231–4 on canon law. 75 See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 15, 33; Liber de Melros, nos 33, 64; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 228; note also RRS i, nos 141, 164, ii, nos 62, 342. RRS ii, no. 62 also records royal confirmation of a gift which Margaret wife of Thomas of London made, with her husband and son granting. 76 See e.g. RRS i, no. 243, ii, nos 39, 62. 77 Charters of David I, no. 33; see also nos 147 (Holyrood), 159 (Cambuskenneth), 174 (Jedburgh – foundation); RRS i, no. 118 (Dunfermline), ii, no. 30 (Dunfermline). 78 RRS i, no. 131 for Kelso. 79 Note also Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 184. 80 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 76. The charters he cites in support of his statement are K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152–1219, Edinburgh 1985, nos 42 (David’s charter confirming a grant by his daughter to Lindores abbey), 44 (another charter of David for Lindores, also including confirmation of his daughter’s gift), 47 (David’s charter confirming a gift by William Wascelin to Lindores), 50 (David’s charter confirming a gift by Norman son of Malcolm to Lindores); J. Dowden, ed., Chartulary of the Abbey of Lindores, Scottish History Society 42, 1903, no. 81 (Norman son of Malcolm’s grant); thus they are confirmation charters rather than explicit statements of permission to alienate. Note also Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 409. 81 King’s assent: Charters of David I, nos 129 (king’s counsel and assent), 193 (king granting – ‘concessu’); Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 258 (kings agreeing and confirming); Liber de Melros, no. 39 (king agreeing). Other lords’ assent: Liber de Melros, no. 31 (lord agreeing and witnessing).

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wishing to leave the place might sell his house and toft.82 Elsewhere, even if a lord’s approval is recorded, consent need not have been essential for the gift, rather strengthening it.83 Only very rarely were lords presented as joint donors of land with their men, which would emphasise direct seignorial control of the land. Much more frequently they issued separate charters, presented as confirmations of existing gifts of land by their tenants.84 The heir’s consent is sometimes recorded in gifts to churches, only very exceptionally in gifts to laymen.85 Participation of the king’s heir is noticeably more common in Scotland than in England.86 Malcolm IV’s charters occasionally mention his brother William’s consent.87 William the Lion’s charters sometimes have his brother, David, as their first witness, at least implying his agreement,88 and on occasion making his participation explicit.89 Most notable, though, is the position of Henry, son of David I. As well as issuing his own charters for gifts also made in his father’s name, he is mentioned in David’s documents as consenting or jointly giving.90 Henry’s special position is made clear in a charter issued jointly by David and himself in favour of St Andrews Cathedral priory; it describes Henry as ‘my son, and – God granting – heir, and king designate’.91 This special position explains the much more prominent place he enjoyed in grants than did his successors or any post-Conquest English king’s heir. Setting aside Henry, family consent appears more common in non-royal Scottish charters than in royal, as was the case in England.92 The reason for this distinction is unclear, although continuing beneficiary-drafting of non-royal documents could be one explanation.93 Charters also record ceremonies for the transfer of land by donor to beneficiary. King Edgar offered on the altar his gift of Swinton, Berwickshire, to Durham.94 In William the Lion’s reign we have charters mentioning that a sheriff or other official had handed over (tradere) the land to the beneficiary,95 or seised (saisire) them of it.96 Such actions were sometimes associated with perambulation of the 82

Such may be the implication of Charters of David I, no. 176 and RRS i, no. 121, granting to a certain Baldwin that he might sell should he wish to leave Perth. 83 Note Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 208–29. 84 In contrast, the donor might make explicit that the land given still owed service to their lord: Liber de Melros, no. 28; note also RRS i, no. 261. The lord in turn might make a separate grant acquitting the new donor of that service. 85 See e.g. Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 9; RRS ii, no. 204. 86 For England, see Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 184. For Duncan II making his brothers grant a gift of his to Durham, see Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 12. 87 RRS i, nos 114 (for Glasgow cathedral), 235 (for Melrose abbey), 265 (for Glasgow cathedral). 88 RRS ii, nos 9, 10; see also no. 236. 89 RRS ii, nos 192 (for Glasgow cathedral), 204 (for William de la Haye). 90 Charters of David I, nos 31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 52, 66, 70, 86, 96, 120, 147, 159, 172, 174, 200. 91 Charters of David I, no. 126. 92 Liber de Melros, nos 6, 9, 26, 39, 40, 55; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 214, 251, 270; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, nos 6, 7, 28. Note also royal confirmations of non-royal grants made with the heir’s consent: RRS i, no. 196 (sons granting), ii, nos 62, 83, 310; also of gifts made jointly by a man and his son: RRS ii, nos 241, 296. 93 Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 205. For possible beneficiary influence, see also above, nn. 87, 89, for royal charters in favour of Glasgow cathedral mentioning the consent of the king’s heir. For practice in France, see e.g. S. D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints, Chapel Hill 1988. 94 Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 20; see also no. 26; Charters of David I, no. 9; Donaldson, ‘Conveyancing’, 166. Note also Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 14: ‘In Scots law the handing over of earth and stone on land being granted was a requirement until as late as 1845’ (see Gouldesborough, Formulary, 107). 95 RRS ii, nos 219, 415, 422. 96 RRS ii, no. 410.

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land,97 and this emphasis on perambulation and associated descriptions of boundaries is another contrast with twelfth-century English charter diplomatic.98 Those responsible for perambulating could be mentioned in the body of the charter, and also appear as witnesses.99 Sometimes the perambulation was certainly associated with a dispute,100 and sometimes it may have been.101 However, it seems unlikely that all remaining instances concern otherwise unknown disputes. What alternative explanations are plausible? One possibility is that a more dispersed settlement pattern made perambulations more necessary in some parts of Scotland than in many areas of England, although I am far from sure that this can have been universally true.102 Ceremonies were intended to secure the grantee’s tenure, and so too were penalties and warrandice clauses. Particularly early charters, and especially those in diploma form, might threaten ecclesiastical penalties or divine punishment.103 Some grants to Dunfermline warned those infringing that they would be ‘removed from the Book of Life’.104 The first warrandice clause I have found in a Scottish charter dates from 1145x1153, at the same time it seems as an initial burst of warranty clauses in England.105 As in England, they were proportionately more common in non-royal than royal charters, notably, for example, in charters recording grants to Melrose.106 Charters might also mention the duty of maintenance, perhaps best translated as support, maintenance and warrandice being quite often included in the same clause.107 Some Melrose charters spell out such obligations: ‘and if by chance anyone wishes to claim this aforesaid alms, I and my heirs will answer to every claimant and adequately defend and warrant them to the aforesaid monks’.108 Although it is hard to compare the overall proportion of English and Scottish charters containing warranty/warrandice clauses, it is likely anyway that warrandice was a seignorial obligation whether or not it was mentioned in a charter.109 Written record may, at least at first, have been encouraged by the existence of a specific threat. Stringer has written of the Galloway charters that ‘It is probably no coincidence that 97 98

Charters of David I, no. 147; RRS i, no. 198, ii, nos 61, 262, 291. See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 41, 86–7, 98, 116, 120, 164–5, 175, 197; also e.g. nos 182, 183 for use of the very common phrase ‘per rectas diuisas’. For a document of 1227 stating that a perambulation had been conducted ‘secundum legalem assisam regis Dauid usitatam et probatam in regno Scotie usque illum diem’, see T. Thomson and C. Innes, The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, 12 vols, Edinburgh 1814–75, i, 91; MacQueen, Common Law, 86–7. Note also G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots, London 1973, 81, for a document of 1221 mentioning a perambulation ‘secundum assisam et consuetudinem regni’. 99 E.g. Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 208–9; Charters of David I, no. 166; RRS i, no. 199, ii, no. 130; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 196. 100 See e.g. RRS ii, no. 252. 101 Charters of David I, no. 70 is one possibility. 102 Another possible connection is with the importance of the judices, who were prominent in perambulations; see Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 72–4. Note also Neville, ‘Charter Writing’, 82–4. 103 E.g. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 12, 117; Liber de Melros, nos 29, 51; Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 122–3, 125, 127. 104 Charters of David I, nos 33, 172; RRS i, no. 118; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 256. 105 Charters of David I, no. 177; Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship, 55. 106 See e.g. Liber de Melros, nos 6, 26, 29, 31, 33–5. 107 Note e.g. Charters of David I, nos 77, 81, 104, 113, 144, 155, 170; RRS ii, no. 316; Liber de Melros, nos 26, 29, 31; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 6. 108 Liber de Melros, nos 39, 41. The tone, if not the style, is reminiscent of Maitland’s description of early warranty: ‘Happy then was the tenant who could say to any adverse claimant: – “Sue me if you will, but remember that behind me you will find the earl or the abbot” ’: Sir Frederick Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1898, i, 306–7. 109 Note also Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 91; MacQueen, Common Law, 46.

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the earliest warrandice clauses appear in charters issued for the Church either during or immediately after the rebellion of 1174–85, which seriously questioned the Galloways’ ability to give “good lordship”.’110 Charters also promised secure tenure through clauses stating that the grantee should ‘hold as well and freely as . . .’ the land concerned or some other land had best been held. The form of these clauses varies. As in England, grants were made to be held as well as the grantee’s predecessor had held,111 or as the donor’s charter witnessed,112 or as the donor had held.113 The clauses could be more general. A church might hold a grant as freely as it holds or possesses any of its alms,114 or as any alms could be given or possessed.115 Standardisation within a lordship or realm is suggested by other phrases, for example, to hold as well as any of my barons best hold, or as the grantee’s peers best hold their feu or toft.116 Unlike English or, for example, Breton charters, Scottish charters quite often add a geographical or regnal element to such clauses.117 In 1140x1141 David I gave the church of Linlithgow to St Andrews cathedral, ‘in perpetual alms’, laying down that they were to have these alms ‘as any church in my realm best and most honourably holds its rights’.118 Such clauses also appear in non-royal charters. Roland, lord of Galloway, made a gift to Kelso to hold as well as they best have and possess any other alms in the kingdom of Scocia.119 It does seem that the kings of Scots were trying to encourage the notion of common forms of land-holding and related rights throughout their realm. The presence of these clauses in non-royal charters, presumably adopted from royal usage, suggests that such efforts had at least some impact on the minds of those who composed and wrote charters. These formulae, together with the emphasis on perambulation, are the most distinctive legal elements to emerge from this survey of Scottish charter diplomatic. Other differences in charters are often minor, for example in vocabulary preferences,120 or reflect the different renders which were common in Scotland. More generally the charters bear considerable similarity to their English counterparts.121 Some charters made the legal similarities explicit. David I’s grant of Annandale to Robert Bruce in c.1124 was to be held ‘with all those customs Ranulf Meschin ever had in Carlisle’.122 It is hard to tell how carefully chosen was the example, whether the parallel was being drawn with English lords generally, or – possibly more likely –

110

Stringer, ‘Galloway’, 206. A dispute over Lilliesleaf could underlie the early warrandice clause in a charter of David I to Walter of Ryedale: Charters of David I, no. 177; RRS i, no. 312. 111 E.g. Charters of David I, no. 53. 112 E.g. Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 28. 113 E.g. Charters of David I, nos 115, 149, 150; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 15. 114 E.g. Liber de Melros, no. 4. 115 E.g. Charters of David I, nos 34, 42. Note also Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 124, 139 for alms to be held as the Templars or Hospitallers hold. 116 E.g. Charters of David I, no. 53; RRS i, no. 175. 117 See Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 89–90. 118 Charters of David I, no. 93. See also e.g. nos 85, 166; RRS i, no. 110. 119 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 25. See also no. 12; Inchcolm, no. 7; Liber de Melros, no. 62. Cf. episcopal charters using the diocese as the unit: Liber cartarum prioratus S. Andree, 128, 135, 136; Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 206, 211, 228. 120 Note, for instance, the preference for the word aisiamenta rather than pertinencia: see e.g. Charters of David I, nos 120, 213. 121 Note also Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 96: ‘Since charters, as legal documents, had to conform to legal rulings, it is a point of first importance that there are no major differences in form between the earl’s English and Scottish acts.’ 122 Charters of David I, no. 16.

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with the particular case of Carlisle in the very north of England.123 But the charters certainly reinforce Maitland’s point that: ‘we may doubt whether a man who crossed the river [Tweed] felt that he had passed from the land of one law to the land of another’.124 The difficulties of progressing from charter diplomatic to more general legal interpretation can be illustrated by two contrasting quotations. First Stringer: The conditions of tenure and service stipulated in the holding clauses of Earl David’s acts do not vary from one country to the other. In each kingdom, he granted or confirmed property to the Church to be held in alms; property conveyed to laymen was normally to be held in return for knight-service. Always to be remembered, however, is that ‘the language of diplomatic sometimes evolved and crystallized in forms which did not represent current political ideas or legal realities with precision or accuracy’. There is no doubt that the stylised language of our charters conceals as well as reveals important divergences between the feudal societies of the two realms.125 Second, MacQueen: The striking thing about the customs that developed in Scotland is how similar they are to the customs that were developing in England at much the same time or a little before. This is not just a matter of the style of the charters: it can be seen in the development of customs to which the charters as such make no reference.126 Bearing in mind such difficulties, in this final section of the paper I wish to explore more broadly the relationship of law and lordship in Scotland. When Maitland commented on how ‘French’ Scotland appeared to him, he meant that lordship was very strong and that this had an impact upon law. It is an opinion shared by notable modern works, such as Stringer’s study of Earl David of Huntingdon’s charters: As a Scottish baron, . . . Earl David exercised a strong control over the land as a source of service and loyalty. The world to which his charters belonged was a world where a lord enjoyed real powers and normally chose his own tenants, and where lord-man relations had genuine meaning. The thanes and native freemen dwelling on the earl’s lands had no freehold that he need recognise. . . . Furthermore, once the tenurial structure had been fashioned, possession and heritability continued to lack the security of automatic protection under royal controls. . . . The situation in much-governed England was altogether different. In the English lands, encumbered by an old-established and far more complex system of dependent tenures, the ties between individual tenants and David were often weakly based.127

123

Cf. MacQueen, Common Law, 35: ‘Carlisle was a great English honour established for Ranulf at the end of the eleventh century; David’s employment of the comparison to define Robert’s holding suggests that he neither saw nor wanted any difference between the rights and duties of his lords and those of Henry I.’ 124 Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law i, 222. 125 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 87–8, his own quotation being from Christopher Cheney. 126 H. L. MacQueen, ‘Tears of a Legal Historian: Scottish Feudalism, Europe, and the Ius Commune’, forthcoming – typescript available from its author. 127 Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 76.

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To probe this conclusion, I will begin with a brief survey of lords, honours and their courts, and of royal control of justice, and then return to the evidence concerning landholding customs. As in England, lordship certainly mattered with regard land-holding and gifts. Lords might address their men in their charters.128 Witness lists indicate land grants being made in lords’ courts, as when William de Morville the constable granted a knight’s feu at Carfrae, at the upper end of Lauderdale, for Henry de St Clair.129 Within Scotland there were very significant compact lordships which contrast with the more dispersed pattern in England. Such lordships were likely to be stronger, perhaps with fewer tenants who also held lands of other lords, certainly with fewer opportunities for tenants to become involved in disputes with neighbours holding of rival lords.130 Charters reveal the privileges seignorial courts might enjoy. Most prominent are those of sake and soke, toll and team, and infangentheof, familiar to English historians. These appear in royal charters certainly from the time of David I.131 In the reign of William the Lion, they are often associated with the king’s barons, in phrases such as ‘with sake and soke, toll and team and infangentheof, and with all the liberties which my other barons have’.132 However, it cannot be certain that these legal privileges were associated with holding in baroniam.133 Firstly, that phrase does not appear in the charters, and secondly occasional charters associate the privileges with the king’s knights rather than his barons. In 1165x1174, a grant by William to Ralph of Graham was made with sake and soke and toll and team and infangentheof ‘as my other knights most freely and quitly and honourably hold their feus from me’.134 Under William, the normal formula concerning sake and soke came to be supplemented with another phrase which was to be familiar in Scotland but not England, ‘furca et fossa’, ‘gallows and [ordeal] pit’.135 Such grants recall others granting rights of ordeal.136 Such privileges at least primarily concern what would later be called criminal jurisdiction,137 but may support a more general view of significant seignorial jurisdiction. What then of royal control?138 From the point of view of property law, the most

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Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 82, interprets the continuing use in Earl David’s Scottish documents of addresses to his men, friends, and so on, as ‘likely to have been influenced, too, by their immediate background, a marked feature of which was the continuing significance of lord-man ties when in England these had for the most part become conventionalised’. 129 Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 129; J. Anderson, ed., Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiae Thesaurus, Edinburgh 1739, plate LXXVb. 130 MacQueen, Common Law, 41–2. 131 See Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 12; Charters of David I, nos 31 and 32 (but dubious), 83, 144; RRS ii, nos 84, 116. 132 RRS ii, no. 116; see also nos 204, 334, 383, 418. 133 Cf. Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 135–6. 134 RRS ii, no. 125; note also no. 137. 135 E.g. RRS ii, nos 136, 185, 197. Note also no. 152, limiting the grantee to two sites for gallows and pits. See Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 334–5, on non-royal grants of furca et fossa in the thirteenth century. 136 Charters of David I, no. 147 (for Holyrood – duel, water, and hot iron); RRS i, nos 243, 247, ii, no. 27 (for Scone – duel, iron, and water), ii, no. 197 (for Arbroath – duel, iron, pit and gallows). 137 See also MacQueen, Common Law, 36. 138 Again, of course, there was chronological and regional variation. For example, before 1165 ‘the sheriff was found only in the south and east, and not at all in the great south-western lordships or north of Forfar; only in the reign of William I (1165–1214) were sheriffdoms established for the first time in Ayr, the Mearns, Moray and (probably) Aberdeen and Banff’: MacQueen, Common Law, 35. Legislative change may also have occurred, although the clearest example concerns the payment of teinds: RRS i, no. 233, ii, nos 71, 124.

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significant elements relate to protections, the hearing of cases, and the issuing of brieves. Most of the evidence we have concerning royal protection concerns churches; how far this is simply a matter of survival must remain uncertain.139 Occasionally a charter will spell out more fully what is meant by the king’s grant of peace or protection.140 For instance, in 1165x1171, William the Lion ordered the sheriffs and officials of his realm that ‘whenever the monks or brothers of Newbattle come to my pleas amongst you, you are to plead and justly maintain their pleas just like mine’.141 On other occasions protection could be associated with pleading only before the king or his supreme justice.142 If the king’s court attracted some cases through special protections, it was also to receive others if a lord failed to do justice. This right was reserved even in the fullest grants of judicial privileges to favoured religious houses.143 How regularly or routinely such cases passed to the king’s court is unclear. In England, an element of routine passing of disputes to the king may be suggested by the frequent presence in royal writs of a phrase such as ‘lest I hear [ne audiam] further claim concerning this for lack of justice’.144 Surprisingly, given the degree of similarity in royal document drafting, such a clause was not adopted in twelfth-century Scottish brieves. A brieve of David I ends ‘so that I hear no claim concerning it’, but it was issued in Huntingdon, and concerns rents in Bedford and a priory in Northampton.145 Exceptionally, a brieve of Malcolm IV in favour of the diocese of Glasgow ends ‘lest complaint reaches me on account of default of justice’.146 Nor do Scottish brieves contain the nisi feceris clause which regularly appeared in English royal writs, ordering that if the addressee failed to act, another was to do so.147 One of the closest Scottish parallels is the charter of Malcolm just mentioned: if any of the addressees failed to pay teind, the sheriff was to take the king’s forfeiture of 12 cows, and if the sheriff either consented to the withholding or detained his own teind, the king’s justice was to take the royal forfeiture from the sheriff.148 Clearly this is still very different from the English version. The absence of ne audiam and nisi feceris clauses from Scottish royal brieves does suggest a less integrated and royally focussed system of judicial administration than in England. Overall, therefore, the argument that lordship was rather more powerful or more autonomous in Scotland than in England receives some support from an examination of documents, although much remains obscure. What more can be said about the impact of this lordship context upon the nature of land-holding? It is extremely hard to say anything about the lord’s power to exact his rights, notably through poinding (distraint) or forfeiture, in twelfth-century Scotland. Very occasionally we have evidence of forfeiture to the king, as in the case of Gillecolm the marischall who 139 140

For an exception, see Charters of David I, no. 176, for Baldwin the lorimer, the king’s cliens. Note also e.g. Charters of David I, no. 75. For wide-ranging and important arguments concerning such grants, see A. Harding, ‘The Medieval Brieves of Protection and the Development of the Common Law’, Juridical Review 11, 1966, 115–49. 141 RRS ii, no. 70. 142 Charters of David I, nos 103, 176 (for a layman); RRS i, no. 220. 143 Charters of David I, nos 33, 172; RRS i, no. 118, ii, no. 197. Note also RRS ii, no. 39. 144 van Caenegem, Royal Writs, 147, 155. 145 Charters of David I, no. 26. Note also RRS ii, no. 110, a charter of Earl Henry for Westminster abbey concerning land in Tottenham. 146 RRS i, no. 258; ii, no. 179, reduplicates this form. RRS ii, no. 189, also in favour of the bishop of Glasgow, ends ‘ne pro defectu uestri inde clamorem audiam super meam forisfacturam’. 147 van Caenegem, Royal Writs, 154–7; J. Boorman, ‘Nisi feceris under Henry II’, ANS 24, 2001 (2002), 85–97. 148 RRS i, no. 258.

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committed the felonia of surrendering a royal castle to William the Lion’s enemies, and going over to their side.149 More generally, however, as MacQueen has written, Examples of tenants losing lands in court as a result of failure to fulfil obligations to their lords can . . . be found in the thirteenth century, although . . . typically they are recorded as resulting from agreements or quitclaims rather than outright judgments. . . . The involvement of the lord’s court in these cases probably betokens some antecedent disciplinary process there by which the tenant had been compelled to recognise his failure and to accept its consequences. Our knowledge of such processes is scanty and of uncertain quality, especially for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.150 Legislation in 1230 concerning dissasine mentions the lord as a possible unjust disseisor, but in the phrase ‘his lord or any other person’; the legislation was not concentrating on seignorial dissasine through unjust poinding.151 Nor do mentions of poinding in royal charters provide any help in establishing the security of the tenant’s position.152 They either specify that poinding was not to occur in specified lands unless the land-holder had failed to do justice,153 or that poinding was not to occur except for the land-holder’s own debt or forisfactura.154 The two indeed may be linked: in 1161x1164 King Malcolm granted to the monks of Coupar Angus that no-one could poind them or their men for any debt or claim unless first they had failed concerning justice in the court.155 It sounds as if the intention was to prevent direct action by poinding before any attempt had been made to settle the dispute through a court hearing. In either case the poinder could, but certainly need not be, the lord.156 Poinding and forfeiture were not the only circumstances in which a lord or donor might threaten a tenant’s secure hold on property. There are certainly signs that native land-holders might be displaced.157 There are also instances where a lord made a gift but may then have sought to reverse it. Probably in the 1160s, Uhtred lord of Galloway gave Kirkgunzeon in Kirkcudbrightshire to Holm Cultram abbey, Cumberland, in feu ferme for six pounds a year. The monks gave the donor ten merks as a gift, but if they were displeased with the land and wished to restore it, Uhtred was to return the money with interest.158 Apparently unrelated to this last clause, Uhtred went on to deprive the monks of some of the gift, and gave it to Walter of Berkeley.159 It is possible that they were entirely ejected when an uprising occurred in Galloway in 1174.160 In c.1176x1185 Uhtred’s son Roland ‘gave and granted’ 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156

RRS ii, no. 258. Note also RRS ii, no. 288. MacQueen, Common Law, 39–40. MacQueen, Common Law, 137. For an instance of the king ordering the restoration of goods poinded, see Charters of David I, no. 78. Charters of David I, no. 147; RRS ii, nos 39, 95. Charters of David I, nos 50, 100, 126, 131; RRS i, nos 118, 174, ii, nos 28, 30, 176. RRS i, no. 222; see also no. 262. Cf. MacQueen, Common Law, 40: ‘It . . . seems that poinding could be a violent process, and this may explain why from the twelfth century grants of royal protection commonly provided against poinding for another’s debts, something which might happen when the lord sought to poind outside the tenant’s fee.’ 157 MacQueen, Common Law, 41, suggests that ‘displacements of native landholders by incoming settlers may explain the statement in the Holyrood Chronicle that Malcolm IV “transtulit” the men of Moray in the 1160s.’ Alternatively, this may represent royal retribution against those who had refused to recognise his authority. 158 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 7. On this case, see also MacQueen, Common Law, 44. 159 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 13. 160 Stringer, ‘Galloway’, note to no. 7.

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Kirkgunzeon to Holm Cultram in feu ferme. Use of the verb dare may show that this was a restitution, whilst the recorded boundaries carefully exclude the lands which had been given to Walter.161 A perambulation may have formed part of an attempt at settling the dispute, as ordered by the king, although Walter was initially unwilling to make a restoration.162 Finally Walter ‘gave’ the land to Holm Cultram to hold of him, and his grant was confirmed by William the Lion, probably in the 1180s, and by Roland son of Uhtred, probably in the mid 1190s.163 The case might be taken as evidence of royal control in eventually ensuring restoration, but also of the weakness of a grantee’s position when faced with a lord unwilling to honour his own gift. Take another instance. In 1189xc.1193, King William gave to Agatha wife of Humphrey son of Theobald four ploughgates in Conveth, Mearns, in exchange for land in Ardoyne, Aberdeenshire, which he had taken from her.164 This grant again is hard to interpret. It could be the product of a dispute, Agatha now receiving an exchange for land previously taken away from her against her will. Alternatively, the charter may record a mutually agreed exchange. Or we may have a situation where the tenant had a right to a holding from her lord but not a right to a specific piece of land. The situation is further complicated by our ignorance of the terms on which Agatha had held Ardoyne. Not all the evidence points to the weak position of the tenant. Robert Bruce famously could withdraw fealty from David I at the Battle of the Standard.165 Robert was in a peculiarly strong position because of his own power and his cross-border holdings, but conceivably there were some tenants who, at a lower level, had equivalent advantages in relation to their lords. The monastery of Coldingham may have had problems with a land-holder at Swinton, Berwickshire. King Edgar gave the whole place to Coldingham, with the boundaries as Liulf held.166 Alexander I confirmed Swinton to the monks, ordering that they need not plead or answer concerning it to anyone, except if he ordered orally or by letter, and also that they were not to enter any plea concerning it until it came before him.167 The future David I confirmed the gift, and stated that he was unwilling that they suffer any harm concerning it.168 These words, and the amount of documentation, suggests a continuing dispute. Swinton was included by David in a grant of various lands to St Cuthbert and his monks in 1126 or 1127.169 Then in 1136 or 1137 he gave Swinton to his knight Ernulf of Morwick to hold in feu from St Cuthbert and himself, by the same customs Liulf son of Eadulf and his son Udard the sheriff had held, and by the same service Udard had done.170 This has led to the suggestion ‘that the monks had been unable to get rid of [Liulf or Udard] and had to settle for services from him’,171 and speculation that the strength of the tenant’s position resulted from the backing of the earl of Dunbar, who was also in conflict with Coldingham.172 If so, this shows the 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172

Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 15 and note. Note to RRS ii, no. 256; also no. 540. RRS ii, no. 256; Stringer, ‘Galloway’, no. 25. RRS ii, no. 344; see also no. 345. Howlett, Chronicles iii, 192, 195. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, no. 20. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, nos 26, 27. Charters of David I, nos 9, 10. Charters of David I, nos 31, 32. Charters of David I, nos 53, 54; see also no. 65. Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 143. Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 23 n. 81. Udard’s position as sheriff might also have strengthened his position.

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potential strength of a sitting tenant to frustrate a lord’s plans, especially if the tenant had a powerful backer. On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that there is no evidence that the disputes concerning Swinton mentioned in the charters of Alexander and David did involve Liulf or his son. It is perfectly possible that Edgar’s gift assumed that Liulf would retain his tenancy. Liulf and Udard are a rare early instance where we can see inheritance having taken place below the highest levels of society. In general, interpretations of seignorial control of inheritance are largely speculative. Stringer has suggested in his study of the charters of Earl David of Huntingdon that both north and south of the border ‘lay vassals were to hold their possessions in perpetual feu according to hereditary descent (in feudo et hereditate); but whereas in Scotland a lord was not bound to acknowledge the heir’s claims, in England he could be compelled to admit him into seisin’.173 However, even when a break in succession can be shown, this need not indicate a general limitation of heritability; such a conclusion may rest upon unprovable assumptions about the nature of the first tenant’s tenure, the existence of heirs, and the absence of consensual tenurial rearrangements.174 The problems of speculation are also apparent regarding alienability. Take the charter whereby Malcolm IV gave Newbattle abbey the toun of Gocelin the cook.175 Bruce Webster in his study of the uses of charter evidence asks what had happened to Gocelin.176 He suggests that ‘the gift may really have been made by Gocelin; the royal charter may not be a real gift but a formal document of conveyance, necessary because the land is held from the king and a tenant could not dispose of his land without his lord’s consent, and because the tenure is being changed from lay fee to free alms’. Again, there is no evidence for this. Much more plausible are the possibilities, noted by Webster, that Gocelin had already died, or that he had retained his hold on the land, but now as a tenant of Newbattle. Overall, evidence for the lord having strong control of his tenants and the lands they held can be matched by other evidence suggesting the tenant’s strong hold on his land.177 Compelling evidence for the autonomy of honours, for example specifically honorial customs, are hard to find within the areas with which I have been dealing,178 although they could, of course, be hidden by the limitations of the evidence. If the case for the relative strength of lordship in Scotland seems reasonable, the case for such strong lordship having a clear impact on land-holding, its customs and practices must remain not proven. This increases the impression of similarities between Scotland and England, similarities which may be reinforced once English legal historians pay further attention to the far north of the realm, as Maitland suggested to Neilson: ‘Yes, it is most curious, Scotch medieval law is to me so French, so Norman – and the change from English to Scottish is not sudden at the border, but is “mediated” by the condition of our four northern counties, which seem to me the Frenchest part of England.’179 Such similar173 174 175 176 177 178

Stringer, ‘Anglo-Scottish Diplomatic’, 88. MacQueen, Common Law, 40–1. RRS i, no. 113. B. Webster, Scotland from the Eleventh Century to 1603, London 1975, 75. See also above, 128, on lords’ participation in their tenants’ gifts. Although for regional difference note Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 181, on partible inheritance in Galloway; cf. 374 on primogeniture. 179 Zutshi, Letters of Maitland, no. 175. The quotation continues ‘As you travel northward, the hundreds and frank-pledge and murder-fine drop off and the county court changes its character. The further he gets from his lord at Westminster the Norman, the more French the baron becomes. It seems as if the later infusion of French jurisprudence met a kindred element in Scotland that had been there for a very long time.’

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ities between Scotland and England are hardly surprising, given MacQueen’s persuasive argument that the early development of Scots common law was the product in part of a ‘legal transplant’.180 Clearly there was a difference in the chronology of the extension of royal control.181 There may have been a longer lasting emphasis in Scotland on specific royal protections,182 whereas in England such protections are matched by a more rapid routinisation of royal justice. In England by end of Henry II’s reign, Glanvill stated that ‘according to the custom of the realm no-one is bound to answer in his lord’s court concerning any free tenement without a writ of the lord king or his chief justice’.183 In Scotland the equivalent custom appears to have emerged in the thirteenth century.184 Yet divergence in administrative development exceeds divergence in substantive customs. MacQueen has pointed to the practice of partible inheritance amongst women in Scotland, and takes it as evidence against over-emphasis on royal control determining the development of custom and hence creating substantive differences between England and Scotland.185 Such interpretation fits my own suggestion that key customs concerning land-holding had emerged in England before the period of Angevin reform. Perhaps one might even think of royal authority having an impact on legal development in Scotland into the thirteenth century in a fashion rather similar to England in the period to 1135, through the possibility rather than the routine of royal involvement in cases involving lords and tenants. Such royal activity could encourage standardisation. Further pressure in the same direction came from the fact that this was a conscious legal transplant. And finally, as we have seen, it was vigorously encouraged through charters explicitly stating that lands were to be held as best as any were in the realm of the king of Scots. Angevin reform was a very important stage in one route to a common law of land-holding, but the Scottish development of such a law followed a somewhat different path.

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Common Law, 264–6. For comment similar to the present paper’s on a ‘diplomatic transplant’, see e.g. Broun, Charters of Gaelic Scotland, 18–19: ‘The Scottish royal scribes often took their cue from English royal charters, and, in turn, the practices of Scottish royal scribes appear to have been influential in other contexts within Scotland. Scottish bishops’ charters were also influenced by English episcopal acta as well as by the usage of the papal chancery.’ 181 See also above, 134, on ne audiam and nisi feceris clauses. 182 See e.g. Charters of David I, nos 66, 123, 207; RRS i, no. 219. See also Harding, ‘Brieves of Protection’. 183 ‘Ranulf de Glanvill’, Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie, Bk xii c. 25, ed. G. D. G. Hall, Edinburgh 1965, 148; see also Bk xii c. 2, ed. Hall, 137. 184 MacQueen, Common Law, 105–11. 185 MacQueen, ‘Tears of a Legal Historian’; note also Duncan, Making of the Kingdom, 372–4.

William of Newburgh on Anti-Jewish Violence

‘FAITH IN THE ONE GOD FLOWED OVER YOU FROM THE JEWS, THE SONS OF THE PATRIARCHS AND THE PROPHETS’: WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH’S WRITINGS ON ANTI-JEWISH VIOLENCE1 M. J. Kennedy William of Newburgh, a canon of the Augustinian house there, some fifteen miles north-east of York, wrote in the 1190s at the end of the most fruitful and creative century of historical writing in medieval England, and his Historia Rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs) has attracted high praise over the last century and more. Howlett, his editor in the Rolls Series, described him in what now read as very ‘Victorian’ terms as ‘a man of unusual moral elevation’ who recorded events with ‘unswerving faithfulness’.2 Kate Norgate, author of his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, ascribed to him ‘the true historian’s instinct for perceiving the relative importance of things, for seizing the salient points and for bringing out the significance of a story in a few simple sentences without straining after picturesqueness or dramatic effect’.3 For Antonia Gransden, his History was ‘the most unusual and interesting produced in this period’.4 The historian who has written most extensively on William in the past three decades, Nancy F. Partner, commented on the degree to which medievalists of our time find him congenial and accessible because he was clearly interested not only in recording events but also reflecting on their significance in the light of the evidence available to him.5 Such enthusiasm by modern historians for William has been based to some extent on the contrast between the breadth of his interests and knowledge and the seclusion of his life at Newburgh Priory. He refers to Newburgh as having ‘nurtured me in Christ from my boyhood’ and his only reference to a journey beyond it, is to his visit to the hermit Godric of Finchale in Co. Durham shortly before Godric’s death in May 1170.6 However, John Gillingham has recently argued persuasively that such seclusion did not deprive William of a good deal of information derived from men who were, unlike himself, active in worldly affairs. He likely had access to the royal newsletters circulated as part of Richard I’s propaganda war relating to his crusade, imprisonment and subsequent dealings with the emperor Henry VI and Philip II 1

The quotation occurs in William’s commentary on Song of Songs 8:5; John C. Gorman, William of Newburgh’s Explanatio Sacri Epithalamii in Matrem Sponsi, Specilegium Friburgense vi, Fribourg 1960, 341. I wish to thank Professor J. A. Watt for his helpful advice in the initial stage of this study, and Professor Barrie Dobson for sending me an offprint of his article, ‘The Medieval York Jewry Reconsidered’, Jewish Culture and History 3, 2, Winter 2000, 7–20. 2 Howlett, Chronicles i, li–liv. 3 Kate Norgate, ‘William of Newburgh’ DNB 61, London 1900, 362. 4 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c.550–c.1307, London 1974, 264. 5 Nancy F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: the Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England, Chicago 1977, 51–2. Partner’s book and that of Rudolf Jahncke, Guilelmus Neubrigensis: ein pragmatischer Geschichtsschreiber des zwölften Jahrhunderts, Jena 1912, are the best starting points for study of William. 6 Howlett, Chronicles i, 51, 150.

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Augustus of France, a war in which the royal clerk Philip of Poitou, bishop of the northern English diocese of Durham from 1197 to 1208, played a prominent role.7 More decisively, Gillingham has shown that William had access to the work of Roger, incumbent of the Yorkshire parish of Howden by whose name he is known, after a long and wide-ranging career in royal service. Indeed, he characterises William’s work as ‘Howden re-written and re-interpreted’, a significant phrase which leaves intact William’s reputation for ability and willingness to offer his own view of the materials to which he had access.8 The limited objective of this paper is to consider William of Newburgh’s treatment of Jewish-Christian relations in his writings, compared to that found in those of some of his contemporaries, and its approach is based on the view that in re-examining material already well-known one may see a writer’s standpoint from the language he employs.9 The subject is an unpalatable one to contemporary taste, since it demands a recognition that the defining characteristic of the Jews in Christian thought and sentiment in the Middle Ages and later was their alleged responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. The roots of that perception lie as far back as the New Testament, particularly in the writings of St Paul, a zealous Jew before his conversion, and in the Fathers of the Church, whose works show a wide spectrum of views of Judaism and its relationship to Christianity.10 There soon developed a stylised rhetoric of mutual abuse between Christian and Jewish writers, and though literary polemic need not necessarily lead to violence by the stronger party against the weaker, it may predispose to it. The twelfth century was a period of clearly hardening ecclesiastical attitudes to the Jews under the influence of such events as the crusades.11 Dr Anna Sapir Abulafia was led to describe the period from the late eleventh century as one of ‘the intellectual and spiritual alienation of Jews within the context of the great number of changes that took place in northwestern Europe’,12 though there were in late eleventh- and twelfth-century England scholars interested in Judaism and in debate with Jews.13 In particular, Gilbert Crispin’s Debate between a Jew and a Christian apparently enjoyed some considerable circulation.14

7

John Gillingham, ‘Royal Newsletters, Forgeries and English Historians: Some Links between Court and History in the Reign of Richard I’, in La Cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204), ed. M. Aurell, Poitiers 2000; ‘William of Newburgh and Emperor Henry VI’, in Auxilia Historica: Festschrift für Peter Acht, ed. W. Koch et al., Munich 2001, 51–71. 8 John Gillingham, ‘Two Yorkshire Historians Compared: Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh’, HSJ, 12, 2003. I am grateful to Professor Gillingham for allowing me to see his paper in advance of publication. 9 Thus, the intention is not to examine in detail such episodes as the massacre of the York Jews in March 1190, as has already been done by Professor Barrie Dobson in ‘The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190’, Borthwick Papers 45, York 1974. 10 For brief summaries of Pauline and patristic views, see Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: the Jews of Medieval Latin Europe, Cambridge MA and London 1992, 8–29; Mark R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton NJ 1994, 17–22. 11 For papal policies in general towards the Jews, see Edward A. Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, New York and London 1965; Kenneth R. Stow, ‘Hatred of the Jews or Love of the Church: Papal Policy towards the Jews in the Middle Ages’, in Anti-Semitism through the Ages, ed. Schmuel Almoog, Oxford 1988. For anti-Christian Jewish rhetoric, S. Eidelberg, The Jews and the Crusaders: the Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, Madison 1977, e.g. 21 (the cross as a profane symbol), 22 (‘defilement’, of baptism), 32 (‘a bastard son conceived by a menstruating and wanton mother’, of Christ) etc. 12 Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, London 1995, 137. 13 Raphael Loewe, ‘The Medieval Hebraists of England’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 17, 1951–2, 225–49; Abulafia, Christians and Jews, 77–106. 14 A. S. Abulafia and G. R. Evans, The Works of Gilbert Crispin, London 1986, xxvii–xxx, 1–54.

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Before turning to William of Newburgh and his English contemporaries, a brief consideration of arguably the most influential patristic author, St Augustine, may be useful. Augustine’s works contain numerous references to the Jews, of which two examples will suffice. He concluded Book Four of The City of God with a chapter in which he contrasted the host of false gods worshipped by the Romans with the one true God of the Old Testament and described the many blessings which happily flowed from the Jews’ worship of Him. For the fall and dispersion of the Jews he offered a twofold explanation. First, taking up a theme of Old Testament prophecy, their turning aside to ‘strange gods and idols’, and, secondly, their putting Christ to death. The providential purpose of the Jewish diaspora was to demonstrate that when in any place paganism was uprooted this had been prophesied long ago, and that Christian explanations of the fall of paganism were not mere inventions. Thus, the Jews were ongoing and necessary witnesses to the veracity of Christian apologetic.15 A second text, which is of particular interest because it would be invoked by twelfth-century English writers, occurs twice in Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms. It is ‘Ne occideris eos nequando obliviscantur legis tuae’, from Psalm 58:12 (59:11 in the Authorised Version), which he applies to the Jews. In the first part of his commentary, he likens the Jews to Cain who, guilty of the murder of his brother Abel, was condemned by God to be a fugitive and wander the earth but was given a mark of protection against any who might wish to kill him. Augustine recalls here the text of Genesis 4:15, ‘If anyone kills Cain sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for him’, and explains that the Jews are likewise protected because they serve as a necessary sign to Christians of the mercy of God.16 In the second part, Augustine refers to the Jews as holding to the Law and the Prophets, while failing to recognise the light of the prophets, Jesus Christ. Some had been converted to Christ and so gained forgiveness. The rest remain as the multitude of Christians grows, and though dispersed they are not deserted by God and even their current plight is a demonstration of His generous love.17 For Augustine, both converted and unconverted Jews had a function to perform in the building up of the Church and should be left in peace to fulfil it. In twelfth-century England anti-Jewish sentiment manifested itself principally in allegations of Jewish complicity in the murders of a number of Christian children, and it is significant that William, who wrote more extensively on the Jews than any other English historian of his time, makes no reference to them. Nonetheless, since they form part of the background to the later massacres and some contemporaries dealt with both topics, they may briefly be reviewed here. The earliest and most notorious allegation of child-killing arose from the discovery on Good Friday 1144 in Thorpe Wood near Norwich of the partially-naked body of a boy who came to be revered as St William of Norwich.18 The story is sufficiently well-known not to need repetition, but some features stand out. In the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the body, the crime was not connected to the local 15 16

Augustine, ‘De Civitate Dei’, CCSL xlvii, Turnhout 1955, 127. Augustine, ‘Enarrationes in Psalmos LI–C’, CCSL xxxix, Turnhout 1956, 743–4. G. Dahan, ‘L’Exégèse de l’histoire de Cain et Abel du XIIe au XIVe siècles en Occident’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 49, 1982, 29. 17 Augustine, ‘Enarrationes’, 745–7. 18 The case owed its notoriety and the cult its development largely to the work of Thomas of Monmouth. See A. Jessop and M. R. James, ed. and trans., The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth, Cambridge 1896. See also Gavin Langmuir, ‘Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder’, Speculum 59, 1984, 820–46.

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Jewish community. Thomas of Monmouth, who probably joined Norwich cathedral priory between 1146 and 1150 and so relied on hearsay for his knowledge of the alleged martyrdom, recounted in his Life the release of a young woman from a diabolical incubus. She had been commanded in a dream by Herbert, first bishop of Norwich, to pray at St William’s tomb, did so and duly secured release. Thomas comments that by this miracle the memory of William, which had been waning and almost died out, was revived.19 A degree of local opposition to the cult is suggested by the author’s devoting the subsequent five chapters of his work to warning those who made light of the miracles of St William or doubted that he had been slain by Jews.20 The extent to which the story was disseminated and aroused interest is not entirely clear. It was reported by the Peterborough Chronicle and by Ralph of Coggeshall, but not by Henry of Huntingdon, who took an interest in events in East Anglia and devoted a chapter of his Historia Anglorum to the death of Geoffrey de Mandeville there in 1144.21 A number of other boy-martyr reports occur between 1144 and the massacres of 1189–90, but it is uncertain whether they attracted widespread notice. The case of Harold of Gloucester whose body was found in the river Severn on 18 March 1168, the day after Passion Sunday, was reported in quite elaborate detail by the chronicler of St Peter’s abbey, Gloucester, which had an interest in the promotion of a cult.22 The chronicler admitted that the attribution of Harold’s death to the Jews rested only on ‘the opinion of very many people’, and that there was no direct Christian or Jewish testimony to the event. No miracles were reported and further mention of the story comes from Knighton and from the chronicle acquired for Jervaulx by Abbot John Brompton, both products of the thirteenth century when anti-Jewish sentiment had become more inflamed. The case of Robert of Bury St Edmunds, mentioned in a single sentence by Jocelin of Brakelond as ‘the holy boy [who] suffered martyrdom and is buried in our church’, discloses considerable background detail to the alleged killing.23 It is apparent from Jocelin that the later years of Abbot Hugh’s rule (1157–80) were characterised by slackness of abbatial control which left the way open for independent and imprudent action by his obedientiaries and consequent indebtedness to both Christians and Jews. In one passage, bonds totalling £1,320 are mentioned, of which £1,280 was owed to two Jewish financiers. This, and reference to the way in which William the Sacrist was called the Jews’ father and protector who allowed them free run of the abbey and its church and kept their money in the abbey treasury under his custody, suggest growing resentment towards the Jews on financial grounds. Resentment culminated in Abbot Samson’s expulsion of the Jews from the town of Bury, an act cited by Jocelin as a proof of the abbot’s excellence.24 By contrast, Jocelin does not mention the massacre at Bury in 1190. There may be a hint of condescension in Jocelin’s reference to many unspecified signs and wonders being worked ‘among the common folk’ (in plebe) by St Robert,

19 20 21

Jessop and James, Life, 84. Jessop and James, Life, 85–96. EHD ii, 212; J. Stevenson, ed., Radulphi de Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, RS, 1875, 12; Huntingdon, 744–6. 22 W. H. Hart, ed., Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, 3 vols, RS, 1863, i, 20–1. 23 H. E. Butler, ed. and trans., The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, NMT, London 1949, 16. 24 Butler, Jocelin, 2, 5–6, 10, 45. Butler suggests that the expulsion may have been for the Jews’ own good, but this seems doubtful.

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but he was sufficiently interested to write a work, now lost, about them. Again, the extent of the cult is not clear and it is not mentioned in the thirteenth-century chronicle of the abbey, which does refer to anti-Jewish activity, including the attempted crucifixion of a boy at Northampton in 1279 and the expulsion of 1290.25 In the ‘heavy and burdensome’ tenth levied at the second Council of Lyons, the altar of St Robert in the abbey church was assessed at the modest sum of five marks,26 though the cult was still in evidence at the abbey when William Worcestre visited in 1479.27 Bury, as Greenway and Sayers put it, ‘dominated East Anglia’ so it is not surprising that the martyrdom of Robert was briefly mentioned by Ralph, abbot of Coggeshall, some twenty-five miles away in Essex.28 A final story, which deserves mention because it differs fundamentally in tone from those already cited, is that of the supposed boy-martyr of Winchester told by Richard of Devizes in his chronicle.29 Richard is perhaps the most difficult of twelfth-century historians in England to categorise briefly. He could be a dispassionate and independent commentator on events, a man who self-indulgently flaunted his prejudices and a witty and mordant satirist. Satire is to the fore in his account of the plausible and wicked old French Jew who persuaded a cobbler’s apprentice to seek his fortune in England at Winchester, described by him for its tolerance as ‘in those parts the Jerusalem of the Jews; in that city alone do they enjoy perpetual peace’.30 The denunciation of other English cities which Richard puts into the Jew’s mouth is described by Partner as the satirical tour de force of the whole work,31 and the praise of Winchester might be taken more seriously had it not included the allegation that its townsmen exhibited one pre-eminent and widespread vice, that of lying like watchmen (‘vigiles’) and of fabricating false rumours more than any other people under Heaven. This allegation has a clear relevance to the narrative of anti-Jewish hostility which follows, and raises the question of whom Richard was satirising. Gransden took his narrative as possibly reflecting pro-Jewish feeling.32 This is unlikely in view of Richard’s earlier reference to the massacre of Jews in London on Richard I’s coronation day, in which he writes of their being immolated to their father the Devil and describes them as bloodsuckers and an incorrigible people.33 Robert Levine drew attention to the literary conventions which he believed Richard was following, and both Partner and Allin argued that he had in his sights the recent genre of boy-martyr stories, especially that told by Thomas of Monmouth, to which his account has similarities, so that he may have had Thomas’s work to hand.34 The boy-martyr stories reflect the main interest of twelfth-century English historians in the Jews before the massacres of 1189–90, and the material in which 25 A. Gransden, ed. and trans., The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds 1212–1301, NMT, London 1964, 22, 28, 61, 66, 67, 69, 89, 95. 26 Gransden, Chronicle, 60. 27 J. H. Harvey, ed. and trans., William Worcestre, Itineraries, OMT, Oxford 1969, 163. 28 Stevenson, Coggeshall, 20; D. Greenway and J. Sayers, trans., Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Oxford 1989, ix. 29 J. T. Appleby, ed. and trans., The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, NMT, London 1963, 64–9. See also Patricia Allin, ‘Richard of Devizes and the Alleged Martyrdom of a Boy at Winchester’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 27, 1980, 32–9. 30 Appleby, Richard of Devizes, 67. 31 Partner, Serious Entertainments, 176. 32 Gransden, Historical Writing, 251. 33 Appleby, Richard of Devizes, 3–4. 34 Robert Levine, ‘Why Praise Jews: Satire and History in the Middle Ages’, JMH 12, 1986, 291–6; Partner, Serious Entertainments, 177–8; Allin, ‘Alleged Martyrdom’, 36.

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they deal smacks more of ‘false rumour’ than of fact. With the accounts of the massacres we are on surer ground. Of the authors mentioned, Richard of Devizes and Ralph of Coggeshall mention them, as does Ralph Diceto, and they are joined by the two most significant voices in this area, those of Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh. One is drawn to the conclusion that for most of them the massacres were of only limited interest. Richard of Devizes devotes only a short and hostile paragraph, as already noted, to the subject. Ralph Diceto, as dean of St Paul’s during a vacancy in the see of London, carried out the bishop’s function of handing the holy oil and the chrism to the archbishop of Canterbury at Richard I’s coronation. He was thus in an excellent position to write an informed account of the anti-Jewish violence of that day, had he chosen to do so, but in his account of the coronation he devotes only three sentences to the Jews.35 The later killings at Norwich, Stamford, Bury St Edmunds and York are given only a short paragraph in which he strikes a common theme in attributing the persecution to ‘many people throughout England who were preparing to go to Jerusalem’ on crusade.36 Yet in this brief reference his disapproval is clear. The Norwich Jews were ‘trucidati’, at Stamford ‘occisi sunt multi’, at Bury fifty-seven ‘jugulati sunt’ and those of York ‘neci traditi sunt’. He concludes that ‘it is incredible that so grievous and deadly a murder of Jews should be pleasing to prudent men, since that text of David “Do not kill them” comes frequently to our ears’. The psalmist’s text, on which Augustine had commented, did indeed come frequently to all who worked their way through the Psalter in the Divine Office. Ralph of Coggeshall’s narrative of the massacres is somewhat longer, but unspecific and less reflective.37 His description of the unburied bodies of Jews at York being exposed to the dogs and the birds recalls the biblical prophecy by Elijah in I Kings 21:23–4 of the similar fate of King Ahab and his queen Jezebel. Of them the prophet states that ‘there never was anyone like Ahab for double dealing and for doing what is displeasing to Jahweh, urged on by Jezebel his wife’. This biblical echo prepares the reader for Coggeshall’s assertion that the souls of the Jews were given up to the flames of Hell for eternal torment after blaspheming against Christ and openly and abusively disparaging the faith and the sacraments of the Church. He concludes that since the Jews had by usury brought many nobles and men of moderate means to indigence, ‘so cruel a punishment was deservedly inflicted on them by Christians’. For him, the matter needed no further elaboration, and there is no hint of moral or theological reflection on the events he describes. Both Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh devote more attention to the outrages of 1189–90 than the writers above, and Newburgh’s account of the London massacre is some three to four times the length of Howden’s, that of events at York more than twelve times so. Since he had access to Howden’s work, this considerable expansion is indicative of his personal interest in the Jews. It is an interest Howden does not appear to share. Like Ralph Diceto, he provides a long account of Richard I’s coronation and a longer account of the London massacres than Ralph’s; to the York massacre he devotes only little attention.38 In both cases, his concern is primarily the infringement of royal authority represented by outbreaks of violence. In London, the king called the perpetrators of violence before him ‘not because of the Jews but because of the houses and property of Christians which they had burnt and 35 36 37 38

Diceto ii, 68–9. Diceto ii, 75–6. Stevenson, Coggeshall, 26–8. Howden, Chronica iii, 9–13, 33–4.

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plundered’ and it was for that crime that he had some of them hanged. Howden reports the visit to York in the aftermath of the massacre there by the chancellor William Longchamp with a large force, his deposition of the sheriff and the warden of the castle who had countenanced the disorder, and his taking hostages to secure the king’s peace and that of the realm. In neither instance is he drawn to reflect on the morality of the anti-Jewish violence. It is not merely the length of his narrative which has led modern historians to regard William of Newburgh as the major source on the massacres, but the complexity and sophistication of his response to the events he treats.39 As Barrie Dobson concluded of his approach to the York massacre, it ‘shows him at his very considerable best; well-informed and emotionally involved, he was yet sufficiently detached from the atrocities to provide a comparatively impartial and well-balanced if sometimes over-calculated story’.40 Some features of William’s approach will now be examined. First, it is self-evident that he was a man of his age and shared the universally-held belief that Jews of his own time had inherited the alleged guilt of their forebears for the crucifixion of Christ. He calls the day of the pogrom in London in September 1189 a ‘dies Aegyptiacus’ on which the victims were reduced ‘by the judgement of God’ from their former happy state in England to the servitude their fathers had endured in Egypt. Although he believed that the events he describes were in recent memory and known to all his contemporaries, he nonetheless thought it worthwhile to pass on to posterity more fully a written memorial of so conspicuous a divine judgement against a faithless (‘perfidam’ – a word applied to the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy) and blasphemous people.41 Clearly William shared with some contemporaries a belief that the former state of Jews in England had been excessively ‘happy’ in material terms. He writes of what was done against ‘the arrogance of the Jews’ at Lynn in Norfolk, refers to their throwing their weight about because of their numbers there, their excessive wealth and royal protection in the previous reign.42 In his accounts of the massacres, he refers repeatedly to popular resentment of Jewish prosperity.43 Such prosperity was visible in the houses they built, two of which at York William likened to the palaces of kings, and the house of Josce there to rivalling in dimensions and strength of construction ‘strongholds of no mean dimensions’.44 William’s underlying assumption is that to an extent the Jews brought their calamity upon themselves. Scattered, too, throughout his references to Jews are the conventional terms of abuse found elsewhere. They are characterised as a ‘perfida gens’ and ‘inimici crucis Christi’, a ‘blasphema gens’ and ‘blasphemi illi’ whose insolence and blasphemous tongues must be reined in.45 Notably, when reporting the fate of Benedict of York, a Jew who had been baptised out of fear after the London massacre and later confessed to the king that he had in reality remained true to his Jewish faith, William asserts that he was doubly a son of Gehenna, as a Jew and an apostate from Christianity. In contrast, Roger of Howden reports the same scene and includes the angry outburst of

39 40 41

The relevant parts of William of Newburgh’s text are in Howlett, Chronicles i, 293–9 and 308–24. Dobson, Jews of Medieval York, 24. See also his judgement in York Jewry Reconsidered, 9–10. Howlett, Chronicles i, 294. On 312, the same preoccupation with recording well-known events for the benefit of posterity is mentioned at the beginning of his account of the York outrages. 42 Ibid., 309–10. 43 Ibid., 294 (three references relating to London), 308, 310 (Stamford) etc. 44 Ibid., 312–13, 314. 45 Ibid., 297, 298, 299, 310.

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Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury that if Benedict did not wish to be a Christian he could be the Devil’s man. He is more restrained than William, and remarks that the archbishop spoke less circumspectly than was needed and, like the good civil servant he was, suggests what he should more temperately have said.46 So far, one might say, William is conventional enough, but he is exceptional in the degree to which he agonises (and the word is chosen deliberately) over anti-Jewish violence. An early hint of his unease may be detected in his assertion that the beginnings of justice inflicted on the Jews at London presaged a new Christian confidence against the enemies of the Cross in Richard’s reign, a reference to the king’s mission as a crusader against the Muslims, the other great enemies of the Christian faith.47 In fact, William’s eventual judgement on Richard’s crusade strikes a sombre and disappointed note. ‘With so much expense, danger and toils, little was done for the recovery of the earthly Jerusalem but very much for the renewal of the Heavenly Jerusalem.’48The tone of this passage is reminiscent of St Bernard’s in the part of his De Consideratione in which he sought to explain the failure of the Second Crusade, another expedition in which great expense, danger and toils had been invested, and to extract some comfort from its outcome.49 William may well have had access to Bernard’s work through his close contacts with the Cistercian abbeys of Rievaulx and Byland. At any rate, his doubts as to what the significance of anti-Jewish violence in London might be are conveyed by his comment that ambiguous events should be interpreted for the better rather than for the worse, which occurs in the same paragraph as his reference to Richard as crusader. There is no doubt, from the force of his language, of William’s disapproval of the perpetrators of anti-Jewish violence. The London rioters, for example, are described as undisciplined, as vehemently enraged and as a furious mob to whom the false rumour that the new king had authorised the extermination of the Jews came as welcome news.50 There is a nice irony in William’s use of the phrase ‘frementibus populis’ since he knew well Psalm 2, a messianic psalm prophesying the destruction of Israel’s enemies which began with the words ‘Quare fremuerunt gentes et populi meditati sunt inania . . . adversus Dominum et adversus Christum eius.’ Such biblical wordplay is a recurrent feature of his literary style. The reasons for such disapproval emerge clearly from the text. The basic motive for the violence was avarice, which exceeded even the cruelty of the perpetrators and was turned upon fellow-Christians as well as Jews in a competition for loot. In each of William’s accounts of anti-Jewish violence, financial considerations are specified and in the York narrative one of the most vivid scenes is that of the leaders of the massacre ceremonially burning in the Minster the bonds which recorded their indebtedness.51 The religiously corrosive effects of the events he described were illustrated by William with an anecdote concerning a young man named John who fled from Stamford to Northampton with his loot, some of which he lodged with another man, only to be murdered for the money. The discovery of John’s body led to the senseless rabble (‘vulgus insipiens’) there attempting to establish a martyr-cult, which was derided by men of sense but encouraged by clergy eager to profit from it. The determined suppression of the incipient cult by Bishop Hugh of Lincoln is described by 46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., 299; Howden, Chronica iii, 12–13. Howlett, Chronicles i, 297–8. Ibid., 379. De Consideratione, PL 182, 741. Howlett, Chronicles i, 295–6. Ibid., 296–7, 308, 311, 313, 315, 322.

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William as ‘the devoted and effective action of a good shepherd’,52 and is corroborated by the statement in the Life of Hugh that the bishop ‘after a bitter struggle put a stop to the veneration paid to a robber at Northampton’.53 Hugh had apparently been a defender of the Jews, and at his funeral in 1200 the local Jewish community lamented him as a true servant of the one God.54 In William’s opinion, then, the violence he reports was straightforwardly sinful. It transgressed the command of Psalm 58:12, ‘Slay them not’, and thwarted God’s purpose in preserving the Jews, which he reports in Augustinian terms while adding a visual touch of his own. ‘The perfidious Jew, who crucified the Lord Christ, is allowed to live among Christians because he performs the same useful role as does the image of the Lord’s cross painted in Christ’s church, namely to perpetuate the memory of the Lord’s passion for all Christians.’ No one, he implies, would desecrate such an image and reminder, though he goes on immediately to add that ‘in the case of the Jews we curse their impious deed, while in that of the sacred image we revere His divine dignity with fitting devotion’.55 It is probably straining the evidence to see here an echo of the classic Christian idea of hating the sin but cherishing the sinner, but William was sufficiently exercised by Jewish sufferings to include near the end of his York narrative a list of four reasons why ‘the detestable cruelty of the butchers was inexcusable’.56 The best William can find to say of the perpetrators of the killings of 1189–90 is a thrice-repeated comment that they thought they were offering a service to God.57 Like other contemporary writers, he ascribes a degree of responsibility for the various massacres to outsiders coming to the towns where they took place, on business or on their way to the crusade.58 Though his references to the mob or the common people have been read as condescending,59 they may also have been excusatory. He states that some citizens of York were unable to prevent the first night of violence owing to their preoccupation with the safety of their own houses, suggesting perhaps that they might otherwise have done so, and later adds that the ‘nobles of the city and those of substance’ prudently held aloof from the tumult for fear of royal punishment.60 The implication is that the mob knew no better. Of one who should have known better, the Premonstratensian hermit who incited the mob in the attack on York castle, William was severely condemnatory. His actions were ascribed to a ‘blinded mind’, an apt and ironic phrase since William would know the conventional image of the Synagogue (Jews) as blind, in contrast to the Church illuminated by the light of Christ. He was particularly scandalised by the hermit’s having celebrated Mass before joining the mob: ‘before making his way to the bloody work, he sacrificed the unbloody Victim early in the morning’.61 There is a hint of satisfaction in his report of the hermit being fatally crushed by a huge stone falling from the castle, the only religious to perish. Towards the victims of the sinful behaviour he describes at York, William’s atti52 53

Ibid., 312. D. L. Douie and D. H. Farmer, ed. and trans., Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, 2 vols, OMT, Oxford 1985, ii, 201. 54 Douie and Farmer, Vita, 16–17, 228. 55 Howlett, Chronicles i, 316–17. 56 Ibid., 322. 57 Ibid., 308, 311, 316. 58 Ibid., 308, 310, 311, 316, 322. 59 Levine, ‘Why Praise Jews’, 291. 60 Howlett, Chronicles i, 314, 316. 61 Ibid., 317–18.

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tude is complex. Though, as already seen, he shared in the general condemnation of alleged Jewish guilt, there are signs of sympathy for Jewish suffering. Thus, he describes the Jews beleaguered in York castle as ‘courageous and stoical through desperation alone’, ascribes to their spiritual leader, Rabbi Yomtob of Joigny, a dignified and moving speech advocating martyrdom through self-immolation, and another to the minority of his companions who felt unable to embrace death. Moreover, he unhesitatingly maintains that the Jews lured out of the castle by the promise of safety in return for submission to baptism, only to be murdered on coming out, were baptised in their own blood if their conversion was genuine.62 Yet alongside these references, he refers to Yomtob as ‘the Ancient of evil Days’, an inversion of the vision of the ‘Ancient of Days’ in Daniel 7:9–10, 13, 22, and to the self-immolation as the ‘mind-boggling irrational madness of rational men directed against themselves’. His only attempt at explanation is couched in terms of the Jews imitating the suicide of the hopeless defenders of the stronghold of Masada against Roman attack in AD 73, as reported by Josephus.63 Professor Dobson suspected that William had read Josephus ‘very attentively indeed’, and it is a book to which he would have had access since a twelfth-century manuscript was in the library at Rievaulx.64 It is evident here and throughout his account of anti-Jewish violence that William was a puzzled man attempting to make some sense of events which deeply disturbed him, in a way which goes far beyond the approach to the same events of any of his contemporaries. If this reading of William is to any extent accurate, it is useful to explore his exceptional interest in the Jews somewhat further. One can do so by reference to his other major work, the Commentary on the Song of Songs.65 It is an untypical biblical text, since it neither mentions God nor contains any overt theological, historical or prophetic teaching. Its precise status and nature have been much-debated by scholars, and the commonly-held view is that it is a collection of erotic poetry.66 As such, it lends itself to allegorical interpretation in both Jewish and Christian traditions, being read as a celebration of the love between God and Israel or God and the Church. There is a rich tradition of Christian commentary extending from Origen, writing in the 240s AD, throughout the Middle Ages. Given the prominence in the text of the female lover, it is unsurprising that some verses were applied liturgically to the Blessed Virgin Mary from at least the seventh century, though systematic Mariological commentary began only in the twelfth century. William of Newburgh’s Commentary is pertinent to this paper, but has attracted little notice from historians compared to that paid to his History. It survives in only three known manuscripts, one in Brussels and two in Cambridge, and was the subject of a critical edition (n. 1 above) by John C. Gorman, whose primary interest was in spiritual theology and who provides a comprehensive listing of relevant biblical texts. Like the History, the work was undertaken at the urging of a Cistercian abbot, in this case Roger, abbot of Byland from the 1140s to 1196. Roger’s request is not

62 63 64

Ibid., 318–19, 321–2. Ibid., 320. Dobson, Jews of Medieval York, 27 n. 84; D. N. Bell, The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, London 1992, 98. 65 E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, Philadelphia 1990, is an excellent recent work on the Song, which usefully includes the Vulgate text and an English translation at xvi–xxxiii to which reference will hereafter be made. 66 Matter, Beloved, 49–52.

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altogether surprising since there is some evidence that William of Newburgh saw spiritual and theological reflection as his principal occupation. In the dedicatory letter to Abbot Ernald of Rievaulx with which the History begins, William thanks him for commissioning the work, which ‘bids me not to devote myself to the investigation of lofty matters nor to exploration of the mysteries, but to stroll for a while in the paths of historical narrative, an easy task offering me a form of mental recreation’.67 The preface and epilogue to the Commentary throw some light on the nature of Abbot Roger’s request and the author’s execution of it. Roger had asked specifically for a book applying the text to the Blessed Virgin, and though devotion to her was longstanding in England as elsewhere,68 he wrote at a time when that devotion was developing markedly, as exemplified by a work of William of Malmesbury.69 Cistercian devotion to the Blessed Virgin is well-known, though interestingly neither of Bernard of Clairvaux’s two works on the Song, the longer of which consisted of eighty-six sermons and extended only as far as Song 3:1, took a Mariological approach. William’s protestations in the preface and epilogue of his incapacity for the task may be read as conventional self-deprecation, but there are elements which may be taken more seriously. Abbot Roger had seemingly made persistent requests for such a work and William writes that only a wish to obey him and God, who spoke through him, had made him eventually agree.70 He seems genuinely to have been deterred by the task and refers in the epilogue to having finally completed a project of great difficulty. The difficulty was not only intellectual, arising from the perceived novelty of the approach demanded, but practical. He had frequently been unwell, had no assistance available in transferring his work from wax tablets to parchment, and his many other commitments, probably including the History, had left him only limited time. He began the Commentary at the beginning of one Lent and had scarcely finished it by the beginning of the next. William’s reference in the prologue to the novelty of his approach and to the difficulty of ‘building a new track and having no way well-trodden’ by earlier authors arose from his belief that only St Jerome had written a Mariological commentary. The work in question was in fact written by Paschasius Radbertus, the ninth-century abbot of Corbie, and there were several twelfth-century examples. Rupert of Deutz and Honorius of Autun, both Benedictines, wrote in the first quarter of the century, Philip of Harvengt and William of Weyarn, regular canons, in the middle to later years and Alan of Lille before his retirement from academic life to become a Cistercian.71 If William’s claim was inaccurate, it was likely to be genuine. Gorman concluded after a careful comparison of the content and arrangement of the other twelfth-century works that ‘there is no reason to doubt his good faith, for his commentary differs from each of the others [so as] to make any direct dependence

67 68

Howlett, Chronicles i, 4. See the study by Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 1990. 69 Peter Carter, The Historical Context of William of Malmesbury’s Miracles of the Virgin Mary’, 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, 127–65. From a different context, see the affinity in Old French sources between the Blessed Virgin and earthly mothers, cited by Linda M. Paterson, The World of the Troubadours, Cambridge 1993, 294. 70 Gorman, Explanatio, 71–2 (prologue), 364 (epilogue). 71 Ibid., 41.

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unlikely’.72 One might add that nowhere in the History does the author make any claim to or prize originality in his own work. Rather, he is concerned to base himself on reliable authority and when he cannot vouch for the contemporary events he reports he is fastidious in distancing himself by the use of such phrases as ‘it is said’ or ‘it is believed’. Indeed, one ground of his withering criticism of the Arthurian stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth was that they were not based on reliable authorities.73 There are in the Commentary some dozen references to the Jewish people, and space permits examination of only a representative sample here. Given the Marian theme, it is not surprising that the earliest significant one occurs in the context of the Crucifixion.74 William pictures Jesus’s mother standing by the cross and seeing with her loving eyes ‘the eclipse of the true sun, she who was the mother of that sun’ and the dying Christ is made to speak of ‘my brothers the Jews who fought against their salvation in fighting their saviour’. The consequences of such resistance are spelt out later.75 Addressing the Church, William writes that her mother is the Synagogue, from which faith in the one God flowed to her, and that her mother had been a holy nation and the special people of God. ‘Corruption’ he reads as the failure of that people to recognise their saviour and the calling down of his blood upon themselves and their children, thus losing dignity and freedom so that they are no longer the people of God and children of Abraham. The crime of ‘violation’ would result in the yoke of temporal servitude being followed by eternal punishment in Hell. Thus far, William’s portrayal of the Jews appears as one of considerable severity, but his view is more complex. Writing of the Annunciation, he refers to Mary providing Christ’s flesh from her own for the salvation of the Jews.76 He then has her say that He (Christ) ‘later made clear to me that he had a far more fruitful grace in mind, . . . the salvation of the Gentiles, lying below the Jews, and of all the Elect . . . They are the true Israelites, and the truer sons of Abraham, from wherever they are taken up.’ This does not, however, imply the exclusion of the Jews from salvation. Certainly, William regarded their role in the crucifixion as culpable but even there he regards them as playing a providentially-ordained role.77 Christ asserts that ‘neither they who crucified me with their tongues (the Jews), nor they who did so with their hands (the Roman soldiers), despoiled me’. Christ submitted to the Passion voluntarily ‘so they unknowingly did me a service’. William here as elsewhere employs the notion of God carrying out His purposes through unwitting and sometimes unworthy agents. He insists, too, that the fate of the Jews is far from a matter of indifference to the Blessed Virgin. She is presented as exulting on earth at the conversion of some Jews after the Ascension.78 Far more remarkable is his statement that ‘the loving mother of

72 73 74

Ibid., 55–6. Howlett, Chronicles i, 17–18. Gorman, Explanatio, 91–2. The commentary is on Song 1:5, ‘Filii matris mee pugnaverunt contra me’; Matter, Beloved, xvi–xvii. The texts are quoted in the form in which they appear in William’s work, which differs slightly from that in Matter. 75 Gorman, Explanatio, 341–2. Commentary on Song 8:5, ‘Ibi corrupta est mater tua, ibi violata est genetrix tua’; Matter, Beloved, xxxii–xxxiii. 76 Gorman, Explanatio, 238–9. Commentary on Song 5:6, ‘Anima mea liquefacta est, ut dilectus locutus est. Quesivi illum et non inveni illum; vocavi et non respondit michi’; Matter, Beloved, xxvi–xxvii. 77 Gorman, Explanatio, 228. Commentary on Song 5:3, ‘Expoliavi me tunica mea, quomodo induar illam? Lavi pedes meos, quomodo inquinabo illos?’; Matter, Beloved, xxvi–xxvii. 78 Gorman, Explanatio, 301. Commentary on Song 7:1, ‘Quid videbis in Sunamite, nisi choros castrorum’; Matter, Beloved, xxviii–xxix.

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the redeemer calls that race, from which she herself came, her mother and the one who bore her’. Though the killers of Christ are an object of hatred, ‘that hatred should not grow to the extent that they are consigned to oblivion or thought of no account, because the sacrifice made for human redemption was taken from that race. Salvation is from the Jews.’ William portrays Mary as praying daily for the salvation of the Jews and forgetting that her son was killed by them. Instead she bids Him remember that He took flesh from them and that they from whose flesh He did not recoil should have part with Him in spiritual things.79 Not only, therefore, does William not exclude the Jews from the economy of salvation, but he emphasises insistently that they enjoy the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, uniquely powerful among the saints and an intercessor whose prayers could not ultimately be ineffective. The nature and depth of his engagement with the issue of the salvation of the Jews is suggested by his commentary on one particular verse of the Song.80 It gives rise to a long and powerful passage addressed to the Jews which comprises the most lyrical part of William’s entire work and warrants quotation in full. Return, return that we may look on you. For you are in darkness even until now because you have put out the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. Because you are in darkness, and the darkness which extinguishes light has cut you off, the children of light do not see you. So return, return, come wholly out of the power of darkness so that we may see you, placed in the light. Return, return, Sunamite. Return, despised one. Return, captive. Return, despised one, that you may no longer be held despicable; return, captive, that you may no longer be crushed by the yoke of so dread a captivity. Return, return, that we may see you, may no longer despise you as a captive but count you, as one snatched away from captivity, with the freedom of the children of Christ. It is, of course, a truism to observe that this passage, like the rest of William’s language, is shot through with the phraseology of the Latin Bible, though modern scholars sometimes find it less than easy to appreciate the extent to which such phraseology lay embedded in the minds of observant religious who participated in the daily round of the Divine Office. There is in the above passage a particular association, with the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Selections from these poems, a product of the Exile in Babylon, were chanted as Lessons at Matins on each of the last three days of Holy Week, each Lesson ending with the exhortation, ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn back to the Lord your God.’ This is an apt reflection of William’s suggested mood, since the poems were laments for the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC and the consequent subjugation and exile of the Jews, and an appeal for them to recover their freedom by repentance. As William was aware, the fall of Jerusalem was not the end of the Jewish story, since an edict of the Persian king Cyrus in 538 BC restored them to Jerusalem. No more was the Passion and Crucifixion the end for William, in spiritual terms, of the story contained in his Commentary. His confident hope was for Jewish repentance and conversion.

79 Gorman, Explanatio, 151–2. Commentary on Song 3:4, ‘Inveni quem diligit anima mea; tenui eum nec dimittam donec introducam illum in domum matris mee’; Matter, Beloved, xx–xxi. 80 Gorman, Explanatio, 300–1. Commentary on Song 6:12, ‘Revertere, revertere, Sunamitis, revertere, revertere, ut intuamur te’; Matter, Beloved, xxviii–xxix.

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* The argument of this article is not that in any way William of Newburgh stood outside the belief universally held by Christians in his time that the Jews were by their rejection of Christ guilty of a great crime from which their subsequent troubles flowed. It is, rather, that the portrayal of the Jewish people in his work is an unusual and subtly nuanced one, which gave weight to their past and to their hoped-for future place in the history of salvation, and that the Commentary has a role in illuminating what William writes on this subject in his more commonly-read History. Any adequate estimate of William has to be based on his work both as historian and as biblical commentator.

Anglo-Norman Lay Charters, 1066–c.1100

ANGLO-NORMAN LAY CHARTERS, 1066–c.1100: A DIPLOMATIC APPROACH Richard Mortimer Documents purporting to be those of Anglo-Norman lay men and women have survived in quite substantial numbers from before 1100. For lay estates they are often the only source that can be used alongside Domesday Book, and for the religious institutions which are the beneficiaries they are often the foundation charter or the earliest record of endowment. But interpreting them poses serious problems. They are often suspected of being forgeries. The eleventh century was a period of very decentralised document production everywhere in northern Europe: ‘each establishment created its own tradition’, leading inevitably to a great variety of diplomatic practice.1 This is even more obviously the case when dealing with non-royal productions, and makes criticism exceptionally difficult. Especially to historians approaching these documents backwards, coming to them with eyes used to the much more numerous baronial charters of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many purported eleventh-century documents look distinctly eccentric, and all the worse for being studded with unnerving anticipations of later common forms. To use such significant source material with confidence there has to be some degree of consensus on authenticity. The more recent historiography of the subject has been about the mentality of the writer or forger, the ways in which documents can develop and their connection with more obviously narrative texts.2 The authors of eleventh-century charters are now likely to be seen as tentative amateurs unused to drafting such documents, but feeling their way towards the later common forms.3 This may be true, but it does nothing to solve the problem of authenticity. Discussions of group memory, literacy and the status of written testimony presuppose knowledge of which texts, or which parts of which texts, were written in the eleventh century and which in the twelfth or later. Authenticity is an underlying issue in this work, but it is rarely tackled head on. These documents can be subjected to various types of criticism, to do with the historical context in which they claim to have been drawn up – questions of the tenure of land and the dates of individuals named in them, for example. They can be 1

Olivier Guyotjeannin, Jacques Pycke and Benoit-Michel Tock, Diplomatique médiévale, Brepols 1993, 116–17; see also Bates, Regesta, 105–9. See Emily Zack Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law, Chapel Hill 1988, 143, for an instance of diplomatic form depending more on scriptorium than type of transaction. I would like to thank the members of the conference for discussion and help with this paper, and Mathieu Arnoux for his comments. 2 M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 2nd edn, Oxford 1993, 85–7, 318–27; Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, Princeton 1994, 81–114; Marjorie Chibnall, ‘Charter and Chronicle: the Use of Archive Sources by Norman Historians’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. C. N. L. Brooke, D. E. Luscombe, G. H. Martin and Dorothy Owen, Cambridge 1976, 1–17; Marjorie Chibnall, ‘Forgery in Narrative Charters’, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, MGH Schriften 33 vol. 4, 1988, 331–46. 3 Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, 294.

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examined one by one for the credibility of their content. What I think has not been tried on them yet is a systematic examination of their forms. It is especially the anticipations of later common practice that arouse suspicion. But later common practice must have started to evolve at some time: in an evolutionary process there must be a first individual of each successive mutation. Some genuine early instances of later practice therefore have to be expected; the problem is, which examples are genuine? It should also prove useful to map some of the practices which are acceptable for the eleventh century but were abandoned later. To all these problems diplomatic analysis would seem to offer a promising approach. The objective is to establish what was written in the eleventh century and what later. By ‘forgery’ I mean no more than a text in the name of an eleventhcentury donor but written later than the eleventh century. By ‘genuine’ I mean simply that a text was written in the eleventh century – the relationship between the genuine text and what actually happened in the eleventh century is a separate problem, as is the whole matter of eleventh-century concepts of authenticity. My conclusions about forgery and authenticity will be based on diplomatic only; it could be that a diplomatically acceptable piece falls foul of other kinds of criticism. The method will be to take a group of single-sheet documents whose palaeography is consistent with an eleventh-century date, hereafter referred to as ‘originals’; to examine their diplomatic characteristics, and to pursue these characteristics into the larger body of texts which come down to us as later copies. I shall not mention every instance or parallel among these copies, only those that are particularly appropriate or revealing. My group of ‘originals’ is not all those that exist, just those that are most useful for this purpose. The documents under discussion are those running in the name of non-royal lay men and women which deal with land in England, and which appear to date between 1066 and c.1100. Having looked analytically at their diplomatic characteristics, I shall look briefly at the larger corpus of such documents. These can be sorted into three categories: the completely acceptable, the completely unacceptable, and those which have been interpolated or expanded. But first I want to introduce the ‘originals’. We shall take them in rough chronological order. The first is a charter of one Waleran to St Etienne, Caen,4 in which he grants, for the salvation of King William, himself and his family, the church at Bures 4

Bates, Regesta, no. 47; facsimiles in V. H. Galbraith, ‘The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings’, PBA 21, 1935, 201–38 before p. 201, and Annual Report of the Friends of the National Libraries, 1961, no. 1. The MS is BL, Add. Charter 75503, and reads as follows: Ego Walerandus pro salute domini mei Willelmi Regis Anglorum et ducis Normannorum et pro salute ac redemptione anime mee atque pro animabus tam patris et matris mee quam uxoris ac filiorum meorum, trado aecclesie dei que in honore beatissimi Stephani Cadomi sita est, aecclesiam sancte Mariae que michi in Buri est et omnia que ad eam pertinent, id est terram duarum carucarum, molendinum unum, et totam aquam que ibidem est, sicut usque nunc in meo dominio habere solitus sum. Ea quoque que michi vicina ibidem sunt pascua, omnibus eiusdem loci animalibus communia esse permitto. Preterea ducentis porcis ubicumque mei fuerint singulis annis pascua concedo. Ecclesiam autem eo tenore trado, ut si Cadomensis abbas eundem locum ad dei servitium aptum providerit, et ubi monachi honeste et regulariter vivere valeant congruum iudicaverit, ibidem monachos constituat. In cuius providentia committo quicquid ei de eadem ecclesia melius et convenientius secundum deum statuere placuerit. Trado etiam omnem decimam terrarum ac rerum mearum tam in animalibus quam in ceteris rebus, meorum vero hominum tantum in segetibus. Omnes quoque presbiteros cum suis ecclesiis ecclesiarumque beneficiis et quas a me retinent terris, et domum quandam Nundonie sicut habere solitus sum propria voluntate concedo. Ut autem hoc in perpetuum firmum habeatur, meis precibus dominus meus rex propria manu firmavit, et ut in supradicto monasterio consistentes monachi ad omnia quibus indiguerint ligna in meo nemore succidendi licentiam habeant, mea postulatione propria annotatione roboravit. Mathildis regine + signum. Willelmi + regis Anglorum signum. Johannis + archiepiscopi signum. Rogeri + Belmontensis signum. Roberti + Bellimontensis signum.

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(Suffolk), with land, a mill, water, pasture rights and tithes. The abbot of Caen is to install monks there if he thinks it appropriate. Waleran also grants ‘all the priests with their churches’, and a house in London. So that this shall be firm in future the king has signed at Waleran’s request, and also so that the monks may have the king’s licence to cut wood. Then follow the labelled signa of Queen Matilda, King William, Archbishop John, and Roger and Robert de Beaumont. There is no signum of Waleran, though there is plenty of space for it. The palaeography is convincingly eleventh-century, in fact the scribe has probably been identified as that of two other St Etienne charters. The document is nearly square, and is ruled. The signa look autograph, and are accepted as such by Galbraith, Chaplais and Bates.5 The style of the Latin is rather literary, as it is in the other two documents likely to be from the same hand; there is very little ‘diplomatic’ in it at all. It can be dated 1068x1079 by the witness of Archbishop John of Rouen. Domesday Book shows Bures held by John son of Waleran, but makes no mention of any holding by St Etienne.6 It seems the grant did not take effect. The next original to be considered contains two separate items, the grant by William and Gundrada de Warenne to the abbey of Cluny of the original endowment of Lewes priory, Cluny’s first daughter-house in England, and William the Conqueror’s confirmation.7 The donors begin the document, and give to Cluny, where Dom Hugh presided as abbot, the church of St Pancras (at Lewes, though that is not stated), the land of two ploughs at Swanborough with the villeins belonging to it, and ‘the land of one plough in the land called’ and the vill of Falmer and everything that belongs to it, all as Gundrada used to hold it. Despite the scribe’s concern for the impressive appearance of the document, an error has occurred in the text, with the omission of a place-name saying where the land of one plough should be.8 The 5

Bates, Regesta, 13, 222, 225, 241; Galbraith, ‘Literacy’, 220 and n. 42; P. Chaplais, ‘Une charte originale de Saint Etienne de Caen au British Museum de Londres’, Annales de Normandie 12, 1962, 110–11. 6 Domesday Book ii, fol. 435b. There was wood for 40 pigs, and two acres of meadow. Bates, Regesta, no. 45, 1066x1077, identifies the donor of the London house as Waleran fitz Rannulf, confirmed again in ibid., no. 54 (1081x1087), but the confirmations do not mention Bures. 7 Bates, Regesta, no. 101; EYC viii, The Honour of Warenne, no. 2, facsimile at plate I. The text reads as follows: Notum sit omnibus fidelibus quod ego Willelmus de Warenna et Gundreda uxor mea pro redemptione animarum nostrarum, consilio et assensu domini nostri regis Anglorum Guillelmi, donamus Deo et sanctis apostolis eius Petro et Paulo, ad locum Cluniacum ubi preest domnus Hugo abbas in eadem Anglorum terra ecclesiam sancti Pancracii cum his que ad eam pertinent, et terram duarum carrucarum in proprio in Suamberga, cum villanis ad eam pertinentibus, et unius in terra que nuncupatur et villam Falemelam ubi sunt tres carruce proprie cum his omnibus que ad eam pertinent, sicut tenebat eam supradicta uxor mea. In nomine domini nostri Ihesu Christi, ego Guillelmus Dei gratia rex Anglorum inspiratione divina compunctus, pro incolomitate regni mei et salute anime mee, rogantibus etiam et obnixe postulantibus Willelmo de Warenna et uxore eius Gundreda, hanc inscriptam donationem quam faciunt sanctis apostolis Dei P(etro) et P(aulo) ad locum Cluniacum sigillo nostro signatam confirmo, et regali auctoritate corroboro, ut in perpetuum firma et inconcussa permaneat. Hanc donationem ita concedo ut habeam eandem dominationem in ea quam habeo in ceteris elemosinis quas mei proceres faciunt meo nutu, et hoc in ista elemosina habeam quod habeo in aliis. + Signum Willelmi regis Anglorum. + Signum M(atildis) regine Anglorum. + S(ignum) Willelmi comitis filii regis. + S(ignum) Rotberti de Bellomonte. + S(ignum) Henrici de Bellomonte. + S(ignum) Rotberti Gifardi. + S(ignum) Rogeri de Mortuomari. S(ignum) + Gosfridi de Calvomonte. + S(ignum) Radulfi dapiferi. + S(ignum) Mauricii cancellarii. + Signum Willelmi de Warenna. + S(ignum) Gunnorede uxoris W(illelmi) de Warenna. 8 Clay interprets the phrase ‘terram duarum carrucarum . . . in Suamberga . . . et unius in terra que nuncupatur.et uillam Falemelam’ in his English summary, EYC viii, no. 2, as meaning the gift of another ploughland ‘with the vill of Falmer’, but to mean this ‘uillam Falemelam’ would have to be in the nomina-

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king begins again: he confirms and corroborates the donors’ written gift such that it shall stand in perpetuity, and he shall have the same power in this alms as he has in others which his great men make with his permission. There follow twelve signa, of the king and queen, the donors, Robert and Henry de Beaumont, Robert Giffard, Roger de Mortimer, Geoffrey de Chaumont,9 and at the bottom Ralph dapifer and Maurice the chancellor. Here again the scribe has been identified, by Pierre Chaplais, as the one known chancery scribe of the Conqueror’s reign.10 This piece can be dated 1078x1080/1. Bates points out its diplomatic interest as ‘a confirmation of English property written in the style of a Continental diploma’.11 That is true of the royal part of the document, but the Warennes’ part, beginning with a simple notification clause, is not an example of a baronial diploma. The document was not kept at Lewes, but among the archives of Cluny. If, as has been suggested, this charter is a consequence of Abbot Hugh of Cluny’s visit to Normandy, 1078x1080, and was drawn up then, this document may never have been in England.12 The third original we shall consider is the foundation charter of Totnes priory in Devon.13 It notifies all worshippers of the holy church of God that Juhel son of Alured has given to Sts Sergius and Bachus, the abbot and Dom Tetbald the monk the church of St Mary at Totnes, with the fees (‘feuo’) of a group of named priests, some land near the church, some tithes and a fishing weir. He also gave four copes, two dossals, an alb, a silver-gilt cross and two other crosses. He made this alms for King William, Queen Matilda and their children, from whom he had his honour, and for his own family. He made the gift at Tetbald’s request, without retaining anything, and handed it over by the key of the monastery and the bell-rope, and placed a knife on the altar. This was done before witnesses, whose names were written out in five columns. The same hand then continues to recount how two of the priests asked Tetbald to continue to be able to hold their fees, which at Juhel’s request was granted on condition that they be subject to St Serge. There then follows a wide gap, and at the base of the sheet another hand lists the priory’s tithe holdings in numerous Devon vills, ending with a note of Geoffrey dapifer’s gift, by knife on the altar.14 The palaeography makes this a credible eleventh-century document. The main scribe uses e-caudata, there are horizontal feet to the capitals, and few abbreviations.15 The date of the document is very hard to determine with any accuracy. It is tive; nor would there be any need to say that there were actually three ploughs at Falmer. Bates’s suggestion that a word has been omitted is preferable – and if this were a place-name it would make sense of the grammar. 9 ‘Goisfrid de Calvomonte’ is Geoffrey of Chaumont-sur-Loire, on whom see Jean Dunbabin, ‘Geoffrey of Chaumont, Thibaud of Blois and William the Conqueror’, ANS 16, 1993 (1994), 101–16, at 114; if this charter was given in Normandy it would not constitute evidence that Geoffrey had interests in England. 10 P. Chaplais, ‘Une charte originale de Guillaume le Conquérant pour l’abbaye de Fécamp: la donation de Steyning et de Bury (1085)’, in L’Abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp (ouvrage scientifique de XIIIe centenaire), Fécamp 1959, i, 94; repr. in Chaplais, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration, London 1981, no XVI. 11 Bates, Regesta, 376, and 377 for the date; see also discussion at 38–9, stressing the document’s Norman rather than Burgundian diplomatic. 12 Bates, Regesta, 377; Frank Barlow, ‘William I’s Relations with Cluny’, JEH 32, 1981, 136–40 for Abbot Hugh’s possible visit. 13 Exeter, Devon Record Office, 312M/TY1; facsimile in Hugh R. Watkin, The History of Totnes Priory and Medieval Town, 2 vols, Torquay 1914–17, i, plate 1, and English translation (only), 3–4, 6; see appendix below for edition of the Latin. I have not been able to consult Yves Chauvin, ed., Premier et second livres des cartulaires de l’Abbaye Saint-Serge et Saint-Bach d’Angers, Angers 1997: I am grateful to Mathieu Arnoux for the reference. 14 Watkin, Totnes i, 6–17 identifies the places. 15 N. R. Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest, Oxford 1960, 22.

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not known when Juhel arrived in Totnes, but he had been expelled by 1091 when he was replaced by Roger de Nonant.16 The tithe note at the bottom begins ‘In Roger’s manors . . .’, and was therefore added after 1091. It is in a lighter ink and a different hand, and the scribe has had to leave gaps, sometimes in the middle of words, to allow for the deep folds in the parchment which he could not write over. The first text had therefore been written, and the document kept folded for some time, before the tithe note was written. Though the main text runs in the third person, and does not therefore necessarily require that Juhel was even alive at the time, the balance of probability must be that it was written when Juhel was holding Totnes. The character of the reference to the king and queen does make it seem likely that they were alive, and Queen Matilda died in 1083. The main text of this document also occurs in a copy preserved in France, but with a number of subtle variations and a historiographical addition. It was this which was printed in Monasticon, from an ‘autograph’ at Angers.17 The addition recounts how after Juhel’s expulsion, Roger de Nonant was given Totnes, quarrelled with the monks, and was later reconciled with the king’s encouragement. In other words it seems there were two documents, one in England and one in France, which evolved separately, one sprouting a note on tithes, the other a narrative of subsequent events. Next to be considered is the charter of Ilbert de Lacy to La Trinité-du-Mont, Rouen.18 Ilbert notifies all Christians living and to come that he, with his wife Haduidis, gives Tingewick (Bucks.), to La Trinité, with the water, meadow and wood belonging to it, for the souls of King William and his own friends and relatives, notably his son Hugh who is buried there (presumably Rouen). At the end another hand has added ‘and the tithe of Fraiteville’. There is then a large empty space in which three signa appear, of King William (Rufus), Ilbert and Haduidis. The document was originally sealed, but the seal has become detached. The donor is Ilbert I of the Pontefract branch of the Lacys, who died between 1091 and 1100.19 He is shown

Palaeography will not enable a document to be dated securely before or after 1100, as ‘older’ and ‘newer’ hands worked simultaneously and change was only gradual, e.g. Richard Gameson, ‘English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury in its Context’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, ed. R. Eales and R. Sharpe, London and Rio Grande 1995, 114–15; but palaeography is not being used to demonstrate that an original must be eleventh-century, only that it could be. For some late eleventh-century hands less formal than those usual in book production at major monastic centres see Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, Oxford 1992, esp. 18–19. 16 See John Bryan Williams, ‘Judhael of Totnes: the Life and Times of a post-Conquest Baron’, ANS 16, 1993 (1994), 271–89; after 1107 Juhel reappears as lord of Barnstaple, and was alive and witnessing a charter perhaps as late as 1123, Regesta ii, no. 1391, which must make it unlikely that he was put into Totnes as early as 1068. Watkin, Totnes i, 9–10, maintains that the first witness, Martinus de Uualis, must be ‘Martin of Wales’, a name he could not have borne until the conquest of south Wales in 1087–8: but both these assumptions are unnecessary. Domesday People, i, 286, suggests a date between 1082 and 1086, and closer to 1082, for the priory’s foundation. 17 Monasticon iv, 630, ‘ex ipso autographo apud S. Sergium et Bacchum Andeg.’, discussed in Williams, ‘Judhael’, 282–3; English translation in Watkin, Totnes i, 5, from Paris, BN MS lat. 5446, fol. 269. The break in the Monasticon text appears to be an editorial intervention. 18 Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, plate 1 and commentary opposite. Edition in EYC iii, no. 1483, but wrongly giving ‘Hadrude’ for Haduide and with various other mis-readings. The MS is Winchester College Muniments 11334 and reads: Notum sit omnibus Christianis tam uiuentibus quam futuris quod ego Hilbertus de Laceio una cum Haduide uxore mea do mansionem Tinsuicz Sancte Trinitati de Monte Rotomagensi, terram scilicet cum aqua & pratis & siluis omnibusque ad ipsam mansionem attinentibus pro anima mea atque domini mei Willielmi regis & animabus parentum et amicorum meorum necnon & uxoris mee filiique mei Hugonis pro eo quod et ipse supradictus filius meus in loco requiescit & decimam de Fraiteuilla. 19 W. E. Wightman, The Lacy Family in England and Normandy 1066–1194, Oxford 1966, 11, 56, 60.

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in Domesday Book holding Tingewick of Odo of Bayeux with no mention of La Trinité.20 Therefore c.1088x1100 are the likely outside dates. Clanchy has pointed out the inconsistent spacing and variable script size, and the eccentric spelling. The scribe has idiosyncratic signs for long s, ‘-orum’, ‘m’ and ‘n’. The hand which added ‘et decimam de fraite uilla’ has made a careful attempt to reproduce the ampersand and the lengthened first minim of m, the most obvious relevant eccentricities in the hand to be copied, but his curved d and form of e declare him to be a different hand, though not necessarily much later. It is possible that Ilbert knew and approved of this addition to his charter, and that the attempt to mimic the original hand was made for aesthetic reasons, but it looks more likely that deceit was intended. The small, neat charter of Gilbert Tisun for Selby abbey21 also begins with a notification to all the faithful, that Gilbert, by concession of his wife and sons, has granted to St German of Selby, for the souls of King William and Queen Matilda and the redemption of his own soul and those of his wife and children, two carucates of land in Gunby and his tithes in Averham and Ella, and eight bovates of land in Lound, on condition that he be taken into full brotherhood. One of his men, named Swain (‘Suanus’) also gave a carucate in Duffield, which Gilbert confirms. There follows a witness list, and immediately below, a seal tag and wrapping tie. This is a much more business-like production than the previous document, regular in script size and without obvious idiosyncracies. The scribe consistently uses e-caudata, and both upright and sloping d. Clay gave cogent reasons for dating this piece in William Rufus’s reign,22 probably towards the end, and the palaeography is consistent with that date. Our sixth and last example is a charter of Ralph de Mortimer.23 He confirms the

20 21

Domesday Book i, fol. 145a. The original is EYC xii, The Tison Fee, no. 15 and plate 1; Monasticon iii, 500, and J. T. Fowler, The Coucher Book of Selby, Yorks. Archaeolog. Soc. Record Series 13, 1893, 19, are from the cartulary copy which omits all but the first two witnesses and modifies some spellings. The MS was Phillipps 29205, was acquired by the Robinson brothers and sold at Sotheby’s, 4 July 1972 (lot 1755), and now belongs to a private collector. I am most grateful to Nigel Ramsay for help in trying to trace this charter, which reads as follows: Notum sit omnibus fidelibus quia ego Gislebertus Tisun concessu uxoris mee & filiorum meorum dedi ecclesie sancti Germani de Salebi pro anima domini mei Willelmi regis & Mathildis regine & pro redemptione anime mee & uxoris mee & omnium liberorum meorum, duas carrucatas terre, in uillam que Gundebi dicitur, cum omnibus que illi adiacent, & illam decimam quam habeo in Aigruna, & in Alueleia, & viii bouatas terre in uilla que Lund dicitur. Hoc autem ea conditione feci, ut in eadem ecclesia sim plenarius frater. Quidam etiam ex hominibus meis nomine Suanus dedit memorate ecclesie unam carrucatam terre in Duffeld. Quod ego concessi et concedo. T(este) Thoma archiepiscopo. T(estibus) Adam filio meo, et Willelmo, et Everardo capellano, et Ricardo Tisun, et Vctredo filio Alwini, et Suano, et Ro(berto) filio Widonis, et Maino. 22 EYC xii, 48–9; Gilbert Tisun probably received the lands of Alwine son of Northmann shortly after 1069; his forfeiture occurred early in Henry I’s reign, probably before Tinchebrai in 1106; though it was not complete, and he survived as a tenant of Nigel d’Albini, this charter dates from before his fall – which means that the first witness is Archbishop Thomas I, 1070–1100. Paul Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, Cambridge 1994, 69, 87–8, 90. 23 Worcester Record Office, BA 1531 ref. 705: 134 parcel 72; R. R. Darlington, Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory, Pipe Roll Society ns 38, 1968, no. 270 and plate XIII. The text runs: Ego Radulfus de Mortuo mari concedo terram de Wrubenhalla que est in estimatione unius uirge, liberam ab omni seruitio seculari excepto geldo si contigerit, ad uictum et d(omi)ni(c)um monachorum, sicuti Turtinus eam donat cum filio suo Girardo. Hoc quia de me feodio est, concedo, pro anima mea et uxorum mearum, & dominorum & filiorum & parentum meorum. Hoc mea propria manu confirmo + assensu filiorum et hominum meorum, ut sit firmum & stabile in perpetuum. Ego uero Tustinus licencia domini mei confirmo mea + manu. Testes sunt Bern’ Oxpac, Gislebertus, Iohannes filii Ebrardi, Ebrardus de Dontona, Rogerus, Walterus, Radulfus, Balduinus, Rogerus

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land of Ribbenhall (Worcs.), estimated at one virgate, for the support of ‘the monks’, quit of all secular service except geld if it occurs, as ‘Turtinus’ gave it with his son Gerard; this he does since it is of his fee, and he does it for his soul and those of his wives, lords, sons and relatives. He confirms with his own hand (a cross at the beginning of a line), and specifies the assent of his sons and men. Turtinus then, with the licence of his lord, also confirms with his own hand (a cross at the end of a line). There is a list of witnesses. There is a seal, still attached by a short tag threaded through slits in the middle of the sheet. Darlington, who edited this document, dated it around 1100, and more likely before than after that date if ‘Turtinus’ can be identified as Turstin of Wigmore, who was given land by William fitz Osbern before 1071.24 The palaeography is consistent with this date, showing both upright and sloping d, and horizontal feet on capitals. Even if it dates from a little after 1100 this is a useful piece to us, because of its eccentricities. The Latin is sometimes odd or careless. The original donor is now ‘Turtinus’, now ‘Tustinus’. The diplomatic has various odd features, as we shall see later. But perhaps the oddest is the charter’s failure to name the beneficiary, other than ‘the monks’. These were the monks of Worcester cathedral, into one of whose cartularies the text was copied, and who continued to have an interest in the land.25 Could the Worcester monks have been responsible for such an amateurish production? Let us turn now to the analysis of the diplomatic characteristics of these documents. It is typical of later original charters that they very nearly fill up the space on the piece of parchment they are written on, and that each single sheet contains only one document. Neither of these holds true of the Totnes priory charter, which after its columns of witnesses has another transaction, involving the local priests and their holding and executed before the same witnesses, then a large blank space, and then an entirely separate memorandum, later in date. The monks of Totnes, presumably the subject of ‘habemus’, ‘we have the following tithes’, are using some blank space on their foundation charter to note down some useful facts about their income. There is nothing impossible about there being two genuine documents on one piece of parchment in the eleventh century. The Warennes’ grant to Cluny begins with their own grant in their own names, and halfway down the parchment begins again as a diploma of William the Conqueror. The Totnes document contains not only the tithe note added at the foot of the page, but also the further transaction involving the re-grant of the priests’ fee and their subjection to the monks, occurring on the document after the columns of witnesses and in the same hand as the first part. This extra business is specifically said to have taken place ‘before the aforesaid witnesses’. But the note added at the end of Ilbert de Lacy’s charter to La Trinité of Rouen, ‘et decimam de Fraite uilla’, can be seen from the script to have been added by a different hand which intended the phrase to look like part of the text. A document with no eschatocol and a lot of space at the bottom, even if partly filled by signa, was wide open to additions. These could be contemporary or later, authorised by the donor – or not. But the addition of a forged text does not invalidate what was already on the parchment. A single sheet may therefore carry both genuine and forged texts. Documents preserved in copies provide some examples of presumed genuine additions at the end. A suggestive parallel to the Totnes charter occurs in another document of the same mother-house, in which Count Alan I, ‘the Red’, is recorded to have given to St Serge of Angers the endowment for a priory at Swavesey in 24 25

Darlington, no. 270 n. 2 and pp. xxx–xxxi. Subsequent documents in the thirteenth-century cartulary record fee-farm arrangements for the Wribbenhall estate: Darlington, xxxi.

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Cambridgeshire.26 After the main series of gifts is added a note on how the count conceded to Ivo the monk the use of his pasture at Swavesey for the monks’ animals: this was done at Rochester before a separate list of witnesses.27 The record of Godfrey the sheriff’s grant of churches and land to Shrewsbury abbey has a brief witness list, and is followed by a grant by Roger the Poitevin, and then Roger’s confirmation of Geoffrey’s gift, a further witness list, and then a note that a daily mass was to be celebrated for Roger and his family.28 It is easy to imagine cartulary texts representing single-sheet originals that had evolved in the way the Totnes original did: the additions could have been made a short time or a long time afterwards. The developing text is not thereby inauthentic. Such multiple texts, when copied into cartularies, are obviously going to be difficult to identify as such, particularly if the separate components are given rubrics, but the possibility of adjacent cartulary texts having originally been on a single sheet should be borne in mind. Part of the protocol of later charters is the address clause, either general or to specific groups or individuals, and ending ‘Salutem’. None of our chosen originals presents us with an address clause of the later type. In fact Waleran’s charter to Caen and Ralph de Mortimer’s for Worcester have almost no protocol at all, both starting simply ‘I, x, give/concede . . .’ The lack of an address is common in eleventh-century charters: whole types of document omit any mention of their audience. Agreements are commonly unaddressed, as are diplomas.29 The individual gifts summarised in pancartes, which often look like little charters with witness lists, do not have addresses, and while they may be edited versions, one surviving original such ‘notitia’ has no address either.30 Of documents surviving in copies that do not fall into any of these categories, Beatrice Malet’s charter to Eye priory begins simply ‘I,

26 EYC iv, The Honour of Richmond part i, no. 1; Monasticon vi(2), 1001–2. There is no surviving medieval MS. The Monasticon text was printed ‘ex regist. de Swavesey, transcript. per S. Low Kniveton’, and Clay’s version collates that against a seventeenth-century transcript by Richard St George from a thirteenth-century MS. This extremely tenuous transmission makes the parallels with the Totnes original all the more striking. The monks of Swavesey occur in Domesday Book i, fol. 195b, which does not necessarily mean, as Clay states, that this charter had already been drawn up. As a memorandum in the third person it makes no claim as to its own date. Like the Totnes charter it begins with a verb in the first person plural, here ‘hac carta notificare decrevimus’, of which no subject is given. 27 Clay, EYC iv, 2, notes Farrer as suggesting that this was at the siege of Rochester in 1088. If so we would have a terminus ante quem for the whole document, but Rochester was on an important road and could have been visited at any time; the witnesses seem to be Count Alan’s household officers and others of lesser importance, which does not necessarily point to the siege. 28 Una Rees, The Cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey, 2 vols, Aberystwyth 1975, ii, no. 371; Monasticon iii, 521, from the cartulary; Godfrey’s grant must date 1093x1101, Roger’s confirmation before 1102, so they could have been simultaneous; the note on masses could have been added at any time afterwards. 29 For agreements, or conventiones, see e.g. the Ramsey examples, W. H. Hart and P. A. Lyons, Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, 3 vols, RS, 1884–94, i, 127–9; writs are addressed, but as no genuine original eleventh-century Anglo-Norman baronial writs, other than those of Odo of Bayeux, or diplomas are known to me, I have not discussed the surviving texts in this paper. Cassandra Potts, ‘Early Norman Charters: a New Perspective on an Old Debate’, in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, Stamford 1992, 36, notes increasing use of notification without preamble in Norman ducal charters before 1066. 30 T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais, Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to AD 1100, Oxford 1957, plate XXX: Eton College Library, ECR 29/1A, noting a grant of Walter Giffard to Bec. For similar texts, C. Harper-Bill and R. Mortimer, Stoke by Clare Cartulary, 3 vols, Woodbridge 1982–4, iii, no. 137 iii–vi, in a general confirmation of Archbishop Theobald; William de Warenne to Castle Acre, Monasticon v, 49–50; ‘Sanctorum prisca’, Earl Hugh to St Werburgh’s Chester, Geoffrey Barraclough, The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester c.1071–1237, Records Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1988, no. 3. For the process of editing diplomas into pancartes see Bates, Regesta, 12.

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Beatrice, sister of Robert Malet, concede . . .’31 The complex of charters whereby William de Briouze makes various grants to the priory of St Florent de Saumur at Briouze, including the endowment of Sele priory in Sussex,32 are all likewise unaddressed, as are Count Alan the Red’s grant of Linton (Cambs.) to St-Jacut,33 and Alfred de Hispania’s grant of tithe at Turnworth (Dorset) to St Etienne, Caen.34 If the address clause is not evidenced in our originals, the notification clause is well attested. Ilbert de Lacy for Rouen has ‘Notum sit omnibus Christianis tam viventibus quam futuris’, Gilbert Tisun for Selby and the Warennes for Cluny ‘Notum sit omnibus fidelibus’. Such phrases continue to be very common until the later thirteenth century.35 Slightly more elaborate and with the order reversed is the Totnes charter’s ‘Omnibus sancte ecclesie cultoribus notum fore volumus’. Charters surviving in copies which follow this general scheme are common, though those which omit any religious reference are commoner still. The mention of those in the present and the future is also frequent, as in Robert de Tosny’s grant of eels to Belvoir priory,36 or Ivo Taillebois’s shorter grant to Spalding.37 We have already seen how the charter I have referred to as Ilbert de Lacy’s to La Trinité du Mont at Rouen is actually also in the name of his wife, Haduidis. But the grammar makes it clear that Ilbert is doing the speaking: ‘I, Ilbert de Lacy, with Haduidis my wife,’ – and the verb is then in the singular; and later, ‘for my soul’, and ‘my wife’s soul’. Compare the Warennes to Lewes: ‘I, William de Warenne and Gundrada my wife’ – but this time the verb is plural, ‘donamus’, and the gift is for the redemption of ‘our souls’. The gifts include Falmer, which Gundrada is said to have held: it is partly her property which is being granted. In both cases the wife’s signum is placed at the foot of the charter. Joint grants from husband and wife are not unusual, but to have the verb in the singular is uncommon. A charter of Roger de Busli for Blyth priory does this: ‘. . . ego Rogerus et uxor mea Muriel . . . dono . . .’ This charter is made out to the same mother house, La Trinité du Mont, as the Lacy charter where the same feature occurs.38 The Lewes form, in which the husband appears from the pronouns to be speaking but the verbs are in the plural, is more usual. Roger the Poitevin and Almodis his countess grant in the plural to Charroux,39 31 Vivien Brown, Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters, 2 vols, Woodbridge 1992–4, i, no. 2; Monasticon iii, 405. 32 Bates, Regesta, no. 266; see also Jane Martindale, ‘Monasteries and Castles: the Priories of St-Florent de Saumur in England after 1066’, in Hicks, England in the Eleventh Century, 135–56 for gifts to St Florent. 33 Bates, Regesta, no 258a; J. A. Everard, ‘The Foundation of an Alien Priory at Linton, Cambridgeshire’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 86, 1997, 169–74, no. 1, who also prints three other eleventh-century memoranda for this house. The phrase ‘Guillelmi primi regis’ surely means this charter was written after 1087, unless the phrase is an interpolation. 34 Bates, Regesta, no. 55. 35 Michael Gervers, ‘The DEEDS Project and the Development of a Computerised Methodology for Dating Undated English Private Charters of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Dating Undated Medieval Charters, ed. Michael Gervers, Woodbridge 2001, 24–5. Véronique Gazeau, ‘Recherches autour de la datation des actes normandes au Xe–XIIe siècles’, in ibid., table, 76–9, shows other similar notifications from the late eleventh-century cartulary of La Trinité du Mont, but none exactly the same as Ilbert de Lacy’s, and notes, p. 68, a tendency to concision in the diplomatic of this house. 36 Monasticon iii, 290. Domesday People i, 380 says Robert died c.1093. 37 Monasticon iii, 217. The deaths of William the Conqueror and Bishop Remigius produce a date of 1087x1092. The text changes from first to third person, and the witness list is the same as in Ivo’s other charter, ibid., 216. They are printed from ‘an old copy’, ‘ex vetero apographo’, transcribed in 1648. 38 R. T. Timson, The Cartulary of Blyth Priory, HMSO 1973, no. 361. Tabuteau, Transfers of Property, 146, finds plural subjects with singular verbs common in Normandy. 39 D. P. de Monsabert, Chartes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’Abbaye de Charroux, Archives

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and Robert of Mortain and Almodis his countess grant the manors of Ludgvan and Truthwall in the plural to Mont-St-Michel.40 Lower down in the social scale, ‘Willelmus de Rovilla et Beatrix uxor mea dedimus’ the church of Iken to Eye priory.41 Simon de Senlis and his wife Matilda found St Andrew’s Northampton in the plural (‘damus’, ‘constituimus’) ‘pro nobismetipsis’.42 In the latter instance the donors call themselves just ‘Simon and my wife Matilda’. This simplicity, also noted just now with the Buslis’ ‘I Roger and my wife Muriel’, echoes that in Waleran’s original for Caen, where the historian has to do further research to establish the donor’s identity. The same applies to ‘Patrick’, who granted five hides at Weston to the church of Bath.43 Husband and wife donors are nothing unusual, nor are donors who use no patronymic or family name. In the case of Ralph de Mortimer’s charter for Worcester we have a second man speaking in the first person in the text of the charter: ‘I Tustinus with my lord’s licence confirm with my hand’, and then follow the witnesses. The situation here is like that in formal diplomas, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, where signa are often accompanied by first-person statements: ‘I, X, subscribed’, but I know of no other instance of this in an eleventh-century Anglo-Norman lay charter. It is not only the donor whose name is sometimes lacking in precision. Ralph de Mortimer’s confirmation is given ‘ad victum et dominicum monachorum’, without specifying which monks are meant. Perhaps that implies that the document was indeed drafted by the beneficiaries, since they would be the most likely people to think their identity so obvious as not to be worth specifying.44 The Totnes charter is made out to God, the holy martyrs Sergius and Bachus and the abbot ‘of the place’, and Dom Tetbald the monk who was present in person. The fact that the institution concerned was at Angers is nowhere actually stated. This is quite a common situation in copies as well. It is another feature that Alan of Richmond’s Swavesey charter has in common with that for Totnes to the same Angevin mother house.45 Major monasteries dedicated to Sts Sergius and Bachus were not thick on the ground, but in copies commoner saints also appear as beneficiaries without it being specified which of their churches is intended. Roger the Poitevin’s charter granted the church of Historiques du Poitou 39, 1910, no. XV. For Roger’s career in La Marche see Victoria Chandler, ‘The Last of the Montgomerys: Roger the Poitevin and Arnulf’, Historical Research 62, 1989, 6–8. The charter dates between Almodis’s inheriting the county of La Marche in 1091 and Roger’s loss of his English lands in 1102, and possibly before the death of William Rufus in 1100. For further discussion see C. P. Lewis, ‘The King and Eye: a Study in Anglo-Norman Politics’, EHR 104, 1989, 569–87, who suggests a date after 1094; Cyril Hart, ‘William Malet and his Family’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 158, and George Beech, ‘Aquitanians and Flemings in the Refoundation of Bardney Abbey (Lincolnshire) in the Later Eleventh Century’, HSJ 1, 1989, 73–90. 40 P. L. Hull, The Cartulary of St Michael’s Mount, Devon and Cornwall Record Society ns 5, 1962, appendix II. 41 Brown, Eye Priory i, no. 136. This charter could date from as late as the 1120s. 42 Monasticon v, 190. 43 William Hunt, Two Chartularies of the Priory of St Peter at Bath, Somerset Record Society 7, 1893, 45, from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 111. Dated 14 September 1100, the same as the charter of Henry I on p. 46 which confirms the gift. Ernulf de Hesdin is described as the previous holder of the land, so the donor is Patrick de Chaources: I. J. Sanders, English Baronies, Oxford 1960, 125 (Kempsford, Gloucs.). For Waleran fitz Rannulf see above, note 6. 44 The phrase ‘ad victum monachorum’ is often found at Worcester, charters for this purpose being collected together in Heming’s Cartulary: N. R. Ker, ‘Heming’s Cartulary: a Description of the Two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A xxii’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern, Oxford 1948, 49–75, repr. in N. R. Ker, Books, Collectors and Libraries, London and Ronceverte 1985, 31–59. 45 For the Swavesey charter see n. 26 above.

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Lancaster to God and St Martin, in effect St Martin of Sées though that is not stated.46 Ralph Rosel’s order to his servants to tithe his grain at the barn door of Hendred and deliver it faithfully to the servant of St Mary does not specify Abingdon, though he must have meant that.47 Naming a particular monk is very unusual (though it also occurs in the additional transaction on the Swavesey charter), but naming the abbot is less so: the Warennes mention Hugh, abbot of Cluny, and it has been suggested that their grant may have been a consequence of a visit by Hugh of Cluny to Normandy.48 A group of Selby charters specify Abbot Benedict,49 and William de Percy mentions Prior Serlo his brother when refounding Whitby.50 The verbs used for the words of gift show considerable variety, though dare and donare are much the commonest. Waleran’s charter to Caen uses trado, which is unusual but is found in other St Etienne charters.51 More significant in this charter is the use of concedo: trado is used of the church of Bures and its appurtenances; permitto is used of added pasture rights, and then concedo for pasture for 200 pigs. It looks as if concedo is used in the same sense as trado, for an original gift, and not, or not necessarily, to confirm an earlier gift. This is significant because in the twelfth century concedo became characteristic of confirmations.52 The Caen charter is the earliest of our group. In the Selby charter of the 1090s Gilbert Tisun ‘dedi’ two carucates in Gunby and other gifts. His man Suain then grants a further carucate which Gilbert ‘concessi et concedo’. Around 1100 Ralph de Mortimer says ‘concedo’ the land of Wribbenhall as Turtinus ‘eam donat’. Ralph then says ‘confirmo’ with his own hand, and Turtinus also ‘confirmo’ with his own hand. The use of concedo for confirmation is consistent and logical in these two later charters; confirmo is used for the extra stage of putting it in writing. The same distinctions can be found in the earlier Lewes/Cluny original where William de Warenne and Gundrada ‘donamus’, and William the Conqueror ‘sigillo nostro confirmo’, saying 46

Printed from the fifteenth-century Lancaster cartulary, BL Harley 3764, in W. Farrer, Lancashire Pipe Rolls and Early Lancashire Charters, Liverpool 1902, 289–90, and W. O. Roper, Materials for the History of the Church of Lancaster, Chetham Society 26, 1892, 8–10. A different version is Cal. Docs France, no. 664, which does specify Sées. Chandler, ‘Last of the Montgomerys’, 4 and n. 16, dates this grant to the spring or early summer of 1094 on the grounds that the death of Roger’s father is not mentioned: but his presence as a spiritual beneficiary and the formulation of the clause cannot be pressed to such a specific conclusion. The outside dates are Roger’s acquisition of the land, earlier than Domesday, and his forfeiture in 1102. 47 Joseph Stevenson, Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, RS, 1858, ii, 33. Ralph Rosel’s order came after a gift of the tithes by Robert Marmion and Helto his son, which the chronicle, ii, 32, says was made in the time of Abbot Rainald, 1084x1097. 48 See above, n. 12. 49 J. T. Fowler, The Coucher Book of Selby, Yorks. Archaeol. Soc. Record Series 10, 1891, and 13, 1893, ii, 279–80 (also Monasticon iii, 499), Geoffrey de la Guerche; Coucher Book ii, 258–9 (also Monasticon iii, 499), Guy de Raincourt; Coucher Book i, 282 (also EYC iii, no. 1484), Robert de Lacy. The gifts of Geoffrey and Guy are also mentioned in Domesday, and the Historia Selbeiensis Monasterii: see Janet Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215, Cambridge 1999, 28. 50 J. C. Atkinson, Cartularium Abbathiae de Whiteby, Surtees Soc. 69, 1879, i, 31–3 (also EYC ii, no. 855); for the Percy family and the foundation of Whitby see Janet Burton, ‘The Monastic Revival in Yorkshire: Whitby and St Mary’s York’, in Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich, Woodbridge 1994, 41–51, and eadem, Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 33–9; the charter seems diplomatically acceptable, with the exception of the final phrases beginning ‘hec autem omnia’, which look like an interpolation. 51 The table in Gazeau, ‘Recherches’, 76–9, shows tradere sometimes used at La Trinité du Mont, Rouen. 52 John Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Charters’, in The Earldom of Chester and its Charters, ed. A. T. Thacker, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 71, 1991, 162–4, notes the slow adoption of this usage in Chester charters. On the chaotic situation in Normandy see Tabuteau, Transfers of Property, 144–5.

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later ‘concedo’ on stated terms. An original charter of William de Warenne, second earl of Surrey, confirming his family’s previous gifts to Lewes, also uses ‘concessisse’, but the date could be anywhere from 1088 to 1118.53 Thus there seems during the later eleventh century to be a slide towards a distinction between grant and confirmation, expressed in the use of the verbs dare and concedere. Plenty of examples in copies can be found of both the later distinction consistently applied, and the use of concedo for what appear to be original gifts. ‘Dono et concedo’ is the formulation used by Geoffrey de la Guerche for his gift to St Nicholas Angers when he comes to the corroboration clause, having used concedo and dono apparently indifferently for a series of acts of gift, and subsequently using concedo to confirm future gifts by his men.54 William de Mohun used ‘dono et concedo’ when giving Dunster church to Bath abbey, and this is a common formulation.55 On the other hand William de Warenne II uses concedo to confirm the gifts of his father and their men to Castle Acre priory, and Ralph de Limesi ‘concessit’ to Hadwisia his wife ‘ut daret’ some land from her dowry.56 Similarly Roger the Poitevin ‘dedit’ his own grants to Lancaster priory but ‘concedit’ what others might give in future.57 As for the tense of the verb, Tisun to Selby and Juhel to Totnes are in the perfect tense, Waleran to Caen, Lacy to Rouen and Mortimer to Worcester in the present. The tense seems rather a matter of indifference, and it is hard to see in it any significance, as Galbraith did, regarding the dispositive or evidential nature of the document.58 In fact in the Caen charter Waleran himself is made to speak in the present tense for his own gifts, but when he introduces the king’s confirmation William ‘firmavit’ and ‘roboravit’ in the perfect. A more logical sequence occurs in Henry de Ferrers’ foundation charter for Tutbury priory, where he starts out in the perfect (‘fundavi’) and ends in the present (‘dono’), perhaps reflecting the gradual nature of the process of foundation.59 The grant of Totnes church to St Serge at Angers begins with a first person plural present tense, ‘volumus’, and continues with a third person singular perfect, ‘dedit’: ‘we wish it to be known that Juhel gave’. The subject of ‘volumus’ is not specified, but must be assumed to be the monks of St Serge or Totnes. The donor of the gifts is not the author of the document, which takes the form of a memorandum in the third person. This is a very common style of document, consisting of a note made by the beneficiary of what was granted, and perhaps including a witness list. Ramsey and Gloucester abbeys amassed quantities of notes of this kind, as on a smaller scale did Blyth priory, but they can be found anywhere. The beneficiaries simply made a more or less formal memorandum of the transaction, without working it up into a document in which the donor is made to speak for himself. The date at which such docu53 54 55 56 57 58

EYC viii, no. 7, facsimile plate II: PRO Ancient Deed A 15400. The dates are those of the second earl. Monasticon vi(2), 996, the foundation charter of Monks Kirby. Hunt, Chartularies of Bath, 38. Monasticon v, 49–50; iii, 300 no. II. See above, n. 46. V. H. Galbraith, ‘Monastic Foundation Charters of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Cambridge Historical Journal 4, 1934, 205; Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects’, 162, reaches the same conclusion about twelfth-century Chester charters. 59 Avrom Saltman, The Cartulary of Tutbury Priory, HMSO 1962, no. 51, also Monasticon iii, 391–2, datable 1087x1100 because it refers to King William ‘junior’. The date of 1080 in a verse at the end of the charter was added later, probably in the fourteenth century, and cannot be accurate; the charter is therefore not evidence that the Ferrers honour had been created by 1080: cf. Robin Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, Cambridge 1991, 165.

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ments were made can be difficult, or impossible, to define. They could be contemporary, or they could have been written up after the death of the donor, and the witnesses remembered, and put in writing in response to a need which became obvious only some time afterwards. They frequently make no claim about their own date; they make a statement about a datable transaction, which may be accurate or inaccurate; but they cannot be ‘forgeries’ in the sense in which I use the term.60 Occupying a prominent position in many charters, often directly after the address, is the clause specifying those for whose spiritual benefit the gift is made. Waleran’s charter for Caen leads off with King William, and continues with Waleran himself, his mother and father, his wife and sons. The charter of Gilbert Tisun for Selby mentions King William his lord, Queen Matilda, himself, his wife and all his children. Ilbert de Lacy’s Rouen charter has a similar, if more loosely phrased, group of beneficiaries: ‘for the soul of my lord King William, and the souls of my relatives (parentes) and friends (amici)’. This pattern, of the king and queen and the donor’s nuclear family – self and wife, parents and children – is very common in charters surviving in copies. Sometimes another member of the royal family is added. An agreement between Nigel Fossard and Ramsey abbey specifies full fraternity for King William, Queen Matilda and Count Robert as well as Nigel himself, his wife, his son who will be his heir, and his father and mother.61 Henry de Ferrers founds Tutbury priory for the benefit of the king and queen, his own parents, his wife Bertha, his sons Engenulph, William and Robert, his daughters unnamed, and all his ‘predecessores’ and ‘amici’.62 The prominence of the nuclear family is quite striking, and it is often accompanied by vaguer formulations – predecessors, ancestors, relatives – which only make the narrower family group stand out. The occurrence of ‘amici’ in the Rouen charter is interesting: a charter of Robert de Tosni for Belvoir priory grants thirty ‘sticks’ of eels for the souls of himself, his parents, his brother and his ‘other friends’ and all his ‘predecessores’.63 An unusually elaborate clause is to be found in the Totnes original: the gift is made for King William, his wife the queen, their sons and daughters, from whom Juhel had his honour (‘honorem habebat’), that the Lord may keep them safe and well, grant them victory over their enemies, and bring them after the course of this life to the eternal inheritance; and for Juhel himself, his father and mother, his brother Robert, and his ‘parentes’ living and dead. The prayer-like formulation, in this beneficiary-drafted document, underlines the intercessory purpose of the gift. A close parallel is found in another document of St Serge of Angers, Count Alan’s grant of Swavesey church, which was made for his own soul, that of King William his lord and Queen Matilda, by whose aid he acquired his honour (‘honorem adquisivit’), for the souls of the sons and daughters of the king, his own father Count Eudo, and for his ‘parentes’ living and dead.64 Lords confirming a grant can take the opportunity to add new spiritual beneficiaries in

60

In some cases a single-sheet piece was made: see the Bec document mentioned in n. 30 above, which has the king’s seal for authentication. But others were probably noted in a book or roll. 61 Hart and Lyons, Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, i, 127–8, concerning the church of Bramham. The text is dated 1081 but mentions Abbot Aldwin, 1091–1102 and 1107–1111, which makes the document look suspicious. The gift probably never took effect: Emma Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, Woodbridge 1998, 115–16 and n. 47 – Robert, Nigel’s heir, granted the church to Nostell. 62 See above, note 59. 63 Monasticon iii, 290; on the use of the word amici see John Meddings, ‘Friendship among the Aristocracy in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS 22, 1999 (2000), 187–204. 64 See above, note 26.

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return for their favour. The king does this in Warenne’s Cluny charter, and Ralph de Mortimer adds his own list in what is in effect a confirmation charter. The lord and the closer family are also those mentioned in clauses specifying the consent of others to the transaction. Gilbert Tisun’s grant to Selby is made ‘concessu uxoris mee et filiorum meorum’, Ralph de Mortimer’s to Worcester with the assent of his sons and men. The latter might seem surprising, and unlikely in the twelfth century: a lord would expect to make a grant without the consent of his men, though their counsel and approval are often mentioned.65 I have found no other examples of the consent of men being specified, though some grants are made with the agreement of various groups: Ralph de Limesi, for instance, grants the church of Hertford to St Albans ‘concedentibus’ his wife and son, and ‘laudantibus hominibus suis’ with his friends French and English.66 In the Worcester charter Turtinus’s gift is made with the assent of his lord, and William and Gundrada de Warenne’s grant to Cluny specifies the assent of the king in their part of this double document. Royal assent is sometimes specified in charters surviving in copies: Hawise daughter of Nicholas de Bacqueville grants with the king’s assent in the presence of his barons.67 The Totnes original says the gift was made at the request and ‘diligentia’ of a named monk. I have found no other instances of a brother of the house being named as petitioner in this way. In our group of originals the degree of precision in the definition of what is being granted varies from the strikingly vague to the mildly businesslike. As well as not mentioning that the church of St Pancras is at Lewes, the Warennes’ grant to Cluny even manages to omit the name of one of the places being given. Ilbert de Lacy gives La Trinité at Rouen the ‘mansio’ of Tingewick, with the water, meadow and woods belonging to it, and makes no estimate of its extent. Even where the list of what is given is quite elaborate there often remains a vagueness which would be unacceptable by the later twelfth century. Waleran grants St Stephen’s Caen the church of Bures with what belongs to it, namely land for two ploughs, a mill and all the water there as Waleran had it in demesne; he also allows all the pasture which is nearby to be common for all the animals of the place. Later one would expect more definition in all these elements. The eleventh-century preference for leaving the definition of the gift as ‘the church with its appurtenances’, ‘the land called x’, ‘two ploughs in such a place’, or ‘the land of so-and-so’ is also found in the Totnes charter. The most businesslike of our originals is Geoffrey Tisun for Selby, which is also one of the latest in date: he grants two carucates in Gunby with appurtenances, his tithe in Averham and Ella, and eight bovates in Lound. A large group of documents surviving in later copies corresponds to these practices. For instance, Count Alan grants the land which Hervey de Hispania held of him in Manhall to Bury St Edmunds;68 Walter de Douai gave Bath abbey the church of Bathampton with half a hide, all the things which Goscelin the priest held, and the

65

F. M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism, Oxford 1932, 89–90, stresses the importance of baronial counsel; Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects’, 170, suggests counsel may have been assumed when not specifically stated; Tabuteau, Transfers of Property, 187–8, notes that tenants’ consent in charters is rare but still may have been necessary. 66 See below, note 111. 67 Bates, Regesta, no. 211: grant of Waddon, Dorset, to Montivilliers. For the prominence of royal relatives in the assent and attestation clauses of William the Conqueror’s acta see Bates, Regesta, 92–6. 68 D. C. Douglas, Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History of England and Wales 8, 1932, no. 169, also EYC iv, no. 3, dating it 1089x1093.

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tithes of the manor.69 Robert of Mortain gave Mont-St-Michel the manor of Ludgvan, that which ‘Bloicus’ had in Truthwall, and ‘both the fairs of the Mount’.70 Godfrey the sheriff gave Shrewsbury abbey the church of Walton and whatever he had in demesne in the vill, and the church of Kirkham with the priests and the land belonging to them.71 But there are other charters surviving in copies which have more precision, sometimes affecting the whole gift, sometimes only part of it, and these I shall discuss later. As for the terms on which these gifts were to be held, a similar vagueness applies. William de Warenne grants ‘as my wife held it’; Ilbert de Lacy makes no mention of tenure at all. Waleran grants ‘as I have been used to have in my dominium up to now’. The most specific clause in our originals is in one of the latest, Mortimer to Worcester, who besides confirming land ‘as Turtinus gave it’, also specifies that it shall be ‘free of all secular service except geld if it occurs’. Juhel gives to Totnes ‘solidam et quietam absque ullo retinaculo quod sibi retineret’; earlier he promised ‘facere solidum et quietum monachis de terra et pratis’. So the terms of tenure can be unspecified, vague, or phrased with rather elaborate imprecision. But the direction of evolution is towards increasing precision. The word libera is used once, quieta only in the Totnes charter and then paired with solida. Our earlier donors grant possessions as they themselves held, slightly later ones specify that they will take no services in return. The crucial word that is not found in the full later technical sense is elemosina. In the king’s part of the Warenne charter the word is used twice – he concedes this grant such that he shall have ‘eandem dominationem in ea quam habeo in ceteris elemosinis quas mei proceres faciunt meo nutu. Et hoc in ista elemosina habeam quod habeo in aliis.’ Similarly in the Totnes charter Juhel gave ‘hanc elemosinam’ at the request of Dom Tetbald. There is a certain technical sense here – it is not just alms, to any recipient: it is a charitable gift to the church, which leaves the king with rights. Ralph de Mortimer is not prepared to acquit the geld due from Turtinus’s virgate himself; the geld will still have to be paid. The king’s rights may well explain the frequency with which his assent is specified, and the occurrence of the royal family as spiritual beneficiaries. We may have begun to move towards free, pure and perpetual alms, but we have not arrived there yet.72 Ilbert de Lacy grants Tingewick to La Trinité at Rouen ‘cum aqua et pratis et siluis omnibusque . . . ad ipsam mansionem attinentibus’. This type of clause has a future of great elaboration, especially in royal charters of the next century. But the Selby, Totnes and Lewes originals confine themselves to simple, unspecific phrases to the effect of ‘with all things that belong to it’, and the Caen charter has no such clause at all. The weight of this testimony to brevity and vagueness in the eleventh century, with even the most elaborate far from the long and formulaic lists of the next century, is persuasive. 69 Hunt, Two Chartularies of Bath, no. 35, a memorandum after Walter’s death, the date of which is not known but which may be after 1100. 70 P. L. Hull, The Cartulary of St Michael’s Mount, Devon and Cornwall Record Society ns 5, 1962, appendix II. D. J. A. Matthew, The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions, Oxford 1962, 35, dates this between 1086, when Domesday Book, fol. 120d, shows one hide in Truthwall taken by Robert, and 1091 when Robert died; a final dating clause puts it into William Rufus’s reign, therefore 1087x1091. 71 Rees, Shrewsbury Abbey ii, no. 371. 72 See John Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England, Oxford 1994, 90–1, and Benjamin Thompson, ‘Free Alms Tenure in the Twelfth Century’, ANS 16, 1993 (1994), 221–43, for the later development of the phrase; Marjorie Chibnall, ‘Dating the Charters of the Smaller Religious Houses in Suffolk in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Gervers, Dating Undated Medieval Charters, 55, for a case study, and Michael Gervers, ‘The DEEDS Project’, 20 fig. 4 for distribution 1150–1289.

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The most picturesque element in any of our originals occurs in the Totnes charter: Juhel handed the church to Tetbald the monk ‘per clavem monasterii et chordam signi’ – by key and bell-rope, and placed the gift on the altar with his knife. I know of no other gift by key and bell-rope, but the ceremonial offering of a symbolic object, often a knife, on the altar is not unusual and continues to be a well-known feature of twelfth-century charters too.73 The largest collection of such objects is found in the grant of Robert dispenser to Westminster abbey: after his death his widow ‘placed this gift on the altar by two silver candlesticks, a thurible, a pallium and a carpet’.74 At the end of the charters comes some form of authentication. Three of our charters – Waleran for Caen, Warenne and the king for Lewes/Cluny, and Lacy for Rouen – have no witnesses, but signa. All three are early in the period and for continental beneficiaries. The other three – Juhel for Angers/Totnes, Tisun for Selby and Mortimer for Worcester – have witnesses, and the Worcester charter has both signa and witnesses. As for the grammar of the witness lists, Selby has ‘T’, once for teste and once for testibus, followed by names in the ablative; Worcester on the other hand has ‘Testes sunt’, and a list in the nominative. Totnes, characteristically, has something rather circumlocutory: ‘Fecit . . . coram multis . . . quorum ista sunt nomina . . .’ followed by a list in the nominative, and the ending ‘et alii multi’. Neither of the other originals with witnesses has any compendious phrase representing others unnamed. So a wide variety of types of witness list is justified by the originals, but not hiis testibus or et multis aliis.75 An interesting feature of the Selby witness list is its hierarchical nature: it begins with the archbishop, who has his own ‘Teste’, and continues, after a new ‘T’ with the donor’s son, one William, perhaps another son, a chaplain, then another Tisun family member, then an important tenant who was probably the son of Gilbert Tisun’s predecessor.76 Hierarchy is a regular feature of eleventh-century witness lists, and the pecking order is commonly along the lines of the Tisun charter. Important clerics come first, then family members, then lesser clerics if any, then laymen. Count Alan’s charter to St Mary’s York has the abbot and two priests followed by the sheriff and then other laymen.77 Roger son of Gerold’s grant to the same house is witnessed first by his wife and brother, then his steward,

73

Kathleen Major, ‘Blyborough Charters’, in A Medieval Miscellany for D. M. Stenton, Pipe Roll Society ns 36, 1962, 206 no. 1 and plate XV, still has a knife attached to a charter of 1148. Jacques Le Goff, ‘Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité’, appendix I, in Pour un autre moyen âge, Paris 1977, 415–18, lists all the objects referred to in Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. investitura: this includes ‘per claves ecclesie’ and ‘per clocas ecclesie’ as well as by knife, but not ‘per cordam signi’. 74 Emma Mason, Jennifer Bray and Desmond J. Murphy, Westminster Abbey Charters 1066–c.1214, London Record Society 25, 1998, no. 488, where dated 1095–6 x ante 1098; also J. Armitage Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, Cambridge 1911, no. 27, dated 1100–c.1108. The transaction took place between Domesday, when Robert’s predecessor held the land, and 1098, death of Bishop Walkelin. The memorandum, after Robert’s death, may well have been drawn up for Henry I’s confirmation, as Robinson suggests. 75 Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects’, 175, finds ‘hiis testibus’ common only in the late twelfth century in charters of the earls of Chester. 76 Identifications from EYC xii, 49; see also Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge 1995, 40–1. 77 EYC iv, no. 2. Judith Green, English Sheriffs to 1154, HMSO 1990, 89, dates Geoffrey Bainard’s period of office as 1070–1100 but most likely c.1089–c.1095; see also Richard Mortimer, ‘The Baynards of Baynard’s Castle’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth and J. Nelson, Woodbridge 1989, 244–7.

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then other laymen.78 Beatrice Malet to Eye puts a priest first, then a deacon, and then laymen ending with a cook.79 Signa are a well-known feature of eleventh-century documents, and occasion no surprise when found in copies. The Rouen document bears the king’s signum; it is interesting that its presence is not announced in the text. Perhaps the charter was written out and only afterwards presented to William for signing. The Cluny and Caen charters specifically state in the text that the king has ‘signed’, so the texts were composed with that intention. But in both cases the king’s cross is in a position that implies he was the first to sign, and the others fitted in around him.80 In both these documents the signa look autograph. In the case of the Cluny/Lewes charter they have a uniformity of proportion and thickness which makes them look scribal, but enough variety of size and placing to give the impression that autograph crosses have been thickened by the scribe, as Bates suggests.81 But there are two crosses that have not received the scribe’s attention; Ralph dapifer and Maurice the chancellor. Perhaps these household officers attested last (they are at the bottom of the sheet), after the scribe had worked on the other crosses. The scribe himself has been identified by Chaplais as the one certain chancery scribe of the Conqueror’s reign, so Maurice’s underling.82 In this charter and in the Rouen document there is no attempt to announce that signa will follow.83 It is easy to imagine that when a cartulary scribe was copying out a document he might simply omit the signa. After all, witness lists are omitted in many cartularies. This would explain the way some eleventh-century pieces preserved in copies simply stop abruptly: Ralph Rosel and the earl of Chester for Abingdon,84 for instance, or Henry de Ferrers for Tutbury.85 One of the curious features of Ralph de Mortimer’s Worcester charter is his signum in the middle of the text, followed in the next line by Tustinus’s signum.86 Signa in the text of the document occur in the copies of Godfrey the sheriff’s Shrewsbury charter and Count Stephen of Brittany’s for St Mary’s York.87 It is rather striking how many of our group of originals have, or had, seals. Ilbert de Lacy’s still exists: it was originally on a lace threaded through a simple hole in the parchment, and is now detached. Ralph de Mortimer’s is on a tag attached through two slits in the middle of the document, an eccentric place but an effective method – it is the only one of our seals still attached to the document. The Tisun charter for Selby still has a tongue cut out of the bottom of the sheet, which would have borne the now lost seal; there is also the remains of a wrapping-tie, so that this was a letter close.88 Ilbert de Lacy, Ralph de Mortimer and Gilbert Tisun were only 78 79

EYC i, no. 601. Brown, Eye Priory i, no. 2. On eleventh-century and later hierarchical lists see David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1000–1300, London 1992, 33–8. 80 Potts, ‘Early Norman Charters’, 32, finds the same in acta of Duke Richard II; for William the Conqueror’s autograph signa see Chaplais, ‘Une charte originale’, plate II. 81 Bates, Regesta, 376. 82 See above, note 10. The name labels by the signa are in the same hand as the charter. 83 Bates, Regesta, 11, notes the lack of such corroboration formulae in post-1066 Norman diplomas. 84 See above, note 47; Barraclough, Charters of the Earls of Chester, no. 2 (who dates it 1089–90), though being more a writ than a diploma it may not have had signa. 85 See above, note 59. 86 For a Norman charter of Ralph de Mortimer with many scattered signa see Potts, ‘Early Norman Charters’, 35–6 and plate 5. 87 See above, note 28; EYC iv, no. 4, from an inspeximus on a Patent Roll. 88 T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals from the mid-Ninth Century to 1100’, Journ. BAA 133, 1980, 1–16, suggests that most seals before the twelfth century were for sealing close, but does not discuss those mentioned here; the Lacy and Mortimer seals are clearly patent, as must have been whatever was attached to

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middle-ranking barons, and only through the survival of these original charters do we know that they had seals. There is no sealing clause, such as developed later along the lines of presens scriptum sigilli mei appositione roboravi, though in Waleran’s charter the signa are introduced by a clause beginning ‘ut autem hoc in perpetuum firmum habeatur’, which looks like the germ from which such clauses developed. In fact the only one of our originals which uses the word sigillum is the royal section of the Cluny document, which was never apparently sealed at all: the king’s phrase ‘sigillo nostro signatam confirmo’ might be taken to refer to his signum.89 The absence of sealing clauses does not therefore mean that eleventh-century baronial charters were without seals. Our examination of a group of eleventh-century originals has produced quite a haul of odd features, any or all of which can be found in a copy without occasioning suspicion. We might find additions and afterthoughts tacked on to the end of a document; no form of address clause; grammatical confusion, with verbs not agreeing in number with their subjects and changes of tense. We can expect vagueness to be a feature, about the donor, about the beneficiary, about what is being granted and on what terms it will be held. We might find concedo being used for grants, and signa in the middle of a document as well as at the end; documents can stop abruptly, with no sealing clause or witnesses, let alone corroboration or warranty.90 On the other hand we have also found a number of points at which the diplomatic of a later period is anticipated. Notification clauses may contain the same elements as can be found a century and more later. The spiritual beneficiaries are carefully enumerated. The consent of kin might be specified; witness lists are already hierarchical, at least in outline. We may suppose that many eleventh-century charters of laymen were originally sealed, even though we have no evidence in the diplomatic. In each case, with both the oddities and the anticipations, we have seen further examples in documents surviving only in copies. A gratifying number of charters preserved in copies consist only of credible eccentricities and credible anticipations. In this category are Walter de Douai’s and William de Mohun’s charters for Bath abbey,91 a small document of Robert de Tosny for Belvoir priory,92 the memorandum of Pain de Neufmarché for Blyth priory,93 Count Alan for Bury St Edmunds,94 Alfred de Hispania for St Stephen’s Caen,95 Manasser Arsic for Cogges,96 Beatrice Malet

the tongue of the Tisun charter. Lacy’s has an equestrian figure of a knight; Mortimer’s formerly bore the device of a lion. Jean-Luc Chassel, ‘L’essor du sceau au XIe siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 155, 1997, 221–34, dates the increasing use of seals in northern France by laymen from the 1060s, but does not have it descend as low as middle-ranking barons. The use of seals may have been more widespread in Anglo-Saxon England: Christine Senecal, ‘Keeping up with the Godwinesons: In Pursuit of Aristocratic Status in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ANS 23, 2000 (2001), 254, sees their use, and even their design, as inspired by royal example. 89 Cf. Bates, Regesta, 103: ‘the text indicates the presence of a seal’, but as there is no sign of preparation for sealing, the presence of a sealing clause is not sufficient to indicate that sealing took place; for sigillum as the sign of the cross, ibid., 104. 90 Tabuteau, Transfers, 196, finds ‘warrantor and warrant’ very rare in Normandy, but the concept was known. 91 Hunt, Two Chartularies of Bath, nos 34, 36. 92 See above, note 36. 93 Timson, Blyth Priory, no. 364, possibly after 1100. 94 See above, note 68. 95 Bates, Regesta, no. 55. 96 J. Conway Davies, Cartae Antiquae Rolls 11–20, Pipe Roll Society ns 33, 1960, no. 548. The date is between the forfeiture of Odo of Bayeux, when Manasser acquired the land, and his later ‘renovation’ of the gift in 1103, the following charter on the roll: Matthew, Norman Monasteries, 51 n. 8.

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for Eye priory,97 Hadwisia for Montivilliers,98 Robert of Mortain for Mont-StMichel,99 Simon and Matilda de St Liz for St Andrew’s Northampton,100 Geoffrey de la Guerche for Selby,101 Godfrey the sheriff for Shrewsbury,102 Ivo Taillebois for St Nicholas Angers and Spalding,103 the Robert dispenser memorandum and Geoffrey de Mandeville’s grant of Eye to Westminster,104 and the charters of Count Alan, Roger fitz Gerold and Count Stephen to St Mary’s York.105 On the other hand another group of documents consists entirely, or almost entirely, of clauses of common later types, and I have no hesitation in convicting them as forgeries. For example, Morgan ap Morgan’s charter to Gloucester abbey begins with an address clause and continues ‘Sciatis quod ego’.106 His list of spiritual beneficiaries is not objectionable in itself, but his precise description of the 40 acres in the marsh of Goldcliff that he is granting, his perpetual alms and his corroboration and sealing clauses are fatal. An unpublished charter of Roese, widow of Richard fitz Gilbert, in the St Neot’s cartulary is a dramatic instance, every phrase being characteristic of the thirteenth century, from the address to the warranty and sealing clauses.107 Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury’s ‘charter of liberties’ to Shrewsbury abbey, though largely accepted by its editor, seems to me to fall into the same category.108 ‘Concessi et in puram et perpetuam elemosinam confirmavi’ is anachronistic, as are ‘ideo volo et firmiter statuo, habeant et teneant bene et in pace’ etc., ‘quare volo et firmiter precipio’ etc.; but chiefly it is the precision and all-inclusive elaboration of the privileges granted that seem anachronistic. If I am right this leaves no genuine charters of Earl Hugh for Shrewsbury abbey. It is sometimes possible to make a reasonable guess at the date of composition of a forgery on the basis of the anachronistic diplomatic. Three diplomatically very similar charters of Richard fitz Gilbert for Bec, copied out in the fifteenth-century Liber Albus of Windsor, have a form that would be just right in the first half of the thirteenth century: the verbs used are ‘dedi et presenti carta mea confirmavi’, the recipients are the church of Bec and ‘monachis ibidem deo servientibus’, the gift is in free, pure and perpetual alms, and there is a common form sealing clause in each charter.109 Their editor, Marjorie Chibnall, needless to say, was not taken in by the

97 Brown, Eye Priory i, no. 2. The witnesses are identified by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Domesday Book and the Malets: Patrimony and the Private Histories of Public Lives’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 41, 1997, 19–20; cf. Cyril Hart, ‘William Malet and his Family’, 161–2. 98 Bates, Regesta, no. 211. 99 See above, note 70. 100 Monasticon v, 190. 101 See above, note 49. 102 See above, note 28. 103 Bates, Regesta, no. 9, and Monasticon iii, 216. The other Ivo document, Monasticon iii, 217 no. VII, also looks acceptable. 104 See above, note 74; Mason, Westminster Charters, no. 436. 105 See above, note 77; EYC i, no. 601; iv, no. 4. 106 W. H. Hart, Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, 3 vols, RS, 1863–7, ii, 50. On record-keeping at Gloucester under Abbot Serlo, and the later need to create presentable charters, see C. N. L. Brooke, ‘St Peter of Gloucester and St Cadog of Llancarfan’, in The Church and the Welsh Border in the Central Middle Ages, Woodbridge 1986, 51–61. 107 BL Cotton Faustina A iv (St Neot’s Cartulary), fol. 92r. 108 Rees, Shrewsbury Abbey i, no. 4: Rees concludes ‘this charter is based on a genuine document but was touched up at a later date’. 109 Marjorie Chibnall, Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec, Camden Society 3rd series 73, 1951, nos XXXIX, XL, XLI, and Introduction, p. x. The MS is G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain, London 1958, no. 1061.

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form of these charters, but points out that the property granted, or some of it, was held by Bec in the eleventh century. The relationship between eleventh-century fact and later forgery could be complex, and will often be a problem we shall never be able to solve. We therefore have documents which are completely acceptable, and others completely unacceptable. Greater difficulties arise in the grey area of documents that have been, as many writers put it, ‘tampered with’. There are instances where it is quite possible that the information in an early record, and perhaps even the form of it, was incorporated into a document written much later and obeying the diplomatic conventions of a later age – forgeries with a grain of truth. Here it is partly the accumulation of anachronisms that leads to condemnation. But it might also happen that a genuine document, inadequate in only one or a few respects, had the necessary clauses inserted at a later date – interpolation. With knowledge of later diplomatic and legal developments it can be suggested that certain types of clause are more likely to be interpolated or rewritten than others. The vagueness of eleventh-century definitions of what is granted and the terms of tenure make these clauses obvious targets. On the other hand one can hardly imagine a later forger copying out an earlier document solely in order to insert an up-to-date sealing clause. Therefore a purportedly eleventh-century document with a sealing clause of later standard type is likely to have been extensively rewritten or completely forged, whereas one with a suspicious-looking degree of precision in the dispositive clauses, but otherwise conforming to the kind of practices we have been seeing in the originals, is more likely to have been interpolated. An obvious factor affecting which of these strategies was adopted would be the state of the beneficiary’s archive – if there were no eleventh-century documents, something would have to be created out of nothing. If there were genuine, but inadequate early records, they could be interpolated, or treated creatively. To a great extent this approach helps us round the problem of the clever forger, who has a good idea of what a genuine eleventh-century charter ought to look like: forgery was committed with a purpose, and the kind of advantage the forgers gained can be what gives them away. An exceptionally clear case of a basically genuine document with an interpolation is provided by Count Alan’s Swavesey charter, which I have often cited as a close parallel to the Totnes original.110 There is one section in this piece which leaps out as an interpolation: it is the detailed specification of episcopal and archidiaconal rights over the church – for instance, ‘when the archdeacon celebrates a synod a monk shall go for one day, whichever he likes, not by way of custom but for love of the archdeacon and the bishop’s honour’. The list of berewicks of Swavesey could also be an interpolation, as could the types of tithe specified, but the basic scaffolding of the document is surely genuine, as its oddities so closely echo those of the Totnes original. Another probable instance of greater definition being added to an existing charter occurs in the memorandum recording Ralph de Limesi’s agreement with Abbot Paul of St Albans about the foundation of Hertford priory.111 Here the list of tithe due from lands and tenants looks suspiciously detailed, as if it had been expanded from a simple original, or perhaps interpolated complete. The memorandum of Roger the Poitevin granting the church of Lancaster to St Martin has some convincing eleventh-century features, not least the vagueness of the grantee, but also

110 111

See above, note 26. Monasticon iii, 299–300; Peter Jackson, ‘Ralph de Limesy: Conqueror’s Nephew? The Origins of a Disputed Claim’, Prosopon 6, May 1997, 1–2.

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some very suspicious ones: the land between the old wall and Geoffrey’s orchard and down to ‘Prestegat’ in Lancaster for instance, and the specification of the tithes of chicks, calves, lambs, kids, piglets, grain, cheese and butter at a list of places that could otherwise be genuine.112 A possible instance of the elaboration of a contemporary record which was not in the form required by a later age, a forgery with a grain of truth, is the Gilbert de Gant charter to Bardney which is quoted in a confirmation by his son Walter.113 This has an anachronistic address, uses ‘do, concedo et confirmo’, and grants lands ‘in pratis, pascuis, moris, mariscis, viis et semitis’ etc. etc., ‘libere, quiete, honorifice’ etc., in free, pure and perpetual alms, and ends with a sealing clause. But the list of tithes and lands in particular places is of a simplicity that could be eleventh-century. This would be an example of eleventh-century vagueness retained at the heart of a later forgery, suggesting that here the motive was the simple need for a proper charter, rather than an attempt to defend subsequently acquired property, or to extend the monastery’s possessions. A failure, or refusal, to rewrite the dispositive clauses is also a clue to motive. The process of rewriting an inadequate eleventh-century record in an expanded form can be observed most readily in a number of cases where the later forgers neglected to destroy the document they had used as a basis, thus leaving their tracks open for inspection. This is the technique used by Pierre Chaplais in his exposure of the foundation charter of Hurley priory, a cell of Westminster founded by Geoffrey I de Mandeville.114 The forgery is a single-sheet document, the genuine text survives in a fourteenth-century cartulary copy. Unfortunately the simpler, ‘genuine’ text seems to me to contain some dubious features. The address ‘Sciant presentes et futuri’, and the precision of the lands and ecclesiastical rights granted suggest that it is itself at least an expanded version of an eleventh-century record. A clearer instance is provided by the foundation charter of Blyth priory. Here the document being expanded is completely credible as an eleventh-century piece.115 Both the older version and the rewritten, larger one survive in the cartulary. The expanded version identifies the simple ‘Roger’ of the original as ‘de Buusli’, updates the verb ‘dono’ to ‘dedi et concessi et hac presenti carta mea confirmavi’, changes the beneficiary from La Trinité-du-Mont at Rouen to ‘deo et Sancte Marie de Blida et monachis ibidem deo servientibus’, and expands the simple original gift of the church of Blyth and all the vill ‘cum appendiciis’ into the church and all the vill ‘integre cum omnibus appendiciis suis et consuetudinibus’, adds a long list of labour services due from the men, and all the ‘dignitates’ he has in the vill, namely ‘soc et sac, tol et them’ etc., and gallows with all liberties. The tithe of wild horses given in the original is omitted; the list of places where tithe is given is taken over complete, but expanded to specify lesser tithes and the tithes of assarts. The cartulary text of the original document simply expires, with no clause after the last of the donations. The expanded version 112 113

See above, note 46. Monasticon i, 628–9, from the cartulary, BL Cotton Vespasian E xx. The witness list was probably invented: there was no William, earl of Chester. The ‘confirmation’ by Walter looks suspicious as well, though both documents are accepted by A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘Notes on the History of the Abbey of St Peter, St Paul and St Oswald, Bardney’, Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers 32 pt 1, 1913, 37–44. Although William of Malmesbury, De gestis pontificum, 312, says Bardney was refounded by Bishop Remigius, virtually all the places mentioned in the charter were Gilbert’s land in Domesday. See also Beech, ‘Aquitanians and Flemings’. 114 Pierre Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, Abbots of Westminster (1121–1157)’, in Medieval Miscellany (see above, note 73), appendix A, 105–8. 115 The simple version is Blyth Priory, no. 361, the expanded version is no. 325.

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supplies an annual pension of 40s to La Trinité, and a witness list, credible for the eleventh century, that may have been put together from other early charters or even from signa on the original single sheet which were not included when the original version was copied into the cartulary. The Blyth foundation charter thus neatly exemplifies many of the kinds of content that we have been finding suspicious when presented as eleventh-century. This investigation raises many further questions. Where do these diplomatic practices come from? Pre-Conquest Normandy, pre-Conquest England, or post-Conquest royal charters? What is the role of ‘house style’ – how clear is it that the documents were produced by the beneficiaries? What do they tell us about the circumstances of production? Not everyone will agree with what I have said about individual charters. This is not the time to take any of these questions further, but I hope I have said enough now to demonstrate that, despite the small size of my sample of originals, a diplomatic analysis based on them is helpful in distinguishing the genuine from the forged across a large number of texts surviving in later copies. Diplomatic is not the only form of criticism to which these texts can be subjected; perhaps some which pass my diplomatic tests can be condemned on other grounds, though it is not so easy to see how those which fail at the diplomatic hurdle can be rescued.116 It is easier to prove that an eleventh-century charter is a forgery than that it is authentic, but less useful for the history of the eleventh century; I especially hope that I have presented some types of diplomatic that can be used to suggest authenticity.

APPENDIX Memorandum of a grant by Juhel son of Alfred to the church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus, Angers, of the endowment of Totnes Priory (Devon); memorandum on the tithes of Totnes Priory MS: Exeter, Devon Record Office 312M/TY 1. Size: 31.2cm across top, 29.5cm across bottom; 54cm right side. Endorsement (contemporary or twelfth-century): d Iuhello fil’ Aluredi Illustrated: Hugh R. Watkin, The History of Totnes Priory and Medieval Town, 2 vols, Torquay 1914–17, i, plate 1. Omnibus sanct” dei ”cclesi” cultoribus notum fore volumus. quod Iuhellus filius aluuredi. dedit deo & sanctis martiribus SERGIO / & bacho & abbati loci & domno TETBALDO monacho. qui ibidem presentialiter erat loco omnium fratrum. ”cclesiam Sanct” Mari” de Tot/tenes. cum omnibus ”cclesi” pertinentibus scilicet cum feuo huberti pr(es)b(iter)i. & anschitilli pr(es)b(iter)i. & suuetini pr(es)b(iter)i. & Ansgoti pr(es)b(iter)i & feuu(m) RODBER/TI tornatoris. & terram qu”. est subtus ”cclesiam SANCTE MARIE quicquid habebat proprium. quod uero alii tenebant ab eo promisit facere./ solidum & quietum monachis de terra & pratis. sicut illam propriam quam eis dedit. & decimam exiture vill”. & unam sclusam as pis/candum

116

Historical criticism can rescue a witness list, which may have been taken over from a genuine document; but such a list does not corroborate the document to which it is attached.

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coram burgo cum piscatore. dedit insuper ad seruitium ”cclesi” .iiii. cappas de pallio. & unum pallium ad altare. & .ii. dosal/los. & unam albam paratam. & unam crucem argenteam deauratam. & duo ligna dominica. Fecit autem ”lemosinam pro Will(el)mo / REGE ANGLORUM & pro uxore sua REGINA & pro filiis & filiabus eorum de quo honorem habebat. ut eos dominus saluos & incolumes / conseruaret. & uictoriam de inimicis daret. & post huius uite decursum. ad ”ternam hereditatem peruenirent. Fecit etiam hoc / donum pro semet ipso. & pro animabus patris sui. & matris & fratris sui. RODBERTI. & parentum suorum. uiuorum & defunctorum./ Dedit ergo hanc ”lemosinam per petitionem & diligentiam domni TETBALDI Sancti sergii monachi. solidam & quietam / absque ullo retinaculo quod sibi retineret. & ”cclesiam domno TETBALDO tradidit . per clauem monasterii. & chordam / signi. & cum ipsius cultello misit donum super altare. Fecit autem hoc donum coram multis bone memori” uiris. quorum ista sunt / nomina Martinus de uualis. Rogerius senescallus. Ausgotus pr(es)b(i)ter. Rogerius pr(es)b(i)ter. / Hubertus pr(es)b(i)ter. Anschitillus pr(es)b(i)ter. Torgis de la forest. Oddo senescallus. Rodbertus filius d(avi)d. / Godselmus dechinum. Hubertus frater eius. Rodbertus de bruelia. Gaufridus senescallus. Garinus / dispensator. Radulfus malban. Rodbertus torneator. Godefredus filius achardi. Raynaldus. / Durandus. Rogerius homo bodini deuer. Herueus. Hauenellus. Rodbertus decuria. Anschitillus / duxe. Garinus. & gaufridus. & Raynaldus. homines sancti SERGII. & alii multi./ Sane Hubertus & anschitillus pr(es)b(iter)i. feuum quod primitus tenebant. de iuhello petierunt humiliter a domno TETBALDO / qui ibidem loco abbatis. & omnium fratrum erat ut eis feuum quod primitus tenuerant concederet. tali pacto ut subiecti essent sancto sergio. & abbati. & omnibus fratribus & per omnia fideles. & proprii capellani . quod eis concessit per deprecationem domni / iuhelli coram supra dictis testibus & reuestiuit propria manu: In maneriis Rogerii sic diuisas habemus decimas. Ad Bredefort .ii. partes decimarum annone. & cherchetorum. & totam porcorum & agnorum & lanarum [et caseorum]1 & tocius mobil(is). Similiter in asprintona / & in conourda. & in turle stagno. & in buccelanda. & in cherletona. & in pola. In brisehanno uero prius medietatem annon” & postea de presbiteri medietate octauam partem./ & de mobili totam: [: & .iiii. partem panis & ceruisie altaris]1 Similiter de cherchetona In lodeuilla autem medietatem annon” & cherchetorum. & de mobili totam. Similiter in clauatona preter chercheta. in tretechota & in / boueio similiter. Ad paurdam .ii. partes annone & cherchetorum & de mobili totam & .iiii. panis & ceruisie altaris & sepulture. In tressetona totam decimam ex integro preter .i. cher/chetum. & in esseleia. & in urdihella. & in lega similiter. & decimam de brutefort totam. & decimam radulfi de eschagi(ri)is. & rogerii de estancoma totam & de coletona totam. & .xx. sol’ / de totenesio. & decimam molendini de cornoorda. & decimam rotberti filii d(avi)d de bocchedona & loleurda. & samari presbiteri & aluini totam. In retua uero .ii. partes annone. & de mo/bili totam. hanc dedit gaufridus dapifer sancto sergio propter turgisum cognatum suum. & portauit donum super altare sancte marie uidentibus landrico milite. & turgiso monacho / & fulcone & harduino. & hetduio presbitero. quin etiam de omnibus emptionibus quas facturus est similiter donum super altare sancte marie portauit.

1

interlineations.

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The Instituta Cnuti and the Translation of English Law

THE INSTITUTA CNUTI AND THE TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH LAW Bruce O’Brien In 1893, the same year that he published his slim edition of the Consiliatio Cnuti, Felix Liebermann turned his attention, in a paper published by the Royal Historical Society, to another overlooked Latin translation of Old English law. The object of his interest was one of the three Latin translations of Old English legal texts made after 1066. It went under many titles – Liebermann proposed replacing these with his own, drawn in part from two of the earliest witnesses, but crafted to reflect better, he thought, the actual contents of the translation: the Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglorum.1 And so it has been known ever since. At first glance it is not for its time a remarkable text. Like three of its contemporaries, it chose the codes of Cnut as its principal source.2 And like two of its contemporaries, it included laws issued under other kings’ names.3 It is not the longest or most comprehensive collection of English law: Quadripartitus is.4 Nor is it the most idiosyncratic: the Consiliatio Cnuti charts a course very separate from its fellow translations.5 It was, however, the most popular in the twelfth century. Half of the Instituta’s witnesses – seven manuscripts – come from the twelfth century or the turn of the thirteenth century. Quadripartitus has five that are that old; the Consiliatio Cnuti (in fragmentary form) has two; the Leges Henrici Primi, none.6 The Instituta consists of translations of selected chapters from Cnut’s code (conventionally known as I and II Cnut) mingled with selections translated from Edgar’s second code and Alfred. After that come more selections from Ine, Alfred, and a collection of treatises on status by Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester (1002–16; archbishop of York, 1002–23) called the ‘Geþyncðu Group’: Geþyncðu, Norðleoda laga, Mircna Laga, Að, and Hadbot, and another of Wulfstan’s treatises, Grið, as well as one or several unidentified sources.7 It appears to have been divided into two 1 2

F. Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta Cnuti aliorumque regum Anglie’, TRHS ns 7, 1893, 79 and n. 1. These are Quadripartitus (Quadr), Consiliatio Cnuti (Cons Cn) and Leis Willelme (Leis Wl). All codes, treatises, and translations will be referred to using Liebermann’s titles and abbreviations (Liebermann i, ix–x). The second book by the translator of Quadr, the Leges Henrici Primi (Hn), is built on a foundation of translated passages from Cnut: see L. J. Downer, ed., Leges Henrici Primi, Oxford 1972, ‘Commentary’. 3 It is noteworthy that the Instituta Cnuti (In Cn) does not name these other kings; all translated passages travel as if parts of Cnut’s laws. 4 P. Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, in Law and Government in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 111–47. 5 F. Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, ein Übertragung angelsächsischer Gesetze aus dem zwölften Jahrhundert, Halle 1893, vi–ix; P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. i, Legislation and its Limits, Oxford 1999, 405–6. 6 Liebermann’s dates have been amended by subsequent scholarship: see Wormald, Making, 237–8; B. R. O’Brien, God’s Peace and King’s Peace: the Laws of Edward the Confessor, Philadelphia 1999, 137–46. 7 On the origins of this group and of Grið, see Wormald, Making, 391–5.

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or three books in its earliest manuscript copy (MS H: Textus Roffensis); I and II Cnut are run together with only a larger initial to signal the change, while a break is present after II Cnut and before the sections from Alfred-Ine. The whole fills thirty-five pages double-spaced in US paper size or thirty-three in A4. Before Liebermann’s work, it was relatively unknown and only edited by default or in its most eccentric form. In 1720, Thomas Hearne published an edition of Textus Roffensis based on a transcript in Harley 6323, which included a copy of the Instituta’s earliest text.8 106 years later it again surfaced. In the early nineteenth century, J. L. A. Kolderup-Rosenvinge, a Danish lawyer, published the version of the Instituta found in a Colbertine manuscript then in Paris, now BN MS latine 4771 (Cb).9 The text of the Instituta here has been interwoven at start and finish with sections from another contemporary translation of Cnut – the Consiliatio Cnuti. While this edition made the Instituta available to a wider range of scholars, it unfortunately reproduced its most corrupt version.10 The Instituta in this guise was a postconquest antiquarian eccentricity rather than a reflection of the Volksrechte, and so it captured no scholar’s imagination. In the nineteenth century, the Instituta stayed firmly in appendices and notes as a supplement, a guide, a distorted clue to understanding the meaning of Cnut’s laws, not as a guide to English law after the conquest.11 Until Liebermann, that is. Liebermann’s work on the Instituta was part of a grand scheme to collect and edit all of the Anglo-Saxon laws in all versions, carried beyond this 1893 article and other shorter editions and into three massive volumes published between 1903 and 1916. Liebermann included in this scheme the postconquest Latin translations of Old English preconquest codes, and some of the Anglo-Norman French translations of preconquest English and postconquest Latin codes. He generally printed the Latin translations on facing pages or adjacent columns to the Old English witnesses. Since such a system for displaying the text of these translations did not convey a picture of the whole translation on its own, Liebermann included abbreviated lists of the contents of each translation as well as full texts for original material not derived from the sources. Liebermann always imagined these translations as subservient to their sources. They were, after all, derivative, and the collection was entitled Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, which, technically speaking, should not necessarily include postconquest sources. This implied hierarchy was not lost on those who used Liebermann’s Gesetze. Julius Goebel, in his 1937 Felony and Misdemeanor, wrote that texts like the Instituta were ‘largely mere translations of earlier Anglo-Saxon dooms’ and were of principal value only to scholars interested in the poorer specimens of Anglo-Latin.12 For Frederic William Maitland, the translations were only useful for an occasional footnote on French misunderstandings of English law. Rarely were they entrusted with more.13 Maitland does not name the Instituta in the text of his and Frederick Pollock’s History of English Law where he discusses the law books of the Anglo-Norman period, although he alludes to its existence and says that the translator tried to be more than a translator. 8 9

T. Hearne, ed., Textus Roffensis, Oxford 1720; Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 78. J. L. A. Kolderup-Rosenvinge, ed., Legum Regis Canuti Magni, Copenhagen 1826; this is Liebermann’s MS Cb. 10 See below, 184. 11 R. Schmid, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 2nd edn, Leipzig 1858, appendix. 12 J. Goebel Jr, Felony and Misdemeanor: a Study in the History of the Criminal Law, New York 1937, 380 and n. 151. Goebel did, however, think that further study of all the translations would show ‘the mechanics of legal transfiguration’: ibid., 413 n. 260, 414 n. 266. 13 F. W. Maitland and F. Pollock, The History of English Law, 2 vols, 2nd edn, Cambridge 1898, i, 101.

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Nevertheless, Liebermann’s achievement was monumental and has endured rather well to this day. Volume 1 of his Gesetze offered scholars accessible transcriptions or editions of the laws, and presented a scheme for organizing and assigning the individual texts to this or that king – much here based on earlier work of antiquaries and historians like Reinhold Schmid.14 Volume 2 provided a vocabulary and theme/ subject glossary combined as a way of navigating the shoals and finding the channels. Lastly, in the third volume, Liebermann presented introductions to the editions and notes on the texts and the meaning of select passages. In addition, for the Instituta, Liebermann’s 1893 article provided a meticulous sifting of the translation for matters of legal significance, as well as a collection of observations on the qualities of the translation and the identity of the author. Liebermann’s principal achievement, of course, was to provide what are considered to be trustworthy editions of texts for scholars interested in Anglo-Saxon law and the effects of the Norman conquest on that law. The foundation of an edition is the accuracy of the transcriptions of the witnesses. Without an accurate record of the variants in individual manuscripts, no firm relationship between witnesses can be established, and without that, there is no trustworthy way to identify what is likely to have been the author’s text. Liebermann, as almost all the editors of Latin texts of his generation, knew this and practiced the art of recensio and emendatio: a survey of the witnesses and the establishment of the text from that survey, guided by scholarly judgment. When I worked with the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, I discovered that Liebermann’s readings were not always reliable.15 I have discovered the same to be the case with the Instituta, but to an even greater degree. A comparison of the readings in the seven earliest or most important witnesses to Liebermann’s text and apparatus for the title, prologue, and first three chapters of the Instituta revealed 54 errors of transcription.16 This small part of the Instituta constitutes 3.7% of the entire translation, but if I extrapolate from this evidence, there would be over 1400 errors in total. If I add the other seven manuscripts of original witnesses, the number of errors I feel would only rise. Let me offer a few observations. First, Liebermann’s errors occur most frequently in his readings from the class of manuscripts whose text of the Instituta ends at book III, chapter 44, rather than chapter 64: thirty-three of the fifty-four errors occur in readings from Lambeth Palace MS 118 (La), the earliest copy of the fifth edition, version B, of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, and BL MS Harley 746 (S), a late thirteenth-century statute and legal treatise collection. Thus, Liebermann’s understanding of the basic text, of which the short form may be the earliest witness, rests on fundamentally unsound ground. Second, for the long form, his appraisal of the value of individual witnesses is unlikely – also because of his transcription errors

14

See W. Lambarde, ed., Archaionomia sive de priscis Anglorum legibus libri, London 1568; P. Wormald, ‘The Lambarde Problem: Eighty Years On’, in Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1997, 237–75; B. Thorpe, ed., Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 2 vols, London 1840; Schmid, Gesetze; Wormald, Making, 21–2. 15 O’Brien, God’s Peace, 222, n. 34. 16 The manuscripts used for this comparison are Cb (BN MS lat. 4771), H (Textus Roffensis), Rl (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C. 641), Di (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 13), T (BL MS Cotton Titus A. xxvii), La (London, Lambeth Palace MS 118 [Liebermann’s Lb]), and S (BL MS Harley 746). In his readings from La, e.g, here are his errors: Inscr. (La reads Anglie, not Anglice, and Norag-, not Norwag-), n. 4 (Kannuto, not Canuto), 2.2 (La omits scilicet), 2.3, n. 12 (e. a. D., not D. e. a.; Cb in note should probably be Lb), 2.5, n. 2 (La does not add plenam), 2.5, n. 8 (La reads mundbreche, not mundbrece; reconciliatione, not reconciliationem), 3, n. 21 (La omits per), 3.1 (omnes sunt, not sunt omnes), n. 27 (La reads et eiusdem, not eiusdemque).

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– to be trustworthy. Liebermann, for instance, treats Rl (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C. 641) as independent from Textus Roffensis and therefore confirming that Textus Roffensis was copied from a now lost exemplar. His apparatus, however, offers no variants for Rl other than – in the section under comparison – the spelling of a proper name in the prologue. While in this section there is no support for the independence of Rl from Textus Roffensis, a review of all shared errors in Rl and H suggests that Rl is merely a rather faithful copy of Textus Roffensis.17 Again, with the relationship of T (BL MS Cotton Titus A.xxvii) and Cb, the other two witnesses to the long form, Liebermann suspected a link of some kind between them – which there is – but his apparatus misses most of the textual proof of just what the relationship is. Lastly, and this is important especially for dialectologists and historical sociolinguists, Liebermann’s variants for Old English terms and expressions preserved in the Latin translation are only incompletely recorded and sometimes wrong.18 This pattern of error is also present in his edition of the Leges Edwardi. The stemma Liebermann presents, then, does not in all respects reliably represent the relationship of the witnesses. It is in many ways right in outline, but clear where it might have wanted to be cautious, and cautious where it could have been clear. My own stemma (see below, 183) offers a tentative adjustment, the most significant part of which is the relegation of Rl to derivative status. I have also discovered new independent witnesses of the Instituta – College of Arms MS Vincent 98 and BL MS Harley 785, both sixteenth-century transcripts of probably the same lost manuscript.19 Similarly, our understanding of the texts that travel with Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia has changed, thanks in large part to the magnificent edition by Diana Greenway, from Liebermann’s flat line of texts to a more varied landscape, with nine witnesses reconstructing four hypearchetypes as well as the archetype of this extended family.20 Because Liebermann did not sort out the relationships as well as he could have, he found himself unable or unwilling to choose his text. Parenthetical clauses, phrases, and words abound in what is presented as the translator’s text, at times creating redundancies and generally sowing confusion and discord for the user of the edition. 17

Patrick Wormald has recently noted our disagreement on this point (Making, 402 n. 635). I want to take the opportunity to explain my case. The key is the interlinear glosses shared for the most part by Textus Roffensis (H) and the Rawlinson manuscript (Rl). Wormald, ‘Laga Edwardi’, 260–2, n. 29, cites as evidence of Rl’s independence the placement of fieri (In Cn II 69) in different places in H and Rl. Closer examination of the manuscripts, however, shows that fieri is placed in both H and Rl in essentially the same place: in H above the line with an insertion mark after uolo, and in Rl in the text after uolo. Titus A . xxvii places it in the text after uolo and Cb inverts fieri omni populo to omini populo fieri. A general comparison of readings reveals no errors that would prove either that Rl is independent of H or that Rl is a copy of H, except perhaps at II 49, where H’s triple insertion of patientis (reduced to two by erasures) is repeated in Rl, where it is also nonsensical. What makes it likely that Rl is a copy of H is the lack of evidence of independence and the almost identical pattern of capitals, initials, and rubrics: of the 123 capitals that begin chapters in H, Rl lacks only one, at I 6.3; of those initials which extend beyond a single line, Rl’s are almost always the same size as those in H. Out of the hundreds of smaller capitals that mark the beginnings of clauses in the text, in only seven instances do H and Rl make different choices on what to capitalize. Thus, to have Rl and H remain independent would require the belief that two teams of scribes and rubricators were exceedingly careful to copy their shared exemplar in exactly the same way. It is much simpler to conclude that Rl is a faithful copy of H. 18 E.g. at I 2.5, Liebermann prints mundbrece as his text, and cites mundbrice in Di and mundbreche in Cb as his only variants; he missed T’s mudbrece, and the agreement of La and S with Cb. At I 3.2, he missed S’s montam and feldchirche for his text’s mundam and feldcirice. 19 For these discoveries, see O’Brien, God’s Peace, 138–9 (for Vincent 98) and 141 (for Harley 785). 20 Huntingdon, cliii–clv. Liebermann set out all of these manuscripts – except Pl and S – as similarly direct descendants from the archetype of this edition of the Historia: Liebermann iii, 330.

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Much of the problem can be traced to Liebermann’s transcriptions and the elevated place he assigned to MS Cb. My last quarrel with Liebermann’s edition concerns his editorial use of bold-face type to show how the translator has changed the original. Here Liebermann’s identification of what is new misleads readers. He appears to have been excessively tolerant of changes made by the translator and so only the longest or most obvious changes trigger the employment of this printing device. Only rarely, then, will the reader be warned that something is afoot in the translation. Nor are omissions signaled in any way in the notes. This lack of editorial signal means the reader is focused on additions as being more valuable than the omissions, and is only alerted when the addition is, in Liebermann’s judgement, significant. In a typical instance, at I Cnut 5 the translator has added to his translation of robbery and witchcraft a catch-all – ‘or any similar thing’ – which is not put into bold type face by Liebermann, but is an addition and one that may suggest the translator’s lack of confidence that his renderings had captured the two named offenses in the Old English, or his own broader interpretation (perhaps anachronistic) of the intention of the original to do more than cover those two cases alone.21 At I Cnut 5.2d, Liebermann signals an important addition by the translator – a clause specifying that compensation for homicide, while not allowed to monks, ‘is allowed for the kin of the killers and of the victim’ – but he does not signal the omission of the final clause in the original – ‘[the monk] leaves his kindred’s law behind when he accepts the law of monastic rule’.22 Considering the focus of the whole project on Anglo-Saxon law, the presentation of the text of the Instituta, and the limited editorial guidance to its peculiarities, it is not surprising that the Instituta has been passed over by students of postqconquest law except as a distorted mirror of Cnut’s law.23 So far all that the evidence suggests is that Liebermann did not do a very good job editing the Instituta, and that the format he used to present it makes it difficult to appraise. It is a separate issue to determine whether the Instituta, as a translation, merits a reappraisal. Given the controversies surrounding 1066, any source from the period before or after the Norman conquest is important and deserves attention for what it can tell us about the consequences of conquest. Translated law, however, is important in different and special ways. Language contact in conquered lands, in lands where new populations speaking different languages have settled, has been and continues to be an area of intense study by sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists.24 In those circumstances, the act of translation – although performed before by the cultures involved – takes on new significance, is altered. It can become the linguistic adjustment between cultures; it can trace borders dividing peoples and cultures and bridges crossing those borders; it marks contact between peoples as well as between cultures.25 Translation, and translated texts, have the quality of being liminal and mural at the same time. 21 22 23

Liebermann i, 284–5. Liebermann i, 286–7. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles told their readers ‘We need spare them [In Cn and Cons Cn] but few words’: Law and Legislation from Æthelberht to Magna Carta, Edinburgh 1966, 45. Anglo-Norman historians, as opposed to legal historians, have been more comfortable using it; see the sensible comments of J. A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I, Cambridge 1986, 96–9. 24 Good places to begin are S. Romaine, Language in Society: an Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, Oxford 2000; U. Weinreich, Languages in Contact, New York 1953; A. Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology, Cambridge 1997; and P. Sture Ureland and G. Broderick, eds, Language Contact in the British Isles, Tübingen 1991. 25 One of the Old English words for translation, geþeodnes, also means ‘juncture’. In general, see S. Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies, rev. edn, London 1991, xi–xii, xvi, and passim.

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In 1066, the English already had much more experience than their conquerors with translation.26 They understood it, devised theories of translation, developed interesting uses for vernacular texts translated from Latin and Greek, and had moved texts in both directions.27 1066 complicated translation by adding a few more vernaculars, one of which, French, soon (unlike the Scandinavian of the last round of conquerors) developed a thriving written form.28 The conquest also coincided with and was partly responsible for the introduction of scholarly languages like Arabic, and the settlement of a people who had multiple new languages and could translate still more – the Jews.29 In such a complicated postconquest world, law is a particularly critical point of contact since, unlike knowledge of Arabic or Arabic texts, law has the potential to affect more people directly. Since the conquerors spoke their own languages (several dialects of French, but also Flemish and Breton), and the conquered spoke about or recorded their laws in their languages (English, Scandinavian, and Welsh), translation was necessary for rule, stability, and coexistence. Translations of legal texts offer us one important measure of continuity or change. The preservation of law through translation reveals attitudes toward the past and toward English culture.30 It can tell us perhaps a good deal about royal power. It goes to the heart of Norman rule in general. The rest of this paper will concentrate on two of the issues raised so far. First, I will try to clear up some of the issues of the text. Second, I will discuss the translator’s method and its implications for our understanding of what the Instituta can tell us about English law and legal treatises under the Norman kings. There are thirteen witnesses to the text. Three witness the full version: Textus Roffensis (H) from 1123–4, BN MS lat. 4771 (Cb) from c.1175, and BL MS Cotton Titus A. xxvii (T), dated to the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century.31 The shorter text is witnessed by Bodleian Library MS Digby 13, which is from the middle of the twelfth century, and a host of other manuscripts holding texts

26 27

R. Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 2002. The bibliography here is immense; see R. Hogg, ed., The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 1: The Beginning to 1066, Cambridge 1992, 514–26, and Stanton, Culture of Translation; M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350–1100, Cambridge 1994, 405–60; M. Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform, Cambridge 1999; and M. C. Bodden, ‘Anglo-Saxon Self-Consciousness in Language’, English Studies 68, 1987, 24–39. 28 M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background, Oxford 1963; R. Dean and M. B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: a Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, London 1999. Working out the linguisitic complications moves commmunity by community; see e.g. C. Clark, ‘People and Languages in Post-Conquest Canterbury’, JMH 2, 1976, 1–34, with further complications supplied by John Frankis, ‘Sidelights on Post-Conquest Canterbury: Towards a Context for an Old Norse Runic Charm (DR 419)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 44, 2000, 1–27. The best broad survey of the English scene after 1066 is M. Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, Stuttgart 1979, 35–104. 29 P. Hyams, ‘The Jews in Medieval England, 1066–1290’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages, ed. A. Haverkamp and H. Vollrath, Oxford 1996, 173–92; C. Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England, The Panizzi Lectures, The British Library, London 1996, 46–60; N. Golb, The Jews of Medieval Normandy: a Social and Intellectual History, Cambridge 1998, 112–14; M. Beit-Arié, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West: Towards a Comparitive Codicology, The Panizzi Lectures 1992, London 1993; idem, The Only Dated Hebrew Manuscript Written in England (1189 CE) and the Problem of Pre-Expulsion Anglo-Hebrew Manuscripts, London 1985. 30 O’Brien, God’s Peace, 131–4. 31 Julia Crick dates this manuscript to s. xii/xiii, in The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. 3, A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts, Cambridge 1989, 156–8 (no. 95); M. Gullick places it slightly earlier in s. xii4/4, in Wormald, ‘Quadripartitus’, 117 n. 18; Liebermann dated it c.1225 in Liebermann i, xl.

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derived from the one interpolated into the fifth edition, version B, of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, whose hypearchetype probably was written in 1149, and into which the Instituta was interpolated by c.1190.32 I have finished collating nine of thirteen manuscripts, so my conclusions here are tentative. I have relied on Diana Greenway’s stemma for Henry of Huntingdon’s fifth edition to reflect the relationship between its texts of the Instituta – which, according to my work with some of those manuscripts, is right.33 Eight hypearchetypes can be posited, one of which, gamma, has one descendant, one, delta, has two descendents, and another, beta, is reconstructed from ten witnesses and five hypearchetypes. The Stemma is as follows: a

b

g

Di

d

H

e

Cb

T

Rl i S

Ba

p Pl

Ar

La

m Va

n J

T

Ha

First: how many authorial versions of the Instituta do we have? It is a trick of fate that there appear to be two versions – one long, one short. The shorter one ends at book III, chapter 44, while the longer one runs on for an additional twenty chapters, which include all of the texts whose sources have not been identified.34 Rather than representing a later or revised version, by the original translator or by others, the longer version merely reflects the full translation, while the shorter version, ending as it does imperfectly in the middle of the Instituta’s translation of the short treatise called Að, reflects a faulty hypearchetype caused by the loss of leaves or by the premature and incomplete copying of the archetype. Liebermann recognized this and 32 For MS Digby 13, see B. R. O’Brien, ‘The Becket Conflict and the Invention of the Myth of Lex Non Scripta’, in Learning the Law: Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England, 1150–1900, ed. J. A. Bush and A. Wijffels, London 1999, 6 n. 25; Richards, Texts, 48; W. D. Macray, Catalogi Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae Pars Nona, Oxford 1883, 10; for dates of copies traveling with Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia, see Huntingdon, cxix–cxliv and cxviii. 33 Huntingdon, cxviii for the stemma. 34 The chapters without identified sources are III 45.4–55, 57–9.

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offered various explanations for how it had happened, all of which are, strictly speaking, irrelevant.35 What matters to us is that all non-derivative texts are witnesses to the same version and thus must all be used to reconstruct the archetype (a). One of the manuscripts in which Liebermann placed greater trust for this reconstruction was his Cb, which he assigned to c.1160, making it one of the oldest witnesses to the Instituta Cnuti and the third version of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, which together form the contents of the book.36 Liebermann perceived in Cb’s text archaic elements which he thought must go back to the archetype. Cb, however, is an eccentric witness. Its compiler, or at least the compiler behind its version of the Instituta, grafted the prologue and a few select chapters from the Consiliatio Cnuti onto his long version of the Instituta.37 In addition, Cb is filled with unique readings, which suggests, in conjunction with the larger cut and paste, the work of a reviser rather than the work of the original translator of the Instituta, or of a scribe more faithful to the archetype than any of the other copyists. The reviser took pains to spell out the amounts of fines in both pounds and shillings and more accurately number the compurgators needed in certain cases.38 In I Cnut 5.2, for example, he has added a long gloss which repeats for priests what was described as the appropriate number of compurgators for deacons.39 This was not a reviser afraid to amend his text. This tendency makes Cb interesting evidence for how Cnut’s law was understood in c.1175, its likely date, but of very limited use for reconstructing delta, the hypearchetype of its family, let alone the archetype of the Instituta.40 It is difficult to say with specificity when the Instituta was composed. The contents do not settle this issue. The translator’s additions are often slight adjustments to his source; it is difficult to find a trustworthy measure outside the translation by which to judge the accuracy of these changes, let alone the date to which they correspond. The chapters in book three which cannot be traced to any known source (but appear nonetheless to be translations) contain a list of royal rights more extensive than Cnut’s and less fulsome than Henry I’s.41 These rights, in fact, resemble the collection of rights and obligations found in some of the lists of local customs in Domesday Book – most notably those of Taunton, the bishop of Winchester’s borough in Somerset.42 However, even if such a document were the source, these chapters would be describing a late eleventh-century arrangement that would not 35 36

Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 79–80. In 1893, he said it ‘was written about A.D. 1150, and certainly before 1172’: ‘On the Instituta’, 103. By 1903, the core had aged to ‘um 1160’, and the accompanying genealogy was updated after 1170 and again after 1189. 37 In general, see Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, xv–xviii, though for dating see O’Brien, God’s Peace, 109. 38 E.g. I 3.2, where he is mixing In Cn and Cons Cn. 39 The source reads (in Liebermann’s manuscript G, BL Cotton Nero A. i): ‘Gif man folciscne mæssepreost mid tihtlan belecge, ðe regollif næbbe, ladige hine swa diacon þe regollife libbe.’ H (Textus Roffensis, fol. 59v): ‘Si popularis presbyter calumniatur qui non regulariter uiuit de supradictis . purget se sicut diaconus qui regulariter uiuit.’ The reviser behind Cb (pp. 4–5) has the following: ‘De uulgari sacerdote non casto. Si uulgaris presbyter qui non regulariter uiuit calumpniatur simpla appellatione; purget se sicut diaconus regulariter uiuens . scilicet assumens duos et ipse sit tertius . Et si de triplici appellatione; sumat sex . et ipse sit septimus.’ 40 It is of course possible that this particular melange of In Cn and Cons Cn was created long before its first extant witness; however, there is nothing in the contents, such as a datable amendment of the Latin, to place it earlier. 41 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 97; In Cn adds hospitality and charter rights to Cnut, but lacks the arson and rape of Hn. 42 Domesday Book i, 87v (R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England, Cambridge 1998, no. 1354).

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help date the translation – especially if one trusts in the existence of something resembling Domesday Book returns from before the conquest.43 It might be hoped that indirect witness could at least push the terminus ante quem earlier than 1123–4, the date of the Instituta’s earliest manuscript, Textus Roffensis. Two sources are said to have used the Instituta: the Ten Articles of William I and the Leis Willelme.44 Let me take them briefly in turn. It is clear that the Articles drew five of its chapters from the Instituta.45 The Articles is, in fact, a pastiche of other texts; only three of what Liebermann thought were its ten chapters are not drawn in some fashion from either William’s ordinance on modes of proof or from the Instituta Cnuti.46 The compiler abridged and adjusted his sources to accommodate a new king and new conquerors. Identifying this dependence, however, does not help much in dating the Instituta. The three original chapters in the Articles are the famous Gloucester decree ordering the murder fine and placing Normans in England before 1066 under English law, and the requirement for all to abide by the laga Edwardi. All of these promises or issues are mirrored in Henry I’s coronation charter, but not as often after that date.47 The Articles have been placed before 1100, in the reign of William II – most recently Patrick Wormald has offered with caution a hypothetical date of origin ‘late in the Conqueror’s own reign’ for both Instituta and Articles of William.48 But as with the Instituta, the only firm evidence of its terminus ante quem is the date of Textus Roffensis. What of the other indirect witness – the Anglo-Norman French Leis Willelme? It has been argued that the Instituta rather than the Old English text was the source for those chapters of the Leis Willelme that come from Cnut’s laws (chapters 39–45, 47–52).49 If the Leis Willelme was composed earlier than its earliest manuscript – BL MS Additional 49366 from the third quarter of the twelfth century – we might narrow the date of the Instituta.50 This dependence of the Leis Willelme on the Instituta rather than on the Old English original, however, cannot be. The minor agreements between the Old English text and the Anglo-Norman translation, and disagreements with the text of the Instituta, are many, but the case is easily and briefly settled by a phrase in II Cnut 24.2 stating that the possessor of property on which there is a claim shall vouch to warranty three times – ‘þonne tyme hit man þriwa’ (‘then one shall vouch it to warranty three times’). The Instituta’s translator performs his usual service of replacing this compact phrase with a more detailed one – the possessor 43

E.g. H. R. Loyn, ‘The Beyond of Domesday Book’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 2–3. 44 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 101; revised in Liebermann i, 486–8, and iii, 277–8; Wormald, Making, 404–5. 45 The Articles has been variously labeled as Hic intimatur, its incipit, or Liebermann’s Articuli decem Willelmi I. The original title may have been something closer to Decreta Willelmi, which appears in a number of the witnesses. 46 Wl art. 6–6.3 are made up of Wl lad 1–3.1; Wl art. 1, 5, 8–8.3, 9 and 10 are derived from In Cn I 1, II 2.1, 3, 17, 20, 24, 25.1 and 31.1. Liebermann links Wl art. 2 with III Em 1. The only chapters of Wl art. not so linked to other texts are chapters 3, 4 and 7. Liebermann’s division of the text into ten chapters is of course a convenience, but does not receive support from the manuscript witnesses. 47 See O’Brien, God’s Peace, 46–8. 48 Wormald, Making, 405, though in his chart at 116 he puts them between 1090 and 1095. 49 Richardson and Sayles, Law and Legislation, 124, 173–4; Wormald, Making, 409; J. P. Collas’s well-known discussion of the terminology of the Leis Willelme makes no comment on this issue since Collas ignores the nature of some of the cited passages as translations and misunderstands the survival of Old English legal terms in the French text as evidence of their untranslatability. Therefore much of his discussion of the language of the Leis Willelme is useless: Year Books of Edward II, vol. 25, 12 Edward II, Part of Easter and Trinity, 1319, ed. J. P. Collas, Selden Society vol. 81, London 1964, xx and passim. 50 On BL MS Additional 49366, see O’Brien, God’s Peace, 45–6, 141–2.

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shall call his warrantor, and that one shall call the other if he can, and so on. Tieman becomes uocere warrantem, and the three times, þriwa, becomes a sequence where each warrantor calls the next to warranty. The Leis Willelme has none of this replacement text, but is almost identical in syntax and language to the Old English.51 It is not beyond reason to imagine the Anglo-Norman translator having access to both the original and the Latin translation of the Instituta, but there is little evidence other than a few coincidental cognates to support this picture and much to show him working solely from the Old English.52 It seems that the best we can do at present is say that the translation was done between the Norman conquest and 1123–4. Where it was composed must also for now remain uncertain. The most compelling case can be made for Worcester – a case acknowledged and explained by Liebermann in 1893, though he preferred to push the translator over the border of the Danelaw because of the text’s preservation and clarification of penalties in the Danelaw.53 The case for Worcester rests on several facts, but especially on the intersection of two things: the presence at Worcester of texts of all the Old English laws translated in the Instituta, and the existence in the region, and nowhere else, of people labeled radcnihtas. Grið, one of the shorter Wulfstan texts translated in the Instituta, only survives now in a Worcester (or York) manuscript (BL MS Cotton Nero A.i [B]), a manuscript which shows evidence of Wulfstan’s own hand. The other texts used are either found in manuscripts at Worcester, or in ones with Worcester-York associations (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 201 [B]; BL MS Harley 55 [A]). Of course, the texts also occur in manuscripts less surely tied to Worcester or York, and some manuscripts that may have held them have probably disappeared, leaving their associations now unknowable.54 What makes Worcester more likely, however, is the translator’s addition of the label radcniht to Alfred’s sexhyndum man (39.2) – implying that they are equivalent. Men labeled radcnihtas are not in Alfred: Alfred’s law states that ‘Gif syxhyndum men ðissa hwæðer gelimpe, ðrifealdlice arise be ðære cierliscan bote.’ The Instituta has changed this to read ‘Si autem hoc fit in domo hominis quem Angli nominant radcniht . alii uero sexhændeman . ter carius ei emendetur id est duodeuiginti solidis

51 The source (in Liebermann’s MS B, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 383) reads ‘[24.1] gyf 7 hit mon ðonne gefo, 7 he ðyllice gewitnysse næbbe, ne beo ðær nan team, ac gyfe man ðam agenfrigean his agen 7 þæt æftergyld, 7 þæt wite ðam ðe hit age. [24.2] 7 gyf he witnysse habbe, swa we ær cwædon, ðonne tyma hit man ðriwa; æt ðam feorðam cyrre ahnige hit oððe agyfe ðam ðe hit age’. Leis Wl 45.1–2 reads ‘E se hum le chalange e il n’en ait testimonie, si n’ad nul warant, rende l’um a l’hum soun chatel, e le forfait ait qui auer le deit. [45.2] E si testimonie ad, si cum nous einz desimes, voeste les treis feiz e a la quarte feiz le dereinet u il le rende’ (A. J. Robertson, ed. and trans., The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, Cambridge 1925, 272). In Cn (MS H) reads ‘Et si non tot nec tales testes habuerit . et aliquid tale in manu uel in potestate eius inuentum fuerit . et ipse uuarantem uoluerit uocare; non ei ualeat neque liceat . sed reddatur calumnianti quod suum est aut ualens . et insuper iterum tantum ualens . et forisfacturam qui eam iuste habere debet . [24.2] Quodsi tales testes habuerit quales supradiximus; uuarantem uocet . et ille uocatus uocet alium si potest . et tertius adhuc tertium uocet si potest . et tertius suum faciet si ualet . quodsi non ualet . reddatur ei qui iuste habere debet.’ 52 Cf. e.g. Leis Wl 39.1 and In Cn II 15.1ff. 53 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 85–7. 54 Among other possible locales, Canterbury and Rochester stand out, given the evidence for legal collection at Rochester, translation work at Canterbury, and an attempt to preserve and present the Anglo-Saxon past at both: see M. P. Richards, Texts and their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society ns 78, part 3, 1988, and D. N. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia 2, 1983, 23–57. Liebermann specifically excluded Canterbury, Rochester and Winchester, but not for persuasive reasons: ‘On the Instituta’, 87 n. 1.

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quam illi quem supra nominauimus ceorlman.’55 The translator appears then to have chosen to add this label as a synonym for, or representing status equivalent to, Alfred’s sexhyndum man. The second important fact about radcnihtas is that the title is not found everywhere in England. Liebermann knew that men called radcnihtas were found only in the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire.56 The addition of radcniht seems the kind of alteration that would be made only by someone located in that region, where the texts and radcnihtas were plentiful. What Liebermann did not cite, but ought not to be passed over now, is the amount of translation of all sorts being performed in the Worcester region. It was the place where translations of passages in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle formed the base for John of Worcester’s Latin chronicle.57 The Old English Life of Wulfstan by Colman was translated into Latin by William of Malmesbury for Warin, the prior, and the monks at Worcester.58 An Old English account, composed in the late eleventh century by Prior Thomas of Worcester, of how Wulfstan became bishop and acquired certain lands, was translated and expanded, and both texts, Old English and Latin, appear together in Hemming’s Cartulary.59 It was the region where Adelard of Bath and Walcher, prior of the church of Great Malvern, were assisted by, it appears, the Spanish Jew, Petrus Alphonsi, in the work of translating Arabic texts into Latin.60 Worcester cathedral possessed a copy of at least one of their translations, a matter of note for John of Worcester himself.61 Worcester was an important center of translation in the century after the conquest, perhaps second only to Canterbury. Translation in fact is the key to the Instituta. The only purchase on the Instituta’s purpose is the translator’s method. Unlike Alfred, Ælfric, or even the translator of Quadripartitus, the translator of the Instituta offers no statement of purpose in his prologue. We may lament this – the long introduction before Quadripartitus certainly offers help (however confusing it has proved) in understanding the goal of the translator. When a translator tells us why he is translating, it tells us about his ideas of translation, but without a comparison of the source to the target as a measure of the product, there is little content that we can safely infer from this explanation of why the task was undertaken. Perhaps he wrote, like the person responsible for the Consiliatio, whose implied goal was to reflect the unity of a kingdom’s law 55 56

In Cn II 59i (MS H, fol. 72r). There were men similarly obligated thoughout England; the status is not special to the western shires, but the title is. 57 John of Worcester ii, xix and passim; R. R. Darlington and P. M. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS 5, 1982 (1983), 185–96. 58 The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Society 3rd ser. 40, London 1928, 1 (dedicatory epistle); see the translation in William of Malmesbury, Saints Lives, ed. and trans. R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, Oxford 2002. 59 D. A. E. Pelteret, Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents, Woodbridge 1990, 121–2 (no. 147); N. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, 2nd edn, Oxford 1990, 251 (no. 190 B). 60 Burnett, Introduction, 38–40; C. Burnett, ‘The Works of Petrus Alfonsi: Questions of Authenticity’, Medium Ævum 66, 1997, 42–79. Great Malvern established confraternity with Worcester long before 1125; relations would have been close: R. R. Darlington, ed., The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory, Pipe Roll Society 76 for 1962–3, London 1968, 158 (no. 300 and note). 61 John of Worcester iii, 258–61 (s.a. 1138); Burnett, Introduction, 39–40. The continuing copying of Old English texts, bilingual Old English-Latin texts, and of earlier translations (explicitly recognizable as such) can be seen in the late eleventh-century books identified as Worcester productions: see R. Gameson, ‘Book Production and Decoration at Worcester in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. N. Brooks and C. Cubitt, London 1996, 236–42.

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supporting the unity of its kingship. Perhaps, like William of Malmesbury’s claim in the dedicatory epistle to his translation of Colman’s Life of Wulfstan, the Instituta translator or his patrons simply thought English barbaric. With no statement of purpose, however, we must infer purpose from method. What method, if any, did one use to translate law? No matter the interest or goal, translators of texts, legal or otherwise, began with choices on all levels.62 First, the choice of texts: the Instituta’s original title was something more like Instituta de legibus regum Anglorum – or more narrowly Instituta de legibus secundum Cnut regem Anglorum; but the only king named in the text is Cnut. The fact that the Instituta is principally a translation of Cnut’s code is not surprising. Cnut’s laws were the most authoritative statements of the laga Edwardi available after the conquest.63 As the Quadripartitus translator wrote in his Argumentum, ‘the laws that go by King Edward’s name [are] derived from the institutes of Cnut in the first place’.64 But perhaps there is more to this choice than mere availability and age. The Normans were fascinated by the previous conqueror, and his authority – in the Consiliatio Cnuti, the translator wrote a new prologue in which he makes Cnut say that ‘as the entire kingdom of England is ruled by one king, so also should it be by one law’.65 Which version of Cnut’s laws was used by the Instituta’s translator is difficult to say. At times the translation agrees with one, then another, of the surviving Old English texts. It would not be all that surprising if the translator had access to more than one version of Cnut – the English translators of the Psalms sometimes mixed all three of Jerome’s Latin translations as sources for their Old English versions.66 Another important choice for the translator – one intimately tied to choice of text – was choice of audience, and with that, the choice of language. The existence of laymen and lay courts literate in Latin, and the comfort semi-literate clerics may have found in Anglo-Norman French, precludes an easy equation of the Instituta translator’s choice of Latin with a clerical audience.67 The translator’s selection of texts betrays no greater interest in the role of the clergy than in the concerns of royal agents of justice. He edits and amends ecclesiastical and secular law equally, and usually with the same end, to provide more specific answers to questions of penalty.68 The translator, in fact, has added much specificity on legal matters, and omitted much of the homiletic prose Wulfstan had written into the original.69 But this observation leads to no conclusion on audience. Anyone can dislike sermonizing. We can say that the translator chose to write for a Latin literate audience unfamiliar with English. It is good to recognize – from the evidence of the quality of the Leis Willelme and the fact 62

For the wider medieval European context, see the papers in Traduction et traducteurs au moyen âge, ed. G. Contamine, Paris 1989. 63 In Cn and Cons Cn are principally translations of Cnut, onto which other codes have been grafted; Leis Wl translates and appends some chapters of Cnut, but not the laws of any other king; Quadr begins with Cnut, but follows it with an extensive collection of laws; these laws appear not under Cnut’s name, but under that of the issuing king (in cases of royal law). The translator of Quadr also employs Cnut more extensively than other preconquest codes in Hn, which claims to state current law. 64 Quadr arg., c. 1; translated in R. Sharpe, ‘The Prefaces of “Quadripartitus” ’, in Law and Government, 162. 65 ‘Quatinus sicut uno rege ita et una lege uniuersum Anglie regnum regeretur’: Cons Cn Proem 1, Liebermann, Consiliatio Cnuti, 1. 66 See P. P. O’Neill, ed., King Alfred’s Old English Prose Translation of the First Fifty Psalms, Cambridge, Mass., 2001, 32–4. 67 N. Orme, ‘Lay Literacy in England, 1100–1300’, in England and Germany, 35–56; R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225, Oxford 2000, 482–506. 68 E.g. II 37 and 45.3. 69 E.g. I Cn 18–21; II Cn 4.1 and passim.

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that the Comput of Philippe de Thaon was written in 1113 for a royal chaplain – that the translator could very well have made a different choice of language here.70 And unlike the translator of the Quadripartitus, the translator of the Instituta almost always included translations for transliterated Old English words included in his text.71 He could count on little Old English from his readers. Next, come some choices in presentation. There were many ways to display a translation, all evidenced in contemporary work. A translator could put the source text first and then follow it with the translation (either the whole text, like BL MS Cotton Claudius A. iii’s Latin and Old English versions of VI Æthelred, or chapter-by-chapter, like BL MS Cotton Titus A.iv’s mid eleventh-century Rule of Benedict). A translator could also choose to present the translation as an interlinear gloss: BL MS Faustina A.x’s Old English Rule of Benedict has a Latin text dismembered and turned into an interlinear gloss. It may be that such texts were principally educational, and the Instituta was not. Then there is the word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase translation, where a word in the source text is followed by a translation in the target language. Poetic it is not: Harley 3271 from the early eleventh century holds a copy of Abbo of St Germain’s Bella Parisiacae urbis, which reads like this: ‘O clerice . eala ðu cleric . ne dempseris . ne wana ðu . umquam . æfre . diplicas . wexbreda . lateri . fram sidam’, and so on.72 Last – and this is what the translator of the Instituta chose to do – a translation can provide a replacement for the source. Even in Textus Roffensis, the largest of the legal encyclopedias and the one with the greatest inclination to record the Old English originals, the Instituta has replaced the Old English Cnut, which is not included. No surviving manuscript copy of the Instituta combines both Old English source texts and Latin translation. While the Instituta can be called a replacement text, it is one that is tied into its source through its inclusion of Old English terms and phrases throughout. There is no mistaking this as anything but a translation of an Old English source. The practice of including the Old English has been taken – by me as well as by others – to signify the translator’s concern to ensure that the law was accurately represented in his translation.73 Is this really so? At first glance, it looks like this is the case. Many of the usual terms of art are here in Old English: mund, griðbryce, hamsocn, fyrdwite, sac and socn, were, lahslit, halsfang, hergeat, as well as less commonly found ones like ceapgeld, atheswurþe, and friðleasne man. What causes me to doubt the practical purpose of these inclusions is what is not here, as well as the way the translator repeats and translates far more often than he needs to such well understood labels as thegen (twelve times).74 The overall pattern does not appear to be following any legal 70

J. Wüest, ed., Die Leis Willelme, Bern 1969; Dean and Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature, 190–1 (no. 346). I. Short, ‘Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England’, ANS 14, 1991 (1992), 229–49. 71 E.g. II 12. 72 BL MS Harley 3271, fols 115v–118; Ker, Catalogue, 311 (no. 239 [17]); P. Lendinara, ‘The Third Book of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis by Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its Old English Gloss’, ASE 15, 1986, 73–89. 73 O’Brien, God’s Peace, 27. 74 Striking omissions from the beginning of I Cnut include cininges handgrið (I Cn 2.2), griðbryce (I Cn 3.2), and þryfealde spæce (I Cn 5a). On the first example, the hand-given peace of the king, it was considered important enough as a vernacular term to be employed in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris (ECf 12). On the second, Quadr, which is slightly less inclined than In Cn to include Old English terms, uses it, as does Domesday Book in the account of the customs in Dover, Domesday Book i, 1r (Fleming, Domesday Book, no. 882). On the last, the ‘threefold claim or purgation’, the translator incorporates in the Latin the phrase anfealde spæce ‘single claim or purgation’, which occurs just before it (I Cn 5), but not this parallel phrase. Thegen appears twelve times, sometimes in places where it does not occur in the source (e.g. I 5.3;

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logic – at least not consistently – or reflect the strength of particular terms as technical and authoritative. It may be that the translator was as much interested in the flavor of his source as in capturing its specific English meaning – just as some contemporary translators of Arabic texts include – but not always or consistently – Arabic terms in their translations.75 The inclusion of some Old English terms, then, may reflect the translator’s belief that a legal text needed to be grounded in its source language, just as other translators were grounding the authority of their texts. The last choices take us down to the level of passages and individual words: with what tools did the translator work, and with what training? Tools cover everything from the availability of grammars and glossaries to the use of wax tablets for the draft. On the last issue, for example, did the translator of the Instituta work on wax tablets, which may have been the universal practice? Here we know of Anselm’s composition of his Proslogion on wax tablets, and William of Newburgh’s draft of his commentary on the Song of Songs.76 Or did he work directly on parchment and then rework the translation, ending up, like William of Malmesbury’s drafts of the Gesta regum, with scribal chaos?77 Liebermann posited a messy parchment draft to explain textual contamination between families of texts.78 With better transcriptions, the contamination and its messy manuscript source disappear, but we still cannot say how, physically, the translator worked. Did he seek out expert advice, especially from native English speakers? He may very well have known about Jerome translating the Bible with his Hebrew helpers.79 He also surely knew that courts sought out such expertise: this must have happened often in much the same way that Ansketil de Bulmer, reeve of the North Riding, served as translator in the York inquest of 1106.80

6.2; and II 59i [= Af 39.2]). It is good to remember that in the source at the time of its composition, these terms did not carry a ‘precise semantic burden’: A. J. Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE 11, 1983, 67. 75 E.g. BL Sloane MS 2030, item 10; in general see Burnett, Introduction, 5, 40–6, figs 4, 8, 9, 16, 18–20, and plates 3 and 4. 76 Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, trans. R. W. Southern, Oxford 1962, i.19, 30–1, citing C. H. Talbot in Analecta Sacri Ordnis Cisterciensis 6, 1951, 223 n; É. Lalou, ‘Les Tablettes de cire médiévales’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 147, 1989, 123–40. 77 Gesta Regum vol. 1, xxii–xxiii, xxvi. 78 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 103–4; he used this to explain apparent contamination in the Leges Edwardi: Liebermann iii, 340. 79 Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: a Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim, Oxford 1993; Jerome’s prefaces to the individual books of the Vulgate are filled with discussion of translation issues, including alphabets, using Hebrew interpreters, specific renderings from the Greek and Hebrew source, and the failings of other translators. These prefaces were fairly widely known and available: Richard Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge 1995, 35–8, and chapters 10–12; Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, Tempe, Arizona, 2001; Richard Gameson, The Manuscripts of Early Norman England (c. 1066–1130), Oxford 1999. The prefaces can be found in PL 28, as well as better edited in Dom Donatien de Bruyne, ed., Les préfaces de la bible latine, Namur 1920. The Septuagint story, where the Egyptian pharoah summoned seventy men to perform a simultaneous translation of the Torah from Hebrew into Greek, was also well known. It appears, for example, in Jerome’s preface to the Pentateuch (PL 28, cols 181–4), as well as in copies of Josephus, Antiquities, 12.11 and 12.31: Flavii Iosephi Opera ex Versione Latina Antiqua, ed. C. Boysen, part 6: De Iudaeorum Vetustate, Prague 1898. Henry of Huntingdon preserves a fragment of this tale in his letter to Henry I, c. 69: Huntingdon, 526–7. Gilbert Crispin attempts to shift authority from the Hebrew source to the Septuagint by using his considerable knowledge of the history of the Septuagint translation: Gilbert Crispin, Disputatio Iudei et Christiani, cc. 119–32, in The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, ed. A. S. Abulafia and G. R. Evans, London 1986, 39–44. 80 R. C. van Caenegem, ed. and trans., English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, Selden Society 106–7, London 1990, vol. 1, 139 (no. 172). See H. Tsurushima, ‘Domesday Interpreters’, ANS 18, 1995 (1996), 201–22. Oral witness, rather than translation assistance, has attracted attention: Robin Fleming,

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Related to that issue is whether or not he used glossaries and grammars. Many glossaries – including bi- and tri-lingual legal glossaries – survive.81 Some have been arranged alphabetically and would thus have been easy to consult; but even those not so arranged can be scanned rather quickly for difficult words. The translator did, it seems, use a glossary, though only selectively and not mechanically. His classic error was in fact a result of his rather uncritical use of a glossary like Ælfric’s. The word before him was landebræde ‘loin’, which he translated as assatura renum ‘roast kidneys’. It seems unlikely that he could possibly have thought that roast kidneys appeared suddenly in the midst of Alfred’s list of tariffs for injured body parts. He had found bræde in the glossary with assatura as its gloss and had borrowed it, thinking a bræde was a (lande-) bræde.82 If he had persevered, he might have found his landebræde glossed by lumbolos ‘little loins’, which occurs in many of the same glossaries as bræde. It is clear from this example that he sought out written help rather than oral – which surely, if he were working at Worcester, would not have been hard to find and might have prevented such errors.83 We should not of course assume that in all cases the native interpreter would be trustworthy or accurate. His choice of text over expert may have been the result of his training, his education. What would have been emphasized in his school? Perhaps the variety in styles of translation betrays the variety of teachers’ styles in training children to read and write Latin.84 How someone learned a foreign or learned language would have established a pattern or method that would guide later translating. This education also authorized that method – especially since this is an age without standard dictionaries and almost no grammatical material in vernacular languages. An education built on classical Latin texts – Cicero, Virgil, Ovid – would produce a very different trans-

‘Oral Testimony and the Domesday Inquest’, ANS 17, 1994 (1995), 101–22, for Domesday Book; with narrative sources, see E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Memory of 1066 in Written and Oral Traditions’, ANS 19, 1996 (1997), 167–80, and idem, ‘Hereward and Flanders’, ASE 28, 1999, 202–4. 81 On the legal glossaries, see A. G. Dyson, ‘The Career, Family and Influence of Alexander le Poer, Bishop of Lincoln, 1123–48’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford Univ. 1972, 19–21, and O’Brien, God’s Peace, 55. Texts and editions are listed in J. E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1400, New Haven 1916, 834. 82 III 31 = Af 67, at Liebermann i, 85; bræde ‘roast meat’ (cf.brædan ‘to roast’). T. Wright and R. P. Wülker, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 2 vols, 1884, no. 10, col. 127; Aelfrics Grammatik und Glosssar, ed. J. Zupitza, with a new foreword by H. Gneuss, Berlin 1966, 316 and apparatus. Extant copies are listed in Ker, Catalogue, index 1, 517. BL MS Cotton Faustina A. x (A), a late eleventh-century copy of Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary, which shows evidence of significant use s. xi/xii and again towards the end of the twelfth century, is in a hand very like a known Worcester creation, according to Ker, Catalogue, 196. 83 See E. Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c. 1008–1095, Oxford 1990, 206–9, 269–77, 288–9; V. H. Galbraith, ‘Notes on the Career of Samson, Bishop of Worcester, 1096–1112’, EHR 82, 1967, 86–101; Gameson, ‘Book Production’, 218–35; A. Gransden, ‘Cultural Transition at Worcester in the Anglo-Norman Period’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Worcester Catheral: British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions 1, 1978, 43–50. Further evidence of the availability of help comes from the fact that Old English texts were copied and composed at Worcester during this time, as well as at Christ Church, Canterbury, Rochester, and Peterborough: E. M. Treharne, ‘The Dates and Origins of Three Old English Manuscripts’, in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage, ed. P. Pulsiano and E. M. Treharne, Aldershot 1998, 231; Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, ed. M. Swan and E. M. Treharne, Cambridge 2000. See above, 187, n. 61. 84 B. Bischoff, ‘The Study of Foreign Languages in the Middle Ages’, Speculum 36, 1961, 209–24; J. J. Murphy, ‘The Teaching of Latin as a Second Language in the Twelfth Century’, Historiographia Linguistica 7, 1980, 159–75; H. Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 72, 1990, 3–32; Anglo-Saxon Conversations: the Colloquies of Ælfric Bata, ed. and trans. S. Gwara and D. W. Porter, Woodbridge 1997, 8–11, 15–43, 51–7; S. Reynolds, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text, Cambridge 1996, esp. chapters 2, 3 and 5.

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lation than an education built on the Vulgate and Church Fathers. The consequences should be visible in everything from lexis and syntax to the imagined status of the translation. Such an education may explain the difference between the classicizing and grandiloquent Consiliatio Cnuti and the unclassical Instituta Cnuti. Here you have to leave aside the word for word or sense for sense dichotomy taken from Jerome. The actual process of translation is more complicated. Medieval translators moved freely between invention, paraphrase, and literalness in meaning and shape, without leaving the category of translation.85 But when they did want to translate individual words – rather than paraphrase or omit them – their choices were three: transliteration, which brought in the source word whole but gave it a target language inflection; etymological translation, which produces calques, where each component of a source word is translated by its target equivalent and re-combined to create a usually unique word; and last, finding an equivalent word in the target language.86 The translator’s choice here was dependent on the level of his training – had the translator achieved fluency in either or both languages? This fluency was prized. Ian Short has written on the miraculous acquisition of other languages – in particular French by the English after the conquest – but this miracle occurs in a world with much language contact and which valued knowledge of other tongues.87 A contemporary portrait of Alexander the Great has him speaking Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin, and Indian, without the need for interpreters and using this skill to extend his own power.88 Those who failed to achieve fluency – like Hubert Walter in Gerald of Wales’ famous story, could find themselves embarrassed.89 The translator of the Instituta did not work in his own language, but in two other languages that were in different ways foreign. It is easiest to see this if we take a closer look at a sample of the Instituta. I have chosen two chapters from II Cnut – c. 13 and c. 15 – to represent the translator at work. In this section of the source, the various rights of the king in English, Mercian, and Danish law are being detailed, including the power of the king to impose outlawry. [II Cn 13]90 Se ðe utlages !eorc ge!yrce . !ealde se cyng ðæs friðes. [13.1] 7 gyf he boc land habbe . sy þæt for !orht ðam cynge to hande . sy ðæs mannes man ðe he sy. [13.2] 7 loc h!a ðone fleman fede oððe feormie . gylde fif pund ðam cynge butan he hine geladige þæt he hine flema nyste.

85

See, e.g., N. V. Curling, ‘Translation and Innovation in the Roman de Brut’, in Medieval Translators and their Craft, ed. J. Beer, Kalamazoo 1989, 30–2. 86 S. Brock, ‘Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 20, 1979, 69–87. 87 I. Short, ‘On Bilingualism in Anglo-Norman England’, Romance Philology 33, 1980, 467–79; Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Society 20, London 1847, 179 (c. 79), 203–4 (c. 94), and 206–7 (c. 96). 88 Elisabeth Schulze-Busacker, ‘French Conceptions of Foreigners and Foreign Languages in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Romance Philology 41, 1987, 24–47, citing (at 38–9) the examples from the late twelfth-century Le Roman d’Alexandre. Incidently, ‘Chaldean’ here probably refers to Aramaic: Jerome indentifies the Aramaic parts of Daniel as being written in ‘sermo Chaldaicus’: Jerome, preface to Daniel, PL 28, cols 1357–8. 89 Bartlett, England, 485. 90 The Old English text is taken from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383 (Liebermann’s MS B and also the base text used by Robertson in her edition), pp. 51–2.

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[15] 7 on Denalage . he ah fiht !ite . 7 fryd !ita . grið bryce . 7 ham socne butan he h!æne furðor gemæðrian !ylle. [15a] 7 gyf h!a ðonne . friðleasan man . helade . oððe feormie . bete s!a hit lagu !æs. [15.1] 7 se ðe unlage rære oððe undom gedeme heonan forð for læððe . oððe for feoh fange . beo se !ið ðone cyng hundt!elftig . scill’ . scyldig . on Engla lage . buton he mid aðe cyðan durre þæt he hit na rihtor ne cuðe . 7 ðolie aa his þegen scipes butan he hine æt ðam cyng gebycge . s!a he him geðafian !ylle. [15.1a] 7 on Dena laga lahslites scyldig . buton he hine geladige þæt he na bet ne cuðe. [15.2] 7 se ðe rihte lage 7 riht dom forsace . beo se scyldig !ið ðone ðe hit age . s!a !ið cyng hund t!elftig scill’. s!a !ið eorl syxtig scill’ s!a !ið hundred XX scill’ . s!a !ið . ælc ðara gyf hit s!a ge!eorðeð on Engla lage. [15.3] 7 se ðe on Dena lage rihte lage !yrde . gylde he lahslite. [II. 13]91 Si quis fecerit opus expulsi quod Angli uocant utlages !eorc . uideat rex de pace. [13.1] uerum si ipse habet alodium [bocland written above alodium] totum sit regis cuiuscunque homo sit. [13.2] Et qui exulem quem Angli uocant utlaga pauerit post expulsionem . quod Angli dicunt fede oþþe fermie: det regi centum solidos . nisi se purgauerit quod illum nescisset expulsum clamatum . quod Angli dicunt gekidne utlaga. [15] In lege autem Danorum . habet rex has . Violationem monet” quod Angli uocant feoh!ite . dimissionem belli . quod Angli dicunt ferd!ite . fractionem pacis . quod dicunt griðbrece . inuasionem in domo uel in curia quod dicunt hamsocne . nisi rex dare uelit quod suum est. [15a] Qui expulsum pauerit aut detinuerit pacifice . quem Angli uocant friðleasne man . reddat regi sicut lex est plenam emendationem . et qui expulsum expulit . despectum suum si ita iustum est. [15.1] Si quis iniustas leges adinuenerit et iudicauerit . aut causa odii . aut adquisitionis pecuni”; sit reus regi . xl . solidis in lege Anglorum . nisi iuramento affirmauerit se rectius iudicare nescisse; et postea careat liberalitate sua . nisi eam a rege redimat ad uelle regis. [15.1a] In lege Danorum erit reus forisfactur” . quam Dani uocant lahslit. In lege eorum liberalis hominis lahslit uocant decem dimidi” marc” . hoc est quinque marcae. Hominis alodium [bocland written above alodium] habentis . vi . dimidi” marc” . hoc est tres marc”. Villani lahslit quem Angli uocant ceorlman . xiici . or”. [15.2] Qui rectum iudicium et iustam legem abnegat . sit forisfactus ei cui iustum est. Si regi; det illi . xl . solidos. Si comiti; xx . solidos. Si hundredo; x . solidos. Si contra omnes hos; omnibus reddat. [15.3] Per legem Danorum; lahslit reddat. These two chapters tell us a good deal about the translator’s method:92 1. The translator adds sections from other codes to explain elements of Cnut. The scale of fines based on status at 15.1a, from ‘In lege eorum’ to ‘duodecim or”’, has been taken from the Northumbrian Priests’ Law, cc. 51–53. 2. Similarly, he composes sections to enlarge upon his source. At 15a, he has extended one sentence and inserted another: ‘. . . plenam emendationem . et qui expulsum expulit . despectum suum si ita iustum est’. 3. He avoids repetition in order to be concise: at 15.3, he assumes that the offence is the same in English and Danish law and so omits repetition. 91 92

The Latin text is taken from Textus Roffensis, fols 64r–65r. The model for such an approach is A. Orchard, ‘The Style of the Texts and the Translation Strategy’, in Two Old English Apocrypha and their Manuscript Source: ‘The Gospel of Nicodemus’ and ‘The avenging of the Saviour’, ed. J. E. Cross, Cambridge 1996, 105–30; see also the analysis in Poème anglo-normande sur l’ancien testament, ed. P. Nobel, Paris 1996, vol. 1, 85–169.

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4. He replaces vague statements with direct ones: While the source was content with the rather vague ‘butan he h!æne furðor gemæðrian !ylle’,93 a phrase that has played a prominent role in discussions of the existence of franchises before the conquest as well as of whether or not Edward the Confessor dissipated royal authority, the translation says ‘nisi rex dare uelit quod suum est’.94 He has performed a similar maneuver at 13.1, 15.1 and 15.2. 5. He maintains for the most part the tense and mood of the Old English (present subjunctive). 6. He replaces in 13.2 the Old English terms from the source with other English terms. For example utlaga takes over for fliema, and gekidne utlaga for, again, fliema. Neither utlaga nor gekidne utlaga are in any surviving version of the Old English source, but are very likely the translator’s choice. The latter phrase is, in fact, an English translation of his own Latin text’s expulsum clamatum, which he uses to cover the source’s fleman. The motive for such a change is difficult to recover. Perhaps the translator has chosen, as Liebermann suggested, more current words of his own day to replace archaic or dialectal words he found in the original.95 7. He was usually confident enough of his abilities to choose a Latin equivalent for key words – mostly legal jargon – but occasionally he retreated, elsewhere – not here – to etymological translation for compounds, supported by transliteration or simply by the inclusion of the actual word with its Old English inflection in his Latin translation. At times, he has not been successful; II 64’s husbryce ‘home invasion’ has been transformed by etymological translation to become destructio domus, which goes a bit beyond the original. He does use transliterated words and some unadulterated English of his day; witness above his retention of lahslit, an older Scandinavian loan, which is defined at 15.1a, and then used without translation at the end of 15.1a and at 15.3.96 From all of this, it appears that his understanding of Latin was slightly better than his understanding of Old English, but that clearly both were foreign and learned languages for him, and only imperfectly acquired. Given his habits, skills, and limitations as a translator, what does the Instituta say about the law? Do the changes made by the translator reflect the state of the law when the Instituta was composed? Liebermann thought that the places where the author had changed his source or had included Old English legal jargon did in fact reflect the state of the law, or at least the translator’s attempt to render his understanding of what the law was.97 Where the translation was literal, or close to that, Liebermann was doubtful. In several places, Liebermann recognized that procedures and laws of Cnut’s day had not been amended and yet were arguably obsolete by the early twelfth century.98 Why the translator, who was so anxious in many places to amend his translation to fit – it appears – some new circumstances, would have left obsolete elements in the translation unamended, Liebermann did not say.

93

‘unless he shall wish to honor anyone’; Cnut’s code is the only place where the verb gemæðrian appears in all extant Old English texts: A. diP. Healey and R. L. Venezky, eds, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, Toronto 1980, s.v. 94 ‘unless the king wishes to give what is his’. 95 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 85. 96 Lahslit originally meant a ‘breach of the law’, but transfered to mean the fine levied for this breach: Robertson, Laws, 354 n. 1, and Downer, Leges Henrici, index verborum, s.v. ‘lahslit’. It is used in Hn 11.11 as the Danelaw equivalent of full wite in English law. 97 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 89–92. 98 Liebermann, ‘On the Instituta’, 87, 91.

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It is clear that Liebermann’s argument can only partially convince and that we cannot assume that the translator’s changes and use of Old English ipso facto reveal the law of his day. We have already seen that his retention of the language of his source, or his insertion of Old English synonyms or glosses, is not driven by any legal need. The appearance of English in the Latin cannot comfortably be used as a clue to the legal currency of that chapter of the text. However, the editing the translator performed is another matter. Although the translator felt the pull of his source, and this has dampened his urge to emend it, nevertheless there is no other persuasive reason why he would alter the source in the way he has except that he wanted to say something about the law. His additions, subtractions, and shifting of the source are clues to Anglo-Norman law and can tell us where to look for changes from previous law-making and also, can cautiously be used as a guide to postconquest practice or to legal expectations outside the king’s court. It can serve this purpose provided we continue to be aware of the translator’s limitations. Changes made by the translator are too numerous to rehearse them all here. Rather, I will merely point out a few examples where the translator has changed his source and suggest what level of insight we might gain from studying this change. First, a change may show procedures being altered. The translation of II Cn 8.2 shows the use of the ordeal extended into some cases where it previously was not ordered to be used. This chapter in the Instituta adds the ordeal to oath as the methods of purgation for accused counterfeiters.99 Second, the translator’s interventions can help clarify the developing meaning of the concepts with which a postconquest court worked. The gloss on foresteall at II.12 makes it clear that this is not just assaultus ‘assault’ – which is used in other contemporary texts to translate foresteall – but is an attack which is not defensive or retributive and involves intention to do harm.100 The translation can explain actual procedures where preconquest sources are vague. Nam ‘distraint’ is glossed to explain what anyone who wants to distrain has to do in the county courts in order to get permission to distrain. The translator’s addition here of a longer description of course implies nothing about any change in the law, but rather provides some confirmation of contemporary practices. Perhaps the translation can even at times reveal something of the conflicts in the translator’s world that would likely invoke legal remedies. The addition cited earlier specifying that compensation is allowed in cases of murder (I.5.2d) speaks, it appears, of the continuing existence of feud and the use of compensation to end it. This addition neatly supports the Worcester story of Wulfstan II’s attempts to end a particularly violent feud.101 This conjunction may mean that we should understand the fixation of postconquest translators on such tariffs and wergeld not as antiquarian obsession, but as a reflection of the still powerful preconquest ideal. There is much more to be said along these lines. The worry in each case is the degree to which the translator’s changes are new, rather than newly explicit about what had earlier been implicit. But even in the latter case, the translator at least

99

R. Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: the Medieval Judicial Ordeal, Oxford 1986, 64. By Glanvill’s day (c.1189) oath had disappeared as an option in such cases: The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. G. D. G. Hall, with a guide to further reading by M. T. Clanchy, Oxford 1993, 171, 176–7 (xiv, 1, 7). 100 F. E. Harmer, ed., Anglo-Saxon Writs, Manchester 1952, 81; cf. A. Cooper, ‘Extraordinary Privilege: the Trial of Penenden Heath and the Domesday Inquest’, EHR 116, 2001, 1167–92. 101 William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, 2.15, 38–9; P. Hyams, ‘Feud in Medieval England’, HSJ 3, 1992, 1–21.

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speaks to continuing vitality of the particular practices and does provide details about the law that we would otherwise not possess. If translation is performance, as some have said, then how do we evaluate the success or failure of the task of translating law? What were the consequences of the Instituta’s alterations of its source or for that matter, of the Leges Henrici’s heavy reliance on the author’s previous translations of Old English codes, or the Consiliatio Cnuti’s classicizing tendency in translation, or the Leis Willelme’s preservation of the English names for the offenses, but substitution of French names for agents and classes of people in its translation of Cnut? The answer to these questions depends on the status of written law in the half century after the Norman conquest. In so far as we can tell, this law was recorded by private or non-royal initiative. The texts are not the witnesses to King William I having done anything like Charlemagne, who ordered his comites to make copies of his latest capitularies.102 Some of these Anglo-Norman writers decided to record something closer to the actual practices of their day – for example, the author of the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, whose description is almost wholly free of any textual source and whose details fit what we know about law in the Danelaw.103 The Leges Henrici too aims to describe contemporary law, though it does so with significant reliance on preconquest texts, utilizing Cnut as its starting point.104 Others were more reliant on older texts – again to differing degrees. The legal results, then, suggest some conclusions about the relationship of written law to practiced law in the half century after 1066, and specifically of the relationship of the translation of legal texts to the recording and study of law. Although the texts achieve very different ends, this variety of accomplishment does not allow me to say that some succeeded and some failed. Rather, the variety says that the relationship of text to the administration of law was not thought to be only direct. The texts could be an intellectual and symbolic anchor to the practice of the law, or at times an indicator of what kinds of things the law ordered. What they were not – even when updated and accurate – was black letter law, to be consulted by iudices seeking black and white answers to legal questions. Even if some familiar with developments in canon law had wanted secular codes to serve this purpose, the texts they possessed had no authority to do so. Courts do not appear to resolve issues by referring to legal treatises or codes, yet copies of such texts were relatively abundant throughout the twelfth century.105 In a sense, copying Cnut around 1100 or translating it is something akin to copying or translating Magna Carta in the nineteenth century. It is both historical and legal at the same time. Why then did the translator translate? The Instituta and the other legal translations, like many postconquest translations, reflected not only the immediate needs of insular audiences after 1066, but also the rise of Latin in the late eleventh and twelfth century as part of the intellectual and cultural renaissance in western Europe, a renaissance in large part propelled by translation.106 In such a world, it is too easy to read legal translations such as the Instituta as explicable merely in terms of Norman-English relations. Not all translations produced after 1066 were responses to conquest and colonialism, though conquest inevitably cast continuing programs of 102

J. L. Nelson, ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick, Cambridge 1990, 280–5. 103 O’Brien, God’s Peace, 62–104. 104 See references to Cnut’s laws as sources in the commentary to Downer, Leges Henrici. 105 O’Brien, ‘Becket’, 3–4, 9–11; Wormald, Making, 155, 160. 106 M.-T. d’Alverny, ‘Translations and Translators’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson and G. Constable, Cambridge, Mass., 1982, 421–62.

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translation into a different light and imparted to them a new significance. In the broadest sense, translations in this age sought out strange knowledge. There was much interest in the orient – in foreign wisdom – just as had characterized the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, when translations were made of the Wonders of the World, Appolonius of Tyre, and the Letter of Alexander.107 After 1066, however, the movement is into Latin, not English, and the source languages and subjects multiply: from Arabic, the Astronomical Tables of Al-Khwarizmi, the Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology of Abu Ma’shar, and the Book of Talismans of Thabit ibn Qurra, all translated by Adelard of Bath;108 from the Greek, Adelard’s translation of Euclid’s Elements, and a description of the holy sites in Constantinople translated by an anonymous English pilgrim;109 interests implied by the study of Hebrew by English clerics and the donation to Durham cathedral of the medical books of Isaac, a north African Jew, translated into Latin by Constantine the African;110 and even the rising fascination with Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Hebrew, and Runic alphabets as symbols of antiquity and magic.111 This was, one might say, for the most part barbarian knowledge – barbarian in its enlarged classical sense meaning anything outside of the three sacred languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Such barbarian wisdom could be found by the curious scholar in England itself, in the texts in Old English that were in the kingdom’s libraries. It could be found even in texts of old law issued by the mighty monarchs of England’s past: barbarian wisdom indeed.

107

S. B. Greenfield and D. G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature, New York 1999,

99. 108

Burnett, Introduction, passim; Thñbit ibn Qurra, Book of Talismans (Liber Prestigiorum), selections translated by C. Burnett, ‘Talismans: Magic as Science? Necromancy among the Seven Liberal Arts’, in Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds, Aldershot 1996, no. I, 9–13; Abà Ma’šar, The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology, together with the Medieval Translation of Adelard of Bath, ed. C. Burnett, K. Yamamoto and M. Yano, Leiden 1994; al-Khwñrizm†, Die astronomischen Tafeln des Muhammed ibn MÃsñ al-Khwñrizm† in der Bearbeitung des Maslama ibn Ahmed al-Madjr†t† und der lateinische Übersetzung des Athelhard von Bath, ed. H. Suter, A. Bjørnbo and R. Bestborn, Copenhagen 1914. 109 The First Latin Translation of Euclid’s Elements Commonly Ascribed to Adelard of Bath, ed. H. L. L. Busard, Toronto 1983; K. N. Ciggaar, ‘Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais’, Revue des Études Byzantines 34, 1976, 211–67. 110 Bartlett, England, 519, 589–90. 111 R. Derolez, Runica Manuscripta: the English Tradition, Bruges 1954, esp. 219–29, 274–8.

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The French Interests of the Marshal Earls

THE FRENCH INTERESTS OF THE MARSHAL EARLS OF STRIGUIL AND PEMBROKE, 1189–12341 Daniel Power The so-called ‘end of the Anglo-Norman realm’ in 1204 is a pivotal moment in the history of England and France.2 At first glance it appears to bring the Anglo-Norman chapter in the history of the two countries to a complete close: although the kings of England and their counsellors long nourished hopes that ‘England and Normandy would be one’, most of the aristocracy soon had to abandon their possessions on one or other side of the Channel. Yet although the broad outlines of this disengagement are well known, its details are still relatively unexplored – in marked contrast with the establishment of the ‘Anglo-Norman realm’ after 1066. It is true that no source comparable to Domesday Book documents the transformation of Norman and English landowning society after 1204, but there is no shortage of evidence for the impact of the Capetian conquest of Normandy. Rather, the evidence, though abundant, is disparate, and much of it unpublished. Yet the more that historians have probed these sources, the more apparent it becomes that for many landowners the events of 1204, although a rupture, did not mark the end of their cross-Channel interests.3

1

In my research concerning the Marshals in France I have benefited greatly from discussions with David Crouch, Judith Everard, Sir James Holt, Keechang Kim, and especially Nicholas Vincent, and I owe many of the references below to them; and I have a particular debt of gratitude to Elisabeth van Houts, who oversaw my earliest research into this subject. The generous support of the British Academy aided the research for this article. I am also grateful to John Gillingham for allowing me to give this paper at Battle-in-Glasgow. Apart from William Marshal II’s intended pilgrimage to St Andrews in 1226, abandoned at Coventry (Patent Rolls 1216–25 HMSO 1901 [hereafter Pat. Rolls 1216–1225], 80–1), the Marshals had no Scottish connections until the marriage of Earl Gilbert to Marjorie, sister of Alexander II, in 1235. It was a shortlived association. In the notes below the following abbreviations are used: AN = Paris, Archives Nationales; ADCA = St-Brieuc, Archives Départementales des Côtes d’Armor; ADE = Évreux, Archives Départementales de l’Eure; ADSM = Rouen, Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime; BM Rouen = Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale; OBL = Oxford, Bodleian Library. 2 F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 2nd edn, Manchester 1961, remains the classic study of the events and context of 1204. More recent reassessments include L. Musset, ‘Quelques problèmes posés par l’annexation de la Normandie au domaine royal français’, in La France de Philippe Auguste: le temps des mutations, ed. R.-H. Bautier, Paris 1982, 291–307; N. C. Vincent, Peter des Roches: an Alien in English Politics 1205–38, Cambridge 1996, 42–7; D. Power, ‘King John and the Norman Aristocracy’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. S. D. Church, Woodbridge 1999, 117–36; J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn, London 2001, 86–102. 3 For general surveys, see Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 280–97, 328–58, corrected and augmented by W. B. Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy, 1204–59’, 2 vols, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds 1974. Case-studies include the many works of Nicholas Vincent (e.g. below, n. 90); K. Thompson, ‘The Anglo-Norman Aristocracy and 1204’, and D. Power, ‘ “Terra regis Anglie et terra Normannorum sibi invicem adversantur”: les héritages anglo-normands entre 1204 et 1244’, both in La Normandie et l’Angleterre au moyen âge: colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 3–7 octobre 2001, ed. V. Gazeau, Turnhout forthcoming (2004).

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The best-known example of a landowner who retained lands on both sides of the Channel, in defiance of the new circumstances, is the most famous magnate of the age, William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and Striguil and lord of Leinster. In addition to his landed wealth in the British Isles, William had held extensive lands in Normandy before 1204 in right of his wife, Isabel of Striguil (Chepstow), for which he did homage to Philip Augustus in 1205. After his death in 1219 Isabel negotiated with the king of France to keep her Norman lands, and when she died the following year her eldest son, William Marshal II, conferred them upon her second son Richard. However, with the death of his elder brother in 1231 Richard Marshal reunited the entire inheritance in Normandy and the British Isles, so that only after his death in 1234 did the Marshals lose their Norman inheritance. For thirty years after the Capetian conquest of Normandy, however, their activities ranged far and wide across France. The two leading biographies of William Marshal, by Sidney Painter and David Crouch, both note the political difficulties that befell him in the British Isles after 1204, partly because of his agreement with Philip Augustus.4 Nicholas Vincent’s magisterial reconstruction of Richard Marshal’s revolt against Henry III in 1233 has demonstrated how the rebel earl’s position north of the English Channel was compromised by his French connections.5 To date, though, there has been no single study of the Marshals’ French interests after 1204, apart from a brief summary in Wendy Stevenson’s unpublished thesis.6 This article aims to fill that gap. After a survey of the construction of the Marshal inheritance in France, it concentrates upon two main aspects of its history: the strategies of the Marshal dynasty that enabled its members to retain their possessions in France between 1204 and 1234, only to lose them thereafter; and the wider impact of their cross-Channel interests upon their lands, followers and Anglo-French relations. It will be seen that their initial success and ultimate failure in retaining their Norman lordships has broader significance for British and French history in the decades following the ‘loss of Normandy’. I. THE CREATION OF THE MARSHAL INHERITANCE IN FRANCE (1189–1204)

The career of William Marshal before 1189 is too well known to require discussion here.7 Fourth son of a Wiltshire baron, he initially had no prospects of obtaining lands in France, but since his early career as a household knight was spent almost entirely on the Continent, he must have hoped to acquire lands there long before his marriage to Isabel of Striguil in 1189. In fact, the first property that he received for his service came from his tournament rival Count Philip of Flanders, who granted him an unidentified fief in Flanders.8 More significant is a writ of Henry II recently discovered by Nicholas Vincent, which suggests that the king of England briefly

4

S. Painter, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England, Baltimore 1933, 136–45; D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, 1147–1219, London 1990, 85–93. 5 See below, n. 165. 6 Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy’ ii, 411–19; cf. i, 199, 207, 221. 7 See Painter, William Marshal, 13–77; Crouch, William Marshal, 9–61; also G. Duby, Guillaume le Maréchal, ou le meilleur chevalier du monde, Paris 1984. 8 Painter, William Marshal, 49, suggests that the Marshal acquired his Flemish fief mentioned in Rotuli Chartarum (1199–1216), ed. T. D. Hardy, ‘Record Commission’, 1837 [hereafter Rot. Chart.], 46, during his short exile from the Angevin court (1182–3).

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considered rewarding the Marshal with the heiress of Châteauroux, whose wealth purportedly matched that of the duke of Normandy.9 The Marshal’s proposed marriage to a Berrichon heiress shows that his ambitions ranged across the breadth of the Angevin ‘empire’, and that King Henry regarded him as a possible tool for strengthening the ties between his disparate territories.10 With his marriage to ‘the damsel of Striguil’ in 1189, achieved thanks to the favour of the newly acceded Richard I, William Marshal finally acquired lands in France, and by 1204, he held the castles of Longueville-sur-Scie and Meulers near Dieppe and Orbec near Lisieux, together with lands owing the services of more than sixty knights.11 Yet it is striking that at the time of her marriage Isabel’s rights in Normandy consisted chiefly of claims, not property. Almost all that her father, the famous conqueror of Leinster, Earl Richard fitzGilbert or ‘Strongbow’, had held in Normandy was a little knot of properties around Neufchâtel-en-Bray, possibly the dowry of his great-grandmother Rohese Giffard.12 From these modest beginnings William Marshal and Isabel of Striguil built up an extensive estate in Normandy by 1204, relying throughout upon the favour of the Angevin kings for their success. Their acquisitions included the lordship of Orbec and Bienfaite, the ancestral lands 9

N. C. Vincent, ‘William Marshal, King Henry II and the Honour of Châteauroux’, Archives 25, 2000, 1–15. For the heiress, Denise de Déols, and her lands, see Chronique de Robert de Torigni, ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols, Paris 1871–2, ii, 69; G. Devailly, Le Berry du Xe siècle au milieu du XIIIe, Paris 1973, 374–8, 409–13, 438–41, 459, 470–1. Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. P. Meyer, 3 vols, Paris 1891–4 [hereafter HGM], i, 9375–7, 9392–4, says that Henry II later promised her to Baldwin de Béthune, but Richard I gave her to Andrew de Chauvigny. 10 N. C. Vincent, ‘King Henry II and the Poitevins’, in La cour Plantagenêt (1154–1204): actes du colloque tenu à Thouars du 30 avril au 2 mai 1999, Poitiers 2000, 103–35, at 111–15, 119–26, notes Henry’s few attempts to create aristocratic connections between Aquitaine and his other dominions. William Marshal served as a royal envoy in Aquitaine as late as 1200 (Rot. Chart., 97). 11 See below, 203–5. The ‘William Marshal’ in the Pays d’Auge in c.1220 was probably William de Venoix (RHF xxiii, 619d, 635a; Complete Peerage xi, app. 122–5; BN, MS lat. 10087, p. 72, nos 159–60). For ‘la damisele d’Estreguil’, see HGM i, 9365, 9513–14; cf. 8303–4. 12 (i) Lands at St-Saëns and Osmonville: MRSN i, 59 (farmed for nearly 85 li. ang.); M.-T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century, 130n. In 1153 both ville had been held by Matthew, lord of St-Saëns: F. Lot, Études critiques sur l’abbaye de Saint-Wandrille, Paris 1913, 147–50, nos 85, 86; Orderic vi, 92, 162–4, 286–8, 370; RHF xxiii, 640f. By 1172, however, his barony was in royal hands: Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall, 3 vols, RS, 1896 [hereafter RBE], ii, 641–2 (Les Registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. J. W. Baldwin, i, Texte, Paris 1992, 275); MRSN i, 59, 131; ii, 551. (ii) Fesques (cant. Neufchâtel-en-Bray) and Fresnoy-en-Val and Varimpré (cant. Londinières): ADSM, 8 H 108, acts of ‘Richard son of Earl Gilbert’ (1148x1161) and his mother Countess Isabel (1175x1184); cf. Actes de Henri II i, no. CLXXVI (1156–61), p. 310. Cf. Bates, Regesta, no. 166, p. 554: Richard fitzGilbert, first Norman lord of Clare and husband of Rohese Giffard, held Lucy, which William Marshal lost in 1202 (below, 208). (iii) Bosanuilla (Beuzeville-la-Giffarde, cant. Bellencombre?): C. de Beaurepaire, ‘Recueil des chartes concernant l’abbaye de St-Victor-en-Caux’, Société de l’Histoire de Normandie, Mélanges 5, 1898, 333–455, at 380–2, ‘Earl Richard, son of Earl Gilbert’ confirms gifts approved by his great-uncle, Roger fitzRichard, and father, Count Gilbert; cf. p. 399 (Archbishop Rotrou confirms Roger’s gifts at Beuzeville, 1175). (iv) Cottévrard and Dreule, held by Richard Marshal in 1231 (ADSM, 9 H 1753), had belonged to Richard fitzGilbert (d. c.1090) and his son Roger fitzRichard (Chartes de l’abbaye de Jumièges, ed. J. J. Vernier, 2 vols, Rouen and Paris 1916, i, no. XXXI; Actes de Henri II ii, no. DXXVII, p. 94); Chartes du prieuré de Longueville . . . antérieures à 1204, ed. P. Le Cacheux, Rouen and Paris 1934, no. 1 (Regesta ii, no. 809). (v) Équiqueville: ADSM, 56 HP 1, two acts of ‘Countess Isabel, widow of Count Gilbert’ (Earl Richard’s mother), endowing the convent of Camp-Souverain near Saint-Saëns from the mill of Équiqueville; cf. Actes Henri II ii, no. DLXXVI, 1172–3x1182. HGM i, 9455–66, states that William stopped at Équiqueville during his journey to England in 1189 to marry Isabel; this sojourn becomes more explicable when we realise that Équiqueville was one of Isabel’s few estates on the Continent.

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of the Clare dynasty in Normandy,13 which had passed to Isabel’s grandfather Gilbert fitzGilbert (d.1148), earl of Pembroke, upon the death of his uncle Roger fitzRichard, but which had been lost in the time of Geoffrey of Anjou to Robert de Montfort.14 It was at Orbec that Robert had imprisoned his uncle, Count Waleran of Meulan, in 1153.15 Robert’s son Hugh de Montfort was still holding Orbec in 1194,16 and it is quite possible that William did not gain it until after the accession of King John, when his robust support for the new king appears to have won him the much greater prizes of the lordship of Pembroke and formal recognition of his comital title.17 Isabel’s family had not lost touch with these lands in the interim, however, for a lignage chevaleresque taking its name from Orbec had patronised the priory of Camp-Souverain near Saint-Saëns in the same period as Strongbow’s mother.18 The return of a descendant of Earl Gilbert of Pembroke to Orbec had been long in preparation. Although Orbec was the kernel of the Clare lands in Normandy, the Marshals’ greatest gains lay in Upper Normandy. The extinction of the Giffard lords of Longueville had given the various branches of the Clare family a claim to their lands through Rohese, aunt of the last Walter (III) Giffard and great-great-grandmother of Isabel Marshal. When Walter defected to Geoffrey of Anjou, King Stephen granted Walter’s English lands to his cousin, Earl Gilbert of Pembroke.19 They had later reverted to Walter, passing into royal hands when he died without heirs in 1164.20 Soon after his marriage William Marshal proffered two thousand marks to have one half of the Giffard inheritance. Accordingly, in November 1189 Richard I divided it between Isabel of Striguil and her cousin, Earl Richard de Clare of Hertford.21 Isabel’s share included the castles of Longueville-sur-Scie and Meulers in the eastern Pays de Caux, together with fiefs and domains extending as far west as Cany and

13

For Orbec, see Flanagan, Irish Society, 112–15. Little is heard of Bienfaite after the eleventh century, but in c.1265 it was part of the terre au Mareschal at Orbec (J. Strayer, The Royal Domain in the bailliage of Rouen, 2nd edn, London 1976, 148–9). 14 D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen 1135–1154, London 2000, especially 129–30. For Isabel’s ancestry, see J. H. Round, Feudal England, London 1909, 468–79; M. Altschul, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: the Clares 1217–1314, Baltimore 1965, 17–22. Orderic iv, 210–12, makes Roger fitzRichard, lord of Orbec, the eldest son, whereas Torigni, in Jumièges ii, 270, places him next after his brother Gilbert de Clare. 15 Torigni, ed. Delisle, i, 281–2; D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: the Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 1986, 75. In 1172 Robert III de Montfort owed the service of 2½ knights for Orbec and had the service of about 11 more: RBE ii, 627; Registres de Philippe Auguste, 268; cf. RHF xxiii, 636j. Robert II, nephew and captor of Waleran of Meulan, had died in 1164–5 (H. E. Mayer, ‘Ein unedierter Originalbrief aus dem Heiligen Land von 1164/65 und die Herren von Montfort-sur-Risle’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 46, 1990, 481–505). 16 Flanagan, Irish Society, 114 n. 8. 17 Crouch, William Marshal, 77–82. 18 ADSM, 56 HP 2, act of Landry d’Orbec when his daughter entered the convent (1181x1191), and two acts of his son Hugh d’Orbec (late twelfth century?). In 1173 Landry d’Orbec joined the Young King’s revolt, as did Robert de Montfort, whereas Strongbow remained loyal to Henry II: Howden, Gesta Regis i, 45–6; Diceto i, 375. 19 D. Crouch, ‘The March and the Welsh Kings’, in The Anarchy of Stephen’s Reign, ed. E. King, Oxford 1994, 255–89, at 274–5; Crouch, King Stephen, 130, 194, 206n, 224. 20 PR 11 Henry II, 25. 21 The Cartæ Antiquæ Rolls 11–20, ed. J. Conway Davies, Pipe Roll Society ns 33, 1960, no. 564; PR 2 Richard I, 144. The grant was confirmed by King John (Rot. Chart., 47).

Table I. The Succession to the Giffard Inheritance (1189) (The heirs who divided the Giffard inheritance are underlined) Walter I Giffard d.1084 lord of Longueville & Crendon

Walter II Giffard d.1102 earl of Buckingham lord of Longueville & Crendon

Walter III Giffard Isabel d.s.p. 1164 = Robert de Chandos

Gilbert k. 1040 count of Brionne (grandson of Richard I, duke of Normandy)

Rohese = Richard fitzGilbert d.c. 1090 lord of Tonbridge, Clare & Orbec

Gilbert fitzRichard = lord of Clare d. c.1115

Alice de Clermont

Alice of Chester = Richard fitzGilbert k. 1136 lord of Clare and Cardigan

Gilbert de Clare earl of Hertford d.s.p. 1152 Amice d.1223 = co-heiress of Gloucester

Roger de Clare = Matilda earl of Hertford de St-Hilaire d.1173

=

Roger lord of Orbec (eldest?)

Walter d.s.p. 1138 lord of Striguil

Robert fitzRichard lord of Dunmow d. c.1136

Gilbert fitzGilbert d. 1153 = Isabel de Meulan earl of Pembroke lord of Orbec & Striguil

Eva (Aiofe) = heiress of Leinster

Richard de Clare d.1217 earl of Hertford

Gilbert de Clare d.1230 earl of Gloucester & Hertford

Baldwin

William Marshal II d.1231 Eleanor, dau. of King John

Walter fitzRobert d. 1198

Richard fitzGilbert (Strongbow) earl of Striguil d.1176

Isabel of Striguil d. 1220

=

Richard Marshal k. 1234

Robert fitzWalter d.1235

William Marshal d.1219

Gilbert k. 1241

Walter d.1245

Anselm d.1245

5 daus.

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Montivilliers and as far south as the Rivers Andelle and Seine, including the port of Leure (now part of Le Havre).22 Like the eviction of Hugh de Montfort from Orbec, the Marshal’s acquisition of the Giffard honour relied heavily upon royal favour and disadvantaged other claimants. The lord of Dunmow, Walter fitzRobert, father of the future rebel Robert fitzWalter, was also descended in the male line from Rohese Giffard. If the two senior branches of the Clare family had equal claims to the Giffard inheritance by collateral descent through the female line, then why not also the most junior branch? Walter fitzRobert must surely have known that Rohese Giffard had been his grandmother (see Table I).23 There is also some evidence that other Giffard heirs were excluded who had stronger claims than either Isabel of Striguil or Richard de Clare. The late-twelfth-century cartulary of Mortemer-en-Lyons claimed that Walter III Giffard’s sister Isabel married Robert de Chandos, castellan of Gisors; if so, her claims appear to have descended by 1189 to Matilda de Chandos, mother of Philip de Colombières, and her cousin, another Robert de Chandos.24 It would be a striking 22 The honour comprised c.100 knights (RBE ii, 633; Registres de Philippe Auguste, 271); the number owed to the king is unknown. The main estates were Leure, Longueil (cant. Offranville), Parc d’Anxtot (cant. Bolbec), and Montivilliers; in 1180 it was farmed for over 750 li. ang., but Henry II had alienated land worth 45 li. at Auppegard to Richard du Hommet (MRSN i, 59–60; cf. Chartes de Longueville, nos XXIV, LXIX–LXXIII; VCH Bucks. ii, 261–2). For the Giffard lands before and after division see J. Le Maho, ‘L’apparition des seigneuries châtelaines dans le Grand-Caux à l’époque ducale’, Archéologie Médiévale 6, 1976, 3–148, at 31–48, 51–5, 110–11, 142 (map); also ADSM, 18 HP 28, fols 251r, 252r; 24 HP 76; 52 HP 28; Chartes de Longueville, nos I, XIV–XVI, XXI, XXIV, XLVI, LXVIII, XCII, XCIII, XCV; Newington Longeville Charters, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxford 1921, no. 1; Beaurepaire, ‘Guillaume le Maréchal’, 397–403; MRSN i, cxlviii–cxlix; Registres de Philippe Auguste, 287; RHF xxiii, 637gh (Petiville, held of the bishop of Bayeux), 641j–642g, 643a (de comitatu de Clara), 644bd (fiefs of Cany answering to the Marshal), 645m (fiefs held of Fécamp); H. Navel, ‘L’enquête de 1133 sur les fiefs de l’évêché de Bayeux’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 42, 1934, 5–80, at 18, 33 n. 91 (Petiville). 23 For family sentiment in this line, see J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, III: Patronage and Politics’, TRHS 5th ser. 23, 1984, 1–25, at 2–4, 20–2. It is a moot point whether the division of the Giffard honours also disadvantaged Richard de Clare by awarding esnecia in Normandy to William Marshal and Isabel, since this right more often went to the senior branch: see idem, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England, IV: The Heiress and the Alien’, ibid. 5th ser. 35, 1985, 1–28, at 10–20. 24 BN, MS lat. 18369, p. 1, ed. in P. F. Gallagher, ‘The Monastery of Mortemer-en-Lyons in the 12th Century: its History and its Cartulary’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Notre Dame, Indiana 1970, 157, and partly in RHF xiv, 509–10. Eyton deduced that Robert de Chandos’s wife Isabel was the daughter of Alvred d’Épaignes, the Domesday lord of Nether Stowey (Som.): see Herefordshire Domesday, ed. V. H. Galbraith and J. Tait, Pipe Roll Society n.s. 25, London 1950, 84–5. Eyton was followed by VCH Devon i, 392, and I. J. Sanders, English Baronies: a Study of their Origin and Descent (1086–1327), Oxford 1960, 67, but there is no direct evidence that Isabel was Alvred’s daughter. The Mortemer foundation narrative’s claims regarding the Giffards should be taken seriously, not least because they emphasise the role in the abbey’s early history of a supposed nepos of Walter and Isabel Giffard, William Malus Nepos (Gallagher, ‘Mortemer’, 158, 160, 164–5, 173). Cf. Orderic, vi, 342–4. If Isabel was the earl’s sister, who were her heirs in 1189? The castellan of Gisors and his wife have customarily been identified with the founders of Goldcliff Priory (Mon.), who were succeeded by their (significantly named?) son Walter: ADE, H 9 (act of Hywel of Caerleon confirming Chandos gifts to Goldcliff, c.1200); Regesta iii, no. 373; Rot. Chart., 95; Calendar of the Charter Rolls, 6 vols, PRO 1903–27 [hereafter Cal. Charter Rolls], iii, 359–63; Monasticon vi, 1022. Matilda de Chandos, wife of Philip de Colombières (d. c.1185) and lady of Nether Stowey, is normally identified as Walter’s daughter (Rotuli de dominabus et pueris et puellis, ed. J. H. Round, London 1913 [hereafter Rot. de Dom.], 60–1; Sanders, English Baronies, 67), and was certainly his successor (Surveys of the Estates of Glastonbury Abbey c.1135–1201, ed. N. E. Stacy, Oxford 2001, 87; cf. RBE i, 222). Robert de Chandos (d. c.1193), lord of Snodhill (Herefs.), was apparently descended from the founders of Goldcliff through another son, Robert (see Sanders, English Baronies, 79). The Chandos pedigree in Monasticon ii, 60, is both late and flawed.

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comment upon the exercise of King Richard’s patronage if Philip de Colombières was denied all right to the Giffard lands, even though he had the best claim of all, in favour of the Marshal; only a few months earlier this young knight had been captured by the escort of Henry II, including the Marshal, while fighting on Richard’s behalf outside Le Mans.25 A final point to remember when considering the Marshal’s eagerness to retain his Norman lands is that after his marriage he eagerly set about expanding and consolidating his lordship in Normandy, where he spent most of the last ten years of Angevin rule in the duchy.26 In 1200 he granted some of his English lands to Roger d’Abenon, son of his friend Enguerrand, in return for the fief of Abenon near Orbec,27 and acquired Chambois near Argentan from King John.28 He also obtained Le Pollet, at the mouth of the River Dieppe (Béthune), from the Cluniacs of Longueville, with the aim of establishing a market and fair that could attract commerce away from Dieppe into his own domain.29 He defended the interests of the monks of Longueville against the abbey of Saint-Wandrille,30 and there are signs that he was attempting to integrate his disparate Norman interests with each other and with his English possessions.31 Indeed, his successes in Normandy in this period contrast with his failure to assert his lordship in Ireland in 1200–1.32 William Marshal was not alone in showing confidence in the future of the Anglo-Norman ‘realm’. Around 1200 Earl Robert of Leicester built a new hall at Rugles near Breteuil.33 In 1200 Earl Ranulf of Chester reinforced his French concerns by marrying the sister of the lord of Fougères, whose dowry lay in both England and Normandy; at about the same time 25 26

HGM i, 8809–22, 8865–9. Matthew Paris’s epitaph for the elder Marshal calls him ‘Normannis negotiator, quia in ea multa comparavit’, a contrast with his reputation amongst the French, Irish and English (Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols. RS 1872–3 [hereafter Chronica Majora] iii, 43). HGM iii, cxlv–clvi, suggests that, like the Angevin kings, William spent the overwhelming part of the period Apr. 1194 – Dec. 1203 in Normandy. Beneficiaries of his charters include the abbeys of Bec (n. 47 below), Valmont (ADSM, 19 HP 1), Foucarmont (BM Rouen, Y 13, fols 72v, 160v) and the priory of Longueville (Chartes de Longueville, nos XC, XCII–XCIV; Beaurepaire, ‘Guillaume le Maréchal’, 397–403), the chapter of Lisieux Cathedral (A. Le Prévost, Mémoires et notes pour servir à l’histoire du département de l’Eure, 3 vols, Évreux 1862–9, iii, 67), and the abbey of La Vallée-Notre-Dame in the French Vexin (ADSM, 18 HP 28, fol. 252r–v). 27 Rot. Chart., 65, and Crouch, William Marshal, 84: Duxford (Cambs.) and 20 solidates in Great Chesterford (for which, see VCH Cambs., vi, 203–4; Flanagan, Irish Society, 124, 126n., 127n.). See C. A. F. Meekings, ‘Notes on the de Abernon Family before 1236’, Surrey Archaeological Collections 72, 1980, 157–73; the exchange led to a dispute between Nicola d’Abenon and William Marshal II in 1220 (ibid., 163–4). 28 Rotuli Normanniae, ed. T. D. Hardy, London 1835 [hereafter Rot. Norm.], 39 (1200–1); Rot. Chart., 75, for the grant of a Jew at Chambois (8 Sept. 1200). The countess of St-Quentin had ceded Chambois to King John for 1000 li. ang. (ibid., 96). In 1204 Philip Augustus granted it to Guérin de Glapion, the former seneschal of Normandy (Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. H. Delaborde et al., 4 vols, Paris 1916–79, no. 802). 29 Beaurepaire, ‘Guillaume le Maréchal’, 397–8, 402–3; Chartes de Longueville, no. XCII. Rivalry between the two ports continued until Philip IV granted Le Pollet to the archbishops of Rouen, lords of Dieppe (Cartulaire Normand de Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint Louis et Philippe-le-Hardi, ed. L. Delisle, Caen 1852, no. 1024). 30 Beaurepaire, ‘Guillaume le Maréchal’, 399–400. 31 BM Rouen, Y 13, fol. 160v (Cal. Docs France, no. 194): act of William Marshal for Foucarmont concerning Orbec (s.d.). San Marino, Huntington Library, Stowe Grenville Evidences, STG Box 5, no. 18 (transcript courtesy of David Crouch and Nicholas Vincent): marriage of Matthew de Lucy, from the Striguil lands in Normandy (cf. BM Rouen, Y 13, fol. 88v), to Denise of (Long) Crendon, witnessed by William Marshal and ‘Countess Isabel’ (1189x1199). 32 Crouch, William Marshal, 79–80. 33 ‘Querimoniæ Normannorum 1247’, RHF xxiv, I, 1–73 [hereafter QN], no. 264.

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the daughter of Hugh de Gournay brought a similar marriage portion to the young earl of Gloucester, Amaury d’Évreux.34 Despite their vast English estates, Earl Hamelin and Countess Isabel de Warenne chose to be buried at Notre-Dame-du-Pré near Rouen in 1202 and 1203 respectively.35 The acknowledged leaders of Norman society had arguably never exuded so much confidence in the Anglo-Norman connection as they did in the opening years of the reign of King John. Yet the Marshal differed from most of the other Anglo-Norman magnates both because his Norman estate had been so recently put together, and in his debt to the patronage of the Angevin kings. He was not alone in Normandy in exploiting the troubled accession of King John to make good various claims; the earl of Chester acquired Vire, for instance.36 Nor was William the only one to owe his position in the duchy to his marriage: so did the earl Warenne and the counts of Eu and Aumale. Yet no one had achieved quite so much through royal favour, and so often at the expense of his fellow barons. His frequent presence in Normandy after 1189 could not compensate for his lack of longstanding connections with his Norman lands. William was one of the most active defenders of the duchy in 1202–03, and was compromised by his close association with King John.37 His position in Normandy in 1204 appears remarkably precarious. The fact that he, almost alone amongst English magnates, retained his Norman lands without interruption until his death is therefore all the more remarkable, although it defies easy explanation. II. THE PRESERVATION OF THE MARSHAL LORDSHIP (1204–20)

Surviving the Fall of Angevin Normandy (1204–5) There are two pivotal sets of agreements in the survival of the Marshal lordship in Normandy after 1204: William’s arrangements with Philip Augustus in 1204–5, and his widow’s and sons’ agreements with the same king in 1219–20. In addition, the succession of Richard Marshal to the English lands in 1231 and the end of the Marshal lordship in Normandy in 1234 are also instructive for an appraisal of the Marshals’ strategies in France. The first, crucial event was the well-known pact between the earl and Philip Augustus at Lisieux in May 1204, when Lower Normandy was succumbing to the French invasion and the earls of Pembroke and Leicester were attempting to negotiate a truce on John’s behalf.38 The Marshal agreed to hand over his ‘castle and fortress’ of Orbec at once, expressly permitting the king of France to use it immedi34

The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c.1071–1237, ed. G. Barraclough, Chester 1988, no. 318; D. Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Cambridge forthcoming, ch. 7. 35 ADSM, 20 HP 5: vidimus of Archbishop Walter of Rouen (1203), of grant by William de Warenne, stating that his parents and brothers are buried at Notre-Dame-du-Pré. This disproves the assertion of the fifteenth-century Lewes cartulary that they were buried at Lewes: The Chartulary of the Priory of St Pancras of Lewes, ed. L. F. Salzman, 2 vols, Lewes 1932–4, ii, 16; cf. Complete Peerage xii, I, 500, and EYC viii, 14 n. 7, 19 nn. 13–14. 36 V. D. Moss, ‘The Norman Exchequer Rolls of King John’, in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Church, 101–16, at 105–8. 37 For the Marshal’s role in the duchy’s defence, see Painter, William Marshal, 127–36; Crouch, William Marshal, 82–4; S. R. Packard, Miscellaneous Records of the Norman Exchequer, 1199–1204, Northampton MA 1927, esp. 65–9. For an extreme view of his compromising ties to King John, see M. D. Legge, ‘William the Marshal and Arthur of Brittany’, BIHR 4, 1982, 18–24. 38 Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, RS, 1875, 144–5, also naming the archbishop of Canterbury and bishops of Norwich and Ely; HGM ii, 12853–900, places the parley at Bec.

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ately against the Norman forces still loyal to King John. For the time being Longueville and Meulers would be handed over to a knight of the Pays de Bray, Osbert de Rouvray, but on Midsummer’s Day both fortresses would become available to Philip Augustus for his campaigns as well.39 The earl would also purchase a respite until May 1205 for five hundred marks, but could not reclaim anything that he had already lost – probably a reference to Lucy and Ménonval in the honour of Mortemer, which the king of France had captured at the outset of the war and conferred upon Count Renaud of Boulogne, and to Chambois.40 King Philip had promised Meulers to Count Renaud, as soon as it should be taken; the Marshal was therefore driven by the utmost urgency to prevent any further erosion of his wife’s inheritance.41 The earl of Leicester received a similar respite but died within its term.42 The willingness of the king of France to make these concessions were undoubtedly an exceptional favour to two respected noblemen, with whom Philip had had more previous dealings than any other Anglo-Norman barons – apart, that is, from rebels against the Angevin kings. The Marshal had acted as an envoy to the Capetian king in 1188,43 and when Philip’s forces began to make headway against John in 1202–3, it was William who was sent to seek peace with the king of France: the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal depicts a sincere understanding between the earl and this longstanding adversary.44 In the Marshal’s case, Philip may also have been swayed by the earl’s age, since he was already old by medieval standards but his sons were still under age. In 1204, the most likely outcome was that the Marshal would die leaving a minor heir, which would allow the king of France to take control of the lands while postponing any decision regarding their ultimate fate. Yet some aspects of this agreement have more general significance.45 The role of Osbert de Rouvray in particular reveals much about how the king of France subdued the province. Osbert’s lands in the Pays de Bray and Norman Vexin lay not far from the earl’s possessions and his longstanding associations with the Marshal antedated William’s marriage.46 In May 1204, what recommended Osbert, a member of the Rouen garrison, to both the king of France and the earl of Pembroke was the presence of Osbert’s younger brother John in the French camp: indeed, John would soon become the first Capetian castellan or bailli of Arques, giving him jurisdiction over most of the Marshal lands in Upper Normandy.47 At the surrender of Rouen a few weeks later, John de Rouvray 39 40

Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. A. Teulet, 5 vols, Paris 1863–1909, i, no. 715. RHF xxiii, 641c (cf. Registres de Philippe Auguste, 289); Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. H. Delaborde, 2 vols, Paris 1882–5, 152; Layettes, i, no. 733 (Mortemer), 1282 (wood of Lucy in royal hands, 1218). BM Rouen, Y 13, fols 88r–89r, shows Varimpré near Lucy under the Marshal’s seneschal William de Héricourt in 1203, but under Count Renaud by 1204. For Lucy, Varimpré and Chambois, see above, nn. 12, 28. 41 Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. H. Delaborde et al., 4 vols, Paris 1916–79, ii, no. 770. The Marshal had taken over Count Renaud’s lands at Lillebonne in 1202 (Painter, William Marshal, 129). 42 RHF xviii, 352 (Lyre chronicle). 43 Howden, Gesta Regis ii, 45–6; Howden, Chronica ii, 344. For the earl of Leicester and Philip Augustus, see D. Power, ‘L’aristocratie Plantagenêt face aux conflits capétiens-angevins: l’exemple du traité de Louviers (1196)’, in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154–1224), ed. M. Aurell, Poitiers 2001, 121–37. 44 HGM ii, 12676–704; Painter, William Marshal, 134–5, 225–6. 45 C. L. H. Coulson, ‘Fortress-policy in Capetian tradition and Angevin practice: aspects of the conquest of Normandy by Philip Augustus’, ANS 6, 1983 (1984), 13–38, at 37–8. 46 D.J. Power, ‘John de Rouvray and the knights of the Pays de Bray, c. 1180–1225’, 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, 361–84. 47 Power, ‘John de Rouvray’, 374–5, 379–81; see also G.-A. de la Roque, Histoire Généalogique de la

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was one of the two knights nominated to arrange the submission of castles across the duchy.48 The Marshal’s pact demonstrates in detail the sort of arrangements that must have been made all over Normandy between the king of France and the Norman aristocracy. In spring 1205, when William returned to France to confirm his submission to the French king and redeem his Norman lands, his personal relationship with Philip Augustus must have made him more confident of success than his fellow barons, even though he now had to rely upon the good will of two hostile royal dynasties at once.49 Besides, all his potential rivals for his Norman lands had retreated to England without coming to terms with the French king.50 The nature and significance of the earl’s submission to King Philip in 1205 has been debated by historians for over a century; even at the time there was much dispute as to what the king and earl had agreed.51 If there was one precedent that the Marshal might have had in mind, it was his refusal to do homage to Richard I for his Irish lands in 1194, citing his homage to Count John; there were also examples from the Norman frontier.52 But in fact, the Marshal’s actions created precedents rather than followed them: in 1220, the Marshal’s son claimed that his father’s oath to the king of France amounted to ‘liege homage this side of the sea’, which would have been inconceivable before 1204.53 In any case, William’s success was not unique; although no other baron initially retained lands in both Normandy and England, three of the chief barons of Ponthieu, the lords of Saint-Valéry, Cayeux and Bailleul, achieved a similar juggling act, although the king of France was not their immediate lord.54

The Preservation of an Anglo-Norman Inheritance (1219–20) At the death of William Marshal in May 1219, William the younger’s standing in England guaranteed his undisputed succession to his father’s English and Irish lands. By contrast, the Norman honours lay at the mercy of the French Crown. The agreement of 1205 did not oblige Philip Augustus to pass the honours in 1219 to the adult William the younger, who had recently deserted Philip’s son in the Magna Carta war and who had no longstanding rapport with the French court. Philip II could have

Maison de Harcourt, 4 vols, Paris 1663, i, 314 (act of William Marshal and Isabel for Bec, witnessed by Osbert de Rouvray). 48 Power, ‘King John’, 134–5, also noting Osbert at Rouen in May 1204. 49 HGM ii, 12957–66, and Layettes i, no. 1397; both allege that King John approved William’s return to France. 50 The lands of the earl of Clare and Hugh de Montfort were confiscated in spring 1205: Actes de Philippe Auguste ii, no. 901. Hugh’s son Robert later recovered a portion of them (AN, L 979, no. 57; Cartulaire Normand, no. 408; QN, no. 1). Robert fitzWalter was still in contact with the Norman lands of his wife, Gunnora de Valognes, in c.1208 (ADSM, 20 HP 6). 51 HGM ii, 12921–13278; K. Norgate, John Lackland, London 1902, 106–7; Painter, William Marshal, 140–1; Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 294–5; W. L. Warren, King John, 2nd edn, London 1978, 113; Crouch, William Marshal, 85–6. 52 Painter, William Marshal, 106–7; Crouch, William Marshal, 71–2, 86–7, also noting Count Waleran of Meulan’s arrangements with Louis VII (concerning Gournay-sur-Marne); Rot. Chart., 58, for the count of Dreux’s agreement with Henry II. 53 Layettes i, no. 1397 ‘hominagium ligium citra mare’. I have not found examples of this phrase elsewhere. HGM ii, 12944–13148, repeatedly contrasts the Marshal’s homage to King Philip with accusations that he had sworn Philip ‘homage e feelté et alïence’ against King John. 54 For Thomas de St-Valéry after 1204, see Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy’ i, 207, 221; for all three Ponthevins, see also Power, ‘L’aristocratie Plantagenêt’, 323, and the sources there cited.

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quite justifiably confiscated Longueville and Orbec in 1219, or in 1220 after Countess Isabel’s death, and had acted no less harshly towards other families. However, the succession to the old earl in France appears to have been carefully prepared. The second son, Richard, had apparently had no part in English royal affairs since 1214, thereby avoiding any antagonism to Louis of France during the latter’s invasion of England.55 For a time before 1218 he may have farmed the manor of Bosham (Sussex), which pertained to his father’s marshalcy, but even this perquisite, providing him with revenues from a Channel port, would aid a career in France.56 According to the Histoire Richard was at the French court when it received the news of the old Marshal’s death: whether he had been there for some years or only since the onset of his father’s last illness, his chief task must have been to ensure the preservation of the Norman honours once the old earl died.57 Nothing was to be left to chance, however: soon after her husband’s death Countess Isabel crossed to France and did homage for her Norman lands, and secured a promise that her sons William and Richard might do the same.58 Isabel secured far more favourable terms than another great widow, Countess Alice of Eu, who was attempting to reconstruct her cross-Channel inheritance that same summer, who had to pay a vast indemnity and promise not to remarry without the consent of the king of France.59 When Isabel in turn died the following year, her elder two sons went to the French court: Richard swore liege homage against all men for his father’s Norman lands, but if he were to die, William would recover his lands and perform only ‘liege homage on this side of the sea’ like his father. Although the terms of the agreement do not mention it, Richard also had to pay more than 800 livres parisis to the king of France, presumably as a relief.60 In view of the prudence of these arrangements, it is at first sight surprising that by 1222 Richard Marshal was also lord of Long Crendon, one of the two main Giffard manors in England that had come to the Marshals.61 Since William Marshal II continued to pay scutage for half the Giffard honour, it is likely that he had conferred a single manor upon his younger brother on account of its traditional connection with Longueville.62 The ancient tie between the Norman and English Giffard lands overrode the newer political realities – and, as we shall see, not just for Richard himself.63 Such ‘cross-Channel’ lordships evidently still seemed viable in 1220, when the 55 56

For his participation in the Poitevin campaign (1214), see HGM ii, 14708–26. PR 2 Henry III, 19: ‘Willelmus Mariscallus Ricardus fol. eius [blank] xliij li. bl. de firma de Boseham.’ The words ‘Richard his son’ are interlined for deletion. 57 HGM ii, 19113–22. Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp, 2 vols, Camden Society 4th ser. 31, 1987, ii, no. 1056, shows that Richard was in England at some point in 1219–20. 58 Layettes i, no. 1354. 59 Ibid. i, nos 1353, 1360. 60 Ibid. i, no. 1397; Actes de Philippe Auguste iv, no. 1641; M. Nortier and J. W. Baldwin, ‘Contributions à l’étude des finances de Philippe Auguste’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 138, 1980, 5–33, at 11, 18. 61 Richard appears in Buckinghamshire from 1222, when the sheriff was pursuing him for his father’s debts: Excerpta e Rotulis Finium in Turri Londiniensi asservatis, ed. C. Roberts, Record Commission 1835 [hereafter Exc. e Rot. Fin.], i, 97. 62 E.g. PRO, E 372/69 (PR 9 Henry III), m. 1; PR 14 Henry III, 131. Richard also sought 40 acres at Charlton Marshall which he claimed had been assigned to him as inheritance: Curia Regis Rolls, Richard I–Henry III, 19 vols, HMSO 1922–2002 [hereafter CRR] xiii, nos 861, 1355, 1730, 2294, 2311; xiv, nos 672, 1150, 1723. OBL, MS Dugdale 39, fol. 68r: acts of Countess Isabella and her sons William and Richard in favour of William Taylour of Crendon, proving that William II initially inherited Crendon; cf. J. G. Jenkins, ‘The Lost Cartulary of Nutley Abbey’, Huntington Quarterly Review 17, 1954, 379–96, at 38, no. 19. 63 Below, 218–20.

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Anglo-French truce had been renewed and relations between the two monarchies were enjoying a modest thaw.64 At the same time, the head of the Marshal dynasty was freed from his parents’ obligations to the king of France, and he had made satisfactory provision for a very ambitious younger brother while maintaining most of his Anglo-Irish estates intact. But for the death of William Marshal the younger without offspring in 1231, Richard Marshal would have remained like the handful of other families who managed to hold lands on both sides of the Channel in the 1220s and 1230s: living under the periodic threat of confiscation, holding only a small estate across the Channel from the main lordship, and with his lands overseas eventually falling into the hands of the Crown or the senior branch of his family. III. THE MARSHAL LORDSHIP

What did holding lands simultaneously in both countries mean in practice? The history of the Marshal lordship in France falls into four main phases. Between 1189 and 1204, William Marshal and Isabel established and consolidated their lordship in Normandy. Between 1204 and 1220, they were absentee landlords. In contrast, between 1220 and 1231 the French lands were once more held by a resident lord, who nevertheless attempted to pursue the traditional lifestyle of living on both sides of the Channel. Finally, between 1231 and 1234, Earl Richard’s absence in England, Wales and Ireland left his French lands once more bereft of a resident lord.

The Marshal as French Lord, 1204–19 While between 1189 and 1203 William Marshal had probably spent much of his time in Normandy, there is no evidence that he ever saw his Norman lands again after 1204, although his embassy to King Philip in 1216 probably gave him an opportunity to do so.65 The only act that we can confidently ascribe to this period was issued by Countess Isabel for Bec-Hellouin, most probably when she visited the French court after her husband’s death.66 William Marshal had previously been an active landlord in Normandy, developing ports, exploiting the Jews, and purchasing land, and there are hints that he attempted to maintain his contacts with his Norman lands after 1204. In 1205–6 he sought royal licences to import wine to England from Normandy and another to export wheat from Bosham.67 Yet his absence removed his direct influence over his Norman lands. In or after 1202, William had granted half the church of Équiqueville to the priory of Longueville, the patronal house of the Giffard lands. His gift embroiled him in a dispute with the abbot of Saint-Wandrille, who claimed rights in the church. With the earl effectively absent from Normandy after May 1204, the two religious houses reached a compromise without him in 1206.68 Those present at 64

The Harcourts and Marmions also re-established links across the Channel in 1220: Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 339, 342–3, corrected by Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy’ ii, 421–5, 434–6; Thompson, ‘Anglo-Norman Aristocracy’. For the truce, see Actes de Philippe Auguste iv, nos 1601–2; Layettes i, nos 1387–9; D. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III, London 1990, 153–6, 176–9. 65 Coggeshall, 180; Painter, William Marshal, 185. 66 BN, MS lat. 13905, p. 168 (s.d.): the wording implies that William Marshal I was dead. 67 Rotuli de oblatis et finibus, ed. T. D. Hardy, ‘Record Commission’ 1835 [hereafter Rot. Ob. Fin.], 307, 327; Rotuli Litterarum Patentium, ed. T. D. Hardy, ‘Record Commission’ 1835 [hereafter Rot. Pat.], 60. 68 Beaurepaire, ‘Guillaume le Maréchal’, 399–400. The church had belonged to St-Wandrille in 1153 (Lot, St-Wandrille, 149, no. 86).

Table II. The marriages and claims of Gervaise de Dinan (simplified genealogy) Alan de Dinan*

Roland de Dinan*

Andrew de Vitré

Emma* = Robert de Vitré*

X (1) = Alan de Dinan* = d.1198

Juhel de Mayenne (1) = Gervaise* = d.1220 d.1238–9 =

Dreux de Mello (1) = Isabel Louis, ct. of Sancerre (2) =

(2)

Clemence de Fougères [later countess of Chester]

(2) Geoffrey, visc. of Rohan d. 1221 (3) Richard Marshal* k. 1234

Margaret = Henry d’Avaugour

* held or claimed Burton Latimer (Northants.)

Gilbert de Tillières = d.1190–1

(1)

Eleanor = d.1233

Thomas Malesmains* = Joan* d. 1219 d.1221

Joan = Peter ct. of Vendôme

(2)

William d.1196 earl of Salisbury

Ela* = William Longuespee* d.1261 earl of Salisbury d.1226

Nicholas Malesmains* d.1239

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this amicabilis compositio included John de Rouvray, now castellan of Arques, Osbert de Rouvray, and William de Héricourt, who had been the Marshal’s seneschal in Upper Normandy in 1202–3.69 As Osbert had been entrusted with Longueville and Meulers in 1204 he may have been keeping a benign eye on William Marshal’s lands, and involved John de Rouvray’s perhaps more stifling support to this effect.70 When a hermitage was founded near Orbec in 1208, the witnesses included Gilbert, ‘chaplain of Orbec’, who presumably came from the Marshal household in the castle of Orbec, but there was no Marshal confirmation.71 So William was unable to influence his Norman lordships directly, but some of his followers maintained his interests during his absence. The Marshal was also still regarded as a member of the Norman political community: the compiler of the first register of Philip Augustus numbered the lord of Longueville and Orbec amongst the barones regis Francorum, one of only four Normans to receive that accolade.72 In practice, however, it no longer appeared possible to be a great lord in both countries simultaneously.

Richard Marshal, Lord of Longueville and Orbec (1220–31) Once Richard Marshal was firmly ensconced at Longueville and Orbec, in contrast, there is ample evidence of seigneurial activity. Beneficiaries of his charters include the abbeys of Jumièges73 and Foucarmont74 and the priories of Mont-aux-Malades75 and Longueville.76 He appears at assizes at Longueville itself and at Rouen,77 and is also said to have become the marshal of the French royal army.78 Since the conquest of Normandy had stripped the duchy of so many of its greatest landowners, the lord of Longueville ranked even more highly within the province than his father had before 1204.79 Oddly enough, most of Richard’s recorded activities in France were not in Normandy but in Brittany. By May 1223 he had married Gervaise, daughter and heiress of Alan de Dinan, one of the chief barons of Brittany (see Table II). The match is a curious one. Gervaise had already been married twice: to Juhel de Mayenne (d. 1220), the greatest baron of Maine, and then, briefly, to Geoffrey,

69 70

Rot. Pat., 13; cf. Chartes de Jumièges ii, no. CCXLIV; above, n. 40. We should remember here the praise that John de Rouvray allegedly lavished upon William Marshal after the latter’s death: HGM ii, 19153–58; Power, ‘John de Rouvray’, 380. 71 C. Vasseur, ‘L’ermitage de Saint-Christophe-de-Mervilly’, Bulletin Monumental 29, 1863, 321–36, at 323, 324 n. 1. 72 Registres de Philippe Auguste, 330: the others were Fulk Paynel, Ralph Taisson, and William du Hommet, constable of Normandy. 73 ADSM, 9 H 1753: Richard Marshal, lord of Longueville and Dinan, grants a house near Cottévrard (May 1231). 74 ADSM, 8 H 254 (vidimus of 1391): act of Richard Marshal, lord of Longueville, concerning Hémy (cant. Londinières, cne. Preuseville) (1228). 75 ADSM, 25 HP 1: Richard Marshal confirms the sale of a house at Rouen to Mont-aux-Malades, witnessed by Geoffrey Martel, kt, and Oliver de Dinan (Rouen, 1223). 76 ADSM, 24 HP 22 (inventory of Longueville acts, 1782), p. 88: notice of a lost act of Richard Marshal, lord of Longueville (1231). 77 ADE, H 711, fol. 148r (Recueil des Jugements de l’Échiquier de Normandie au XIIIe siècle, ed. L. Delisle, Paris 1864, no. 467n. dated 1 April 1231). According to the Capetian system this act could also be dated 1 April 1232. 78 Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols, RS 1864–9 [hereafter Ann. Mon. iv, 72; Chronica Majora iii, 255, notes his experience in French warfare. 79 See below, 216.

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viscount of Rohan (d. 1221), a leading Breton magnate.80 Marriage to Gervaise brought Richard Marshal immense status in northwest France. She was closely related to the chief lineages of Brittany.81 As heiress of the leading cadet branch of the lords of Dinan, she held the castles of Léhon and Bécherel, as well as the southern half of Dinan itself,82 and her authority was not heavily compromised by the presence of a comital seneschal at Dinan.83 Her political importance had been demonstrated in 1220, when, in the wake of the death of Juhel de Mayenne, the Capetian baillis in Normandy had moved to garrison his castles of Guarplic and Pontorson and had specifically forbidden Gervaise ‘de Mayenne’ to shelter a renegade Breton nobleman who had designs upon Guarplic.84 The marriage of Gervaise to a Norman lord who owed so much to French royal favour presumably aided Philip Augustus in his attempts to control the Breton fringes of his realm.85 Yet Richard’s marriage was less suitable for an aspiring dynast, for Gervaise already had three daughters by Juhel de Mayenne. By 1216 the eldest, Isabel, had married a French curialis, Dreux de Mello, lord of Loches in Touraine and son of the constable of France, and they had duly succeeded to Juhel’s inheritance in 1220.86 80

For Gervaise’s marriages, see BN, MS fr. 22325, pp. 669–70 (H. Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’histoire écclésiastique et civile de Bretagne, 3 vols, Paris 1742–6, i, cols 893–4); Anciens Évêchés de Bretagne, ed. J. Geslin de Bourgogne and A. de Barthélemy, 4 vols, Paris 1855–64, iv, 367–8, no XX; Complete Peerage x, 370. 81 Her father Alan de Dinan, a younger son of Robert de Vitré, inherited the lands and surname of his uncle Roland de Dinan: Torigni, ed. Delisle, ii, 46; BN, MS lat. 5441, III, pp. 339–40 (partly ed. in Morice, Preuves i, col. 664). Gervaise’s mother is usually identified as Clemence de Fougères, later countess of Chester, who certainly married Gervaise’s father Alan de Dinan (J. R. Planché, ‘Confirmation Charter of Ranulf II, Earl of Chester’, Journ. BAA 6, 1850, 131–8, at 135–6). However, in 1200 Clemence’s grandfather William du Hommet was living and her brother Geoffrey, lord of Fougères, was still a minor. It is therefore inconceivable that Gervaise, who married Juhel de Mayenne before 1198 (Morice, Preuves, col. 729; Angers, AD Maine-et-Loire, 10 H 1, pp. 15–19) and bore him a child soon afterwards, was Clemence’s daughter. Gervaise must have been Alan’s daughter by an unknown first wife (cf. Complete Peerage x, 370g). Judith Everard has pointed out to me that the wife of the Breton magnate Geoffrey de Montfort, a daughter of Roland de Saie, bore the relatively rare name Gervaise (Actes de Henri II ii, no. DLI; Torigni, ed. Delisle, ii, 97). Geoffrey de Montfort had assisted the rebellion of Roland de Dinan in 1168 (ibid. ii, 6); might he have married one of his daughters to Roland’s nephew and adopted heir at the same time? 82 For the family of Dinan-Bécherel, see M. Jones, The Family of Dinan in England in the Middle Ages, Dinan 1987, 24–8; P. Meazey, Dinan au temps des Seigneurs, Guingamp 1997, 65–78; J. A. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire 1158–1203, Cambridge 2000, 45–6, 189–92. Torigni, ed. Delisles, ii, 6, calls Léhon ‘natura et arte munitissimum’; for its ruins, see A. Subert, ‘L’abbaye de Léhon: témoin du premier art gothique’, Dinan au moyen âge, ed. L.-R. Vilbert, Dinan 1986, 313–32, at 318. 83 Angers, AD Maine-et-Loire, H 3358: Geoffrey Prigent, senescaulus comitis in Dinanno, announces a judgment made in, and warranted by, the count’s court (1218). However, there are numerous contemporary acts from the court of Juhel de Mayenne as lord of Dinan, one of the last (1219) being BN, MS lat. 5430a, p. 45 (Morice, Preuves i, col. 839). 84 Catalogue des actes de Philippe-Auguste, ed. L. Delisle, Paris 1856, nos 1228–9, 2017 (ed. pp. 521–2). Juhel had received the island fortress of Guarplic (Le Guesclin) as a reward for expelling an English force there in 1210: Guillaume le Breton i, 227–8; Layettes i, no. 936. Juhel’s death must have provoked the castle’s exiled lord, Peter de Guarplic, who had first admitted the English, to attempt to recover Guarplic. In 1231 it was in the hands of Juhel’s son-in-law Dreux de Mello: another son-in-law, Henry d’Avaugour, hoped that Dreux might allow him to take refuge there from the duke of Brittany (Layettes ii, no. 2135; cf. nos 2139, 2289, 2308). For Pontorson, given to Juhel in c.1205 and conceded by Henry d’Avaugour to Louis IX in 1233, see Actes de Philippe Auguste ii, no. 915; Layettes ii, nos 2253–5. 85 Meazey, Dinan, 84–5, suggests that the king of France arranged Gervaise’s marriage to Richard at the same time as her daughter Margaret married Henry d’Avaugour, as a means of controlling this region. 86 Anciens Évêchés iv, 365, nos XIV (Morice, Preuves i, col. 833), XV–XVI, which show that Dreux was already called ‘lord of Dinan’ in 1218. The marriage must have taken place after 1211 (cf. Layettes i, no. 996).

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The two younger daughters soon married Henry d’Avaugour, the noblest of all the Bretons who had once been destined to marry the duchess of Brittany herself, and the count of Vendôme.87 Even if Gervaise were still young enough to have a son by Richard, he was unlikely to have the wherewithal to oppose her powerful sons-in-law. So Richard now counted amongst the leading Breton barons: most of his extant acts before his succession to the earldom of Pembroke concern his wife’s Breton lands,88 and he witnessed the foundation of the fortress of Saint-Aubindu-Cormier by the duke of Brittany in 1225, but he can have had few hopes of establishing a line of Marshal lords of Dinan.89 More significant for the present study, Richard also derived much value from the marriage in England. Nicholas Vincent has drawn attention to the curious Anglo-Breton context of the 1220s, in which the confiscated ‘lands of the Bretons’ formed a subgroup of the ‘lands of the Normans’, passing between a number of loosely connected families with Breton links, a process that became increasingly entangled with the English regency’s attempts to use the stridently independent duke of Brittany, Peter Mauclerc, as its proxy in France.90 From her father and previous husbands Gervaise received a string of claims to property in England as her inheritance or dower, and within a few years of their marriage she and Richard began to plead for them in the king’s court. Before 1204 Juhel de Mayenne had held the manor of Ringwood (Hants) on Gervaise’s behalf, since when it had had a series of custodians as one of the terre Britonum, briefly including William Marshal II.91 In February 1226, however, Richard did homage to Henry III for Ringwood as Gervaise’s right and inheritance.92 The following month he did homage for the reversion of the manor of Fen Stanton (Cambs.) under similar terms.93 By 1228 he and Gervaise had also been granted custody of Burton Latimer (Northants), which had once belonged to her father but which since 1216 her cousin, Joan de Tillières, and the latter’s husband Thomas Malesmains, a knight of the royal household, had successfully claimed as their jus (see Table II).94 Like Richard Marshal, the descendants of Joan and Thomas Malesmains would spend much of the early part of Henry III’s reign walking the tightrope of simultaneously holding lands in England and Normandy: Thomas’s son Nicholas Malesmains, who had seisin of Burton before 1225, also appears as a benefactor of the Norman abbey of Mondaye in 1228, for instance.95 Moreover, William, earl of Salisbury (d.1226), had had custody in the early 1220s in right of his wife and unlike the Malesmains had no compromising French interests. Given Richard Marshal’s success in the face of these potential rivals 87 Registres de Philippe Auguste, 505–7; D. Barthélemy, La société dans le comté de Vendôme de l’an mil au xive siècle, Paris 1993, 897–8, and AN, L 971, no. 631 (Geoffrey de Vendôme confirms gifts to Savigny of his grandfather Juhel, lord of Mayenne, 1272). For Henry’s ancestry see EYC iv, 87–9. 88 Vincent, Peter des Roches, 325 n. 58, provides a convenient list of most of Richard’s extant acts up to 1231; see also ADCA, MS 2, pp. 92–3, and H 1, fols 1r–2v; Morice, Preuves i, cols 853, 893–4. 89 Morice, Preuves i, cols 853–4. 90 N. C. Vincent, ‘Twyford under the Bretons 1066–1250’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 41, 1997, 80–99, at 92–4; see also S. Painter, The Scourge of the Clergy: Peter of Dreux, Duke of Brittany, Baltimore 1937, 14–16, 35–65. 91 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols, London 1833–44 [hereafter Rot. Claus.] i, 13, 50, 328, 491, 555; Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 205, 377; VCH Hants iv, 607 (some errors). 92 Rot. Claus. ii, 99; cf. 101. 93 Rot. Claus. ii, 103. 94 For what follows, see VCH Northants iii, 181–2, which omits Gervaise; Rot. Pat., 190–1, 195; S. D. Church, The Household Knights of King John, Cambridge 1999, 64, 78–81, 88n. Joan’s mother Eleanor, countess of Salisbury, was the sister of Andrew de Vitré and Alan de Dinan: Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 353–5; EYC vi, 21–2, and Power, Norman Frontier, appendix (Tillières).

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it is tempting to conclude that William Marshal II exploited his high position in the minority council of Henry III on his brother’s behalf. Against Richard’s successes in leading this cross-Channel lifestyle must be set the political difficulties that he incurred. In 1221, the English regency intervened to prevent William Marshal II from marrying a sister of the count of Dreux, fearing what it called a ‘confederation with aliens’, ‘lest freer entry into England were made available to foreigners, especially since Richard Marshal had all his lands in Normandy’.96 Two years later, at the death of Philip Augustus, the English regency called on the Normans to revert to their allegiance to the king of England, while attempting to prevent Louis VIII’s coronation by appealing to the Pope.97 Richard must have been in England when Louis was crowned on 6 August, for on 16 August the royal bailiffs in Shoreham were ordered to provide him with a ship to take him to Normandy.98 The lord of Longueville appears to have dashed to the Channel coast in order to do homage to his new French lord when he learned of the coronation. Not only did Richard survived the perils of serving two hostile masters on this occasion, but his recovery of Gervaise’s English lands coincided with the desultory Anglo-French war of 1224–27, during which Louis VIII conquered Poitou; Richard also took an increasing part in local judicial affairs in England.99 In December 1225, Henry III permitted Richard’s squires to take armour and horses across the Channel, while preventing the count of Dreux from transporting wheat from his English estates to France at the same time.100 Yet in September 1226, the continuing war did lead to the confiscation of the English lands of Richard and seven other leading French magnates.101 In November of the same year, during the crisis that followed the sudden death of Louis VIII, Richard was one of the eleven leading Norman barons to whom the French regency council appealed to support the young Louis IX: both his Breton and his Norman power made his adherence valuable.102 Although Richard recovered his confiscated English lands in spring 1227, unlike some other French magnates (notably the count of Dreux), the political temperature was now becoming too hot for him.103 In March 1228 Richard Marshal conveyed his manor of Long Crendon to a citizen of London for nine years, and the following month the king committed Burton to William Marshal II, who would answer to Richard for the proceeds of the manor, although Richard’s seisin was still acknowledged.104 It is perhaps no coincidence that the pleading for Gervaise’s rights became increasingly

95

Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 532; Caen, AD Calvados, H 6839, fol. 7v, no. XVIII (1227, o.s.). His grandmother Eleanor de Vitré and aunt Juliana de Tillières were also prominent benefactors in the 1220s (fols 3v–5v, nos VII–XV). 96 Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, i (1101–1272), ed. P. Chaplais, HMSO 1964, no. 140; Carpenter, Minority, 243–9, 271–2, 346, 354. Several of Count Robert III’s sisters could have been candidates for this marriage (A. Duchesne, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Dreux, Paris 1631, 56–68). 97 Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 406; Ann. Mon. iii, 81–2; Coggeshall, 197. 98 Rot. Claus. i, 559. 99 Rot. Claus. ii, 98–9, 148. 100 Rot. Claus. ii, 47, 145, 149. 101 Exc. e Rot. Fin. i, 147 (lands in Hants, i.e. Ringwood); Thompson, ‘Anglo-Norman Aristocracy’. The other French barons affected were the counts of Dreux, Brittany, St-Pol, and Guînes, Henry d’Étouteville, Gilbert de l’Aigle, and Payn de Chaources. 102 Layettes ii, no. 1826. 103 Rot. Claus. ii, 185, 188. Cartulaire Normand, no. 361, p. 311, concerns Norman lands given to the count of Dreux in compensation for the loss of his wife’s English lands. 104 PRO, C 53/26, m. 19 (Cal. Charter Rolls i, 142), grant to John of Willenhall (cf. Close Rolls 1231–1234, HMSO 1905, 273); Close Rolls 1227–1231, HMSO 1902, 36, 42.

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fruitless: she failed to gain dower in the lands of her previous husbands,105 and other claims that Gervaise and Richard launched in 1229–30 were all unsuccessful.106

The Marshals as Connection between England and France The history of this family’s unusual success demonstrates how Anglo-Norman baronial families needed constant royal favour after 1204, but it also had broader implications for relations between the two countries. As regent of England, William Marshal the elder was able to ensure the smooth implementation of the so-called Treaty of Lambeth in 1217, ending the civil war in England, by pledging his Norman lands as security for the payment of a huge indemnity to Louis.107 He and his elder son also served repeatedly as envoys to the French court.108 During the ceremonies that accompanied the translation of the body of Thomas Becket in 1220, all the English barons lodged outside Canterbury except for William Marshal the younger, who resided in the city to protect the many foreign dignitaries who attended.109 For the rulers of England, of course, the Marshals’ French allegiance had a darker side: the elder Marshal refused to serve in France in June 1205, and according to Ralph of Coggeshall he did his utmost to prevent King John setting forth to recover his lost lands.110 His leniency towards Louis of France in 1217 would later lead Henry III to blacken the memory of the former regent with accusations of treachery.111 The Marshals’ success in retaining their Norman lands also had an impact away from the councils of state. It could not go unnoticed at a time when so many other aristocratic families had suffered misfortune in this respect.112 In the Trinity term of 1220, Matilda de Courtenay claimed several West Country manors as hers by right, but her opponents argued that since she was a resident in Normandy, within the potestas of the king of France, the common counsel of the realm made her ineligible to plead in an English court. Matilda retorted that she was from England ‘and has land in England as the Earl Marshal and others do’.113 Since she was a granddaughter of Henry I with a claim to the honour of Okehampton, her reply had some validity, but her opponents also spoke some truth, for in Normandy she was lady of Le Sap and Meulles and wife of Henry de Ferrières, lord of Chambrais (Broglie) – lands that abutted the lordship of Orbec.114 It is therefore striking that the court accepted her

105 106

CRR xii, no. 2385; xiii, no. 251. Gussage St Michael (Dorset): CRR xiii, no. 1697; xiv, nos 672, 1149; cf. The Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill, 3 vols, PRO 1920–30 [hereafter Book of Fees] i, 91–2, 260, 372. East Ginge (Berks.): CRR xiii, no. 1697. Land at Cheveley (Cambs.): CRR xiii, nos 1697, 2314; xiv, no. 2230. Land at Great Wymondley (Herts.): CRR xiii, nos 1817, 2315. 107 Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 115: the sum was paid by a merchant of St-Omer. 108 For William II’s embassy in 1225, see Rot. Claus. ii, 42, 76; Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 579. Carpenter, Minority, 32, notes reports that Louis VIII reproached the ambassador for deserting his cause in 1217. 109 Histoire des Ducs et des Rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel, Paris 1840, 208–9. 110 HGM ii, 13131–57; Coggeshall, 152–4. 111 Chronica Majora iv, 157. 112 In 1217 the ‘Normans’ in Henry III’s army at the battle of Lincoln saw William the younger as the defender of their privileges because he had been born in Normandy, but his father’s continuing connection with the province must also have played its part (HGM ii, 16204–24). 113 CRR ix, 36–7 (cf. 71–2): ‘Matillis dicit quod ipsa est de Anglia et terram habet in Anglia sicut comes Marescallus et alii.’ This complicated case reached back into the reign of Henry II. Matilda also claimed dower in Waddesdon (Bucks.), close to Long Crendon. 114 For Matilda and her father Robert, an illegitimate son of Henry I, see BN, MS lat. 11055, fols 159v–160r; QN, no. 328; Strayer, Royal Domain, 141; Complete Peerage iv, 317. For her marriage to

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right to plead in England, although she subsequently failed to recover any of her English lands.115 Perhaps influenced by cases such as Matilda’s, a few years later Bracton’s treatise stated that William Marshal and others were, exceptionally, permitted to plead in both countries because they were ‘faithful to both kings’ (ad fidem utriusque).116 Much humbler souls also saw the Marshals as potential advocates for their causes across the Channel. In 1218 the king of France restored the lands of a man in the bailliage of Caen through the entreaties of the king’s ‘friend and fidelis, William Marshal’.117 In 1219 the regent informed the Norman Exchequer of the fate of a knight in England who had pledged his Norman lands in 1204.118 The family was most visible as sources of contact between the two countries from the 1220s, when a Marshal brother was resident on each side of the Channel. Richard Marshal secured safe passage in England for Norman merchants, especially from Dieppe and his own port of Leure,119 but the two brothers were seen more generally as suitable patrons for foreign merchants wishing to enter England, in these troubled years when foreign ships were often seized in English ports because of the intermittent war with France:120 in 1225, William Marshal II procured a licence to come to England for a merchant of Abbeville, and in 1225 and 1229, Richard did the same for merchants from Ponthieu and Pamplona.121 Before the Breton campaign of 1230, there are other glimpses of a cross-Channel network that operated in spite of hostility between England and France, through the Marshals. It also embraced Dreux de Trubleville, a prominent canon of Rouen, and his brother Henry, an Anglo-Irish landowner who became Seneschal of Gascony in 1226, but who also attended assizes in Normandy in 1227.122 In September 1229, for instance, Dreux won a licence for a merchant of Rouen called Richard d’Orbec, presumably with links to Richard Marshal’s lands, to sail to his brother Henry in Gascony.123 It was not only merchants who stood to profit from the cooperation of the Marshal brothers across the Channel. Several landowning families who held lands from the Marshals also benefited. The family of Grainville, distant kinsmen of the Giffard earls, had been their tenants in England and Normandy, but had split into several

Henry de Ferrières, see Jugements, no. 87; PRO, KB 26/151, m. 30d.; her first husband had been Renaud de Courtenay. 115 CRR ix, 294; x, 23, 53; xi, no. 1923; Bracton’s Notebook, ed. F. W. Maitland, 3 vols, London 1887, ii, no. 170, and iii, no. 1569. 116 Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, ed. G. E. Woodbine, rev. and trans. S. E. Thorne, 4 vols, Cambridge, MA, 1968–77, iv, 328–9; K. Kim, Aliens in Medieval Law: the Origins of Modern Citizenship, Cambridge 2000, 138. For Bracton’s date and compilation I have followed P. Brand, “ ‘The Age of Bracton’ ”, in The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on ‘Pollock and Maitland’, ed. J. Hudson, Oxford 1996, 65–89. 117 Actes de Philippe Auguste iv, no. 1512. 118 Jugements, no. 246; cf. no. 172. 119 E.g. Rot. Claus. ii, 48; Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 519–20. 120 For examples of seizures, see ibid. i, 603; Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, 471. 121 Ibid., 551; Patent Rolls 1225–32, HMSO 1903 [hereafter Pat. Rolls 1225–1232], 4, 242. 122 For Henry, see R. C. Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III 1216–1245, Oxford 1987, 174–8; for the assizes of 1227, RHF xxiv, I, 293*, preuves no. 85. For Dreux, see Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae 2 (Diocèse de Rouen), ed. V. Tabbagh, Turnhout 1998, 170–1; RHF xxiii, 283; BN, MS lat. nouv. acq. 2231, no. 4; Chartes de Longueville, nos LXXVIII, LXXIX, LXXXVIII; for Dreux in England, see Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 122–3; Exc. e Rot. Fin. i, 385; Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy’ ii, 429. Dreux buried his brother Henry’s heart in Normandy in 1240 (Calendar of Liberate Rolls 1226–1240, HMSO 1916, 444). 123 Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 262 (cf. 239). Other examples include Rot. Claus. ii, 27.

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Norman and English branches by 1204.124 At the death of Eustace, lord of Grainville, in or before 1225, his rightful heir was acknowledged to be Robert de Grainville, whose father Gerard had died in England. While expressly decreeing that Robert’s succession was contrary to the custom of Normandy, Louis VIII granted him the right to inherit the Grainvilles’ Norman inheritance, adding that each half would be held in chief from ‘our dear and faithful’ Richard Marshal.125 Robert continued to hold lands in England from successive earls of Pembroke, however, and the renewed connection between the Grainvilles’ Norman and English lands survived until the mutual confiscations by Henry III and Louis IX in 1244.126 Another family with longstanding Giffard connections, the Sauquevilles, certainly maintained cross-Channel interests in the shadow of the Marshals’ wings.127 Before 1204 the senior branch held Sauqueville near Longueville and Fawley (Bucks.), in the Giffard honour, as well as lands in Suffolk, while the junior acquired extensive lands in eastern England but also retained property in Normandy.128 In 1204 King John briefly confiscated Fawley from Jordan de Sauqueville, representative of the senior line,129 but Jordan’s fortunes north of the Channel increased rather than declined thereafter thanks to his devoted service to the Marshal in Ireland.130 Yet he was also demonstrably in possession of his family’s Norman lands in 1205 and 1220.131 Jordan also nurtured connections with the next generation of Marshals in England,132 and with a Marshal brother as his lord in each country he managed to

124

The lords of Grainville-la-Teinturière were descended from Freesent, sister of Agnes, wife of Walter II Giffard (Chartes de Longueville, nos XXII–XXIII). For the various branches, see Early Buckinghamshire Charters, ed. G. H. Fowler and J. G. Jenkins, Bucks. Archaeological Society 1939, 65–72 (some errors); English Episcopal Acta IX: Winchester 1205–1238, ed. N. Vincent, Oxford 1994, 203–6. 125 Cartulaire Normand, no. 351; half the inheritance would first go to a clerk called Eustace de Grainville for life. For Eustace, lord of Grainville (d. c.1225), see ADSM, 16 H 157 (1211, misdated 1171 by Lot, St-Wandrille, lxxviii and no. 91); AN, S 5205A, no. 29 (c.1214). Robert, possibly Eustace’s nephew, may be identified with Robert, son of Gerard de Grainville of Chilton (Bucks.) by a sister of Henry de Trubleville. As well as holding Chilton, Gerard’s father Eustace had probably been lord of Grainville. See OBL, MS Dugdale 39, fol. 69r–v; Early Bucks. Charters, 65–7; Jenkins, ‘Lost Cartulary’, 391–6; PR 31 Henry II, 135; PR 14 Henry III, 121; CRR iv, 261, and v, 26; Cal. Charter Rolls 1226–1257, 328. 126 Robert was allowed to leave England in 1242 but had died by May 1244, when Chilton escheated to the Crown as one of the terre Normannorum (Close Rolls 1237–1242, HMSO 1911, 427; Close Rolls 1242–1247, HMSO 1916, 192; Book of Fees ii, 880, 1146, 1404, and cf. 1155; English Episcopal Acta IX, 205–6). Another Robert, lord of Grainville, appears in 1251 and 1258 (AN, S 5205A, no. 34; Jugements, no. 813, at Longueville). 127 Crouch, William Marshal, 197–8. 128 Honors and Knights’ Fees, ed. W. Farrer, 3 vols, London and Manchester 1923–5 [hereafter Honors], i, 210–12. For the senior branch in Suffolk, see BL, Add. Ch. 9810; PR 26 Henry III, 202. For the junior’s Norman lands before 1204, see Torigny i, ed. Delisle, ii, 251–2; PR 2 John, 51; Cartulaire Normand, no. 1134 (lands of Ela, wife of Jordan de Sauqueville of Bergholt). 129 Rot. Norm., 131. Rot. Ob. Fin., 247, suggests that he was holding English lands by spring 1205. 130 HGM ii, passim, and iii, 185n.; Crouch, William Marshal, esp. 101–7, 138–9, 197–8. For Jordan’s castle in Ireland, see Rotuli de liberate ac de misis et praestitis, ed. T. D. Hardy, ‘Record Commission’ 1844, 196. 131 ADSM, 9 H 4, p. 193: session of the curia regis at Sauqueville, including Jordan de Sauqueville (1205). 24 HP 75: chirograph of ‘Jordan de Sauqueville, son of William de Sauqueville’ (1220), renewing his grandfather Jordan’s act (Chartes de Longueville, no. VII); it does not name the place of issue but was witnessed by Geoffrey Martel, a leading Norman knight, and assumed that Jordan would reside at Longueville or nearby at Épinay (cne. St-Mards). J. H. Round, Peerage and Pedigree: Studies in Peerage Law and Family History, 2 vols, London 1910, i, 285–9, shows that this Jordan also held Fawley (Bucks.); idem, ‘The Essex Sackvilles’, Arch. Journ. 64, 1907, 217–26, confuses the two branches. 132 Jordan acted as attorney for William Marshal II in 1214 (CRR vii, 100 (Berks.)) and witnessed an act

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preserve his cross-Channel inheritance intact. Indeed, when the ageing knight lost William II’s favour through accusations of fiscal malpractice, Richard Marshal promised to intercede with his brother on Jordan’s account.133 The Sauquevilles’ cross-Channel tenure did not long survive Richard Marshal’s downfall and Jordan’s death; in 1238 his lands in Caux were in the hands of Louis IX’s officials.134 The Marshal connection therefore not only worked to the advantage of William and Richard Marshal but also benefited families who had held from their predecessors in both countries in the twelfth century, although not every lineage was so lucky.135 There are also signs that Richard’s household provided contacts between the English and French lands. The decline of the witness-list as an instrument of French charters is an obstacle to identifying his entourage, but we should note a certain Oliver de Dinan, presumably a kinsman of Richard’s wife,136 who witnessed an act of Richard concerning Long Crendon,137 and another, drawn up at Rouen in 1223, concerning a house in the Norman capital.138

The Breton Campaign and the End of the Marshal Lordship in France The privileged position of the Marshals and their followers threatened to dissolve when Henry III invaded Brittany in 1230, a pivotal event in the history of their French lordships. After landing at Saint-Malo on 4 May 1230, partly in Norman ships, Henry III’s army headed for Dinan itself, where the king licensed a merchant of Dieppe at the request of William Marshal II.139 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that of ‘Richard Marshal, lord of Longueville, son of William earl of Pembroke’, for the church of Thame (BL, MS Stowe 665, fol. 109v). 133 BL, Add. Ch. 27143, petition of Bartholomew de Sauqueville to his lord to restore view of frankpledge at Fawley (c.1235): ‘Set dominus Jord’ de Sauk’ non ausus erat dicere domino comiti de libertate sua quoniam quidam habentes eum odio peiorauerant eum versus dominum comitem pro quodam compoto qui ab eo exigebatur. Set dominus Ric’ Marescallus promiserat ei quod faceret neg[ociu]m suum versus dominum comitem de libertate sua. Set ambo morte preuenti libertate sua non sibi restituta recesserunt a medio vnde Dominus B. de Sauk’ pro tali saisina antecessorum suorum eam sibi petit restitui.’ For this curious document, see Round, Peerage and Pedigree i, 285–6; VCH Bucks. iii, 39–40; it also states that ‘vir strenuus et egregie memorie Dominus Ric’ Marescallus’ often rehearsed the arguments in Jordan’s favour in William II’s lifetime; presumably Jordan died before Richard succeeded to the earldom. 134 Crouch, William Marshal, 197; RHF xxi, 257. Clemence, lady of Sauqueville, who divided the appointment of prebends in the collegiate church of Sauqueville with Louis IX (Cartulaire Normand, no. 432, March 1238, n.s.), may be identified with Jordan’s wife Clemence (BL, Add. Ch. 9810; Honors i, 212). 135 Roger de Wanchy appears in Strongbow’s acts near Neufchâtel-en-Bray and later held Stanstead Abbots (Herts.) from the earl’s shortlived son Gilbert. In the 1180s debts forced his son Michael, who held land near Neufchâtel, to yield Stanstead to the canons of Waltham in return for a money-fief (BM Rouen, Y 13, fols 87v–88r; PR 30 Henry II, 138; Cartæ Antiquæ Rolls 11–20, nos 358, 360, 378–9; VCH Herts. iii, 472–3; Complete Peerage x, 357 note (e); Book of Fees i, 124). In 1225, however, Michael’s successor Henry lost the money-fief, now held from William Marshal II, because he had gone to Normandy without royal leave (Rot. Claus. ii, 57). 136 This Oliver may have been a younger son of Oliver of Hartland or from an illegitimate branch of the Dinan dynasty in England or Brittany, for Oliver III, lord of the northern half of Dinan, had died in 1209, and his uncle Oliver, lord of Hartland (Devon), in 1221; by 1222 Oliver III’s successor at Dinan was Alan de Beaufort and his wife Hawise, probably Oliver III’s daughter (ADCA, H 423; Anciens Évêchés iv, 409; Jones, Family of Dinan, 28, 50; Meazey, Dinan, 56–8). 137 OBL, MS Dugdale 39, fol. 68r: act of ‘Richard Marshal, lord of Longueville and Crendon’, for William Taylour of Crendon. 138 Above, n. 75. 139 Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 370–4. Thomas le Grant had brought Richard Marshal’s ‘harness’ from

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Richard was in fact playing a double game, for on 11 July King Henry licensed thirty-one merchants at the request of the Earl Marshal, including thirteen from Leure and two from Le Pollet, ‘for they are men of his brother, Richard Marshal’.140 Yet even though Richard Marshal at first cooperated with the king of England and duke of Brittany, the awkwardness of his position during the Breton war proved insuperable. In October William Marshal and the Bretons attacked Henry d’Avaugour’s fortress of Pontorson, even though he had recently joined Henry III; Gervaise’s son-in-law consequently deserted to the king of France the following year.141 Richard Marshal, meanwhile, chose to side with the king of France again once Henry left Brittany for Poitou, for he attended assizes in Rouen at Easter 1231.142 It explains why in October 1230 William Marshal II extracted a promise from the king of England that, if he died, Richard would not be disinherited ‘on account of his residence in the land of the king of France’.143 In fact, at the death of William Marshal the elder in April 1231, Henry III attempted to seized the entire inheritance in England, Wales and Ireland, and forbade Richard’s entry to England because: ‘he is the liege man of the King of France, our chief enemy . . . if he wishes to leave his allegiance, we still do not know of it’. He also seized the manors which Richard already held in England and ordered him to be arrested if he entered the country.144 Richard did not gain the earldom of Pembroke and William’s other lands until he had overcome considerable opposition from the English Crown, aided by the mediation of the Prior of Notley (at Long Crendon) and the earl of Chester, whose men were still active on the Breton-Norman border for Henry III, and by the refusal of the constables of the Marshals’ castles to admit royal bailiffs.145 The leniency that had permitted the existence of his cross-Channel inheritance was now stretched to its limit. Henry III had been humiliated by his failure to score any success in France, just as King John had been in 1204 and 1206, and, like his father, Henry turned on those in his realm with French interests.146 His setbacks therefore divided England and Normandy further. So the third and final stage in the family arrangements of the Marshals was Richard’s shortlived attempt to reunite his father’s possessions in the British Isles and France. A similar situation obtained now to that between 1204 and 1220: the Insular concerns of the earl of Pembroke were paramount, and the lord of Longueville was probably permanently absent from his French lordships, although Gervaise continued to reside in Dinan.147 In 1219–20 careful family arrangements had preserved the Marshal lordships in Normandy; so now Richard had two options. He could have Normandy in 1225 (above, 216). For the expedition, see É. Berger, ‘Les préparatifs d’une invasion anglaise et la descente de Henri III en Bretagne’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 54, 1893, 5–44; Painter, Scourge of the Clergy, 66–77. 140 Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 375. 141 Ibid., 408; Close Rolls 1227–1231, HMSO 1902, 443–4, 452, 525, 532, 536; Chronica Majora iii, 200; Layettes ii, no. 2135; Meazey, Dinan, 105–8. 142 ADE, H 711, fol. 148r (ed. Jugements, no. 467n.), dated 1 April ‘1231’ (which could also be from 1232). 143 Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 400: ‘occasione more quam fecit in terra et potestate regis Francie’. 144 Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, 435–6: ‘quia idem Ricardus est homo ligius regis Francie capitalis inimici nostri . . . a cujus ligancia si ipse Ricardus recedere velit, adhuc ignoramus’; Close Rolls 1227–1231, 542. 145 Close Rolls 1227–1231, 503, 590–1; Pat. Rolls 1225–32, 427–37; Chronica Majora iii, 204–5. 146 For the expedition’s consequences, see Stacey, Politics, 172–3. 147 Gervaise was never acknowledged as countess of Pembroke (Complete Peerage x, 371b). In 1233 the pope ordered the bishop of Lisieux to investigate the affinity between her and Richard (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, i (1198–1304), ed. W. H. Bliss, London 1893, 131).

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conferred his Norman lands upon one of his younger brothers, but this posed obvious difficulties should Richard have children.148 Instead, Richard appears to have attempted to run them through his late brother’s officers, immediately sending his late brother’s seneschal in South Wales, Master William of Christchurch, to administer Orbec. Significantly, when this clerk tried to sell the prévôté of Orbec to a local man, the king of France confiscated the office.149 There are other allegations of interference in Richard’s lands from Capetian officials. After Richard’s departure for England the bailli of Rouen and Caen sent John d’Orbec to garrison Gervaise’s castle of Léhon on King Louis’s behalf, where he remained for four years.150 Both Richard’s and Gervaise’s inheritance were now under threat, and what is more, by going to England Richard was soon held to have forfeited the peace of the king of France.151 Within three years Richard Marshal had been forced into revolt against Henry III, perishing in a skirmish in Ireland.152 His direct connections with his French lands appear to have ended in 1231, but he continued to be involved in the affairs of the duke of Brittany, who remained in rebellion against Louis IX.153 At the outset of Richard’s revolt, the bailiffs of the southern English ports were watching out for his men, horses and arms, for he was believed to have sent envoys abroad ‘to the harm of the realm’.154 Yet when Richard’s death ended the Marshals’ cross-Channel interests, it was Louis IX, not Henry III, who dealt the decisive blow. William Marshal the elder had died during a truce, but Richard was killed when the king of France was preparing to reassert his authority over Brittany.155 In a time of renewed AngevinCapetian hostility the Marshal lordships in Normandy made welcome additions to the royal domains: in 1238 they contributed over 500 livres tournois to the Capetian coffers.156 Yet even after Richard’s downfall the Marshals aspired to hold lands in 148 149

For the younger Marshals, see Complete Peerage x, 371–7. QN, no. 334; Close Rolls 1227–1231, 355; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1232–1247, 427–8. William of Christchurch joined the Marshal rebellion of 1233, and later appears in the entourage of Earl Walter Marshal: Close Rolls 1231–1234, HMSO 1905, 328; Cal. Charter Rolls iii, 361; R. F. Walker, ‘The Supporters of Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, in the Rebellion of 1233–1234’, Welsh History Review 17, 1994, 41–65, at 56. 150 QN, no. 335. P. Le Baud, Histoire de Bretagne, Paris 1638, 230, possibly drawing upon lost sources, numbers Richard amongst the Breton lords who admitted Louis IX’s soldiers to their castles. John d’Orbec was grandson of Landry d’Orbec (see above, n. 18); for his acts, see ADE, H 548, H 550, H 571; ADSM, 56 HP 1. 151 QN, no. 334. 152 For the revolt, see Vincent, Peter des Roches, 374–445; Walker, ‘The Supporters of Richard Marshal’, 41–65; B. Smith, ‘Irish Politics, 1220–1245’, in Thirteenth Century England VIII, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, Woodbridge 2001, 13–21. 153 Close Rolls 1231–1234 (7 Nov. 1232), 163, concerning the duke’s English lands. 154 Close Rolls 1231–34, 262, 315–16; Walker, ‘The Supporters of Richard Marshal’, 62. For Richard’s compromising French connections, see Chronica Majora iii, 261. 155 Painter, Scourge of the Clergy, 82–8. 156 RHF xxi, 255 (Orbec, Rouen), 257 (Caux and the bailliage of Arques). In 1234 the bailli Theobald de la Chapelle spent 28s. parisis ‘pro terra domini Ric. Marescalli sasienda’ (ibid., 241–2). Vincent, Peter des Roches, 457–8, asserts that the Marshal lands were worth as much as the whole French domain in Caux, but in fact the income of Longueville (296 li. 5s. tournois) approximated to the bailli’s compotus (300 li.), comparable to a sheriff’s farm. As Professor Vincent’s footnote (458 n. 118) indicates, I was in large part responsible for his error, which I am happy to correct. Since the accounts for 1238 survive for Ascension only (one of three audits per year), it is impossible to know whether they recorded the total annual income of either the Marshal lands or the compotus. In c.1265 the farm of the lordship of Orbec was valued at 640 li. tournois, and the Marshal land at Rouen at 16 li. (Strayer, Royal Domain, 146–50, 35–7). The haia of Équiqueville was in royal hands in 1248 (Cartulaire Normand, no. 477).

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Normandy. In December 1234 Henry III committed the castles of Carmarthen and Cardigan and the English honour of l’Aigle to Richard’s brother and successor, Gilbert Marshal: if the king recovered his land of Normandy, ‘whether by force or peace’, the earl would receive his Norman rights instead.157 The king of England later gave Gilbert permission to seek his Norman lands whether or not a general peace was achieved, and to grant them to one of his younger brothers if he chose – a recognition, perhaps, of the insurmountable difficulties that Richard Marshal had encountered between 1231 and 1234.158 After Gilbert’s death, the fourth Marshal brother Walter also received King Henry’s permission to do homage for his family’s Norman lands.159 Neither brother had any success in his goal, however, and if Saint Louis’s general prohibition against double tenure in 1244 did not make their recovery impossible, the extinction of the Marshals in the male line the following year certainly did. Their lands were shared amongst their five sisters or their representatives, but none of the heirs sought to recover the Norman lands.160 Consequently, the last link between the various components of Richard’s inheritance was Gervaise de Dinan’s abortive petition to the king of England and bishop of Winchester, the man chiefly held responsible for her husband’s death, to recognise her grant of Ringwood to the Norman abbey of Foucarmont.161 Instead, Ringwood was treated once more as one of the terre Britonum, to be held in custody until the king restored it to the right heirs if peace came.162 Gervaise received no dower in Richard Marshal’s lands on either side of the sea, in striking contrast to Henry III’s sister Eleanor, the widow of William Marshal II whose claims upon the Marshal lands had been a contributory factor to Richard’s revolt in 1233, and which would continue to haunt the dynasty and its many coheirs until the downfall of Eleanor’s second husband, Simon de Montfort.163

157

PRO, C 53/28, mm. 18, 16 (Cal. Charter Rolls i, 189, 191). For the difficulties that this grant caused Earl Gilbert in Wales, see CRR xvii, no. 1493. 158 Cal. Charter Rolls i, 252–3 (1240). 159 Fœdera, conventiones, litterae et cujus cunque generis acta publica, ed. T. Rymer, new edn, ‘Record Commission’ 1816, i, I, 240 (25 Oct. 1241); Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy’ ii, 419. 160 For the partition, see Cal. Pat. Rolls 1364–67, 263–75; Sanders, English Baronies, 63–4, 110–11. In 1279 Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and great-nephew of Richard Marshal, laid claim to various lands held by his ancestors in Normandy, but he did not mention any of the Marshal estates except possibly Montivilliers, although this may have been as heir of the earls of Hertford: Les Olim, ou registres des Arrêts rendus par la cour du roi, ed. le Comte de Beugnot, 3 vols, Paris 1839–48, ii, 150; Le Maho, ‘Seigneuries châtelaines’, 110–11. 161 ADSM, 8 H 10: Gervaise de Dinan, ‘viscountess of Rohan and widow of Richard Marshal’, confirms the church of Ringwood (Hants) to Foucarmont, asking the bishop of Winchester (Peter des Roches) to ensure that her wish is carried out (1234); letter from Gervaise to Henry III, begging him to confirm her act (1234); she grants the villa of Ringwood to Foucarmont, for her soul and those of her parents and Richard Marshal (1235). See Vincent, Peter des Roches, 469–70. Although the monks of Foucarmont may have remembered her as a donor (cf. RHF xxiii, 441), the abbey never held Ringwood. There is no easy explanation for Gervaise’s title of ‘viscountess of Rohan’; Ringwood had no connection with her second husband’s family. 162 Close Rolls 1234–1237, HMSO 1908, 434–5; Cal. Charter Rolls i, 244, 253, and cf. 476. After Gervaise’s death Ringwood’s ‘right heirs’ were her three daughters and their husbands. Burton reverted to Nicholas Malesmains (CRR xvi, no. 2099; xvii, no. 527; Book of Fees ii, 937, 1138; VCH Northants iii, 181–2). 163 Vincent, Peter des Roches, 327, 377, 382; J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, Cambridge 1994, esp. 49–53, 130–1. After Richard Marshal’s death Ringwood was briefly assigned to Eleanor, widow of William Marshal II, as dower (Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–47, 125–6).

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The history of the Marshal dynasty in France is without parallel, for it enjoyed unbroken tenure in England and Normandy from 1204 to 1220 and again from 1225 to 1234. Its success may have relied upon unique devices such as homage citra mare Anglie. Nevertheless, fruitful comparisons may be drawn with the experiences of other families, such as l’Aigle, Étouteville, Saint-Valéry, and Harcourt, and many much more obscure lineages. Nor were the Marshals isolated from the rest of Anglo-Norman aristocratic society; to understand their position, we need to consider the families of Dinan, Vitré and Malesmains; of Clare, Chandos and Colombières; and of Sauqueville, Grainville and Trubleville. It is clear that were very significant restrictions upon what a landowner with lands in both countries could do. Whenever the lord of Longueville was also earl of Pembroke, he more or less abandoned his Norman lands to the good will (or otherwise) of Capetian officers and local dependants. Other conventional aristocratic strategies of preserving and augmenting the inheritance were also impeded: William Marshal the elder married none of his five daughters in Normandy, and the English regency prevented William the younger from marrying a French noblewoman. Hence the overriding theme in the history of the Marshals was the need for royal favour in both countries, which rendered all their arrangements precarious and provisional. At times that favour could be very generous, but it was always heavily conditional, and war placed it under immense strain. As the reigns of Henry III, Louis VIII and Louis IX advanced, the surviving members of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy faced progressively more constraints upon their freedom of action, despite some periods of improved fortunes (notably 1215–24). The traditional lifestyle, divided with ease between England and Normandy, had ended in 1204. Yet the Marshal connection was not restricted to the dynasty itself. Richard Marshal transferred an English official to Normandy, while tenant families such as Grainville and Sauqueville were also able to maintain their inheritance both in England and Normandy, arousing expectations in other, less favoured landowners. In the 1220s these cross-Channel links were not mere fossilised relics of a receding past. They were creative, with their own dynamics, as the Marshals offered inspiration to some, access overseas to others, and a conduit for contacts between the two kingdoms at the highest as well as less exalted levels. Yet the network had disintegrated even before Richard Marshal’s death: hence Henry de Trubleville, the seneschal of Gascony, fell out with Richard Marshal in Wales in 1231 and fought against him in 1233, recognising that his stronger loyalties lay with the king.164 One final point should be made. Undoubtedly the Marshals’s simultaneous possession in France and England brought them difficulties, which in Richard’s case proved ruinous since his French background left him isolated at court.165 Yet they also repeatedly used their French connections as bargaining chips in England and Wales. Through directly or indirectly exploiting the French lands and claims William Marshal eased the expulsion of Louis of France and he gained the castles of Goodrich and Cilgerran, the manor of Sturminster, and custody of Cardigan and Carmarthen,166 William II married a daughter of King John, and Gilbert Marshal acquired the castles of Cardigan, Carmarthen and Pevensey as well the English 164 165 166

Close Rolls 1227–1231, 553; DNB lxvii, 324. Vincent, Peter des Roches, 324–7. Crouch, William Marshal, 84–7; above, 217.

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honour of l’Aigle from Henry III, from which Gilbert provided dowries for his nieces.167 No doubt every merchant or knight who sought Marshal help also paid handsomely for it. There can be no doubt that the Marshals used their French lands to go from strength to strength in England. It is hardly surprising, then, that in 1234 Louis IX and his ministers decided that no English baron so great as the earl of Pembroke should also be a magnate in Normandy.

167 Gilbert later ceded much of the honour of l’Aigle to Richard of Cornwall: PRO, C 53/33, m. 2 (Cal. Charter Rolls i, 252–3, which does not detail the dowries of Gilbert’s nieces); Book of Fees i, 618.

Endnote: Since the completion of this article David Crouch has kindly drawn my attention to two intriguing acts of William Marshal II, witnessed by Richard Marshal and most probably issued in Ireland between 1224 and 1226: Calendar of the Ormond Deeds i (1172–1350), ed. E. Curtis, Dublin 1932, 23, 36. They reveal a further dimension to Richard’s activities in the mid-1220s.

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Settlement and Integration: Aristocracy in Scotland

SETTLEMENT AND INTEGRATION: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN ARISTOCRACY IN SCOTLAND (1124–1214) Nigel M. Webb This paper arose out of an attempt to study in detail the development of local aristocratic society in twelfth-century Scotland. The themes to be advanced below will develop the current body of Scottish historiography and will present a picture of society characterised by the fragmentation of settlement into small local groups. At the same time these groups all remained part of the larger regional society. Analysis will take the form of a regional study and will be principally focused upon the relatively well documented county of Roxburghshire. The observations made by Professor Barrow regarding the majority of minor landholders established in this area suggest a stratum of society which, being relatively neglected in an assessment of attachments and relationships, would bear further study.1 Roxburghshire was an important royal centre and established within its borders were three of Scotland’s most important monastic communities.2 By examining a number of associated themes and relationships, it should be possible to measure the strength of local attachments and assess the strategies adopted by individual Anglo-French families in developing the networks through which they became firmly established. Discussion will focus upon the reigns of Malcolm IV and William I and will concentrate upon the development of a number of landholding communities within Roxburghshire. The smaller landholdings in the subject area can be placed in a number of distinct localities, the internal unity of which serves to emphasise the importance of locality in the development of aristocratic society below the level of the greater territorial magnates. Within each locality the various landholdings were marked by relatively close geographical proximity. The evidence of settlement indicates strongly that the developed attachments of a number of social groups were rooted in geography. There was considerable growth in the number of new landholdings established in the county during the period 1153–c.1190. By the close of the reign of William I in 1214, three small landholding communities can be identified in the subject area with each locality being marked by a degree of geographical specificity. In the east of the county close to the modern border with England, a small community developed along the parallel valleys of the Bowmont and Kale Waters. The villages in this area lay along relatively flat river valleys with steeply rising hills forming a natural barrier to the north and west of the settlement. The topography of the area makes for relative isolation from the settled areas immediately to the north along the flood plains of the River Tweed and the more gently rising land of the

1

For comments regarding the minor landholders established in the south-east of Scotland see G. W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History, Oxford 1980, 91–2; G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots, Edinburgh 1973, 295. 2 The communities in question were the abbeys of Jedburgh, Melrose and Kelso. Also close by was the abbey of Dryburgh situated on the north bank of the River Tweed in the modern county of Berwickshire.

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Jedburgh Valley to the west. By 1214, fourteen landholdings were established within this area including some important local families such as Corbet, le Nain, Ridel and Ryedale along with the native families of Orm (later fitz John) and Elstanehale.3 The geographical spread of these landholdings, with the average distance between families being some two and a half miles, made for a relatively close knit settlement of two constituent parts. A similar situation developed along a 17½-mile stretch of the Tweed Valley (in the region of Kelso and Melrose abbeys). The villages which made up the settlement in this area were established along the relatively flat and low lying flood plains of the Tweed with natural boundaries being created by the more steeply rising land immediately north and south of the line of the river. Within this area, some ten families constituted another relatively close knit settlement (of two constituent parts) characterised, like the settlement in the south-east of the county, by the close geographical proximity of the feus in each group. As in the Cheviots around Yetholm, the Tweed Valley contained some important local families such as Colville, Haig, Hadden and Farburne.4 An examination of the landholding patterns in the final sample area around Hawick, in the central region of the modern county, also reveals similar characteristics to the settlements in the south-east and along the Tweed Valley. The main features of this grouping, as at Yetholm, lay within relatively hilly country on the eastern fringes of the Southern Uplands. North of Hawick lay the expanse of the royal Selkirk Forest and the mountains of the modern Ettrick Forest. Although the region was open to access, especially north-east to Kelso along the line of the River Teviot, the villages in the area were separated from the Jedburgh Valley to the east by hills of over 1,000 feet. Again the topography of the area made for natural barriers and a degree of relative isolation from other settled areas. Within this area five families were settled within a radius of some eleven miles. As with the above, the settlement included several important local families such as Lovel and Synton.5 The picture which emerges from a study of settlement in Roxburghshire is thus one of small geographical communities comprising the principal aristocratic presence in the county. The pattern is broadly similar across the south-east of Scotland (allowing for the Earldom of Dunbar and the honor of Lauderdale) and places a distinct layer of localisation within emerging aristocratic networks and relationships. The identification of these local groups can illuminate the general point made by Leopold Gènicot, that any regional community was comprised of more local groups, which owed their emergence to geographical considerations. Within these groups external relationships inserted people into a firm local framework, drawing or inviting precise boundaries.6 However, this suggestion must be tested against the wider landholding patterns of the individuals and families concerned. A number of individuals from within the Roxburghshire sample held land elsewhere in Scotland and several important families also held land across the border in England. For example, the Corbet family from 3

For the more important landholdings in this area, see Regesta Regum Scottorum [RRS], vol. I: The Acts of King Malcolm IV 1153–1165, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Edinburgh 1960, no. 42; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, 34; Liber de Sancte Marie de Melros vol. I, Edinburgh 1837, nos 119, 127, 129–31, 147. 4 For the families settled in the Tweed Valley see, Regesta Regum Scottorum, vol. II: The Acts of King William I 1165–1214, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, Edinburgh 1971, nos 72, 101, 306; Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 177; Melrose Liber, nos 86, 92; Liber de St Marie de Dryburgh, Edinburgh 1847, nos 133, 155–6. 5 For the families settled in the environs of Hawick, see Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 184; RRS ii, nos 62, 581A. 6 L. Gènicot, Rural Communities in the Medieval West, Baltimore and London 1990, 23–6.

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Yetholm, held a number of estates across the border in Northumberland whilst their neighbours at Kirk Yetholm, the le Nain family also held land at Broughton in Peeblesshire.7 From within the Tweed Valley area the Colville family held land at Carsphairn (thirty miles north-west of Dumfries) in Galloway, whilst the Farburne family also held land in Fife and East Lothian.8 These few examples could be multiplied across the south-east as a whole and include a number of the greater landholders whose landed interests were primarily held elsewhere. Thus, for example, the powerful families of fitz Alan and de Moreville both held land in Roxburghshire at Mow, Roxburgh, Dryburgh and St Boswells.9 Other individuals and families holding land in the sample area included the Somervilles, the Berkelys, the Dunbars and the Vesci family from Alnwick in Northumberland who held land at Sprouston in Tweeddale and at Mow in the Cheviots south of Yetholm.10 Yet the realities of wider landholding patterns do not of themselves fragment the importance of locality. As Keith Stringer has noted with reference to the settlement of the Garrioch in north-east Scotland, individuals could have a number of local identities and could function as locals within a number of areas.11 Furthermore, the interaction between local society and wider elite groups was facilitated through the landholding patterns of the individuals concerned. In short, the ability to function within a number of local frameworks helped to blur the lines of demarcation between local society and the wider aristocratic community forming an important point of contact between elite groups. Vicinity was a powerful factor in the creation of local ties through which the settlement of individuals took on a form of social unity. The evidence from an examination of the landholding patterns across the south-east as a whole (a sample of sixty-two families) suggests that settlement was in the main developed through landholding groups which were primarily localised in character. Even allowing for the wider landholding patterns of a number of individuals, the evidence of settlement provides a vivid illustration of how an aristocracy became established in any given area and highlights the importance of locality to the development of society within the lower ranks of the aristocracy. Within this predominantly local framework, society can be seen to have functioned through the interaction of a number of groups creating a variety of different networks within a given geographical location. This essential localisation can be illustrated through a brief examination of the witnessing patterns of benefactions to local monastic houses. Witnessing patterns indicate the active presence of a number of groups within a given locality. Whilst in general they can suggest the extent to which transactions of local significance were attested by members of the local community, a number of charters indicate the prominent role played by both lordship and family groups as a constituent part of local society. The evidence of witnessing patterns can thus add dynamic significance to the often flat recital of ties and associations found in the main body of documentary sources. As such they illustrate the way in which a communal structure was developed through the interaction of a number of groups within a local framework. Illustration of this can be provided through an examination of the witnessing patterns from eastern Roxburghshire in the region of Yetholm. 7

See A History of Northumberland xi, The Northumberland County History Committee, 1922, 128–30; Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 188. 8 See Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 188; RRS i, nos 256, 294; RRS ii, no. 9. 9 Early Scottish Charters prior to 1153, ed. Sir Archibald Lawrie, Glasgow 1905, nos 211, 216, 238, 240; RRS i, no. 183. 10 For a number of examples see, RRS i, no. 299; RRS ii, no. 171. 11 K. J. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, Edinburgh 1985, 95.

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At Clifton near Morebattle, a charter granting land to Melrose abbey late in the reign of William I by Walter Corbet and his brother Robert was witnessed by a number of individuals from the area including Richard le Nain and his son Ralph, William son of John from Hownam and Simon son of Uhtred from Elstanehale. Also present were two individuals from Tweeddale, John, the deacon of Roxburgh and Bernard de Hadden.12 A charter for Walter de Windsor who also granted land at Clifton to Melrose abbey, was witnessed by John son of Orm and his son William from Hownam, Richard le Nain and his son Ralph, Uhtred and his son Simon (Elstanehale) and John the clerk of Morebattle.13 Also on the witness list were Peter of Morebattle and Ansketil of Whitton, both of whom were either minor landholders or clerks.14 On the Hownam feu, William son of John confirmed his father’s grant of a grange at Hownam to Melrose abbey, in a charter witnessed by Walter and Robert Corbet, Simon of Elstanehale, Robert de Burnold (Whitton), William the priest of Hownam and John the deacon of Roxburgh.15 William son of John also granted to Melrose land at Rushy Fell on the southern fringes of the Hownam feu, in a charter witnessed by Robert Burnold and the Tweeddale landholder Peter de Haig.16 Two charters, detailing the grants of land at Mow made to Melrose abbey by Anselm de Mow, were witnessed by John son of Orm and his son William, Richard the deacon of Hassendean, Peter the priest of Morebattle and William the priest of Hownam. Roger de Whitton, about whom nothing else is known, also witnessed the charters.17 Anselm elaborated on his initial grants, by providing them with specified boundaries in a further charter which was witnessed by a group including John son of Orm, Walter Corbet, Ralph le Nain and his sons Richard, Hubert and Walter, Uhtred of Elstanehale and Peter the priest of Morebattle.18 All of these examples were witnessed by individuals from within the donor’s own community. A series of charters from the de Ryedale feu at Whitton illustrate the integrated and multi-faceted nature of local society. These charters include as witnesses those tied to the Ryedale family through tenurial relationships and also individuals drawn from within the wider community along the Rivers Kale and Bowmont. In the first instance, Robert Burnold granted twenty acres of his land to Melrose abbey in a charter witnessed by his lord Patrick de Ryedale and his sons Walter and Ralph de Ryedale, along with a further Whitton landholder called Adam.19 That this transaction was an occasion for bringing the wider eastern community together is indicated through the presence on the witness list of William son of John, Richard le Nain, Simon of Elstanehale and Henry de Mow.20 The confirmation of this by Patrick de Ryedale was witnessed by his son Ralph and the Whitton tenants, Adam de Whitton and Alexander fitz Waldef (brother of Geoffrey fitz Waldef who held land at

12 13 14

Melrose Liber, nos 113–14. Ibid., no. 116. Both of these men, about whom nothing else is known, appear only as witnesses to charters issued from eastern Roxburghshire. Their toponyms lead one to conclude that they held some land in the area. Certainly Ansketil appears as a baptismal name in the Ryedale family. However, it is probable that Peter of Morebattle is the priest who is later found witnessing two grants for Anselm de Mow. 15 Melrose Liber, no. 130. 16 Melrose Liber, no. 131. 17 Ibid., nos 134–5. 18 Ibid., no. 154. 19 Ibid., no. 152. 20 It is probable that Henry de Mow was Henry de Cormunnock, the second husband of Eschina de Londres, widow of the steward, Walter fitz Alan.

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Whitton). Also present were William son of John, Richard le Nain and Henry de Mow.21 Geoffrey fitz Waldef granted the abbey land totalling four bovates in a series of charters witnessed by his lord Patrick de Ryedale and his sons Walter and Nicholas, Robert Burnold, Adam de Whitton, William de Whitton and Richard le Nain.22 Lastly, a grant made by Geoffrey de Cocus to the Hospital of Jerusalem of one bovate at Whitton (which later came to Melrose Abbey) was witnessed by Walter II de Ryedale, Adam de Whitton, Alexander fitz Waldef, Robert Burnold and his son Robert, and William son of John from Hownam.23 As these examples would seem to indicate, lordship was an enduring element in the development of local society with tenurial relationships playing an important role in predominantly local transactions. Whilst there is insufficient evidence for a level of subinfeudation on the smaller landholdings to sustain a discussion of the subject, it is clear that lordship ties (whether explicitly or implicitly defined) are an important indicator of the strength of local networks and power structures. The evidence from witnessing patterns is also indicative of the integrated nature of local groupings. The examples outlined above illustrate the plurality of relationships within a local framework, bringing together both specific groups and individuals from within the wider communal setting. As such, these predominantly local transactions suggest a level of interaction in the localities commensurate with Susan Reynolds’s argument for collective activity as a major constituent of local society.24 Of course it is not possible to state with any degree of certainty where these charters were enacted, as place date evidence is not available on the majority of surviving cartulary copies. It is possible that transactions were carried out either in the sheriff’s court at Roxburgh or else in a more local court. However, surviving witness lists do suggest that there was a more than superficial level of interaction in local affairs within the communities that made up the aristocracy in the south-east. One of the most important elements of local society was developed through the extension of family ties and the creation of local lineages. Unfortunately, kinship ties are rarely explicitly expressed in the available evidence and references to them and to their dynamic significance have to be teased out from a number of sources. During the reign of David I, the Corbet brothers Walter and Robert were both established in Roxburghshire at Yetholm and Maxton respectively, although Robert appears to have died without issue and his feu passed to Robert de Berkely early in the reign of William I.25 Robert de Londres, lord of St Boswells in Tweeddale, was the stepcousin of Henry Lovel, lord of Hawick and he was also the cousin of his Tweeddale neighbour Robert de Berkely, lord of Maxton.26 Further ties were created through marriage. In the south-east of Roxburghshire early in the reign of William I, Matilda Corbet the daughter of Walter I Corbet, lord of Yetholm and Morebattle married William de Ryedale, a younger son of her fathers near neighbour Patrick de Ryedale, lord of Whitton.27 At Mow to the south of Yetholm along the valley of the Bowmont Water, Simon de Malverer, a minor landholder in the area made an advantageous marriage when he married Cecila, the

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Ibid., no. 153. Ibid., nos 156, 158, 160. Ibid., no. 161. S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300, Oxford 1984, 87–93. For Berkely at Maxton see Melrose Liber, no. 92. Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 174, 183. Melrose Liber, no. 160.

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daughter of Eschina de Londres and her second husband Henry de Cormunnock.28 At an unspecified date (probably during the reign of Malcolm IV), Thomas de Londres whose feu of St Boswells lay along the Tweed Valley married Margaret Lovel, the widow of Ralph Lovel, lord of Hawick whose feu lay some eleven miles west of St Boswells.29 Two Anglo-Frenchmen married into the native aristocracy. Robert de Berkely, the younger brother of King Williams’s chamberlain Walter, married Cecila, the daughter of the Anglian lord of Maxton.30 Finally, at Yetholm, Ralph le Nain may have been the Ralph of Yetholm whose wife bore the Anglian name of Raganild and who held property at Yetholm and Roxburgh.31 The evidence from other south-eastern regions reveals similar characteristics: marriages mostly contracted within the local community. Of course the families in question had continuing access to a wider aristocratic world and a number of marriages were contracted between families from different areas. Thus from Roxburghshire the families of Lovel, Londres and Corbet all made English marriages during this period whilst William de Colville married the widow of John de Malherbe, lord of Morham in East Lothian.32 Yet in general the available evidence, limited though it is, does tend to suggest that the south-eastern aristocracy married within their own locality and region. It is possible that the exceptions can be explained either by tenurial links or by the relatively high standing and wide interests of the families involved. As such, the evidence for local marriages provides an important illustration of the role played by family groups in the integration of local society. Yet important as these wider family ties were in the creation of local networks, it seems clear that a more lineal family structure remained paramount throughout the period in question.33 By 1214, one of the characteristic elements of local society was the continuity and relative security of a number of individual families on well established feus. As elsewhere in the Anglo-Norman world, there was in Scotland an increasing coincidence of lineage, family property and family surname. As such, the creation of a lineal family structure and the corresponding enjoyment of succession during the period in question was important for the stabilising of individual lordships and the development of mature local identities. A growing culture of heritability thus had important implications for the development of local attachments. In Roxburghshire a number of changes had taken place by 1214. These changes ensured that a number of families had established lineages of two and in places three generations by the close of the period. In the Yetholm area a number of feus had been passed on to succeeding generations. At Yetholm itself, a second generation of Corbet lordship was in place through the succession of the brothers Walter II and Robert from their father Walter I.34 At the modern village of Kirk Yetholm, three 28

Eschina de Londres was the widow of Walter fitz Alan and held Mow in right of her late husband. Simon de Malverer accordingly married the daughter of one of the more important figures in Roxburghshire and, if Barrow is correct in assuming that Eschina was a sister of Robert de Londres, he would also have gained a connection with the lords of St Boswells. See Liber de St Marie de Calchou, Edinburgh 1846 [Kelso Liber], no. 150; Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 184. 29 Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 183. 30 RRS ii, no. 342. 31 Ibid., no. 75 and notes. 32 Melrose Liber, nos 113–14; Registrum S. Marie de Neubotle, Edinburgh 1849 [Newbattle Registrum], no. 99. 33 As such it seems appropriate to talk of a society of heirs, a point which will be made clear in the discussion of religious patronage and pro anima clauses in charters (see below, 000). 34 The Corbet Brothers are mentioned in Melrose Liber, nos 113–14. There was also a younger brother, Patrick Corbet, whose seal appears on the grant made by Walter and Robert Corbet of land at Clifton to

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generations of le Nains had held their feu in direct linear succession. Ralph I le Nain was succeeded in turn by his son Richard and grandson Ralph II.35 The de Ryedale feu at Whitton had originally been passed on from Walter I de Ryedale to his brother Ansketil in 1164.36 Subsequently the lordship remained firmly in the hands of an established de Ryedale lineage of three generations. By 1214, Ansketil had been succeeded at Whitton by both his son and grandson Patrick and Walter II. At Hownam, the feu of the native landholder Orm had also moved through three generations of linear succession when his grandson William succeeded his father John late in the reign of William I.37 A second native feu at Elstanehale had been passed on to a second generation by 1214 with Simon of Elstanehale having succeeded his father Uhtred at an unspecified date during the second half of the reign of William I. In contrast, the estates of Anselm de Mow were passed on to his two daughters Isolda and Matilda and their husbands Alexander fitz William and Richard de Lincoln, thereby effectively dividing the feu among new landlords before a de Mow lineage could become established.38 The succession history of Walter de Windsor, Geoffrey fitz Waldef, Robert Burnold, Geoffrey de Cocus, Simon de Malverer, Gilbert Avenel and William de Mow remains unidentified.39 A similar pattern emerges from Tweeddale. At Heiton, the feu of Henry de Percy was passed on into the hands of Philip de Colville c.1164 effectively ending Percy involvement in southern Scotland.40 However, by 1214 three generations of Colvilles had been in possession of the feu in linear succession when Thomas fitz Philip was succeeded in turn by his son William late in the period.41 Nearby at Hadden, Bernard II de Hadden had succeeded his uncle Bernard fitz Brian by the last decades of the reign of William I.42 Thomas de Londres was succeeded by his nephew Robert de Londres at St Boswells who, in turn, passed the feu on to his son Richard before 1214.43 At Faringdon, three generations of the Farburne family had been in possession of the feu by 1214 when Simon Farburne was succeeded by his son Robert and his grandson Roger.44 However, close by at Maxton the marriage of Alina, the daughter and heir of Robert de Berkely, to Hugh de Normanville witnessed the feu pass into the hands of her husband’s family before a Berkely lineage could become established. Lastly, the Melrose abbey: see G. F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History, 2nd edn, Edinburgh 1993, 170. The Corbet family remained at Yetholm into the thirteenth century. Although the heir of Walter II was his daughter Christina (d.1241) she married a younger son of the Earl of Dunbar and their son and heir Nicholas took his maternal surname: see The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland 1124–1303 i, Record Commission, 1844, 409–10. 35 The le Nains are discussed in Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 188. 36 Ansketil sought and received a papal confirmation of his inheritance, which may indicate some question as to his right to succeed. The confirmation is detailed in Annals of the Reigns of Malcolm and William, Kings of Scotland, A.D. 1153–1214, ed. Sir Archibald Lawrie, Glasgow 1910, xv. 37 Both John son of Orm and William son of John can be seen in Melrose Liber, nos 156, 158. 38 The co-heiresses and their husbands are found in Kelso Liber, nos 156, 158. 39 It is known that Walter de Windsor had a brother called Robert, who appears toward the close of the period: see Kelso Liber, no. 215. 40 The change from Percy to Colville is discussed in Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, 177. 41 Ibid., 177. William de Colville can also be found in Newbattle Registrum, no. 189. 42 Bernard II de Hadden is found confirming his uncle’s grants as heir in Kelso Liber, no. 213. He was still alive in 1230 and he remained an active benefactor of Kelso abbey: ibid., no. 269. He was succeeded by his son Aymer de Hadden, who granted land on his feu to Soutra hospital: Registrum Domus de Soltre, Edinburgh 1861, no. 26. 43 The succession history of the de Londres family can be traced through Melrose Liber, no. 88; Dryburgh Liber, nos 53–4, 56, 59; Kelso Liber, no. 139. 44 Farburne succession history can be traced through Kelso Liber, no. 268; Melrose Liber, no. 140.

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feus of Roger Burnard, Ranulf de Ver and Peter de Haig are either unidentified or else remained at first generation down to 1214. In Roxburghshire therefore, fourteen feus, approximately 56% of the total sample of landholders established in the county, had been passed on to succeeding generations of the same family by 1214. The succession history of nine feus is either unidentified or remained in the first generation by the close of the period. Finally, two feus had been passed on through the marriage of heiresses to a new family through a failure in the male line. Within the families which retained their feus through succeeding generations, four had been passed down in the male line after an initial collateral inheritance and a total of seven landholdings had been passed on to a third generation by the close of the period. Thus, by 1214 28% of the feu-holding aristocracy in Roxburghshire were second generation and 28% were third generation. The figures for the whole of the south-east are presented in Table 1. Table 1

The pattern of hereditary succession 1124–1214 Number of landholders

Unidentified Second succession generation

Third generation

Transferred

Roxburghshire

25

9

8 (male line 7)

6 (male line 3)

2

Berwickshire

4

2

1 (male line 1)

1 (male line 1)

0

Lothian

33

9

17 (male line 12)

6 (male line 4)

1

REGION AS A WHOLE

62

20

26 (male line 19)

13 (male line 9)

3

It can be seen from the figures presented above that 58% of the feus held in the south-eastern region had been passed on to succeeding generations within the same family by 1214. The succession history of 36% of the landholding families either remains unidentified or remained at first generation by the close of the period. Within those feus that did pass on to succeeding generations, 70% were passed on directly in the male line and 30% remained in the male line after an initial collateral inheritance. In the final analysis, 41% of the feu holding aristocracy were second generation and 20% were third generation by the close of the reign of William I. These figures are significant. Over half of the total sample for the south-east as a whole, 66% of the feus established in the region, had been passed on to a succeeding generation or generations by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Remarkably few estates had been transferred or passed on through female inheritance by 1214. The enjoyment of relatively secure succession appears to have been a characteristic element of local society reinforcing the importance of family and, in particular, the linear family structure to the development of local attachments. Heritability enabled individual families to put down roots in their local community and underpinned existing local and county ties through continuity. In Scotland, therefore, as elsewhere in the Anglo-French world, the coincidence of lineage and family property became common suggesting that considerable progress had been made towards the development of a stable local aristocracy by 1214. This suggestion can be illustrated further through an investigation of religious

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patronage at the level of the local community. Such an investigation reveals an identification of religious concerns with local monastic communities which has some important implications for the development of local attachments. Examination of local patterns of patronage suggests that they operated on a number of different levels, both reflecting the differentiation of local society and contributing to the integration of local groups within specific geographical boundaries. The development of religious patronage within the subject area was initially slow, with few lay grants being made during the reign of David I. The situation was to develop rapidly during the second half of the twelfth century, with the most dramatic changes taking place during the reign of William I.45 During the period 1165–1214, fifty landholders out of the sample of sixty-two made 112 original grants to monastic houses established in the south-east of Scotland. The initial rate of development was slow, and even appears to tail off in the late 1170s. However, after the mid 1180s the number of benefactions increased rapidly with the majority of lay grants being made during the period 1185–1200. Indeed the overwhelming majority of lay grants fall into a ten year period between 1185 and 1195. Thereafter grants continued to be made but less frequently. A brief examination of the impetus behind the donations made in south-eastern Scotland can shed some important light on the function of religious benefactions. In general the motives behind religious patronage correspond to wider Anglo-Norman and continental models. The explicit purpose of gift giving was almost always to promote the spiritual welfare of the donors and their families and sometimes also of their lords and friends by means of prayer, liturgical commemoration, burial, admission or some other sort of association with the religious community.46 In the twelfth century the influence of monasticism, especially of the reformed kind, permeated society. In general laymen and women sought association with monastic houses through gifts and landed donations that would bring the donor and their families the benefit of prayer and the hope of salvation.47 An examination of the type of pro anima requests in donation charters from south-eastern Scotland reveals the donors’ concerns. While such clauses may have been formulaic, analysis strongly suggests that in general they reflected genuine sentiment on the part of the donors. One hundred and forty-seven non-royal charters made to six monastic houses reflect a marked concern for the well-being of the donors and their families.48 The catalogue of pro anima requests for the years 1124–1214 is given in Table 2.

45

This situation is paralleled in Anglo-Norman England where during the reign of William Rufus there was a clear shift towards the patronage of religious houses in England that had no obvious connection with the continent. See E. F. Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, Woodbridge 1998, 193–4. 46 For wider discussion on the Christian belief in the efficacy of prayer as a motivation behind patronage, see G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 1996, 243–4; Cownie, Religious Patronage, 151–71; L. K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, London 1978, 3–18; C. A. Gregory, Gifts and Commodities, London 1982. 47 For the influence of reformed monasticism on contemporary attitudes see Constable, Reformation, 6–7; C. B. Bouchard, Sword, Miter and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198, Ithaca 1987, 229; S. Wood, English Monasteries and their Patrons in the Thirteenth Century, Oxford 1955, 122–35; J. le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, Chicago 1981, 11–12, 45–6, 102; J. Wardrop, Fountains Abbey and its Benefactors 1132–1300, Kalamazoo 1987, 235–76. 48 Emma Cownie has done a similar analysis using a sample of 185 donations from eight religious houses in England: Cownie, Religious Patronage, 153–66. See also J. T. Rosenthal, The Purchase of Paradise: Gift Giving and the Aristocracy 1207–1485, London 1972, 11–30.

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Table 2 Pro anima requests from the south-east of Scotland 1124–1214 Pro anima requests

Male donors

Female donors

Joint donors

Total

Self/selves

96

11

7

114

Kin

15

1

—

16

Father

39

8

9

56

Mother

34

8

8

50

3

—

—

3

Wife

37

—

—

37

Husband

—

7

—

7

Grandparents

Brothers Sisters Sons

2

2

—

4

—

1

—

1

6

3

—

9

Daughters

—

2

—

2

Ancestors

81

7

7

95

Heirs/successors

83

6

6

95

Lord King/royalty Other TOTAL NUMBER OF CHARTERS

7

—

3

10

58

1

2

61

4

—

—

4

121

11

15

147

This reveals that the most frequent element in pro anima clauses was the formula ‘for my own soul’ that occurs in 77% of the sample. Its absence from the remaining 23% indicates that its inclusion was not necessarily automatic.49 A further argument against beneficiary drafted charters merely reflecting the concerns of the recipient community is the slow growth in requests for heirs and successors. As the linear family structure developed towards the later decades of the century there is a marked increase in the number of charters bearing some variation on the formula for my heirs and successors. As such, the sentiments behind these requests reflect the developing needs of the time and were by no means simply formulaic topoi. Numerous requests for the souls of the donors’ fathers and mothers reveal a relatively high concern for both parents, with the requests for the souls of fathers being slightly more frequent than for mothers. The high level of requests for ancestors and successors is an indication of the concern for developing family structures and this is borne out by the 30% of the male sample and the 36% of the female sample who include a request for their spouse in their donation. These requests provide further evidence for the importance of family (especially the linear family) within local society. The suggestion made above that one of the major characteristics of society was the development of family relationships is thus reinforced by the strong sense of family involvement in religious concerns; in particular the variation in the kindred 49

Of course it is possible that such a clause could have been omitted in a cartulary copy. However, the presence of requests for other individuals when prayers for the donor’s own soul are omitted suggests that not all absences were due to scribal pruning.

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included in pro anima clauses. This also illustrates the strong local attachments that could be developed through the linking of family and lineage with perpetual endowment. This point becomes especially relevant during the second half of the twelfth century when the heirs of donors continued family relationships with recipient houses. The more recent historiography of the subject has recognised the extent to which benefactions acted as a bond between an individual religious house and its donor’s family through a number of generations.50 In this context, patronage was made up of a series of relationships in which benefactions, disputes, confirmations and re-grants testified to living relationships which became part of the history of emerging family lineages. Those outside the family group are less frequently mentioned. The south-east of Scotland was a region of strong royal influence, however, and this powerful royal presence is reflected in the relatively high percentage (41%) of pro anima requests for the king. Although analysis of pro anima clauses indicates that in general the patronage received by Scottish houses mirrors wider Anglo-Norman and continental practice, the relatively high proportion of requests for the soul of the king contrasts sharply with Emma Cownie’s findings for England.51 Of course patterns of patronage were neither uniform nor consistent. Yet their diversity had a distinctly local flavour. In this respect the evidence from south-eastern Scotland corresponds to recent studies carried out from a wider Anglo-Norman and continental perspective and emphasises the importance of locality in the development of social relationships.52 This localisation can be seen to especially good effect in Roxburghshire where three of the more important religious houses were located. During the reign of Malcolm IV, all of the donations made by Roxburghshire landholders went to houses established in the county. During the following reign, of the nineteen individuals who made donations sixteen made benefactions exclusively to houses established in the county. Of all benefactions made by the area’s local landholders during the period 1165–1214, 84% went to houses in the same county. The evidence from Lothian is more fragmentary, but of those individuals with only local landed interests, 75% made donations to either Holyrood or Newbattle abbeys. In general it can be argued that patterns of patronage were broadly similar across the south-east of Scotland and reflect a mixture of factors including regionalisation, locality and of course personal preferences. The evidence strongly suggests that the most dedicated benefactors of the region’s houses were drawn from their environs, reflecting the local concerns and aspirations of the local elite. Benefactions formed a series of dynamic relationships between individual donors and their recipient houses that contributed to the developing complex and multi-faceted web of ties and associations. During the 1190s, in eastern Roxburghshire donations to Melrose abbey added shared religious patronage to the associations already developing through proximity, family ties and tenurial relationships. In the Yetholm area of the Cheviots, the Ryedale family, Geoffrey fitz Waldef, Robert Burnold, John son of Orm and his son William, the Corbet family, Walter de Windsor, Geoffrey Ridel, Simon of

50

See Bouchard, Sword, Miter and Cloister, 148–50; Cownie, Religious Patronage, 173; B. Rosenwein, To be the Neighbour of St Peter: the Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049, Ithaca and New York 1989, 4. 51 She found royal requests in only 14% of the charters in her sample: Cownie, Religious Patronage, 155. 52 See comments by Bouchard, Sword, Miter and Cloister, 132; Cownie, Religious Patronage, 169; Constable, Reformation, 243–4.

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Elstanehale and Anselm de Mow all made donations to Melrose abbey.53 For a number of individuals who patronised Melrose abbey, their mutual associations became more complex through their patronage of Kelso abbey. Anselm de Mow, Walter Corbet, Geoffrey Ridel and William son of John all made donations to Kelso.54 At the level of the local community, shared ties of religious patronage reinforced the local connections that had arisen out of geography, family and tenure. By isolating and examining a number of ties and associations, this paper has suggested that local society was characterised by the interaction of a number of factors and groups. Considerations such as locality, marriage, kinship, lordship and religious patronage all tended towards integration and the development of an aristocracy whose interests were predominantly local. Viewing society from the lower ranks of the aristocracy rather than top down allows a framework to be created which can suggest how, from an essentially settler aristocracy, new local communities became established within the wider Scottish realm. The interconnection of associated influences, benefactions, local associations, lordship and family ties helped to create an aristocratic presence in the region which, despite its relative newness, was developing into an integral segment of both local society and the wider regnal community.

53 54

Melrose Liber, nos 116, 119, 127, 129, 131, 133–5, 137, 139–40, 147, 152, 154, 156, 160, 167. Kelso Liber, nos 148, 150–5, 177, 268, 367–8, 382, 399.