Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066-c.1216: Essays in Honour of Professor Edmund King 1472413733, 9781472413734

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RULErSHIP AND REBELLION IN THE ANGLO-NOrMAN WOrLD, c.1066–c.1216

Edmund King

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216 Essays in Honour of Professor Edmund King

Edited by PAUL DALTON Canterbury Christ Church University, UK DAVID LUSCOMBE The University of Sheffield, UK

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Paul Dalton, David Luscombe and the Contributors 2015 Paul Dalton and David Luscombe have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Rulership and rebellion in the Anglo-Norman world, c.1066–c.1216 : essays in honour of Professor Edmund King / edited by Paul Dalton and David Luscombe. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-1373-4 (hardcover) 1. Great Britain–History–Norman period, 1066–1154. 2. Great Britain–History–Angevin period, 1154–1216. 3. Great Britain–Kings and rulers– History–To 1500. 4. Nobility–England–History–To 1500. 5. Government, Resistance to– Great Britain–History–To 1500. I. Dalton, Paul. II . Luscombe, D. E. (David Edward) III . King, Edmund. DA 195.R93 2014 942.02–dc23 2014012044 ISBN 9781472413734 (hbk) ISBN 9781315607122 (ebk)

Contents List of Tables   List of Contributors   Acknowledgements   List of Abbreviations  

vii ix xi xiii



Introduction   Paul Dalton and David Luscombe

1

Edmund King: an Appreciation   Sandra Raban

2

William the Peacemaker: the Submission of the English to the Duke of Normandy, October 1066–January 1067   Paul Dalton

21

A Profession of Ignorance: an Insight into Domesday Procedure in an Early Reference to the Inquest   David Roffe

45

The Place of Government in Transition: Winchester, Westminster and London in the Mid-Twelfth Century   Kenji Yoshitake

61



A Different diffidatio: Violence, Litigation and the Lord of Courville from the Letters of Ivo of Chartres   Kathleen Thompson

77

6

The Charters of Geoffrey de Mandeville   Judith A. Green

7

The Legacy of Ranulf de Gernons   Graeme J. White

3 4 5

1 11

91 111

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Fortunes of War: Safe-Guarding Wallingford Castle and Honour 1135–60   Katharine Keats-Rohan

9

John of Salisbury and Courtiers’ Trifles   David Luscombe

141

10

How to Suppress a Rebellion: England 1173–74   Paul Latimer

163

11

The Battle of the Countesses: the Division of the Honour of Leicester, March–December 1207   David Crouch

12

The ‘Loss of Normandy’ and Northamptonshire   Daniel Power

13

The Twenty-Five Barons of Magna Carta: an Augustinian Echo?  231 Nicholas Vincent

A Bibliography of the Published Writings of Edmund King   Index of Manuscripts   General Index  

125

179 213

253 263 267

List of Tables 4.1 4.2 4.3

Charters issued by King Stephen at Winchester, Westminster and London   Charters issued by Queen Matilda   Charters issued by Queen Matilda at Winchester, Westminster and London  

64 64 64

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List of Contributors David Crouch, FBA, Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, University of Hull Paul Dalton, Principal Lecturer in Medieval History, Department of History and American Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University Judith A. Green, Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh Katharine Keats-Rohan, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Paul Latimer, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Bilkent University David Luscombe, FBA, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, University of Sheffield Daniel Power, Professor of Medieval History, Department of History and Classics, Swansea University Sandra Raban, Emeritus Fellow, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge David Roffe, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Kathleen Thompson, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Sheffield Nicholas Vincent, FBA, Professor of Medieval History, University of East Anglia, Norwich Graeme J. White, Professor Emeritus of Local History, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Chester Kenji Yoshitake, Professor at the Division of History, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, Tokyo

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Acknowledgements The Editors wish to thank warmly all the contributors to this volume for their never failing help and cooperation, and also to thank equally warmly the staff at Ashgate who have been so very supportive and obliging. Paul Dalton and David Luscombe

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List of Abbreviations ANS Anglo-Norman Studies BL British Library, London EHR English Historical Review GS Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K.R. Potter with new introduction and notes by R.H.C. Davis (Oxford, 1976) HH Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, ed. and trans. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (60 vols, Oxford, 2004) OV The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969–80) PL J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (221 vols, Paris, 1844–64) RRAN Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, ed. H.W.C. Davis et al. (4 vols, Oxford, 1913–69) TNA The National Archives (of the United Kingdom), Kew TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society VCH Victoria County History

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Introduction Paul Dalton and David Luscombe

The importance of the themes of rulership and rebellion in the history of the Anglo-Norman world between 1066 and the early thirteenth century is incontrovertible. The power, government and influence of kings, queens and other lords pervaded and dominated society but were frequently challenged and resisted. We can note, for example, the English risings against William the Conqueror during the period 1068–75, the rebellions against King William Rufus in 1088 and 1095, the contest between King Henry I and Duke Robert Curthose for control of England and Normandy between 1101 and 1106, the protracted civil war of King Stephen’s reign (1135–54), the rebellion against King Henry II in 1173–74 and, most famously, the baronial resistance to King John that brought about the issue of Magna Carta in 1215. Given the importance of rulership and rebellion in this period, it is unsurprising that much has been written about these subjects by historians. But while biographies of rulers, studies of the institutions and operation of central, local and seigneurial government and works on particular aristocrats and political struggles abound, many major aspects of rulership and rebellion remain to be explored or further elucidated. One of the aspects of rulership and rebellion which requires further investigation is the role of diplomacy and peacemaking in the process by which resistance to authority might be overcome. Paul Dalton seeks to add to our knowledge in this area by examining the negotiations in which William, duke of Normandy, persuaded English leaders to submit to his authority and accept him as king during his campaign through south-east England between the battle of Hastings (14 October 1066) and January 1067, a subject that has received far less attention than the military aspects of the Norman Conquest.1 Although William frequently demanded that the English leaders accept his lordship, perform homage, swear oaths of loyalty, hand over hostages and money and accept the construction of castles, and threatened them with violence, he was also prepared to offer them good lordship in return for peaceful submission. This was reflected in his respect for the royal status and dignity of members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family; confirmation of urban privileges and the offices,   Chapter 2.

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dignities, lands and inheritances of English aristocrats; ecclesiastical patronage; offer of additional powers and favourable marriages to particular Englishmen; and wider promises to maintain peace and justice and rule the English well. A profound reflection of the scale of the disaster that befell the English aristocracy during and after 1066, and of the ultimately ruthless and exploitative nature of Norman rulership, is to be found in the famous Domesday Book. The purpose of Domesday Book has been vigorously contested by modern scholars for more than a century, and in this volume David Roffe adds significantly to his recent contributions to this debate.2 Roffe examines evidence from ‘a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century calendar of donors appended to a history of the church of St Peter, Gloucester’ relating to this church’s tenure of Nympsfield and to the ignorance of its abbot (Serlo) regarding the assessment of Nympsfield to the king’s farm (by Roger de Berkeley) during the Domesday survey. Roffe argues that the abbot’s ignorance ‘is of considerable interest to an understanding of the procedure of the survey and the place of disputes within it’. It supports Roffe’s view that a number of separate but interrelated surveys – of royal demesne and regalia and the geld, conducted by local officials, and then of baronial lands undertaken by ‘special commissioners … appointed to groups of counties’ – were undertaken in 1086, and that, more broadly, the Domesday survey and the making of Domesday Book cannot be seen ‘as a single monolithic process’. Roffe contends that Abbot Serlo’s ignorance of Berkeley’s actions reflects the exclusion of tenants-in-chief like Serlo from the ‘private review of the royal fisc’ undertaken by local officials in 1086, information from which was ‘used to inform the survey of seigneurial estates which followed’; that the evidence relating to Nympsfield ‘illuminates the way in which disputed tenure bubbled up in a series of enterprises in which they had no place’; and that the ‘airing of questions of title was a by-product which was to prove of little interest to the GDB scribe and were apparently peripheral to the main business of the inquest’. Kenji Yoshitake continues the theme of exploring the operation of central government addressed by Roffe.3 The Domesday survey and the compilation of Domesday Book relied heavily on Anglo-Saxon governmental institutions and processes, and after its completion the Book was deposited in the royal treasury in Winchester, the principal centre of Anglo-Saxon administration beyond the royal court. By the late twelfth century, however, Winchester’s position as the key centre of fixed ‘central government’ had been superseded by that of London. Yoshitake challenges the view that the initial change of governmental emphasis from Winchester to Westminster occurred during King Stephen’s reign (1135–54), especially after 1141, arguing that the transformation was already underway when William the Conqueror was   Chapter 3; quotations at pp. 47, 48, 56, 60.   Chapter 4.

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crowned king at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, and continued with the holding of crown-wearing courts and the construction of a Great Hall at Westminster by William Rufus. Yoshitake also places a significantly different emphasis on the role of King Stephen’s reign in further diminishing Winchester’s importance. He notes that the citizens of London played an important part in Stephen’s accession before he secured control of the royal treasury in Winchester, and shows that Stephen issued significantly more charters at Westminster than at Winchester before 1141, and far more charters at London than either Westminster or Winchester. Yoshitake observes that the chroniclers rarely report Stephen’s activities at Winchester after 1142, and suggests that the elevation in the administrative significance of London, especially the Tower of London, from this time is also reflected in the increasing importance of Queen Matilda in royal government after c. 1140. He also suggests that the exchequer may have been convened at Winchester until 1141, but by 1154 and during the early years of Henry II’s regime it met more frequently at Westminster and was distinct from the treasury at Winchester. Three chapters in the volume cast new light on the much debated nature of baronial behaviour during Stephen’s reign, a subject that has been strongly influenced by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s famous depiction of treacherous barons taking advantage of a weak king, committing atrocities, filling the land full of castles held against him and using these fortresses to exploit the people.4 It was a view that helped to shape, for example, the negative depiction of baronial behaviour advanced by John Horace Round,5 and it continued to cast its shadow over the historiography of this subject long after Round’s day. In the last 40 years, however, historians have advanced a more sophisticated and nuanced appreciation of aristocratic political conduct during ‘the Anarchy’. One of the strands in this reappraisal is a more complex appreciation of the nature and limitations of allegiance between lords and their men. Contributing to this theme, Kathleen Thompson examines a significant, but little explored, aspect of resistance to rulership that featured in the defection of King Henry I’s illegitimate son, Robert, earl of Gloucester, from King Stephen’s cause in 1138: Robert’s formal defiance or renunciation of his obligations (diffidatio) to his lord the king.6 Noting the rarity of such acts of defiance, despite William of Malmesbury’s depiction of Robert’s diffidatio as if it were customary procedure, Thompson explores the context of an earlier   The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition Volume 7 MS. E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004), p. 134; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (London, 1961), E, 1137, pp. 198–9. 5   J.H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892). 6   Chapter 5; quotation at p. 84. 4

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diffidatio alleged to have taken place in the region to the west of Chartres in the early years of the twelfth century. The allegation was made by Count Rotrou of Mortagne against his man Ivo of Courville during the course of a dispute between them concerning Rotrou’s construction of a castle on land that Ivo and Hugh du Puiset, viscount of Chartres, claimed was under Hugh’s protection and had been conceded by him to Ivo. Thompson explores the nature of the relationship between Rotrou and Ivo, suggesting that it might have been forged during their earlier cooperative involvement in military actions. In this view, Ivo’s defiance could indicate his ‘departure from a personal association forged in conflict rather than a formal denial of homage for land holdings’. Thompson also explores the role and difficulties of Bishop Ivo of Chartres in trying to resolve the dispute, opposed as he was by the lord of Courville and other powerful supporters of Viscount Hugh, pressurised by his archbishop to carry out papal orders to excommunicate Rotrou, and yet determined to be fair to Rotrou. Thompson concludes by examining the familial and other connections between Count Rotrou and Robert, earl of Gloucester, suggesting that Robert’s act of defiance in 1138, and its public nature, might have been influenced by conversations between the two men, that Rotrou’s use of the term diffidatio was a clever legal defence against a clever legal attack, and that Rotrou might even have invented it. These arguments raise important issues concerning ideas about the limitations of subordination and loyalty in the relationship between lords and their men, and about the ways in which these men might seek to justify behaviour towards their lords that might be perceived to be dishonourable, treacherous and rebellious. In addition to the actions of Robert, earl of Gloucester, in ‘the Anarchy’, the volume casts new light on the careers of two other prominent magnates who periodically opposed King Stephen: Geoffrey II de Mandeville, earl of Essex, famously described by Round as ‘the most perfect and typical presentment of the feudal and anarchic spirit that stamps the reign’,7 and Ranulf II, earl of Chester, whose actions during the civil war have also stimulated considerable debate. Judith Green takes a fresh look at Geoffrey II de Mandeville, primarily by exploring the evidence of his surviving charters, a calendar of which is provided.8 The picture of Geoffrey which emerges from this analysis ‘further strengthens what might be thought of as the ‘‘revisionist’’ view … that he was not an irredeemably bad baron as portrayed by the chroniclers and by Round, but a man who, like his contemporaries, faced a dilemma after the capture of the king in 1141’ and ‘succeeded in navigating the turbulent political events of that year almost too well’. His subsequent rebellion against the king in 1143 only occurred after Stephen arrested him and forced him to surrender his castles, and   Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. v.   Chapter 6; quotations at pp. 93, 102.

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ended with his death from a wound received in combat. Although Geoffrey’s ‘[d]eath as an excommunicate sealed his reputation in the eyes of the chroniclers, and this in turn was to shape the views of later historians’, Green argues that ‘it is clear that he was not the sole or even necessarily the primary cause of trouble’. Graeme White also strengthens the ‘revisionist’ view of Ranulf II, earl of Chester, though in a different way.9 Ranulf inherited an extensive honour, spread over several English counties, which included ‘significant elements of autonomy’ from royal control within Cheshire but whose Lincolnshire possessions had become much more important since the first generation of Norman settlement. White argues that Ranulf sought to exercise aspects of his enhanced authority in Cheshire throughout his honour, but also made innovations in Cheshire’s financial and judicial governance that set its administration apart from the rest of the honour, contributed to the emergence of ‘palatine arrangements’ in the thirteenth century and had ramifications that lasted until the nineteenth century. From this it emerges that although Ranulf ’s successors refined and developed his administrative structures and procedures, he nevertheless bequeathed to them a significant and enduring governmental legacy. In addition, White further elucidates Ranulf ’s geopolitical ambitions, showing that they included a desire to control important trading centres and sections of several key north–south routes through England, had important potential implications relating to the alliance of Henry of Anjou (the future Henry II) and King David of Scots in 1149, and included an independent policy towards Wales. One of the most ardent baronial opponents of King Stephen was Brien (Brian) FitzCount, lord of Wallingford (Oxfordshire), who resisted royal sieges until he stepped down from his lordship c. 1148.10 Katharine Keats-Rohan casts further light on the key role played by the men of the strategically important castle and honour of Wallingford in the opposition to King Stephen, and on the significance of these men in Angevin court circles, by tracing their attestation of charters (mainly those of Empress Matilda) at a time when her son Henry of Anjou was seeking to assert his claims to the English crown.11 In doing so, Keats-Rohan discusses the strategic and administrative importance of Wallingford during Stephen’s reign, and reveals that ‘the notion that Wallingford was a heritable baronial honour as well as a royal castle and borough, is misconceived’, and that as a significant military centre it ‘could only be put into the hands of trustworthy constables under royal supervision’. This first becomes evident when Brien FitzCount relinquished his position as constable of Wallingford c. 1148 and Wallingford castle ‘became   Chapter 7.   On Brian’s ‘single-minded loyalty’ to Empress Matilda, see E. King, ‘The Memory of

9

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Brian Fitz Count’, Haskins Society Journal, 13 (2004): pp. 75–98 at p. 87. 11   Chapter 8; quotations at p. 133.

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directly associated with Angevin lordship’. Keats-Rohan shows that careful arrangements were then made for the custody of Wallingford and its castle, identifies the men appointed to this role, and establishes that they had strong connections with the household of the empress that gave them, or their sons, entrance to the court of King Henry II. ‘English politics was court politics’, as Robert Bartlett once wrote.12 The fundamental importance of royal and aristocratic courts and households in the rulership of the Anglo-Norman dominions is partly reflected by the criticism they attracted from clerical writers in the late twelfth century, including the philosopher and curialis of Archbishops Theobald and Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus and other writings. David Luscombe shows that, in John’s eyes, those guilty of misconduct at the royal court included a number of its most prominent members, among them (probably) King Stephen and his son Eustace, and the justiciars Robert, earl of Leicester, and Richard de Lucy.13 Among them, too, were a group of earls described by John as ‘public enemies’, including Geoffrey II de Mandeville and Ranulf II, earl of Chester, and several other magnates who had exercised arbitrary power during Stephen’s reign. John regarded the multifarious vices of courtiers as threats to good government. They included the use of magic and astrology to predict the future, various frivolous, excessive or immoral entertainments and pastimes, avarice, flattery, bribery and ultimately pride, ambition and envy. Luscombe adds his voice to those of scholars who have reacted against views that John did not understand how courts worked: the Policraticus was intended not only as recreational amusement for its readers, but also as a vehicle to highlight genuine grievances and concerns about rulership and government, and to offer constructive advice about proper conduct, urging the need for moderation, a ‘knightly ethic and a clerical sense of canonical duty’ with strong ‘royal control’. If the activities of courtiers posed serious threats to the res publica, so did full-scale rebellion, especially when supported by foreign powers. In 1173–74 the Anglo-Norman dominions experienced just such a threat when King Henry II’s son, Henry the Young King, rebelled after the king announced plans to grant three important lordships in Anjou to his youngest son John. Paul Latimer shows that Henry II’s government was already well placed to deal with rebellion before 1173. Employing pipe roll evidence, Latimer argues that although there was some administrative disruption in the North and in Kent during the rebellion, there was also a significant amount of highly effective administrative continuity, and casts important light on the measures taken by Henry II and his men to defeat

  England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 28–47

12

at p. 28.

  Chapter 9; quotations at pp. 144, 160.

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the rebellion.14 There are signs that the extent of rebellion amongst the magnates has been exaggerated, but Latimer also maintains that ‘although the pipe rolls show us a system operating through the writ and systematic accounting, we should not imagine that it is a system operated by bureaucrats and accountants’. Great men actually ran it, including Robert de Stuteville, sheriff of Yorkshire, and Ranulf de Glanville, custodian of the honours of Lancaster and Richmond, in northern England, and, even more importantly, the justiciar Richard de Lucy. Not only were Richard’s writs ‘everywhere throughout the pipe rolls of these years’, he also played an important role in the siege of Leicester, compelled the Scottish king to retreat back into Scotland in 1173 and fought at the battle of Fornham. Richard was ably assisted by the royal constable, Humphrey de Bohun, who played ‘a crucial military role’, and by the king’s loyal earls. Latimer’s study of the 1173–74 rebellion is followed by three chapters that address important features of the troubled reign of Henry II’s son, John. The first of these, by David Crouch, discusses the succession dispute between two aristocratic sisters over the powerful honour of Leicester after the death of its lord, their brother, Robert IV de Breteuil, earl of Leicester, in 1204.15 Robert IV’s heirs were his sisters, Amice, countess of Montfort, and Margaret, wife of Saher de Quincy. Amice claimed the Norman honour of Breteuil and all her family’s Norman lands, which King Philip II of France had seized after the earl’s death, but Amice was also determined to assert her claims to the English lands of her dead brother. This family tension, Crouch shows, was complicated by the claim made by Countess Petronilla, mother of Amice and Margaret, to the entire inheritance, which was based on historic links between the Norman honour of Grandmesnil, which she had brought to her husband, Earl Robert III of Leicester, and the earldom of Leicester. Her claims were challenged by her younger daughter, Margaret, and Margaret’s husband, Saher de Quincy, who (like Petronilla) made monetary proffers to the king for the honour. Countess Amice’s delay in going to England to assert her claim enabled the king to keep the bulk of the honour, though he appears to have given Saher de Quincy a privileged position in its disposition. Amice eventually sent her son, Simon de Montfort, to make her claims in 1206. A final division of the honour of Leicester between Saher and Simon was made, probably in December 1207, by royal justices and several juries, and Crouch publishes for the first time the fascinating document which records it. The victors in this protracted dispute were Saher de Quincy and his wife, whose connections with the king and court had secured Saher effective control of all the English portion of the honour between November 1204 and August 1206, and enabled him to challenge the Montfort claims and help Countesses Petronilla and her daughter-in-law Loretta   Chapter 10; quotations at pp. 176–7.   Chapter 11.

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de Briouze maximise their dower portions. But the sisters and co-heirs, Amice and Margaret, had been very active in this dispute and pursued their claims with vigour and ingenuity. The dispute over the inheritance of the honour of Leicester was complicated by King John’s loss of Normandy to King Philip II of France in 1204. Daniel Power explores another dimension of the impact of this political upheaval which has hitherto received little attention: how the loss of Normandy affected the nature and balance of royal and aristocratic power at the local level.16 The locality on which Power focuses is the English county of Northamptonshire, the tenurial landscape of which included estates belonging to the honour of Leicester and many other lordships, but his study also addresses the wider implications of this for the rest of England. The royal confiscation of the estates of Northamptonshire landholders who chose to remain in France in 1204 allowed some English lords to secure lands that they had claimed against these landholders. Some others were able to overcome by skilful manoeuvring the problems and challenges posed by the division of England and Normandy, and to retain landed interests on both sides of the Channel long after 1204. To do so, they invariably needed royal favour, but stood more chance of success if they were Flemings or Bretons rather than from Normandy, had contacts at the royal courts and were prepared to offer bribes. Power also shows that, overall, the scale of King John’s seizure of the ‘lands of the Normans’ in England was not great, especially in the northerly and westerly regions of England, but its impact endured for decades after 1204, in some cases into the fourteenth century, as local communities came to terms with the political, seigneurial, tenurial and legal consequences of losing dispossessed lords. The final chapter, by Nicholas Vincent, focuses on another historic landmark of King John’s reign with an even more powerful and enduring political and legal legacy, Magna Carta and, more particularly, on the twenty-five barons referred to in its so-called security clause (61) who were supposed to enforce its terms.17 By comparing the ‘Articles of the Barons’ with Magna Carta, Vincent valuably illuminates the evolution of the negotiations between the king and the rebel barons between mid-May and mid-June 1215, and the ‘watering down’ of provisions originally intended to have the English archbishops and bishops support the twenty-five in preventing John from obtaining a papal annulment of the settlement. Challenging the established view that this number was influenced by close connections between the twenty-five and the men of London who had a tradition of being governed by twenty-five counsellors, Vincent notes that, even if this view is correct, there is still the question why the number twenty-five was chosen. He suggests that it might have been   Chapter 12.   Chapter 13; quotations at pp. 234, 241, 246.

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influenced by the use of twelve jurors in English law, which could have owed something to biblical inspirations, and notes that the numbers twelve and twenty-four ‘are to be found in standard medieval numerological treatises … in the Glossa Ordinaria’s interpretation of the twenty-four of Revelation 4:4’, in ‘the standard medieval computistical division of each day and night’ and in the common size of monastic communities. But Vincent also suggests that the number twenty-five might have been influenced by St Augustine’s tractate or homily on John 25.6, glossing St John’s Gospel 6:19, in which Augustine not only defines ‘twenty-five as “the number of the law”, but derives its meaning not from a duodecimal system (as, for example in Bede or Isidore, adding Christ to a combination of the twelve patriarchs and apostles) but from a system based upon the square of the number five (the number of the books of the law)’. Vincent points out that some of Augustine’s writings on John’s Gospel would have been widely disseminated in Lent 1215, when portions of this Gospel were read during Masses, and presents a compelling argument that political, governmental and legal developments in this period cannot be viewed in isolation from theological and philosophical considerations, the schools of Rome and Paris, the scholars and libraries of Flanders and Lotharingia and the ancient legal, patristic and biblical texts that were at the heart of scholarly investigation. Ranging chronologically from the Norman Conquest and Domesday Book to Magna Carta, and embracing discussions relevant to several major aspects of rulership and rebellion in this period, including the operation, efficiency, shortcomings and transformation of central government, the role of negotiation and peacemaking in political disputes, baronial behaviour, ambitions and resistance to royal authority, the nature and limitations of allegiance between lords and their men, the capacity of the crown and its administrative system to cope with major revolts, the impact of the loss of Normandy, the role of aristocratic women and the crown in complex aristocratic inheritance disputes and the profound influence of theological and philosophical thinking on political, legal and governmental developments, this volume offers a significant contribution to the history of the Anglo-Norman world. It is also a greatly deserved tribute to a highly respected scholar who, as the list of his distinguished publications at the end of this book shows, has done much to illuminate that world and many other aspects of medieval history.

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Chapter 1

Edmund King: an Appreciation Sandra Raban

It gives me great pleasure to write in appreciation of Edmund and his work not least because, although we share many interests and long years of collaboration and friendship, I am no expert in the twelfth century and would otherwise have been unable to contribute to this richly deserved tribute. We come from the same academic stable, Cambridge in the early 1960s when the economic historian M.M. (Mounya) Postan was a dominant figure among medievalists. Although Postan was Edmund’s official PhD supervisor, it was the outstanding supervision of Marjorie Chibnall that provided his day-to-day support. I am sure Edmund will not mind if I spend a moment in the wake of her recent death to acknowledge the debt we and all her other students owe to her firm but humane guidance in the ways of true scholarship.1 Edmund belonged to a stellar generation. At St Benedict’s, Ealing, where he was at school between 1949 and 1959, he was taught by a trio of gifted historians whose pupils went on to Oxford and Cambridge. Among Edmund’s near contemporaries were Peter Linehan, David d’Avray and Peter Biller, all of whom became distinguished medievalists. Christopher Patten was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford, to read history, even though in the words of Peter Linehan, ‘he was more intent on making history rather than studying it’. Edmund’s fellow students at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he came under the benign influence of Edward Miller, were equally illustrious. As well as Peter Linehan, who followed him to Cambridge, there was the modern historian Peter Clarke with whom he shared a flat as a research student and Timothy Clark the art historian. Other medievalists elsewhere in Cambridge were also embarking on their careers; David Luscombe at King’s College and a clutch of Marjorie Chibnall’s pupils at Girton; Wendy Childs, Sally Thompson, Nicola Coldstream and myself. Edmund’s academic career has a certain symmetry, beginning and ending with Peterborough Abbey. This house was so wealthy that its endowment ranked eleventh in value out of the 45 oldest houses in England in Domesday Book. One of the three richest Fenland abbeys, it was alone in remaining without 1   I am grateful to Edmund’s friends, including other contributors to this volume, who have helped with some of the information found in the following pages.

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a study of its estates when Edmund began his research in 1963.2 In addition to an outstanding series of registers and chronicles, its substantial archive included a small number of detailed enrolled accounts for the abbot’s share of the demesne manors together with some original charters and court rolls. From these sources Edmund harvested a prize-winning thesis, subsequently published as Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market.3 At the time, authors of monographs were under heavy pressure from Cambridge University Press to produce small volumes. Edmund responded with a masterpiece of concision which already demonstrated assurance and maturity of judgement. Despite its brevity, the book managed to cover a remarkable amount of ground. As one might anticipate, it dealt with abbey administration and estate management, but also matters of wider academic debate at that date, notably the fate of the small knightly tenants of which Peterborough had acquired an embarrassingly large number in the post-Conquest period. At this early stage in his career, Edmund naturally enough leaned towards economic matters. It is worth remembering that had things turned out differently, he might well have become an outstanding economic historian. Peterborough was not abandoned with the publication of this first book. At intervals during the following years, Edmund returned to the abbey and associated Northamptonshire subjects. In articles directly arising from his thesis he examined two early twelfth-century surveys of the military potential of the abbey known as the Descriptio Militum and also offered a fuller exploration of the land market in order to assess how far knightly tenure was under threat from the encroachment of large landowners. He engaged briefly with Peterborough’s mid-thirteenth-century estate management at the time of the baronial reform movement.4 His lively curiosity focused on a variety of subjects ranging from the early medieval development of the town of Peterborough and Northamptonshire’s medieval wall paintings to the origins of   The other two comprised E. Miller, The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (Cambridge, 1951, repr. 1969) and J.A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1957). For the ranking, see D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England; A History of its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216 (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1963, repr. 1966), App. 6, pp. 702–3. 3   Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge, 1973). His PhD thesis won the Ellen McArthur Prize for Economic History, 1969. 4   ‘The Peterborough Descriptio Militum (Henry I)’, EHR, 84 (1969): pp. 84–101; ‘Large and Small Landowners in Thirteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 47 (1970): pp. 26–50, revised and reprinted in T.H. Aston (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 141–65; ‘Estate Management and the Reform Movement’, in W.M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Thirteenth Century (Stamford, 1991), pp. 1–14. 2

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the Wake family.5 However, a combination of the tenurial complexities he was unravelling in Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties and his teaching duties increasingly shifted the main thrust of his interest from the abbey and its environs to the wider theatre of the Anglo-Norman realm. Only now, after the appearance of his widely acclaimed study of King Stephen in 2010, has he been at liberty to return to his early intellectual pastures. He is currently putting the final touches to a definitive edition of the three important texts which comprise Peterborough Abbey’s house chronicle. This edition is sorely needed. Although Mellows published the first text, the chronicle of Hugh Candidus, shortly before his death in 1950, the remaining chronicles of Robert of Swaffham and Walter of Whittlesey have long been available only in Joseph Sparke’s old and inaccessible edition published in 1723.6 The biography of King Stephen, Edmund’s most lasting contribution to the history of the mid-twelfth century to date, marks the culmination of decades of work which have redefined much of that century for the current generation.7 He set out the stall for this new phase of his career in his article on ‘King Stephen and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy’ published in 1974.8 This surveyed the historiography of ‘the anarchy’ and proposed a more nuanced interpretation of magnate behaviour. His initial article was followed by what David Bates has described as ‘a remarkable series of publications’.9 Those from the early 1970s in particular have become the starting point for any discussion of the interplay between local and national politics. One might also mention his influential article on dispute settlement published in 1992.10 His unrivalled knowledge of the convoluted tenures at a time of great turbulence and insecurity, combined with an imaginative insight into baronial attitudes have enabled him to create a plausible interpretation of events which had been distorted both by the propaganda of Stephen’s successor, Henry II, and by the historical orthodoxy of earlier historians. One task remains. After the sustained effort expended on Stephen, one can only hope that Edmund will find the strength to tackle the biography he has proposed of Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois, bishop of  5   ‘The Town of Peterborough in the Early Middle Ages’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 6, no. 4 (1980–81): pp. 187–95; ‘Medieval Wall-Paintings in Northamptonshire’, ibid., 7, no. 2 (1984–85): pp. 69–78; ‘The Origins of the Wake Family; the Early History of the Barony of Bourne in Lincolnshire’, ibid., 5, no. 3 (1975): pp. 166–76.  6   The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus A Monk of Peterborough, ed. W.T. Mellows (London, 1949); N. Karn and E. King, ‘The Peterborough Chronicles’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 61, (2008): p. 17; J. Sparke (ed.), Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Varii (2 vols, London, 1723), vol. 2, Historiae Coenobii Burgensis Scriptores Varii.  7   King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010).  8   History, 59 (1974): pp. 180–94.  9  Reviewing King Stephen in EHR, 127 (2012): p. 682. 10   ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 115–30.

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Winchester, an able and intriguing figure who badly needs a full-scale study. In the meantime, we have a foretaste in his article on Henry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.11 The new edition of William of Malmesbury’s Historia Novella which appeared in 1998 belongs very much to Edmund’s mid-twelfth-century oeuvre.12 It also represents an important aspect of his scholarship; that of making texts available to fellow scholars in good modern editions with full supporting analysis. The Historia Novella had been edited and translated by K.R. Potter for the Nelson’s Medieval Texts Series in 1955, but was unsatisfactory in several respects. Edmund’s edition, while retaining Potter’s translation with annotations, established a much improved text. He also added a substantial introduction discussing Malmesbury himself and the writing of the Historia Novella, together with a detailed survey of the extant manuscripts and the historical value of the chronicle. Paul Dalton justly described it as ‘a skilful, astute and original work of scholarship’ in his review for the English Historical Review.13 Less well known are Edmund’s editions of a number of short but useful documents which at the time were hard to access. The Descriptio Militum, copied into the unpublished Black Book of Peterborough, was otherwise available only as an appendix to the Camden Society edition of the Chronicon Petroburgense edited by Thomas Stapleton in 1849.14 Similarly, the two short mid-thirteenth-century estate inventories, now in print, were at the time only to be found in the British Library.15 To this day, the surviving estate records of the Hotot family of Clapton, rare evidence of the private dealings of a small knightly family, remain accessible only in Edmund’s edition.16 His latest project, the Peterborough chronicles, has been undertaken in the same spirit. In this respect, as in several others, he could be described as a historians’ historian. Edmund is a prodigiously energetic researcher. Close attention to contemporary witness is his forte. David Crouch called his article on Mountsorrel and its region ‘one of the most dazzling displays of historical detection ever published’.17 It is noticeable that as his work has evolved, it has tended to go   ‘Blois, Henry de (c. 1096–1171)’, in ODNB, vol. 6, pp. 238–42.   William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella: The Contemporary History (Oxford, 1998). 13   EHR, 115 (2000): p. 185. 14   Society of Antiquaries, MS 60, fols, 14r, 18r; T. Stapleton (ed.), Chronicon Petroburgense, Camden Society (1849), pp. 168–75. 15   BL, Cott. Vesp. E xxii, fol. 41v; S. Raban (ed.), The White Book of Peterborough, Northamptonshire Record Society (NRS), 41 (2001), nos 103–4. 16   ‘Estate Records of the Hotot Family’, in E. King (ed.), A Northamptonshire Miscellany, NRS, 32 (1983), pp. 1–58. 17   In his review of King Stephen, www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1038. The article was ‘Mountsorrel and its Region in King Stephen’s Reign’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 44 11 12

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straight to the sources and place less emphasis on historiography. This has not met with universal approval, although David Carpenter, for one, welcomed his avoidance of the ‘buzzing hive of historians’.18 The advantage of this approach is that it not only confers depth and immediacy on his writings; but that it means that they are likely to prove enduringly useful rather than be swiftly superseded by the next intellectual fashion. This is not of course to deny that Edmund’s arguments are fully informed by their historiographical background. Evidently they are, as his earliest publications on the subject testify. Indeed, he has gone further than he needed in acknowledging the contribution of his predecessors with his interest in John Horace Round, not at first glance the most alluring of subjects. He initially contemplated a full-scale assessment of Round’s life and work and collected a good deal of his surviving correspondence to that end. Apart from short biographies in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians, this remains to be achieved.19 However, his article on the compilation of the Calendar of Documents Preserved in France is much cited, not least because it foreshadows an awakening of interest in the work of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars.20 The other outstanding aspect of Edmund’s scholarship is what one might term his individual voice. In a discipline which is no longer generally seen as an art form, it is refreshing to read work written with elegance, a wide frame of cultural reference and lively expression. Only Edmund could describe the Liber Vitae of Thorney Abbey as ‘a most superior early visitors’ book’ or cite a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel to illustrate the disadvantages besetting younger sons.21 This zest explains the success of his general book Medieval England, which went through five editions (including one in Japanese) and was the ‘Editor’s choice’ for The Ancient and Medieval History Book Club in 1988. Most of us at one time or another have attempted to mediate serious historical research to a popular audience, but few have enjoyed quite such success. So, a historians’ historian, but one eminently well qualified to communicate academic writing to the wider public in a vivid and witty fashion. It is the mark of the finest scholars that they not only engage in the furtherance of their own research and reputation, but that they also have a care for the profession as a whole. Medieval history has a long tradition of those who (1980): pp. 1–10. 18   In his Times Literary Supplement review of King Stephen, 30 December 2011, p. 15. 19   J. Cannon (ed.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians (Oxford, 1988), pp. 360–361. 20   ‘John Horace Round and the “Calendar of Documents Preserved in France”’, in ANS, 4 (1982): pp. 93–103, 202–4; J.H. Round (ed.), Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, AD 918–1206 (London, 1899). 21   ‘The Foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, HSJ, 2 (1991): p. 172; ‘Large and Small Landowners in Thirteenth Century England’, in Landlords, Peasants and Politics, p. 161.

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have given unstintingly of their time and energy in order to extend and improve the tools available to others. Edmund has been outstanding in this regard. In addition to his own editions of texts already mentioned, he has made his fair share of contributions to the great scholarly undertakings of the day. Chief among these is the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In addition to Henry of Blois and John Horace Round, he profiled 13 other individuals, reflecting once more the wide range of his interests. He is also a generous source of information and help to fellow scholars, helped by what appears to be a vast and meticulous record of all his past correspondence and notes. A particularly exacting duty, cheerfully undertaken, has been his service to the two local record societies closest to Peterborough; Lincoln Record Society and Northamptonshire Record Society. Such bodies, often venerable institutions operating on the slenderest of budgets, are the jewels in the crown of English local history. Without the texts they have made available in good printed editions, the work of historians would be a great deal more difficult. To sit on their Councils and deliver the occasional lecture is no great hardship, but to serve as a General Editor is an altogether more demanding task. Not least of the difficulties for a medievalist is the members’ proverbial dislike of volumes in Latin. There is a fundamental tension between the serious scholarly purpose for which the societies were founded and the preference of those whose subscriptions pay for the publications for something more accessible and pertinent to their interests. Already in the 1920s this issue was rearing its head at Lincoln.22 Northamptonshire Record Society attempted to resolve the problem with Northamptonshire Past and Present, a more popular publication under separate editorship, containing articles on a wide range of local subjects. Many of these deal with topics closer to the present day, but there are also useful medieval contributions, many of which have been written by Edmund. This does not altogether prevent the refrain that ‘members hate Latin volumes’ at Council meetings, while some members even go so far as to return their copies in grumpy complaint. Edmund served as General Editor for Northamptonshire Record Society for nearly a quarter of a century between 1970 and 1994 and, against slightly mutinous trench warfare, mounted a long and doughty defence of its core function. As many an editor will tell you, presenting other people’s work for publication can be ten times more demanding than preparing one’s own. The luxury of copy editors is not for local record societies; the General Editor performs this service as well as having to ensure a balanced programme of publications, each following the other at regular intervals so as to honour the terms of the annual subscription. Edmund’s long tenure saw the publication of a wide variety 22   N. Bennett, Wonderful to Behold: A Centenary History of the Lincoln Record Society, 1910–2010, Lincoln Record Society, 100 (2010), pp. 46, 56.

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of volumes, including the miscellany which contained two eighteenth-century documents alongside the Hotot estate book.23 Medieval volumes comprised the cartularies of Luffield and Daventry Priories and the obedientiary accounts of Peterborough Abbey, as well as Janet Martin’s invaluable inventory of the abbey’s cartularies and registers.24 Other publications, including David Hall’s much lauded study of the open fields of Northamptonshire and Peter Gordon’s papers of the Red Earl, ranged from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.25 In a departure from past practice, Edmund also introduced a monograph on Elizabethan puritans in Peterborough diocese.26 Taken together these stand as a weighty monument to his term of office. His most idiosyncratic contribution to the scholarly community is his attraction to the leading figures of the preceding generation and a sense of the importance of preserving a record of their deeds. Historiography King style. His interest in Round has already been mentioned, but more recently he has begun helping to preserve the memory of the grandes dames of medieval history of whom there are an impressive number. He was lucky enough to work briefly with Joan Wake, the redoubtable founder of Northamptonshire Record Society, at the end of her life. Edmund has volunteered to mastermind a collaborative volume to celebrate her life for the Society’s centenary in 2020. It is also characteristic that, despite having no formal role in the various forms of commemoration now being prepared for Marjorie Chibnall, he has delved enthusiastically into her family roots to add his mite. Edmund was promoted to a personal Professorship of History in 1989. In his inaugural lecture he launched a brisk attack on those who doubted that historical research could be undertaken outside the metropolis. Ridiculous as this might now seem, at the time the proposition appeared to have been seriously entertained by the University Funding Council. In these days of web-based resources, one barely has to set foot outside one’s study, let alone board a train or plane. Not only has Edmund produced a very large and varied body of research from his Yorkshire base, he has managed without the slightest difficulty to be fully integrated into the wider scholarly community. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he has also held visiting Fellowships at All Souls’ College, Oxford,   A Northamptonshire Miscellany, pp. 59–146.   G.R. Elvey (ed.), Luffield Priory Charters, pt. 2, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire Record Societies, 26 (1975); M.J. Franklin (ed.), The Cartulary of Daventry Priory, NRS, 35 (1988); J. Greatrex (ed.), Account Rolls of the Obedientiaries of Peterborough, NRS, 33 (1984); J.D. Martin, The Cartularies and Registers of Peterborough Abbey, NRS, 28 (1978). 25   D. Hall, The Open Fields of Northamptonshire, NRS, 38 (1995); P. Gordon (ed.), The Red Earl. The Papers of the 5th Earl Spencer 1815–1910, NRS, 31 (2 vols, 1981) and 34 (1986). 26   W.J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough 1558–1610, NRS, 30 (1979). 23 24

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and the Huntington Library in the USA. He enjoyed spells as a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan and Connecticut in the early 1980s and made many good friends among American scholars. Notable among these was Thomas K. Keefe of the Appalachian State University who sadly died in 1998. There are also myriad scholars whom he encounters at conferences and seminars and on the numerous committees claiming his attention, not to mention the help and advice which he has given individually to so many of us. Without regular study leave, most of these achievements would not have been possible. Scholars in this day and age rarely enjoy the privilege of uninterrupted research. Increasingly an academic career involves not only teaching but heavy administrative responsibilities. Edmund has embraced this challenge with relish. He was appointed to an Assistant Lectureship at Sheffield University in 1966, at what now seems a very tender age. There is an anecdote, probably Edmund’s own, that at this time of university expansion in the wake of the Robbins Report, a carriage load of research students would set out from Cambridge by train to attend interviews at more or less weekly intervals. Each week, the same band minus one would set off again for a destination a little further away. Edmund was fortunate enough to become happily established in a sympathetic department where he enjoyed a long and successful career. Foremost among his achievements there must be his record as a dedicated and accomplished teacher. To anyone concerned with the well-being of his discipline, nurturing the next generation is a priority. Edmund was able to command the attention and respect of students by the gravity and originality of what he had to say, and by the gentle and intelligent humour with which he often said it. His special subject on the reign of King Stephen, which he jokingly referred to as ‘The Age of Brother Cadfael’, was launched in 1970 and ran until his retirement.27 The classes for this course were held in Edmund’s large office where, before a postcard of the Anglo-Saxon King Edmund, the Department’s ‘King’ would hold court twice weekly. In a nod to the past, for several years he also ran a second year course on Towns and Trade in the Later Middle Ages. The symbiotic relationship between scholarship and teaching has been significant in accumulating the material and ideas on which Edmund’s work is based. His students in their turn were made aware of the richness and crucial importance of primary sources – and left in no doubt that their arguments had to be supported by good evidence. Unlike some academic teachers, he was not concerned to produce clones, but to encourage students to believe in the value of their own ideas and thereby gain confidence in their own abilities. Many students were first attracted to medieval history in his classes and for some it was even life changing. Inspired to undertake postgraduate study, they found Edmund an exemplary supervisor; generously supportive and full of wise advice.   Historia Novella, p. v.

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As well as feeding the intellect, Edmund, ever mindful of the importance of the spirit, fostered a convivial atmosphere in which ideas and arguments could be exchanged. His students quickly realised that medieval history is something to be enjoyed as well as studied. It was not long before they were engaged, often spontaneously, in vigorous debates which were refereed by Edmund with his customary fairness and wit. He also took the pastoral side of teaching very seriously. He was always approachable, accessible and caring. Students who dropped in for advice were welcome, counsel was patiently conveyed and appropriate and timely steps were taken to help with non-academic difficulties. There was also a distinctly convivial side to Edmund’s teaching. Towards the end of the Christmas term, he and Jenny would invite all the ‘King Stephen’ students to their home for dinner while, at the end of the academic, year he took the entire group to the pub to celebrate the completion of finals. It has been rightly said that all of Edmund’s students have much to thank him for. He was supportive to his colleagues as well as to his pupils. Their careers were fostered as generously as those of his students. The atmosphere in the Department was collaborative not competitive. Dan Power, for one, remembers their many discussions with appreciation. He also fostered research on a broader front as joint director of the Hundred Rolls Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based in the Department between 1992 and 1996. Ambitiously conceived, it lacked sufficient funds and time to produce the planned facsimile of the early nineteenth-century Record Commission edition accompanied by a new index. However, greater understanding of the making of the 1255 and 1274–75 rolls and the publication of some of the hitherto unprinted rolls represent a significant contribution to the study of these important thirteenthcentury inquiries. This is a tribute to Edmund the historian and consummate professional, not to Edmund the man, but the two are closely intertwined. His care for the discipline echoes his thoughtful, almost chivalrous, approach to others. His ‘generous humanity’ has been commented on. He is deeply committed to his family. That Jenny, a poet, assists in throwing open their home to students and colleagues reflects their long-standing partnership and mutual support. His Catholic faith is another integral part of his persona. It gives him an imaginative insight into a society where religion pervaded everyday life to an extent many today find incomprehensible. It also provides him with the vocabulary and background knowledge which others have sometimes had painstakingly to acquire. In the historical High Street, Edmund is certainly not one of the boring multiples, nor yet a flashy boutique, rather a traditional purveyor of quality goods, increasingly rare and much to be treasured.

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Chapter 2

William the Peacemaker: the Submission of the English to the Duke of Normandy, October 1066–January 1067 Paul Dalton

The role of negotiation and peacemaking in the establishment of William the Conqueror’s power over the English has been much less studied than the contribution of warfare.1 This chapter seeks to explore this role more fully, 1   It receives little attention, for example, in the accounts of the period October 1066– January 1067 in D.C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1964), pp. 205–6, 247, 252; and R.A. Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest (2nd edn, Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 122–62 at pp. 128 and n. 37, 141 and n. 106, 154–6, 160–61. For a study which gives more attention to it, E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England (6 vols, Oxford, 1870–79), vol. 3, pp. 255–65, 430–33, 447–50, 537–41, 545–9, 701–3, 733–9, 767–8; vol. 4, pp. 18–22. The following abbreviations are used in the footnotes: ASC 5; 6; 7; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 5 MS. C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 2001); Volume 6 MS D, ed. G.P. Cubbin (Cambridge, 1996); Volume 7 MS. E, ed. S. Irvine (Cambridge, 2004). ASCT: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (2nd edn, London, 1961). CHP: The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. F. Barlow (Oxford, 1999). CP: ‘Chronica Pontificum Ecclesiae Eboracensis’, in Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J. Raine (3 vols, 1879–86), vol. 2. GDB: Great Domesday Book: Library Edition, eds A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (London, 1986–92). GP: William of Malmesbury Gesta Pontificvm Anglorvm: The History of the English Bishops, eds and trans. M. Winterbottom and R M. Thomson (2 vols, Oxford, 2007). GR: William of Malmesbury Gesta Regvm Anglorvm: The History of the English Kings, eds and trans. R.A.B. Mynors et al. (2 vols, Oxford, 1998–99). JW: The Chronicle of John of Worcester Volume II The Annals from 450 to 1066, eds R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford, 1995). RRW: Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998).

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primarily in the period from the battle of Hastings to January 1067. It will show that peace discussions were common, that the English surrenders were far from unconditional and that the terms involved obligations on both sides. The nature of these obligations, including those William agreed in relation to Edgar the Ætheling and his family, English towns and magnates and the governance of the realm, will be examined. The chapter will also pay particular attention to Archbishop Ealdred of York’s involvement in the negotiations, and the attempts to justify his actions. It owes much to Edmund King’s major contributions to the history of the Anglo-Norman world.2 Attempts peacefully to resolve the dispute between William and Harold Godwineson over the English crown appear to have started before the Norman invasion. The accounts of this vary, but collectively they indicate that William sent messages to Harold complaining about Harold’s breach of faith, demanding his submission and fulfilment of previous oaths regarding William’s succession to the kingdom and certain marriage agreements, asserting William’s claim to the crown and readiness to use military force to obtain it and insisting on Harold’s abdication; and that Harold responded with arguments justifying his rejection of William’s wishes.3 Negotiations continued after William landed in England. Some of the evidence appears in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, the authorship, date and veracity of which have been much debated. It may have been written by Guy, bishop of Amiens, before May 1068 or summer 1070, and

WJ: The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. E.M.C. van Houts (2 vols, Oxford, 1995). WP: The Gesta Gvillelmi of William of Poitiers, eds and trans. R.H.C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998). I am grateful to Dr Gaynor Williams for helpful observations that improved this chapter. 2   Especially ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 115–30; ‘The Accession of Henry II’, in C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (eds), Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 24–46; ‘A Week in Politics: Oxford, Late July 1141’, in P. Dalton and G.J. White (eds), King Stephen’s Reign (1135–1154) (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 58–79; and his monumental, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), chaps 5 and 9. 3   WJ, vol. 2, pp. 160–61 (William of Jumièges wrote about the Norman invasion for the Conqueror, reflected the duke’s justification of his actions, and sought to portray him as a good ruler: WJ, vol. 1, pp. xxxii–xxxv, xlvii–xlix, lii–liii); WP, pp. 106–7; Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule (London, 1884), p. 8; GR, vol. 1, pp. 446–7; Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina, ed. K. Hilbert (Heidelberg, 1979), p. 156; ‘Baudri of Bourgueil, Adelae Comitissae’, trans. M.W. Herren, in S.A. Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 167–77 at p. 169; Wace: The Roman de Rou, trans. G.S. Burgess ( Jersey, 2002), pp. 228–9 (Wace was writing in the 1160s/early 1170s). See also Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, pp. 255–65, 701–3.

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certainly favours Duke William.4 It states that Harold sent a message instructing William to leave the country and restore captives and anything else seized by force, or face war. William responded by asserting his right to the kingdom, and proposing that if Harold sought peace and was prepared to admit his crimes and submit he would be forgiven and granted his father’s lands. The Carmen also refers to William demanding that Harold maintain his faith and abide by his oaths if he wanted to be saved.5 The Conqueror’s chaplain, William of Poitiers, who wrote most of his chronicle between 1071 and 1077, probably utilised the Carmen, based his work partly on the writings of classical authors and was intent on justifying, defending and glorifying the Norman invasion, also refers to communications between duke and king. Harold’s message to William defended his right to the crown and demanded that, unless William and his men left the country, Harold would terminate his friendship and pacts with William. The duke responded by justifying his claim to the crown and offering to have it judged by English or Norman law or by single combat.6 Although Poitiers ‘uses the challenge to a judicial duel as a potent motif to hammer home the justice of the Norman cause and William’s supposed reluctance to avoid bloodshed’, such challenges were not uncommon and sometimes a way of seeking to avoid battle.7 The negotiations failed and the battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066. Although William’s victory there was profoundly important, his conquest was far from complete. He hoped the remaining English leaders would surrender, but when they did not he marched into Kent, ravaging the land.8 These leaders, based in London, established the boy Edgar the Ætheling, grandson of King 4   CHP, pp. xvi–xlii and the references there, and for the CHP’s value generally pp. liii–xci. See also WP, p. xxviii. 5   CHP, pp. lxx, 12–19. 6   WP, pp. 118–23. For the date, composition, and bias of this chronicle, see WP, pp. xx, xxvi–xxx; CHP, p. lvii; G. Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 3–9, 40–41, 75; D. Bates, ‘The Conqueror’s Earliest Historians and the Writing of His Biography’, in idem et al. (eds), Writing Medieval Biography 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 129–41 at pp. 132–5. For Harold being offered the choice of abdicating on conditions, reigning under William’s authority, or single combat; and William’s readiness to settle the dispute by papal judgement or battle, see also GR, vol. 1, pp. 452–3. Wace pp. 244–7, 250–55 notes William’s offers of a marriage alliance, papal judgement, single combat, Northumbria (for Harold), and Earl Godwine’s land (for Harold’s brother, Gyrth); and Harold’s refusal and promise to rebuild William’s ships and give him money, clothing and safe conduct. See also Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, pp. 430–33, 447–50, 733–9. 7   M. Strickland, ‘Provoking and Avoiding Battle? Challenge, Judicial Duel, and Single Combat in Warfare of the High Middle Ages’, in idem (ed.), Armies, Chivalry, and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France (Stamford, 1998), pp. 317–43 quotation at p. 324. 8   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 144; JW, pp. 606–7.

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Edmund Ironside (d. 1016), as king and prepared to offer William battle.9 William’s advance towards London has been much discussed. The discourse has tended to focus on the military aspects of this campaign,10 but the negotiations that accompanied it deserve fuller appreciation. Before examining these negotiations more closely, it is valuable to consider, with Edmund King’s guidance, aspects of the peace process that settled the later succession dispute between the Conqueror’s grandson, King Stephen, and his great-grandson, Henry duke of Normandy, in 1153.11 It occurred after Henry came to England to claim the throne. He offered the magnates good lordship in return for support, and during a progress through the Midlands secured the submission of several centres. In July 1153 at Wallingford negotiators secured a ‘breakthrough’ agreement that excluded Stephen’s eldest son Eustace, who was to die soon afterwards, from the succession. Henry’s progress continued until, in November 1153, the peace was ratified at Winchester. The terms included Stephen granting Henry ‘and his heirs the kingdom’, and promising to ‘maintain him as [his] son and heir’. They also included Stephen’s surviving son, William, doing homage to Henry, and Henry doing homage to Stephen. Stephen and Henry then went to London, and Stephen issued a charter at Westminster detailing their agreements. These included the offer of a ‘substantial premium’ (including extensive lands, revenues and an earldom) to William, and ‘notification of a more general exchange of homages’. Henry’s men who had never accepted Stephen’s lordship did homage to Stephen, ‘saving only the [king’s and duke’s] agreements’. Stephen’s earls and barons renewed their fealty to him and did liege homage to Henry, ‘saving their fealty to [Stephen]’. This ‘recognised the integrity and protected the tenures of those who had taken different parts in the civil war’. ‘There would be no disinheritance built into the peace. It was a key to the integrity of the kingdom that the personal integrity of those who fought on either side was respected in this way’. To ensure Henry’s safe succession key castles were entrusted to chosen castellans who provided hostages. An edict then dealt with the restraint of violence and spoliation, ejection of foreign mercenaries, decommissioning of castles and restoration of lands. Elements of this peace process, which led to the accession of Duke Henry as king in 1154, help to illuminate the process that brought Duke William to the throne in 1066. Like Duke Henry’s Midland progress in 1153, Duke William’s march through south-east England in 1066 was accompanied by peacemaking. It emerges first at Dover. Its citizens were prepared to surrender, but some of William’s men   WP, pp. 146–7; OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–81. See also JW, pp. 604–7.   See, for example, Douglas, William the Conqueror, p. 206; Brown, The Normans, p. 155; CHP, p. lxxxix. 11   For what follows, see King, ‘The Accession’, pp. 25–39 quotation at p. 29; idem, King Stephen, pp. 270–91 quotations at pp. 280 (citing RRAN, vol. 3, no. 272), 282, 287 (partly citing RRAN, vol. 3, no. 272); King, ‘Dispute Settlement’, pp. 124–5 quotation at p. 125. 9

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burnt part of the town. William ‘paid for the repair of the buildings and gave compensation for other losses’.12 But references to William expelling Englishmen from their homes to provide his soldiers with lodgings, strengthening Dover’s fortifications and installing a garrison indicate the imposition of harsher terms of surrender.13 His actions were probably intended to intimidate other English strongholds into submission. ‘Immediately terror spread out beyond the town to all neighbouring cities, boroughs, and places’.14 Fearing complete destruction, Canterbury despatched messengers to offer William tribute, fealty and hostages.15 ‘Afterwards many more [settlements], holding firmly to their own rights … made gifts to the king’.16 English settlements unprepared peacefully to submit and offer William loyalty, security and money faced the loss of rights or destruction. But William was also prepared to offer terms, including protection and the preservation of urban privileges, to encourage such surrenders. One of the cities whose surrender William obtained, probably through envoys, was Winchester. The duke is said to have commanded its leaders to render tribute and submit.17 He might also have compelled them to accept the construction and garrisoning of a castle within their city.18 But because Queen Edith had been granted Winchester in dower by her husband, King Edward, William’s sense of honour is said to have caused him to permit her to retain it in return for ‘rent and fealty’.19 This might well reflect the truth. As the widow of Edward the Confessor, whose alleged succession wishes were a key justification for William’s claim to the crown, and ‘as a powerful woman having contact through the court with the administration [Edith] was useful to [William] and had a bargaining position’. She ‘was one of the most successful of all early queens in her retention of land and property in widowhood’, ‘one of the few English whose situation improved as the Norman story took final shape … [and] died in possession of much of her land’.20 In return for submission, loyalty and money her royal status and dignity were respected. From East Kent William went to London, the submission of which, as in 1153, was the key to securing the crown. While probably close to the south bank of the Thames, his knights drove Englishmen defending London back behind   WP, pp. 144–5; OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–81.   CHP, pp. 36–7; WP, pp. 144–5; OV, pp. 180–81. 14   CHP, pp. 36–7, and see p. lxxxvii. 15   WP, pp. 144–5; CHP, pp. 36–7; OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–81. 16   CHP, pp. 36–7. For the payment of tribute to William, see also WP, pp. 152–3, and p. 152 n. 3. 17   CHP, pp. 36–7. 18   It might have been built after 1066: WP, pp. 164–5; OV, vol. 2, pp. 194–5. 19   CHP, pp. 36–7. 20   P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997), p. 275. See also WP, pp. 114–15. 12 13

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their walls and burnt houses.21 If William had not already begun negotiations with London’s leaders, he was soon to do so. They were probably underway by the time he reached Wallingford, 36 miles west of London, the site of the ‘breakthrough’ agreement of 1153. There, according to William of Poitiers, Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, submitted to him. Although Poitiers and Orderic, who used Poitiers’ work, are the only sources to mention this and might have confused it with another English surrender at Berkhamsted, their accounts may be accurate.22 Wallingford was a town of major administrative, military and strategic importance.23 It was a fortified royal centre in the charge of Wigod, who was probably a staller (an important official in the royal household), and incorporated property held by Stigand.24 It was also on or close to major communication routes, and the focus of a lordship with a crucial ‘strategic role in the defence of the middle Thames valley’. Situated close to the place where the Thames cuts through the Chilterns, at a crossing point on the river close to the Icknield Way, Wallingford was a key gateway to London from the west. It was common for peace talks to occur on islands in rivers or at important river fords or bridges, often on the frontiers of authority.25 There is a distinct possibility, therefore, that William’s meeting with Stigand was just such a conference, and that it had been carefully planned in advance. Stigand ‘gave himself with his hands to [Duke William], and confirmed his faith with an oath’, and effectively renounced Edgar the Ætheling.26 Although Orderic ‘freely adapts’ this to include the submission of other English nobles who acknowledged William as their lord, were received by him kindly and obtained ‘all their former offices and honours’, he probably captures the essence of the peace.27 It has been noted that, when associated with peacemaking, homage ‘constitutes a splendid visual amplification of an admission of wrong before   WP, pp. 146–7; OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–83.   WP, pp. 146–7; OV, vol. 2, pp. 182–3. Poitiers does mention that London’s leaders submitted after William left Wallingford. For discussion: Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, pp. 767–8. 23   For the details on Wallingford, see K. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis of the Honour of Wallingford’, in idem and D. Roffe (eds), The Origins of Wallingford, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, 464 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 52–67 quotation at p. 52. See also D. Roffe, ‘Wallingford in Domesday Book and Beyond’, in idem, pp. 27–51, and below pp. 125–39, esp. pp. 129–33. 24   GDB, fols 56, 58. 25   J. Benham, ‘Anglo-French Peace Conferences in the Twelfth Century’, ANS, 27 (2005): pp. 52–67; P. Dalton, ‘Sites and Occasions of Peacemaking in England and Normandy, c. 900–c. 1150’, Haskins Society Journal, 16 (2006): pp. 12–26 at pp. 13–18. 26   WP, pp. 146–7 (translation modified): see Garnett, Conquered England, p. 76. 27   OV, vol. 2, p. 182 and n. 1, p. 183. For discussion: J.L. Nelson, ‘The Rites of the Conqueror’, ANS, 4 (1982): pp. 117–32, 210–21 at p. 17. 21 22

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bystanders … publicized the recipient’s victory and helped to restore his “face”, while at the same time it proclaimed the homagers’ detachment from a hostile support group’; and that it ‘established an unbreachable amicitia comparable to that of close blood kinship’.28 Homage was also contractual: something was expected in return.29 What was given in return at Wallingford was William’s kindness and confirmation of offices and honours – his good lordship.30 Stigand retained his ecclesiastical offices until 1070, and Wigod, who might have been present at his submission, and his family also appear to have fared well after 1066. There is evidence that Wigod ‘survived 1066 in the service of the Norman king’; his daughter Ealdgyth married, and carried at least some of his lands to, the Conqueror’s follower Robert d’Oilly; and his son Toki entered William’s service and died trying to save his life at the siege of Gerberoy in 1079.31 In 1066 Stigand might have acted unilaterally when submitting to Duke William. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and John of Worcester refer to the surrender of other English bishops at Berkhamsted, to which William appears to have marched after leaving Wallingford. He probably travelled via the Icknield Way, below the western edge of the Chilterns, and then along the Roman Akeman Street, which ran through the gap in the Chilterns at Tring. From Tring he could advance on London via Akeman Street and Watling Street, largely unencumbered by any major geographical obstacles.32 The only serious barrier of this kind facing him was the River Bulbourne, and it was at the point where Akeman Street met the Bulbourne at Berkhamsted that several English leaders from London offered William their submission.33 In modern studies this often receives relatively little attention or is described in terms which give at least the impression that it was unconditional, or nearly so.34 But neither the location nor the nature of this submission supports such an interpretation.35   P. Hyams, Rancor & Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca and London, 2003), pp. 202–6 quotations at pp. 203–4. 29   J.C. Holt, ‘1086’, in idem (ed.), Domesday Studies (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 43; King, ‘Dispute Settlement’, p. 120. 30   For William’s return of inheritances in return for homage and fealty, see also Wace, pp. 288–9. 31   Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis’, pp. 52, 55 quotation at p. 52. 32   E. Impey, ‘London’s Early Castles and the Context of their Creation’, in idem (ed.), The White Tower (London, 2008), pp. 13–26 at pp. 17–18. 33   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 144; JW, pp. 606–7. Whether this was Great or Little Berkhamsted has been much debated. For a recent argument in favour of the former, see Impey, ‘London’s Early Castles’, pp. 17–18. 34   See, for example, Brown, The Normans, p. 156; F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1971), p. 597; Douglas, William the Conqueror, p. 206 (Stenton and Douglas briefly refer to William’s promise of gracious/good lordship). 35   I hope to address this in more detail elsewhere. 28

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Berkhamsted’s location made it, like Wallingford, a key gateway to London, and is one of the indications that the meeting there was another peace conference. It is also significant that the only account of this meeting in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is given in version D, a source which has been linked to the entourage or person of Ealdred, archbishop of York, who was already an experienced diplomat and peacemaker by 1066 and appears first in the list of English leaders present at Berkhamsted.36 The identity of the others is also revealing: Edgar the Ætheling, Earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria, the leading men of London, and Bishops Wulfstan of Worcester and Walter of Hereford.37 The meeting involved the principal disputants, William and Edgar, and their great men. This suggests that the headlines, at least, of the peace terms had already been worked out before the meeting.38 To reconstruct these terms we need to consider more closely aspects of ASC D’s account of the period 1066–67. It states that after the battle of Hastings, which the English lost because of their sins, Archbishop Ealdred and the Londoners … wanted to have Edgar Cild as king, as was his natural right; and Edwin and Morcar promised him that they would fight on his side; but always the more it ought to have been forward the more it got behind, and the worse it grew from day to day … William … when he understood that no one meant to come to him … ravaged all the region that he overran until he reached Berkhamsted. There … Archbishop Ealdred and Edgar Cild, and Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar, and all the chief men from London … submitted out of necessity after most damage had been done – and it was a great folly that they had not done it earlier, since God would not make things better, because of our sins. And they gave hostages and swore oaths to him, and he promised them that he would be a gracious [or faithful] lord [‘hold hlaford’], and yet in the meantime they ravaged all that they overran. Then on Christmas Day, Archbishop Ealdred consecrated him king at Westminster.   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D 1066, p. 144. For discussion of Ealdred’s links with D, see I. Atkins, ‘The Origin of the Later Part of the Saxon Chronicle Known as D’, EHR, 55 (1940): pp. 8–26; P. Wormald, How Do We Know So Much About Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst? (Deerhurst, 1993), pp. 10–16; P. Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and Women: Gendering Conquest in Eleventh-Century England’, in S. Keynes and A.P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Dublin, 2006), pp. 208–23 at p. 211; idem, ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the D Chronicle’, in D. Crouch and K. Thompson (eds), Normandy and Its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 135–56. For Ealdred, see also J.M. Cooper, The Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, Borthwick Papers, 38 (York, 1970), pp. 23–8; V. King, ‘Ealdred, Archbishop of York: The Worcester Years’, ANS, 18 (1996): pp. 123–37; M.K. Lawson, rev. V. King, ‘Ealdred [Aldred] (d. 1069)’, in ODNB, vol. 17, pp. 552–4. 37   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 144; JW, pp. 606–7. 38   See King, ‘A Week in Politics’, p. 76. 36

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And he promised Ealdred on Christ’s book and swore moreover (before Ealdred would place the crown on his head) that he would rule all this people as well as the best of the kings before him, if they would be loyal to him. All the same he laid taxes on people very severely, and then went in spring overseas to Normandy, and took with him Archbishop Stigand, and Æthelnoth, abbot of Glastonbury, and Edgar Cild and Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar, and Earl Waltheof … And Bishop Odo [of Bayeux] and Earl William [FitzOsbern] stayed behind and built castles far and wide … and distressed the wretched folk, and always after that it grew much worse. May the end be good when God wills!39

Valuable analysis of D’s annals for 1066–69 has already gone some way to illuminating the author’s position and motives. He was a ‘commentator on conquest, nostalgic, patriotic, fatalistic but also bitter and angry. He was an English patriot’ who gave a ‘complex response’ to the conquest, ‘one which turns inwards to castigate the English elite as much as outwards against the Norman conquerors; one which both generalises a loved “England/English” yet criticises sections of it, in particular its leaders; one which accepts defeat and seeks its causes’. This response was influenced by the description of the earlier Danish conquest of England found in a vernacular account of Æthelred II’s reign and in the writings of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York. It was ‘a view of betrayal from the top: of an English people … afflicted by divided leadership, an untrustworthy elite, and dogged by “unræd”, bad counsel, in the highest places. … The English nobility, led by Ealdred, Edgar, Edwin and Morcar bowed to William only after most harm had been done and it was “micel unræd” that it had not been done before’.40 D’s response was also, designed to explain Ealdred’s actions … as he sought to affirm a legitimate succession to the kingdom and to gain divine forgiveness for the English people in the midst of disaster … The allusion to the rightful claim of Edgar ætheling must on this reading be seen as a failed attempt to find a course which would propitiate God’s anger. The preparatory oath exacted from William by Ealdred before his coronation … represents both an attempt to control William and to set the English on a course for redemption. The subsequent criticisms of William, which include excessive taxation, the breaking of promises, oppression and the unnecessary taking of life were … a critique of a king who was failing to live up to Ealdred’s and others’ expectations.41

39   ASC 6, pp. 80–81; the quoted translation is from ASCT, D, 1066, pp. 143–5 (translation modified – see n. 45 below). See Garnett, Conquered England, p. 1. 40   Stafford, ‘Chronicle D’, pp. 214–16. 41   Bates, ‘Earliest Historians’, p. 131.

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D’s explanation of Ealdred’s actions is even more understandable in the context of Ealdred’s involvement in peace negotiations crucial in establishing Duke William as king. It was important for peacemakers to ‘broker acceptable face-saving settlements’.42 It was deeply problematic, not least for their own reputations, if the settlements brokered were regarded as cowardly, dishonourable or disastrous. It would have been particularly problematic for Archbishop Ealdred if, as has been suggested, he knew the vernacular chronicle, utilised in D, that carried ‘messages from earlier English History’ which, … expressed the West Saxon hegemony and the successes of Alfred’s dynasty … highlighted its darkest moment and conquest by Swegn and Cnut … included a very critical account of the activities of the mid-tenth-century Archbishop Wulfstan [of York] vis-à-vis Viking claimants to Northumbria [that] … told a salutary tale of the potential treachery of northern archbishops … [and came] to Ealdred via the revered hands of his predecessor Archbishop Wulfstan II – a man who himself had been faced with negotiating a foreign conquest … If this was the content of the chronicle Ealdred knew, then that is truly an important insight into the formation of the mind of the man who negotiated the events of 1066.43

Another difficulty for Ealdred is that his actions at Berkhamsted could easily have been seen as inconsistent with his involvement in previous negotiations designed to ensure the continuance of the West Saxon royal dynasty. He had gone to Germany on King Edward’s behalf in 1054 to secure the return to England of Edgar the Ætheling’s father, Edward the Exile, from Hungary.44 In 1066, after Harold’s death, he had also, with the Londoners, ‘wanted to have Edgar [the Ætheling] as king, as was his natural right’, exactly the same phrase used by D when describing King Edward’s accession in 1042.45 But at Berkhamsted Ealdred’s negotiations involved depriving Edgar of ‘his natural right’ and accepting the lordship of an illegitimate descendant of Vikings (‘Wyllelm Bastard’ in D’s words)46 who had invaded and ravaged a Christian kingdom and killed a Christian king (probably crowned by Ealdred’s own hands)47 and ‘many good men’; and who, when he became king, taxed the English severely, took  Hyams, Rancor, p. 107, and see p. 144.   Stafford, ‘Archbishop Ealdred’, pp. 155–6. See also idem, ‘Chronicle D’, pp. 215–16. 44   ASC 6, p. 74; ASCT, D, 1054, p. 129; JW, pp. 574–7; CP, p. 345; King, ‘Ealdred’, pp. 127–8; Lawson and King, ‘Ealdred’, p. 552. See also discussion of Ealdred’s journey to Hungary in 1058, in King, ‘Ealdred’, p. 130; Lawson and King, ‘Ealdred’, p. 552. 45   ASC 6, pp. 66, 80; ASC 5, pp. 107–8; the quoted translation is from ASCT, D, 1042, 1066, C, 1042, pp. 106, 143 (with the earlier of Whitelock’s translations being preferred for the italicized text); JW, pp. 604–7; Garnett, Conquered England, p. 43 n. 310. 46   ASC 6, p. 79; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 141. 47   JW, pp. 600–601; CP, p. 348; Nelson, ‘The Rites’, pp. 127–8. 42

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their leaders to Normandy and left England in the charge of Normans who built many castles and caused the English people distress. The difficulty of Ealdred’s position must have been exacerbated by his responsibility, as an archbishop, to share in the king’s sacred ministry to govern and protect the Christian kingdom and care for the souls of its people. And it might have been made even worse by the possibility that his peace with William included terms favourable to himself. Ealdred was to enjoy the privilege of crowning William, and Ealdred and the church of St John’s, Beverley, which was subject to his authority, secured beneficial charters from William that might have been issued early in his reign.48 Viewed in this context, the case for hearing Ealdred’s voice in D’s response to the conquest becomes even stronger, and the response all the more understandable. If it was nostalgic, patriotic, fatalistic, bitter and angry, it can also be read as justificatory. Its castigation of the English elite is revealingly nuanced. There may be an intimation that Edwin’s and Morcar’s broken promises and prevarication cost Edgar his natural right,49 and that the submission was not just Ealdred’s decision but a collective act. And there is a clear statement that submission was offered ‘out of necessity after most damage had been done’. At one level, the necessity resulted from Norman destruction, but it was probably also regarded as being compelled by a much more powerful force. The concept of necessity in medieval thought was complex and related to the much debated and interrelated subjects of God’s power, will and foreknowledge of events, predestination and human free will. D links the necessity of the submission to God’s will, but allows for a measure of human free will in its timing (‘it was a great folly that they had not done it earlier’).50 The logic appears similar to St Augustine’s belief that ‘human freedom, in some sense, is compatible with a completely determined course of events … [humans] act freely in the sense that [they] are at least partly free of external constraints … But … are mistaken if [they] think that each decision helps to determine a future which was not fully determined before it was made’.51 Thus, although the English were free   RRW, nos 31 (1066 x Sept. 1069), 32 (1067 x 1069), 351 (1066 x Sept. 1069). For Ealdred’s favour towards the church of Beverley, see CP, pp. 353–4; Cooper, Archbishops, p. 27. 49   For the earls failing to fulfil their promise to enter battle, see also JW, pp. 606–7. 50   For the author of D’s belief in God’s foreknowledge and control of earthly events, see also ASC 6, p. 82; ASCT, D, 1067, p. 147. 51   C. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge, 1994), p. 234 and see pp. 50–51, 88–9, 231–5. There is an extensive literature on this subject. For other examples, see W. Rowe, ‘Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will’, The Review of Metaphysics, 18(2) (December 1964): pp. 356–63; G. Bonner, Freedom and Necessity: St Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington, DC, 2007), esp. pp. 23–4, 41–2, 81–4, 92, 97–8. For necessity, see also D. Luscombe, Medieval Thought (Oxford, 1997), pp. 44–5, 104, 126–7, 153–7, 164–5. 48

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to choose when to submit, the submission itself was unavoidable and faultless because it was predestined by God’s will. The only fault was the foolish prevarication in doing so. The submission is also depicted by D as contractual rather than unconditional. The terms included the English accepting William as their lord, swearing oaths (of fealty) to him52 and surrendering hostages.53 But they also related to the conduct of William’s rule. He was to be a gracious or faithful (that is, a good) lord, and this doubtless carried with it, as D implies, an obligation to maintain and protect his subjects and not to distress them with ravaging or castles. John of Worcester, who belonged to a religious community that had Ealdred as its bishop from 1046 until 1062 and might have used a chronicle related to D, had good reason to regard the outcome of the meeting at Berkhamsted as a treaty or pact (‘foedus’).54 There is much, however, that is unsaid in D about this treaty. There is no explicit mention of the English electing William as their king, though William of Poitiers states (more generally) that the ‘bishops and other leading men begged [William] to take the crown’.55 Perhaps their ‘collective public recognition of [William] as lord amounted, under the circumstances of an interregnum, to an acceptance of him as king’,56 but D’s lack of precision raises questions. A closely related matter, about which D is also silent, is what was agreed in relation to Edgar the Ætheling and his mother Agatha and sisters Margaret and Christina. Edgar was an Ætheling and, with his sisters, shared the blood of the AngloSaxon kings. He had been ‘wanted as king’ by Archbishop Ealdred and the Londoners, and even William of Poitiers acknowledged that he was established as king by Stigand, Edwin and Morcar.57 It is not certain that Edgar was actually consecrated, but his election, like his blood, gave him a powerful claim to the crown.58 Despite D’s silence on the matter, the Berkhamsted talks are likely to   See p. 28 above. For discussion, see Nelson, ‘The Rites’, p. 117. See also JW, pp. 606–7. 53   This is confirmed in WP, pp. 146–7. 54   JW, pp. 606–7. For John’s sources, see P. Stafford, ‘Royal Women and Transitions: Emma and Ælfgifu in 1035–1042/1043’, in L. Körntgen and D. Wasenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 127–44 at p. 134 n. 25. 55   WP, pp. 146–9. See also OV, vol. 2, pp. 182–3. But Poitiers makes no explicit mention of Berkhamsted, and was intent on portraying the Conqueror’s seizure of power in the best possible light. 56   Nelson, ‘The Rites’, p. 117 and see p. 118. 57   WP, pp. 146–7. See also CHP, pp. 38–9; OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–81. 58   For the importance of election in Anglo-Saxon king-making, see F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), pp. 54–5; J.L. Nelson, ‘Inauguration Rituals’, in P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (eds), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 50–71 at pp. 53–6; Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 2–3. For the importance of Edgar’s royal lineage, see OV, 52

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have involved, and may have ratified earlier agreements concerning, the issue of what to do about Edgar and his family. The issue was all the more pressing because even if the English negotiators did not elect William as king, they accepted him as their lord. How was this to be reconciled, without the loss of honour, with their prior choice of Edgar as king; and what was Edgar’s position and that of his kinswomen in William’s kingdom to be? There are signs that some of the solutions to these questions resembled some of those found in 1153. Like Duke Henry in 1153, Edgar recognised his rival as his lord and swore oaths to him. Like King Stephen, Duke William made promises to his rival. William also, according to William of Poitiers, gave Edgar lands and held him dearly because ‘he was of the stock of King Edward’ and so that he did not feel too aggrieved at ‘not having the honour to which he had been elected’.59 Perhaps embellishing this, Orderic Vitalis stated that since Edgar ‘was a boy who was gentle and sincere and a kinsman of the great King Edward, namely the son of his nephew, the duke embraced him amicably, and all his life honoured and venerated him among his sons’.60 Poitiers and Orderic were intent, of course, on portraying William as a merciful and magnanimous monarch, but there could be shades of truth in their picture. Poitiers’ claim that William ‘was related to King Edward by close ties of blood’, although exaggerated, indicates William’s respect for the lineage of Edgar whose great-grandfather, King Æthelred, was King Edward’s father.61 Even if Orderic is mistaken, and William did not adopt his rival as his son in 1066, as Stephen did in 1153, he could not deny Edgar’s membership of the royal family.62 This is probably why Edgar’s name heads the list of four named English laymen, three of them earls, who accompanied William to Normandy in spring 1067.63 There are signs, then, that at Berkhamsted, or perhaps a little earlier, it was agreed that although Edgar’s royal status would be modified (he was not to be king), it would also be respected. Edgar might also have obtained from William a grant, or at least a promise, of lands – of a ‘premium’, in other words, to secure his

vol. 2, pp. 276–7; CHP, pp. 38–9; N. Hooper, ‘Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon Prince, Rebel and Crusader’, Anglo-Saxon England, 14 (1985): pp. 197–214 at pp. 203, 212–13. 59   WP, pp. 162–3. Hooper suggests Edgar was stripped of his honours after rebelling in 1068: ‘Edgar’, p. 204. 60   OV, vol. 2, p. 182–3 (translation modified). Orderic also referred to Edgar and Robert Curthose as virtually foster-brothers: OV, vol. 5, pp. 272–3, cited by Hooper, ‘Edgar’, p. 204 n. 36. 61   WP, pp. 150–51. For discussion: Douglas, William the Conqueror, p. 251. 62   It is significant that Edgar was never executed or imprisoned by William despite his rebellions and links with William’s enemies. See Hooper, ‘Edgar’, pp. 204–5. 63   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 145.

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support for the peace – and assurances regarding the respect to be shown to the royal status and dignity of his kinswomen.64 As for Edgar’s men, like the men of Stephen in 1153, they also submitted to their lord’s rival, possibly in a way recognised as preserving their faith to Edgar.65 Like Stephen’s men, they probably did so in the expectation that the duke would be a good lord and protect them and their tenures. For a time, this expectation, at least in respect of some of them, appears to have been fulfilled. The English leaders who accompanied William and Edgar to Normandy in spring 1067, some of the negotiators of Wallingford and Berkhamsted among them, did so with their titles intact; and some may have secured additional premiums.66 Up to a point, their status was respected, though William did not trust them and regarded them as hostages.67 For these men (at least) there was, in the early months of William’s reign, no disinheritance built into the peace, though this peace and their security were not to last.68 As in 1153, so in 1066, it also looks like provisions were made, as the progress of the duke of Normandy was coming to its conclusion in London, for the safe succession of the new king, and that they involved hostages and castles. English hostages were handed over to William at or shortly after the Berkhamsted conference. William also ‘sent men ahead to London to build a fortress in the city’ and undertake other preparations.69 The fortress they built was probably on the site of the first castle named in the peace terms of 1153, the Tower of London, and it might then or soon afterwards have been supplemented by another one located in the west of London.70

64   Edgar received a large sum of money when he later rejoined William’s court c.1074: see GR, vol. 1, pp. 466–7. He appears to have continued to hope to acquire honours from William: ASC 7, p. 94; ASCT, E, 1086, p. 162. I hope to discuss Edgar’s kinswomen elsewhere. 65   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 144; JW, pp. 606–7. 66   ASC 6, p. 81; ASCT, D, 1066, p. 145. For Edwin and Morcar’s retention of their earldoms, see RRW, nos 32–3, 138, 181, 286, 292; C.P. Lewis, ‘The Early Earls of Norman England’, ANS, 13 (1991): pp. 207–23 at pp. 215–16. If Orderic is to be believed, William gave Edwin ‘authority over his brother and almost a third of England’, and ‘promised to give him his daughter in marriage’: OV, vol. 2, pp. 214–15. See also GR, vol. 1, pp. 468–9. 67   WP, pp. 166–9; GR, vol. 1, pp. 464–7. 68   Even before William was crowned, he may not have been prepared to grant all Englishmen their lands in return for submission: E.M.C. van Houts, ‘The Brevis Relatio …’, in idem, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, 1000–1200 (Aldershot, 1999), Chapter VII, pp. 1–48 at pp. 33a–33. 69   WP, pp. 148–9 (translation modified). 70  Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 3, pp. 553–4; Impey, ‘London’s Early Castles’, pp. 18–19, and see pp. 20–24. But see also C.N.L. Brooke assisted by G. Keir, London 800– 1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), p. 30; Brown, The Normans, p. 161 n. 220.

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In 1153 the entry of Stephen and Henry into London was met with processions.71 The situation in 1066 was probably different. Resistance to William from London, or at least from elements within it, appears to have continued after the Berkhamsted conference. William of Jumièges noted that an advanced force of knights, sent ahead by the duke to London, found numerous hostile rebels and had to fight to secure their submission and hostages.72 When the duke reached the city, according to William of Malmesbury, although the Londoners rushed out to greet him at the instigation of the magnates, ‘especially Archbishops Stigand of Canterbury and Ealdred of York’, some noblemen in London would have chosen Edgar if the bishops had supported them.73 The Carmen even goes so far as to say that William besieged London from a base at Westminster, but this could be fictional.74 Despite its difficulties as a source, the Carmen might provide further insight into London’s submission. It describes William terrifying the Londoners with threats and making a secret proposal to their leader, Ansgar, that although William would be king Ansgar would command the affairs of the kingdom. After further negotiations, in which William agreed to the Londoners’ demands and threatened them with destruction, the city repudiated Edgar and came to terms: With faces turned to the ground, they proceed with the boy in an orderly procession to the royal hall, seeking to surrender the city by its keys and to appease wrath by making a gift with their hands. … the king … went to meet them and bestowed joyful kisses on the boy and the others. He pardoned their crimes, gratefully accepted their gifts, and thus treated with honour those whom he had taken under his protection. … and binds treacherous hearts by oaths.75

This remarkable tale reads like a poetic set piece interwoven with literary conventions, may conflate events at Berkhamsted with later developments and must be treated with caution. But we should also be cautious about dismissing it as pure invention.76 Baudri of Bourgueil provides compatible information, stating that the citizens of an unnamed city (presumably London) tried to secure an honourable peace from William, accepted his offers and received him

 King, King Stephen, p. 282.   WJ, vol. 2, pp. 170–71. See also CHP, pp. lxxxvii–lxxxviii; Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 598; Impey, ‘London’s Early Castles’, p. 18. 73   GR, vol. 1, pp. 460–63. 74   CHP, pp. 38–41. 75   CHP, pp. 40–45 quotation at p. 45 (translation modified). 76   See Brooke and Keir, London, p. 28. 71 72

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enthusiastically.77 It is also likely that Ansgar was a real person: Asgar (or Esgar/ Esger) the staller, ‘the second-richest thegn in pre-conquest England below the rank of earl’, a royal steward and procurator who ‘may have had some official position in London, possibly as portreeve (an office later held, like Asgar’s land, by his Norman supplanter, Geoffrey de Mandeville)’. In this view, although ‘the details of [the Carmen’s] tale may be no more than poetic licence, the tradition that Asgar had authority in the city of London may be reliable’.78 It is also significant that Geoffrey de Mandeville might have been sheriff of London, Middlesex, Essex and Hertfordshire and custodian of the Tower of London.79 It is conceivable, therefore, that the Conqueror secured London’s submission, as he might have secured Wallingford’s, by negotiating with a powerful staller, and by offering him command of the kingdom’s affairs; and all the more so in view of the Waltham Chronicle’s reference to Asgar’s grandfather, Tovi the Proud, as the most important man in England after the king.80 The veracity of the Carmen’s account is also supported by the ritualised nature of the peacemaking it depicts, which has much in common with other medieval peace agreements.81 There is compromise and reciprocity. Gifts are given ‘with hands’. Signs of submission, respect and remorse are met with similar movements, formal kisses, forgiveness, gratitude and the bestowal of protection. A city is surrendered by the handing over of keys. And the peace is guaranteed by the swearing of sacred oaths. While it is true that a bishop like Guy of Amiens could have imagined all of this, the picture probably painted by him, for people who took part in or at least knew the story of 1066, is unlikely to have been a work of pure fantasy. Other indications of the diplomatic tactics William might have employed to secure London’s submission might be provided by some of his early charters. A famous writ, addressed to the bishop, portreeve and citizens of London, promising them ‘all the laws of which they were worthy in King Edward’s day’, ‘that every child shall be his father’s heir after his father’s death’ and protection from wrongs, could have been issued at some point between Christmas Day 77   Baldricus Burgulianus, p. 163; ‘Baudri of Bourgueil’, trans. Herren, pp. 176–7; CHP, p. lxxxvii. 78   A. Williams, ‘Asgar the Staller (d. after 1066)’, in ODNB, vol. 2, pp. 596–7. 79   J. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 (London, 1990), pp. 39, 47, 56; and see Brooke and Keir, London, pp. 192–7, 216–17. 80   The Waltham Chronicle, ed. and trans. L. Watkiss and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1994), pp. xvi, 12–13, and pp. 26–7. 81   There is no space here to provide substantial references but, for examples, see S.D. White, ‘“ Pactum … Legem Vincit et Amor Judicium”: The Settlement of Disputes by Compromise in Eleventh-Century Western France’, American Journal of Legal History, 22 (1978): pp. 281–308; Hyams, Rancor pp. 200–202; D.M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985), image 23 and p. 181.

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1066 and March 1067, and echo earlier negotiations.82 Another one, issued ‘almost certainly 1066 x 1067’, granted land to William’s coronation church, Westminster Abbey.83 The abbey might have secured further early grants from William.84 Another great church and focus of power and devotion within London to benefit from William’s patronage was St Paul’s cathedral, the resting place of the seventh-century saint and bishop of London, Erkenwald.85 Some of William’s charters for it might have been issued early in his reign.86 It has also been suggested that the bishop of London in 1066, a Norman named William, might have joined the Conqueror before Berkhamsted, and that his ‘Norman origins and mediatory skills may have helped soften [William’s] wrath towards London and its cathedral’. The king certainly allowed the bishop and the chapter ‘by and large to maintain and enhance their endowment’, and also permitted the bishop (1066 x 1075) to build a castle at (Bishop’s) Stortford.87 Although this patronage could simply have been conventional and later than January 1067, some of it could reflect earlier negotiations designed to secure the submission of London. It was certainly the sort of good lordship that William appears commonly to have promised when making peace with the English. After securing London’s submission, William was crowned at Westminster. His concerns about security are reflected in his stationing of armed and mounted men around the abbey who appear to have expected the worst. Mistaking the loud English cry of assent to William’s consecration as something more sinister, the soldiers set fire to nearby houses.88 If our Norman and French sources are to be believed, the coronation included the election (or at least the acceptance) of William as king by the English and French present, indicating that they

  RRW, no. 180, noting, however, that the writ might have been issued 1066 x 1075. It also suggests that Asgar might already have been supplanted by Geoffrey de Mandeville. 83   Ibid., no. 291. 84   All of the following charters could have been issued in 1066 but might be later, sometimes by several years: ibid., nos 292, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300, 309, 329, 330. See also nos 290, 301, 302, 304, 317, 321 and the notes. 85   The cathedral had extensive lands within and near London whose citizens provided some of the members of its chapter. See Brooke and Keir, London, pp. 341, 352–5. For Erkenwald, see P. Wormald, ‘Earconwald [St Earconwald, Erkenwald] (d. 693)’, in ODNB, vol. 17, pp. 559–60. 86   RRW, nos 184, 187, but these may have been issued several years after 1066. 87   P. Taylor, ‘The Endowment and Military Obligations of the See of London: A Reassessment of Three Sources’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 287–312 at pp. 304–9; idem, ‘Foundation and Endowment: St Paul’s and the English Kingdoms, 604–1087’, in D. Keene et al. (eds), St. Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004 (New Haven, 2004), pp. 5–16 quotations at p. 16. 88   WP, pp. 150–51; OV, vol. 2, pp. 184–5. 82

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represented the political community of the realm.89 Archbishop Ealdred presided, and ASC D’s account of this can be read again as justificatory. The coronation was only undertaken by Ealdred after William promised on the Gospels and swore a sacred oath that he would govern the English as well as the best of their previous kings, if they were loyal.90 There may be an implication here that this involved levying reasonable taxes, allowing English leaders to remain in England, limiting castle-building and ensuring that the people were not distressed. John of Worcester referred, in a statement mirrored in a twelfthcentury York chronicle, to Ealdred requiring the Conqueror to swear ‘that he would defend the holy churches of God and their rulers too, and would govern the whole people subject to him justly, and by royal provision would establish and maintain right law, and totally forbid rapine and unjust judgements’.91 The York chronicle also includes the dubious story that Ealdred reminded William about this oath when later complaining to him about depredations committed by a sheriff, and that a fearful William prostrated himself before Ealdred to obtain forgiveness.92 Further resonances of Ealdred’s conditions, and of his desire to justify his role in negotiating them – partly by reference to William’s broken promises – are probably to be found in D’s statement that after Berkhamsted the Normans ‘ravaged all that they overran’; that in 1067 the king inflicted severe taxes; and that in 1069 he and his men ravaged and burnt York and its cathedral, and laid waste to Yorkshire.93 If the later successions of William Rufus and Henry I followed the practice of 1066, it is possible that the Conqueror also promised Ealdred, who is said to have ‘loved him like a son’ as long as he ‘behaved temperately towards his people’, that he would regard him as his spiritual father and rule with his advice.94

  WP, pp. 150–51; WJ, vol. 2, pp. 170–73; OV, vol. 2, pp. 184–5; CHP, pp. 48–9.   Poitiers makes no mention of any conditions: WP, pp. 150–51. See also OV, vol. 2, pp. 182–5; Eadmeri, p. 9. The Carmen states that the ceremony involved two metropolitan bishops, presumably Ealdred and Stigand: CHP, pp. 46–7. For discussion of the coronation, the ordo used, and the possibility that Ealdred composed it, see also CHP, pp. xxxvi–xxxviii; Nelson, ‘The Rite’, pp. 117–32, esp. pp. 124–8, 130; but see also G. Garnett, ‘The Third Recension of the English Coronation ordo: The Manuscripts’, Haskins Society Journal, 11 (2003): pp. 43–71. 91   JW, pp. 606–7; CP, p. 349. 92   CP, pp. 350–53; Cooper, Archbishops, pp. 27–8. See also GP, vol. 1, pp. 384–5. 93   ASC 6, pp. 82–4; ASCT, D, 1067, 1069, pp. 144–6, 149–50. For discussion, see Atkins, ‘Origin’, p. 23. On ASC D and broken promises, see also Stafford, ‘Chronicle D’, p. 214; Bates, ‘Earliest Historians’, p. 131. 94   GP, vol. 1, pp. 384–5; P. Dalton, ‘The Accession of King Henry I, August 1100’, Viator, 43 (2) (2012), pp. 98, 101, 103, 107. William is said to have ‘received [Stigand] as father and archbishop, while Stigand received William as king and son’: GP, vol. 1, pp. 48–9. 89 90

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Although probably distorted and exaggerated by a writer intent on justifying and glorifying William’s kingship, on presenting it and William’s kingly behaviour ‘in terms of exactly the same motifs and rituals as other similar sources’, and on elaborating conventional expectations of good kingship,95 more echoes of the peace agreement made by William and the English leaders before Christmas Day 1066 might be heard in William of Poitiers’ account of the ‘many wise, just, and merciful provisions’ made by the Conqueror at London after his coronation: … some were for the advantage and honour of the city, others to the profit of the whole people, and some for the care of the churches … Whatever laws he composed, he established for the best of reasons. No one ever sought a just judgement from him in vain … He condemned none save those whom it would have been unjust not to condemn … He understood that the essence of royal majesty was to excel in conspicuous generosity, and to accept nothing which was contrary to fair dealing. … He warned [his magnates] … not excessively to oppress the conquered … He restrained the knights of middling rank and the common soldiers with appropriate edicts. Women were safe from the violence … He scarcely allowed the soldiers to drink in taverns, since drunkenness leads to quarrels and quarrels to murder. He forbade strife, murder, and every kind of plunder, restraining the people with arms and the arms with laws. Judges were appointed who could strike terror into the mass of the soldiers, and stern punishments were decreed for offenders … He set a limit that was not oppressive to the collection of tribute and all dues owed to the royal treasury. He allowed no place in his kingdom for robbery, invasions, or evil deeds. He ordered that merchants should go freely in the harbours and on all highways, and should suffer no harm. He did not approve of the pontificate of Stigand … He also gave thought to making appointments to other churches. All the first acts of his reign were righteous.96

Despite Poitiers’ bias, and evidence that some of William’s early acts were far from righteous,97 there are probably elements of truth in this account. Some of the provisions described have the flavour of some of those in the royal edicts promulgated in 1100 and 1153 to pacify England and secure support   Bates, ‘Earliest Historians’, p. 135.   WP, pp. 158–61 (translation modified). See also OV, vol. 2, pp. 192–5. 97  See WP, p. 160 n. 3; Eadmeri, pp. 9–10; H.E.J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the Penitential Ordinance following the Battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20 (1969), pp. 225–42 at pp. 233–6. 95 96

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for succession arrangements.98 Conventional expectations of good kingship expressed in literature are unlikely to have been divorced entirely from reality. It is surely not too far-fetched to expect English leaders to have sought guarantees from the invader, before accepting him as their ruler, of the kind described by Poitiers. That they did so, and that William responded positively, is supported by other evidence. As well as William’s writ for the Londoners, we have his confirmation of the titles of English prelates and earls, his charters for London churches and signs that he tried to impose discipline on his army.99 After the coronation ceremony was over, according to William of Poitiers, the Conqueror withdrew to Barking ‘while fortifications were being completed in the city as a defence against the inconstancy of the numerous and hostile inhabitants’.100 At Barking the earls Edwin and Morcar, Copsi and other English nobles submitted to and ‘sought … pardon for any hostility’ from King William, made oaths to him, received his favour and were restored to their possessions ‘and treated … with great honour’.101 Although William of Poitiers and Orderic are the only sources to mention this conference, and might have confused it with the one at Berkhamsted,102 it is quite possible that their accounts are accurate.103 Barking offered William certain advantages. It was less than nine miles east of the site of the later Tower of London, protected from western approaches by the river Roding, and connected by it to the nearby Thames. It was a good place for William to utilise his invasion fleet for defence, reinforcement or retreat. It was also the site of a Benedictine nunnery, a house of God, sanctuary of peace and foundation of St Erkenwald (who died there); and one, moreover, with a history linked closely to the sins of Edgar the Ætheling’s predecessor and namesake King Edgar and his wife Queen Ælfthryth.104 Practically, spiritually and symbolically, Barking was a good place for a peace conference, and the terms of the agreement said to have been made there chime with those made by William at earlier peace meetings.   Could the problematic ‘Articles’ of William I also reflect some of his early edicts? See http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/texts/wl-art/.   99   For the discipline, see Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenfrid’, p. 236. 100   WP, pp. 160–63. 101   Ibid., pp. 162–3, see Garnett, Conquered England, p. 76. 102   OV, vol. 2, pp. 194 and n. 1, 195; WP, p. 162 n. 2; Impey, ‘London’s Early Castles’, p. 19. 103   See Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. 4, pp. 18–22; Douglas, William the Conqueror, p. 207 (though acknowledging, at n. 3, the possibility of confusion with Berkhamsted); Brooke and Keir, London, p. 30; Brown, The Normans, p. 162; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 8. 104   Wormald, ‘Earconwald’, p. 559; B. Yorke, ‘Wulfhild [St Wulfhild] (d. after 996)’, in ODNB, vol. 60, pp. 551–2. I hope to examine this history elsewhere.   98

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The terms probably also involved the English handing over money and hostages. A more general application of this policy is indicated by the ASC E’s comment that ‘people paid taxes to him [William], and gave him hostages and afterwards bought their lands’.105 It can be seen again in the case of Brand, abbot of Peterborough, who paid 40 marks of gold to obtain a settlement after angering William by seeking the approval of Edgar the Ætheling for his election as abbot (soon after 31 October 1066).106 A charter, datable to 1066 x 1067, in which William confirms lands (mainly in Lincolnshire) which Brand’s relatives granted to Peterborough Abbey, was probably part of this settlement. It might also cast further light on the methods employed by William, including his utilisation of Englishmen, in the wider peace process.107 ‘The witnesses to any agreement’, Edmund King observed when discussing King Stephen’s famous Westminster charter of 1153, ‘are frequently those who helped to negotiate it’.108 In the witnesses to William’s charter for Brand – Ealdred, archbishop of York, Wulfwig, bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames, the sheriff Merleswein, Ulf son of Tope, William Malet, and the priest Ingelric – we might well have the distinguished intermediaries said to have negotiated the settlement between king and abbot.109 It helped in peacemaking if intermediaries were trusted by, or at least had links with, both sides in the dispute. The witnesses above appear to fit this bill. The first four were Englishmen; William Malet was part English and part Norman; and Ingelric the priest, although probably of continental origin, held lands in England by 1066. Three of the witnesses were churchmen; several had significant interests in Lincolnshire; and one, Ulf son of Tope, was a kinsman of Brand and left land to him and Peterborough Abbey in his will.110 Moreover, in addition to Archbishop Ealdred, Bishop Wulfwig and Ingelric might also have been involved in the negotiations that helped to secure London’s submission. Wulfwig’s episcopal seat was only four miles from   ASC 7, p. 87; the quoted translation is from ASCT, E, 1066, p. 142; and see WP, pp. 152–3. For the English buying back lands, see also Williams, The English, pp. 8–10; Garnett, Conquered England, pp. 21–3; Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis’, p. 55. 106   ASC 7, p. 87; ASCT, E, 1066, pp. 142–3; and see The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus A Monk of Peterborough, ed. W.T. Mellows (London, 1949), pp. 76–7. 107   RRW, no. 216 and n; Hugh Candidus, pp. 41–2, 71–2, 77; J. H. Round, ‘Ingelric the Priest and Albert of Lotharingia’, in his The Commune of London and Other Studies (Westminster, 1899), 28–30 at pp. 29–30. 108  King, King Stephen, p. 289. 109   For the witnesses, see J. Barrow, ‘Wulfwig (d. 1067)’, in ODNB, vol. 60, pp. 566–7; Williams, The English, 22–3; K. Keats-Rohan, ‘Malet, William (d. 1071?)’, in ODNB, vol. 36, pp. 312–13. 110   For Ulf, see E. King, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310: A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 11–12; R. Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 139–41. 105

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Wallingford, and some of his estates were even closer.111 Ingelric held lands close to Wallingford and Berkhamsted, and in or near places where Asgar the staller had interests.112 He was probably the ‘Ingelri’ who held Newnham, immediately across the Thames from Wallingford, and his most valuable manor was Tring, just five miles from Berkhamsted.113 He was also an important man in London, founded there, with his brother, the church of St Martin le Grand, and secured for it confirmations from the Conqueror on occasions (Christmas 1067 and Whitsun 1068) closely associated with the establishment of William’s royal dynasty. Ingelric also served William, and his own interests, after 1066 in the process by which lands were redeemed by English owners or passed into the king’s hands. Ingelric and the other witnesses to William’s charter for Brand had retained their positions of authority, and were assisting the imposition of Norman power; none of them more so than Archbishop Ealdred. For William of Poitiers, Ealdred was the most eagerly compliant of certain bishops who obeyed the Conqueror.114 And a later story of Geffrei Gaimar gives another indication of how this compliance might have compromised the archbishop’s position. In it Ealdred acted as a royal intermediary in negotiations with the thegns of Yorkshire in 1068 in which the Conqueror promised them, in return for their submission, the inheritances of their ancestors and his peace and safeconduct but, when they came to him, imprisoned and dispossessed them, and plundered and burnt the region.115 There was much in Ealdred’s actions after the Norman invasion, and perhaps not just those at Berkhamsted, that required careful justification, despite his good intentions. In conclusion, although the Norman invasion of 1066 was an act of war involving considerable violence, it was also accompanied by much diplomacy. Military commanders, William the Conqueror among them, generally preferred to avoid rather than to engage in the risky issue of battle.116 It has been argued that, during the 30 years or so for which he ruled Normandy before 1066,

  See Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis’, p. 61.   See, for example, GDB, fols 62, 136, 137–v, 142, 159v. I hope to return to this elsewhere. 113   Ibid., fol. 159v; Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis’, p. 59. For the details on Ingelric here and below, see P. Taylor, ‘Ingelric, Count Eustace and the Foundation of St Martin-le-Grand’, ANS, 24 (2002): pp. 215–37; S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS, 10 (1988): pp. 185–222 at pp. 218–19. 114   WP, pp. 186–7. 115   Geffrei Gaimar: Estoire des Engleis: History of the English, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009), pp. 292–3. 116   J. Bradbury, ‘Battles in England and Normandy, 1066–1154’, ANS, 6 (1984): pp. 1–12 at pp. 1–3. 111

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William did not command forces in a pitched battle.117 In 1066 there is certainly evidence that he sought to avoid the battle near Hastings that he is most famous for fighting. In his subsequent march on London, William’s army exercised extensive violence and did much damage, but his peace negotiations also feature prominently in his progress. William was prepared to engage in them immediately after the battle of Hastings, and his communications with the men of Dover, Canterbury, Winchester and London, and peace conferences at Wallingford and Berkhamsted (and possibly Barking) are also well attested. There is no doubt, and the point should be emphasised, that the talks involved William threatening and terrorising the English into submission, and demanding (at sword point) homage, oaths of loyalty, hostages, money, gifts and other acts of supplication; but the English surrenders were far from unconditional. The peaces they made with William were often contractual, involving obligations on both sides. Some of the English negotiators made demands to William before submitting, and William often confirmed (for a price, and in the short term at least) many English leaders in their dignities, lands, offices and rights,118 and made more general promises about ruling the English well; though his assurances were not to endure and might not have been entirely sincere. On Christmas Day 1066, however, there can be no doubt that, whatever their suspicions about William’s trustworthiness, the English leaders gathered in Westminster Abbey, especially the master of ceremonies, Archbishop Ealdred, regarded him as obliged to fulfil his promises and establish a genuine AngloNorman governmental regime. This obligation was central to the terms on which William’s accession was accepted, and it was supported by ecclesiastically sanctioned beliefs about the proper governance of the Christian kingdom which held that the king was to be elected by the leading subjects (the political community) of the realm.119 William was consecrated king by one of the most important of these subjects, the Englishman Ealdred, and there is good reason to accept William of Poitiers’ statement that the duke sought the consent of the others, both English and French, present at his coronation ceremony.120 William’s title and legitimacy were intricately connected with, and derived some of their force from, his recognition of the titles and legitimacy of these men. If William was to be king of the English, he acknowledged in 1066 that he would rule with the English as well as the French who were joining their community. His coronation oath marked the sacred ratification of a contract   J. Gillingham, ‘William the Bastard at War’, in C. Harper-Bill et al. (eds), Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 141–58 at pp. 143–5; CHP, p. lxxiii. 118   For other examples, see Keynes, ‘Regenbald’, pp. 210–11; Williams, The English, pp. 8–11. 119   For election, see n. 58 above. 120   Compare the later coronation of Stephen: King, King Stephen, pp. 47–8. 117

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to do just that. Archbishop Ealdred, who probably did more than any other Englishman to secure the agreement of this contract’s terms and the submission of the English, knew before his death in 1069 – allegedly after receiving saddening news that the English in the North had joined with the Danes to resist the Normans, and after praying to God to prevent the destruction of churches and the country – that William’s accession brought neither peace nor good rulership.121 It led instead to English rebellions and alliances with Vikings, the ravaging and burning of English churches, cities and land and the financial and military oppression, disinheritance, disempowerment, exile and death of many of Ealdred’s countrymen. It is hardly surprising that Ealdred, or those who spoke in his favour, portrayed him as bravely trying to make William honour the contract, blamed William for breaking it and sought in other ways to justify Ealdred’s role in negotiating its terms. The most important justification was that events were governed by God’s will: God had given the Normans victory on 14 October 1066 and compelled the submission at Berkhamsted because of the sins of the English. This explanation of the events of 1066 betrays the acute sensitivities of someone who knew that it was not only the battle of Hastings and the subsequent military campaign that secured the crown for William and brought disaster upon the sinful English, but also the talks and agreements that accompanied the warfare. William’s success in England by January 1067 owed much not only to his military abilities but also to his negotiation skills. Unquestionably a conqueror, he was also an accomplished peacemaker, albeit a remarkably brutal, threatening and ruthless one.

  CP, p. 349.

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Chapter 3

A Profession of Ignorance: an Insight into Domesday Procedure in an Early Reference to the Inquest1 David Roffe

References to claims and disputes in Domesday Book have always figured large in accounts of the political and social history of late eleventh-century England. In a source that is frequently a litany of dry statistics, not the least of their attractions is that they provide human interest. Who can fail to be beguiled by the following? William de Chernet claims this land [in Fordingbridge Hundred], saying that it belongs to the manor of South Charford, [in] Hugh de Port’s fief, through inheritance from his predecessor; and he has brought as his testimony to this the better men and the old men of the whole shire and hundred; and Picot has brought against it as his testimony villans and common people and reeves, who are willing to maintain by oath, or by the judgement of God, that he who held the land was a free man, and could go with his land where he would. But the witnesses of William refuse to accept [any] law except that of King Edward until it be determined by the king. It was worth 15s.; and afterwards 8s.; now 10s.2

Such passages have an intrinsic appeal. They also shine a powerful light on the inner workings of Anglo-Norman society. Without them, our knowledge of the Conqueror’s England would be so much the poorer.3 It should come as 1   I am grateful to Katharine Keats-Rohan for drawing my attention to the reference to the Domesday inquest in the Historia of St Peter’s, Gloucester, that is the subject of this paper. Thanks are also due to the Principal and Fellows of Linacre College, Oxford, for electing me as a visiting senior member for the Michaelmas term 2011, which provided me with the time and space to write. 2   Great Domesday Book: Library Edition, ed. A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (London, 1986–92), hereafter GDB, fol. 44v. This is entry Hants, 23,3 in Domesday Book, ed. J. Morris and others (34 vols, Chichester, 1974–86). 3   They are collected in R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998).

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no surprise, then, that disputes have often commanded a central place in the understanding of the Domesday process. Individual cases have, of course, been variously interpreted and reinterpreted, but the phenomenon itself was, until recently, never perceived as a particular problem. According to Richard FitzNigel, writing c. 1179 in the Dialogue of the Exchequer, Domesday was a book of judgements.4 To all appearances, the text does not disappoint in that regard. In folio after folio we hear of lords claiming this and jurors of the hundred and the shire declaring that. This is to all appearances the language of lawsuits and judgement. Debate there has been over the progress of such cases, but it has generally been accepted that the determination of title was an integral part of the Domesday process.5 And yet there is a problem. In the first systematic study of what he termed Domesday ‘lawsuits’, Patrick Wormald found that the distribution of cases throughout Domesday Book was remarkably uneven.6 Discounting the invasiones of Little Domesday Book (LDB) and the terre occupate of the Liber Exoniensis (Exon), he found that Lincolnshire was apparently the most litigious county with 126 cases, closely followed by Yorkshire with 41. In Leicestershire, by contrast, there are none at all. Other counties are of varying amounts but none in the order of the two northern counties. This skewed distribution, however, is as nothing compared with the results of the lawsuits. Despite frequent unequivocal decisions in favour of the plaintiff, the land in question was enrolled in the breve of the aggressor in the vast majority of cases. Wormald was frankly baffled by the contradictory evidence. The present author subsequently revisited the issue in a wider reassessment of the Domesday process.7 The clamores of the South Riding of the parts of Lindsey in Lincolnshire, enrolled in a schedule of disputes for the whole of the county appended to the end of Great Domesday Book (GDB), are explicitly said to be judgements: the title of the section reads ‘Disputes in the South Riding of Lincoln and their settlement by the men who swore (clamores que sunt in Sudtreding Lincolnie et concordie eorum per homines qui iuraverunt)’.8 Judgements of this kind elsewhere were indeed no such thing since they were 4   Dialogus de Scaccario, the Course of the Exchequer, and Constitutio Domus Regis, the King’s Household, ed. C. Johnson (London, 1950), p. 64. 5   For a review of the emergence of a consensus, and an opposing view, see D.R. Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 273–9. 6   P. Wormald, ‘Domesday Lawsuits: A Provisional List and Preliminary Comments’, in C. Hicks (ed.), England in the Eleventh Century, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 2 (Stamford, 1992), pp. 61–102. 7   D.R. Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book (Oxford, 2000), pp. 165–8; idem, Decoding Domesday, pp. 273–8. 8   GDB, fol. 375: Lincs, CS.

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referred to the king for determination.9 More to the point, however, was that the sessions were subsequent to the drafting of the body of the Lincolnshire text.10 The declarations of jurors there, frequently referring to the same cases as the clamores, were clearly simple presentments, the provision of evidence, rather than recognitions. Just how integral were claims to the Domesday inquest? Light on the matter is cast by a contemporary reference to a claim in Gloucestershire which has previously been overlooked. In a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century calendar of donors appended to a history of the church of St Peter, Gloucester, there is a record of the confirmation of the abbey’s tenure of Nympsfield by William the Conqueror. Subsequently, however, there appears the following entry: ‘In 1087 Roger of Berkeley senior, in the survey of the whole of England, had Nympsfield assessed to the farm of the king without Abbot Serlo’s knowledge (Anno millesimo octogesimo septimo, Rogerus senior de Berkelee, in descriptione totius Anglie, fecit Nymdesfeld describi ad mensam regis, abbate Serlone nesciente)’.11 The editor of the Historia, W.H. Hart, was somewhat perturbed by the implications of this comment. He pointed out that throughout the Middle Ages the test of tenure in ancient demesne was enrolment in the terra regis in Domesday Book. So, here was positive proof that Domesday Book could mislead: Nympsfield duly appears in the land of the king even though it rightly belonged to St Peter of Gloucester.12 The conclusion was startling in the late nineteenth century and proved far too much for Sir Henry Barkly.13 In an essay in Domesday Studies, the proceedings of the conference held to celebrate the octocentenary of the   See, for example, GDB, fol. 377v: Lincs, CK50.   The cases themselves overlap with presentments preserved in the body of the text, but there is no exact correlation; disputes are found in the one that are not noticed in the other and vice versa. Nevertheless, it is clear that they were heard independently of the presentments in the text and almost certainly on a later occasion, for the twelve-carucate hundred, the northern equivalent of the vill, ubiquitous in the text, is absent in the clamores. The vill, of course, took no part in recognitions. 11   Queen’s College, Oxford, MS 367, BL, Cotton, Domitian viii, nos 21–2, printed in Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W.H. Hart, Rolls Series (3 vols, London, 1863–67), vol. 1, p. 101. Mensa is literally ‘table’. The term is found only once in Domesday Book: in Raveningham Ketil Friday held 7 acres of land that were said to be ‘mensa eiusdem manerii’ (Little Domesday Book: Library Edition, eds A. Williams and G.H Martin (London, 2000), hereafter LDB, fol. 273v. This is entry Norf, 65,17 in Domesday Book, eds Morris and others. Since Ketil was a free man, the implication must be that he owed a food rent to the lord of the manor. By extension, the word could also refer to demesne land. The meaning of the word here is discussed below. 12   Historia et Cartularium, vol. 3, pp. xxi–xxii. 13   H. Barkly, ‘On an Alleged Instance of the Fallibility of Domesday in Regard to Ancient Demesne’, in P. Dover (ed.), Domesday Studies (2 vols, London, 1888), vol. 2, pp. 471–83.  9

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Domesday inquest in 1886, he took Hart to task for impugning the integrity of the document ‘from which no appeal can be made’. First, he asserted that the charter of William the Conqueror purportedly granting the manor was a forgery since Nympsfield does not appear in what he considered an authentic general charter of confirmation of 1086. Although there is a record of eighthand ninth-century grants that indicates that St Peter had the estate at some time in the distant past, it was clearly in the hands of the king by the reign of Edward the Confessor. Land in Nympsfield was recovered by the church in the reign of William Rufus, again recorded in the calendar, but it was not the manor. Eustace of Berkeley restored only the chapel of Kinley and a virgate of land within the parish. Barkly sniffily concluded that the claim to the whole of Nympsfield was got up by the monks of Gloucester in the fifteenth century. In a brief commentary at the end of the article, J.H. Round shared Barkly’s horror at the thought of Domesday misleading, but, typically for him, took the opportunity, even more sniffily, to correct Barkly’s errors of interpretation. In particular, he asserted that the description of the Domesday inquest as the ‘descriptio totius Anglie’ clearly indicated that the entry in the cartulary drew on early evidence and that the fact that Abbot Serlo did not know what had happened was ‘of some interest’.14 There the matter has rested. Nympsfield has not figured in the discussion of Domesday Book since.15 In this paper the issue is reopened. If indeed this is an authentic reference to the Domesday inquest, it is of considerable interest to an understanding of the procedure of the survey and the place of disputes within it. At the outset it is clear that Round’s intuition was sound. The calendar, it is true, is carelessly written, with many errors of fact and chronology.16 Nevertheless, from time to time it records material that cannot have been invented in the fifteenth century when it was compiled. The reference to the survey of the whole of England is a prime example. The name Domesday Book first appears in official sources in 1221 and its use soon became universal.17 Exactly when it came to be so called is not known. Richard FitzNigel, again writing in the Dialogue of the Exchequer in c. 1179, tells us that it was accorded the name by the English, ‘not because it contains decisions, but because those things that it does contain   J.H. Round, ‘Discussion’, ibid., p. 483.   C. Flight, The Survey of the Whole of England: Studies of the Documentation Resulting from the Survey Conducted in 1086, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, 405 (Oxford, 2006), p. 122n, notes the reference but does not comment on it. 16   Barkly, ‘Alleged Instance of the Fallibility of Domesday’, p. 474 and n; D. Bates, ‘The Building of a Great Church: The Abbey of St Peter’s, Gloucester, and its Early Norman Benefactors’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 102 (1984): pp. 129–32. 17   Curia Regis Rolls (London, 1923–), vol. 10, p. 68; E.M. Hallam, Domesday Book Through Nine Centuries (London, 1986), p. 35. 14 15

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cannot be changed’.18 What is clear, though, is that early on it had various names in written sources. Most clearly it was ‘the king’s book’ or ‘the book of Winchester’.19 Other references to carte, ‘charters’, breves, ‘breves’, and the like may refer to the Book or to other documents produced in the course of the survey.20 The inquest itself, by contrast, was consistently called a descriptio.21 The term appears in Domesday Book in five passages,22 while in retrospect the inquest was called ‘the survey of the whole of England (descriptio totius Angiae)’. That phrase first appears in a writ of William the Conqueror of 1086, a contemporary account of the survey penned by Robert of Losinga, bishop of Hereford, and in a St Paul’s, London, source shortly thereafter.23 It is used by Heming, in the variant form descriptiones totius Anglie, in the Worcester Cartulary in about 1100, and by Orderic Vitalis in his Ecclesiastical History in the 1120s.24 Thereafter, it does not seem to appear.25 By the early twelfth century attention had begun to move away from the inquest to the book.

  Dialogus de Scaccario, p. 64.   V.H. Galbraith, ‘Royal Charters to Winchester’, EHR, 35 (1920): pp. 383–400 at p. 389; GDB, fol. 332v: Yorks, 31,1. The Domesday reference appears in the Bruis fee at the end of the Yorkshire folios of GDB; it is an addition added c.1120. 20   For the various references, see Hallam, Domesday Through Nine Centuries, pp. 32–51. 21   The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. D.C. Douglas (Oxford, 1944), pp. 23–4; C. Thorn and F. Thorn, ‘The Writing of Great Domesday Book’, in E. Hallam and D. Bates (eds), Domesday Book (Stroud, 2001), pp. 37–73 at p. 69 and n. 109. The term means ‘a writing down’, but in Domesday it is used of the process of collecting the evidence. In the notes appended to Salop C12 in the electronic edition of the Morris text (http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingdata/snDescription.asp?sn=5694, accessed 31 December 2012), it is asserted that descriptio refers to ‘the Enquiry resulting in Great Domesday including the actual writing of it’, but this formulation begs the question of the date of Domesday Book and its relationship to the inquest. For its association of the term with taxation and service, see J.O. Prestwich, ‘Mistranslations and Misinterpretations in Medieval English History’, Peritia, 10 (1996): pp. 322–40 at pp. 330–33. 22   GDB, fols 3, 164, 252, 269: Kent, 2,2; Gloucs, 1,63; Salop, C12; Ches, FT2,19; LDB, fol. 450: Suff, 77.4. 23   Regesta Regum Anglo-Normanorum: The Acta of William I 1066–1087, ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), no. 326; W.H. Stevenson, ‘A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, EHR, 22 (1907): pp. 72–84 at p. 74; Historical MSS Commission Ninth Report (2 vols, London, 1883), vol. 1, p. 65b. Regesta, no. 398 was probably copied from Regesta, no. 326 in the early twelfth century. 24   Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne (2 vols, Oxford, 1723), vol. 1, pp. 287–8; OV, vol. 2, p. 267. 25   Pace V.H. Galbraith in The Herefordshire Domesday, ed. V.H. Galbraith and J. Tait, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 25 (1950), p. xxv. The Winchester chroniclers use the verb describere; FitzNigel’s descriptio terrarum may have an echo of the earlier phrase. 18 19

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The use of the descriptor in the St Peter’s donors’ calendar would seem to indicate that the record is indeed of an early date. We must take seriously the assertion that land was assigned to the king without the knowledge of Abbot Serlo. What, then, are we to make of this statement? That St Peter’s held land in Nympsfield is witnessed by its tenure of the chapel of Kinley and its appurtenances in the later Middle Ages.26 The fact disposes us to believe that the calendar’s record of its restitution, as the presumably synecdochic ‘Nympsfield’, by Eustace of Berkeley in 1093 is also authentic.27 The manor of Nympsfield itself, the major part of the vill, was not held by the church. It was in the possession of the Berkeley family throughout much of the twelfth century and thereafter remained in lay hands.28 However, it is likely, as Round intimated, that St Peter’s claimed title to the whole estate in the eleventh century. The Historia sets the scene. A benefactors’ list therein records that in the late eighth-century Ealdred, under-king of the Hwicci, gave, inter alia, to the nuns of St Peter in Gloucester, three manentes in Nympsfield. According to the same source, this gift was regranted or confirmed by Burgred of Mercia in the same terms in 852.29 Manens, probably incomprehensible in the fifteenth century, stood in for hida in pre-Conquest charters, and so an early transaction is not intrinsically unlikely.30 The record of confirmation supposedly by William the Conqueror brings the story up to the late eleventh century. The authenticity of this last actum is unverifiable. It is clear, though, that Barkly’s dismissal cannot be sustained since the charter of confirmation of 1086 on which he relied is itself manifestly a later compilation.31 We cannot be certain that St Peter’s held Nympsfield before the Domesday inquest, but it certainly had a claim on it. The tenor of the complaint in the calendar is that the church had been unjustly dispossessed by the actions of Roger of Berkeley or had been unable to register its claim on the same account. The case is not obviously the usual one of naked aggression. The emphasis is on the abbot’s ignorance: there is something of the inadvertent in the story. It is   Historia et Cartularium, vol. 2, pp. 41–2.   A subsequent entry records that Roger II de Berkeley took it away again in the following year. Is this a memory of the original appropriation by his father? According to T. Tanner, Notitia Monastica (Oxford, 1695), p. 145, William Rufus restored the estate in 1093. 28   Liber Feodorum. The Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill. ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (3 vols, London, 1920–31), vol. 1, pp. 439, 443; Barkly, ‘Alleged Instance of the Fallibility of Domesday’, pp. 476–7. 29   Historia et Cartularium, vol. 1, p. 122. The grant is also noticed in the body of the Historia (ibid., p. 4). 30   The list uses various pre-Conquest synonyms for hide – hida, manens, cassatus, tributarius – in the early part of the list, suggesting that the scribe copied faithfully from his source or sources. 31   Regesta, no. 156. 26 27

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possible, then, that lack of communication, for example, lies at the root of the issue. Several entries in the Gloucestershire folios hint that there were indeed some exceptional problems in the collection of data in the shire. In the account of Woodchester it is recorded that ‘no one gave any account (rationem) of this manor to the king’s commissioners, nor did any of them come to this inquest (descriptionem)’.32 The men of Woodchester were not the only ones who stayed at home. Earl Hugh held two manors of four hides in Longtree Hundred which two of his men held, but ‘there has been no one to answer (responderet) for these lands, and they are valued by the men of the shire at £8’.33 Again, Roger son of Ralph had a manor in Swinehead Hundred and ‘there has been no one to answer (responderet) for this land’.34 Such references are rare elsewhere and it is thus possible that there were some local procedural glitches in the conduct of the inquest in Gloucestershire. It is unlikely, however, that St Peter’s lost Nympsfield on that account. Failure to provide information, it is true, could lead to forfeiture. In North Barningham in Norfolk there were two commended men held by Ansketil FitzUnspac, but ‘there was no one who could render the account (reddideret compotum)’ and in consequence the land was in the hands of the king.35 This, though, was not the experience of the Gloucestershire cases. The first two are definitely postscriptal, and the third may also be so,36 and it looks as if the scribe may have waited for the relevant information or, at least, searched for it in another source. When it was not forthcoming, he nevertheless enrolled the land in the breve of the lord who claimed it. Woodchester, of course, was entered into the terra regis since, return or no return, it was the king’s. But the lands in Longtree and Swinehead Hundreds were assigned to Earl Hugh and Roger son of Ralph respectively. Inquest procedure probably lies at the heart of the distinction between the Gloucestershire and Norfolk cases. There was more than one occasion on which data might not be provided. The vast majority of the presentments which are recorded in Domesday Book were those of the hundred and shire, but the matters on which they pronounced are largely confined to geld assessment and title.37 The bulk of the data came from other sources. Local juries were not competent to pronounce on much of the business of the survey and it is clear that the minutiae of manorial structure and stocking were supplied by lords in their own   GDB, fol. 164: Gloucs, 1,63.   GDB, fol. 166v: Gloucs, 28,7. 34   GDB, fol. 170: Gloucs, 75,3. 35   LDB, fol. 279v: Norf, 66,99. 36   Domesday Book: Gloucestershire, ed. J.S. Moore (Chichester, 1982), 75, nn. 2–3 suggests that the two entries are different tenants-in-chief. The blank line and rustic capitals of the account support this contention, but there are only very slight differences in the hand that may merely indicate that the scribe consulted a separate source. 37  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, p. 81. 32 33

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detailed returns.38 Only one Domesday passage refers to the process directly: in the Norfolk folios reference is made to the day on which Robert Malet’s land was enrolled (inbreviatus).39 A late eleventh-century reference to lands ‘which the commissioners swore to [the canons of St Paul’s, London] in the inquest of the whole of England’ probably refers to the same process.40 Nevertheless, variations in content and expression from chapter to chapter indicate that seigneurial returns, whether written or delivered verbally, were the norm. Compliance seems to have been high, but failure to provide data does not seem to have necessarily had an adverse effect on tenure. So, it is reported in the Herefordshire folios that there were 300 hides of land in the bishopric of Hereford, ‘although of 33 hides the bishop’s men have given no account (rationem)’.41 Whether the 300 hides were confined to Herefordshire or included all of the bishop’s lands, is unclear. However, 33 hides are not obviously missing and all are said to belong to the bishopric. It is most likely, then, that the three cases in Gloucestershire in which there was no account relate to a failure to provide a return of stock. All three, indeed, provide only the barest details of the estates. The Norfolk case seems to have been somewhat different and may be more relevant to Nympsfield. At some early stage in the survey estates had to be in some way ‘claimed’ by their lord.42 Bishop Osbern of Exeter, for example, produced before the commissioners charters to demonstrate his right to the manor of Crediton in Devon.43 Failure to claim land in this way led to forfeiture. In Yorkshire the clamores records that there were two manors in Belby which had belonged to Orm and Basinc in 1066. The bishop of Durham held them up to the inquest, ‘but no one claims (clamat) them now, neither the sheriff nor the bishop’. The land was duly enrolled in a schedule of waste or unoccupied lands in the king’s breve.44 Again in Essex, it is said of the land of Turold in Alresford that ‘the Hundred does not know how he had this land and since neither an officer nor any other man came on his behalf to prove his right to this land, it has been taken into the king’s hands’.45 References to writs or delivery, albeit usually in the context of   Ibid., pp. 85–7.   LDB, fol. 276v: Norf, 66,61. See also LDB, fol. 277v: Norf, 66,81, for a reference to Roger Bigod’s return (breve). Here, as in other notices of breve, it is not clear whether the scribe is referring to a chapter in the work in hand, that is, LDB, or a separate document. 40   Historical MSS Commission Ninth Report, vol. 1, p. 65b. See also, land ‘inbreviata’ in a charter of St Benet Hulme of the 1090s (English Historical Documents, 1042–1189, eds D.C. Douglas and G.E. Greenaway (London, 1953), no. 200). 41   GDB, fol. 182v: Heref, 2,57. 42  Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, pp. 136–8. 43   GDB, fol. 101v: Devon, 2,1. 44   GDB, fols 301, 373: Yorks, 1E2.CE, 12. 45   LDB, fol. 25v: Essex, 18,44. 38 39

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claims, are common throughout Domesday Book. A number of documents in the Domesday corpus, notably Evesham A, have been tentatively identified as schedules, or collections of schedules, drawn up by tenants-in-chief to register their tenure, if not title, in the inquest in this way.46 The defining characteristic of these sources is that they are cursory lists of estates and their assessments that deviate from the hundredal order of the Domesday texts. As such they have usually been identified as strictly preinquest sources. The public forum in which evidence was witnessed was the courts of hundred and shire, in the case of the Domesday inquest, meeting in joint sessions. It was their verdicts that gave the distinctive order of hundreds that is evident in chapter after chapter throughout much of Domesday Book. Domesday-type texts that do not exhibit this order must therefore be earlier. Evesham A, and documents like it, have thus been seen as marking the beginning of the Domesday process.47 Within this scenario it is difficult to comprehend the Nympsfield reference. If tenants-in-chief were invited to lay claim to their lands at the beginning of the enterprise, why did the abbot of St Peter’s not register Nympsfield? Oversight or incompetence could explain the omission – it is unlikely that any religious house would admit to such a lapse – but that seems hardly credible given the importance of the business in hand. Indeed, there is evidence that Abbot Serlo was fully aware of the procedure: the Domesday entry for St Peter’s manor of Duntisbourne Abbots apparently quotes the charter by which William the Conqueror confirmed its grant by Emmilina, wife of Walter de Lacy.48 Oversight can be discounted. Rather it would seem that the abbot was claiming that Roger of Berkeley registered the land off his own bat. How this might have happened suggests an entirely different view of Domesday procedure. The assumption that Evesham A and the like represent the first stage in the Domesday process depends on a pre-conceived notion of its purpose. It is a notion that has a long history. By far the most substantial and impressive product of the inquest is Domesday Book itself and from the late twelfth century it has dominated the understanding of the inquest. According to Richard FitzNigel, it was designed to bring the English ‘under the rule of written law’, so that ‘every man may be content with his own rights, and not encroach 46   P.H. Sawyer, ‘Evesham A, a Domesday Text’, Miscellany 1, Worcestershire Historical Society (1960), pp. 2–36 at pp. 9–10. Other texts of the kind possibly include the Descriptio Terrarum of Peterborough Abbey, Domesday Monachorum A of Christchurch, Canterbury, Evesham F, and Worcester A (Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, pp. 137–8). 47   H.B. Clarke, ‘The Domesday Satellites’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Domesday Book: A Reassessment (London, 1985), pp. 50–70 at pp. 60–62. 48   The ‘Uxor Walteri de Laci concessu regis Willelmi dedit Sancto Petro pro anima viri sui Duntesborne’ of the Domesday entry reflects ‘Emmelina uxor Walterii de Lacei dedit Petro de Gloucestre pro redemptione anime viri sui unam villam quinque hydarum, scilicet Duntesburne’ of the charter of 1085 (GDB, fol. 165v: Gloucs, 10,13; Regesta, no. 156).

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unpunished on those of others’.49 Richard attributes this understanding to Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and treasurer (d. 1171), but it is a formulation, one must suspect, that owes as much to contemporary concerns as any eleventhcentury reality. After the anarchy of King Stephen’s reign, Henry II’s most pressing problem was to effect a settlement by restoring lands to their rightful holders. The means were novel legal instruments which were to form the basis of English Common Law.50 Richard was promoting Domesday Book as both a precedent and potent icon of the process. The centrality of Domesday Book is the product of late twelfth-century spin. Nevertheless, the notion has dominated Domesday scholarship ever since. There is nothing inherent in the Domesday corpus of documents that necessarily supports it. Domesday Book does not stand alone as a witness to the Domesday process. The most substantial survival is Exon. It is an account of fees on a regional basis but, unlike Domesday Book, it is not compiled to a set format; it is simply a collection of seigneurial breves, in effect little more than an office file. The Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis (ICC) is a full Domesdaylike account of Cambridgeshire, less the lands of the king, but is geographically arranged by hundred and vill. The Inquisitio Eliensis (IE), predominantly an account of the lands of Ely Abbey, appears to have been derived from similar sources, at least in so far as its East Anglian estates are concerned. The other fragmentary documents are variously both seigneurially and geographically arranged sources.51 Only the so-called articles of enquiry in the prologue to the IE may seem to pre-figure Domesday Book, but closer inspection reveals that they could have as easily informed the compilation of the ICC as a feudally arranged source and are anyway probably a post-Domesday production.52 Attempts have been made to shoehorn these disparate sources into a single taxonomy,53 but there is nothing inherent in the documents themselves that suggests a single activity. If Domesday Book was intended from the start of the enterprise, why was so much effort put into drafting geographical recensions for much of England? The geld inquest, records of which are bound up with Exon, is evidence that 1086 saw a number of different activities.54 So different was this from the business of the production of Domesday Book that attempts have been made to relegate   Dialogus de Scaccario, p. 63.   J. Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law (London, 1997), pp. 127, 139. 51  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 29–61. 52   Ibid., pp. 114–17. 53   Clarke, ‘The Domesday Satellites’, pp. 50–70; A. Freason, ‘Domesday Book: The Evidence Reviewed’, History, 71 (1986): pp. 375–93. 54   Libri Censualis, vocati Domesday Book, Additamenta ex Codic. Antiquiss. Exon Domesday; Inquisitio Eliensis; Liber Winton; Boldon Book, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1816), hereafter Exon, fols 1–10, 13–24. 49 50

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it to an earlier date or at least a contemporary but independent enterprise.55 Nevertheless, contemporary evidence places it firmly in 1086 as one of a number of separate but interrelated activities. The E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a particularly eloquent witness. It records that the king had much thought and deep discussion with his council at Gloucester about England, ‘about how it was occupied or with what sort of people. Then he sent his men all over England into every shire and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in the shire, or what land and cattle the king himself had in the country, or what dues he ought to have in twelve months from the shire’.56 Here a survey of royal estates is linked to an inquisitio geldi in what must have been a through-going audit of regalia. The documentation that the process produced was not confined to the geld records preserved in Exon, but also included extended accounts of the terra regis, probably substantially like those in Domesday Book, reference to which is found in the ICC as the king’s breves, along with summaries of the issues of the shires from customs, pleas and the like.57 Further activities ensued. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continues: ‘Also he had a record made of how much land his archbishops had, and his bishops and his abbots and his earls – and though I relate it at too great a length – what or how much everyone had who was occupying land in England’.58 The outcome was documents like Exon and the ICC. To what extent the survey of royal estates and regalia, the inquisitio geldi, and the further survey of baronial lands were conceived as a single enterprise is unclear. They were to come together, to a degree, with the compilation of Domesday Book in so far as it contains account of both royal and seigneurial lands, but that is not to say that Domesday Book was intended from the start. Indeed, as an abbreviation, it was most probably an afterthought. In the later Middle Ages the scope and conduct of inquests tended to change as early returns threw into relief the extent of the problem in hand and the types of information needed to meet the occasion. The Domesday inquest may have been no different.59 What is clear, however, is a change in venue and personnel between the early and later stages. The decisive evidence here comes from a second contemporary source. Writing within a year of the inquest, Robert of 55   R.W. Eyton, Domesday Studies: An Analysis and Digest of the Somerset Survey and of the Somerset Gheld Inquest of AD 1084 (2 vols, London, 1880), vol. 1, pp. 87–93; R.W. Eyton, A Key to Domesday: The Dorset Survey (Dorchester, 1878), pp. 4–5, 109; V.H. Galbraith, The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford, 1961), pp. 87–101, especially at p. 92; S.P.J. Harvey, ‘Domesday Book and its Predecessors’, EHR, 86 (1971): pp. 753–73 at pp. 768–9. 56   The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, eds D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas and S.I. Tucker (2nd edn, London, 1963), pp. 161–2. 57  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 74–82. 58   Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 161–2. 59  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 62–108.

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Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Losinga, bishop of Hereford, recorded that there was a survey of the whole of England in 1086 and went on to say ‘Other investigators followed the first and were sent to counties that they did not know, and where they themselves were unknown, to check the first description and to denounce any wrongdoers to the king’.60 It is clear from this account that the initial survey was conducted by local officials and so was presumably supervised by the sheriff and other royal officials in the shire. By contrast, special commissioners, referred to as legati or barones in Domesday Book, were appointed to groups of counties to oversee the second stage. It was to those appointed to the West Country shires that the bishop of Exeter showed his charters for Crediton and it was from their sessions that the regionally arranged breves of Exon emanate. Inbreviation, it would seem, was the business of the second stage of the Domesday inquest. The survey of regalia and the inquisitio geldi were confined to proceedings in the shire. Evesham A, then, and similar documents do not have to stand at the very beginning of the Domesday process: claims to land were a precursor to the second stage of the inquest. Abbot Serlo’s complaint that Roger of Berkeley enrolled Nympsfield without his knowledge begins to make more sense in this context. In 1086 the land is entered in the terra regis as one of the 21 berewicks of the manor of Berkeley.61 In substance, the whole extended estate seems to have been the endowment of the abbey of Berkeley which is first noticed in the historical record in the early ninth century. By 1066 the abbey had been dissolved, according to twelfth-century tradition forcibly by Earl Godwine, or at least was much reduced, and its lands were in the hands of Edward the Confessor.62 Roger of Berkeley had probably become the king’s reeve thereafter and farmed the estate at the time of the inquest.63 As such, he would have provided the account of Berkeley substantially as it appears in Domesday Book in the first stage of the inquest. He evidently considered Nympsfield an integral part of the estate and felt no need to consult any other party in what was a survey of the royal demesne alone. 60   Stevenson, ‘Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, p. 74. This passage is echoed in a copy of Marianus’ History probably from Worcester (BL, Cotton MS, Nero C v). It reads: ‘William, king of the English, ordered all of the possessions of the whole of England to be described, in fields, in men, in all animals, in all manors from the greatest to the smallest, and in all payments which could be rendered from the land of all. And the land was vexed with much violence proceeding therefrom’ (Stevenson, ‘Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey’, p. 77). 61   GDB, fol. 163: Gloucs, 1,15. 62   A. Williams, ‘An Introduction to the Gloucestershire Domesday’, in The Gloucestershire Domesday, eds A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (London, 1989), pp. 1–39 at pp. 32–3. 63   GDB, fol. 163: Gloucs, 1,17.

A Profession of Ignorance

57

Abbot Serlo’s ignorance, then, becomes comprehensible. Nympsfield was enrolled in a survey of the royal fisc in which he had no right of audience and took no part. If Roger in his official capacity acted mistakenly or fraudulently, the question then becomes why the abbot’s claim was not subsequently made and recorded in Domesday Book. In 1880 A.S. Ellis viewed the matter as one of perspective. He suggested that the issue turned upon the payment of farm rather than the tenure of land.64 Despite Barkly’s dismissal, the idea does have some substance. An estate might owe customs to the king but would otherwise be freely held. Thus, it is recorded in the Berkeley entry itself that ‘in this manor TRE 2 brothers held 5 hides in Cromhall … these 2 brothers could turn where they would with their land’.65 Nymspfield, then, could well have been in the tenure of the abbot but, like the land in Cromhall, was entered in the terra regis because it rendered farm to the king. The abbot’s complaint in the calendar would effectively be that Nympsfield should be held in free alms. The solution is an attractive one, but not entirely convincing. In the normal course of events where dues from land were reserved, an estate was entered in the tenant-in-chief ’s chapter as well as the terra regis. Kemerton and Boddington, held by Westminster Abbey, are local examples.66 Nympsfield is, of course, not obviously represented in St Peter’s breve.67 Furthermore, the subsequent restitution of Kinley suggests that tenure was the problem. Roger of Berkeley would indeed seem to have held Nympsfield, either on behalf of the king or on his own account. Whether he held rightly or wrongly, within the remit of the inquest it was therefore appropriate that it should appear in the terra regis in Gloucestershire. As a matter of course lands claimed by the crown were taken into the king’s hands in the survey of royal demesne.68 Presumably the aim was to maximize royal income. The same concern informed the inquisitio geldi. The surviving accounts suggest that one aim was to collect outstanding taxes from the geld of 1084; a new geld was probably also contemplated. From a royal perspective right to land was immaterial. By contrast, it was anything but for the tenant-in-chief and his tenants. To geld in the broadest sense, that is to render all the taxes, services and dues that were owed by land, defined freedom and title.69 The principle is implicit in the AngloSaxon law codes and is articulated in Domesday Book itself: in Berkshire it is   A.S. Ellis, ‘Domesday Tenants of Gloucestershire’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 4 (1879–80): pp. 86–198 at p. 145. 65   The entry goes on to say that William FitzOsbern commended the men to the reeve of Berkeley so that he might have their service. Commendation, however, did not bring land into a manor. 66   GDB, fols 163v, 166: Gloucs, 1,19; 19,2. 67   GDB, fol. 165v: Gloucs, 10. 68  Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, pp. 136–9. 69  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 190–97. 64

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58

recorded that those who did not perform military service forfeited their lands to the king.70 The failure to geld jeopardized tenure. It was therefore inevitable that any audit of the geld would bring forth claims to land. By necessity, the documentation that came out of the inquisitio geldi included references to disputes. They were destined never to take centre stage. Whether the schedules produced by the tenants-in-chief were presented at this time or later is not clear. What is evident is that a list of the lands held by each tenant-in-chief was drawn up to inform the second stage of the inquest from the documentation of the first. Thus, in some areas there is compelling evidence that it was geld accounts that structured Domesday entries as opposed to manorial structure,71 while Bath A, the closest we have to a seigneurial return in the Domesday corpus, already exhibits the hundredral order of Domesday Book.72 What estates the lord presented for inbreviation were evidently determined by an official rather than a private schedule of lands.73 The type is perhaps represented by extant sources like Abingdon A, the Crowland Domesday, and the Excerpta of St Augustine’s, Canterbury.74 So it was that disputed estates were entered in the chapter of the existing sitting tenant. At the same time, however, or possibly later, schedules of disputes were drawn up for separate consideration. Reference is made to these sources in the IE and Ely D is probably an example, while the invasiones sections of LDB and the terre occupate of Exon, supplemented by the details of stock, are derived from them.75 Most did not find their way into GDB. When the main scribe began his work with the writing of the account of the northern shires of Circuit VI, he included similar lists for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in an appendix, and subsequently noted further clamores for Huntingdonshire.76   GDB, fol. 56v: Berks, B10.   D.R. Roffe, ‘Place-Naming in Domesday Book: Settlements, Estates, and Communities’, Nomina, 14 (1990–91): pp. 47–60. 72   Two Chartularies of the Priory of St Peter at Bath, ed. W. Hunt, Somerset Record Society, 7 (1893), pp. 67–8. 73  Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 82–5. 74   D.C. Douglas, ‘Some Early Surveys from the Abbey of Abingdon’, EHR, 44 (1929): pp. 618–25 at p. 623; Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Veteres, ed. W. Fulman (Oxford, 1684), pp. 80–82; An Eleventh-Century Inquisition of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, ed. A. Ballard, Records of the Social and Economic History of England, 4 (London, 1920), pp. 1–33. 75   Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton (London, 1876), pp. 127, 184–9; LDB, fols 99–104, 273v–80, 447–50: Essex, 90; Norfolk, 66; Suffolk, 76–7; Exon, fols 495–512. 76   GDB, fols 208–208v, 373–77v: Hunts, D; Yorks, CN, CE, CW; Lincs, CS, CN, CW, CK. For the order of writing of GDB, see Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, pp. 191–210. Thorn and Thorn, ‘Writing of Great Domesday’, pp. 42–6, assert that the Clamores section was written at the very end of the process because the quire exhibits ruling 70 71

A Profession of Ignorance

59

Thereafter he dispensed with the data and progressively dropped references to disputes as his work progressed. Gloucestershire, written some half way through, is one of the counties in which the data were largely omitted.77 We can see at last, then, that Abbot Serlo’s complaint had most likely been entered on a separate schedule and was simply edited out of GDB. However, it would be misleading to characterize Serlo as a victim of an editorial whim. The GDB scribe decided at an early stage that claims to land were irrelevant to his purpose. A record of tenure was good enough for him. Nevertheless, this does not mean that matters of title were of no moment in the inquest. Further proceedings were clearly planned. The invasiones record judicial preliminaries such as pledging and the like, and the Lincolnshire clamores are said to be concordiae, ‘settlements’, although the reality is that most were not.78 A claim first made in the Domesday inquest in Huntingdonshire was subsequently settled in the county court79 and this was probably the planned course of events for most pleas. Whether all reached court is unlikely – the majority of disputed lands remained in the hands of the successors of the Domesday tenants – but the intention probably remained to see pleas through to a determination in due course. Resolution of contentious issues was not central to the business of 1086, but it remained an aspiration, not the least since it promised further profit for the king. It is not impossible that the restitution of Kinley to St Peter’s in 1093 was a consequence of a claim made in 1086. The Domesday inquest was a royal enterprise. The king demanded information under certain heads and he put in motion the machinery of local government to collect it. Put thus, the inquest looks like a simple exercise of the royal prerogative. But that is to misunderstand the context and the realities of power. There was a national emergency. The realm of England was threatened with invasion by King Cnut of Denmark and English resources had not proved sufficient to meet the threat. I have argued elsewhere that it was this background that frames the various activities of the inquest.80 William needed cash to pay for the mercenaries that he had hired and also sought a review of service to obviate the need in future. Title was not a pressing issue for William. But, in so far as he had to enlist the support of his subjects through consultation before and negotiation after, it became so for his subjects. Taxation and service – and the more so new imposts – legitimized tenure. A demand was created, if not pattern 2, only otherwise found in Circuit III. However, as they themselves suggest, the change in format – an increase in the number of horizontal lines – was probably a function of subject matter. 77   Wormald, ‘Domesday Lawsuits’. 78   GDB, fol. 375: Lincs, CS. 79   D. Bates, ‘Two Ramsey Writs and the Domesday Survey’, Historical Research, 63 (1990): pp. 337–9. 80   For the following, see Roffe, Domesday: The Inquest and the Book, pp. 227–42.

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to determine, then to air disputed tenure. The result was the special procedure introduced to record disputes which left the commissioners free to carry out the main business of the inquest. Abbot Serlo’s profession of ignorance shows just how easy it was for individual concerns to get lost in a process that had not been designed to meet them. His experience, then, is of more than ‘some interest’. Most immediately it tells us something about the business of the Domesday inquest. It seems impossible to interpret if the Domesday inquest and the production of Domesday Book are seen as a single monolithic process. Serlo’s ignorance speaks of a procedure to which the tenant-in-chief was not privy. It has been suggested here that that procedure was an essentially private review of the royal fisc. Whether this review was originally intended to stand on its own is not known. What is clear is that the data were subsequently used to inform the survey of seigneurial estates which followed. More directly, the reference illuminates the way in which disputed tenure bubbled up in a series of enterprises in which they had no place. The airing of questions of title was a by-product which was to prove of little interest to the GDB scribe and were apparently peripheral to the main business of the inquest. Yet it was a matter that dared to speak its name and in so doing the Domesday inquest came to serve subject, however imperfectly, as well as sovereign. In this way the process incidentally saw the meeting of government with the governed. It nicely illustrates an aspect of the inquest that was to characterize the instrument of government throughout the Middle Ages.81 The great inquiries of the twelfth and thirteenth century were all primarily concerned with royal income. Insofar as the crown was dependent on local communities for information, however, it had to recognize their concerns. Sometimes communal issues were addressed directly as in 1258 and 1275. More often they were peripheral to the matters in hand. Nevertheless, querelae, the complaints of individuals, are common to all. Perforce the inquest was a mechanism of negotiation before the advent of parliaments in the second half of the thirteenth century. In using it to defend his own interests, Serlo placed himself in what was to prove a long tradition of pragmatic accountability in English government.

81   D.R. Roffe, ‘Inquests in Medieval England’, The Haskins Society Journal Japan, 4 (2011): pp. 18–24.

Chapter 4

The Place of Government in Transition: Winchester, Westminster and London in the Mid-Twelfth Century Kenji Yoshitake

In 1176/7 Richard FitzNigel was asked to compose the Dialogue of the Exchequer while ‘sitting by the window of a tower (specule) next to the river Thames’, probably in his house in Westminster.1 Important figures in royal government like Richard must have settled and spent much time in Westminster around this period, as governmental affairs came to be transacted more often in this place. By this time, Westminster was on the way to becoming the ‘royal capital’. Such development, however, was quite uncertain when William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster several months after the battle of Hastings. London was then already the largest and most influential town in England, which needed to be subdued by William before his coronation, but Westminster was to develop as a relatively small but distinct urban community in the Middle Ages, and in 1066 it was rather a bleak damp area that stretched around the abbey rebuilt by Edward the Confessor, though there were around it some houses, which were set on fire during William’s coronation.2 In this period, the town which could be regarded as the ‘capital’ was an old Wessex settlement, Winchester.3 It was one of the fortified boroughs of Alfred the Great, which had a long history of royal association. The elements 1   Dialogus de Scaccario, eds E. Amt and S. Church (Oxford, 2007), pp. 6–7, cf. pp. lii–liii, n. 66; G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989), p. 20: Richard owned houses ‘which lay to the north of the wharf at Enedehithe’ in Westminster. 2   OV, vol. 2, pp. 180–85. Westminster had a population of some 3,000 at the end of the Middle Ages, whereas Winchester had about 5,500 residents in the mid-twelfth century, and London about 20,000 around 1200: Rosser, Medieval Westminster, pp. 167–82; Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, ed. M. Biddle (Oxford, 1976), p. 440; G. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), pp. 315–17. 3   For Winchester in this period, see M. Biddle, ‘Winchester: The Development of an Early Medieval Capital’, in H. Jankuhn, W. Schlesinger and H. Steuer (eds), Vor- und Frühformen der europäischen Stadt im Mittelalters (2 vols, Göttingen, 1973–74), vol. 1, pp. 229–61, and ‘Early Norman Winchester’, in J.C. Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies

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which made Winchester the ‘royal capital’ included the royal burial place, the royal palace and the treasury. Since the time of its foundation in the seventh century, Old Minster developed as the burial place for many West-Saxon kings. In 901, another royal abbey, New Minster, was added and the body of King Alfred was transferred there. Next to these minsters was situated the royal palace, and the treasure was stored there at least from the reign of Cnut. It was the treasury which ensured Winchester’s place as the main seat of the sedentary part of royal government after 1066. With the new cathedral, the castle was newly constructed in the south-western corner of the town after the Norman Conquest. This castle became the central depository of royal treasure, and the centre of the Anglo-Norman government, apart from the itinerant royal court. While Winchester continued to play an important part as the ‘royal capital’ after 1066, a new development was seen at Westminster. William selected the abbey where Edward the Confessor rested as the place of coronation, perhaps to insist on the legitimacy of his succession as the heir to the Confessor. This assured the royal association of the abbey in the future, though it was only at the time of Henry III’s death that it became the royal mausoleum of post-Conquest kings and their families.4 There already existed a royal palace in Westminster, built by the Confessor after abandoning a residence in London. Towards the end of the century, however, William Rufus newly built, near the abbey, the Great Hall, the ‘largest hall … perhaps in Europe, at the time’.5 In these circumstances, Westminster gradually became more important in the politics of the kingdom. This is reflected in the crown-wearing courts held by the Anglo-Norman kings at Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, which were important occasions to demonstrate royal dignity. While the Easter courts were held fairly regularly at Winchester, the Whitsun and Christmas courts were more likely to be at Westminster. This was especially the case after 1099 when Rufus held the Whitsun court for the first time in the Great Hall at Westminster, but Henry I seems to have abandoned the tradition of seasonal festivals after 1110.6 Westminster may have lost some political importance later on. In his reign as a whole, however, Henry I’s activities tended to centre on Westminster, Winchester and Rouen, and to a lesser extent on Woodstock, (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 311–31, in addition to his edited volume, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages. See also T.B. James, Winchester (London, 1997). 4   E. Mason, Westminster Abbey and its People, c. 1050–c. 1216 (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 150–51. An exception was Edith/Matilda, queen of Henry I, who was buried beside the Confessor’s tomb. 5  Rosser, Medieval Westminster, pp. 14–16; H.M. Colvin (ed.), The History of the King’s Works (6 vols, London, 1963–82), vol. 1, pp. 44–7, 491–4. 6   M. Biddle, ‘Seasonal Festivals and Residences: Winchester, Westminster and Gloucester in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries’, ANS, 8 (1986): pp. 51–72.

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Windsor and London. Of the two main centres in England, Westminster retained a ceremonial character, while Winchester had a different function as the place of administration.7 Winchester played a significant role in Anglo-Norman government through the treasury in the castle. It may be better not to call the treasury a ‘department’,8 but the treasury at Winchester was not merely a storehouse. Many political, judicial and financial transactions were made there. It was the depository of royal treasure and the crown, but it was also ‘developing into a permanent central archive for government’, which housed the king’s seal, various administrative documents including Domesday Book and pipe rolls.9 It was in the custody of the hereditary chamberlains, and the exchequer came to be held there.10 Perhaps in connection with its sessions, Winchester was often the place of the royal court at Michaelmas as well as Easter. Many officials and magnates working at the exchequer had houses in the town, as the chamberlains also did.11 In the second half of the twelfth century, however, Winchester gradually lost its political and administrative importance in face of the growth of the  7   S.M. Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government under Henry I’, Albion, 28 (1996): pp. 202, 205, 209.  8   H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles stressed that the exchequer in the twelfth century was not a ‘place’ but an ‘occasion’, but insisted that the treasury was the ‘first government department’: The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 228, 242. In any case, Henry I’s exchequer cannot be regarded as the ‘beginning of a separate department of state’ and was still a ‘part of the king’s household’: Dialogus, pp. lii–liii. Some problems surrounding the treasury derive from the ambiguity of the word thesaurus. It means (1) treasure and (2) a place where treasure is stored: R.L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1912; repr. edn, London, 1973), pp. 70–72; Dialogus, pp. 10–13, 94–7. On the second definition, there were, in the early twelfth century, the central treasury at Winchester and other subsidiary treasuries such as at Portchester, but recently there is a tendency not to use the word ‘treasury’ for ‘thesaurus de Wintonia’: Dialogus, p. xlii; M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066– 1307 (3rd edn, Chichester, 2012), pp. 163–4. In the twelfth century, however, the thesaurus at Winchester can be interpreted as a place, as in the case of the 1111 court at the treasury at Winchester cited in n. 43 below.  9  Clanchy, Memory, p. 164; Dialogus, pp. 94–7. See also n. 65 below. 10   C.W. Hollister, ‘The Origins of the English Treasury’, EHR, 93 (1978): pp. 262–75; C.W. Hollister and J.W. Baldwin, ‘The Rise of Administrative Kingship’, American Historical Review, 83 (1978): pp. 877–87; Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, p. 208. 11   Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 387–92; Christelow, ‘Moveable Feast’, pp. 204–5; S.M. Christelow, ‘Fiscal Management of England under Henry I’, Haskins Society Journal, 17 (2007): pp. 171–2. Herbert the chamberlain was one of the largest landholders, who probably lived mainly in the city, while others with moderate sized lands seem to have stayed there only when necessary.

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Westminster-London area.12 It has been suggested that the initial shift of gravity occurred in the reign of King Stephen, especially after 1141.13 Substantial work has been done concerning the royal government in this period,14 but it may be still of some use to review, in the sections to follow, the process of the shift from a somewhat different viewpoint. Table 4.1

Charters issued by King Stephen at Winchester, Westminster and London Total

1135–41

1142–54

unable to date

Winchester

10

6

1

3

Westminster

57

39

3

15

London

85

6

42

37 (1)

(1)

  22 of these were issued after 1139.

Table 4.2

with place-date

Table 4.3

Charters issued by Queen Matilda Total

1135–41

1142–54

unable to date

30

5

19

6

21

4

14

3

Charters issued by Queen Matilda at Winchester, Westminster and London Total

1135–41

1142–54

unable to date

Winchester

0

0

0

0

Westminster

1

0

0

London

8

2

(1)

5

1 (2)

1

Probably issued during the captivity of Stephen.   Including a charter issued with her son Eustace.

(1)  (2)

12   For a general outline, see K. Yoshitake, ‘From Winchester to Westminster: Urban Communities and Royal Government in Twelfth Century England’, in The Proceedings of the Second Japano-Korean Symposium on Medieval History of Europe (Tokyo, 1991), pp. 177–95. 13   J. Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 110–11; H. Tanner, ‘Henry I’s Administrative Legacy: The Significance of Place-Date Distribution in the Acta of King Stephen’, Haskins Society Journal, 17 (2007): p. 197. 14   E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored 1149–59 (Woodbridge, 1993); G.J. White, ‘Continuity in Government’, in E. King (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994); G.J. White, Restoration and Reform 1153–1165: Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000).

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65

The status of Winchester, Westminster and London in the kingdom is well illustrated in the chroniclers’ descriptions of 1135. Shortly after the death of Henry I, Stephen, having landed at Dover from Wissant in Boulogne, visited London and was admitted by the citizens as king. The people of ‘London, the capital, the queen of the whole kingdom’, insisted on ‘their own right and peculiar privilege’ that ‘a successor should immediately be appointed by their own choice’. He then moved to Winchester, which was the ‘second place in the kingdom’, to meet his brother, Henry the bishop, and the citizens. Stephen there was given control of the castle and the treasure of Henry I (probably including the regalia) by William de Pont de l’Arche, the chamberlain of the treasury, with the assent of Roger of Salisbury. Securing his position in this way, Stephen was finally anointed as king at Westminster on 22 December.15 Winchester, Westminster and London thus played a crucial part in politics at the beginning of the reign. Yet their roles changed in the vicissitude of the civil war, as Tables 4.1 and 4.3 imply. Stephen in fact issued a relatively small number of charters at Winchester, and most of them may date from before 1141. On the other hand, many more charters were issued at Westminster, but again most of them were granted before 1141. After 1142, Stephen came to issue charters more often at London. As for the charters of Queen Matilda, most of them were issued at London and mostly after 1142, though the total number is very small.16 It has been argued that the year 1141 was the turning point of King Stephen’s government.17 Key factors were Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln and the sack and rout of Winchester. After Stephen was captured at Lincoln and imprisoned at Gloucester and Bristol successively, the Empress Matilda came to Winchester to meet Henry of Blois to acquire his support. A legatine council was held at Winchester in April, and the empress was formally recognized as Lady of England, in spite of the queen’s protest and the Londoners’ objection.18   GS, pp. 4–13; William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella. The Contemporary History, ed. E. King, trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), pp. 26–9; RRAN, vol. 3, nos 45, 500. William of Malmesbury wrote that Stephen was ‘received as king by the people of London and Winchester’. All the kings from William Rufus to Richard Lionheart secured the castle and treasury at Winchester before the coronation. 16   ‘London’ is a very ambiguous word. Chroniclers often use it to denote Westminster, but Christelow says that ‘London and Westminster were ordinarily distinguished by AngloNorman scribes’, and London meant the Tower whereas Westminster the royal palace and the abbey: ‘Moveable Feast’, p. 203. For a thorough analysis of the charters of Stephen and the Empress Matilda, see Tanner, ‘Administrative Legacy’. Oxford was also important for Stephen as a place of government. 17   K. Yoshitake, ‘The Arrest of the Bishops in 1139 and its Consequences’, Journal of Medieval History, 14 (1988): pp. 97–114. Tanner has recently argued that there was no decline in Stephen’s chancery even after 1141: ‘Henry I’s Administrative Legacy’, pp. 183–99. 18   Historia Novella, pp. 86–97. 15

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Probably shortly after the council, Henry handed over ‘to her disposal the king’s castle and the royal crown … and the treasure the king had left there’.19 She finally reached London with Henry of Blois to prepare for the coronation at Westminster, but was soon expelled by the Londoners who responded to the queen’s display of force and were indignant over the empress’ haughty demand for money.20 She first retreated to Oxford, but then went to Winchester where a quarrel arose with Henry concerning the inheritance of Stephen’s son Eustace. She stayed in the castle, but the city was soon surrounded by the queen’s army, and ‘the besieged flung firebrands and completely reduced to ashes the greater part of the city’.21 The Angevin army was finally routed, and Robert of Gloucester was captured by the royal force during his flight in mid-September. Meanwhile, ‘the Londoners, together with a very large part of the king’s troops, sacked the city of Winchester in a very terrible manner’.22 Stephen was at last delivered from captivity in November and went back to Winchester where Robert of Gloucester was subsequently released.23 On 7 December, a legatine council was summoned at Westminster to restore Stephen as king, and he then received a second coronation with the queen at Christmas at Canterbury.24 The main theatres of the crucial events in 1141 were Winchester, Westminster and London, but chroniclers rarely report Stephen’s activities at Winchester after 1142, and its place in royal government during this period seems to have been degraded. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show that the most important place of royal government after 1142 was not Winchester, nor Westminster, but London. Westminster functioned more as a place of ceremony,25 but Henry of Huntingdon reports that the tradition of ceremonial crown wearing had died   GS, pp. 118–19.   GS, pp. 120–25; Historia Novella, pp. 96–9. 21   GS, pp. 128–31; Historia Novella, pp. 102–5. 22   GS, pp. 132–7. 23   Historia Novella, pp. 104–9. 24   Historia Novella, pp. 108–11; The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (2 vols, London, 1879–80), vol. 1, p. 527. The fact that the council this time was held at Westminster indicates the devastated state of Winchester at this moment. In the 1148 survey of Winchester, about 44 lands were recorded as ‘waste’: Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 18, 386. 25   A step was taken to enhance the abbey’s prestige in the early years of the reign. Prior Osbert of Clare completed a hagiographical life of Edward the Confessor around 1138, and in 1139 (after Gervase of Blois, Stephen’s illegitimate son, was ordained abbot) visited Rome to appeal for the Confessor’s canonization, carrying with him his Life with letters of recommendation from the king, Henry of Blois and the chapter of St Paul’s. But Innocent II denied it in his letter to Abbot Gervase: F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970), pp. 272–7; The Letters of Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster, ed. E.W. Williamson (Oxford, 1929), nos 16, 17, 18, 19. 19 20

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out by 1139.26 As Table 4.1 shows, the royal government of the later years of the reign rather preferred London. As the territory under Stephen’s effective control was confined to south-eastern England in the 1140s, and the Londoners were consistently favourable to the king from the beginning of the reign,27 London would be a natural choice for him, but Queen Matilda’s role in government should also be considered as a factor encouraging this tendency.28 In the early years of the reign, the key figure in royal government was Roger of Salisbury, but he and his family were disgraced by the ‘arrest of the bishops’ in June 1139. It is plausible that Queen Matilda’s influence on royal government increased after Roger’s fall. In the Anglo-Norman tradition of government, there was a system whereby members of the royal family acted as regents with power and authority similar to the king’s, while non-royal personnel acted as viceroys with limited authority under them. Therefore, it was not unusual for the queen to have the status of ‘regent’, once Roger the viceroy was away.29 Queen Matilda’s activities were noticed by chroniclers from 1138,30 and she led the royalist party in 1141, most obviously as ‘regent’, when she was struggling for the release of Stephen.31 Although information about Queen Matilda in the chronicles decreased after 1142, it is clear from the charter evidence that she was more active after that date.32 The chroniclers’ silence on her in the 1140s may be due to the fact that she assumed administrative responsibility in   HH, pp. 724–5, 748–9.   The reason was thought to be his position as count of Boulogne which enabled him to control the trading route with Flanders, but J.A. Truax has argued that it was because he had long been constructing a cordial relationship with the Londoners since the previous reign: ‘Winning over the Londoners: King Stephen, the Empress Matilda, and the Politics of Personality’, Haskins Society Journal, 8 (1996): pp. 43–61. Stephen granted to them the ‘commune’ at the coronation: C.N.L. Brooke (with G. Keir), London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), pp. 34–5; Historia Novella, pp. 94–5. 28   For the detail of the arguments, see K. Yoshitake, ‘Queen Matilda and Royal Government in the Reign of Stephen’, in Igirisu Chuseishi Kenkyukai (ed.), Chusei Ingurando no Shakai to Kokka (Tokyo, 1994), pp. 115–39, as well as H.J. Tanner, ‘Queenship: Office, Custom, or Ad Hoc? The Case of Queen Matilda III of England (1135–1152)’, in B. Wheeler and J.C. Parsons (eds), Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady (New York, 2002), pp. 133–58, especially pp. 141–2. 29   D. Bates, ‘The Origins of the Justiciarship’, ANS, 4 (1982): pp. 1–12. The 1111 court at Winchester castle cited in n. 43 below is a typical manifestation of this tradition. 30   OV, vol. 6, pp. 520–21; HH, pp. 712–13; The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. E. Searle (Oxford, 1980), pp. 140–43; Symeon of Durham, Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series (2 vols, London, 1882–85), vol. 2, pp. 299–300. 31   Her ‘regency’ may be seen in a mandate issued during Stephen’s captivity: RRAN, vol. 3, no. 530 (‘Mando vobis et precipio ex parte regis domini mei et mea …’). 32   Queen Matilda issued only two charters before February 1141, two or three during Stephen’s captivity, and 19 after 1142. She attested 46 of Stephen’s charters, of which nine 26 27

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the south-eastern region, and remained apart from Stephen who was fighting elsewhere in the kingdom.33 Matilda’s geographical location is attributable to her inheritance of the honour of Boulogne, and the basis of her government was her own household, which included many men with a Boulogne connection. Queen Matilda’s government may have fused with that of Stephen, as some officials and clerks attended both their courts.34 It is known that the royal government in the later years of the reign tended to rely on a small inner circle which included William Martel, Richard de Lucy35 and William of Ypres, the commander of the Flemish mercenaries, the nucleus of the royal army. They and other royal servants were often supervised by the queen, possibly with her son Eustace.36 The core areas of the royalist territory, Essex, Surrey and Kent were respectively in the charge of Richard de Lucy, William Martel and William of Ypres.37 The headquarters of the government of Queen Matilda and Stephen was likely to be at the Tower of London in the midst of these areas.38 For the war government, the Tower must have been a much safer place than Westminster, especially for the treasure. It may be understood in this context that in 1143 Stephen recaptured the custody of the Tower which had been granted to Geoffrey de Mandeville during the confusion of 1141.39 Some governmental activities in the Tower are seen in the charters. King Stephen is said to have engaged in financial transactions with the Londoners. Probably in the later 1140s, Stephen granted land to a London financier, Gervase of Cornhill, to hold of his son Eustace by were in 1136, four between March 1137 and June 1139, and probably 25 after that date. Of these 25, 12 were certainly issued after 1142, and possibly nine more after that date. 33   Matilda’s charters and attestations show that she travelled relatively widely until 1140, but her attestations after that date were almost confined to south-eastern England, especially Kent, Essex and London. 34   For example, Baldwin de Boulogne and Richard de Boulogne worked as clerks for the king and the queen, and had a prebend at St Martin le Grand in London, the depository of royal clerks, which had a strong connection with the honour of Boulogne and whose dean was Henry of Blois: R.H.C. Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand and the Anarchy, 1135–54’, London Topographical Record, 23 (1974): pp. 9–26. 35   Green, ‘Financing Stephen’s War’, pp. 111–13. 36   For example, see RRAN, vol. 3, no. 548. 37  Cf. The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall (3 vols, London, 1896), vol. 2, pp. 648–50, 654. 38   The Tower was the place of sojourn for Stephen’s family even before 1142. He spent Whitsun of 1140 in the Tower, and Queen Matilda was there with her daughter-in-law, Constance, just before the battle of Lincoln in 1141: Historia Novella, pp. 76–7; William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, ed. P.G. Walsh and M.J. Kennedy (2 vols, Warminster, 1988–2007), vol. 1, pp. 66–9. 39   GS, pp. 160–67; HH, pp. 742–3. The Londoners’ hostility against the empress may be due to her grant of the Tower and the sheriffdom of London to Geoffrey: Truax, ‘Winning over Londoners’, p. 51.

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the service of a half knight, which was to be rendered annually ‘in money at London’. Queen Matilda also issued a charter at London granting Gervase land worth 10 marks at Gamlingay until she paid off a debt.40 Stephen’s charter may imply the holding of an annual financial meeting at London, though the sheriff or some other agents may simply have collected the sum. After 1139 or 1141, the royal government may have changed to a somewhat different type of administration with Queen Matilda as ‘quasi-regent’ under Stephen. The queen’s government or household took more of the responsibility for daily administration in the south-eastern region, and stayed at or nearby the Tower of London much more frequently than the king’s court which travelled over a much wider area. Queen Matilda’s role cannot be overstressed, but this system must have increased the political importance of the London area. Considering these political arrangements, it is sometimes said that the treasury moved from Winchester to Westminster during the reign of Stephen, but this is a little misleading. What actually happened then may be that the exchequer was finally detached from the treasury at Winchester. The process is difficult to illustrate because of the nature of the evidence, but an outline can be traced through a series of documents introduced by J.H. Round and others.41 The word ‘exchequer’ first appeared in 1110 in a notification issued by Henry I at Westminster to the barons of the exchequer. It is manifest that a kind of refined audit session at the chequered board was working by this date.42 At Michaelmas 1111, a court was held at the treasury in the castle of Winchester concerning Abingdon Abbey’s claim to the manor of Lewknor. As the king was away in Normandy, the queen presided at the court and, with the assistance of Roger of Salisbury and many other barons, consulted Domesday Book (‘per Librum de Thesauro’), and reached a judgment in favour of the abbey, which was then recorded in the charter issued in her name.43 Historians agree with

  RRAN, vol. 3, nos 243–4 (‘faciet ei servitium illud apud Londoniam in denariis’); Truax, ‘Winning over Londoners’, pp. 57–8. 41   J.H. Round, The Commune of London and Other Studies (London, 1899), pp. 80–81. Round used the evidence to show that ‘The change from the “Treasury” to the “Exchequer” was … a gradual process’, but Poole rephrased this sentence as ‘the word Exchequer only came gradually into use as denoting the place of payment as well as the place of audit’: Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, p. 40. 42   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 963 (cf. nos 1514, 1538, 1741); Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C.W. Foster and K. Major, Lincoln Record Society (10 vols, 1931–73), vol. 1, no. 32. For arguments over the origins of the exchequer, see J.A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 38–50; Dialogus, pp. xxv–xxvii. 43   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1000; Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis, ed. J. Hudson (2 vols, Oxford, 2002–7), vol. 2, pp. 168–71: ‘in castello Wincestre’, ‘apud Wintoniam in thesauro’. 40

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the assumption that this court was a part of the exchequer session in 1111.44 In the Abingdon chronicle, however, the word ‘exchequer’ does not appear, and the places mentioned are the castle and the treasury at Winchester. Although the centre of government was still the itinerant royal court, and the treasury in this period was a place of government with its own officials and documents, the exchequer was just an occasion held in the treasury at Winchester, and was subordinated to it in many aspects, most of its officials being members of the royal household. In 1114/20, Henry I granted 15 marks to the monks of Tiron for their shoes. The sum was specified ‘to be received from the treasury, at Michaelmas, at Winchester’.45 The charter might indicate that an exchequer session would be held at Michaelmas at Winchester, but here again there is no actual mention of the exchequer. With the establishment of the court-treasurership around 1125, the royal government may have reached a new stage where the royal finance as a whole came to be supervised by this new official.46 In the pipe roll of 1130, we see exchequer practices similar to those found in the pipe rolls of Henry II.47 In 1131, the exchequer had emerged as a place of payment. In that year Henry prescribed that 100 marks (60 marks from the farm of London and 40 from the farm of Lincoln) should be delivered annually to Cluny. The method of payment is a little complicated. The sum was to be given ‘from my own treasury’ for as long as Henry was alive, but after his death the ministers from those towns were to ‘bring that money to the exchequer at Michaelmas, and deliver it to the agent of St Peter [at Cluny]’.48 But the payment at the exchequer did not materialize under King Stephen who, in 1136 at Winchester, granted a manor of Letcombe 44   F.J. West, The Justiciarship in England 1066–1232 (Cambridge, 1966), p. 14; Hollister and Baldwin, ‘Administrative Kingship’, pp. 877–8; Green, Government, p. 43. 45   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1236; Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, ed. J.H. Round (London, 1899), no. 998; Cartulaire de l’abbaye de la Sainte-Trinité de Tiron, ed. L. Merlet (2 vols, Chartres, 1883), vol. 1, no. xxvii: ‘de thesauro meo, in festo Sancti Michaelis, Wintonie’. 46   Hollister, ‘Origins of Treasury’, pp. 262–75. Cf. Dialogus, p. xli; F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), pp. 148–9. 47   The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I Michaelmas 1130, ed. and trans. J.A. Green, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 57 (2012). An extract of the pipe roll for 1123/4 was found by M. Hagger, ‘A Pipe Roll for 25 Henry I’, EHR, 122 (2007): pp. 133–40. 48   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1691; Calendar of Documents, no. 1387; Recueil des chartes de l’Abbaye de Cluny, ed. A. Bernard and A. Bruel (6 vols, Paris, 1876–1903), vol. 5, no. 4016: ‘ministri mei de illis civitatibus qui firmas meas tenuerint, afferent secum hanc pecuniam ad scaccarium meum ad festum Sancti Michaelis, et ibi eam liberabunt nuncio Sancti Petri … Has autem centum marcatas singulis annis reddam eis de thesauro meo, et post discessum meum a successoribus meis recipient, sicut superius annotatum est’. The meaning of this charter is somewhat ambiguous, but is clarified by Henry’s reconfirmation of the same year

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Regis as a substitute for the 100 marks which had been given by Henry I ‘from his own treasury’.49 The 100 marks were paid from the treasury in the previous reign, and the new payment arrangement at the exchequer directly from the farms was avoided by Stephen in the case of Cluny. Meanwhile, in July 1141 at the height of the civil war, the 15 marks which Henry I had granted the monks of Tiron ‘from the treasury of Winchester’ were confirmed at Oxford by the Empress Matilda, who added another five marks. This time, the empress prescribed that the monks were to receive 20 marks ‘from the farm of Winchester, 10 marks at Michaelmas and 10 marks at Easter’.50 This payment method was similar to that granted to Cluny. The empress, at this moment, seems to have supposed that the exchequer was still being held at Winchester at Easter and Michaelmas,51 but the exchequer was probably not held in that year because of the sack of Winchester in September. This grant was reconfirmed by Duke Henry in 1154 at Le Mans, following his mother’s charter,52 but it is unlikely that the monks received 20 marks from Stephen after 1141, including the five marks granted by the empress. At the beginning of the next reign (1156/7), Henry II renewed his charter to Tiron, but the atmosphere was now different. He reconfirmed to the monks 15 marks ‘to be received from my treasury at my exchequer, at Michaelmas’, as Henry I’s charter testifies.53 This treasury was the lower exchequer, now regarded clearly as distinct from the central treasury at Winchester. The exchequer court in 1111 and the charter to Tiron in 1114/20 definitely show the stage when the exchequer was subordinated to the treasury at Winchester and inseparable from it. The charter to Cluny in 1131 which has no mention of Winchester may indicate the receipt section of the exchequer (RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1713; Calendar of Documents, no. 1389; Recueil de Cluny, vol. 5, no. 4015). It may be possible to translate the word ‘thesauro’ as ‘treasure’ here. 49   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 204: ‘de proprio thesauro suo’. Cf. the reconfirmation by Duke Geoffrey of Anjou and Duke Henry (nos 205, 206). 50   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 899: ‘… xv marcas argenti quas pater meus Henricus rex dederat eis habere singulis annis de thesauro Wintonie. Et preter hoc adcrevi eis v marcas argenti … Et has xx marcas argenti concedo eis de firma Wintonie, in festo Sancti Michaelis x marcas argenti et in Pascha x marcas’. Cf. RRAN, vol. 3, nos 328, 628. 51   The famous Mandeville charters also regarded the payment of county farm as routine: RRAN, vol. 3, nos 275, 276. 52   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 900: ‘… xx marcas argenti annuatim de thesauro Wintonie illis reddendas … de firma Wintonie illas habeant in festo Sancti Michaelis x marcas et in Pascha x marcas’. 53   Calendar of Documents, no. 1001; Cartulaire de Tiron, vol. 2, no. cccviii: ‘accipiendas de thesauro meo ad scaccarium meum, in festo sancti Michaelis’. The empress’ five marks were (probably) later confirmed by Henry’s writ to the barons of the exchequer, issued at Rouen with her attestation (no. cccix).

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distinct from that treasury, but the monks received the sum from the treasury during Henry I’s lifetime. The Empress Matilda’s charter to Tiron in 1141 also assumes the existence of a distinct receipt section, but seems to suppose that the annuity had been and would be received at the treasury of Winchester. In contrast to these cases where the receipt section is described ambiguously, Henry II’s charter to Tiron totally omitted the word ‘Winchester’, even from the phrase about Henry I’s grant, and unmistakably specified the payment from the treasury at the exchequer (that is, the ‘lower exchequer’). In the reign of Henry I, the exchequer was held normally at the treasury at Winchester, and transactions at the receipt section of the exchequer were carried out at that treasury, while the money paid in was deposited directly there.54 In these circumstances, it is difficult to imagine the ‘lower exchequer’ (‘treasury of receipt’) independent of the treasury at Winchester. In the later years of Stephen’s reign, however, the exchequer was finally detached from Winchester by the political circumstances, and the ‘lower exchequer’ came to be perceived clearly as a distinct section of the exchequer, a change probably accompanied by the development of the localized treasuries at London and Westminster where the ‘lower exchequer’ was held and the treasure was deposited while the exchequer was closed. This situation made possible the appearance of the phrase, ‘the treasury at the exchequer’, distinct from the treasury at Winchester. We know very little about the exchequer in the reign of Stephen,55 but there is a possibility that the exchequer was held basically at Winchester until 1141. After that date, Stephen may have maintained the exchequer, though somewhat degraded, at London or Westminster.56 After the Treaty of Winchester in 1153, however, more evidence about the exchequer emerges. Around Michaelmas 1154, King Stephen held a ‘council at London with the bishops and nobles of England’.57 London here means Westminster, and the exchequer must have been held there, as in 1156 Earl Patrick of Salisbury paid the debt of the county farm of Wiltshire for 1153–54.58 Around 1155 the exchequer may also have been held   In the pipe roll of 1130, we frequently encounter the format such as ‘in thesauro liberavit’. This is the transaction made at the ‘lower exchequer’, but the ‘treasury’ here is nothing but the treasury at Winchester. This format itself may have evolved simply by describing the actual practice. 55   K. Yoshitake, ‘The Exchequer in the Reign of Stephen’, EHR, 103 (1988): pp. 950–59. 56   Winchester was not in a situation where the exchequer could be held in this period, as Hampshire was among the counties whose effective control both Stephen and the empress lost, and probably did not pay the county farm: E.J. King, ‘The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign’, TRHS, 5th series, 34 (1984): pp. 133–53; Yoshitake, ‘Exchequer’, p. 958. 57   William of Newburgh, vol. 1, pp. 130–31. 58   The Great Rolls of the Pipe for the Second, Third, and Fourth Years of the Reign of King Henry II, ed. J. Hunter (London, 1844), p. 56; Yoshitake, ‘Exchequer’, p. 956. The exchequer did not necessarily require the king’s attendance, but it was a special occasion after the civil war. 54

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at Westminster, as Nigel of Ely, as a baron of the exchequer, issued a writ then concerning Bordesley Abbey at Westminster.59 As early as this date, Nigel of Ely had begun to work for the ‘restoration’ of the exchequer. Richard FitzNigel was appointed treasurer shortly after, but his status was different from before. He was more separated from the itinerant royal court, and the financial administration came to be held at a more fixed location, most probably at Westminster.60 At the beginning of Henry II’s reign, Westminster had already been equipped with buildings and facilities necessary for government, though many of them needed some repair. It is well known that there existed a house of the exchequer in 1155/6. The king’s houses, probably including the Great Hall, were maintained by the keeper Nathaniel. There were also the houses in the care of Nigel of Ely, and a gaol as well. The treasury must have existed and the treasure was probably sent from there to Shorham.61 Many necessities for the king and his court were also supplied in this area. The London sections of the pipe rolls record commodities for them, for example, linen for tablecloths, shields and saddles, quilts, tapestries, clothes, bowls, basins, towels, bacon and kettles.62 This list indicates that the king’s life was much more tightly connected with this area than in the time of the pipe roll of 1130.63 After this period, governmental activities came to be carried out more often at Westminster, but Winchester did not lose its function for a while. The treasury at Winchester still existed in 1154, even if it suffered from the sack of Winchester in 1141. In December 1154, Henry II landed at Southampton and went to Winchester as the previous kings did. According to Gervase of Canterbury, he received fealty from the magnates there while waiting for the followers dispersed by the bad weather when crossing the Channel,64 but he may also have collected the regalia with which to be crowned at Westminster. Even at the beginning of the new reign, the regalia, such as the crown, were deposited in the treasury at Winchester.65 It was still operating as the central treasury. There are many records in the pipe rolls of Henry II for the movement of treasure from and to Winchester. After the exchequer session was closed, money, tallies and documents were transferred to Winchester, and the exchequer itself was 59   English Episcopal Acta, 31, ed. N. Karn (Oxford, 2005), no. 94. Henry II held a council at Winchester at Michaelmas in 1155: Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series (4 vols, London, 1884–90), vol. 2, p. 186. 60   N. Karn, ‘Nigel, Bishop of Ely, and the Restoration of the Exchequer after the “Anarchy” of King Stephen’s Reign’, Historical Research, 80 (2007): pp. 299–314. 61   Pipe Rolls 2, 3, 4 Henry II, pp. 3–4. ‘Rogeri ostiarii de thesauro’ is mentioned in the London section. 62   Ibid., pp. 3–4, 111–14. 63   Pipe Roll 31 Henry I, pp. 113–17. 64   Gervase of Canterbury, vol. 1, p. 159. 65   Pipe Rolls 2, 3, 4 Henry II, pp. 107, 175.

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sometimes held there. After c. 1173/4, however, references to the permanent treasury at London increase, and after 1181 when money received at the exchequer in London was sent to Winchester, it became the rule that treasure, rolls and tallies were dispatched from London to the place of the exchequer and sent back from there to London. Finally, ‘by the reign of Richard I the London treasury has usurped the place of Winchester as the central treasury’. Now the central treasury was placed in the Tower of London. 66 In these circumstances, Richard I prescribed in 1189 that the aforesaid 20 marks of Tiron should be delivered ‘at Michaelmas from our exchequer at London’.67 Now the exchequer was more like a department of the royal government, while the treasury of Winchester lost importance in face of the ascendancy of the treasuries of the London area, which in turn came to be subordinated to the exchequer. Two hereditary chamberlains, who belonged to the treasury of Winchester in the reign of Henry I, would be regarded as the chamberlains of the exchequer later.68 As the London area acquired importance as the place of government, royal officials moved there. It is known that before 1157 a ‘royal minister’ named Gerin bought land at Enedehithe in Westminster. Later, Richard FitzNigel is known to have owned houses there, and the Mauduit chamberlains, Winchester landholders early in the century, also acquired houses next to Longditch in Westminster.69 In the early twelfth century, the centre of the English government was the treasury of Winchester, as well as the itinerant royal court which was often away from England. The exchequer developed in the treasury, and in due course functioned as the headquarters of the English government. By the second half of the century, however, the exchequer was detached from the treasury at Winchester, and gradually settled at Westminster, while treasuries developed at London and Westminster, and the Tower finally became the central treasury of England. The reign of King Stephen seems to be the crucial epoch for this change. The political geography and the system of Stephen’s rule made inevitable the ascendancy of the government centred on Westminster and London. The ‘restoration of order under Henry I’ was the manifesto of Henry II and his 66   R.A. Brown, ‘The Treasury of the Later Twelfth Century’, in J.C. Davies (ed.), Studies Presented to Hilary Jenkinson (London, 1957), pp. 37–41. 67   Calendar of Documents, no. 1003; Cartulaire de Tiron, vol. 2, no. cccxxxi: ‘in festo sancti Michaelis de scaccario nostro apud Londonum’. The word ‘London’ here may mean Westminster. 68   Hollister, ‘Origins of Treasury’, pp. 262–75; Richardson and Sayles, Government, pp. 422–37; E.M. Mason, ‘The Mauduits and their Chamberlainship of the Exchequer’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 49 (1976): pp. 1–23. 69  Rosser, Medieval Westminster, pp. 18–32; Westminster Abbey Charters 1066–c. 1214, ed. E. Mason, with J. Bray and D.J. Murphy, London Record Society (1988), nos 219, 261, 311, 312, 313. See also n. 11 above.

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administration, but in reality they were either not very faithful to, or not able to follow, the Anglo-Norman tradition of government, which owed much to the pre-Conquest period.70 The situation of the previous reign may have provided an expedient precedent for the development of a new régime centred on the London area. The mid-twelfth century was an age of transition. The shift of gravity in government from Winchester to Westminster and London may symbolize it.

70   J. Campbell, ‘Observations on English Government from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, TRHS, 5th series, 25 (1975): pp. 39–54.

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Chapter 5

A Different diffidatio: Violence, Litigation and the Lord of Courville from the Letters of Ivo of Chartres Kathleen Thompson

In the late spring of 1138 Robert, earl of Gloucester, sent formal notification to King Stephen that he was renouncing the homage and fealty that he had sworn to the king two years previously. It was a critical point in the troubled relationship between the king and the earl, which has been subsequently discussed by many commentators on the reign of Stephen, not least Edmund King.1 In the Historia Novella William of Malmesbury tells us that Robert renounced his homage in the traditional way, ‘more maiorum’2 and J.H. Round referred to ‘the famous diffidatio’.3 If we are to believe that Robert turned to a tried and tested procedure for the dissolution of his obligations to the king, then the description of a different and earlier diffidatio, given in the letter collection of Ivo, bishop of Chartres (1090–1115), provides us with a valuable comparator. It took place a generation earlier and occurred in lands that had traditionally been under the influence of King Stephen’s paternal family, the Thibaudian counts of Blois. Examination of this incident should therefore shed further light on the formal defiance or renunciation and have much to tell us about the way in which power was mediated in the localities of western Europe in the early twelfth century.   E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 86–8. The author would like to take this opportunity to express her warmest thanks to Edmund King for his advice and support throughout her association with the University of Sheffield History Department. 2   William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella: The Contemporary History, ed. E. King, trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), pp. 40–42. 3   J.H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville: A Study of the Anarchy (London, 1892), p. 28. The literature on renunciation is surprisingly slender; the classic account remains M. Bloch, ‘Les formes de la rupture de l’hommage dans l’ancien droit féodal’, Mélanges historiques (Bibliothèque générale de l’école pratique des hautes études, VIe section) (2 vols, Paris, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 189–209. See also, P. Hyams, ‘Homage and Feudalism: A Judicious Separation’, in N. Fryde, P. Monnet and O. Gerhard Oexle (eds), Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus: Présence du Féodalisme et Présent de la Féodalité: The Presence of Feudalism (Göttingen, 2002), pp. 13–49 at pp. 34–7. 1

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Bishop Ivo had been appointed to the see of Chartres as the pressure for reform was gathering momentum throughout western Europe, and his letters are full of pastoral and, in particular, legal advice.4 His successful career as prior of the Augustinian house of Saint-Quentin in Beauvais and his reputation as a canonist made him an unimpeachable successor to Bishop Geoffrey (1077–89), who had been deposed by a papal council for simony. Although his reputation rests chiefly on his writings on canon law, it is, in fact, Ivo’s letter collection that provides the reference to the defiance.5 It appears in the last of four letters dealing with a complex case that had come before Ivo’s court, relating to the recently announced provisions to protect the property of those who journeyed east on the various crusading initiatives. The letters are numbered 168, 169, 170 and 173 in the conventional numbering for Bishop Ivo’s letters.6 Although Bishop Ivo was the author of the letter, however, the reference to the defiance actually occurs in reported speech and the speech reported is that of Count Rotrou of Mortagne (d. 1144), one of the most celebrated of the participants in the first crusade, who had returned to his family’s territories in western France.7 The story that emerges from the letters is as follows. Count Rotrou had begun to erect a small fortification in an undisclosed8 location, which probably lay to the east of his main territories, since the construction work met with opposition from Hugh du Puiset, viscount of Chartres9 and Ivo, lord of Courville. Hugh and Ivo alleged that the count’s   The most authoritative work on Ivo is R. Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung in der Kirchengeschichte (Pariser historische Studien, 1) (Stuttgart, 1962). For a recent study, C. Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres (Cambridge, 2010). 5   The letter has been much discussed in the context of the development of canon law on crusaders: J. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, WI, 1969), pp. 165–7, and ‘St Anselm, Ivo of Chartres and the Ideology of the First Crusade’, in Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des xie-xiie siècles (Colloques internationaux de CNRS, Le Bec Hellouin, juillet 1982) (Paris, 1984), pp. 175–87; M. Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970–c. 1130 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 59–61; K. LoPrete, Adela of Blois, Countess and Lord, c. 1067–1137 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 264–6, 475; C.J. Tyerman, ‘Were there Any Crusades in the Twelfth Century?’, EHR, 110 (1995): pp. 553–77 at p. 571. See also, K. Thompson, Power and Border Lordship: The County of the Perche, c. 1066–1217 (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 59. 6   Ivo of Chartres, letters, nos 168–70, 173, PL, vol. 162, cols 170–74. 7   On Rotrou’s crusading career, K. Thompson, ‘Family Tradition and the Crusading Impulse: The Rotrou Counts of the Perche’, Medieval Prosopography, 19 (1998): pp. 1–33 at pp. 7–9, and ‘An Old Crusader is Encouraged Back to the Spanish Front: A Woman’s Letter to Count Rotrou of the Perche’, International Medieval Review, 9–10 (2003/4): pp. 40–50. 8   Identified with the modern place name La Motte-Rotrou in A. Chédeville, Chartres et ses campagnes (XIe–XIIIe s.) (Paris, 1991), p. 278, n. 182. 9   C. Cuissard, ‘Les seigneurs du Puiset (980–1789)’, Bulletin de la Société Dunoise, 30 (1875–80): pp. 313–98 at pp. 390–93; J.L. La Monte, ‘The Lords of Le Puiset on the 4

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fortification was illegal, since it lay on property under the viscount’s protection, which he had conceded to the lord of Courville. They made their complaint before the ecclesiastical authorities, because the viscount had undertaken to go to Jerusalem and they invoked the pope’s new rulings intended to protect the rights and property of crusaders.10 In response to the charge against him Count Rotrou asserted, as might be expected, that the property was not under the viscount’s protection, but under his own. Since judicial combat was required to settle such a disagreement among the military elite, the case was referred to the court of the secular authority, Countess Adela of Blois, where the viscount lost his case.11 The dispute then flared up in open conflict; Count Rotrou and Ivo of Courville came to blows, and Rotrou captured Ivo. At this point, the viscount again pleaded his crusader credentials, but, rather than again asking the local ecclesiastical courts to apply the new papal ruling, the viscount went directly to the pope. All this is narrated in letter 168 and is likely to have taken place in 1106, for Bohemond, Prince of Antioch and one of the leaders of the first crusade, had appeared in Chartres in the spring of that year to marry the king’s daughter, Constance, and had recruited many of the local nobility to his cause.12 Pope Paschal II was in France for much of 1107 and Viscount Hugh may have taken the opportunity of the pope’s visit to Chartres at Easter 1107 to make his appeal.13 This dating aligns with the account given in Bishop Ivo’s letter 170, where he describes how the pope had, in the bishop’s presence, refused to succumb to heavy persuasion to excommunicate Rotrou and had referred the matter to a commission of bishops headed by Archbishop Daimbert of Sens (‘nec apostolicus cum ad hanc excommunicationem nobis praesentibus multis persuasionibus urgeretur, aliter fieri voluit’). Bishop Ivo’s four letters were written during the process of that commission, which the archbishop seems to have delegated immediately to Bishop Ivo. In letter 168 Bishop Ivo is attempting to persuade the archbishop of the need for a fair hearing for Count Rotrou and in letter 169 he seeks the support of his fellow bishop, Galo of Paris, in carrying out the commission. Letter 170 is in the nature of a progress report to Archbishop Daimbert, while letter 173 summarizes the entire process of the case and notifies the pope of Count Rotrou’s decision to make a direct papal appeal. We do not know the outcome of the case. The key player in this diffidatio is, of course, the man who is alleged to have made it, Ivo of Courville. His toponymic is derived from Courville-sur-Eure (EureCrusades’, Speculum, 17 (1942): pp. 100–118; H.E. Mayer, ‘Origins of the County of Jaffa’, Israel Exploration Journal, 35 (1985): pp. 35–45. 10  Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, p. 159ff. 11   Cado a causa – to lose a case, J.-M. Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (2 vols, Leiden, 1954–76), vol 1, p. 113. 12   OV, vol. 6, p. 70. 13   Ibid., p. 42.

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et-Loir, chef lieu du canton) and he was a member of a family with interests there that went back to at least the middle of the eleventh century.14 His grandfather, Ivo [I] of Courville, had held Courville from Viscount Gilduin of Chartres and had given the church of Saint Gervais and Saint Prothais at Chuisnes (Eure-etLoir, cant. Courville) to the abbey of Marmoutier, with Gilduin’s consent.15 This Ivo [I] had also consented to another gift to the same abbey, which is described as held by Ivo from Ganelon the treasurer.16 So in the eleventh century the lords of Courville were comfortable within multiple relationships of lordship, though it may be significant that there was some uncertainty about the patterns of lordship, since Ivo’s tenant only ‘seemed to hold in his fee’. Ivo [I] founded a church at Courville dedicated to St Nicholas and his son (and our Ivo’s father), Giroie of Courville, replaced its eight canons with monks from Marmoutier sometime in the late 1070s or early 1080s.17 Giroie also appears in the pages of Orderic’s Ecclesiastical History as one of the subjects of Mabel of Bellême’s poisoning activities, but not a fatality.18 Orderic tells us in passing that Giroie of Courville was the friend and kinsman of Arnold of Échauffour, whose family, the Giroie, was a source of unfailing interest to Orderic. Giroie of Courville had harboured Arnold for three years at Courville, during which time Arnold had waged a violent campaign in southern Normandy, or as Orderic describes it: ‘a furious war of vengeance for the injustice of his banishment’. By 1094 Giroie was dead and his widow, Philippa, had become a patron of the abbey of Saint-Père at Chartres.19 On her deathbed she sought to persuade her son, our Ivo [II] of Courville, to rescind all the customs which the family held in Saint-Père’s land, but it was some years, by the admission of Ivo’s own act, before he carried out her wishes and only then under the threat of legal action from the abbot of Saint-Père.20   For early attempts to establish the genealogy of the lords of Courville, R. Durand, ‘Chronologie des premiers seigneurs de Courville notice généalogique: Courville et Vieuxpont’, Mémoires de la Société Archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir, 12 (1895–1900): pp. 243–93. 15   Cartulaire de Marmoutier pour le Dunois, ed. E. Mabille (Châteaudun, 1874), no. cix: ‘… assensu domini mei Gilduini vicecomitis filiorumque ejus Arduini atque Ebrardi a quibus habeo totam terram Curvae villae …’. On the viscounts of Chartres, Chédeville, Chartres et ses campagnes, pp. 258–9. 16   CMDunois, no. cvii: ‘Annuit ad hoc Ivo de Curba Villa, dominus ejus, cum liberis suis his nominibus, Girogio, Rodulfo, Ivone atque Hugone, de quo ipse Nivelo praedictam terram in fevum videbatur tenere. Guanilo quoque thesaurarius de quo Ivo tenebat et ipse nichilominus annuit’. 17   Ibid., no. cxxxviii. For the subsequent history of this church, see Ivo’s letter no. 266, PL, vol. 162, col. 270. 18   OV, vol. 2, pp. 122–4. 19   Cartulaire de Saint-Père de Chartres, ed. B. Guérard (2 vols, Paris, 1840), vol. 2, pp. 499–500. 20   Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 502–3: ‘… venit domnus abbas Willelmus Curvamvillam ad me, sciendus de placito, an placitarem scilicet an dimittererem’. 14

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A picture is emerging, then, of the lords of Courville holding lands in the Chartrain from a number of lords, while supporting two of the great abbeys of western France, Marmoutier near Tours and Saint-Père of Chartres. So it is perhaps surprising that our Ivo was also a generous patron of a house founded by his opponent, Count Rotrou. The abbey of Tiron had been established in the late 1100s on land donated, according to the vita of its first abbot, Bernard, by Count Rotrou.21 Ivo had been impressed by the austerity of the Tironensians’ life, and he granted them all his land at Augerville(-les-malades, Eure-et-Loir, cant. Prunay-le-Gilon), with the exception of two small parcels that he had already granted to other religious communities. He also granted a mill, an oven and rents in Courville, the right to fish his lake at Charruel once a year, as well as rights in his woodlands and the land at Clémas (Eure-et-Loir, cant. Courville, comm. du Favril), where a group of Tironensians lived. These latter gifts have all the appearance of the endowment of a new priory, and an addition to his act in the Tiron cartulary makes it clear that he later supplemented it with the dues he received from the sale of salt, pottery and vegetables at Courville and his share of the produce of local gardens.22 Then there is the evidence of an act from the Tiron cartulary that suggests that Ivo entered the community at Tiron.23 In this act it is announced that Ivo, while renouncing the world (‘abrenuncians seculo’), conveyed to Count Theobald of Blois/Chartres Courville and everything that he held from the count or the viscount. The word used (‘dimisit’) is that which is often used of an inheritance or legacy, but it can equally mean to cede or place at someone’s disposal.24 It is therefore interesting that Ivo’s action attracted a payment of 200 marks of silver from the count and an elaborate agreement follows whereby the count is to hold Ivo’s lands, respecting the benefactions Ivo has made, until an individual called Robert of Vieuxpont can repay the 200 marks and recover the land. If Robert does not do so, then the count is to restore it to Robert of Vieuxpont’s unnamed nephew on similar conditions. The act has all the appearance of an expedient to raise cash, similar to many others made in the early twelfth century as lords and knights sought to raise funds for the crusade, except for the fact that Ivo says he is renouncing the world. Are we therefore to conclude that he regarded participation in a crusade as the equivalent of renouncing the world, since he had no intention of returning to western Europe? Or perhaps we should conclude that the money raised from what was effectively the sale of his land

  Geoffrey Grossus, ‘Vita Beati Bernardi Tironiensis’, PL, vol. 172, cols 1408–9.   Cartulaire de l’abbaye de la Sainte-Trinité de Tiron, ed. L. Merlet (2 vols, Chartres, 1883), vol. 1, no. xviii. 23   CTiron, vol. I, no. lxxxv. 24  Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus, pp. 333–4. 21 22

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would accompany Ivo into the abbey of Tiron? That would certainly account for the preservation of this act in the Tiron cartulary. Most remarkable of all, however, are the arrangements to guarantee the act. Not only did Count Theobald swear to his promise, but so did his mother, the formidable Countess Adela of Blois and his brother, Count Stephen, later to be king of England, while his uncle, King Henry I of England, confirmed that he would encourage the count to fulfil his obligations. The count also gave sureties from among the leading members of his entourage. These arrangements imply that this was a momentous transaction, although we cannot be sure when it took place.25 Countess Adela entered the nunnery at Marcigny in May 1120, so the act can be no later, and Ivo does thereafter disappear from the contemporary record. A woman named Ermesindis, who is described as once the wife of Ivo Cotella of Courville, possessed the income from the church of Saint Martin at Chuisnes, which she gave to the priory of Chuisnes during the episcopate of Bishop Geoffrey (1116–49).26 So what are we to make of Count Rotrou’s assertion that Ivo of Courville had been his man and had defied him (‘Ivo Rotrocum dominum suum diffiduciasset’)? Rotrou’s assertion is the only evidence for this example of defiance and no information is given about when it had taken place. It apparently surfaced only in the second phase of the dispute. In the first phase, Rotrou’s defence was that he was building his fortification on property that lay under his own protection and he won the case in the countess’s court with that assertion. The second phase did not begin until after Rotrou had captured Ivo of Courville. In this second phase the argument turned on people rather than property, with Viscount Hugh maintaining that his crusader’s right to protection extended not only to the property on which Rotrou had begun building the fortification, after Hugh had taken the cross, but also to Hugh’s knight, Ivo, whom Rotrou had captured and ransomed. Faced with this new plea Rotrou’s defence was robust and internally consistent: the property had been judged by the countess’ court to be Rotrou’s and Ivo was Rotrou’s as well. Not only had Ivo been Rotrou’s man, but he had done Rotrou wrong. He had defied his lord, when he had earlier taken his booty; he was holding his own men in chains on the day that he was captured and on that day he was proceeding with an armed force of knights with the purpose of doing harm to Rotrou. Was there any substance to Rotrou’s assertion or was it simply a defence to avoid the excommunication that Viscount Hugh and Ivo of Courville’s claims would have provoked? It has to be said that there is no direct evidence that Ivo of Courville held property from Count Rotrou. He never appears among the witnesses to Count Rotrou’s acts and there are few occasions on which his family  LoPrete, Adela, pp. 521–2.   CMDunois, no. clxxix.

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can be shown to have been associated with Count Rotrou’s. Two occurred in the 1050s, when their namesakes and grandfathers witnessed benefactions to their favoured religious foundations: the first to the Rotrou family foundation of Saint-Denis of Nogent-le-Rotrou and the second when Ivo of Courville made his gift of the church at Chuisnes to the priory there.27 These isolated contacts suggest neighbours who generally had little to do with each other. In his consideration of this incident Marcus Bull suggests that Rotrou’s act in building the castle ‘was almost certainly meant to provoke’ and conjectures that Adela sold Rotrou the property on which the castle was being built in the hope that Rotrou’s presence might challenge the well-established viscount of Chartres and his associate, Ivo of Courville.28 Adela’s strategic use of her court in support of a vassal is a speculation, of course, but the outbreak of hostilities between Rotrou and the lord of Courville does imply that the real dispute was between these two men, and probably involved the extension of Rotrou’s influence towards Ivo’s lands. Rather than seeking to reach a settlement of their differences, however, perhaps in a conventio, as was often the practice, Viscount Hugh and Ivo of Courville had brought the action in Bishop Ivo’s court, seeking a decision.29 It is of course possible that Count Rotrou’s relationship with Ivo was not founded in the lordship and landholding patterns of the Chartrain and Dunois at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but on the battlefield itself. The reported speech attributed to Rotrou states not only that Ivo had defied his lord Rotrou, but that he had earlier received Rotrou’s largesse (‘Ivo Rotrocum dominum suum diffiduciasset et praedam ejus prior cepisset’). The word praedam derives from the verb prehendere, to seize or take violent possession of, and its primary meaning is loot, booty or plunder. It reflects the forging of the relationship of lord and man in battle and, in the words of a modern commentator, plunder was ‘the crucial dynamic behind much of the warfare of the early Middle Ages’.30 While Niermeyer’s Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus   Saint-Denis de Nogent-Le-Rotrou 1031–1789, ed. C. Métais (Vannes, 1894), no. xxxviii; CMDunois, no. cix. 28  Bull, Knightly Piety, pp. 59–61. 29   The literature on dispute resolution is vast and includes: S.D. White, ‘“ Pactum … legem vincit et amor judicium”: The Settlement of Disputes by Compromise in EleventhCentury Western France’, American Journal of Legal History¸ 22 (1978): pp. 281–308; P.J. Geary, ‘Living with Conflicts in Stateless France; A Typology of Conflict Management Mechanisms 1050–1200’, in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1994), pp. 125–62, and, of course, E. King, ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS, 14 (1992), pp. 115–30. 30   M. Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 183. T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, TRHS, 5th series, 35 (1985), pp. 75–94 at p. 82 refers to Hincmar’s description of the gifts of food, clothing, equipment and booty – gift-giving is the dynamic 27

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observes a secondary meaning of cattle, taken from documents that originated in the area of Anjou and Vendôme in this period, it confirms the primary medieval usage as pillage. Bishop Ivo uses the word himself in this sense in his Decretum, when discussing whether it is a sin to fight for booty, and he again uses it in a letter to Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, when describing the depredations he has experienced at the hands of the lords of Le Puiset.31 Since Rotrou was among the most famous warriors of his day, his relationship with Ivo and the granting of plunder may have occurred in the long campaign that led up to the capture of Jerusalem in July 1099.32 Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, Ivo may have fought alongside Rotrou in his conflict with his neighbour, Robert of Bellême, and have received looted property as a result.33 So Rotrou’s defence may reflect Ivo’s departure from a personal association forged in conflict rather than a formal denial of homage for land holdings. What can be learned from Bishop Ivo’s approach to the dispute? While Ivo has been described as the ‘most celebrated and influential canonist of his generation’,34 it is his responsibilities as a bishop that emerge from his letter to Archbishop Daimbert, in which he articulates his obedience to the pope and concerns for fairness to the individual.35 The bishop was clearly operating in uncharted waters and Marcus Bull declares that ‘there was great uncertainty over where effective jurisdiction lay and the correct procedures to be followed’.36 The first phase of the dispute found its way to the episcopal court, since the pope had promised protection to crusaders’ property. The case had then been referred to a hearing by the secular authority, because trial by combat was considered necessary. In the second phase, where the new element was the capture of Ivo of Courville, the bishop was reluctant to carry out the sentence of excommunication implicit in the pope’s commission without giving Count Rotrou a hearing.37 Bishop Ivo of lordship. For distribution of plunder by a warlord of the previous generation, see G.A. Loud, ‘Coinage, Wealth and Plunder in the Age of Robert Guiscard’, EHR, 114 (1999): pp. 815–43 at pp. 826–7. 31   ‘Militare non est delictum, sed propter praedam militare peccatum est’, PL, vol. 161, col. 728; ‘De caetero praedam a Puteacensibus in me et in Carnotensem ecclesiam factam’, letter no. 60, PL, vol. 162, cols 74–5. 32   On the practice of plunder, W.G. Zajac, ‘Captured Property on the First Crusade’, in J. Phillips (ed.), The First Crusade: Origins and Impact (Manchester, 1997), pp. 153–80. 33   OV, vol. 6, p. 396: ‘Vnde atrocem guerram uicissim fecerunt,in terris suis predas et incendia perpetrarunt, et scelera sceleribus accumulauerunt. Inerme uulgus spoliauerunt …’. 34   Brundage, ‘St Anselm’, p. 176. 35   ‘… ut et vobis et nobis … bene provideatis quatenus nec obedientiam apostolicam contemnamus nec aliquem injuste praegravemus’ (letter no. 168) 36  Bull, Knightly Piety, p. 60. 37   ‘… nolo quemquam more sicariorum sine audientia punire …’ (letter no. 169).

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presents his reluctance as the natural outcome of his pastoral responsibilities towards Rotrou and he reassures Archbishop Daimbert that he is not favouring Rotrou (letter 170). Indeed he points out that Rotrou’s fortification represents a potential threat to his own interests and those of the cathedral of Chartres.38 So we might say that the bishop is involved as a pastor, but he is detached as a lawyer. His letters indicate that the lawyer in Ivo is at pains to keep to the point and not to be distracted by detail; he does not know (he says in letter 168) why Viscount Hugh lost the case in Countess Adela’s court and he does not know (he says, again in letter 168) what Ivo of Courville was doing when he was captured by Rotrou’s knights. Bishop Ivo’s position therefore can be construed as an impossible one, caught between the demands of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the influence of the local elite and his own conscience. Such a view would misrepresent Ivo’s position, however. Ivo’s first letter to Archbishop Daimbert was written after the papal instructions had been received and it made the case for giving Count Rotrou the opportunity of a hearing to explain his actions. It is conciliatory and helpful in its tone, proposing a course of action to his superior that Ivo expects to be followed, since it is the most appropriate manner of proceeding. It has the tone of the civil servant’s recommendation to the Minister, and Daimbert had every reason to listen to Ivo, because Ivo had been influential in securing the archbishop’s appointment against the interference of the papal legate, Hugh of Die.39 Ivo’s sanguine approach was shattered by the response he received from the archbishop, who told him in no uncertain terms to obey the papal letter and excommunicate Rotrou. It is in these circumstances that Ivo wrote to Galo, bishop of Paris, one of the other bishops appointed to look into the matter by the pope. Galo was a personal friend; he had succeeded Ivo as abbot of Saint Quentin and Ivo had promoted Galo’s unsuccessful candidature as bishop of Beauvais before his appointment as bishop of Paris in 1104.40 Ivo’s tone has changed in this letter. He is exasperated with the archbishop, who has not acted in the way that Ivo had advised: I asked him to give me advice, when he had carefully looked at the papal letter and had understood the truth of the matters that I had written to him … I know not by what rhyme or reason, but he wrote back to me that I should obey the apostolic letter and excommunicate Rotrou.   ‘… quia pendente negotio quamlibet humilem personam lege prohibente communicare non audeo’ (letter no. 170); ‘… munitionem quam facit mea sententia confirmare quae nulli tantum nocitura est quam mihi et ecclesiae mihi commissae’ (letter no. 170). 39  Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, pp. 17–19. 40   Ibid., p. 9; OV, vol. 4, p. 262. 38

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Since he had not received the advice he asked for, Ivo turned to legal nicety. The archbishop has not answered his question; he has not told Ivo whether to hold a hearing; he has only told Ivo to excommunicate Rotrou. On that basis, Ivo is seeking Galo’s help. He hopes that Galo will endorse Ivo’s approach, but whatever happens, Ivo would like Galo to be present when the case is considered. In his letter to Galo, Ivo describes how he has been harassed by Ivo of Courville and the Viscount’s brother, Guy, who was now acting on behalf of the Le Puiset family. This can have been no comfortable experience. Guy of Le Puiset had been a member of the chapter at Chartres, before leaving it for a secular role as Viscount of Étampes.41 He may already have been part of the chapter when Bishop Ivo was struggling to establish himself in the 1090s.42 The bishop had sought to improve discipline within the chapter, attempting to limit abuse of its revenues and vetting the new appointments. These were precisely the issues that might bring him into conflict with canons from a lordly background, such as Guy. Bishop Ivo had no cause to love the Le Puiset, moreover, because in the autumn of 1093 he had suffered the humiliation of imprisonment by the viscount, who was acting on the king’s behalf in his dispute with Ivo about the royal marriage to Bertrade of Montfort.43 Long-standing tensions underlay Bishop Ivo’s resistance to Guy of Le Puiset and Ivo of Courville, when they attempted to force the bishop’s hand over Rotrou’s excommunication and this might account for the rather immoderate language that Ivo uses in his description of the encounter, saying that he refused to punish anyone without a hearing ‘in the manner of the cut-throats’ (‘more sicariorum’). The word he uses is derived from sikarioi, the Greek term for the political activists of first-century Palestine, described by Josephus. They assassinated their opponents and had in turn been summarily killed by the Roman authorities, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 21:38).44 Ivo’s letter to Pope Paschal, which is the final letter in the sequence, ends with what Marcus Bull describes as Ivo’s ‘expression of despair … that the protagonists were so powerful locally that they could not be brought to heel’, but it is significant that throughout the letter Count Rotrou’s behaviour is presented as entirely reasonable. The count was summoned to judgement and 41   Dion, ‘Le Puiset’, pp. 21–3; Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres, eds E. de Lépinois and L. Merlet (3 vols, Chartres, 1862–65), vol. 1, no. xxiv; Ivo, letter no. 204, PL, vol. 162, cols 208–10. 42  Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, p. 6. 43  Rolker, Canon Law and the Letters of Ivo of Chartres, pp. 16, 232 (letters nos 20 and 21). 44   Flavius Josephus, Works, in nine volumes (London, 1926–65), vol. 9, Jewish antiquities. Books XVIII–XX, Book XX, 186, p. 488. See also N. Wright, ‘Twelfth-Century Receptions of a Text: Anglo-Norman Historians and Hegesippus’, ANS, 31 (2009), pp. 177–95.

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presented himself on the day. He had been asked to halt the building and take nothing for Ivo of Courville’s ransom, and he explained why he had not done so. (It is within this explanation given by Rotrou that the reference to the diffidatio occurs.) When Bishop Ivo’s court was unable to reach a conclusion, Rotrou’s opponents are point-blank perverse (‘omnino refutavit’), while Count Rotrou is more measured – he fears to do anything that is prejudicial to himself (‘se praegravari timeret comes Rotrocus’). These are indeed great men, who cannot be compelled to judgement by the insignificant bishop, but there is a sense that some great men are more co-operative than others. Great matters were at issue in this case. James Brundage suggests it ‘is crucial in that it involves the earliest direct invocation known of the crusader’s right to preserve and protect his property during absence on crusade’.45 Yet the underlying context is a local power struggle.46 Count Rotrou was extending his influence, with or without Countess Adela’s connivance, at the expense of the Le Puiset and their henchman of several generations’ standing. Hugh of Le Puiset and Ivo of Courville sought to resist. They might have resorted to violence immediately or they might have brought a dispute to the comital court. Instead they chose to use the new rulings to protect crusaders, in itself a particularly provocative approach to employ against Rotrou, whose reputation had been forged in the Holy Land. It was a high-risk ploy, however, for the new rulings had scarcely been tested. Pope Paschal’s letter to the French clergy on the subject referred only to the restitution of returning crusaders’ property, while Hugh of Le Puiset had hardly even left for Jerusalem.47 The case required Bishop Ivo to pronounce in an area where there were no precedents and that may have led to his evident unease, rather than any dislike of crusading.48 Dispute resolution was still fundamentally an oral process and implementing the papal pronouncement on crusaders’ property was easier said than done. We can only speculate on the outcome. We know that Ivo became a patron of Rotrou’s new foundation at Tiron, which may have formed part of a settlement. Count Rotrou took part in an expedition to Spain in 1109, which might indicate that he was now able to leave the Perche. We also know that, some years later, Ivo of Courville renounced the world in a high-profile and complex act involving the count of Blois/Chartres, his mother and his brother, that was guaranteed by the king of the English, father-in-law of Count Rotrou. It is tempting to speculate that this was an expedient to remove  Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, p. 166.   For another local power struggle, E. King, ‘Mountsorrel and its Region in King Stephen’s Reign’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 44 (1980): pp. 1–10. 47   ‘… porro fratribus qui post perpetratam divinitus victoriam revertuntur, iubemus sua omnia restitui’, quoted in Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, p. 165. 48   ‘That it should have been raised within Ivo’s jurisdiction was ironic, for Ivo’s enthusiasm for the crusade was limited’, Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, p. 166. 45 46

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a difficult and dangerous man, who knew how to get the most out of his law and had finally found religion. How then does Ivo of Courville’s defiance relate to the more well-known events of 1138? The two narratives are presented from opposite viewpoints; Count Rotrou takes the lord’s perspective and asserts that Ivo has defied him (‘… Ivo pro peregrinatione Hugonis minime erat reddendus, cum praedictus Ivo Rotrocum dominum suum diffiduciasset’), while William of Malmesbury describes the point of view of the individual who is making the defiance (‘… quod comes Gloescestriae Rotbertus, qui erat in Normannia, in proximo partes sororis foret adiuturus, rege tantum modo ante diffidiato … Celeriter enim post Pentecosten, missis a Normannia suis regi more maiorum amicitiam et fidem interdixit, homagio etiam abdicato …’). Both accounts use a word with the diffid- root to describe the act of disavowal or defiance, which terminated the relationship of trust or faith (fides). It is a word that is little used before the twelfth century, according to standard lexicons. Niermeyer can find a use in the mid-eleventh century in Aragon, but then moves on to William of Malmesbury’s usage; Latham and Howlett can find no use in British sources before William of Malmesbury, and the word perhaps translates a concept more commonly described in the language of the vernacular. One link between Ivo of Courville’s defiance and that of Earl Robert is, of course, Count Rotrou himself. In the opening decade of the twelfth century, it was he who asserted that Ivo of Courville had been his man and had defied him. Thirty years later it was Earl Robert of Gloucester who made the defiance. Earl Robert was Count Rotrou’s brother-in-law, as a result of Count Rotrou’s marriage to one of Henry I’s illegitimate daughters in the early 1100s. In itself this might not have been a particularly close link, since Henry had many illegitimate children, but Count Rotrou was hardly an unknown figure at the English king’s court; he had been with King Henry at Arganchy in 1118 and witnessed the king’s charter to Savigny, alongside Robert the king’s son, as the earl of Gloucester was then described.49 Moreover Rotrou was the first lay witness after King David of Scotland in Earl Robert of Gloucester’s concord with the bishop of Llandaff, made at Woodstock in 1126.50 The two men had known one another for many years by 1135 and there is a curious link in their predilection for the use of the form consul as a title.51 Count Rotrou is known to have been in Earl Robert’s company in December 1135 when they were present   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1183.   Ibid., no. 1466. 51   Earldom of Gloucester Charters: The Charters and Scribes of the Earls and Countesses of Gloucester to A.D. 1217, ed. R. Patterson (Oxford, 1973), pp. 22–3. For Rotrou as consul, Hereford cathedral library, no. 798, published as The Original Acta of St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester c. 1122 to 1263, ed. R.B. Patterson, Gloucestershire Record Series, II, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society (1998), no. 248. Rotrou is also described as consul in 49 50

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at the death of King Henry I.52 Rotrou and Robert took charge of the king’s body and escorted it to Rouen. There was plenty of time to re-establish friendly relations and several long winter evenings for two middle-aged men to reflect on and review their careers. Ivo of Courville’s presence in a fighting unit commanded by Rotrou during conflict with his neighbour Robert of Bellême was probably the element of truth behind Rotrou’s assertion that Ivo had broken faith with him. The rupture of that personal bond would enable Rotrou to develop a clever defence to an equally clever litigious attack in the 1100s. In the view of John Gillingham, the 1138 defiance may be similarly illusory. He suggests that it is a sleight of William of Malmesbury’s hand and historians ‘have been deceived – as doubtless William, in his patron’s cause, intended they should be – by his assertion that this was done in traditional fashion’.53 He draws attention to the unfamiliarity of the vocabulary when a similar event occurred before the battle of Lincoln and the act of abrogation itself seems rare; even the taxonomist of ‘Feudalism’, François Ganshof, can only find two examples, one of which is imaginary.54 David Crouch adds another, when he reminds us of Reginald of Bailleul’s defiance of King Henry I (‘fidelitatem regi reliquit’), which the king soon faced down by arriving at Reginald’s stone dwelling and burning it to the ground.55 William of Malmesbury is, however, confident that his point will be understood and it may be that the Latin vocabulary was developing as the twelfth century progressed and an accepted way of formally accomplishing the act was beginning to be recognized. Reginald did send formal notice of his act to the king and it may not be without significance that Reginald, like Count Rotrou, had spent some time in Spain where Niermeyer observes the earliest use of the word diffidare.56 As Earl Robert pondered his position in Normandy in the winter of 1137/8, there was time for him to seek the advice of his brother-in-law. David Crouch detects that a ‘great struggle and deep doubt lay behind the earl’s defiance of Stephen …’.57 Rotrou himself was committed to Stephen; he had just secured the grant of the castles of Moulins and Bonsmoulins (both Orne) for himself and his a French act, Cartulaire de la Leproserie du Grand Beaulieu et du Prieuré de Notre Dame de la Bourdinière, eds R. Merlet and M. Jusselin (Chartres, 1909), no. 58. 52   OV, vol. 6, p. 448. 53   J. Gillingham, ‘1066 and the Introduction of Chivalry into England’, in G. Garnett and J. Hudson (eds), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 31–55 at pp. 48–9. 54   F.L. Ganshof, Feudalism (3rd English edn, London, 1964), pp. 98–101. 55   OV, vol. 6, p. 214. 56   OV, vol. 6, p. 402 for Reginald in Spain with Sylvester of Saint-Calais, who appears as a witness to an act given in the chapter at Tiron in 1136, CTiron, no. ccxv. 57   D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (Harlow, 2000), p. 77.

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nephew, Richer of L’Aigle.58 He had much to gain by retaining his connection with King Stephen, but he might have pointed out to Earl Robert that, if there must be a rupture with the king, then there were advantages in a public act of defiance in a society that thrived on the public gesture as an expression of political power.59 Ivo of Courville had probably not made such a public act all those years before, but he had broken a personal bond with Count Rotrou, which enabled the count to claim Ivo as his man and to present his actions as an attack on his lord. Count Rotrou might even have come up with the name that had been used to describe such an act in the court of Bishop Ivo of Chartres around 30 years before, the diffidatio.60

 Thompson, Power and Border Lordship, pp. 79–80. RRAN, vol. 3, no. 279 for a charter of King Stephen, witnessed by Rotrou and Richer at Oxford. 59   On leave taking as an indicator of power relations, see S.D. Brown, ‘Leavetaking: Lordship and Mobility in England and Normandy in the Twelfth Century’, History, 79 (1994): pp. 199–215 at pp. 211–13. 60   This paper benefitted from Professor Paul Hyams’ comments on an earlier draft and the author wishes to record her thanks. 58

Chapter 6

The Charters of Geoffrey de Mandeville* Judith A. Green

Geoffrey de Mandeville is perhaps the most celebrated of the barons of King Stephen’s reign, a period which our honorand has done so much to illumine. In the late nineteenth century John Horace Round developed an argument put forward by William Stubbs of the ‘selfishness’ of those feudal nobles who used the king’s weakness to sell their support to the highest bidder.1 Round’s Geoffrey de Mandeville (1892) had at its core a discussion of the charters granted by Stephen (which have subsequently been referred to by historians as S1 and S2) and those of the empress (M1 and M2) which, he believed, demonstrated both the magnate’s selfishness – ‘the most perfect and typical presentment of the feudal and anarchic spirit that stamps the reign of Stephen’ – and the importance of charters, ‘the very backbone of my work’.2 In 1964 R.H.C. Davis re-examined Round’s dating of the four charters.3 Instead of Round’s order, S1, M1, S2, M2, Davis argued for S1, M1, M2, S2. This meant in effect that Geoffrey’s behaviour in 1141 was no better and no worse than many of his contemporaries: a beneficiary of Stephen’s patronage, he went over to the empress after the battle of Lincoln when the king was captured, but returned to Stephen’s side after the latter’s release. Subsequently Warren Hollister fleshed out the earlier history of the Mandevilles. In an article, ‘The Misfortunes of the Mandevilles’, he argued that in 1135 Geoffrey was still deprived of three valuable manors his father had lost, and was seeking to recover them.4 Then John Prestwich *  My interest in these charters dates back to the time I was working on The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), and to discussions with the late John Prestwich about Geoffrey de Mandeville. I should like to thank the archivists and librarians of the British Library, Essex Record Office, London Metropolitan Archives, Special Collections at Glasgow University Library, and Westminster Abbey for facilitating research visits and for permission to publish summary translated texts. Thanks also to Elizabeth Danbury, Ian Green and Stephen Marritt for helpful comments on earlier drafts. 1   The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, vol. 1 (6th edn, Oxford, 1897), p. 353: ‘the barons were in earnest only for their own interests’. 2   J.H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville (London, 1892), p. v. 3   ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville Reconsidered’, EHR, 79 (1964): pp. 299–307. 4   First published in History, 58 (1973): pp. 18–28 reprinted in Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), pp. 117–27. Page references below are to the latter edition. 1

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in an article ‘The Treason of Geoffrey de Mandeville’ returned to the subject of the four charters, and argued for a return to Round’s dating. He believed that Geoffrey, having returned to the king’s side at the close of 1141, had nevertheless re-engaged with the Angevin cause in 1142, and that this backsliding was the basis of the charge of treason brought against him in that year.5 A lively debate in the pages of the English Historical Review between Davis and Prestwich ensued.6 Meanwhile new editions were published of the chronicles of Walden and Waltham Abbeys, two of the local chronicles which dealt with aspects of Geoffrey’s career.7 Moreover, there has been sustained interest in different aspects of the reigns of Henry I, Stephen and post-war reconstruction, including the publication of two biographies of King Stephen, a study of his reign and a biography of the empress.8 It might be thought then that there is little new to be said about Geoffrey de Mandeville. However, one category of evidence which has remained relatively neglected is the charters of Geoffrey himself (hereafter Geoffrey II). There are some 16, including one forgery (no. 13).9 They were edited as part of an appendix to Anne Charlton’s 1977 PhD thesis, and by David Crouch in his collection of the charters of twelfth-century earls.10 A calendar forms an appendix to this   EHR, 103 (1988): pp. 283–317.   EHR, 103 (1988): pp. 960–966, 967–8; 105 (1990): pp. 670–72.  7   The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. and trans. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999); The Waltham Chronicle, ed. and trans. L. Watkiss and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1994).  8   C.W. Hollister, Henry I (New Haven and London, 2001); J.A. Green, Henry I. King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 2006); E. King (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994); P. Dalton and G.J. White (eds), King Stephen’s Reign (1135– 1154) (Woodbridge, 2008); D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen 1135–1154 (Harlow, 2000); D. Matthew, King Stephen (London, 2002); E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010); M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda (Oxford, 1991); E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England. Royal Government Restored 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993); G.J. White, Restoration and Reform 1153–1165. Recovery from Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000); T. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century (Princeton NJ and Woodstock, 2010), pp. 269–78.  9   A further charter, in favour of Colne priory, was probably a charter of Geoffrey III, the second earl: Essex Record Office, Colne Cartulary, D/DPr. 149, fol. 19; printed: Cartularium Prioratus de Colne, transcribed and annotated by J.L. Fisher, Essex Archaeological Society, Occasional Publications no. 1 (1946), no. 51, p. 28. The charter is followed in the cartulary by a charter of Earl William (1166–89) confirming the same grant ‘as the charter of my grandfather Aubrey de Vere bears witness’, p. 28. The grandfather of William was Aubrey II de Vere, so on that count it seems more likely that this was indeed a charter of the second earl though the witnesses would certainly fit a charter of Geoffrey II. 10   ‘A Study of the Mandeville Family and its Estates’ (unpubl. PhD thesis, University of Reading, 1977); I should like to thank Professor Crouch for kindly sending me his own list of the charters of Geoffrey II.  5

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paper. They offer a perspective on the earl’s career that is both different from and complementary to the other, better known, sources. Here we may identify members of his inner circle, trace his religious patronage and glimpse his efforts to reverse the effects of war on churches. The resulting impression further strengthens what might be thought of as the ‘revisionist’ view of Geoffrey: that he was not an irredeemably bad baron as portrayed by the chroniclers and by Round, but a man who, like his contemporaries, faced a dilemma after the capture of the king in 1141. He succeeded in navigating the turbulent political events of that year almost too well, but by 1143 he had lost the confidence of the king. He was arrested and released on surrendering his castles, and died of a wound before he was able to reverse the penalty of excommunication which had been passed upon him. Death as an excommunicate sealed his reputation in the eyes of the chroniclers, and this in turn was to shape the views of later historians. The charters are not easy to date precisely. The main development was the adoption of the title of earl, granted by Stephen between December 1139 and December 1140.11 One (no. 10) was issued before Geoffrey had recovered his manor of Sawbridgeworth, presumably therefore before 1136 x 1140. Of the 16 charters, 14 have witness lists, and it is from these that we gain an impression of his inner circle. His wife Rohese is prominent, witnessing eight and co-grantor of a ninth. She was the daughter of Aubrey II de Vere, chamberlain of Henry I and co-sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, and his wife Adeliza, daughter of Gilbert FitzRichard.12 The marriage, which presumably occurred around the time Geoffrey reached adulthood in the 1120s and must have needed the king’s permission, linked Geoffrey to other prominent East Anglian families including Hugh Bigod, who married another daughter of Aubrey’s, Juliana, and with the Clares. Geoffrey’s son Ernulf occurs five times. Round believed that Ernulf was of legitimate birth but it is clear that, given he had no claim on the Mandeville estates, he must have been illegitimate.13 Other Mandevilles occur from time to time, and Geoffrey’s brother-in-law William de Say appears once.14 The Earl Gilbert who attests the foundation charter of Walden is thought to have been Gilbert, earl of Pembroke, a leading royalist who was sent with Geoffrey to the Isle of Ely.15 We can also identify the key officers of his household, and see the 11   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 273. For dating, see Davis, ‘Geoffrey de Mandeville Reconsidered’, pp. 300–301. 12   Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, p. 168. 13  Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 227–33; Charlton, ‘Study of the Mandeville Family’, p. 41. 14   For William de Say, see Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, pp. 14–17. Gilbert was the son of Richard FitzGilbert, lord of Clare and was created earl of Hertford. 15   Liber Eliensis, ed. E.O. Blake, Camden Society, 3rd series, 92 (1962), p. 319. That this Earl Gilbert was the earl of Pembroke rather than his nephew Gilbert, earl of Hertford, is based on the former’s career as a supporter of the king. Geoffrey de Mandeville and

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names of tenant families. Three stewards are mentioned, Gregory, about whom nothing is known, Ralph de Berners, from a tenant family, and Geoffrey of Tilty, whose son Maurice also appears. Maurice became sheriff of Essex. He may already have held the office under the earl, and was certainly sheriff both under Stephen and Henry II.16 With his overlord Henry de Ferrers Maurice founded a Cistercian abbey at Tilty around 1153.17 He also held one-third of a fee of the new enfeoffment of Geoffrey de Mandeville.18 Three chamberlains occur: Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Hamelin and Simon. The military side of Geoffrey’s following must have been particularly important. The more prominent of the two constables mentioned was Adelard de Guerris, who was addressed in no. 6. Little is known of Adelard, save that he came from a tenant family.19 Geoffrey’s meteoric rise under Stephen meant that he was able to attract newcomers into his following. Among the most important were Warin and Henry FitzGerold, who later moved into the king’s service. Their family background is not easy to determine. They are thought to have been related to Robert and Ralph FitzGerold, whose fees were assigned to Earl Geoffrey in S2.20 Nicholas Vincent argued on circumstantial grounds that the family were tenants of the honour of Eudo the steward.21 An alternative scenario is that they were descended from Gerold, an under-tenant in Essex in 1086.22 Warin Gilbert FitzGilbert (before he was made earl of Pembroke) both witness one of Stephen’s charters for Humphrey of Barrington, RRAN, vol. 3, no. 41. Earl Gilbert is also mentioned in the damaged charter to St Paul’s (no. 8). Gilbert, earl of Pembroke, was son of Gilbert FitzRichard and the uncle of Rohese, Geoffrey’s wife, Complete Peerage, by G.E.C., revised edn by V. Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday and G.H. White (13 vols in 12, London, 1910–59), vol. 3, p. 244; vol. 10, p. 198. 16   RRAN, vol. 3 nos 546–8, 544, 552. Maurice reappears as sheriff between 1157 and 1163, The Great Rolls of the Pipe for the Second, Third, and Fourth Years of the Reign of King Henry II, ed. J. Hunter (London, 1844), p. 131; Pipe Roll 5 Henry II, p. 3; Pipe Roll 6 Henry II, p. 9; Pipe Roll 7 Henry II, p. 63 (for a quarter of the year); Pipe Roll 8 Henry II, p. 68; Pipe Roll 9 Henry II, p. 21. 17   The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall, Rolls Series (3 vols, London, 1896), vol. 1, pp. 337, 339; Amt, Accession of Henry II in England, pp. 67–8; K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants. A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066– 1166 II: Pipe Rolls to ‘Cartae Baronum’ (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 734–5. 18   Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, p. 347. 19   L.C. Loyd, The Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families, Harleian Society, 103 (1951), pp. 48–9. In 1166 Roger, Manasser and William de Gweres (Guerris) were Mandeville tenants, Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, pp. 345–7. 20   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 276. 21   N. Vincent, ‘Warin and Henry FitzGerald, the King’s Chamberlains: The Origins of the FitzGeralds Revisited’, ANS, 21 (1999): pp. 233–60 at pp. 241–4. 22   K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People. A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166. I. Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 208. A man

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witnessed five (nos 4, 7, 11, 12, 16) of Geoffrey’s charters, and Henry two (nos 4 and 12), all issued by Geoffrey as earl. Both survived Geoffrey’s downfall and had successful careers in royal service.23 It was not all one-way traffic, though, because the Martel family, which had held land of the first Geoffrey in 1086, had moved on to the king’s service.24 William Martel was Stephen’s steward and constant companion, but never witnessed Mandeville charters. Finally, Payn of the Temple, who occurs three times (nos 7, 12, 16), was Payn of Montdidier, one of the original Templars, who became master of the French province.25 The connection between the two men is particularly significant, as it was the Templars who took charge of Geoffrey’s body at death, and, it was said, covered his body with a Templars’ cloak, an indication that he was about to enter the order.26 As an excommunicate he could not be buried in their church, but his body lay outside (either in a pit or in a tree, accounts vary) until the penalty of excommunication was lifted.27 Geoffrey cannot be documented as having given land or property to the order, though he witnessed charters for the Templars issued by Stephen and by the royal constable, Turgis d’Avranches.28 It has even been suggested that Geoffrey could have been the founder of the Old Temple in London, and that this would account for Payn’s attestation of the charter to Holy Trinity (no. 7) thought to have been issued by Geoffrey on his deathbed, and for the Templars’ transfer of the body to the Old Temple.29 If he was not the founder – and it could be argued that the Old Temple surely predated his rise to wealth and power – Geoffrey had certainly established close relations with Payn de Montdidier and perhaps was planning a major gift at the time of his death.30 named Gerold held freemen attached to Swein of Essex’s manor of Canewdon in 1086, Domesday Book, ed. A. Farley, Record Commission (2 vols, London, 1783), vol. 2, fol. 44r–v. 23   N. Vincent, ‘Fitzgerald, Henry (d. 1170 x 74)’, in ODNB, vol. 19, pp. 812–13. 24   Geoffrey Martel held Abbess Roding, Little Hallingbury, Bigods, Little Dunmow and White Roding from Geoffrey I de Mandeville, Domesday Book, vol. 2, fols 57v, 60r, 61r, 61v. 25   Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, p. 171; Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. B.A. Lees, British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, 9 (London, 1935), pp. lxiv, 180; Robert II d’Oilly made a grant to the Templars, probably in 1139, ‘in the presence of Payn de Mundidesiderio’. Cf. pp. 231–2 for a charter (1123 x 1147) of William de Warenne similarly granted in Payn’s presence. 26   Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, p. 18. 27   Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, ed. W.D. Macray, Rolls Series (London, 1886), p. 332; Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, p. 19. 28   Records of the Templars in the Twelfth Century, pp. 188–9, 212–13, 219–20. 29   D. Park, ‘Medieval Burials and Monuments’, in R. Griffiths-Jones and D. Park (eds), The Temple Church in London. History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 67–91, at pp. 68–74. 30   Hugh de Payens, master of the Templars, had visited both Normandy and England in 1128 and had been given ‘treasures by all’ according to Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E for that

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Most of the beneficiaries of the surviving charters were religious houses, especially Westminster Abbey (nos 13–16), patronized by Geoffrey’s grandfather, the first Geoffrey de Mandeville, Walden priory, his own project (no. 12), and Colchester Abbey (no. 3). Geoffrey I had endowed Westminster with his manor of Hurley, to which his grandson confirmed and augmented grants, one of rents in London for the commemoration of the anniversary of his mother’s death. The younger Geoffrey initiated the foundation of a priory at Walden in Essex, close to the castle there (no. 12). It was to be a Benedictine house dedicated to the Virgin and to St James, and Diana Greenway has argued that the date of 1136 traditionally assigned to the commencement of the project was probably soon after he recovered Walden, one of the three large estates transferred from his father to Eudo the steward.31 The new house was endowed principally with the churches of Geoffrey’s demesne manors. In 1141 Geoffrey secured the transfer of a market from Newport to Walden, a move which would boost the fortunes of the latter.32 Lying on the route north from London to Cambridge, Walden was to be one of Geoffrey’s chief centres of lordship. Colchester Abbey had been founded by Eudo the steward, and whilst Eudo held the three Mandeville manors he had granted their tithes to the abbey, a gift which Geoffrey II confirmed for the souls of his own parents (no. 3). In the case of a fourth house, Missenden Abbey in Buckinghamshire, Geoffrey’s role was to confirm the grant made by Mazilia of Bushey (no. 9). In the case of the other ecclesiastical beneficiaries we see Geoffrey attempting to make restitution. In a mandate to his constable Adelard de Guerris he ordered the restoration of corn at Good Easter, not far from the Mandeville manor of High Easter, to the canons of St Martin le Grand, as well as ordering an inquest into an alleged disseisin (no. 6). Later, probably on his deathbed since the charter (no. 7) was witnessed by two physicians, he restored their mills in London and their land outside the Tower of London, the custody of which he was granted in 1141. To the canons of Holy Trinity Aldgate he expressed sorrow for the wrongs he had done and for the souls of King Henry, his own salvation and those of his wife and children, restored the church of Newport, added two acres of assarts and gave back their lands and churches ‘of his power’ ‘quit of work, sheriffs’ aids, and pleas’ (no. 5). He also made restitution to the cathedral church of St Paul’s, London (no. 8). His charter survives in a damaged copy, without witnesses. In language year, ed. S. Irvine (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 130. It is not clear when the Old Temple and its churchyard were established. In 1128 Geoffrey was not in full possession of his inheritance. If, as argued above, he embarked on a major foundation at Walden in 1136, then a gift to the Templars may have come later, possibly when he was at the height of his power. 31   Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, pp. xiv–xix. Note also the reservations expressed (pp. 171–2) about the form of the charter. 32   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 274 (M1).

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comparable with that in the charter for St Martins and presumably of a similar date, he recognized that he had acted as a cruel persecutor and confirmed his agreement with the queen concerning the castle of (Bishop) Stortford. There had been a castle here since the days of William the Conqueror. It was close to the Mandeville manors of Thorley and Sawbridgeworth, and situated on the main route between London and Walden.33 Anselm abbot of Bury St Edmunds took over the castle when he was nominated to the see of London in 1137, but presumably gave it back when his election was quashed.34 In her second charter the empress promised to assist Geoffrey to secure the castle. As Geoffrey’s own charter indicates, he had made some kind of agreement about it, but had failed to keep his side of the bargain, hence his repentance when mortally ill. Only five of the surviving charters were in favour of laymen. One was a grant to an otherwise unknown man named Payn, of Thorley at farm for £20, plus the land which belonged to Ralph de Hairon to hold in fee ‘until he recovered Sawbridgeworth and grant him land there’ (no. 10). In a second charter Geoffrey, by then earl, confirmed to Robert son of Payn his father’s land in Sawbridgeworth (no. 11). To Eustace of Barrington and Humphrey his son, Geoffrey granted the land of Alan of Shepreth (nos 1 and 2).35 The relationship between Geoffrey and Eustace is both important and complicated. Eustace’s name is thought to have been taken from Barenton in Cambridgeshire.36 In the 1120s Henry I granted him the land which belonged to Geoffrey the forester in Hatfield ‘for the keepership of the forest’, together with the land of Adam ‘who had incurred forfeiture of the forest’.37 Hatfield was an important royal estate and its woodland was the nucleus of a royal forest. Soon after his accession, in a charter addressed to the justice and sheriff of Essex, Stephen confirmed that Eustace was to hold his lands quietly, and all his property in Hatfield which he held in chief.38 A second charter of similar date was addressed to the justice, to Geoffrey de Mandeville and to the sheriff of Essex. In it Stephen confirmed that Eustace was to hold his land of Hatfield and Writtle in chief and his other 33   Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum. The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), nos 189, 190. 34   Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica. The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (2 vols, London, 1876), vol. 1, p. 250. 35   In 1086 Sigar had held a hide in Shepreth of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Domesday Book, vol. 1, fol. 197r. 36  Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, p. 304. Possibly the Eustace of Walden who occurs in 1130, The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I Michaelmas 1130, ed. and trans. J.A. Green, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 57 (2012), p. 43. 37   RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1518. 38   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 39.

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land of the fee of William de Luvetot and Thomas of Thurrock peacefully.39 Eustace died, probably before 1138, and was succeeded by his son Humphrey. Two of Stephen’s charters to Humphrey survive, both original. In the first he was granted his father’s land of Hatfield and Writtle, the former quit for keeping the forest, together with the land of Adam, who had incurred forfeiture of the forest. The king also granted Humphrey his father’s office to be held of William de Montfichet.40 In the second issued at Pleshey and probably after the fall of Geoffrey, Humphrey was confirmed in his lands of Hatfield, Writtle, Havering and Wethersfield.41 In other words, Eustace and Humphrey held land in chief in Hatfield, a forest office held of the king, plus a forestership held of the Montfichets. The latter subsequently claimed to be chief foresters of Essex. Meanwhile, in S2 Geoffrey de Mandeville was granted 100 shillings of land in Hatfield. A final grant to a layman was made after 1140 since Geoffrey is referred to as earl, but it is most appropriately discussed at this point: Hugh of Eu was granted half of the manor of South Mimms, a berewick of the great manor of Edmonton (no. 4). Hugh is presumably the man of that name who was son of William of Eu and Mazilia, the grantor of Bushey, and brother of Geoffrey de Gerponville. In 1166 William of Eu held four knights’ fees of the old and Hugh one of the new enfeoffment from Geoffrey III de Mandeville.42 A revetted motte was discovered at South Mimms in the early twentieth century. This has been dated to the twelfth-century civil war, but whether Hugh of Eu was the architect, or Ernulf de Mandeville, who later held the manor, or Geoffrey himself, is not clear.43 The charters are thus in some respects typical of the day: in the increasing frequency of a wife’s attestation, of a balance between old and new in religious patronage, and of a household headed by stewards, constables, chamberlains and including clerks and chaplains. More unusual are the physicians mentioned in no. 7, and the phrases ‘of my power’ (no. 5) and ‘of my bailiwick’ (no. 8) are worth noting. There are illustrations of Geoffrey’s dominance in Essex and Hertfordshire, where he was territorially strong and was royal justiciar and sheriff between 1141 and 1143. There are references to assarts, and to a concern with market rights, both of which suggest he was, as King has suggested, ‘a very capable businessman’.44 Key aspects of his career are barely recorded, especially the military side of his following. His son Ernulf was clearly his right-hand man in 1144, and was commanding a fortress at Wood Walton at the time of his     41   42   43   44   39 40

Ibid., no. 40. Ibid., no. 41. Ibid., no. 42. Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, pp. 345, 346. VCH Middlesex, vol. 5, p. 282. King Stephen, p. 199.

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father’s death.45 Flemish retainers are mentioned seizing goods being stored in the church at Waltham.46 Rewards for service, whether of land, as the charters to Hugh of Eu, Payn, Eustace and Humphrey suggest, or of cash, were crucial. Before his arrest Geoffrey does seem to have had a keen eye for business. When raising war in the fens, he had to take supplies and cash where he could, and by whatever means possible. One of Geoffrey’s charters deserves closer scrutiny because it throws light on his relations with the Londoners. M2 included the promise that the empress and her husband would not make peace with the Londoners without Geoffrey’s consent, ‘because they were his mortal enemies’. The striking phrase is selfexplanatory and suggests complete antipathy between the leading citizens and the earl.47 Was this in fact the case? The Londoners claimed for themselves an important role in the accession of a new king.48 Stephen almost certainly had confirmed and possibly even augmented their privileges, which included that of choosing their own sheriffs, and possibly that of choosing the justiciar, who had jurisdiction over the king’s pleas.49 The disputed succession had resulted in factions, with some supporting the king, others, notably Osbert Huitdeniers, the empress.50 The atmosphere in the city was volatile: Geoffrey’s father-in-law Aubrey de Vere was killed in the London streets.51 Nodes of power centred on   Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, p. 332.   Waltham Chronicle, pp. 80–83. 47   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 275; P. R. Hyams, ‘“Mortal Enemies”: The Legal Aspect of Hostility in the Middle Ages’, in B.S. Tuten and T.L. Bilado (eds), Feud, Violence and Practice. Essays in Honor of Stephen D. White (Aldershot, 2010), pp. 197–212. 48   GS, pp. 6–7; M. McKisack, ‘London and the Succession to the Crown in the Middle Ages’, in R.W. Hunt, W.A. Pantin and R.W. Southern (eds), Studies in Medieval History presented to F. M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948), pp. 76–89. 49   This issue is complicated by the disputed status of Henry I’s charter to the Londoners, RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1645. This amongst other things promised to the Londoners the right to elect their own sheriffs, and to pay a farm of £300 a year. The former was accounted for as a new agreement in 1130, but at that time the farm was some £525. See C.N.L. Brooke, G. Keir and S. Reynolds, ‘Henry I’s Charter for the City of London’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 4 (1973): pp. 558–78. £300 was the figure which Earl Geoffrey was to pay, according to M2 and S2, RRAN, vol. 3, nos 275, 276. 50   Annales Plymptonienses in Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. F. Liebermann (Strassburg, 1879), p. 28. Osbert received a grant of £20 from the Empress, mentioned in M2, RRAN, vol. 3, no. 275. In 1141 he seems to have been justiciar whilst John (possibly John son of Ralph FitzEbrard, sheriff in Henry I’s reign) was sheriff, RRAN, vol. 3, nos 527–30. In 1166 Osbert held a knight’s fee of the earldom of Gloucester in Kent, Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, p. 189. 51   It is not precisely clear when this occurred. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard, Rolls Series (7 vols, London, 1872–83), vol. 2, p. 174 placed it in 1140 though together with other events of 1141, see M. Brett, ‘The Annals of Bermondsey, Southwark 45 46

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the great churches, especially St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, the royal palace at Westminster and the castles, the Tower, Baynard’s and Montfichet’s. Stephen was in a much stronger position than his rival with regard to London. As count of Boulogne he had property there;52 an illegitimate son was abbot of Westminster;53 his brother Henry became dean of St Martin le Grand in 1139;54and the king and queen had close links with the canons of Holy Trinity Aldgate where two of their children were buried. Custody of the castles, the Tower, Baynard’s and Montfichet’s, Stephen must have assumed, was in loyal hands.55 After the death of Bishop Gilbert in 1134, there was a contested election. Anselm abbot of Bury St Edmunds had been elected, but the election was quashed in 1138, and it was the empress who nominated the eventual successor, Robert de Sigillo. At some stage Geoffrey de Mandeville took over the Tower, of which his father and grandfather had had custody, but which at the start of Stephen’s reign was in the hands of a man named Hasculf de Tany. The timing is uncertain and has been disputed.56 His takeover may, as was later alleged, have placed the queen and her future daughter-in-law, Constance of France, in his hands.57 Possession of the Tower put Geoffrey in a particularly powerful position, as the empress wished to proceed to Westminster Abbey, and she needed to gain access to the city. It was in this context that Geoffrey was able to secure a raft of confirmations and new grants on his own account and those of his kinsmen and allies. Yet the empress’ presence in London was to be fleeting. She angered the citizens by her demands for money, the Londoners rose to support the queen, and the empress fled. Geoffrey was left stranded, and retreated with the new bishop of London and Merton’, in. D. Abulafia, M. Franklin and M. Rubin (eds), Church and City 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 279–310 at p. 299. 52   Domesday Book, vol. 1, fol. 34r: the Surrey manor of Walkingstead (Godstone) had 15 appurtenant houses in Southwark and London. 53   The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol. 3, ed. P. McGurk (Oxford, 1998), pp. 262–3. 54   R.H.C. Davis, ‘The College of St Martin-le-Grand and the Anarchy, 1135–54’, London Topographical Record, 23 (1974): pp. 9–26. 55   By 1141 Montfichet’s was held by Gilbert, son of William de Montfichet, who was in the wardship of Earl Gilbert, Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W.H. Hart, Rolls Series (3 vols, London, 1863–67), vol. 2, p. 168. Meanwhile in the reign of Henry I Baynard’s had passed to a branch of the Clare family represented in 1141 by Walter FitzRobert, see I.J. Sanders, English Baronies (Oxford, 1960), p. 129. Stephen’s relations with the Londoners were discussed by J.A. Truax, ‘Winning over the Londoners: King Stephen, the Empress Matilda, and the Politics of Personality’, Haskins Society Journal, 8 (1996): pp. 43–61. 56   See especially Prestwich and Davis, EHR, 105 (1990): pp. 670–72. 57   William of Newburgh believed the detention of Constance was the reason why, later, Stephen arrested the earl, Historia Rerum Anglicarum. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series (4 vols, London, 1884–89), vol. 1, p. 45.

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as a kind of human shield.58 Within weeks he was once again on the side of the royalists, and one version of the Historia Novella has him in alliance with the Londoners harrying the empress’ rearguard on the way to Winchester.59 In those weeks Geoffrey had been able to deliver access to the Tower for the empress, but had been forced to retreat. When the king was released, Geoffrey returned once more to his side, and in S2 Stephen confirmed him in most of the gains he had made, including the offices of justiciar and sheriff of London, and hereditary custody of the Tower, which he held until his arrest at Michaelmas 1143. The reasons for Geoffrey’s arrest, and its timing, have been much discussed. It seems that although Stephen had been prepared in S2 to recognize almost all the earl’s gains, they were a challenge to royal power, an affront to the house of Boulogne and to the prospects of his son Eustace, and the earl’s territorial strength lay in a region crucial for the royalist cause.60 Its timing may have been partly to do with the need to ensure that any potential threat posed by the bishop of Ely had passed over, as Davis suggested.61 That it occurred after Michaelmas, the end of the exchequer year, might have highlighted a revenue shortfall. Whether Geoffrey did flirt with the Angevin cause again in 1142, as Round and Prestwich believed, is possible, though it seems unlikely. Geoffrey had much more to gain by staying on the king’s side than defecting to the Angevins. Nevertheless, Stephen allowed himself to be persuaded that the earl was accroaching royal power and was planning to hand the kingdom over to the Angevins. Geoffrey was arrested and had to hand over the castles of Pleshey, Walden and the Tower as the price of his release, whereupon he went to war, and received a wound that was to prove fatal.62 At this point then we return to the charter of restitution he issued for the canons of St Martin (no. 5). Its witness list included William archdeacon of London and Walter his brother, Gilbert the sheriff (either Gilbert Becket or Gilbert Prudfot, both sheriffs of London), Hugh FitzUlger and Ailwin son of Leofstan, both Londoners, and Robert de Ponte whose name might refer

  Brett, ‘Annals of Bermondsey’, p. 300.   William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella. The Contemporary History, ed. E. King, trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), pp. 102–3. The queen, presumably whilst her husband was in prison, made grants to him referred to in S2. Geoffrey certainly had returned to the king’s side soon after his release. 60   On the contest for power in Essex, see now P. Dark, ‘“A Woman of Subtlety and a Man’s Resolution”: Matilda of Boulogne in the Power Struggles of the Anarchy’, in B. Bolton and C.E. Meek (eds), Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, International Medieval Research, 14 (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 147–64. 61   R.H.C. Davis, King Stephen (3rd edn, London, 1990), pp. 77–8. 62   See Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 201–26. 58 59

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to London Bridge.63 Hugh FitzUlger held one-fifth of a knight’s fee of the new enfeoffment of the Mandeville honour in 1166, and another holder of a fractional fee was Gervase of Cornhill.64 Some leading Londoners at least were prepared to witness the earl’s charter of restitution. In the last weeks of his life Geoffrey evidently took steps to repair the damage he had done, but it proved to be impossible to secure the lifting of his excommunication. He was not alone in suffering the penalty. The Gesta Stephani has two sections devoted to men who were excommunicated, Miles, earl of Hereford, and Geoffrey de Mandeville. The former was excommunicated by his diocesan bishop, but had been reconciled by making amends and doing penance. Even so, he had died in a hunting accident without having had the chance to do penance. His death had alarmed many who had encroached on church property, and made the bishops more determined to resist them. Geoffrey de Mandeville, whose glittering career and downfall is related next, was even more of an object lesson for, as he had brought trouble on the church whilst he lived, so the whole church conspired to bring him down. He died ‘struck by the sword of anathema and unabsolved’.65 The local chroniclers who wrote after the ending of the war judged the earl harshly, but it is clear that he was not the sole or even necessarily the primary cause of trouble in their regions. At Waltham, the chronicler reported that William d’Aubigny the butler was the aggressor. Geoffrey retaliated, inadvertently setting light to the canons’ houses.66 At Ely the problem was Bishop Nigel who, having escaped arrest in 1139, had joined the empress’s cause. During the time he was on the Angevin side, the king sent Earl Geoffrey and Earl Gilbert to recover 63   For Gilbert Becket as sheriff, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury Canonized by Pope Alexander III, A. D. 1173, Rolls Series (7 vols, London, 1875–85), vol. 3, ed. J.C. Robertson, p. 14. For Gilbert Prudfot, see St Paul’s Cathedral Liber L cartulary, calendared by H. Maxwell Lyte, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 9th Report, Appendix, p. 62. Hugh FitzUlger was head of a London ward around 1128, H.W.C. Davis, ‘London Lands and Liberties of St Paul’s. 1066–1135’, in A.G. Little and F.M. Powicke (eds), Essays in Medieval History presented to Thomas Frederick Tout (Manchester, 1925), pp. 45–59 at pp. 47–8. He occurs in the 1130 pipe roll, Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty-First Year of Henry I, pp. 115, 118, 119(2). Ailwin son of Leofstan and Robert his brother were present when the lands of the cnihtengild were handed over to Holy Trinity, Cartulary of Holy Trinity, no. 871, p. 168. For Ailwin’s descendants, see C.N.L. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), p. 246. 64   Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 1, p. 347; for Gervase of Cornhill, see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 304–12. 65   GS, pp. 160–67. 66   Waltham Chronicle, pp. 78–81. William d’Aubigny’s building at Castle Rising demonstrates the image he wished to project. It is easy to imagine he would have seen Geoffrey’s power as a personal affront.

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the Isle of Ely. The bishop was reconciled with Stephen after the latter’s release from captivity, but in 1143 seems to have gone to support the empress, and subsequently left England for Rome. It was during his absence that Geoffrey, by now in revolt, was readmitted to the Isle.67 These events preceded the author’s account of the effects of war. At Ramsey, too, there was a local struggle which interlocked with the wider civil war. The account in the Ramsey chronicle, which provides the most lurid details about Geoffrey’s tactics on his last campaign, fails to mention that Geoffrey’s intervention had been sought by a monk named Daniel. The background here was the resignation of the previous abbot and the appointment of Daniel who had been strongly backed by the king, until the previous abbot returned and wanted reinstatement.68 Even at Walden, the chronicler, who gave Geoffrey a good write up, recognized that his rebellion made it difficult for the monks to retain their endowments.69 By the time we reach William of Newburgh, writing in the late twelfth century, the damage had been done.70

    69   70   67 68

Liber Eliensis, p. 328. Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, pp. 325–34. Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, pp. 14–19. Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, vol. 1, pp. 44–6.

Appendix 1. Barrington, Eustace of G. de Mandeville to all his men, French and English, greeting. He has granted to Eustace of Barrington and Humphrey his son the land of Alan of Shepreth in fee and inheritance for 100 shillings, 50 to be paid at Easter and 50 at Michaelmas, for all services namely for the army, for castleguard, scutage and other aids, and all other services except the king’s common custom of the county. He promises not to give the service of Eustace or his heirs to anyone else. Witnesses: Rohese my wife, Ralph de Berners, Geoffrey the steward, William de Ou, Humphrey de Rochelle, Adelard the constable, Fulk de Nuers, Gilbert de Mandeville, Geoffrey son of Walter, Ralph de Mandeville, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Eustace of Shellow, Walter the chaplain, Raymond de Bi[ ], Maurice son of Geoffrey and G [ ] Date: before 1140. Original charter, wrapping tie and seal queue to left, Essex Record Office, D/ DBa T/2/1. 2. Barrington, Humphrey of Geoffrey earl of Essex to all his men clerks and lay French and English greeting. He has granted to Humphrey of Barrington all his tenements in Hatfield and Writtle as his father had held them in fee and inheritance and by the same terms. Wherefore he and his heirs are to hold the land peacefully and so on. Witnesses: Gregory my steward and Maurice son of Geoffrey. Date: probably Geoffrey II, from the appearance of Gregory the steward, in which case it must have been issued between 1140 and 1144. Humphrey was confirmed by King Stephen in his father’s lands and office in a charter witnessed by Aubrey de Vere, Geoffrey de Mandeville and Gilbert FitzGilbert. As the latter was not yet earl of Pembroke, the charter was presumably issued before 1138, RRAN, vol. 3, no. 41, cf. no. 42; OV, vol. 6, p. 520. William de Montfichet, who was living in 1137 but died shortly afterwards, confirmed Humphrey in his father’s rights in the forest of Essex, Essex Record Office, D/DBa T2/4. This too suggests that Eustace died c. 1137. Original charter, wrapping tie and seal queue to left, Essex Record Office, D/ DBa T/2/3.

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3. Colchester, abbey of St John Geoffrey de Mandeville to all his barons and men French and English greeting in Christ. Know that for the redemption of his soul and those of his father, mother, and all his kin, he has granted to the abbey the third part of the sheaves of the tithe of his demesne of Sawbridgeworth, the third of the tithes of stock living or dead and the whole tithe of the mill in Waltham, and likewise in Waltham of the sheaves, and of the livestock, and the whole tithe of the mills, and in Walden the whole tithe of the mills and of wool. Witnesses: Rannulf de Berners, Fulk de Nuers, Roger son of Eudo, Roger the clerk. Date: Before 1141. Cartulary of St John’s Abbey, Colchester, Essex Record Office, D/DJ 1/1 fol. A8; printed: Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Johannis Baptiste de Colecestria, ed. S.A. Moore, Roxburghe Club (2 vols, London, 1897), vol. 1, pp. 146–7. 4. Eu, Hugh of Geoffrey earl of Essex to all his barons and men clerks and lay French and English greeting. Know that he has granted to Hugh of Eu and his heirs in fee and inheritance half of his manor of Mimms for the service of one knight. Wherefore he wishes Hugh and his heirs to hold in peace and so on. Witnesses: Earl Gilbert, Countess Rohese my wife, William de Say, Ernulf de Mandeville, Gregory the steward, Adelard the constable, Humphrey de Rochelle, Fulk de Nuers, Warin FitzGerold, Henry FitzGerold, Geoffrey son of Walter, Ranulf son of Ernald, William son of Ernald, Geoffrey de Gerponville, William son of Alured, Ralph his brother, Ernulf de Riplemundo, Godescalc, Baldwin de Breburg, Maurice son of Geoffrey, Roger the clerk, Richard Talbot, Robert de Buellis, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Hamelin, William Turpin and many others. Date: 1140 x 1144. Original charter, an equestrian seal of red wax with a red silk cord. London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 4444. This charter was discussed by P. Chaplais, who identified the scribe’s hand in two other Westminster charters, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase Abbots of Westminster (1121– 1157)’, P.M. Barnes and C.F. Slade (eds), Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 36 (1960), pp. 89–110 at p. 96. 5. London, College of St Martin le Grand Geoffrey by the grace of God earl of Essex and Justiciar of London to Robert by the same grace bishop of London, and all his barons and men, all his tenants and

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friends of London and Essex clerks and laymen greeting. Because he has sinned and offended God by seizing the goods of the church, he has promised to make good the losses of the church of St Martin of London as penance. He confirms the church of St Mary of Newport which they possessed by the gift of King Henry of venerable memory with its lands and tithes according to that king’s charter. And for the souls of that king, of his own father and mother, for himself and his wife and children he grants the tithe of his demesne and demesne ploughs of Newport and of all men in that vill. In addition he adds two acres of assarts of the vill which the church had previously held. He also grants that the canons recover their lands at Maldon and Good Easter which were unjustly taken away from them after the death of King Henry and that the canons enjoy their lands de potestate mea viz. Good Easter, Maldon, Benfleet, Norton and Tolleshunt quit of works, sheriffs’ aids and pleas as they had been under King Henry. Witnesses: Countess Rohese my wife, William archdeacon of London and Walter his brother, Gregory the clerk, Osbert the clerk of William the archdeacon, William of Mucking, Richard FitzOsbert the constable, Gilbert the sheriff, Ailwin son of Leofstan, Robert de Ponte, Hugh son of Ulger, and Maurice of Tilty. At London in the Tower in the presence of the monks of Westminster. Date: 1141 x 1143 (from Geoffrey’s tenure of the justiciarship of London). London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, Book 5, Cartulary of St Martin le Grand, fols. 28v–29; abstract in J.H. Round, Commune of London (London, 1899), p. 118; translated A.J. Kempe, Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of St Martin le Grand London … Illustrated with Engravings of the Vestiges of the Collegiate Church, its Common Seal etc. etc. (London, 1825), pp. 58–9. 6. London, College of St Martin le Grand G. earl of Essex to Adelard de Guerris greeting. Orders that without delay or postponement and as A. loves him body and soul he restores to the canons of St Martin of London all their corn at Good Easter and that they have peace for all those things my men took because he has promised to make good to the canons and to all churches for the redemption of his soul. And A. is to hold an inquest through the neighbours and good men of that province about five acres of land Walter Longus holds and of which the canons claim he disseised them. If it be so, have them put in seisin and allow them to hold in peace. Date: 1140 x 1144 Original charter, wrapping tie and seal queue to left, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 938; translated, Kempe, St Martin le Grand, p. 61.

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7. London, Holy Trinity Aldgate Geoffrey earl of Essex to the bishop of London and all the faithful of holy church greeting. He has restored to the church of Christ of London (viz. Holy Trinity) their mills next to the Tower and all the land beyond which belonged to the English cnihtengild, with Smithfield. He also restores half a hide of land at Bromley as William son of Guy gave it to them when he took the canon’s habit. The canons are to hold freely etc. Witnesses: Countess Rohese my wife, Gregory the steward, Payn of the Temple, Warin FitzGerold, Ralph de Criquetot, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Ernulf the physician, Iwod the physician. And likewise he grants them one silver mark of the service of Edward of Shelford by the witness of the above and of William the archdeacon of London. Date: 1140 x 1144, probably 1144 as the charter is witnessed by two physicians. Cartulary of Holy Trinity Aldgate, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter U. 2. 6, fol. 171v; printed Round, Commune of London, p. 101; translated The Cartulary of Holy Trinity Aldgate, ed. G.A.J. Hodgett, London Record Society (1971), no. 962, p. 190. 8. London, St Paul’s Cathedral To his lord and father Robert by the grace of God bishop of London and the whole chapter of St Paul’s and all the faithful of holy church Geoffrey earl of Essex offers greeting and obedience. He gives thanks to God for having recalled him from error and his fall into Babylon through having been an opponent and cruel persecutor of the church; now, weakened by trouble and infirmity, he seeks penance. [Text incomplete: to do with the castle of Stortford and an agreement between the queen and the earl. Refers to the countess his wife and to Earl Gals, probably Earl Gilbert]. Restoration to be made at the feast of All Saints. Promises to restore their chattels in mea bailia without delay. Date: 1140 x 1144, probably 1144. Charter roll, probably compiled in the late thirteenth century, London, St Paul’s, London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/313/A/005/MS25,272, dorse, second charter; printed: Early Charters of St Paul’s Cathedral, ed. M. Gibbs, Camden Society, 3rd series, 58 (1939), no. 339, p. 277; Round, Commune of London, p. 119. 9. Missenden Abbey Geoffrey earl of Essex to all his barons and men French and English greeting. Confirms to the church of St Mary of Missenden at the request of Geoffrey de Gerponville, his son David, and Hugh of Eu, for his salvation and that of his

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father and mother the gift of Mazilia of Bushey as in the writing of William of Eu and Geoffrey de Gerponville of five shillings a year from the mill at Bushey. Witnesses: William de Mandeville, Ralph de Berners, William of Pleshey, Hugh of Eu, Michael de Buseuille, John de la Rochel’. And others. Date: 1140 x 1144. Cartulary of Missenden Abbey, BL, MS Harley 3688, fol. 165r–v; printed: The Cartulary of Misssenden Abbey, part III, ed. J.G. Jenkins, Buckinghamshire Record Society jointly with the Historical Manuscripts Commission JP1 (London, 1962), no. 838, p. 201. 10. Payn Geoffrey de Mandeville to all of Thorley greeting. He has granted Thorley to Payn at farm for three years for 20 pounds. The land is to include that of Ralph de Hairon, which Payn is to hold after the three years in fee and inheritance for a silver mark. And if God allows him to recover Sawbridgeworth he is to hold a virgate of land for 11 shillings a year. Witnesses: Ralph de Berners my steward, Richard de Mandeville, Aluuredo Benneuille, William the chaplain, Adelard de Guerris, and Geoffrey of Quarrendon. Date: before 1140. Walden cartulary, BL, MS Harley 3697, fol. 239v. 11. Robert son of Payn Geoffrey earl of Essex to all his barons and men clerks and lay French and English greeting. Confirms to Robert son of Payn of Thorley all his father’s land in Sawbridgeworth and Thorley in fee and inheritance. He and his heirs to hold in peace and so on. Witnesses: Countess Rohese, Ernulf de Mandeville, Gregory my steward, Maurice son of Geoffrey, Warin FitzGerold, Hugh of Eu, Hugh de Cranunauilla, William FitzOtuel, Fulk de Nuers, Humphrey of Barrington, Reiner de Deupa, Roger the clerk, Nigel the clerk, William son of Galio, Hugh the forester and many others. Date: 1140 x 1144. Walden cartulary, BL, MS Harley 3697, fol. 239v. 12. Walden Priory Geoffrey de Mandeville earl of Essex to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, all his men and friends French and English greeting. Announces the foundation

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of a monastery at Walden in honour of God, the Virgin, and St James for the souls of himself, all his predecessors and successors, and the gifts of churches in free alms namely, Walden, Waltham, Easter, Sawbridgeworth, Thorley, Gilston, Enfield, Edmonton, Mimms, Shenley, Northall, Chishill, Chippenham, Digswell, Amersham, Streatley, Kingham, Aynho, and Compton. In addition he grants 120 acres in his assart at Walden, and 100 acres of wood at Kibworth and a meadow at Fulfen, two mills, one at Walden and the other at Enfield, the hermitage at Hadley and quittance of pannage for their pigs at Walden. An anathema clause follows. Witnesses: Earl Gilbert, Countess Rohese, William the archdeacon of London, Ralph and Brien, canons of Waltham, Gregory the steward, Payn of the Lord’s Temple, Ernulf de Mandeville, Warin FitzGerold, Henry FitzGerold, Adelard de Guerris, Fulk de Nuers, Humphrey de Rochelle, William son of Alured, William son of Ernald, William Pulcyn, Richar, Thomas, Simon the chamberlain, Roger the clerk and many others. Date: c. 1140. Walden cartulary, BL, MS Harley 3697 fol. 18r; printed: W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, eds J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (6 vols in 8, London, 1817– 30), vol. 4, pp. 148–9. The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999), pp. 169–72. 13. Westminster Abbey, Hurley Priory Geoffrey de Mandeville to all his barons and men French and English clerks and lay present and future and so on greeting. Confirms his grandfather’s gifts to the church of Hurley, viz. the vill of Hurley, the third of his demesne tithes and so on, the land of Edward called Watcombe and the church, gifts in the Isle of Ely and Mose, the tithes of Turold the steward in Ockendon and Bordesden, and of Edric his reeve of Hurley, except the land of Eric the reeve and of seven rustics of Little Waltham. Geoffrey now adds the tithe of his assarts. Witnesses: Airic prior of that church, Prior Alfred de Benneuill, Adelard the constable, Humphrey de la Rochelle, Ernulf de Mandeville my son, Walter the chaplain, Richard FitzOsbert, Rannulf son of Ernald, William his brother, Richard de Rane, Osmund the chaplain, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Hamelin, Ern’ of Hurley, Alfred his brother, Walter of Compton, William the mason, Bering and many others. Date: before 1140. Pretended original, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 3551; calendared: F.T. Wethered, St Mary’s Hurley in the Middle Ages. Based on Hurley Charters and Deeds (London, 1898), pp. 91–2. Chaplais, ‘Original Charters’, p. 98 suggested that this charter may be a forgery, and the repetitious language certainly points to that conclusion. On the other hand, the witness list is credible.

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14. Westminster Abbey, Hurley Priory Geoffrey de Mandeville to his lord Stephen king of the English, and all archbishops, bishops, abbots and so on greeting. He has given the monks of Hurley 100 shillings of rent in exchange for their tithes in Edmonton, Enfield, and Mimms, viz. 20 shillings in Hurley, 30 shillings in Waltham, and 50 in Weston. Witnesses: Rohese wife of Geoffrey, Walter the chaplain, Geoffrey of Tilty the steward, Adelard the constable, Geoffrey of Quarrendon the chamberlain, Rannulf son of Ernald and William his brother, Hamelin. Date: before 1140. Original charter, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 2182; printed: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 3, p. 434; translated, Wethered, St Mary’s Hurley, p. 228. 15. Westminster Abbey, Hurley Priory G. de Mandeville and Rohese his wife grant to God and the monks of St Mary of Hurley part of the tithe which William the chaplain used to have. An anathema follows. Witnesses: Alured de Benneuille, Humphrey de Rochelle, Rannulf son of Ern’, Hamelin the chamberlain, Ernald the king’s forester, Richard de Ran, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Ern’ of Hurley, Alured his brother, and many others. Date: before 1140. Original charter, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 3747; printed: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 3, p. 434; T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum (London, 1702), no. 402, p. 242. 16. Westminster Abbey Geoffrey earl of Essex to the bishops and all the barons of London, clerks and lay, French and English, greeting. He has granted twenty shillings from his London rents for the anniversary of his mother for the use of the monks in the refectory, viz. the land of Fulk Bruning, that of Ernulf Orphan, that of Wuluric Trace, and that of his neighbour Wuluric. Witnesses: Earl Gilbert, Countess Rohese, Gregory the steward, Ernulf de Mandeville, Payn of the Temple of Solomon, Warin FitzGerold, William prior of Walden, Fulk de Nuers, Geoffrey of Quarrendon, Hamelin, and many others. Date: 1140 x 1144? summer 1141. London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, Westminster Domesday fol. 492v; printed: Westminster Abbey Charters c. 1066–1214, ed. E. Mason assisted by J. Bray, London Record Society, 25 (1988), no. 350, pp. 197–8.

Chapter 7

The Legacy of Ranulf de Gernons Graeme J. White

In the course of his long and distinguished engagement with the history of Stephen’s reign, Edmund King has had frequent encounters with Ranulf de Gernons, the acquisitive earl of Chester whom he has described as a ‘loose cannon’: ‘no man during the course of the reign had done more to destabilize the North of England and none had proved so unconciliatory’.1 Clearly, Earl Ranulf was widely detested and distrusted,2 yet there was an underlying purpose to his career. As one of the editors of this volume has argued, far from repeatedly ‘changing sides’ during the war between Stephen and the Angevins, as used to be claimed, he pursued a policy of ‘armed neutrality’ for most of the conflict, honourably (from his own perspective) and with some consistency.3 And despite his inability to hold onto and secure for his successors the generous territorial concessions wrested from King Stephen and the future Henry II in turn, it would be wrong to regard him as a ‘failure’ overall. His tenure of the earldom and honour of Chester was of lasting importance. In 1129, Ranulf de Gernons (hereafter Ranulf II) inherited an honour created for the first earl of Chester, Hugh d’Avranches (died 1101), with demesnes stretching from the River Clwyd in the west through north Cheshire and the Midlands to Lincolnshire in the east, plus outliers further south.4 The Clwyd frontier represented a retreat in North Wales since Hugh’s time but conversely there had been gains in Lincolnshire following the death of the second earl, Hugh’s son Richard, in 1120, when Henry I had granted the earldom and honour to Richard’s cousin, Ranulf Meschin, third husband of the wealthy heiress Lucy. On becoming earl of Chester, Meschin had been required to surrender about 1   E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 150, 296. I am most grateful to Chris Lewis, Rachel Swallow and Alan Thacker for reading an earlier draft of this chapter. 2  See especially, HH, pp. 734–5; GS, pp. 198–9, 236–7. 3   P. Dalton, ‘In Neutro Latere: The Armed Neutrality of Ranulf II Earl of Chester in King Stephen’s Reign’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 39–59. 4   C.P. Lewis, ‘The Formation of the Honor of Chester, 1066–1100’, in A.T. Thacker (ed.), The Earldom of Chester and its Charters (Chester, 1991), pp. 37–68. It is customary to omit from the sequence Gherbod, the Fleming who briefly held Cheshire from William the Conqueror.

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two-thirds of Lucy’s Lincolnshire estate, along with his holdings in Cumbria, but this still left a significant portion evidently centred on Belchford, a manor in the east of the county which on the basis of Domesday valuations would have added more income than his entire Cheshire demesne. Ranulf II, as son of Ranulf Meschin and Lucy, inherited this Belchford portion when his mother died about 1138.5 By the close of the twelfth century, the earldom and honour of Chester were in the hands of yet another Ranulf, later given the appellation ‘de Blundeville’ (and hereafter Ranulf III). He had, and still has, a very different reputation: acknowledged by his peers as the greatest magnate in England and lauded as a statesman upon whom successive kings depended.6 Within Cheshire itself, he was regarded as a ‘princeps’ who governed his ‘province’ separately from the rest of the kingdom. The earl or his chief justiciar presided over the county court of Cheshire and heard ‘pleas of the sword’, deemed equivalent to ‘pleas of the crown’ elsewhere; finances were dealt with by the county’s own exchequer, with features similar to that of the king at Westminster. There was no royal demesne in Cheshire, and no farms, taxes, profits of justice or military service were levied for the crown within its borders; its distinctive customs were protected in the Charter of Liberties which the earl saw fit to issue on the model of King John’s Magna Carta.7 Study of the development of these exceptional privileges has been constrained by undue concentration on whether, and when, they made Cheshire a ‘county palatine’, a term which first occurs formally in the 1290s long after the earldom had been taken over by the crown in 1237.8 Here, the discussion focuses instead on the debt owed by Ranulf III – in terms of initiative and inspiration – to his grandfather Ranulf II. By the close of Henry I’s reign the earldom of Chester had experienced an important shift of focus. Hugh d’Avranches had been given Cheshire as a power  Lincolnshire Domesday and Lindsey Survey, ed. C.W. Foster and T. Longley, Lincoln Record Society (1921), p. 84; P. Dalton, ‘… Ranulf II … and Lincolnshire …’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 109–34 at p. 110; J.A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 368–9. For Ranulf ’s tenure of Belchford in succession to his widowed mother, Charters of the Earldom of Chester, ed. G. Barraclough, Record Society of Lancs. and Ches. (1988) [hereafter CEC], nos 17, 44, 107–8. 6   For a recent, very positive, assessment of Ranulf III, see I. Soden, Ranulf de Blundeville: The First English Hero (Stroud, 2009). 7   Liber Luciani de Laude Cestrie, ed. M.V. Taylor, Record Society of Lancs. and Ches. (1912), p. 65; R. Stewart-Brown, ‘The Exchequer of Chester’, EHR, 57 (1942): pp. 289–97; G. Barraclough, ‘The Earldom and County Palatine of Chester’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs and Ches., 193 (1951): pp. 23–57 esp. pp. 30–38; VCH Cheshire, vol. 2, pp. 2–6. 8   For example, J.W. Alexander, ‘New Evidence on the Palatinate of Chester’, EHR, 85 (1970): pp. 715–29; J.W. Alexander, Ranulf of Chester: A Relic of the Conquest (Athens, 1983), pp. 60–68. 5

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base on the Welsh marches: Domesday Book records that apart from the city of Chester and manors held by the bishop and by the church of St Werburgh (which he would convert into a Benedictine abbey in 1092–93), the whole of the shire was held either by the earl in demesne or from him by vassals. Beyond this stretched a great honour with the resources to enable him not only to secure the frontier with North Wales but also to facilitate invasion and conquest. However, the marcher earldoms of Hereford and Shrewsbury, organized by William the Conqueror along broadly similar lines for a similar purpose, had been extinguished following rebellion in 1075 and 1102 respectively and Henry I, by favouring client rulers such as Gruffudd ap Cynan in Gwynedd, had discouraged the licensed adventurism on which Hugh d’Avranches had thrived.9 This left Cheshire in an anomalous position. Much of the raison d’être for the arrangements originally made by the Conqueror no longer applied, but the earl was still one of the best-endowed magnates in the kingdom. Already – as in Ranulf III’s time – within the shire from which his earldom was derived there was no royal demesne, he was lord of every lay landholder, no revenues were accountable at the king’s exchequer, no pleas were heard by royal justices. Almost alone among those parts of England by then organized into shires, Cheshire was absent altogether from the 1130 pipe roll and it would continue to be absent from the pipe rolls for the rest of the century, save for periods when the honour was being farmed for the crown during the minorities of later earls.10 The monks of Hugh d’Avranches’ foundation, Chester Abbey, had not sought any royal confirmation or protection for their holdings, as – for example – their fellowBenedictines at Shrewsbury (founded by Earl Roger de Montgomery) and Durham (established by Bishop William of St Calais) had done;11 the Chester monks appear not to have thought this appropriate until Ranulf II’s son Hugh de Kyvelioc (Hugh II) was in wardship to Henry II in the late 1150s, when the king received them into his custody, ‘saving the honour and dignity’ of the young Earl Hugh.12 Meanwhile Lincolnshire, where the earl’s holdings in 1086 (those in demesne plus those held by tenants) already amounted to one-fifth by value of  9   J.E. Lloyd, A History of Wales (3rd edn, London, 1939), pp. 378–92, 400–411, 462–7; R.R. Davies, ‘Henry I and Wales’, in H. Mayr-Harting and R.I. Moore (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis (London, 1985), pp. 133–47; C.P. Lewis, ‘Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Normans’, in K.L. Maund (ed.), Gruffudd ap Cynan: A Collaborative Biography (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 61–77. 10   Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I Michaelmas 1130, ed. and trans. J.A. Green, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 57 (2012), p. xxiii; Cheshire in the Pipe Rolls, 1158–1301, ed. R. Stewart-Brown, Record Society of Lancs. and Ches. (1938), pp. 1–25. 11   RRAN, vol. 2, nos 767 (Durham), 1245 (Shrewsbury). 12   Chartulary or Register of the Abbey of St Werburgh, Chester, ed. J. Tait (2 vols, Manchester, 1920–23) [hereafter Chester Chartulary], vol. 1, no. 28.

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the entire honour,13 had assumed even greater importance through the addition of part of Lucy’s inheritance; at £14, the earl of Chester’s 1130 danegeld remission in this shire was far larger than that of any other landholder, and almost twice as much as his remissions in all other shires combined.14 Ranulf II kept a house in Lincoln before 114615 and issued more (known) charters in Lincolnshire than in Cheshire – 11 in Lincoln, one in Stamford, one in Greetham, compared to eight in Chester and one in Frodsham.16 All this gives us an insight into how Earl Ranulf perceived his inheritance, as he launched himself into the civil war of Stephen’s reign. His earldom already exhibited some significant elements of autonomy, while his honour offered him the prospect of making a major impact in the east of the country as well as the west. Ranulf II’s position was that the earldom of Chester gave him a status above that of most other earls. From this flowed enhanced authority, to be exercised not only in Cheshire but over the honour as a whole. In seeking to present himself as grandly as possible, he was of course far from unique among his contemporary magnates. He was not the only earl sometimes to style himself ‘consul’, to engage a scribe whose work matched the quality of that in the king’s chancery or to impose a £10 forfeiture – often found in royal writs and charters – for disobeying his instructions,17 but cumulatively these practices look to be deliberate self-aggrandizement, manifest outside Cheshire as well as within it.18 Two administrative innovations suggested by his charters, which have been taken as indicative of some precocity and sophistication – comparable only to that of the earls of Leicester among his peers – also applied over the entire   Lewis, ‘Formation’, p. 42.   Great Roll of the Pipe Thirty First Year of Henry I, pp. 9, 60, 70, 86, 95, where remissions in Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire total £7 4s.; cf. W. Farrer, Honors and Knights’ Fees (3 vols, London and Manchester, 1923– 25) [hereafter HKF], vol 2, pp. 6–7 for an attempted identification of the manors against which remissions were made. 15   CEC, no. 55 (on the date of which, cf. R.H.C. Davis, ‘Geoffrey Barraclough and the Lure of Charters’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 23–34 at pp. 32–3). 16  Chester: CEC, nos 27, 35, 37, 64, 84, 85, 98, 99. Frodsham: CEC, no. 81. Lincoln: CEC, nos 55, 59, 66, 69, 71, 76, 77, 80, 93, 111 and (probably) 107. Stamford: CEC, no. 58. Greetham: CEC, no. 67. 17   M.T.J. Webber, ‘The Scribes and Handwriting of the Original Charters’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 137–51 at pp. 140–41, 148–9; J. Hudson, ‘Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Charters’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 153–78 at p. 155 and n. 20; G.J. White, Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 58. 18  Consul: CEC, nos 56 (issued at Thorney, Nottinghamshire), 81 (Frodsham, Cheshire), 84 (Chester), 90 (Ravensmeols, Lancashire). Scribe: CEC, nos 55 (issued at Lincoln), 56 (Thorney), 66 (Lincoln), 73 (Coventry), 82 (Leicestershire). Forfeit: CEC, nos 61 (no place date but concerning Chester and Shrewsbury), 109 (issued at Wenlock, Shrops., concerning Chester and freedom from tolls ‘throughout my land’). 13 14

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honour in England. These are the employment of ‘bailiffs’ as local administrators overseeing discrete units of the earl’s demesne and the countersealing of some of the earl’s charters, evidently as additional authentication.19 But alongside all this are the possible origins of distinctive financial and judicial administrations for Cheshire itself. They were doubtless introduced for pragmatic reasons, probably the need for efficient handling of income, expenditure and lawsuits within a shire where there was no royal sheriff or justice and in which the earl who was lord of every lay landholder was absent for most of the time. With hindsight, however, they can be seen as significant steps along the road to the separate ‘palatinate’ arrangements of the thirteenth century and beyond. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive, but if the arguments which follow are accepted Ranulf II emerges as a key figure in the history of the county, for under him developments were initiated which would continue to have an impact on the way Cheshire would be governed into the nineteenth century. If we begin with financial affairs, it has long been recognized that Earl Ranulf ’s charters offer the first good evidence of any earl of Chester having a financial office with procedures resembling those of the royal exchequer, itself a product of Henry I’s reign. Among the standard practices of the king’s exchequer was the use of notched sticks (tallies) to record payments and allowances as a preliminary to their formal, permanent recording on pipe rolls, and although (unlike a similar institution for the earls of Leicester, also introduced under Henry I) the Chester office was called a ‘chamber’ rather an ‘exchequer’, it is clear that it was accustomed to tallies.20 In acknowledgement of his enfeoffment with Gawsworth (Cheshire), sometime before the mid-1140s, Hugh FitzBigod formally gave the earl a fine horse, the ceremony taking place in Ranulf ’s chamber of Chester (‘in meo talamo Cestrie’). The earl’s grant – of uncertain date – to Chester Abbey of one-tenth of his rents from the city specified that the sums would be ‘accounted for and tallied (computetur et talliatur)’ by his chamberlains out of the annual farm due from his sheriff. Similarly, the   D. Crouch, ‘The Administration of the Norman Earldom’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 69–95 esp. pp. 88–9; T.A. Heslop, ‘The Seals of the Twelfth-Century Earls of Chester’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 179–97. Bailiffs: primarily concerning Cheshire, CEC, nos 27, 34, 65, 67, 73, 81, 98, 99, 109; Derbyshire, CEC no. 45; Dorset, CEC, no. 86; Gloucestershire, CEC, no. 101; Lancashire, CEC, nos 84, 90; Leicestershire, CEC, nos 82, 89; Lincolnshire, CEC nos 20, 54, 55, 71, 77, 80, 93, 111; Northamptonshire, CEC, nos 56, 57, 58; Nottinghamshire, CEC, no. 69; Staffordshire, CEC nos 40, 45, 118; Warwickshire, CEC, no. 72. Countersealing: primarily concerning Cheshire, CEC nos 22 (no place-date), 67 (dated at Greetham, Lincs.); Derbyshire/Staffordshire, CEC, no. 45 (dated at Castle Donington, Leics.) 20   Crouch, ‘Administration’, p. 82, and on the Leicester exchequer, D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 163–6. 19

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chamberlains were to account and tally (‘computent et talliant’) for deductions from the farm arising from his gifts, probably late in his life, of fishing boats on the River Dee both to the nuns of Chester and the monks of Wenlock; in the last case, they are specifically called ‘my chamberlains of Chester’.21 It is worth stressing that every reference to the earl’s chamber, and to the tallying procedure employed within it – including those which occur later, in Ranulf III’s time22 – is in the context of a payment due from within Cheshire itself: whether or not it was specified as ‘of Chester’, this looks to have been a financial office intended for receipts from the shire which went with the earldom, rather than from the far-flung honour as a whole. It is known that Ranulf II employed several chamberlains who worked in different parts of his honour. Spileman the chamberlain – who had a holding in Lincolnshire23 – and Philip the chamberlain witnessed for him at Chester, Lincoln and Coventry; John the chamberlain did so at Coventry.24 It is tempting to see these three towns (and specifically their castles) as the locations of three separate financial offices, covering estates in Cheshire, Lincolnshire and places in between, although any such arrangements would have been disrupted by Ranulf ’s losses in 1146, which included the castles of Coventry and Lincoln.25 Whatever the truth of this, there were certainly processes for the render of farms from the earl’s manors outside Cheshire at fixed points of the year, since there is reference to them in Ranulf ’s gift of income from two mills in Lincolnshire to Hartsholme priory.26 But the signs are that such financial procedures as were being followed in the honour as a whole were less sophisticated than those within Cheshire. Earl Ranulf made several grants with an annual monetary value across the country – not only those to Hartsholme but also tithe of rents and profits of justice from Repton (Derbyshire) to the church of Repton, and 100 solidates of land in Belchford to Lincoln cathedral – but in none is there a reference to these sums being deducted according to a tallying process, or to the office which

21   CEC, nos 43, 26, 99, 109; the grant to Wenlock also included a Chester fisherman and his house. 22   CEC, nos 245 (which refers to a tallying system for recording payments due from within Cheshire, even though the chamber itself is not specified as ‘of Chester’), 282, 284. 23   CEC, no. 66. 24   CEC, nos 35, 37, 42, 59, 60, 72; cf. Crouch, ‘Administration’, pp. 80–81. On the possibility that Ranulf II also employed a ‘treasurer’, see H. Boston, ‘The Earls of Chester and Land Tenure in Post-Conquest England’, History Review, 62 (2008): pp. 48–51 at p. 51. 25   GS, pp. 198–201; cf. R.H.C. Davis, ‘An Unknown Coventry Charter’, EHR, 86 (1971): pp. 533–45. 26   CEC, no. 77.

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would handle the accounts. The same could be said of his two successors, Hugh II and Ranulf III.27 There are possible clues to the separation of Cheshire’s accounts from those elsewhere in the honour in the handling of the earl of Chester’s estates in the pipe rolls during the minorities of Ranulf ’s son and grandson, although it must be acknowledged that inconsistencies in the way accounts were presented from one year to another mean that the evidence can be read in different ways. From 1181 to 1185 (though not in the two following years) Cheshire was accounted for separately (by Gilbert Pipard) from the rest of the ‘Terra Comitis Cestrie’, for whom the accountant was the prominent Lincolnshire baron, Philip de Kyme. Between 1159 and 1161 (though not in the years immediately before and afterwards) the ‘Terra Comitis Cestrie’ was accounted for jointly by the earl of Chester’s hereditary steward Robert de Montalt, lord of Mold on the Welsh frontier of Cheshire, and by Philip de Kyme’s father Simon FitzWilliam de Kyme. This leaves open the possibility that arrangements similar to those of the early 1180s, with Cheshire separate from that part of the honour for which the Kyme family rendered account, were already in place.28 What can be said with much greater confidence is that when the earldom of Chester eventually passed to the crown in 1237, the accounting office for Cheshire was clearly distinct from the rest of the honour and had developed to the point where, with its ‘counters and cups’, it was recognizable as an ‘exchequer’ to those familiar with the great institution at Westminster. Twenty years later, a jury in the county court affirmed the customary obligation of the abbot of Chester to send a clerk to attend to the enrolment and certification of proceedings at the Chester exchequer. Its separate processes and accounts were allowed to continue, so that the ‘exchequer of Chester’ survived as a financial department handling revenues from Cheshire until the sixteenth century and as a court dealing especially with disputes over debt and other liabilities within the county up to 1830.29 There is good reason to see the chamber which Ranulf II kept at Chester – primarily, perhaps exclusively, to handle receipts from within Cheshire itself – as the origins of all this. We may now turn to the earl’s justices (or justiciars). Under Henry I, the appointment of local and itinerant justices to hear cases on the king’s behalf proliferated. Ranulf II was not alone among the magnates in following this example and his charters make it abundantly clear that one or more justices were engaged to act for him in all parts of the honour. It has been argued that the ‘justice of Chester’ who first appears under Ranulf had an itinerant role not confined   CEC, nos 76, 105, 108 (cf. no. 60); for Hugh II, CEC, no. 123 and The Early Records of Medieval Coventry, ed. P.R. Coss (London, 1986), no. 9; for Ranulf III, CEC, nos 202, 220, 263, 308, 425, 437. 28   Cheshire in the Pipe Rolls, pp. 1–3. 29   Chester Chartulary, vol. 2, no. 894; Stewart-Brown, ‘Exchequer of Chester’; Crouch, ‘Administration’, p. 83; VCH Cheshire, vol. 2, pp. 38–41, 57–9. 27

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to Cheshire and that he can be identified as the ‘Radulfo iusticia’ or ‘Radulfo iusticiario’ among the witnesses to two charters for the earl dated at Lincoln between 1141 and 1146.30 There is an apparent analogy in Ranulf ’s conferment of the constableship of Chester upon Henry I’s former curialis Eustace FitzJohn, already a tenant-in-chief in Yorkshire and Northumberland, who had married the heiress of the previous constable William II FitzNigel and thus succeeded to his Cheshire estate based on Halton; the charter recording this, probably of 1144, specifically stated that his constableship – though designated as ‘of Chester’ – was to apply over the ‘whole land’ of the earl, with Eustace acting as his supreme counsellor above all his leading men.31 But this does not prove that the ‘justice of Chester’ – initially a much humbler figure – had a similarly wide geographical remit. Ralf at Lincoln is described as a ‘justice’, not as ‘justice of Chester’, and there was another, slightly earlier or contemporary, ‘iusticia comitis’ called Adam who seems to have been involved with Cheshire affairs.32 Most of Ranulf ’s charters which include a justice in the address clause (usually but not invariably in the singular) impose no geographical qualification upon the title, even where they are concerned with a specific portion of the honour: whatever significance one attaches to this, it does not argue for the ubiquitous presence of a ‘justice of Chester’.33 The only occasions when a justice is accorded a title identified with a place are in charters relating to Cheshire and to the land between the Ribble and the Mersey, the latter presumably relating to the period from the mid-1140s when Earl Ranulf evidently made good his claim to this territory.34 ‘My justice of Chester (iustitiam meam Cestrie)’ was ordered to act against anyone who infringed the earl’s grant of a tithe of the city’s rents to Chester Abbey.35 The justice of Cheshire (‘iusticie sue de Cestrescira’) was to ensure that Hugh son of Bigod was not impleaded over Gawsworth by the ‘prefects’ of Macclesfield.36 Other appearances in address clauses relate to two gifts of fishing facilities on the River Dee in Chester (both as ‘justice of Chester’), the grant of protection to Norton priory, and the restoration to Henry Tuschet of his inheritance in Tattenhall (both as ‘justice of Cheshire’).37 As for the justice ‘between Ribble and Mersey’, he features in the address clause of one charter ordering that Shrewsbury   Crouch, ‘Administration’, pp. 91–2.   CEC, no. 73. 32   CEC, nos 55, 80; Chester Chartulary, vol. 1, no. 351 (datable c. 1130–c. 1144 because by William II, constable of Chester, concerning a gift in Raby, Cheshire, to Chester abbey). 33   CEC, nos 27, 34, 45, 54, 56, 63, 65, 67, 71, 80, 89, 92, 93, 98, 99, 101, cf. no. 53 (singular); 40, 72, 73, 84, 86, 118 (plural), but see also Crouch, ‘Administration’, p. 92, n. 107. 34   J.A. Green, ‘Earl Ranulf II and Lancashire’, in Thacker (ed.), Earldom, pp. 97–108. 35   CEC, no. 26. 36   CEC, no. 43. 37   CEC, nos 41 (justice of Chester), 81 (of Cheshire), 85 (of Cheshire), 109 (of Chester). 30 31

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Abbey enjoy peaceful possession, particularly of Garston, and of another granting Howick to Evesham Abbey.38 It must be acknowledged at once that several other charters relating to Cheshire and Ribble-Mersey address a ‘justice’ or ‘justices’ in general, rather than one specifically attached to the region, and in this respect appear no different than those concerned with the rest of the honour.39 In a period of emerging, and variable, drafting practice, any conclusions to be drawn from all this must be tentative.40 But the repeated, if inconsistent, focus on a ‘justice of Chester’ (or Cheshire) when property in Cheshire was at stake does seem significant. He looks to have been a different person from the justice covering Ribble-Mersey, for the duration of Ranulf ’s tenure of that region, and was probably different again from the one or more justices, like Ralf at Lincoln, with responsibilities in the rest of the honour. Later earls continued to address a justice or justiciar (almost always in the singular) without further qualification on matters relating to the honour at large, but the man holding the title specifically ‘of Chester’ (or Cheshire) seems to have been expected to focus on Cheshire. Named holders of the office did witness charters concerned with matters outside the shire;41 some had family or landed connections elsewhere in the honour.42 But under both Hugh II and Ranulf III, whenever they are found being given specific instructions, their work consistently relates to Cheshire.43 By the early thirteenth century the status of the office-holder had certainly risen, the post being held by men of baronial rank who could command respect when acting on the earl’s behalf, fit to be among the first few witnesses both to Cheshire’s own Charter of Liberties in 1215 and to the marriage settlement between Ranulf ’s nephew and heir and the daughter of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of North Wales, in 1222.44 So if, in keeping with this status and as is generally assumed, the justice of Chester was the same man sometimes described as the earl’s ‘chief justiciar’, it is significant that we again find Cheshire at the heart of his activity. In confirming to Peter the clerk all the land he had received in Chester, Ranulf III exempted him from any impleading   CEC, nos 64, 90: cf. the spurious CEC, no. 91.   Cheshire (justice in singular): CEC, nos 27, 34, 65, 67, 98, 99; Cheshire (justices in plural) nil. Ribble-Mersey (justice in singular): CEC, no. 63; Ribble-Mersey (justices in plural), no. 84. 40   Hudson, ‘Diplomatic’, esp. pp. 156–9. 41   For example, CEC, nos 315, 351, 392. 42   Philip de Orreby, Ranulf de Blundeville’s justiciar of Chester from c. 1207 to 1229, hailed from Orby (Lincolnshire): J. Tait in Cheshire Sheaf, no. 7804 (5 June 1940). Richard Fitton, who held the office under the next earl John the Scot, received land in Northamptonshire (CEC, no. 451). 43   CEC, nos 162, 210, 397 (assuming that Chester and Cheshire were interchangeable appellations for the justice). 44   CEC, nos 394, 411; VCH Cheshire, vol. 2, pp. 2–3; Crouch, ‘Administration’, pp. 92–3. 38 39

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(other than in matters pertaining to ecclesiastical courts) ‘except in my presence or that of my chief justiciar’.45 This does not prove that these postholders never acted for the earl outside the county,46 but Cheshire was the main focus of their work and they survived its transfer to the crown in 1237 to become the men responsible for accounting for it at the king’s exchequer. In the role of Cheshire’s chief judicial officer, the justice of Chester survived, like the exchequer, until 183047 – another apparent innovation of Ranulf II’s time to show remarkable resilience. For all this administrative reform, Earl Ranulf is best known for his vigorous, often violent, efforts during Stephen’s reign to extend his territorial possessions. Since the gains he made were all resumed by the crown, some after his arrest by Stephen in 1146, the remainder after his death and Henry II’s accession,48 it is easy to accord only passing significance to the charters in his favour issued by king and duke in turn.49 Yet the grants of lands and rights conveyed by these charters have much to tell us about what Ranulf sought to control, and there are common themes within them, beyond the obvious accumulation of landed income and influence and improvements to west-east communication. One was a focus on powers of jurisdiction, which went with sokes, with wapentakes or manors from which wapentakes were administered, with boroughs which lay at the heart of their shire government (Derby and Nottingham) and with a ‘whole county’ (Staffordshire).50 All this had the potential for the replacement of royal by comital officers over a large swathe of the north Midlands. Another was a concern to secure an interest in trading outlets via the Humber, through the grant of the ports of Grimsby and Torksey and the estates of Erneis de Burun, which included manors such as Melton Ross and Ulceby on the southern approaches to the estuary. Yet another was what looks to have been a strategic attempt to win control of major routes between the South and the North of England. Hunsingore (caput of the honour of Erneis de Burun) and Tickhill commanded sections of the main road from London through Yorkshire; Grantham and Nottingham covered alternative branches further south. Rothley and Derby   CEC, no. 286.   CEC, no. 267 specifically envisages ‘totam terram meam’, outside the city of Chester as well as within it, as being covered by a prohibition on impleading except in the presence of the earl or ‘summe justicie mee’, but the point is laboured in a manner which implies that it might have been regarded as exceptional. There is a similar prohibition on impleading except before the earl or ‘capitali iusticiario meo’ in no. 377, but the drafting of the charter leaves it open to interpretation whether only lands in Cheshire are covered. 47   VCH Cheshire, vol. 2, pp. 56–60. 48   G. White, ‘King Stephen, Duke Henry and Ranulf de Gernons, Earl of Chester’, EHR, 91 (1976): pp. 555–65. 49   RRAN, vol. 3, nos 178, 179, 180. 50   Cf. Dalton, ‘Ranulf II and Lincolnshire’, pp. 109–34. 45 46

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both lay along an important route – now represented largely by the A6 – which led from the east Midlands towards the Mersey crossings. Newcastle-underLyme was on the main London to Chester road.51 The king’s grant of Roger de Poitou’s honour of Lancaster – which Stephen specified as including all between Ribble and Mersey – would have given the earl not only a major northwards extension of his authority beyond Cheshire but also control of a long stretch of the principal road to Carlisle. It is worth stressing – as Edmund King has pointed out – that evidence of Ranulf actually controlling these estates during Stephen’s reign is limited.52 But we have a glimpse of the potential implications had he succeeded in his ambitions through the events of 1149. In that year, David king of Scots, in alliance with the earl of Chester and the 16-year-old future Henry II, planned an assault on York which might have extended his realm south from Cumbria and Northumberland to embrace much of Yorkshire as well and which – with Ranulf controlling the north Midlands – threatened to leave the king of England ruling only the southern half of the country.53 In the event, Stephen marched rapidly to the defence of York and forestalled any attack on it:54 itself telling evidence that the earl had failed to secure the control of the main routes north promised three years earlier. The enterprise was snuffed out almost as soon as it had begun, with Ranulf himself being blamed for having ‘fulfilled none of the things he had promised’.55 Yet the episode is of interest, partly because the young Henry was, at this stage in the civil war, willing to countenance such a scheme despite its longterm implications, and partly because the king of Scots evidently saw in Ranulf II an ally whose geopolitical position was key to his success – even to the point of arranging a marriage between his own daughter and the earl’s son. The marriage   D. Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 47–9; for Henry I’s permission c. 1130 for a bridge to be built at Newark-on-Trent, which led to the main route diverting through Grantham at the expense of both Nottingham and Lincoln, see Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. C.W. Foster and K. Major, Lincoln Record Society (10 vols, 1931–73), vol. 1, no. 55, and RRAN, vol. 2, no. 1661. 52   E.J. King, ‘Mountsorrel and its Region in King Stephen’s Reign’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 44 (1980): pp. 1–10 at p. 8; but cf. Green, ‘Earl Ranulf II and Lancashire’; Dalton, ‘Ranulf II and Lincolnshire’. 53   K.J. Stringer, ‘State-Building in Twelfth-Century Britain: David I, King of Scots, and Northern England’, in J.C. Appleby and P. Dalton (eds), Government, Religion and Society in Northern England, 1000–1700 (Stroud, 1997), pp. 40–62. 54   GS, pp. 214–17. 55   Symeonis Monachis Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series (3 vols, London, 1882–85), vol. 2, p. 323; Dalton, ‘In Neutro Latere’, pp. 53–4; see also D. Crouch, ‘The March and the Welsh Kings’, in E.J. King (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), pp. 255–89 at p. 279, for the suggestion that the growing threat from Owain Gwynedd may have distracted Earl Ranulf on this occasion. 51

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never happened and we can only speculate how long a ‘northern kingdom’ with the Chester estates strung out along its southern marches – in amongst the holdings of magnates such as Robert, earl of Leicester, with a different allegiance – would have survived the inevitable conflict which would have ensued. But these dealings with the king of Scots and with Empress Matilda’s heir can only have reinforced Earl Ranulf ’s conviction that his star was in the ascendant and that he was entitled to the ostentation apparent in some of his charters. Ranulf II cultivated close relations not only with the king of Scots but also with the ruling families in North Wales. Cadwaladr, younger brother of Owain who had succeeded their father Gruffudd ap Cynan as king of Gwynedd in 1137, fought alongside the earl at the battle of Lincoln in February 1141, as did Madog ap Maredudd king of Powys. Cadwaladr married Ranulf ’s niece and took refuge in his court when driven out of Anglesey by his brother the king in 1151 or 1152, witnessing two of the earl’s charters dated at Chester as ‘king of the Welsh’.56 All this amounted to an ‘independent policy’ by the earl of Chester in relation to Welsh affairs. In August 1146 he had sought the king’s help in a retaliatory invasion of North Wales, following a raid by Owain Gwynedd east of the River Clwyd: arguably a repetition of Earl Richard’s actions in 1114 when he had called upon Henry I to intervene in the face of trouble from the Welsh, rather than march in on his own initiative as Hugh d’Avranches would have done. Stephen, dissuaded by his advisors from meeting Ranulf ’s request, had him imprisoned instead. Since that imprisonment had been followed almost immediately by a further, more serious, Welsh raid deep into Cheshire,57 and since in order to obtain his release Ranulf had had to surrender castles which secured key elements of his honour, it was all but inevitable that the earl would be an implacable enemy of the king thereafter, free as he saw it to deal autonomously with the rulers of Wales and Scotland and with the rival contender for the throne. But he maintained his stance of ‘armed neutrality’ for as long as he could. The charter which signalled his ultimate commitment to Henry in 1153 was witnessed by ten men ‘ex parte comitis Rannulfi’ to match 11 established Angevin adherents, as if it was a formal concord akin to his famous treaty with Robert, earl of Leicester, limiting the armed conflict between them, also a product of the closing phase of the civil war.58   OV, vol. 6, pp. 542–3; CEC, nos 64, 84 and cf. the spurious no. 28 where he is ‘king of the north Welsh’. 57   Annales Cestrienses, ed. R.C. Christie, Record Society of Lancs. and Ches. (1887), p. 21; Crouch, ‘The March’, p. 278; J.A. Green, Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 2006), p. 132. 58   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 180; CEC, no. 110; F.M. Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism (Oxford, 1932), pp. 249–55; E.J. King, ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS, 14 (1992): pp. 115–30. 56

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In the event, Ranulf II’s death in December 1153, leaving Hugh II to succeed as a minor, made it relatively easy for Henry II as king to renege on what he had promised as duke; essentially, the honour of Chester was reconstituted as it had been before the civil war.59 But that was not, of course, an end to the territorial ambitions of successive earls of Chester. A sense of deprivation, given all that his father had once aspired to, was a major factor in Hugh II’s participation in the ‘revolt of the earls’ in 1173, a disastrous venture from which he could be considered fortunate to emerge with his existing estates virtually intact.60 In territorial terms, Hugh’s son Ranulf III ‘made good many of the hopes entertained by his grandfather Ranulf II’61 through a combination of royal favour and sheer good fortune, which allowed him to accumulate such prizes as the honour of Bolingbroke when the Roumare line died out in 1198, recognition as earl of Lincoln in 1217 and at various times the grant of much of the honour of Richmond, half the honour of Leicester, the castle and county of Lancaster and land between Ribble and Mersey.62 Some of Ranulf III’s acquisitions matched his grandfather’s aspirations very closely, including the castles of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Mountsorrel,63 and there can be no doubt that he, or his officials, were aware of claims from the past which they could pursue.64 However, parallels between the honours held by the two Ranulfs must not be pressed too far. There was a similar ambition to extend territorial control across the north Midlands, with significant holdings in Lancashire and Yorkshire as well, and this often involved an overlap with estates which had been promised in Stephen’s reign. But Ranulf III went about his task of accumulation in a different way, essentially through decades of loyal service to the crown. He also had the rather different motivation – at least towards the end of his life when it was clear that there would be no son to succeed him – of trying to leave enough for his heirs to divide between them, so that Cheshire could remain intact in support of the earldom itself. In territorial terms, Ranulf III’s honour only approximated to that which Ranulf II had sought to create. So what, of his own making, did Ranulf II bequeath to his successors? As a twelfth-century magnate, he might be expected to have left a legacy through castle-building, urban development and benefactions to religious houses. There is some evidence, albeit inconclusive, for his building a castle and promoting   White, ‘King Stephen, Duke Henry and Ranulf de Gernons’.   W.L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), pp. 122, 365. 61   R.G. Eales, ‘Henry III and the End of the Norman Earldom of Chester’, in ThirteenthCentury England, 1 (1986): pp. 100–112 at p. 102; cf. J.C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), p. 4. 62  Alexander, Ranulf of Chester, pp. 7, 20, 32–4, 73–4, 92–3. 63   CEC, no. 423; King, ‘Mountsorrel’, p. 9. 64   CEC, no. 405; HKF, vol. 2, p. 9. 59 60

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a town at both Coventry and Newcastle-under-Lyme,65 and he certainly had an outstanding record as a religious benefactor, including close involvement in the foundation of at least five different houses.66 He also has strong claims to have initiated financial and judicial administrations for Cheshire distinct from those which pertained in the rest of his honour. Under his successors, who preferred to spend more time in and near Cheshire than elsewhere in the honour, these separate arrangements became more refined, to the point where they survived the takeover by the crown in 1237. Beyond this, Ranulf II left a vision of the potential greatness of the earldom of Chester, based both on the exceptional position of Cheshire and on a string of castles, boroughs, manors and jurisdictions from the Clwyd to the Humber. We are told that Ranulf III dreamed about his grandfather and was inspired to follow his example in founding a religious house.67 He must have grown up with stories about an heroic namesake who increased his estates, conducted his own diplomacy with the Welsh, governed Cheshire independently of the king, played a starring role on the national stage and presented himself as a cut above most of his fellow earls. Ranulf de Gernons was not to be outdone as a monastic benefactor, but he would have been immensely proud had he known that, in so many other respects, his grandson would go on to surpass his achievements.

  Early Records of Medieval Coventry, pp. xxxi–xxxiii and no. 11; T. Pape, Medieval Newcastle-under-Lyme (Manchester, 1928), pp. 1–15; VCH Staffordshire, vol. 8, pp. 11–12; M.W. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1988), p. 488. 66   Basingwerk (for Savigniac, later Cistercian, monks), Chester (for Benedictine nuns), Trentham (for Augustinian canons), Minting (for Benedictine monks) and Combermere (also for Savigniac monks, established by Hugh Malbanc who wished the earl to be regarded as principal founder and defender: W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum rev. edn by J. Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel (6 vols in 8, London, 1817–30), vol. 5, pp. 323–34), plus (possibly) a leper hospital at Chester: CEC, nos 14, 44, 92, 93, 117, 125, 198; VCH Cheshire, vol. 3, pp. 146, 150–51, 178; VCH Staffordshire, vol. 3, pp. 255–6; Green, Aristocracy, p. 419. Minting, which lay within Lucy’s estates, has traditionally been attributed to Ranulf Meschin (for example, D. Knowles and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London, 1971), p. 90, following Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. 6 (2), pp. 1023–4, but he would have associated his wife in any grants here, as he did in CEC, no. 14. 67   Extract in translation from the ‘Annals of Dieulacres Abbey’, in Cheshire Sheaf, no. 10233 (26 June, 1957); B.E. Harris, ‘Ranulph III, Earl of Chester’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 58 (1975): pp. 99–114 at p. 113. 65

Chapter 8

Fortunes of War: Safe-Guarding Wallingford Castle and Honour 1135–60 Katharine Keats-Rohan

In nomine [etc.]. Notum sit omnibus fidelibus sancte ecclesie tam presentibus quam futuris quod ego Roaldus filius Wingandi concessi in elemosinam perpetuo ecclesie sanctorum m(inistrorum) Christi Sergii et Bachi que est Andegauim et monachis ibidem Deo seruientibus: omnem decimam tocius dominici mei de Dodebroc non causa lucri uel seruicii sed pro redemptione anime mee et animarum omnium antecessorum meorum proque loci ipsius beneficio atque fraternitate; Idemque concesserunt atque confirmaverunt duo filii meorum uidelicet Hamo et Anfridus apud Excestram in obsidione ipsius; … Teste Alano comitis Stephani filii et Conano archidiacono et Roaldo Harschoidi filio et eisdem filiis meis Hamone atque Anfrido et Rogerio Ilgeri filio et Alwardi qui tunc deacono … Walete.1

This charter for Totnes priory appears not to have been noticed before, yet it contains a great deal of interest. It is the grant of a man who was Breton or of Breton origin of the tithes of his manor of Dodbrooke to the abbey of SS Sergius and Bacchus of Angers in Anjou, and it was made during the siege of Exeter Castle in the summer of 1136. Ruald seeks the benefit of fraternity for himself with the consent of his two sons currently with the army at Exeter. The siege was the first major incident in what became the troubled reign of King Stephen; the final 1   H.R. Watkin, The History of Totnes Priory and Medieval Town (3 vols, Torquay, 1914), Totnes Priory Deed xiv, facsimile of original in vol. 2, translation in vol. 1, p. 18. The author attempted a discussion but was hopelessly adrift, believing the charter to date from c.1086. ‘In the name [etc.]. Let it be known to all the faithful of the holy church both present and future that I Ruald son of Wigan have granted in perpetual alms to the church of the holy ministers of Christ Sergius and Bacchus at Angers and the monks serving God there all the tithe of my whole demesne of Dodbrooke not for material gain or service but for the redemption of my soul and the souls of my ancestors and for the benefit and fraternity of the same place. And the same is conceded and confirmed by two of my sons, namely Hamo and Ansfrid at Exeter during the siege of the same. Witnessed by Alan son of Count Stephen and Conan archdeacon and Roald son of Harscoit and my same sons Hamo and Ansfrid and Roger son of Ilger and Alward then dean … Farewell’.

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major incident was the relief of the siege of Wallingford Castle in 1153 where peace was finally mediated between Stephen and the future Henry II. One of the men named in this charter, Ruald’s son Ansfrid, would feature in both events. The men of the castle and honour of Wallingford played a key role throughout, their influence extending far beyond the confines of the Thames Valley. Great men’s wars are won by the toil and sacrifice of lesser men. We shall follow the fortunes of a few of them here through their charter attestations, mainly for the empress, during a crucially formative period for her son. First, though, a short excursus on the Totnes charter, which affords a rarely seen glimpse of interaction between the North of England and the far West in this period. The donor, Ruald son of Wigan, occurs in several entries on the Pipe Roll of 1129/30, pardoned Danegeld in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Devon and Cornwall, and murdrum fines in Rillaton and Powderham Hundreds, Cornwall and Ermington Hundred, Devon. His own origins are not known, but he keeps company in the Pipe Roll with high status Bretons Geoffrey vicomte de Porhoët, Henry de Fougères and Robert de Vitré.2 He occurs in memoranda relating to Bernard the Scribe, a royal cleric who managed to reassemble part of the holdings of his English ancestors in Cornwall, first discussed by Horace Round in 1899. Subsequently, between 1123 and 1133, Ruald granted to Bernard the churches once held by Brictric Walensis in Cornwall, with tithes and all appurtenances, attested by his son Ansfrid. These had probably been the holdings of Brictric from Robert, count of Mortain, in 1086.3 Also present on that occasion were the chancellor Geoffrey, Robert de Sigillo, William Cumin and William, archdeacon of York, all of them with significant links to northern England. How real these links were for Ruald’s family is not apparent; they certainly do not recur amongst the descendants of his son Ansfrid, who retained Dodbrooke, though they bring us back to the Totnes charter. The witness list of the charter was headed by the senior Breton magnate of the day, Alan son of Count Stephen (a designation indicating that his elderly father was still alive), lord of the northern honour of Richmond, followed by his archdeacon and constable.4 Alan does not occur 2   The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I Michaelmas 1130, ed. and trans. J.A. Green, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 57 (2012), pp. 36, 79, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127. 3   J.H. Round, ‘Bernard the Scribe’, EHR, 14 (1899): pp. 417–30; The Cartulary of Launceston Priory, ed. P.L. Hull, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, new series, 30 (1987), p. xvi and n. 8. 4   Charles Clay dated Stephen’s death 21 April 1135 or 1136, following an obituary notice of St Mary’s, York; Wilmart, using a fourteenth-century Genealogia, dated it 1138: Early Yorkshire Charters Vol. IV: The Honour of Richmond Part I, ed. C.T. Clay, Yorkshire Archæological Society Record Series, Extra Series, 1 (1935), pp. 87–8 n. 11; A. Wilmart, ‘Alain Le Roux et Alain Le Noir, Comtes de Bretagne’, Annales de Bretagne, 38 (1928): pp. 576–602 at p. 602. Stephen’s brother and predecessor Alan Rufus had founded a cell of SS

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among the witnesses to the two major opening acts of the reign, the Easter court at London in March and the meeting at Oxford in April and so must have joined the king in Exeter travelling separately.5 He would very soon afterwards be given the title earl of Richmond, the first of King Stephen’s new creations.6 This was probably in recognition of the power that could be wielded by the lord of such an extensive liberty, created c. 1080, whose predecessors had been famously loyal to the crown.7 He would prove to be something of a mixed blessing to the king.8 The Gesta Stephani gives a very full account of the siege of Exeter.9 The author evinces a lively interest in castles and is very informative about them. He shows the king as an expert in the art of the anti-castle and siege warfare. The castles are always described as impregnable, often in similar terms, and with good reason. Exeter, for example, is described as a walled town built by the Romans. Within it, the castle was ‘raised on a very high mound surrounded by an impregnable wall and fortified with towers of hewn limestone constructed by the emperors’. The king’s men succeeded in breaking the inner bridge affording access from the castle to the city and built timber siege towers. He also employed miners to undermine the walls. What eventually undid the besieged was lack of water. In the following year a similar situation arose at Bedford, where the castle was Sergius and Bacchus at Swavesey, Cambs.; Stephen had confirmed and enhanced the grant in an act given at Lamballe, in Brittany (Early Yorkshire Charters IV, nos 1, 6). Stephen’s obit is given as 22 April in Angers, Bibl. mun., MS 837, fol. 23r, necrology of SS Sergius and Bacchus, of which he was confrater. 5   As reconstructed in Edmund King’s magisterial, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 58–67. 6   Alan attested two charters of King Stephen with that title dated 1136, one of which, given at Winchester, dates before 21 November; RRAN, vol. 3, nos 204, 949. Although the title of earl of Richmond became important to his successors, it was seldom used by Alan and only on these two occasions by the king, the term comes Britannie et Anglie being preferred instead, reflecting Alan’s marriage, by 6 December 1138, to Bertha, heiress of Conan III of Brittany: H. Guillotel, ‘Les origines de Guingamp’, Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Bretagne, 56 (1979): pp. 81–100 at p. 96. The one known occasion Alan used it was with the title earl of Cornwall, briefly held in 1140, in a charter for St Michael’s Mount in which he claimed to be heir to the land of Cornwall once held by his uncle Count Brien (Early Yorkshire Charters IV, no. 12). Brien left England around 1069 and his land had been given to Robert of Mortain. 7   D. Roffe, ‘The Yorkshire Summary: A Domesday Satellite’, Northern History, 27 (1991): pp. 242–60 at pp. 247–8, 255–6. Another reason for the premature favour bestowed upon him is that his mother may have been half-sister of the king’s father: S. Morin, Trégor, Goëlo, Penthièvre. Le pouvoir des Comtes de Bretagne du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2010), pp. 101–3. 8   He left England in 1145 to fulfil his duties in Brittany, dying in September the following year. 9   GS, pp. 30–45.

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‘surrounded by a very lofty mound, encircled by a strong and high wall, fortified with a strong and unshakeable keep, and filled with tough and unconquerable men’. Stephen built his siege works and left the army behind with orders to starve the garrison out whilst he got on with other business. It worked. But by the end of 1138 ‘it was like what we read of the fabled hydra of Hercules; when one head was cut off two or more grew in its place’.10 The country had entered a state of civil war with the defiance of Robert, earl of Gloucester, another of the empress’ half-brothers and her main supporter from 1138 to 1147. An attack on his stronghold at Bristol had been ruled out as impractical, but an army was left at Bath to keep an eye on it. Castle Cary was starved into submission, and the castle at Harptree easily taken when Stephen’s men had come upon it almost unguarded, the garrison having left to help the defence of Bristol.11 In the meantime, Baldwin de Redvers, exiled for his defiance at Exeter, had returned and had been admitted to Corfe Castle at Wareham, ‘the most secure of all English castles’ in anticipation of the arrival of Robert and Matilda.12 Also emboldened by their arrival was Brien FitzCount, who set about ‘strengthening an impregnable castle that he had at Wallingford’ before rebelling against the king ‘with spirit and great resolution, assisted by a very large body of soldiers’. The king arrived, determined to encircle the town and subject the castle to a hard siege. He was dissuaded by advice that ‘said (what was the truth) that the castle was most securely fortified by impregnable walls, that supplies had been put into it in very great abundance, enough to last for a great number of years, that the garrison consisted of a very strong force of invincible warriors, and that he could not linger there any longer without the greatest injury to himself and his men’.13 Reluctantly, after ordering the construction of two anti-castles, Stephen moved off towards Trowbridge Castle, where Humphrey de Bohun was resisting the king at the instigation of his father-in-law Miles of Gloucester.14 As Stephen moved west, taking Miles’ castle at Cerney and receiving the surrender of Malmesbury, Miles moved eastwards. Arriving by night with a superb force of soldiers, he completely overcame the garrison that Stephen had left at Wallingford, killing or imprisoning many of them.15   Ibid., pp. 68–9.   Ibid., pp. 64–9. 12   Ibid., pp. 84–5. 13   Ibid., pp. 90–93. 14   The substantial remains of the anti-castle of the 1152–53 siege of Wallingford, an oval ringwork, were excavated in 2011 at Crowmarsh: G. Laban, Land at the Street, Lister Wilder Site, Wallingford, Crowmarsh OX10 8EB (Site Code: OX-STW11), unpublished report, Museum of London Archaeology, London, 2011. 15   Ibid., pp. 93–7. Humphrey was Stephen’s steward until 1139. Confirmed steward in England and Normandy by Matilda, he kept the offices until his death in 1165. 10 11

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This was an event of great significance, the first serious defeat for an active anti-castle force of Stephen, accounted for by the chronicler as retribution for the conversion of a local church into an anti-castle. Wallingford was to endure many years of siege warfare until its final relief by Henry of Normandy in 1153 paved the way to the peace settlement. It became a symbol of dogged defiance, resisting all Stephen’s attempts to reduce it. Almost all serious mention of Wallingford in work written about the period 1066 to 1200 concerns its role in the civil war of Stephen’s reign: it held out longer than any other castle, and unlike all the major castles attacked during the reign, it never changed sides. It tends to be viewed as the isolated easternmost outpost of the empress’ party. However, this underestimates its real strategic importance. A great deal of work has been done on Wallingford in the past few years by a combination of archaeologists and historians.16 There is now a new wealth of detail that can be brought to a woefully under-discussed area of considerable importance. Wallingford was one of the earliest ‘castles of conquest’. It had played a pivotal role in the accession of William I, because it was at Wallingford that the first stage of the English submission was negotiated by Archbishop Stigand, who had prudently left the Ætheling Edgar with Archbishop Ealdred in the safety of Berkhamsted, where the final submission was made.17 A castle was built here soon afterwards by Robert d’Oilly, who would also build Oxford Castle in 1071.18 He was a castle builder and engineer of some distinction, as revealed by these works and his later building of Grandpont in Oxford, spanning the causeway over the Thames.19 It was on this causeway that the shire of Berkshire met in full session in the twelfth century.20 This might indicate a 16  N. Christie, O. Creighton, with M. Edgeworth and H. Hamerow, Transforming Townscapes: From Burh to Borough: The Archaeology of Wallingford, AD 800-1400 (Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2013); N. Christie, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan and D. Roffe (eds), Wallingford, the Castle and Town in Context, will be published by Archaeopress also in 2015. Already published, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan and D.R. Roffe (eds), The Origins of the Borough of Wallingford, British Archaeological Report. British Series, 494 (Oxford, 2009). 17   Discussed in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘Through the Eye of the Needle: Stigand, the Bayeux Tapestry and the beginnings of the Historia Anglorum’, in D. Roffe (ed.), The English and Their Legacy, 900–1200. Essays in Honour of Ann Williams (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 159–74, and in Keats-Rohan, ‘Propping up the Walls, or Setting the Record Straight(er): Accounts of Wallingford Castle 1071–1411’, in Christie, Keats-Rohan and Roffe (eds), Wallingford, the Castle and Town, forthcoming. 18   A. Norton, ‘Recent Work at Oxford Castle: New Finds and Interpretations’, forthcoming in Christie, Keats-Rohan and Roffe (eds), Wallingford, the Castle and Town. 19   B. Durham, ‘The Thames Crossing at Oxford: Archaeological Studies 1979–82’, Oxoniensia, 49 (1984): pp. 57–100 at pp. 87–95; A. Dodd (ed.), Oxford Before the University (Oxford, 2003), pp. 53–4. 20   D. Roffe, ‘Wallingford in Domesday and Beyond’, in Keats-Rohan and Roffe (eds), The Origins, pp. 27–51 at pp. 42–3.

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pre-Conquest arrangement continued afterwards and is but one symptom of the long-established links between Berkshire, of which Wallingford was the chief town, and south Oxfordshire. These originated in the period in which the burhs of the Alfredan period were first created in the late ninth century, and pre-date the shiring of the counties. Wallingford had been founded as one of the two largest burhs of the burghal system, the other being Winchester. The relative size of Winchester and Wallingford is significant. Winchester was already important, the seat of a bishopric, and virtual capital of Wessex. It housed prestigious religious communities and a royal palace. The sacral and ceremonial aspects of Saxon kingship were located there. By contrast, Wallingford was more an administrative centre. Analysis of the account of the borough in Domesday Book has shown that it had an exceptionally high ratio of leading curiales, ecclesiastical and lay, amongst its tenants. It was also recorded as the ‘place where the housecarls dwelled’.21 This is a reference to a personal military elite attached to the household of the king. They had Saxon precursors, but as ‘housecarls’ seem to have been introduced by the Danish King Cnut after 1016. There are several references to them in Domesday Book, usually in association with towns, including Shaftesbury in Dorset; they also appear in connection with the hinterland of London, along the Thames. Lawson suggested that the garrison not only controlled and protected Wallingford itself, but also enforced the authority of royal officials in the surrounding area.22 Ryan Lavelle has suggested that the lands used to support these housecarls may have been previously available to their Saxon precursors.23 The importance of Wallingford, and the key to understanding it, lies in just such a possibility. Domesday Book makes several references to a man called Wigod of Wallingford. His Danish name, and that of his son Toki whom Domesday describes as both thegn and housecarl of King Edward, associates the family with the time of Cnut. Wigod’s daughter had an English name, and he probably had an English wife. The daughter, Ealdgyth, was married to Robert d’Oilly soon after the surrender of Wallingford. Though the Normans allowed marriage between the new tenants-in-chief with responsibility for local government and the daughters of their dispossessed English predecessors, the idea was less to enshrine a principle of heritability for the future than to reconcile the dispossessed and lend an air of legitimacy to the new order. In short, Robert and others like him were given the lands and, often, as was the case at Wallingford, the ministry of his precedessor with no further reference to English family feeling. Wigod seems   Edition and commentary, Roffe, ‘Wallingford in Domesday and Beyond’, pp. 27–51.   M.K. Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (London New York, 1993), p. 180. 23   R. Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars. Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 244. 21 22

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to have fulfilled well what he will have thought of as his duty in handing on his responsibilities to his son-in-law. His son Toki famously died trying to save the Conqueror’s life at Gerberoy in 1079. By 1086 at the latest Wallingford Castle and honour were in the hands of Miles Crispin, who married the daughter and heiress of Robert d’Oilly and Ealdgyth. At that date some of what had been the holdings of Wigod or his men were held by Earl Roger de Montgomery, one of the Conqueror’s closest friends. These were holdings in Middlesex and Surrey, on the approaches to London.24 Other holdings remained in the hands of Robert d’Oilly, baron of Hook Norton in Oxfordshire and constable of Oxford Castle. He and his wife died around the same time in the early 1090s. At that point more Wigod-connected manors were rejoined to the honour of Wallingford. Robert had no sons so his honour of Hook Norton passed to his brother, Nigel (d. c. 1115), father of Robert II. When plotted on a map, the holdings of the honour of Wallingford in 1086 are striking.25 Just under two-thirds can be firmly associated with Wigod or his family; a small number had belonged to the king or an earl, a number increased by the holdings of a certain Beorhtric, a thegn of Queen Edith whose connection to Wigod may have been as close as that of father-in-law. The bulk of the manors were in the region of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, but there were also properties further away in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. All were within a 60-mile radius of Wallingford. They form a number of clusters in the vicinity of burhs or royal centres such as Wallingford itself, Oxford, Reading, Gloucester, Aylesbury, Buckingham, Marlborough and Chippenham; about 13 miles from Westminster were manors at Colham (now Hillingdon), Harmondsworth and Ickenham, with outliers near Winchester. The exceptions were formed by three holdings that were never part of the post-Conquest honour of Wallingford, at Chichester and Bepton and Broadwater in Sussex, all close to the sea and to the main port used by the family of Harold II at Bosham. Iver in Buckinghamshire was also important. In a charter granting the church of Hillingdon to Evesham Abbey, Brien FitzCount noted that it had been made ‘in nativitate Domini, apud Eure in redditu de curia Londonie’ – ‘at Christmas, at Iver, on return from the court at London’.26 A grant to Abingdon by Miles Crispin (d. 1107) of land at Colnbrook was described as lying on the road to London. It was later the subject of a writ of Henry II addressed to Riulf de Seissun.27   For this paragraph and the next see K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis of the Honour of Wallingford’, in Keats-Rohan and Roffe (eds), The Origins, pp. 52–67. 25   Ibid., p. 60. 26   W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, rev. edn by J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel (6 vols in 8, London, 1817–30; repr. 1846), vol. 2, p. 18. 27   Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon (2 vols, Oxford, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 142–3, 350–51. 24

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This collection of holdings strategically placed in relation to centres of royal business and administration were admirably suited to the demands of the life of a royal administrator with a specific military role. Wigod is never called staller in the few extant Saxon references to him, but that was clearly his role, as is reflected in his successors’ title of constable. Wallingford was strategically located on the right bank of the Thames, upstream of an important river crossing at Staines, close to London, and at a point 50 miles equidistant from London and Winchester. The events of 1066 highlight its importance as a major centre for the organization of the defence of Wessex or southern England. Detailed analysis of the continuing role of the castle beyond the conquest period has shown that the castle was throughout its existence an important fortification, a centre for the making and distribution of arms, an administrative centre and (until c. 1500) a royal residence of some style.28 Thomas Keefe’s discussion of the patronage strategies of Henry II noted that the king’s itineraries varied little, being marked by a line drawn down from London to Portchester, up to Salisbury and on to Gloucester and Worcester, across to Northampton, and down again to London: largely the Thames Valley and central Wessex. These pointed to the existence of what he called a ‘royal administrative enclave’ containing all the royal centres most frequently used by the king as indicated by the place location of charters. They were: WestminsterLondon, Winchester, Woodstock, Northampton, Nottingham and Windsor. ‘Control of the core meant control of England; Henry II knew this early on and fixed his patronage accordingly’. His most trusted curial magnates were given extensive estates outside this core, his uncle Reginald’s earldom of Cornwall being the most notable example, others being Humphrey de Bohun of Trowbridge, and Reginald de Courtenay, who would marry the heiress of Okehampton. His top administrators, including Henry FitzGerold, were given holdings inside the enclave. The pattern is one that holds true also for Henry I, and later for John.29 Historically, as Keefe pointed out, this enclave was the homeland of the English kings. It saw some of the most vigorous conflicts of the civil war. The heart of the enclave was Wallingford Castle, stoutly defended for the Angevins by Brien FitzCount and his men. In his early years as king, Henry’s patronage was concentrated in this area, with notable rewards for the stalwarts of Wallingford. Brien was the man to whom Henry I had entrusted the castle, borough and honour of Wallingford on the death of Miles Crispin in 1107. Brien, a natural son of Alan IV Fergant of Brittany who had been raised at Henry’s court, had   Keats-Rohan, ‘Propping up the Walls’.   T.K. Keefe, ‘Place-Date Distribution of Royal Charters and the Historical Geography of Patronage Strategies at the Court of King Henry II Plantagenet’, Haskins Society Journal, 2 (1990): pp. 179–88. For Henry I, S. Mooers Christelow, ‘A Moveable Feast? Itineration and the Centralization of Government under Henry’, Albion, 28 (1996): pp. 187–228. 28 29

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married Matilda of Wallingford, either the widow or daughter of Miles, for form’s sake, but the king had entrusted a strategically important urban royal castle to a soldier, not a bloodline. Brien and his wife had granted the manors of Ogbourne, Wilts., to Bec before 1133, when the grant was confirmed by Henry I. Matilda of Wallingford regranted them before 31 October 1147, with the assent of Brien. She later issued a notification that Henry duke of Normandy (from January 1150) and his mother had confirmed the grant.30 Matilda of Wallingford’s insistence on the lands of ‘the benefice and inheritance of my ancestors’ complicates the evidence of an inquest of 1184 that she was Miles’ widow, since the Ogbournes are among the few holdings of the honour of Wallingford for which an association with Wigod cannot be demonstrated, in which case she can only have inherited them through Miles Crispin. Ultimately it is unimportant; she had no issue and the hopes that she and her d’Oilly kin appear to have entertained that the honour be seen as their inheritance were ill-founded.31 In fact, the notion that Wallingford was a heritable baronial honour as well as a royal castle and borough, is misconceived. It is clear that the composition of the Norman honour owed much to a pre-Conquest tenurial arrangement that reflected the importance of Wallingford as a fortified town with a significant military function. The honour was an estate that enabled the constable to fulfil his ministry. It could only be put into the hands of trustworthy constables under royal supervision. It is not until Brien withdrew from Wallingford, in or around 1148, and the castle became directly associated with Angevin lordship, that this becomes apparent. The text of the Assize of Clarendon of 1164 shows this very clearly. It demanded that all communities and jurisdictions should co-operate with the king’s officials in the pursuit of wrong-doers, and that this should apply ‘even in the Honour of Wallingford’, a phrase twice repeated in the document. No other honour is singled out in this way. Given that the king himself held the honour, this twice-repeated clause is telling evidence of the scale of the liberty that already attached to the honour and its probable antiquity, perhaps even going back before 1066.32 The scale of the liberty is further revealed in the thirteenth-century inquests summarized in the Rotuli Hundredorum, when the honour was held by the king’s brother Richard, earl of Cornwall. By the midfourteenth century it was part of a complex of estates that formed the appanage of the princes of Wales, a role it kept until the time of Henry VIII.   Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec, ed. M. Chibnall (London, 1951), nos xxxvii, p. 20, xlvii, pp. 24–5, xlviii, p. 25. 31   Bracton’s Note Book: A Collection of Cases Decided in the King’s Courts during the Reign of Henry, ed. F.W. Maitland (3 vols, London, 1887), vol. 3, case 1688. 32   Keats-Rohan, ‘Genesis’, pp. 62–3; Keats-Rohan, ‘Propping up the Walls’; D. Roffe, ‘An English Legacy: The Liberty of the Honour of Wallingford’, forthcoming in Christie, Keats-Rohan and Roffe (eds), Wallingford, the Castle and Town. 30

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Brien’s unwavering loyalty to the Angevins was key to their eventual success, even though he himself did not live to see it. Before the empress left for Normandy in 1148 Brien had withdrawn into religion, whether because of age, infirmity or approaching death, we do not know. His retreat was Reading Abbey, founded by Henry I, with which he formed a close association throughout the 1140s. Before the death of Earl Robert on 31 October 1147 and after Miles of Gloucester’s son Roger became earl after Miles’ death on 24 December 1143, Matilda had granted Blewbury, near Wallingford, to Reading ‘for the love and the lawful service of Brien FitzCount’. Given at Devizes Castle, it was attested by Robert of Gloucester, Earl Roger of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun her steward, William FitzAlan, Gosce ( Jocelin) de Dinan, Walchelin Maminot, William Pagenel, William FitzHamo, Hugh FitzRichard and Riulf de Seissun.33 It was possibly given after Matilda had been safely installed there after her escape from Stephen’s siege in Oxford in 1142. She had fled over the snow and ice to the refuge of Wallingford Castle, and been escorted from there to Devizes by Brien FitzCount. She referred to the siege of Oxford in a charter she gave soon afterwards for the nuns of Godstow, attested by Robert of Gloucester, Miles, earl of Hereford, and Brien FitzCount.34 This is the last known act signed by Brien FitzCount for Matilda, who remained at Devizes until her withdrawal in 1148.35 By then Wallingford had endured another siege, which again it had withstood. Brien clearly was not present during the third, harshest and final siege of 1152– 53, but despite having caught the eye of the chroniclers for his resolute and chivalric support of the empress, none noted that he was absent.36 It seems likely that the grant of Blewbury to Reading marked his withdrawal. The witnesses to the empress’ charter (confirmed by Henry from Rouen) include another of Henry I’s Breton recruits, Gotzo ( Jocelin) of Dinan, who lost his lands at Ludlow during the war and would be granted land in the Berkshire royal demesne at Lambourne by Henry II, William FitzHamo, probably also a Breton, and Riulf de Seissun, a third. William FitzHamo’s origins are unclear, but he seems to have held the manor of Hough-on-the-Hill in Lincolnshire from the honour of Richmond.37 One of the inner core of Henry’s trusted administrators   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 703.   Ibid., nos 369–70. 35   Devizes Castle, built by Roger bishop of Salisbury and ‘constructed with wonderful skill and impregnable fortifications’ (GS, pp. 102–3, 116–17), was acquired in 1141 from the king’s son-in-law Hervé de Léon, briefly earl of Wiltshire. He had been besieged ‘by a mob of plain peasants leagued together for his harm’ and eventually surrendered the castle to the Angevins. He was immediately sent packing, followed by the obvious sympathy of the author of the Gesta Stephani. 36   For example, GS, pp. 134–5, a contrast to his view of Stephen’s supporter Earl Alan, ibid. pp. 102–3, 116–17. 37  (Dinan), Pipe Roll 2–4 Henry II, pp. 34, 80. 33 34

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from this time on, he became a leading agent of the king in Brittany from 1154, where he was seneschal of Nantes from 1158 until his death c. 1176; serving also in Angers and Tours during the 1160s. He was granted the manor and hundred of Warminster, Wiltshire, on Henry’s accession, and many other grants and privileges. Nothing is known of any successors and after his death Warminster was regranted to Robert Mauduit.38 Riulf de Seissun first occurs attesting a charter of Brien FitzCount and his wife granting Little Ogbourne to Bec, sometime before 1133, when the grant was confirmed by Henry I. According to a later inquest he had held the manors of Iver and Aston Rowant of the honour in the time of Henry II. At his death c. 1160–61 Hugh de Mara accounted for the farm of his land in the honour of Wallingford.39 Iver was subsequently granted to Gilbert de Ver.40 The sheriff of Berkshire was still accounting for land given to Riulf Brito in Upper Lambourne in 1180; Henry son of Riulf accounted 6s. 8d. in Upper Lambourne at the same time.41 Stephen, son of Riulf, occurs sharing half a fee in Pushull next Wormesley in Aston in 1166.42 Hugh de Mara held half a fee of the honour at Kingston Blount, and was given a manor at Didcot by Henry II. Peter de Mara held three fees of the honour in Oxfordshire in 1166, and two fees in chief in Lavington, Wiltshire.43 Riulf also attested the empress’ confirmation to Humphrey de Bohun of his land and office of steward in 1144, at Devizes.44 A charter of Brien’s wife regranting, with his assent, land in her inheritance at Great and Little Ogbourne, was attested by Earl Robert, Riulf the constable, William Boterel, Peter Boterel, Hugh FitzRichard, Walter Foliot, Peter de Mara and William de Mara. The date limit of this charter is the death of Robert of Gloucester on 31 October 1147. It may be another sign of Brien’s impending withdrawal, since Riulf appears as constable and Wallingford was the only castle in the honour.45 Riulf de Seissun attested a charter of Henry of Normandy given at Devizes on 13 April 1149, together with William FitzHamo and Peter Boterel. Matilda later issued a   Pipe Roll 23 Henry II, 97; Pipe Roll 24 Henry II, p. 28. Cf. J. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins (Cambridge, 2000), p. 207 and further references there (though reference to the widow Sybil is a confusion with William FitzHamo of Kent). 39   Pipe Roll 7 Henry II, p. 54. 40   Liber Feodorum. The Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (3 vols, London, 1920–31), vol. 1, p. 116. 41   Pipe Roll 26 Henry II, p. 38. 42   The Boarstall Cartulary, ed. H.E. Salter, Oxford Record Society, 88 (1930), App., p. 326. 43   Boarstall Cartulary, p. 307; The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. H. Hall, Rolls Series (3 vols, London, 1896), vol. 1, p. 308. 44   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 111. 45   Select Documents of the Abbey of Bec, nos xxxvii, p. 20, xlvii, pp. 24–5, xlviii, p. 25. 38

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notification that Henry duke of Normandy and his mother had confirmed the grant, the whole transaction taking place at Bec between 1150 and September 1151. It was attested by Warin FitzGerold, and Riulf de Seissun.46 A striking double charter by the empress and Henry of the same period, 1150–September 1151, was given at Notre-Dame-du-Pré, Rouen. It was addressed to William Boterel constable of Wallingford and Ansfrid FitzRuald steward (of the honour), all his barons and other knights and burgesses, clerical and lay, of Wallingford, and proposed to establish a house of canons in the southern suburb of Wallingford, for the souls of the empress’ parents and those of Brien FitzCount and his wife. William Boterel, Ansfrid FitzRuald and Henry of Oxford, now in charge of the borough (‘in cuius manu modo villa est’) were to oversee the transfer of seisin of the area to the canons. The new church, to which the clergy of the castle chapel were to remove, was never built, though Henry founded the Hospital of St John in the same area late in his reign. The charter clearly shows that detailed provision for the running of the castle had been made between Brien’s withdrawal and Henry’s own after his indecisive English campaign of 1149. And it was needed: before Henry’s withdrawal Stephen and his son began a scorched-earth policy in Wiltshire around the castles of Devizes and Marlborough, to the horror of the Gesta’s author. Understandably so, commented Edmund King: ‘Here was the king of England, in the heart of Wessex, the historic centre of the English monarchy, treating it as hostile territory, as though he were a raider in a foreign land’.47 Riulf de Seissun may have accompanied Henry back to Normandy in 1149, but he soon returned to Wallingford. His next occurrences are as witness to a charter for Oseney Abbey, and an associated charter for Eynsham, given by Wigan of Wallingford, with the assent of his brother Mainfelin, granting land at Fulbrook, in Hogshaw, Bucks., and at North Marston, in the honour of Wallingford.48 The charter was attested by the empress’ half-brother Robert FitzRoy, lord of Okehampton, Devon, by 1166, whose mother Edith had become the wife of Robert II d’Oilly. D’Oilly had held the castle of Oxford as Stephen’s constable until his imprisonment following the battle of Lincoln in 1141, when he submitted it to Matilda. Robert died 15 days before Stephen turned the tables by burning the castle in 1142 and putting it in the hands of William de Chesney.49 Wigan’s grant was for the soul of his wife Edith,   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 666.   King Stephen, p. 257. 48   The Oseney Cartulary, ed. H.E. Salter, Oxford Historical Society, 89–91, 97–8, 101 (6 vols, 1929–36), vol. 4, pp. 158–9; Eynsham Cartulary, ed. H.E. Salter, Oxford Historical Society, 49, 51 (2 vols, 1907–08), vol. 1, pp. 101–2, nos 119 and 120, a confirmation by his nephew Alan de Penros after his death. 49   Annales de Oseneia et Chronicon Thomæ Wykes, ed. H.R. Luard, Annales Monastici, Rolls Series (5 vols, London, 1864–69), vol. 4, p. 24. 46 47

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who was a daughter of Robert d’Oilly and died about 1154. The charter was attested also by Henry d’Oilly, temporarily dispossessed by his father’s reversal, William Boterel, Riulf, Walter Foliot, Henry of Oxford and his son William. Nothing is known for certain of Wigan’s background, though he was clearly one of the Bretons who surrounded Brien FitzCount. He occurs in a charter for Eynsham of c. 1153–56 as ‘nepos Brientii’.50 The term nepos is vague; it can only be conjectured that it might refer to Brien FitzCount himself. Brien was a not uncommon Breton name; the name of Mainfelin rather less so, suggesting a link with the Brito lords of Wolverton in Buckinghamshire. He briefly held the borough of (High) Wycombe under Henry II, who, after Wigan’s death before the end of November 1156, gave the church to the nuns of Godstow.51 This was a part of the honour that was still held by Robert I d’Oilly in 1086, as of his wife’s holding. The borough was apparently given a charter by Henry II; its leading men appear as free tenants of the honour in fee lists. Wigan attested a charter of Henry for Biddlesden Abbey at Leicester of mid-1153.52 Wigan’s charter for Eynsham of c. 1153–56 marks another transition. It is the last datable attestation by William Boterel, constable of Wallingford Castle. According to the History of Abingdon Abbey, William as constable had promised to protect the monks, but had instead plundered their village of Culham. He was excommunicated and remained so when he received what eventually proved a mortal wound in the fighting at Wallingford. His brother Peter had interceded for him with the abbot, even taking letters from Duke Henry, to no avail. It was Abbot Walchelin (1158–64) who finally relented when the offer of a mill at Benson was made and accepted, Peter’s charter being attested by Riulf de Seissun and Ansfrid FitzRuald.53 Peter and William were the sons of Geoffrey Boterel, a tenant of the honour of Richmond at Nettlestead in Suffolk, who appears to have died by 1154. Peter was given the demesne manor of Chalgrove of the honour of Wallingford by Henry II. He was dead by 1165, when the sheriff of Oxford accounted for the land of Peter Boterel at the East Gate of Oxford. He had returned to the service of Conan of Richmond some time before. Chalgrove was next regranted by John around 1190. William’s replacement as constable seems to have been Henry FitzGerold, who with his brother Warin (d. 1158) was one of Henry of Anjou’s closest associates. He was married to Matilda de Chesney around 1160, acquiring with her two fees of the honour in Whitchurch and Heyford, Oxon.54   Eynsham Cartulary, vol. 1, no. 119, pp. 101–2.   Pipe Roll 3 Henry II, p. 75; Book of Fees, p. 116. 52   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 104. 53   Historia Abbendonensis, vol. 2, pp. 314–17; Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, eds C.F. Slade and G. Lambrick, Oxford Historical Society, new series, 32–3 (1990–92), vol. 1, C385 p. 304. 54   Historia Abbendonensis, vol. 2, pp. 288–9; Boarstall Cartulary, p. 309. 50 51

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The Englishman Henry of Oxford, one of the burgesses of both Wallingford and Oxford who had worked with Brien FitzCount, was appointed sheriff of Berkshire by Henry after the peace treaty of 1153 and stayed in post until 1155.55 He occurs on the Pipe Rolls until 1163/4. His son John, bishop of Norwich 1175–1200, started as a chaplain to Henry and became one of his favourites. The descendants of his son William and his daughter remained associated with both borough and honour.56 Ansfrid FitzRuald was an apparent late-comer to the honour. His four charter attestations all belong to the period 1150 to January 1153, and all were given in Normandy. He was presumably in Wallingford when he was addressed as steward by Henry and Matilda.57 He died soon after he attested a Missenden charter in 1160. In contrast to Riulf and the Boterels he was given not a demesne manor of the honour, but the manor of Crowmarsh, on the opposite side of Wallingford Bridge. Such a grant makes sense after a prolonged period of war, but Henry eventually restored the manor to Walter de Bolbec who had held it under Stephen. Ansfrid’s son Alan was given the demesne manor of Aston Rowant, together with Thenford in Northants., in exchange for Crowmarsh.58 The descendants of his brother held it until the fifteenth century for half a knight’s fee, providing castle-guard for 40 days. The principal holding of the family was and remained the manor of Dodbrooke in Devon, which Ansfrid’s son Rolland held as part of five fees of the honour of Okehampton in 1166. The family comfortably kept a foot in both counties; Ansfrid’s daughter Matilda, born c. 1135, married Richard Albus or Blunt from Buckinghamshire; his son Rolland’s widow remarried to Ralph Damarrell of Devon.59 There is a possible connection to an earlier steward, Ruellant (Rolland?), who attested the earliest surviving charter of Brien FitzCount, confirming the deathbed grant to Abingdon Abbey made by Richard FitzRainfrid, father of the Hugh FitzRichard   RRAN, vol. 3, no. 13; extracts from Pipe Roll of 1 Henry II in Red Book of the Exchequer, vol. 3, pp. 657–8. 56   K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Making of Henry of Oxford’, Oxoniensia, 54 (1989): pp. 287–310. 57   Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bod. Berks. Ch. 295, is a badly damaged writ of Henry, then still in Normandy, addressed to the barons of Wallingford and probably (‘A … edo’) to Ansfrid. 58   RRAN, vol. 3, nos 71, 72, 88, 409; Pipe Roll 2–4 Henry II, pp. 34, 80; Fees, pp. 116–17. 59   For Matilda, Rotuli de Dominabus, ed. J.H. Round, Pipe Roll Society, 35 (1913), p. 44. Richard was probably the Richard Blunt whose dispute with Abingdon was resolved by Henry FitzGerold as constable and the sacrist Richard at a gathering of the barons at Wallingford Castle; Historia Abbendonensis, vol. 2, pp. 288–9; Cartularies of Abingdon, vol. 1, no. L255, pp. 173–4. Abingdon owed 33 knights’ fees to the crown, of which 30 were attached to Windsor Castle; it appears that 3 were attached to Wallingford Castle; ibid., L528, pp. 340–41. 55

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who attested many of the charters mentioned above. The confirmation dates between 6 November 1115 or 1116 and 23 February 1117 and was attested by Ruellant dapifer, Gilbert Pipard, Ralph Foliot and Hugh FitzMilo. Gilbert Pipard had been steward under Miles Crispin.60 Ruald FitzWigan’s holdings in Cornwall, decidedly peripheral to the ‘royal administrative enclave’ of the Thames Valley and central Wessex, are lost from view after his time. So is the precise means by which his son Ansfrid, present in the army beseiging Baldwin de Redvers of Plympton in Exeter in 1136, became steward of the honour of Wallingford. Connection to the household of the empress, dominated by men of the honour of Wallingford, was, as has been seen, a connection to the future Henry II, some of whose closest associates (or their fathers) are seen first attesting her charters.61 Ansfrid will have known the empress’ half-brother Reginald, earl of Cornwall, whose whereabouts in mid-1136 are not recorded, and the half-brother who eventually became lord of Okehampton. But however he became steward at Wallingford he had certainly chosen the winning side. As for Count Alan and the honour of Richmond, for the lord of Dodbrooke, the Exeter charter was the chance passing of ships in the night.

  Historia Abbendonensis, vol. 2, pp. 158–61.   Not mentioned above is Umfridus filius constabularii, who attested several charters between 1144 and the end of 1151, RRAN, vol. 3, nos 71, 111, 666, 795, after which he disappears. Perhaps he was a brother of William son of Odo constable of Great Torrington, whose castle was taken and himself imprisoned by Henry de Tracy for Stephen in 1139: GS, pp. 82–3. 60 61

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Chapter 9

John of Salisbury and Courtiers’ Trifles David Luscombe

The purpose of the Policraticus sive de nugis curialium vel vestigiis philosophorum of John of Salisbury was to enlighten and entertain in the belief that unruly misconduct at court would lead to tyranny, and also to show that philosophy provides a sure pathway to good rulership.1 John admitted that this seemed an impossible task since the interests of courtiers and of philosophers for the most part were incompatible.2 But in writing eruditely and satirically about courts and courtiers at a time when new ideals of courtly conduct were emerging, John was not alone. Walter Map, for one, followed John’s example: Map’s Courtiers’ Trifles (De nugis curialium), written mostly in the 1180s, also revelled in firing criticisms against the royal court.3 Although he was an itinerant justice and a royal clerk, Map was savage in his condemnations of its extortion and venality: the court, he wrote, ‘sends out beings whom it calls justices, sheriffs, undersheriffs and beadles, to make strict inquisition. These leave nothing untouched or untried and, beelike, sting the unoffending – yet their stomach escapes uninjured’.4 Map does not   The following abbreviations are used: Enth: Entheticus de dogmate philosophorum or Entheticus maior, ed. J. van Laarhoven, John of Salisbury’s Entheticus maior and minor. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters (3 vols, Leiden, 1987). E. min.: Entheticus in Policraticum or Entheticus minor, ed. van Laarhoven, ibid. HP: Historia Pontificalis, ed. M. Chibnall (London, 1956). Letters of JS: The Letters of John of Salisbury, 1: The Early Letters (1153–1161), ed. W.J. Millor, H.E. Butler and C.N.L. Brooke; 2: The Later Letters (1163–1180), ed. W.J. Millor and C.N.L. Brooke (Oxford, 1986 reissue of vol. 1 with corrections, 1979). P: Policraticus, ed. C.C.J. Webb, Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII (2 vols, Oxford, 1909); ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (books 1–4), Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus I–IV. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis (Turnhout, 1993). These include E. min. WJS: M. Wilks (ed.), The World of John of Salisbury. Studies in Church History, Subsidia 3 (Oxford, 1984). 2   P. vii. Prologue. 3   The opening of the work was written as ‘a sort of parody’ of John’s Enth. according to Brooke in Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ed. and trans. M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983, repr. with additional references 1994), p. xxxiii. 4   De nugis curialium, i. 10 ( James, Brooke and Mynors, p. 13). 1

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‘deny that there are many God-fearing, good and righteous men mixed up … among us here at Court, nor that there are in this vale of misery some merciful judges’, but he writes ‘of the larger and wilder portion of the band’.5 ‘I do not … say that (the court) is hell … only it is almost as much like hell as a horse’s shoe is like a mare’s’. In one respect, however, the court is milder than hell for ‘those whom it torments are able to die’.6 Such well-known quips are not untypical of the satirical writing of the time.7 John of Salisbury’s service as a clerical curialis to two archbishops of Canterbury brought him into regular contact with the work of courts.8 He began his work with Theobald in 1147. In the following year he attended the council of Reims about which he wrote in his Historia pontificalis. Here John also wrote of some of the struggles involving the English church and the king towards the end of Stephen’s reign when stability and a settlement, rather than disorder and anarchy, seemed within reach. He wrote too about the flamboyant ambitions of Henry, bishop of Winchester, who, it was said, had put paid to the temptations of the Romans to restore pagan religion by purchasing their statues. Much of John’s work for Theobald was of a legal nature, often concerning rights over churches and requiring also several trips to the papal court. This work did not cease when John went into exile in 1156 after losing the favour of King Henry II. In 1159 he completed his Policraticus as well as his Metalogicon, complaining in the introduction to the Policraticus that he had wasted almost all of 12 years in bondage to the frivolities of court life.9 He was in exile again from 1163/4 to 1170, now serving Becket and living in Reims, but still well connected for   De nugis curialium, i. 9 ( James, Brooke and Mynors, p.11).   De nugis curialium, i, 10 ( James, Brooke and Mynors, pp. 14–17); also i. 2 (ibid., p. 9) and v. 7 (ibid., p. 501). Likewise Gerald of Wales, a secular priest and chaplain of Henry II, contrasted the curia – which was hell – and the schola – which was happiness: ‘curia curarum genetrix; et schola deliciarum’, De principis instructione, preface (written in 1192), ed. G.F. Warner in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, Rolls Series, 21 (8 vols, London 1861–91), vol. 8, p. lvii. 7   For satire directed against the papal court see R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1959), pp. 159–61. For the large body of writings that attack the court service of clergy see C.S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness. Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 54–66 (‘Criticism of the Court’). A rich source of anti-clerical criticism is the ‘Goliardic’ poetry of for example Walter of Chatillon (c. 1135–c. 1179), the Carmina burana and the ‘wandering scholars’. See K. Strecker, Moralisch-satirische Gedichte Walters von Chatillon (Heidelberg, 1929); Carmina burana, ed. A. Hilka and O. Schumann (2 vols, Heidelberg, 1930–70); H. Waddell, Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth, 1927). 8   The chronology of John’s years of service has been illuminated by the edn of the Letters of JS; see esp. vol. 1, introduction and pp. 253–8; also G. Constable, ‘The Alleged Disgrace of John of Salisbury in 1159’, EHR, 69 (1954): pp. 67–76, and M. Kerner, Johannes von Salisbury und die logische Struktur seines Policraticus (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 58–88. 9   P. i, introduction (Webb, vol. 1, p. 14). 5 6

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gathering news or visiting the French royal court, and acting throughout as an adviser to many during the Becket crisis. Household courts had many functions as meeting places for lords and clergy, as chanceries, courts of justice, treasuries, military centres and barracks and places too where patronage was sought and either dispensed or refused. The Anglo-Norman royal court, during John’s period of service under Theobald, was for part of the time split between Stephen and the Empress Matilda and her son Henry, and after Henry’s accession was more often to be found across the Channel than in England. John’s knowledge of this had its limits. How well he understood or could engage with the worldly business of secular social groups or with unlearned people among the élite or the victims of a civil war largely fought while he was still a student in France is debatable. He was first and foremost a cleric, not a secular official nor a soldier nor a married man. He showed a sympathetic appreciation of secular knights when carefully selected and well trained: they should enter their profession after laying their sword on an altar in an act of religious dedication.10 But he clearly upset both King Henry II and some lay curiales at various times. All courts, in John’s eyes, were dens of corruption and folly, and his lampoons and strictures seem inexhaustible. In the light of classical and biblical examples, John criticised contemporary courtiers for their love of hunting, magic and astrology, for their entertainments and above all for their ambition and envy. Their vices had many branches; they all sprang from pride. Whatever the limitations of John’s understanding of the lives of others, he probably knew more about the behaviour of contemporary courtiers than any modern historian. But his observations and counsels, though vast, were hardly comprehensive. King Henry excepted, he does not comment on members of the royal family after the deaths of Eustace and Stephen. John regarded Stephen as an inadequate and a wicked king and his successor – at least at the start of his reign – as a brilliant one.11 But, apart from the arrest of the bishops by King Stephen, he rarely mentions contemporary political or regal acts. He makes jokes about feminine nature and scorns the aggravations of marriage, but he does so only in a single chapter in which he keeps well away from judging living couples except for one passage in which he makes fun of a wife whose pretensions to disappointment in the bedroom were vividly exposed in a court of law by a lawyer friend.12 John never comments on children at court or on their tutors. He is silent about tournaments, about   P. vi., esp. 5 and 10.   P. vi. 18. Of Eustace John remarked (P. vi. 18, Webb, vol. 2, p. 52) that dying was the best thing he ever did. 12   The otherwise unknown lawyer is Gaufridus de Heroumuilla. See P. viii. 11 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 299–300). The chapter owes much to Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum; see P. Delhaye, ‘Le Dossier antimatrimonial de l’Adversus Jovinianum et son influence sur quelques écrits latins du XIIe siècle’, Mediaeval Studies, 13 (1951): pp. 65–86; K.M. Wilson and E.M. 10 11

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chaplains and chapels, about provisioning officials such as stewards and butlers and about servants too. Unlike the Dialogue of the Exchequer or the Constitutio Domus Regis, his Policraticus is focussed upon how rightly or how wrongly business is done rather than upon what the business was, unless it involved ecclesiastical patronage. Some of the villainous types found in courts were heavily criticised in a part of John’s verse Entheticus maior written perhaps in the mid-1150s.13 Their names, taken from classical Latin writings, are puzzling.14 Hyrcanus seems to be King Stephen, ‘a public enemy with the title of king’.15 Mandrogerus is perhaps like Earl Robert of Leicester ‘who boasts that he alone preserves the crown … who, if liars are to be believed, keeps the laws intact, so that the royal honour stands firm through him’,16 and Antipater may resemble the justiciar Richard de Lucy who, with his pack, oppresses the clergy.17 Sporus, who ‘demands little gifts from all’, is a type John came across often enough.18 Earl Robert of Leicester and Richard de Lucy had served King Stephen, and in the early years of Henry’s reign they jointly handled royal finances through the exchequer, and acted also as itinerant justices with Becket and others. But in John’s eyes in the Entheticus maior, which was written for Becket, Becket, the Chancellor, stands apart from Mandrogerus and Antipater; and in Entheticus minor – the introduction in verse to the Policraticus – Becket receives fulsome praise as ‘the man who cancels the unjust laws of the realm, and who carries out the equitable commands of a pious prince’.19 But John also sounds a note of caution in the longer Entheticus that ‘the chancellor is striving in vain that the proud court should change its customs’.20 John believed that history shows that tyrants come to a miserable end.21 Recent tyrants included King Stephen and his son Eustace who had ravaged the estates of St Edmund’s church to pay for his soldiers.22 John also names as ‘public enemies’

Makowski, Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage. Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer (Albany, NY, 1990), pp. 81–7. 13   Enth., lines 1275–532. On the composition of the work see van Laarhoven’s edn, vol. 1, pp. 15–16, 47–52. 14   Cf. Kerner, Johannnes von Salisbury, pp. 161–5. 15   Enth. lines 1301–62, at line 1310. 16   Ibid., lines 1361–78 at 1363–6; also line 153. 17   Ibid., lines 1377–434. 18  Ibid., lines 1417–26. 19   E. min. lines 23–74 at 29–30. In disgrace in 1156–57, John asked Becket to persuade the king to restore him to favour, Letters of JS, vol. 1, no. 28, pp. 45–6. 20   Enth., lines 1435–62, 1475–94 at 1485–6. 21   P. viii. 21. 22   P. viii. 21 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 394–5).

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six earls:23 Geoffrey (of Mandeville), Miles (of Gloucester), Ranulf (of Chester),24 Alan (of Richmond), Simon (of Northampton) and Gilbert (de Clare). Others who came to a bad end were William of Salisbury25 and Robert Marmion who, in a struggle for control of Coventry in 1144, fell into a pit which he had himself prepared to obstruct Earl Ranulf ’s soldiers, could not get up, and was beheaded on the spot.26 Nearly all these were excommunicates, ‘being devoured by eternal death’,27 and all were targets of angry criticisms from churchmen who deplored the tyrannical excess of power wielded during Stephen’s reign by local magnates, their construction of unlicensed castles and their exaction of unjust taxes.28 The names of others, John adds, would fill a book.29 Stephen himself showed that courts, far from being safe havens, could be dangerous places, as when in 1139 he arrested Roger of Salisbury and other bishops at Oxford, and again in 1143 when he arrested Earl Geoffrey of Mandeville at St Albans and again for a third time in 1146 when he arrested Earl Ranulf of Chester at Northampton.30 John’s Policraticus, a substantial work divided into eight books, is about the behaviour of men in courts. During the Middle Ages it was widely copied and read and it is now very commonly studied as ‘an outstanding medieval treatise on politics’.31 J. Dickinson’s translation in 1927 of a selection of the ‘political’ parts of the work was followed in 1972 by the translation by J.B. Pike of ‘the part’ about the frivolities of courtiers and the remedies to be found in

  P. viii. 21 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 395).   Graeme White, in his chapter in this volume, looks at other aspects of Ranulf ’s rule than his destructiveness – the sophistication of his administration, his strategic sense of what he should seek to control, and his ‘outstanding record as a religious benefactor’ (p. 124). 25   P. viii. 21 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 396). 26   P. viii. 21 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 396). 27   So Henry of Huntingdon on Geoffrey in Historia anglorum, x. 22, in HH, pp. 744–5. 28   For the ‘arbitrary power’ so much in evidence during Stephen’s reign E. King remarked (in ‘The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign’. TRHS, 5th series, 34 (1984): pp. 133–53 at 135) that ‘contemporaries had a vocabulary ready to hand. It was tyranny’. 29   P. viii. 21 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 396). In a letter written for Archbishop Theobald John names William of Ypres (c. 1156/7) as a ‘notorious tyrant and most grievous persecutor of our church’, Letters of JS, vol. 1, no. 23, p. 37. 30   Cf. E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 334–5. 31   John Dickinson, introduction to his translation of parts of P. under the title The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury (New York, 1925; reprinted several times), p. xi. In a subtitle Dickinson indicated that his translation presented the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books, and Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books, and he explained (p. xii) that ‘the political thought of the Policraticus is loosely embedded in a general discussion of manners and philosophy in such a way that it has proved easy to separate and present here in their entirety all the directly political sections’. 23 24

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the teachings of philosophy.32 In a Foreword to Pike’s translation, Dickinson described the portions which deal with the frivolities of courtiers as being ‘distinctly disappointing’, the vices and follies of courts which John exposes being ‘singularly devoid of contemporary flavour’ (p. vi), while the chapters on philosophy, although they show ‘sober good sense’, are ‘pedestrian’ (p. vii).33 C. Uhlig, in his study of Hofkritik im England, reached a not dissimilar conclusion: John’s many quotations from the Roman playwright Terence suggest that he was not in touch with his own time and that his criticisms of courtiers were not based on an understanding of how courts actually worked.34 Likewise, E. Turk, in his Nugae curialium, found that John failed to understand the positive benefits for royal administration of stressful competition among curiales for power and wealth.35 Such judgements have not been universally accepted. C.J. Nederman, for example, thought that John ‘studied the wisdom of the ancients as a key to unlock solutions to the political and intellectual controversies which engulfed the twelfth century’.36 Nor would it have been difficult for literate courtiers such as Becket to understand the lessons conveyed by literary examples. Max Kerner, in Johannes von Salisbury, also swept away the view that John’s Policraticus is disorganised. For all its digressions and the manner of its composition, it has a logical structure, books 1–3 being on courtiers’ trifles, 4–6 on rulership and the body politic, and 7–8 on the philosophical life.37 Books 4–6 are the more ‘political’ books, being largely concerned with the prince, law, judges and the armed services. But with numerous examples taken from the classical and the biblical past of advice given to proconsuls and magistrates, and with the appearance in the res publica of a senate and provincial governors, 32   Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers Being a Translation of the First, Second, and Third Books and Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policraticus of John of Salisbury (New York, 1972), p. ix. 33   More recently C.J. Nederman has published a translation of selected chapters of P., John of Salisbury, Policraticus (Cambridge, 1990). They are taken from all books except book 2. Nederman writes that, although the work ‘is commonly acclaimed as the first extended work of political theory written during the Latin Middle Ages’, it is ‘equally a work of moral theology, satire, speculative philosophy, legal procedure, self-consolation, biblical commentary and deeply personal meditation’ (p. xv). 34   C. Uhlig, Hofkritik im England des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Studien zu einem Gemeinplatz der europäischen Moralistik (Berlin, 1973), pp. 27–54. 35   Nugae curialium: Le règne d’Henri II Plantagenêt (1154–1189) et l’éthique politique (Geneva, 1977). 36   ‘The Changing Face of Tyranny: The Reign of King Stephen in John of Salisbury’s Political Thought’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 33 (1989): pp. 1–20 at 1. 37   P. began life as a work of philosophy written perhaps between late 1156 and the summer of 1157 while John was in disgrace with the king and in search of consolation; this appears now in P. vii, Prologue and chapters 1–16 and 25, and viii, Prologue and chapters 1–14, 24 and part of 25. The writing of other chapters and books followed.

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these books have no more ‘contemporary flavour’ and rest no less on the classic satirists and on philosophy and the Bible than the supposedly less ‘political’ and more frivolous parts of the work translated by Pike.38 As for the charge that John was unable to focus his criticisms of courtly life except by reaching back to ancient writers who provided examples of conduct and teaching found in a distant past, we should reflect that to John and other medieval writers the past was not a foreign country. As Beryl Smalley once remarked, a medieval writer saw continuity in institutions where we see change: ‘a writer learned in the Latin classics tended to make medieval rulers talk and behave like the Caesars’, and likewise ‘Roman emperors are made to talk and behave like medieval rulers’. If John could find a suitable exemplum in the classics, and many hundreds were so found, anachronism did not matter for ‘the past resembled the present’.39 It is Stephen Jaeger’s view that the writers, including John, who attacked and satirised the royal court of Henry II did so in ‘response to social realities’.40 However, such writers did not necessarily understand these realities well; ideals and an ethic of worldly service were not settled but were in formation both among noble and knightly courtiers and among courtier clerics. Nonetheless, as Jaeger wrote, ‘writers do not polemicize against literary fictions or conventional ideal schemata, but against social realities perceived as wrongs’.41 These writers were disillusioned men who had left the royal court or been forced out of it, and ‘disgruntled failures castigating the lowest abuses and the worst men’ are ‘highly suspect as witnesses to the realities of court life’.42 Manifestly John tried to counter what he called nugae and which embraced frivolous, immoral and nonsensical speech and activity. So did Peter of Blois who, like John, served two successive (but later) archbishops of Canterbury – Richard and Baldwin – and who, again like John, wrote many of their letters. Peter changed his mind, however, when in Letter 150 he retracted his criticism   For proconsuls whom John likens to itinerant justices, Robert, earl of Leicester, being an example, see P. v. 15, (Webb, vol. 1, p. 345): ‘proconsules, quos nostrates uulgariter dicunt iustititias esse errantes’, and vi. 25 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 74): ‘illustris comes Legecestriae Rodbertus modeste proconsulatum gerens apud Britannias’; also ibid., vi. 1 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 6). For magistrates see P. iv. 7, v. 11 and 16 (Webb, vol. 1, pp. 261, 331, 333, 352). For the senate – the heart of the res publica – ibid., v. 9 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 318). For provincial governors (‘praesidibus prouinciarum’), ibid., v. 11 (Webb, vol.1, p. 330); also ibid., i. 4 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 31). For contemporary use of the title consul see the chapters in this volume by K. Thompson, n. 51, and by G. White, n. 18. 39   Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974), p. 63. As the various Dictionaries of Medieval Latin show, it was not exceptional for medieval officials to be given classical titles such as those mentioned in the previous note. 40   The Origins of Courtliness, p. 55. 41  Ibid. 42   The Origins of Courtliness, p. 66. 38

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that life at the royal court meant death to the soul and admitted that courtiers can do much good for king and country.43 John did not turn in this way; the Becket conflict lay ahead of him. But in the circumstances of 1159, when the Policraticus appeared, John could at least entertain. He had found the time in Canterbury’s wonderful libraries to feast upon and copy voluminous excerpts from the books stocked there.44 John never shirked the heavy burden of official business. But he knew how to relax and remain cheerful by collecting masses of classical and biblical tales which, when suitably arranged, were as destructive as they were instructive. John’s choice of the title Policraticus was an after-thought. His work was not written schematically or systematically under this heading, but rather as a series of flowing streams of moralising tales and rhetorical examples contrasting courtly and philosophical ways of life.45 Statesman is not a good translation of Policraticus which is a made-up, somewhat vague poly-word of a not uncommon sort meaning ‘multi-ruler’ or ‘lord of many’, not the ruler of a polis or city.46 A similar, well-known example is the title of the Polychronica of Ranulf Higden of Chester, so-called because this is a world-history that deals with a plurality of historical periods.47 John’s title likewise has a generalising, omnium gatherum, purpose, suggestive of not only rulership in a public and political sense, but of the discipline also of personal self-rule, with the support of philosophical understanding in resisting many kinds of distraction which upset the functioning of a res publica. So it was with the often serious consequences of trivial pursuits in mind that John sketched the amusements and pastimes of courtiers. Their entertainers included actors, jesters, mimics, jumping priests, wrestlers, jugglers and dancers. All of these give pleasure but when they go beyond reasonable entertainment they often become indecent and obscene.48 Gambling is more problematic: it  In Letter 14 Peter of Blois (c. 1130–1212) regretted his ambitions, wishing to break his connection with the royal court of Henry II and urging his colleagues to do likewise (PL, vol. 207, 42–51); in Letter 150 (PL, vol. 207, 439–42) Peter replied to the courtiers who objected to his attacks on them. See on this Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, pp. 83–5; also pp. 58–60; Uhlig, Hofkritik, pp. 99ff ; J.D. Cotts, The Clerical Dilemma. Peter of Blois and Literate Culture in the Twelfth Century (Washington, DC, 2009). 44   See J. Martin, ‘John of Salisbury as Classical Scholar’, in WJS, pp. 179–201. 45  Kerner, Johannes von Salisbury, pp. 101–7, 119. 46   See P. von Moos, Geschichte als Topik. Das rhetorische Exemplum von der Antike zur Neuzeit und die historiae im ‘Policraticus’ Johanns von Salisbury (Hildesheim, 1988), Exkurz I, pp. 556–82. Sometimes the title Polycraticus or Polycraticon is found. 47   Von Moos, Geschichte als Topik, p. 564. 48   P. i. 8; viii. 12. Holy communion is forbidden to actors and mimics. In Letter 260 (written c. 1168) John compliments Henry, bishop of Winchester, on not wasting his wealth ‘as do wastrels of this world on actors and mimes and human aberrations of this kind’, Letters of JS, 43

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can be a way of finding relief from stressful responsibilities, but it is also the mother of liars and perjury, can lead to squandering of possessions and ruin, and to lust for those of others, and on to theft and rapine.49 Likewise, music, a liberal art, is praiseworthy when it brings harmony to the soul and is turned to the praise of God; but music can also corrupt, stir lascivious emotions and tone down the manly voice into dulcet strains. John pokes fun at the effeminate dalliance of wanton singers who abandon reasonable limits with excessively caressing melodies, carrying the air, dying away, rising again with a flexibility of tone which no nightingale can rival – and no parrot.50 John draws attention to a venerable English contemporary – Gilbert of Sempringham – who had 700 nuns under his care but wisely cut out melodious chanting of the canticles as it encourages voluptuousness.51 Pastimes such as banqueting and drinking are seen by John in the light of the personal risks they bring to the practise of moderation as well as of the public risks they may bring to good government: gluttonous stories include the fall of Hannibal following the enjoyment by him and his army of lavish feasts and flowing wine provided by the Capuans. Whole empires, such as that of Xerxes, fell through self-indulgence.52 Sumptuary laws are commended, for sobriety is necessary at banquets since lust springs from satiety, and disasters from lust.53 Hunting John says he will illustrate not with ‘a formal treatise’ but by ‘deriving a little amusement at the expense of the frivolities of courtiers’.54 In the Old Testament not one patriarch, general, judge, king or prophet was a hunter; likewise, not one philosopher and no saint.55 But the tyrant Nimrod, ‘a stout hunter before vol. 2, p. 527. For perceptive criticism of widespread negative clerical attitudes to entertainers before Thomas Aquinas see C. Casagrande and S. Vecchio, ‘Clercs et jongleurs dans la société médiévale (XIIe et XIIIe siècles)’, Annales, ESC, 34 (1979): pp. 913–28; they cite, among other sources which include P. i, penitential and canon law texts and papal decretals. 49   P. i. 5. 50   P. i. 5–7. 51   P. i. 6 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 43). Cf. R. Graham, S. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (London, 1903), p. 74, and Gilbert of Sempringham, Rule, ed. W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (6 vols in 8, reissued London, 1846), vol. 6, pt. 2, p. xlii. 52   P. viii. 6; cf. P. viii. 7–9. 53   P. viii. 10. 54   P. i. 3–4; ‘non uenaticam tradere sed de curialium nugis nugari propositum est’, P. i. 4 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 33; Keats-Rohan, p. 42, ll. 381–2, after transposition; trans. Pike, p. 24). Cf. Kerner, Johannes von Salisbury, pp. 165–70. 55   Cf. Ps. 90 (91): 3 (‘he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunters’) and PseudoJerome, Breviarium in Psalmos, Ps. XC: ‘Multi sunt venatores in isto mundo, qui animam nostram venari conantur’ – examples of such hunters being Nimrod and Esau; no holy hunter is to be found in Scripture (PL, vol. 26, 1097AB). Cf. also P. Buc, L’ambiguité du livre. Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires du Bible au Moyen Age (Paris, 1994), pp. 112–22.

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the Lord’,56 wallowed in the blood of beasts. Kings who hunt face punishment by God: there are many examples near to hand that John says he could but will not cite.57 Walter Map was not alone in seeing King William Rufus’ death while hunting as punishment for taking the New Forest along with its churches away from God and men to devote it to sport with hounds.58 To hunt for food, John wrote, is not wrong but it should be pursued on public, common land and not restricted to the royal court for its pleasure while farmers are kept out of their fields, frequently under pain of confiscation of their goods or loss of life or limb. Those engaged in public service, John thought, have no business to be hunting since hunting is a rural task, and forbidden to those in holy orders59 as well as to the holders of high judicial office. John regrets that statesmen in his day do not prioritise serious affairs of state over their diversions. As it is, John adds, public servants are now recruited from hunters who merely dabble in affairs of state.60 John’s objections to hunting as the sport of kings and courtiers that infringed the dignity of lesser rural folk were strongly shared by many contemporaries, clerics and non-clerics alike: according to the Magna Vita of Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, the ‘tyranny of the (king’s) foresters’ is ‘the worst abuse in the kingdom of England, under which the countryfolk groaned’.61   Genesis 10: 9.   P. i. 4 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 30). John mentions the death while hunting of King William Rufus in his Vita Anselmi, cap. 11–12 (PL, vol. 199, 1009–40 at 1030B–31B). 58   De nugis curialium, v. 6 ( James, Brooke and Mynors, pp. 465–9 and 464, n. 1). For reviews of the evidence of Rufus’s death see F. Barlow, Willliam Rufus (London, 1990), pp. 408–37 and S.N. Vaughn, Archbishop Anselm 1093–1109 (Farnham, 2012), pp. 114–24. The accidental shooting of Miles, earl of Hereford, while hunting in 1143 was explained in GS, 80, p. 161, as a just punishment for his oppression of churches. 59   Cf. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, VI, 288–9 (PL, vol. 161, 505AB); Gratian, Decretum, D. 34, c. 2–3, ed. E. Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici (2 vols, Leipzig, 1879–82), vol. 1: Decretum magistri Gratiani, p. 126. 60   P. i. 4 (Webb, 1, pp. 31–5). Cf. also the Chronica of Ralph Niger (1140/6–c. 1199), ed. R. Anstruther, Radulphi Nigri Chronica: The Chronicles of Ralph Niger (London, 1851; repr. New York, 1967), p. 167. 61   Adam of Eynsham, The Life of St Hugh of Lincoln (Magna vita sancti Hugonis), ed. D.L. Douie and D.H. Farmer (2 vols, London, 1961–62; repr. with corrections Oxford, 1985) iii. 9 (vol. 1, p. 114). The Life, iv. 6 (Douie and Farmer, vol. 2, pp. 27–8), also tells of the murder and dismemberment of one cruel forester by men whom, for being in the forest, he was about to punish in his usual barbarous way. Hugh himself got into trouble for not informing the king that he had excommunicated a royal chief forester for his behaviour; the forester had also been publicly flogged, Life, iii. 9 (Douie and Farmer, vol. 1, p. 119). Walter Map tells a story of Hugh standing up to royal foresters who oppress the poor: ‘Who are you?’ asked Hugh. ‘We are the keepers’, they replied. Said he to them: ‘Keepers keep out (Forestarii foris stent)’, De nugis curialium i. 9 ( James, Brooke and Mynors, p. 11). The Constitutions of Clarendon forbade the excommunication of demesne officials without the king’s knowledge; 56 57

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Although John’s criticisms of courtly entertainments are taken from classical and biblical sources, none of them can be dismissed as lacking a contemporary foundation. In the second book of the Policraticus John considers the ingenuity and passion with which attempts are made to divine the future. In a short prologue, after commending Becket for his wise and philosophical outlook towards the frivolities of others, John writes that Thomas has ordered him to reveal the frivolities of astrologers (coniectores mathematicos) and others. This requires courage but John feels safe, knowing that he has Thomas’ protection! At times he counters Becket’s views directly; he mentions some of them in his correspondence also. Before engaging with Becket, John roundly dismisses omens as meaningless superstition, although many contemporaries think otherwise.62 He then tries to find a middle ground between reluctance to see in natural history any sure signs of the influence of supernatural power63 and facile foreknowledge which is the result of ‘the irresponsible fancies of astrologers’.64 In a lengthy account, taken from Eusebius, of the siege and final destruction of Jerusalem, foreshadowed by celestial and other signs, John finds evidence that ‘many divine warnings thundered on ears that in general were deaf to them’.65 The account may reflect Becket’s much criticised engagement with the siege of Toulouse in the summer of 1159 while John was writing, but there seems to be no firm evidence for this.66 John shows himself open to discussion of the meaning of one of the Prophecies of Merlin which Geoffrey of Monmouth popularised in his History of the Kings of Britain, finished around 1136. In a letter to Becket in July 1166, following a visit by John to the French king’s court, John wrote: ‘it is said that the time is at hand when the eagle of the broken covenant, according to Merlin’s prophecy, shall gild the bridle, which is being given to his boar or being see W. Stubbs, Select Charters (9th edn, Oxford, 1913), p. 165. Peter of Blois complained to King Henry II about the venality of royal officials, including justices and foresters, in Letter 95 (PL, vol. 207, 297C–302D); cf. also Letter 14 (42C–51C). For further criticism of the forest laws see Nigel de Longchamp (Nigel Wireker), Speculum stultorum, written c. 1180, ed. J.H. Mozley and R.R. Raymo (Berkeley, 1960); trans. G.W. Regenos, The Book of Daun Burnel the Ass (Austin, 1959). Especially valuable is J.A. Green’s study of ‘Forest Laws in England and Normandy in the Twelfth Century’, Historical Research, 86 (2013): pp. 416–31. 62   On omens see P. ii. 1 and i. 13. 63   P. ii. 2. 64   ‘licentiori uanitate mathematicorum’, P. ii. 3 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 70). 65   P. ii. 4–10 at P. ii. 7 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 82). 66   The suggestion was made by L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vols, New York, 1923–58), vol. 2 (1923), p. 160. For John’s criticisms of Becket’s exactions from the church to pay for the Toulouse campaign of 1159 see his Letter 168 ( June 1166; Letters of JS, vol. 2, pp. 104–7) where John writes that Thomas, in persecuting the church like Saul, followed the dictates of necessity, not of greed, but the moneys extorted were wasted by being thrown into a bag with holes.

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forged now in the Breton peninsula’. The oracle was held to illustrate the siege of Fougères by King Henry II and its defence (still at this point successful) by Ralph of Fougères with French support.67 John’s hope was for peace and his sympathies were with the French, not with Henry who seems to be ‘the wild boar … who wastes and tramples on the Lord’s vineyard’ (Psalm 79: 14–15 (80: 13–14)) and who should ‘be tamed and harnessed’, or ‘so I interpret the prophecy, looking to the eagle to drive him on and so gild these disadvantages’. But, John adds, Becket’s clerk Alexander, ‘Merlin’s kin and a wiser interpreter of his oracles’ may think otherwise.68 But on a later occasion (in late 1169), dismissing the claim made by Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, that London, not Canterbury, is a metropolitan see, a claim that Gilbert based in part on Merlin as related by Geoffrey, John swept Merlin aside as having no authority.69 Other forms of divination include magic in its various forms and astrology. These are more serious as they ‘derive from unholy commerce between men and demons’.70 Policraticus ii. 27 begins with a question for Becket ‘which I put in all 67   Cf. J.A. Everard, Brittany and the Angevins. Province and Empire, 1158–1203 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 42. 68   Letter 173 (Letters of JS, vol. 2, pp. 134–7; Letter 99 in The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. Duggan (2 vols, Oxford, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 452–5; and see Letter 45 from Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, to Becket at pp. 200–201). Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. M.D. Reeve, trans. N. Wright (Woodbridge, 2007), The Prophecies 114, p. 148. Geoffrey’s History and the Prophecies attracted fans as well as detractors; see A. Putter, ‘Gerald of Wales and Merlin’, ANS, 31 (2008): pp. 90–103; C.S. Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 144–53; R.W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 3. History as Prophecy’, TRHS, 5th series, 22 (1972): pp. 159–80 at 168–9; L.A. Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 49–56. 69   Letter 292 to Christ Church, Canterbury (Letters of JS, vol. 2, pp. 666–9). For Merlin’s references to London as an archbishopric, along with York and Caerleon, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, iv. 72, vi. 92, Prophecies 112 (Reeve and Wright, pp. 88–9, 114–15, 144–5). On Gilbert’s claim – which is ‘certainly not to be dismissed as frivolous, simply because it failed’ ‒ see A. Morey and C.N.L. Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 149–62 at 159. 70   P. i. 9 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 49). In P. i. 11–12 John introduces the different types of magician, including, among others, enchanters, soothsayers, prophets, dream interpreters, palmists, crystal-seers and astrologers. Some of these are more fully discussed in P. ii. 15–17 (dream interpretation), 18–19 (astrology), 27 (necromancy and soothsaying, palmists, and prophets), 28 (crystal seers). The account of the magi draws upon Isidore’s Etymologies viii. 9. On magic in courtly culture see R. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 95–115; according to Kieckhefer, pp. 90–94, very little is known about magic as entertainment through illusion before an audience before the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Necromancy was, according to John, practised in secrecy; cf. Watkins, History

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seriousness’:71 why did soothsayers, when consulted, recommend to Becket that the army should advance against the Welsh and Owain Gwynedd in Snowdonia? What did they divulge? And what did the palmist say when consulted? In July or August 1157 Becket was in Chester with the troops and the king.72 Within a few days he lost his brother-in-law, his ‘morning star’, unexpectedly in action. What Becket’s answer might be we do not know, but John states that soothsayers, palmists, wizards and suchlike all lack reason and some of their activities must be exposed – ‘cursorily’ John adds, although this chapter becomes one of the longest in his entire work. John writes in detail of the dethronement of Saul and of the role in this of a false prophet:73 Saul, changing from prince to tyrant, deprived of his throne by God, and increasingly envious of David, sought by night a woman with a divining spirit with a view to discussing ‘such matters as the death of kings, the destruction of a people, and the public woe’. At Saul’s request the sorceress brought up an apparition of what Saul thought to be Samuel who then prophesied that Israel would be defeated by the Philistines, but that on the next day Saul and his sons would be with the Lord. This seeming promise of repose after death was specious and ambiguous: the prediction, made by an angel of Satan, was that Saul would descend into hell. But believing otherwise, and following Israel’s defeat at the hands of the Philistines on Mount Gilboa, Saul fell upon his sword and took his life. The parallel with the recent tragedy in north Wales is unmistakable. Yet John’s strong warning did not stop Becket from studying auguries, for many years later John had another occasion to advise Thomas firmly on the folly of seeking prophecies not inspired by the Holy Spirit. Following the failure at Montmirail in January 1169 to procure peace between Becket and Henry, Henry went ahead with having his son crowned. John thereupon wrote to Becket to tell him what he thought of the consequences of his unwise delay in prohibiting the archbishop of York from performing the coronation: You cannot say that you were not told in advance the outcome in these cases: but rather that, as happens to all those who study the auguries, prophecies not inspired by the Holy Ghost deceived your wits … we presumed to search out the secrets of the human heart, which God alone can judge, according to the empty fantasies of another man’s mind … God’s Wisdom alone knows the counsels and thoughts of men just as they are, and not by the conjecture of vain fantasies. From and the Supernatural, pp. 160–63. See also E. Peters, The Magician, the Witch and the Law (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 46–53 (on John and Walter Map) and 53–7 (on Gervase of Tilbury). 71   ‘Vnum tamen est quod a te, si me patienter audias, attentissime quaero’, P. ii. 27 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 143). 72   R.W. Eyton, Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II (London, 1878), p. 29. 73   Cf. 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 28 and 31.

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now on let us renounce prophecies since on this account misfortunes have fallen on us the more heavily.74

Becket is again at the centre of John’s critique when he turns to astrology. John opposed astrological divination, seeing it as astronomy taken beyond the bounds of reason and moderation. Astrologers start with truth based on the firm foundation of created nature and sound reason but then become deluded. If stars have control over events, free will is destroyed. The signs God sends in the heavens to guide men are only those under God’s control.75 At the heart of John’s attack on superstitious astrology is his concern with the relationship between free will, fate and foreknowledge, and especially with the threat, posed by astrological determinism, that things can happen without God’s knowledge or against God’s disposition.76 John explores this at length in the guise of a one-sided disputation with Becket and others, unnamed, who seem to form a committed and unyielding group.77 John recognises that great events are sometimes preceded by warning signs, but denies that astrology provides an art which has the power to predict or shape their future course.78 The most spirited attacks John makes in the Policraticus on courtly culture concern flattery, bribery, envy and ambition – practices and attitudes that are interwoven.79 Flattery at court is a favourite target in book 3, the flatterer being   Letter 301 ( June–July, 1170; Letters of JS, vol. 2, pp. 709–11). Cf. Becket, Letters 284–6 to Archbishop Roger of York and the English bishops (March–May, 1170), forbidding him from crowning the king’s son, in The Correspondence of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 1162–1170, ed. and trans. A. Duggan (2 vols, Oxford, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 1214–25. 75   P. ii. 18–19. 76   P. ii. 20–24. 77   ‘Quod si tibi persuadere non possum, obstantibus his quae michi de providentia et fato indesinenter opponis, michique repugnantibus exemplis quae de uariis affers historiis, persuasi tamen michi huic non acquiescere uanitati … Cur ita crediderim, nisi te curialium nugae detinent, audi’, P. ii. 25 (Webb, vol. 1, p.136). 78   P. ii. 25–6. John’s critique of superstitious astrology (which has some similarities with that of Peter Abelard in his Expositio in Hexameron, 192–208, ed. M. Romig and D. Luscombe, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 15 (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 47–51; PL, vol. 178, 754–56) is shaped by the attacks made by Augustine of Hippo. See M.-T. d’Alverny, ‘Abélard et l’astrologie’, in Pierre Abélard-Pierre le Vénérable, ed. R. Louis and J. Jolivet (Paris, 1975), pp. 611–30, and d’Alverny, ‘Astrologues et théologiens au XIIe siècle’, in Mélanges offerts a M.-D. Chenu, ed. A. Duval (Paris, 1967), pp. 31–50. 79  In E. also lines 1683–1752 characterise bad types represented largely in Latin comedies and including people who are avaricious, jealous, flattering, intriguing, slanderous and boastful. In Architrenius (The Archweeper, written by 1184–85), John of Hauville, a teacher at the cathedral school at Rouen, narrates a journey made by the Archweeper who was shocked by the scandals he found; many coincide with those exposed by John of Salisbury, including avarice in the courts of bishops and of Henry II, ambition leading to war, and the 74

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represented by Gnatho, the parasite in Terence’s comedy The Eunuch. The Prologue to the book presents an outburst of blazing wrath against enemies of the public weal ( publicae salutis hostes), flatterers especially. All flattery is accompanied by deception and fraud, and John asks why flatterers should not be ejected from the body of the faithful.80 A string of (sometimes racy) ancient examples is rolled out of favours gained by unnatural practices as well as of virtuous figures who ignored or laughed at adulation.81 John entertains expansively and his drift is clear: the past gives countless lessons ‘but the present state of affairs makes plain that the flattering faction has gained control’.82 In Policraticus v. 10, 11 and 16, John denounces bribery and extortion and indeed suggests that, to prevent corruption, officials at court should be paid from public sources.83 Becket himself was severely criticised by Gilbert Foliot for paying ‘many thousands of marks’ to obtain the chancellorship.84 John makes no obvious reference to that but he rebuked judges and provincial governors for their unscrupulous avarice: ‘… to sell justice is … iniquity; to sell injustice is … insanity’.85 He made similar comments about sheriffs and itinerant justices (‘rightly called errant’) who love gifts, and about deacons and archdeacons.86 feasting, drunkenness, lechery, lying and flattery that are all found in courts, ed. and trans. W. Wetherbee, Johannes de Hauvilla, Architrenius (Cambridge, 1994). 80   P. iii. 5. In 1155 Arnulf of Lisieux, justiciar in Normandy, wrote to Thomas Becket to complain of the flatterers whom he had introduced into the court: in the ‘sweet songs of the flatterers’ ‘everything becomes twisted’ through ‘deceitful flattery’. Ambitio leads to invidia and invidia leads to odium, Letter 10, ed. F. Barlow, The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux Camden Soc., 3rd series, 61 (London, 1939), pp. 13–14; trans. C.P. Schriber, The Letter Collections of Arnulf of Lisieux (New York, 1997), p. 190. 81   P. iii. 10. 82   ‘Factio tamen adulatorum praeualuit, quod et praesentium rerum declarat status’, P. iii. 14 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 223). Only occasionally, when faced by a tyrant, is it lawful to flatter a tyrant, P. iii. 15. 83   ‘Refert itaque potestatis istorum cohibere malitiam et eisdem de publico prouidere ut omnis grassandi occasio subtrahatur’, P. v. 10 (Webb, 1, p. 328). 84   Letter 170, in The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, eds A. Morey and C.N.L. Brooke (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 229–43 at p. 230. Of this Morey and Brooke wrote (Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, p. 171n.) that ‘it may well have been normal for the king to extract large sums from a new chancellor’. 85   P. v. 11 (Webb, 1, pp. 331, 332). 86   P. v. 16 (Webb, 1, pp. 352–4). Cf. Peter of Blois to Henry II: ‘Ipsos enim iustitiarios quos uulgariter errantes uel itinerantes dicimus, dum errata hominum diligenter explorant, frequenter errare contingit’, Letter 95 (PL, vol. 107, 398). In Letter 140 to Nicholas de Sigillo, formerly a royal clerk and now archdeacon of Huntingdon, John wrote, probably in 1164–65 and not without a touch of irony, that he is encouraged that, thanks to God and the good advice of his bishop (Robert de Chesney, bishop of Lincoln), Nicholas no longer has such a ‘baleful view’ of the greed of archdeacons ‘who may justly rejoice to be acquitted’, Letters of

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John has no objection to officials receiving gifts provided that they do not extort them or give dishonest judgements in favour of unjust donors.87 Unchecked by governors, proconsuls or the prince, farms are put up for sale, wards are defrauded and people are stripped of their possessions or sent into exile.88 John’s stories indicate disorder and abuse, and in a broad sense they reflect the vacuum and the conflicts that had been created by the weakening of royal rights under Stephen.89 The record of disputes over tenures and taxation, as well as the periodic removal of unsatisfactory sheriffs from their offices, also seem to give some substance to John’s complaints.90 The celebrated mid-twelfth-century dispute over the Essex lands of Richard of Anesty sheds light on bribes and legal costs. John outlined the Anesty case in Letter 131 (c. October–November 1160) and here sharply criticised the corruption of both Geoffrey, archdeacon of London, who accepted a bribe and the bishop of Winchester, who was said to have done the same.91 The account Richard left of his expenses shows the gifts he made and his payments to advocates to check that the writs he obtained were according to law or needed correction. But even after correction sealing was refused on occasions, leading to the issue of new writs and a repetition of the JS, vol. 2, pp. 24–5. Also Letter 107 from Archbishop Theobald to (perhaps) the archdeacon of Chester in 1159–61 to put a stop to charging clergy for the purchase of chrism, Letters of JS, vol. 1, pp. 169–71. And Letter 118 to Bartholomew, archdeacon of Exeter, in 1160–61: ‘deans and archdeacons may think the spoliation of a poor man to be good sport – and well they may! For the misery of others brings joy to those … human monsters’, Letters of JS, vol. 1, pp. 193–5 at 193. For papal legates and soldiers cf. P. vi. 1. 87  Cf. P. v.15 (Webb, vol. 1, pp. 145–6) for proconsuls and other magistrates with references to the Digest on gifts. For churchmen, including Pope Eugenius, Cardinal Bernard and Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, who set good examples by not accepting gifts when matters were awaiting judgement see ibid. (pp. 146–7); but these examples are said to be ‘extremely rare even among the clergy in this day’, in spite of the penalties set out in the Digest: P. v. 16 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 148). 88   P. vi. 1. J. Lally, ‘Secular Patronage at the Court of King Henry II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 49 (1976): pp. 159–84 at 163–7, found that the administration of wardships and marriages by royal custodians was ‘wide open’ to abuse. 89  Cf. P. v. 10 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 328): ‘ex negligentia praesidentium saepissime prouenit excessus subditorum’. 90   Cf. G.J. White, Restoration and Reform 1153–1165. Recovery from the Civil War in England (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 91–8, 155–7. According to Gerald of Wales, Speculum ecclesiae, ed. J.S. Brewer in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol. 4, p. 244, Ranulf de Glanville found widespread malpractice in monastic institutions, white monks being particularly covetous to the point of forging charters and seals and inventing landmarks. 91   Letters of JS, vol. 1, pp. 227–37 at pp. 231–3. See P.M. Barnes, ‘The Anstey Case’, in A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, Pipe Roll Society, 74, new series, 36 (1960), pp. 1–24.

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entire, expensive process.92 In Policraticus v. 10 John wittily sketched this kind of situation: the more famous and powerful a court, he wrote, the more it is infested with the scourges of mankind. There is Cossus: lucky the suitor who can pay his respects to Cossus without finding that Cossus rejects his passport and demands payment to prepare new documents which he then deliberately makes faulty. Once clear of Cossus, there is Vegento to be faced: Vegento finds faults of style and transcription, judges the scribe or notary ignorant of law and procedure and to make corrections requires more payments. Does John go too far? The highly trained and precise clerks who drafted so well for the king might think so; at least, they would not accept faults of transcription.93 On the other hand, as J. Lally once wrote, ‘those who sought admission to the presence of Henry II to obtain his favour, no less than those who went to Rome to seek papal support, had first to run the gauntlet of a small army of ushers, doorkeepers, and other royal officials’.94 And courtiers could be pitiless. John’s sketches are mirrored well in the famous appraisal made by Henry of Huntingdon (d. c. 1153), of Simon, the son of Robert Bloet who had been Rufus’ chancellor. Brought up in the royal household, Simon was a model curialis: ‘quick-witted, a good speaker, physically handsome, radiant with charm, possessing mature discretion despite his youth, but tainted with the sin of pride. From pride grew envy, from envy hatred, from hatred slanders, strife, and accusations. Simon made an accurate prediction about himself when he said, “I pass among courtiers like salt among live eels”. For as salt tortures eels, so with his accusations he tormented all those who attended the king’. But, Henry continues, ‘just as salt is ruined by the eels’ moisture, so he was destroyed by the whispering of all’, and was disgraced.95 The follies of courtiers destroy even the virtuous, like the fountain of Salmacis, sweet to taste and agreeable to every sense, which perverted all who entered.96 The original sin of courtiers, the one which leads to calumnies and hypocrisy, is envy.97   English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, 2. Henry II and Richard I (nos 347– 665), ed. R.C. van Caenegem. Selden Society, 107 (1991), no. 408, document E, pp. 397–404. 93   Cf. H.A. Cronne, The Reign of Stephen, 1135–54: Anarchy in England (London, 1970), pp. 206–20. 94   ‘Secular Patronage at the Court of King Henry II’, p. 174. 95   HH, viii: Letter to Archdeacon Walter, De contemptu mundi (Greenway, pp. 596–7). Jaeger (The Origins of Courtliness, p. 101, n. 3) cites this letter on account of the qualities of a good courtier listed by Henry, but the point of Henry’s story is that power also corrupts. For the downward spiral from superbia or ambitio to invidia and then odium, cf. n. 79 above. 96  Ovid, Metamorphoses iv. 285–388. Cf. P. v. 10 (Webb, vol. 1, p. 329). 97   P. iii. 3–4, vi. 30, vii. 24. According to the Walden chronicle it was the envy of a clique following a meeting of the royal court at St Albans that prompted the arrest of Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1143 (The Book of the Foundation of Walden Monastery, ed. D. Greenway and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 1999), pp. 14–15. 92

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The need for moderation in all activity, private or public, however entertaining or distracting the activity might be, is always present if harm is not to follow.98 This is clearly seen in John’s discussion of ambition. To John anyone whose ambition is immoderate is a tyrant. A tyrant need not be a ruler over a people and may even be in the meanest station in life. Indeed, the man who is wholly untainted by tyranny is rare or non-existent, for common vices such as avarice and pride fuel tyranny. A tyrant may be a private person or a churchman deviously plotting a course that might lead to the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment.99 John explores brilliantly the ways in which competitive churchmen deviously cultivate ambition and try out every possible ruse in pursuit of ecclesiastical advancement.100 On one occasion ‘one of our princes (unfortunately I do not happen to recall his name) … It does not make much difference whether it was Henry or Robert’ – rejected the nomination of a monk to an abbacy. The monk, who had already secretly purchased the office, protested his unworthiness, pretending to decline the honour. But the prince turned the tables on him, saying that his purchase had indeed made him unworthy to be appointed.101 Today, John writes, a cleric can successfully conceal ambition because kindred spirits, seeking honours themselves, are also pulled into the horse-trading and provide dispensations from canonical obstacles.102 Priests push to become bishops or to become exempt from their   On John’s handling of the theme of moderation see C.J. Nederman, ‘The Aristotelian Doctrine of the Mean and John of Salisbury’s Concept of Liberty’, Vivarium, 24 (1986): pp. 128–42. Nederman and J. Brückmann, ‘Aristotelianism in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 21 (1983): pp. 203–29 at 210–16, also elucidate the role of Aristotle’s Categories and Topics, as well as of Cicero’s De officiis, in John’s use of the ideal of moderation in all things and of virtue as a mean between excess and defect.   99   P. vii. 17–19. In P. vii. 20 John reproduces legal texts that lay down the proper requirements for election to episcopal office. See too C.J. Nederman and C. Campbell, ‘Priest, Kings and Tyrants: Spiritual and Temporal Power in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus’, Speculum, 66 (1991), pp. 572–90. 100   In his criticism of ambitious clerics, such as those who learn law in order to gain entry into the royal court as a path to a bishopric, Nigel de Longchamp (Nigel Wireker), who lived at Canterbury, was inspired by John of Salisbury in writing c. 1192 Contra curiales et officiales clericos, ed. A. Boutemy (Paris, 1959). 101   P. vii. 18 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 168–9). Webb suggests either Henry I or Duke Robert of Normandy, sons of William the Conqueror. In HP (Chibnall, p. 86) John tells how for 500 marks the protection of King Stephen in 1151, although simoniacal, ensured the election of Silvester as abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury. A payment of the same amount by Richard, archdeacon of London, ensured his own election as bishop of London in the same year, HP (Chibnall, pp. 88–9). On proprietary attitudes to ecclesiastical offices and on extortionate practices in the Anglo-Norman church see F. Barlow, The English Church, 1066–1154: A History of the Anglo-Norman Church (London 1979), pp. 115–19. 102   P. vii. 18 (Webb, vol. 2, p. 169).   98

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jurisdiction, visit princes with frequent gifts, offer money, consult astrologers for signs of a vacancy and lie in ambush by the couches of the mitred sick.103 They do not all achieve what they want: John tells how Robert, the English chancellor of King Roger of Sicily whose hospitality John so much enjoyed in 1150, agreed in secret to accept payments from three suitors for the bishopric of Avella in Campania. When the bishops assembled to make the election, Robert told them what he had done. The bishops acted admirably by rejecting all three as simoniacs and by canonically electing a poor monk instead, while Robert collected in full all that was due to him.104 In some of his most amusing passages John presents over 40 examples of specious arguments taken from Scripture that may be used to give support to wholly unsuitable candidates for ecclesiastical preferment. They include:105 The candidate is married but the Apostle says that he should be the husband of one wife. He has left his wife but St John is also said to have done so to preach the Gospel. He is timid but was not Jonas afraid to go to the Ninivites and Thomas the Apostle to India? He cannot get away from public responsibilities but St Matthew was a tax collector. He does not trust his superiors but Paul opposed Peter to his face. He causes strife and so did Christ’s disciples. He is very talkative but so was St Paul. He is an untrustworthy liar but St Peter himself added perjury to perfidy when denying Christ. He has been deposed for his faults but so have many who, after reinstatement, have done good. He is deaf but this should not prevent him from proclaiming God’s law. His character is contemptible but the Church did not listen when this was said of St Martin. He errs in matters of faith but so did St Cyprian. He is a sick man but so was Pope Gregory when he successfully governed the Roman church. He is vain and proud: so was Brice of Tours. He has been accused of ambition: so were the sons of Zebedee. He has sometimes taught heresy but St Augustine of Hippo admitted he had been a Manichee. He has worshipped idols: Marcellinus, pope and martyr, was also made to do this. He may not yet be a Christian but Ambrose was still a catechumen when he was elected. He has persecuted the church; so did St Paul before he began to preach. He has not been nominated neither were the apostles. There is no vacancy but Augustine joined Valerius as bishop of Hippo. He is greedy: he wastes nothing. A bishopric either receives saints or makes them: thus did the Spirit of the Lord   P. vii. 19 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 172–3).   P. vii. 19 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 173–4); Letter 33 in Letters of JS, vol. 1, pp. 56–9. Cf. also P. viii. 7 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 270–71). Robert of Selby was chancellor from 1138/9 to c. 1152. P.B. Gams, Series episcoporum ecclesiae catholicae (Munich, 1879; repr. Graz, 1957), p. 854, lists no bishop of Avellino between 1132 and 1166. 105   P. vii. 19 (Webb, vol. 2, pp. 175–8). For the remaining exempla see P. von Moos, ‘The Use of Exempla in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury’, in WJS, pp. 207–61 at 231. Dickinson in his translation (p. 297) omitted all these as ‘relatively unimportant’. 103

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descend upon Saul when he was anointed king and upon Caiphas, the high priest, who prophesied the death of the Saviour.

What conclusions can we draw from John’s deep frustration with tyrannical misrule, both clerical and lay, especially in the period from 1147 to 1159 when ‘anarchy’ was followed by a fresh start in Anglo-Norman and Angevin government? Clerical writers such as John were perhaps especially prone to simplify complex situations in which violence and corruption played a part but in which also it was difficult to disentangle military or financial expediency from sacrilege or simony.106 John often criticised baronial violence and clerical avarice but he also promoted a knightly ethic and a clerical sense of canonical duty. In the Policraticus he welcomed strong royal control while working hard for the church of Canterbury. The work, when finished, was dedicated to Becket as Chancellor but the original stimulus does not seem to have been provided by Becket as much as by a general sense of frustration and a need to find consolation.107 Whereas in his correspondence John usually focussed on the tasks in hand, in the Policraticus, as it grew in scope and size, John became playful, and this provokes the question to what extent his purpose was to find and to provide relaxation through collecting flores with moral value and to what extent his extended analogy in books 5 and 6 of the res publica with the head and members that make up a human body amounted to a full review of the balance to be struck between ruling and being ruled.108 But the difficulties of defining the purpose or purposes of the Policraticus are well known, and the satires aimed at the papal court as well as the anti-clerical satires contained in contemporary ‘Goliardic’ poetry raise somewhat similar problems. Of the former R.W. Southern wrote that ‘they are a relief to the feelings rather than the symptoms of practical oppression’.109 But they, and ‘Goliardic’ poems also, were meant to put grievances on display as much as to make jokes. John often veils the targets of his   For differences of perception of knightly violence against churches see M. Strickland, War and Chivalry. The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066– 1217 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 55–97. 107   See Kerner, Johannes von Salisbury, pp. 96–101 and C.J. Nederman, John of Salisbury (Arizona, 2005), p. 22. 108  In P. vi. 24 John records the fable told to him by Pope Adrian IV of the conspiracy of all the members of the body against the stomach which, alone in the body, consumes everything. The other members went on strike but after a while became enfeebled through lack of nourishment. So they absolved the stomach which, although it was still held to be voracious, was also seen to ask not for itself but for the others unable to be sustained by its emptiness. The stomach in the body is like the prince in the republic. This analogy has been much discussed; see, for example, T. Struve, ‘The Importance of the Organism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury’, WJS, pp. 303–17. 109   The Making of the Middle Ages, p. 161. 106

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criticisms by making them generic or by giving them puzzling pseudonyms or by reproducing colourful stories from antiquity. But if he were to be asked whether he had let his imagination or his sense of fun run too free, his answer, I suspect, would be a firm no followed by a little chuckle.

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Chapter 10

How to Suppress a Rebellion: England 1173–74 Paul Latimer

In March 1173, Henry II’s crowned, eldest son Henry surreptitiously left his father at Chinon and went to Paris, to the court of his father-in-law, Louis VII. Between then and September 1174, at the end of which peace terms were agreed, Henry II’s numerous dominions, with few exceptions, were convulsed by rebellion to one degree or another.1 Internal rebellion was supplemented in some cases with invasion from outside, most notably in Normandy, attacked by the king of France, supported by the counts of Flanders, Boulogne and Blois, and in England where the Scottish king attacked and French and Flemish troops were brought in to support the rebels. Although certainly not ignored, this substantial and relatively prolonged conflict has perhaps still not received its due from historians.2 Here the focus will be on England alone, partly for reasons of space, but also for two other reasons. For most of the period of the rebellion in England, the king’s government there had to manage without the king himself, who was generally preoccupied with his continental possessions. Henry II may have made a very quick visit to England, travelling to Northampton, in the early summer of 1173, but otherwise England had to wait until 7 July 1174 for Henry to come to its aid. Within a month of his arrival then, the rebellion in England had collapsed and he was able to return to Normandy to deal with Louis VII’s attempt to take Rouen. When Henry set off for England in July 1174, he would not have known that the crisis in England could be so easily wrapped up. The capture of the king of Scotland on 13 July at Alnwick, which had nothing to   It took another two years to restore order in Aquitaine: W.L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), p. 142. 2   There have been many accounts and discussions of the war and rebellion, with varying degrees of detail. Among more recent accounts are T.M. Jones, ‘The Generation Gap of 1173–74: The War between the Two Henrys’, Albion, 5 (1973): pp. 24–40, which contains a bibliography of earlier accounts (ibid., p. 24 n. 1); Warren, Henry II, pp. 117–42; R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 54–60; D. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 (London, 2003), pp. 223–7; J.D. Hosler, Henry II: A Medieval Soldier at War, 1147–1189 (Leiden, 2007), pp. 195–219. 1

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do with Henry’s arrival in England, made his task much easier than it might have been.3 In an era when the personal role of the king in government and war was still so important, how the administration had coped mostly in the king’s absence and in such a critical situation is itself of interest. A second reason that England is of particular interest is that there is a source, at this time unique to England, that allows us to examine the workings of the administration in more detail than would otherwise be possible: the pipe rolls. These continue in an unbroken series throughout the rebellion, something which did not happen in the troubles of King Stephen’s reign and would not happen in the crisis of King John’s reign from 1215 to 1217.4 It will be argued here that Henry II’s government in England was well enough organized – indeed impressively organized – and well enough supported amongst the aristocracy and political classes to be able to act effectively against the king’s enemies. At the same time, beneficial as these advantages were, necessary even, they were hardly sufficient; opportunities that they allowed for still had to be taken. The ability to suppress a rebellion could not and did not depend solely on measures taken specifically for that purpose. Before talking about the actual response to the rebellion, it is necessary to deal with some conditions that had an important impact on Henry II’s government’s ability to respond to the revolt. In a sense, government was always, in part, about securing control of the country, and as rebellion was, if nothing else, a challenge to that control, administration 3  Warren, Henry II, pp. 135–6. Warren suggested the brief, ‘secret’ visit to England in the early summer of 1173. The evidence, a credit on the pipe roll to Robert FitzSewin, sheriff of Northamptonshire for the corrody of the king at Northampton for four days, authorized by a writ of the king himself, seems incontrovertible, but it is strange there is so little of it, even for a ‘secret’ visit: ibid., p. 127; Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 33. Most of the authorizing writs in the account for Northamptonshire were those of Richard de Lucy, the justiciar, except that there is one other credit, for the payment of knights at Northampton for 35 days starting on 9 April that is authorized by royal writ, though in this case corrected from Richard de Lucy in both versions of the roll: Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 32 and n. A royal writ does not necessarily indicate the king’s presence but may be indicative here. Possibly, the 23 mounted sergeants which John, dean of Salisbury, retained in the service of the king, advances towards their liveries being accounted for in Hampshire, could be connected with the king’s visit: ibid., p. 43. 4   No pipe rolls survive from King Stephen’s reign, though it is likely they were produced, at least until the disgrace of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and his nephew, Nigel, bishop of Ely, in 1139: E. King, King Stephen (New Haven and London, 2010), pp. 125–6. The pipe roll for the exchequer year 1214–15 shows little beyond Easter 1215. Presumably the exchequer stopped functioning in any normal way after the baronial entry into London on 17 May 1215. The exchequer did function uninterrupted throughout John’s revolt against the absent Richard I, but that was a much more restricted crisis.

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and policy in general had aspects that were precautionary against rebellion and could help tip the scales against it. An obvious example of this was Henry II’s extensive spending on the fabric of royal castles in the 19 years of his reign before the rebellion. While the motivation for this was not purely aimed against rebellion, let alone a specific rebellion, the fact that the king possessed many strong castles was certainly advantageous during the rebellion of 1173–74.5 The king of Scotland managed to take a few relatively minor castles in Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland, while the rebel earls of Leicester and Norfolk took and destroyed the castle of Haughley in Suffolk, but by and large Henry II’s strongholds in England remained secure.6 Likewise, the whole normal system of royal administration through sheriffs and others, who accounted at the exchequer and received instructions and authorization to spend money through writs from the king or, more often, the justiciar, was certainly not designed solely to deal with rebellion. Yet, insofar as the system continued uninterrupted throughout the rebellion, which it did to a considerable degree, it was a system of great utility in a crisis, as well as in more normal times. There were breakdowns in the system during the rebellion, particularly in the North. For example, in the pipe roll for the exchequer year 1173–74, the account for Yorkshire consisted of the following: Robertus de Stuteville non reddidit hoc anno compotum de firma comitatus de Euerwichsira neque de debitis regis in eodem comitatu quia nondum habuerat warantum regis de expensa qua fecerat tempore werre in servitio regis.7

For Carlisle and its dependencies in the same year, it was a similar situation: Adam filius Roberti Truite non reddidit hoc anno compotum de firma comitatus vel de debitis quia nichil inde recepit hoc anno propter werram ut dicit.8

5   It is noteworthy that the number of castles where work was done increases markedly in 1172–73: R.A. Brown, ‘Royal Castle-Building in England, 1154–1216’, EHR, 70 (1955): pp. 379–80. 6  Warren, Henry II, pp. 130, 134. 7   ‘Robert de Stuteville did not render an account this year concerning the farm of the county of Yorkshire, nor concerning the debts to the king in the same county, because he had not yet had the warrant of the king concerning the expenditure he had made in the time of war in the service of the king’: Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 107. 8   ‘Adam son of Robert Truite did not render an account this year concerning the farm of the county or concerning the debts, because he received nothing from them this year on account of the war, as he says’: ibid.

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Accounting ceased in the honour of Lancaster for both of the exchequer years 1172–73 and 1173–74, though dealing with the backlog was taken up in the 1174–75 pipe roll.9 Northumberland, on the other hand, managed with something like a normal account, albeit it finished with large amounts still owing ‘qui remanserunt propter werram ut dicit’.10 Of the midland and southern counties, only in Kent did the sheriff fail to render an account for the exchequer year 1173–74, the year most affected by the rebellion, though in this case it seems to have been more of a bureaucratic difficulty than anything else: Gervasius de Cornhull non reddidit compotum hoc anno de firma de Chent neque de terra episcopi Baiocensis neque de purpresturis neque de debitis Regis in hoc comitatu quia clerici et marescalli regis nondum venerant qui missi fuerant cum eo ad liberationem militum et navium faciendam de castellis Ballie sue.11

For most of the country indeed the pipe roll for the period from Michaelmas 1173 to Michaelmas 1174, covering the greater part of the rebellion, looks remarkably normal, if somewhat shorter than usual for the period, even while there were signs of the war and military activity in many places. The same is true of the pipe roll of the preceding year, 1172–73, halfway through which the rebellion began. In respect of the sheriffs who played such a large part in loyally administering this system at a local level during the rebellion, Henry II had already, as a result of his Inquest of Sheriffs in 1170, taken the opportunity extensively to reshape to his liking the roster of sheriffs.12 While this had not been done particularly with disloyalty or rebellion in mind, it had also been part of a longer process of reducing the close relationship between some earls and sheriffs that had grown up in King Stephen’s reign and had the effect of making it more likely that sheriffs would remain loyal. It is perhaps difficult to imagine, before 1170, a sheriff of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, accounting faithfully for these shires while the earl of Leicester was in revolt.13   Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, pp. 7–10.   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 105–7. 11   ‘Gervase of Cornhill did not render an account this year concerning the farm of Kent, nor concerning the land of the bishop of Bayeux, nor concerning the purprestures, nor concerning the debts to the king in this county, because the clerks and marshals of the king who had been sent with him to make the wage-payment for the knights and ships of the castles of his bailiwick had not yet come’: ibid., p. 1. The difficulty is dealt with by the time of the next roll: Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, pp. 207–12. 12  Warren, Henry II, pp. 290–91. 13   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 177–82; Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 139–44. Even before the rebellion, the earl of Leicester had already clashed with Bertram de Verdun, the new sheriff appointed after the Inquest of Sheriffs: Pipe Roll 18 Henry II, p. 109. For an examination of  9 10

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One might also say that the settlement Henry II had made with the Church in 1172 over the matter of Becket’s murder made it less likely that prelates of the Church would offer any comfort to the rebels. In many respects the exception to this was Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham, whose highly equivocal behaviour in importing French knights and Flemish troops led by his nephew Hugh de Bar, at a time when the king of Scotland was invading Northumberland for the second time, cannot but have excited suspicion.14 That the matter of Becket and its settlement was relevant here might be argued from attempts made to describe the special devotion to Becket of the rebel Young King Henry, who had spent some time as a boy in the charge of the erstwhile chancellor.15 There was one disadvantage of Henry II’s settlement with the Church: he had to start filling the many vacancies that had arisen during the dispute, which did cut his revenue just before the outbreak of the revolt, not that there is much sign that financial limitations seriously inhibited the effort to suppress the revolt, given its duration. The problems King Stephen faced when his rule was contested, and the problems that King John and Henry III faced in the conflicts of 1215–17, were both sharply exacerbated by extensive revolts in Wales. The arrangements that Henry II had made in Wales by 1172, including the establishment of Rhys ap Gruffydd as his justiciar in South Wales, were to benefit Henry II considerably during the rebellion of 1173–74.16 This was not just because Wales then presented him with few problems; it opened up Wales as a source of royal recruits and, although this is impossible to prove, perhaps played a role in decisions taken by some in the area of the southern marches not to rebel. Rhys ap Gruffydd even

the connections between earls and sheriffs in King Stephen’s reign and the ways in which they diminished in Henry II’s reign, see P. Latimer, ‘The Earls in Henry II’s Reign’ (unpubl. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1982), pp. 102–17. For Leicestershire in Henry II’s reign in particular, see ibid., p. 114. 14   G.T. Lapsley, ‘The Flemings in Eastern England in the Reign of Henry II’, EHR, 21 (1906): pp. 511–12. The 300 marks the bishop of Durham apparently gave to the king of Scotland to have a truce from 14 January to the end of Easter is less reprehensible, though Henry II might expect something rather more robust from a bishop of Durham: Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Hoveden, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 51 (4 vols, London, 1868–71), vol. 2, pp. 56–7. 15   Jones, ‘Generation Gap’, p. 30. See also the discussion of Henry’s tutelage under Becket by M. Strickland, ‘The Upbringing of the Young King’, in C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (eds), Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 190–94. 16  Warren, Henry II, pp. 164–7; P. Latimer, ‘Henry II’s Campaign against the Welsh in 1165’, Welsh History Review, 14 (1989): pp. 543–4.

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intervened personally on Henry II’s side, leading troops from Wales to the siege of the rebel-held castle of Tutbury in Staffordshire.17 So far, we have been concerned with what might be called favourable preexisting conditions that would assist the suppression of the rebellion, but now we must turn to the response to the revolt itself. Some of the chroniclers write as if they regard the greater part of the nobility as disloyal to Henry II or suspect in their loyalty.18 This perhaps says more about the attitude of these chroniclers to the lay nobility, or the writers’ desire to dramatize the situation, than it does about reality, as the more exaggerated assessments do not seem to have been borne out by events or the royal response. It is hardly surprising that rumours of disloyalty abounded at the time of the rebellion, but it is interesting that, for the most part, the king and his government took no action on the basis of rumour until after the rebellion was safely defeated, where action was taken at all. There was no rush to confront those under suspicion, a lesson that could perhaps have been learned from the history of King Stephen’s reign.19 Jordan Fantosme picks up various of these rumours of disloyalty, but they seem variable in their veracity. The bishop of Durham’s loyalty is impugned, as we have seen with some justification. After the rebellion was over, his castle at Northallerton was destroyed and he was forced to relinquish his other castles.20 Adjoining the city of London, which is said to be loyal,   Radulphi de Diceto Opera Historica. The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 68 (2 vols, London, 1876), vol. 1, p. 384. Evidence of the movement of Rhys’ army can be seen in Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 21, 77, 121. There was no complete peace in Wales. Some sergeants were paid in Shropshire ‘pro guerra Wallie’: Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 107. There was also an attack by Iorwerth ab Owain and his son Hywel on Richard FitzGilbert’s land in Gwent. In 1173–74, the earl’s men recaptured the castle of Usk from the Welsh and the sheriff of Gloucestershire helped supply the castle’s garrison: J.E. Lloyd, A History of Wales, from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (2 vols, 3rd edn, London, 1939), vol. 2, pp. 545–6; Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 22. 18   See, for example, Roger of Howden in Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis. The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I, 1169–1192, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 49 (2 vols, London, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 49, 71 and William of Newburgh in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series, 82 (4 vols, London, 1884–90), vol. 1, pp. 171–2. 19   Edmund King commented on King Stephen’s arrest of the earl of Chester at the Christmas court of 1146, though it might equally be applied to the arrest of the bishops in 1139 or the arrest of Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1143: ‘Here was a man – and this man was the king of England – who did not know how to behave’: King, King Stephen, p. 228. Henry II or his representatives, in this regard, knew better. Henry’s well-known, measured clemency after the defeat of the rebellion seems to have been equally well-judged: Warren, Henry II, pp. 136–42. 20   Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. R.C. Johnston (Oxford, 1981), pp. 120–21; Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, pp. 379–80; Warren, Henry II, p. 373. 17

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Gilebert de Munfichet sun chastel ad fermé, E dit que les Clarreaus vers lui sunt alié.21

There is no sign elsewhere in chronicles or pipe rolls that Gilbert de Munfichet acted disloyally or was punished for it. Of the Clares, there is no indication that Walter FitzRobert de Clare, lord of Baynard’s Castle, was disloyal or fell into any disfavour with Henry II.22 Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, lord of Leinster, was called by Henry II from Ireland to Normandy. Richard answered the call and was put in charge of the frontier castle of Gisors.23 Warren suggested that this implied suspicion and that the summons to Normandy was to prevent Ireland becoming a rebel haven, but it is just as likely that the king simply wanted the military help Richard could provide and the custody of Gisors would seem an odd appointment for one seriously under suspicion.24 Concerning the other Richard de Clare, Richard FitzRoger, who succeeded his father as lord of Clare and earl of Hertford in the year the rebellion broke out, we do find, however, in 1174 once the rebellion is over, other evidence of suspicion, though no specific grounds are given for it: Willelmus comes Glocestriae et Ricardus comes de Clare gener eius, de quibus habebatur suspicio, quod in partem adversam declinare proponerant, occurrerunt regi, suo per omnia parituri mandato.25

As far as Earl Richard was concerned, that seems to have been that. His father-in-law, William earl of Gloucester, is a more complex case. He was listed as a supporter of Henry II and actually fought for him, taking part   ‘Gilbert de Munfichet has fortified his castle, and proclaims that he has the support of the earls of Clare’: Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 120–21. Johnston here perhaps goes too far in translating ‘les Clarreaus’ as ‘Earls of Clare’. Given the London context, Stenton long ago reasonably suggested that this referred, at least in the first place, to Gilbert’s cousin, Walter FitzRobert de Clare, the lord of Baynard’s Castle, which also adjoined London, though that the plural of ‘Clarreaus’ might suggest a vague extension to the whole tribe of Clares would be reasonable enough: F.M. Stenton, Norman London: An Essay (London, 1934), pp. 8–9. 22   Jordan Fantosme has him as the first to attack the Flemings at Fornham: Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 74–7. He was acting as an itinerant justice by 1175–76: Pipe Roll 22 Henry II, pp. 20, 73. 23   G.H. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans 1169–1216 (4 vols, Oxford, 1911–20), vol. 1, p. 315. 24  Warren, Henry II, p. 123. 25   ‘William earl of Gloucester and Richard earl of Clare, his relative, concerning whom there was suspicion that they had intended to defect to the opposing side, hastened to the king ready to carry out his command in all things’.: Diceto, vol. 1, p. 385. 21

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in the campaign that resulted in the defeat of the rebel earl of Leicester and his Flemings at Fornham.26 Jordan Fantosme has the amazon-like countess of Leicester tell her husband: Li cuens de Glowecestre fet mult a reduter; Mes il ad vostre sorur a muillier e a per; Pur tut l’aveir de France ne volsist cumencier De faire nul ultrage dunt eussiez desturbier.27

If this means anything though, it may indicate only that Earl William would be unlikely to do any physical harm personally to Earl Robert, but that some suspicion did attach itself to Earl William seems undeniable. One relatively solid reason for this was that Earl William had ejected royal custodians from Bristol Castle during the rebellion, for which he was impleaded by the king in 1175. In order to turn the king’s displeasure, he was forced to surrender the castle.28 In the pipe roll for 1174– 75, an allowance is made to the sheriff of Gloucestershire for money given to (an unidentified) William of London for the stronghold’s custody and fortification.29 Whether or not the earl’s ejection of royal custodians implied any leanings towards the rebels, it is noteworthy again that direct action against William, measured as it was, was only taken after the rebellion was safely over. There are perhaps though some more subtle signs that Henry II was worried about Earl William even as the rebellion was beginning, and given the role of the earls of Gloucester in King Stephen’s reign, one can understand the delicacy of the situation. Changes in sheriffs are rare with the exchequer year 1172–73, but two of the three changes concern Devon, where Henry II’s uncle, Earl Reginald took over for the second half of the exchequer year from Robert FitzBernard, and Herefordshire, where William de Braose served for the second half of the year, replacing Gilbert Pipard. Even without any implication of fault concerning the former sheriffs, this represented a strengthening of shrieval muscle in the region. These were counties close to the centres of Earl William’s power.30 All turned out well for Henry II: Earl William, under suspicion as he was, did not rebel and fought instead for the king, but could still be punished later   Gesta Henrici, vol. 1, pp. 51 n. 4, 61.   ‘The earl of Gloucester is much to be feared, but he is married to your sister, and not for all the wealth of France would he start any extravagant action that would cause you any trouble’: Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 72–3. 28   Gesta Henrici, vol. 1, p. 92. 29   Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, p. 159. 30   Pipe Roll 18 Henry II, pp, 1, 98; Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 38–9, 142–4. There were no changes in Gloucestershire or Dorset and Somerset. The other change was in London, a crucial place of course, a quarter of the way through the exchequer year: Pipe Roll 18 Henry II, pp. 143–4; Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 182–9. 26 27

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for his presumption in ejecting royal custodians. An early over-reaction to the earl’s behaviour at Bristol may have pushed him into rebellion and that would have represented an extremely serious addition to the king’s enemies. One of the ways in which the relative continuity of the normal government administration at the local level assisted Henry II’s cause was in seizing the lands or chattels of known rebels throughout the country. For example, lands in Essex, Kent and Gloucestershire belonging to William Patric, a rebel and a tenant of the earl of Chester as lord of half of the barony of Malpas in Cheshire, were taken into royal hands by the sheriffs of those counties.31 Likewise, another rebel and tenant of the earl of Chester, Hamo de Masci, lord of Dunham Massey, had his lands in Wiltshire taken into royal hands.32 In 1173–74, the lands in Gloucestershire of Ernald de Bosco, the earl of Leicester’s steward, were in the hands of the sheriff of Gloucester.33 Many more examples such as this could be found. Even in counties close to the centres of rebellion, the effort was made to confiscate rebel lands.34 Of course distraint was a normal means of coercing and weakening an enemy or rebel, but in a situation with numerous rebels, carrying it out effectively was no mean feat of organization; sheriffs had to be informed who was a rebel and they needed to know where the rebels’ lands were. The William Patric example is perhaps particularly impressive, as his rebel activity seems to have been confined to the Norman-Breton frontier; yet the sheriffs in England were evidently informed of it. Naturally enough, when the rebellion broke out, the king’s local administration throughout the country made a special effort to make sure that castles were put in readiness. It is impossible to say how much this was controlled from the centre, with writs from the justiciar or the king, or done to some extent on local initiative and authorized after the event. The example cited above of Gervase of Cornhill’s account, or rather non-account, for Kent seems to suggest that payments at least had normally to await proper authorization. Although castles were improved, repaired and garrisoned in peacetime as well, the number and extent of such activities increased with the outbreak of the revolt.35 A couple of examples will serve for many; they are not hard to find. 31   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 20, 88–9, 155; Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 24, 74; Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, pp. 218–19. William Patric or his son was captured outside Dol, and two other members of the Patric family captured with Dol itself: Gesta Henrici, vol. 1, pp. 56–8. See also G. Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 2nd edn, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby (3 vols, London, 1882), vol. 2, pp. 592–3. 32   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 34; Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, p. 106. 33   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 24. 34   For a long list much of which seems to be of confiscated rebel lands in Leicestershire and Warwickshire, see Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 143. 35   See above, n. 5.

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At Salisbury, work was done on the castle, including what is probably the construction of a drawbridge into the main bailey (‘pro faciendo attractu ad claudendum magnum ballium castelli’), supervised by the constable of the castle, Robert de Lucy, and the reeve, Simon. Various equipment and supplies were bought, including considerable quantities of food. Provision was also made to pay a small force of knights and serjeants, both mounted and on foot, at least from April to June 1173.36 At Berkhamsted Castle, like Salisbury far from any fighting, provisions – unthreshed wheat, wine, cheeses and salt – and equipment – ropes and cables for the latrine and a mangonel, as well as iron – were purchased, works were done on the living quarters, the granary and on bridges, and liveries were paid to knights and sergeants, all accounted for by the castle’s custodian, William of Windsor.37 One can hardly expect the pipe rolls to provide any kind of comprehensive account of the recruitment or deployment of soldiers; that is not the purpose of the rolls, which is only, insofar as it concerns soldiers, to note money authorized to be spent on them by those who were accounting at the exchequer.38 Nevertheless, in the circumstances of the 1173–74 rebellion, soldiers, both knights and sergeants, ‘milites et servientes’, occur frequently and sometimes the rolls give us an idea of who is responsible for organizing or leading them, where they are staying or where they are going. Most of the entries on the pipe rolls detailing payment of soldiers concern the relatively modest garrisons in castles around the country of knights and sergeants, with occasionally a few mounted sergeants specified. These payments to garrisons could vary considerably, both in the number of soldiers and in the length of time for which they were paid. For example, in the exchequer year 1173–74 ten knights and ten sergeants staying in Worcester Castle were paid for 36 days after Robert de Lucy obtained custody of the castle, while there was also a smaller payment to an unspecified number of knights and sergeants that the sheriff, Randulf de Lench, retained in the castle.39 At the castle of Newcastleunder-Lyme in Staffordshire, in 1172–73, a modest sum (£13 6s. 8d.) was paid to the sheriff, Hervey de Stratton, ‘in auxilio tenendi milites at servientes in Novo Castello’.40 In 1173–74, five knights, six mounted sergeants and ten foot sergeants in Newcastle-under-Lyme were paid for 134 days.41   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 96–7. There is a second account detailing a second force of knights and serjeants for 22 days, but the date is not clear: ibid., pp. 101–2. 37   Ibid., pp. 21–2. 38   A recent discussion of military organization in Henry II’s dominions reveals, in effect, just how little we know: Hosler, Henry II: A Medieval Soldier, pp. 103–23. 39   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 26. 40   There are also payments in the same shire account to five knights and 20 sergeants for 19 weeks, though it is not clear where these knights are: Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 58. 41   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 94. 36

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Sometimes the provision made for garrisons could be more complex. In 1172–73, Robert Mantel, sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, Richard de Lucy himself, responsible for the farm of Colchester, and Bartholomew de Glanville, Wimar the Chaplain and William Bardulf, the three men acting as joint-sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk, with Wimar the Chaplain also answering for the farm of Orford, all accounted for payments regarding the knights and sergeants either at or being sent to Walton in Suffolk.42 Concerning the garrisons of Colchester, Orford and Norwich, we can also see one of the ways in which such payments could be organized, in references to royal writs which contain the names, numbers and periods of service of the knights and sergeants, these writs then being compared to allowances made against a number of different accounts within the roll.43 The garrison at Walton and its reinforcement, and also the other East Anglian garrisons here, should be seen in the context of the rebel earl of Leicester’s arrival with an army near Walton, and of Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk’s, rebellion. After all, the two earls besieged Walton itself for four days unsuccessfully and went on to take the castle of Haughley.44 The relationship between garrisons or their reinforcement and the events of the rebellion is sometimes made explicit in the rolls. In 1173–74, allowance was made in Norfolk and Suffolk for a payment made: Philippo de Hasting’ £20 ad tenendum milites in castello Norw’ per preceptum Comitis Willelmi quando Flandrenses fuerunt ad Bungheiam et ad Framingeham per breve regis.45

  Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 20, 30, 117–18, 129.   Ibid., pp. 31, 118, 130. Such writs can be found elsewhere in the country too. See, for example, in the account of Reginald de Lucy for the ‘Census’ of the forest of Nottinghamshire, concerning knights and sergants at Bolsover and Peak (Peveril) castles: Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 174. 44   Diceto, vol. 1, pp. 377–8. There is no sign of Haughley being defended in the pipe rolls, though that may be because Radulf Brito, the custodian of the land of Henry of Essex, to which Haughley Castle belonged, was to account to the king himself, rather than to the exchequer: Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, p. 23. 45   ‘To Philip of Hastings £20 to maintain knights in the castle of Norwich by order of Earl William when the Flemings were at Bungay and Framlingham, by the king’s writ’.: Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 38. The Earl William here is most likely William, earl of Arundel, or quite possibly William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, who had returned to England around the same time as Henry II and left again with him for Normandy in August, and is often simply referred to as ‘Earl William’: ibid., pp. 118, 133. 42 43

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Around the same time, an entry in the account for the farm of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire made by Ebrard de Beche and Warin of Bassingbourn reads: Et in liberationibus 20 militum retentorum in castello de Cantebr’ quando Flandrenses novissime applicuerant £40 de 40 diebus scilicet a proxima die ante festum Sancti Botulphi usque ad festum Sancti Jacobi per breve regis.46

Both these entries refer to the Flemings who landed at the Orwell estuary in May 1174 and assisted Earl Hugh for the rest of his rebellion.47 The war was not all about garrisons though, even if the pipe rolls are most forthcoming about those. The rolls also show mobile forces on the move. In 1172–73, we see Gilbert Pipard, sheriff of Herefordshire, before he was replaced by William de Braose, arranging the payment of 100 sergeants from the Welsh March who were being sent to Normandy, a sign perhaps that conflict was already expected.48 Three hundred and thirty sergeants, plus 100 more with hauberks and ten archers, a considerable force, were sent from Shropshire, again on the Welsh Marches, to help with the abortive siege of Leicester in 1173, their liveries paid for eight days by the sheriff. The sheriff himself, Guido L’Estrange, went to Leicester as well and consequently additional sergeants were recruited for Shropshire. Another 80 foot sergeants were sent overseas to the king, with their liveries paid by the sheriff for six days.49 Presumably, in the case of both these forces, someone else was supposed to take responsibility for their payment thereafter. In the exchequer year 1173–74, 166 sergeants ‘de Marchia’, led by Miles de Cogan and Miles le Bret, came from overseas, possibly at the time of Henry II’s arrival in July 1174, and were provided for by the sheriffs of London and Middlesex.50 Also in the miscellaneous accounts concerning London and Middlesex, a Fleming, Gerbald de Escald, was also provided with £20 for making 46   ‘And in wages for 20 knights retained in the castle of Cambridge when the Flemings had most recently landed £40 concerning 40 days, that is to say from the day before the feast of St. Botulph to the feast of St. James, by the king’s writ’.: 16 June to 25 July 1174: ibid., p. 63. 47   Diceto, vol. 1, p. 381. 48   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 38–9. 49   Ibid., p. 107. The siege succeeded in burning the town of Leicester and gaining the submission of the townsmen, but had to be broken off to deal with the king of Scotland’s first invasion: Diceto, vol. 1, p. 376; Chronicles, vol. 1, p. 177. 50   Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, p. 8. As Miles de Cogan was associated with Richard FitzGilbert in Ireland, this may well have been part of the contingent that Richard had led to Henry II’s aid in Normandy. For a payment for their passage, presumably out of England again, see ibid., p. 118.

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advance payments to 22 knights that were with him in the service of the king.51 In Northamptonshire, two entries in the pipe roll perhaps take us to the heart of the main royal force in the Midlands in the latter stages of the rebellion: Et in liberationibus 118 militum solidariorum qui fuerunt cum Hunfrido de Bohun Constabulario apud Norhant’ de 1 vigint (vicena) £118 per brevia Ricardi de Luci’.52 Et in liberationibus 100 militum solidariorum qui fuerunt apud Norhant’ de 20 diebus et in perditis eorum £104 5s 8d per breve regis.53

We cannot be sure that these are two separate forces, or essentially refer to the same force, but in either case they represent a substantial number of knights with the royal constable, Humphrey de Bohun, cast in the leading role that some of the chronicle accounts also refer to.54 It is interesting too that these knights are described as ‘solidarius’, which is usually taken to indicate some sort of mercenary soldier, equivalent to ‘stipendarius’, which occurs elsewhere.55 However, in all these cases, the knights are being paid a shilling a day, so the tag ‘solidarius’ may simply indicate the rate of pay, although there are other examples of knights paid a shilling a day where the term is not used.56 Seventeen knights of the ‘familia regis’ are also seen to be receiving payments from the assize of the borough of Nottingham, a sign of the king’s arrival in the Midlands perhaps, while an isolated reference in the account for the honour of Wallingford seems to indicate the presence in England of at least a small number of Henry II’s notorious Brabançons.57

  Ibid., pp. 14–15. He is in possession of the manor of Horncastle in 1173–74: ibid., pp. 96–7. For the identification of Gerbald, see J. Conway Walter, A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Horncastle, 1908), p. 11. 52   ‘And in wages for 118 paid knights who were with the Constable, Humphrey de Bohun, at Northampton for twenty days £118, by writs of Richard de Lucy’.: Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 51–2. 53   ‘And in wages for 100 paid knights who were at Northampton for 20 days, and in their losses, £104 5s. 8d., by the king’s writ’.: ibid., p. 54. 54   Chronica, vol. 2, pp. 54–5; Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 58–61, 72–5, 78–9, 114–15. 55   20 ‘milites solidarii’ are also found being paid for 51 days in Lincolnshire and another force of 20, together with 140 foot sergeants receive payments for 115 days at Kenilworth: Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 96, 140. 56   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 30–31, 33, 97, 101–2,134; Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 34, 55, 57, 63, 67, 94, 125, 138–9, 142–3. 57   Ibid., pp. 59, 88. 51

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Although frustratingly short on detail, the delayed pipe roll accounts made by Robert de Stuteville, sheriff of Yorkshire, and Ranulf de Glanville, custodian of the honour of Lancaster and the honour of Conan earl of Richmond, reveal just how important, in conjunction with Henry II’s generally stalwart castellans, their role was in the northern counties after the initial campaign against the invading Scots undertaken by Richard de Lucy and Humphrey de Bohun. The total amounts allowed to Robert and Ranulf for payments made to knights and sergeants amount to £1,228 16s. 10d. and £918 10s. 1d. respectively, monies that would have paid for quite impressive forces.58 Twelfth-century warfare was not all about soldiers. For sieges, craftsmen and equipment were required, and here too the co-ordination and reach of Henry II’s administration in England was impressive. For the siege of Leicester in 1173, equipment for siege engines was sent from Northamptonshire, 24 carpenters and their master from Staffordshire, arrows and pickaxes from Gloucester, spades and pickaxes from Worcestershire, 41 carpenters and their master from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, while another 115 carpenters came from Warwickshire and Leicestershire, as well as further equipment.59 Also, one of the government’s most striking feats of coordination across a number of localities was in 1173, when the king wished to gather a fleet of ships near Sandwich in Kent ‘ad custodiam maris’. Ships were sent from Colchester, Orford, Dunwich, and perhaps elsewhere in Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as from Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.60 If, in part, the suppression of the rebellion was a triumph of the Angevin administration’s capacity for organization – and the pipe rolls reveal just how great that was – in the end we must still return to people and events. The operation of the governmental system depended completely on the loyalty of those who operated it. The sheriffs and others who were separately responsible for other accounts in the rolls were of course vital, but they too depended on the loyalty of those in castle garrisons, or those leading, or participating in, other   Pipe Roll 21 Henry II, pp. 7, 173–4. For the 1173 campaign in the North by the justiciar and constable, see for example Chronica, vol. 2, p. 54; Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 54–63. 59   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 33, 58, 156, 163, 173, 178. We also find a mangonel at Berkhamsted: ibid., p. 21. In 1173–74, the sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk are credited for the cost of conducting 500 carpenters to the king at Sileham in Suffolk when he was threatening to besiege the Bigod castles. Also, from the farm of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, an engineer, Yvo, was paid for hiring carpenters to make machines ‘quando rex venit ad Hunted’ (Huntingdon): Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 38, 82. It is interesting too that, in the account for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, although crossbowmen are nowhere mentioned specifically, there is an allowance for the acquisition of 1,000 quarrels (crossbow bolts), though in this case defence of castles is a more likely purpose: ibid., p. 56. 60   Pipe Roll 19 Henry II, pp. 2, 13, 31, 117, 132–4. 58

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military forces. Although the pipe rolls show us a system operating through the writ and systematic accounting, we should not imagine that it was a system operated by bureaucrats and accountants. If few of the sheriffs by this time were great barons, most were men from a chivalric society intent, if they could, to use royal administrative service to become richer and more powerful. Ranulf de Glanville, the future justiciar, proved at Alnwick that his sword was just as mighty as his pen would be.61 One should also not underestimate the importance of the role of the more senior figures of the government in England. Richard de Lucy’s writs are everywhere throughout the pipe rolls of these years, but he was also amongst the leaders of the army that besieged Leicester, chased the king of Scotland back over the border in 1173 and fought at the battle of Fornham. The royal constable too, Humphrey de Bohun, indisputably baronial, and of a family that would later spawn earls, if only intermittently surfacing in the pipe rolls, clearly played a crucial military role, and evidently played it well. To these we must also add the loyal earls in England: not only Henry II’s uncle, Earl Reginald, who joined Richard de Lucy at the siege of Leicester in July 1173 and fought at the battle of Fornham, but William, earl of Arundel, who also fought at Fornham, as did William, earl of Gloucester, who was discussed above. William, earl of Essex, made a late appearance in England, coming from Normandy with Henry II. All these men would likely have had their own military retinues, though we know few details.62 Fortune too played a role in the suppression of the rebellion. The rebel Hugh, earl of Chester, could surely have caused more trouble in England than he managed to do on the Brittany-Normandy frontier where he was captured at Dol. Yet the reason he was there seems, at least in part, to have been that he was returning from a pilgrimage to Compostella.63 The battle of Fornham was, if nothing else, the result of what turned out to be an ill-judged march by Robert, earl of Leicester. The capture of the king of Scotland at Alnwick – albeit the opportunity was skilfully exploited by the English forces – was scarcely something that had to happen. None of these events necessarily made the difference between the failure of the rebellion and its success, but they undoubtedly made its suppression easier and quicker than it would otherwise have been. As had been demonstrated in King Stephen’s reign, a rebellion that for too long was not suppressed might easily become one that would never be suppressed.   See the dramatic account of the defeat and seizure of the king of Scotland: Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, pp. 128–35. 62   Gesta Henrici, vol. 1, pp. 58, 61; Pipe Roll 20 Henry II, pp. 118, 133, 135. The first of these pipe roll references does intriguingly mention the ‘socii’ of Earl William. 63   As reported by Robert de Torigny: Chronicles, vol. 4, p. 256. 61

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Chapter 11

The Battle of the Countesses: the Division of the Honour of Leicester, March–December 1207 David Crouch

At some time during 20 or 21 October 1204 died in England the earl of Leicester, Robert (IV) de Breteuil, or as he apparently preferred to be known, ‘Robert son of Petronilla’.1 He was then in his mid- to late 40s, and, though a married man for around seven years, his union with Loretta de Briouze had produced no children. He was one of the most notable aristocrats of his day, not merely through his wealth, but because of his world reputation as a warrior and heroic Crusader. Though his death terminated the story of one of the most important and wealthy earldoms of Angevin England, there was a certain appropriateness to its timing.2 Robert died the same year as the collapse of the great crossChannel condominium in which he and his ancestors had prospered for well over a century. That year saw Robert’s consequent loss to the Capetian demesne of the enormous estates in Normandy his family had begun to accumulate in 1121, with the marriage of his grandfather, Earl Robert II, to Amice de Gael, heiress of the honour of Breteuil. To this the fortunes of the civil war of Stephen’s reign had added the honour of Pacy-sur-Eure to his grandfather’s estates, while his father’s marriage c. 1155 to its heiress brought the Leicesters the Central Norman honour of Grandmesnil.3 She was the Petronilla whose name Earl Robert IV liked to sport, and she was to survive her son by eight years, living in retirement in her hall in the town of Ware in Hertfordshire, but politically 1   Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland and Great Britain, ed. V. Gibbs (13 vols in 14, London, 1910–59), vol. 7, p. 535n, gives the obituarial evidence from his abbeys of Lyre and St Evroult. My thanks go to Dave Postles and Dan Power for their generous assistance and comments and suggestions on drafts of this article. Remaining errors and misapprehensions are my responsibility. 2   L. Fox, ‘The Honor and Earldom of Leicester: Origin and Descent, 1066–1399’, EHR, 54 (1939): pp. 390–93, still provides one of the best guides to the latter days of the Anglo-Norman earldom. 3   D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 13–14, 87–9, 90–91.

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active, perhaps a little too much so for some people’s comfort, as events would soon prove. We happen to know that in the months before his death Earl Robert IV was working to secure the fate of his imperilled Norman estates, or at least to offset their potential loss. In April and May 1204 he was in Normandy as part of an embassy from King John to King Philip Augustus, during which he and his colleague, Earl William Marshal, negotiated a year and a day’s truce between themselves and the French king, paying each 500 marks for the privilege. At the conclusion of that year’s grace, the pair were to decide whether or not to do liege homage for their Norman lands to Philip, and so be able to keep them, despite the separation of England and Normandy.4 Death relieved the necessity for Earl Robert to make his choice, as it happened. There is some likelihood that he was using the time he had to negotiate compensation for his Norman losses with King John, who had already in September 1203 offered Robert the honour of Richmond as a massive inducement to maintain his loyalty to the Angevin dynasty.5 But in the event Robert’s death solved the king’s problem, and indeed offered John a remarkably profitable and timely source of patronage. The earl probably died at one of his Midland residences, Brackley Castle in Northamptonshire or Leicester itself, for his death was known to the royal court less than five days after it had occurred, when the king issued a writ confirming the terms of the earl’s testament and supporting the work of his executors.6 The fact that Robert had made a testament would indicate that the earl’s deathbed was protracted enough to make the conventional arrangements, and no doubt spread the news to the various interested parties that the great earl was dying.7 4   History of William Marshal, eds A.J. Holden and D. Crouch, trans. S. Gregory, AngloNorman Text Society, Occasional Series, 4–6 (3 vols, 2002–07), vol. 2, lines 12859–98. 5   In September 1204 King John made him several extensive grants of the English estates of Norman magnates, including those of his cousin, Robert de Harcourt, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, ed. T.D. Hardy, Record Commission (2 vols, London, 1833-44), vol. 1, p. 7. 6   The text of the earl’s grant to the house of 24 virgates and four cottages in Anstey, Leicestershire, cum corpore suo can be found in, TNA, C56/16 (Confirmation Roll of 3 Henry VII, pt 3), m.18, copy of 1487. 7  The Vita of Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, Earl Robert IV’s personal enemy, rejoices in his death, alleging that he was afflicted with leprosy, an insinuation that his sinfulness was made apparent by a diseased body, Magna Vita sancti Hugonis, eds D.L. Douie and H. Farmer (2 vols, Oxford, 1961–62), vol. 2, pp. 83–4. In fact, it was his elder brother William de Breteuil (d. 1189) who, Leicester abbey sources say, was a leper, an affliction which may explain the generosity of their father, Robert III, to the hospitaller order of St Lazarus and various independent leper hospitals in his lands. Later tradition made William the founder of the leper hospital of St Leonard in Leicester, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 625, fol. 4v.

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By the time the king got to hear of his death, the late earl would have already been buried where he had requested, in Leicester Abbey near to its founder, his grandfather and namesake, the justiciar. The earl’s heirs were his two sisters, Amice and Margaret, the latter of whom was to survive him by over three decades, dying in 1235, though the elder of the pair, Amice, paid her debt to nature in September 1213, being buried with her first husband at the abbey of Hautes-Bruyères in the Parisis. The situation of the honour of Leicester in October 1204 was not unprecedented, and there are earlier and comparable examples of the dividing up of an honour between joint female heirs, notably the surviving schedule by royal justices of the division of his major northern honour between the two daughters of William de Percy at the Easter court of the exchequer at Westminster in 1175.8 But the Leicester case was complicated by the recent loss of Normandy to the French. Amice, the elder sister, had been resident in France since the 1170s, when she married Simon de Montfort, a younger son of the then count of Evreux. For her part, her marriage portion gave her substantial rents in her father’s Norman honour of Breteuil.9 In 1180 Simon and his elder brother divided their father’s Franco-Norman inheritance. Simon became lord of the family’s ancestral Parisian honour of Montfort-en-Yvelines in his own right. As the son and brother of a count, Simon occasionally assumed the title of ‘count of Rochefort’ or ‘count of Montfort’ from one or other of his major castles in the west of the Parisis. Amice quite often took the style of ‘countess of Montfort’, which she transmitted by marriage to her second husband, the eminent French warrior and courtier, William des Barres the elder, whom she married some time in 1187 or 1188.10 Amice was a politically adroit woman, well-used to operating in the complicated world of Anglo-French politics. She had long been in expectation of the situation that would unroll should her brother prove childless. In January 1196, quite a while before her brother’s death, Amice and her son Simon were two   Early Yorkshire Charters Vol. XI: The Percy Fee, ed. C.T. Clay, Yorkshire Archæological Society Record Series, Extra Series, 9 (1963), pp. 85–9. As with the Leicester example, the division is written down as between the husbands of the co-heirs. Curiously, one of the 1175 justices (Roger FitzReinfrid) was the father of one of the 1207 justices (Gilbert FitzReinfrid).  9   Mentioned in 1189, Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure, H 438(9) in her charter, where she appears as ‘Amicia domina Montisfortis’. 10   The date of death of Simon is not known, but seems likely to have occurred around 1187, see D. Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2004), p. 332. The identity of the two Williams des Barres is often difficult to penetrate, but it is at least clear that the younger William was half-brother of Simon de Montfort, son of Amice, making it certain that it was the elder William who married her, Peter of Vaux-deCernay, The History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. W.A. and M.D. Sibly (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 206. Power, The Norman Frontier, p. 239, suggests the marriage was imposed on her before 1188 by King Philip.  8

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of the people from whom King Philip II of France had sought acknowledgement of his acquisition of Robert IV’s Norman honour of Pacy-sur-Eure, which the earl had surrendered to the king. Amice’s other brother, Roger, elect of St Andrews, was at the time before her in right of succession, but she was brought into the affair nonetheless. She and her son, Simon de Montfort, were clearly in expectation of succession to the Norman lands after Roger, who in the event predeceased her in 1202.11 No acknowledgement was expected in 1196 from her sister, Margaret, which might indicate that it was understood at the time that the two sisters would divide the inheritance at the Channel if it fell to them. Amice’s known actions in 1204 show that she looked on the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm as a time of opportunity, not one for regrets. Early in that year, she can be found buying up – no doubt at a bargain price – profitable vineyards in the confiscated estates on the Seine of the family of Meulan, her cousins. She had in view the further expansion of the Montfort lordship in the forest of Yvelines.12 She wasted no time in the aftermath of her brother’s death in asserting her rights to the Norman honour of Breteuil and all her family’s Norman lands, which King Philip had taken into his hands once the earl’s death had negated their former truce. That it was Amice who was in the driving seat is clear from the fact that her son, Simon, was at the time engaged on the Fourth Crusade, from which it is unlikely he returned much before 1205.13 The French king bought her off with an exchange of the castle and honour of St-Léger-enYvelines, several fees and the royal interest in the great forest of Yvelines itself, a very ample addition to the Montforts’ large, existing power-base west of Paris. The agreement with the king late in 1204 or early in 1205 shows that Amice was by then calculating the chances of a tussle with her sister for the Leicester English lands. She had already apparently pre-empted her sister’s potential claims on the Norman inheritance and she agreed with the king that ‘if it so happens that my sister, the wife of Saher de Quincy, should make a claim on   Paris, Archives nationales, J 216 (Evreux) nos 2–4. For this cession, D. Power, ‘L’aristocratie Plantagênet face aux conflits capétiens-angevins: l’exemple du traité de Louviers’, in M. Aurell (ed.), Noblesse de l’espace Plantagênet (1154–1224) (Poitiers, 2001), pp. 125–35. For another example of a sister acting as presumptive heir, see a confirmatory act of Isabel, elder sister of Earl Richard FitzGilbert, issued before 1170, which she commenced, ‘if it should happen that I am the heir of my brother Richard’s lands …’, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 103, fol. 152r. As it happened, he outlived her. 12   Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure, H 91, fol. 56v, as ‘Amicia mater Symonis Montisfortis’ buying up rents of Peter de Meulan. The title given her indicates that the charter was issued before her brother’s death in October 1204. 13   Simon is last found in France at Epernon in a charter dated 1203 with a preamble ‘whereas I am just about to set out on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem’, Chartres, Archives départementales d’Eure-et-Loir, H 2338 (6). He cannot be firmly established as back in the West until 1206. 11

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anything, with my brother as justification, I will assign her share to my sister from my English lands, to the king’s benefit’.14 It may however be that there was already an understanding between the sisters over Normandy, as is indicated by the evidence for 1196. Before 1206 Amice was already using the style of ‘countess of Leicester’, which she probably assumed immediately on her brother’s death by right of being the elder heir. King John did not contest her right to do so, for the political community had been considering the position of the Leicester heirs for some while.15 In the meantime, in England, confusion reigned as Countess Petronilla, mother of the co-heirs, made a bid to control the entire inheritance, preempting the rights of her daughter, Margaret, wife of Saher de Quincy, as much as Amice.16 Most probably in the immediate aftermath of her son’s death, she offered the king 3,000 marks for the delivery to her of Leicester with its fees and demesne lands within Leicestershire and outside it ‘as her right and inheritance’. She enhanced the deal by conceding to the king the minor castle of Whitwick and the custody of all the estates within the honour which belonged to Norman landowners, so clearly there was some negotiation between her attorneys and the king himself before clinching this deal. The basis of her right – and the cause of her quick action – is revealed by the choice of the name for what she was claiming as ‘the honour of Grandmesnil’, to describe what was in fact the earldom of Leicester.17 The true honour of Grandmesnil was actually a Norman entity that the countess had brought her husband, Earl Robert III of Leicester, in c. 1155, as the heir of her father, William de Grandmesnil, last of the Norman 14   Paris, Archives nationales, J 217 (Conches et Breteuil) no. 2, she appears here as ‘Amicia soror quondam comitis Lecestrie’. 15   For a good example see their original joint charter to the abbey of L’Estrée, attested by Robert IV of Leicester, commencing: ‘Ego Will(elmus) de Barris et comitissa Amicia de Monte forti …’ Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure, H 320. Amice is ‘Amicia comitissa Leycestrie et domina Montisfortis’ in the address of her charter to the cathedral of Chartres in 1206, Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres, eds E. de Lépinnois and L. Merlet (2 vols, Chartres, 1862–65), vol. 2, p. 35, and to Bec abbey in an original dated 1213, Montigny-leBrettoneux, Archives départementales des Yvelines, 24 H 16. She was ‘comitissa Leyc(estrie)’ in a lost charter she made in 1212/13 to Wareham priory, Register of Sheen priory, BL, MS Cotton Otho B xiv, fol. 35r. Her second husband was called ‘comes de Rupeforti’ by Rigord in 1188, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, eds and French trans. E. Carpentier, G. Pon and Y. Chauvin (Paris, 2006), p. 244. 16   For an early consideration of this curious episode, F.M. Powicke, ‘Loretta, Countess of Leicester’, in J.G. Edwards (ed.), Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait (Manchester, 1933), pp. 254–8. 17   Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus in Turri Londinii asservati tempore regis Johannis, ed. T. D. Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1835), p. 226; Pipe Roll 6 John, pp. 227–8. The fine must have been offered and accepted well before the first recorded term of the payment (2 February 1205) by which time 1,000 marks were already in the king’s hand.

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branch of his lineage. However, it was still clearly remembered that the core of the earldom of Leicester had been made up of the lands and inheritance of the English magnate Ivo de Grandmesnil, lord of Leicester, transferred by dubious means by King Henry I to Robert I of Meulan between 1101 and 1107. Countess Petronilla had the undoubted right to Grandmesnil in Normandy and issued charters independently between 1190 and 1204 as lady of the ‘fee of Grandmesnil’, but she lost her French lands on Philip II’s conquest of the duchy.18 So far as England was concerned, she was only a collateral cousin of the English Grandmesnils, and therefore had little right to claim their former lands as her own. But she chose in 1204 to use family history as her justification for claiming for herself her son’s lands in England, energized perhaps by the fact that her daughter, Amice, had moved to sell off her rights to the Breteuil and Grandmesnil family lands in Normandy, for which no compensation was evidently offered to Petronilla. That Petronilla was being disingenuous is proved by her own charter to the family’s Norman abbey of St-Evroult in which was recited her family history, tracing her claims back to Hugh de Grandmesnil (probably her great-grandfather), but making no claims to confirm the English estates the abbey had, only the Norman ones. It is hardly surprising that Countess Petronilla’s brazen bid to sideline her daughters’ rights to partition the honour of Leicester in England was soon challenged. Her younger daughter Margaret and her husband, the veteran warrior, justice and Angevin courtier, Saher de Quincy, appealed the king’s decision. We know that Saher’s challenge to his mother-in-law must have occurred early in November 1204 (for which see below). And he was successful in his bid to secure a review of Petronilla’s claims. The king took the honour into his own hands and referred the dispute to Geoffrey FitzPeter and the barons of the exchequer for judgement. They considered that Petronilla had no right to the custody of the honour, the face-saving excuse being that Saher had simultaneously offered a fine of 5,000 marks for it. But right was patently elsewhere than Petronilla and in any case the king now had a chance to make further profits because of her inopportune intervention. We can glimpse the way King John used the dispute to improve his finances: not only did he raise the fine for Leicester for Saher by an additional 2,000 marks to 5,000, he was able to bring the surrender of the castle of Mountsorrel into the deal. The ‘honour of Grandmesnil’ remained on the table, but the king’s justices laid down in the fine that ‘it should be pronounced by oath of men experienced in the law what lands   Cartulary of St-Evroult, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 11055, fols 33v–35v. In 1207 King Philip II was in control of the honours of Breteuil and Grandmesnil, which his enquiry into Norman fees treated as separate units of lordship, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, eds M. Bouquet and others (24 vols, Paris, 1864–1904), vol. 23, pp. 616–17. 18

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and fees actually are in the honour of Grandmesnil and what belonged to the other honours the [late] earl held’.19 The ultimate decision was in fact predicted by the terms of the fine. It pronounced Countess Petronilla’s uncontested possessions to be what she already possessed: her life interest in the town and priory of Ware in Hertfordshire and the fees of three knights within the honour of Leicester, as well as her established dower lands elsewhere in England.20 This curious family dispute probably occupied November 1204, for by 20 December of that year the castle of Mountsorrel conceded by Saher to the king had been long enough in the king’s custody for repairs to have been commissioned and executed by its keeper.21 The need to divide the honour of Leicester between the late earl’s sisters resurfaced once Countess Petronilla was thwarted. The king added the condition to Quincy’s fine that: ‘if it happens that Amice countess of Montfort, Saher’s wife’s sister, should come and claim her share of the land and if the verdict of the king’s court would appear to favour it, all the land in demesne and knights’ fees will return to the king’s hands with no dispute about it, so that the judgement of the court might be executed as it concerns both sisters’.22 The king’s justices required that a sworn extent of the lands of the late earl first be made, and there is evidence that a jury met and delivered it at Northampton in mid-May 1205. A sealed copy of the jury’s return was drawn up before the king at Clarendon on 28 May 1205 and sent to the sheriff of Leicestershire, who was required to deliver the lands listed to Saher de Quincy, apart from those reserved as dower to Countess Petronilla.23 Another jury was supposed to meet in June 1205 to respond to the question as to what actually was the honour of Grandmesnil in Hertfordshire, but it was postponed to early August, by which time Countess Petronilla was being pursued over the issue of her dower by her daughter-in-law, Loretta de Briouze. No verdict survives, and perhaps the inquisition never met.24

  Pipe Roll 6 John, p. 229; Pipe Roll 7 John, p. 32; Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus, p. 320.   Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus, p. 320; Pipe Roll 7 John, p. 265. Ware seems to have occupied a recognized place as a centre of the earldom, due perhaps to its prominence within the eleventh-century Grandmesnil honour, which is evident in Domesday Book seu Liber Censualis Willelmi primi regis Angliae, eds A. Farley and others (4 vols, London, 1783– 1816), vol. 1, fol. 138b. In 1148, Earl Robert II in his charter to Bermondsey priory notified that ‘the monks of Bermondsey had Widford (Hertfordshire) in alms of his father, Count Robert of Meulan, and his predecessors of the honour of Leicester and Ware ‘de honore Leg(r)e(cestrie) et Wares)’, London, College of Arms, MS Glover 2, fols 112v–13r. 21   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 16. 22   Pipe Roll 6 John, p. 229. 23   Curia Regis Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (20 vols, London, 1922–2007), vol. 3, p. 340; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204-27, vol. 1, p. 38. 24   Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 4, pp. 16, 46. 19 20

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The failure of Countess Amice to appear in England protracted the process. Until she made her move and the process of division was completed, the king theoretically kept the honour and its profits, apart from certain lands conceded in the interim to Saher and his wife, and for the dower of the two widowed countesses, Petronilla and Loretta. The king seems at first to have planned to do just that. He entrusted his interests in the former earldom to Henry of London, archdeacon of Stafford, and Robert of Roppesley, his household knight, as ‘keepers of the honour of Grandmesnil’ in which capacity they delivered her dower lands to Loretta de Briouze in Leicestershire in late summer 1205.25 However, there is evidence that Saher de Quincy was given a privileged position in the disposition of the entire honour in the many months before the formal division, while it was supposedly under royal control. A note in the eventual division [c. 77] says that in 1207 Simon de Montfort was accusing Saher of overgenerosity in his allotment of dower lands to Loretta. This would indicate that Saher was collaborating from as early as 1205 with the royal keepers, men long his colleagues at the Angevin court. A historical note in the cartulary of the borough of Leicester referred to the date of the Thursday after St Dionysius, ‘when Sir Saher de Quincy received Leicester’, which might well refer to a delivery of the honour to him on 13 October 1205.26 His wife, Margaret, was also favoured. There is a record of the king’s grant to her of the lands in the honour of Leicester of the Norman banneret, Robert de Thibouville.27 Countess Amice did not in fact make her move till 1206, over 20 months after her brother’s death, a curious delay which cost her the money she would have had through the sort of interim grants of lands that Saher and Margaret obtained. Her delay could plausibly be explained by the difficulties caused by the separation of Normandy and England, as much as her son’s absence on Crusade and pilgrimage in the East. How were she and her son, Simon, to pursue their inheritance in England as sworn vassals of King Philip Augustus? In the end, Amice did not herself come to England, but sent her son, Simon de Montfort, then a man in his late 30s, to pursue her claims there. He arrived around June 1206, judging from an award to him of three months’ expenses made by the king in the exchequer account at Michaelmas that year. In August 1206 Simon was allotted 100 pounds in rents from the honour for his interim support by the king: ‘placing on hold the request for a fine which his mother, the countess, made of us until we are informed as to what may be the manner of the division of lands for which she has made a fine’. The pipe roll of 1206 gives him the title ‘earl of Leicester’, which indicates   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 47. They are called ‘custodes honoris de Grentemesnill’ in September 1205, ibid., p. 49. 26   Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. M. Bateson (3 vols, London, 1899–1905), vol. 1, p. 18. 27   The fee was in Syston and Croxton: ‘comes Winton’ eam tenet, eo quod predictus J, rex dedit eam matri sue et valet per annum .xxiiii. libras’, TNA, JUST1/455, m. 6d. 25

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that the king was not intending to dispute his claims, or those of his mother.28 The subsequent long delay in coming to a final settlement has to be put down to the intractability of the Quincy and Montfort parties in ironing out the details. The uncomfortable complication of affairs for the tenants of the honour in the months until the final division was made can be illustrated from a transaction noted at Michaelmas 1206. The leading Leicester tenant, Ralph de Martinwast, offered at the exchequer a fine of 40 marks to the king to have possession of lands and a marriage with which he had separately negotiated with three of the parties to the division: Saher de Quincy, Countess Petronilla and Simon de Montfort, and obtained the requisite charters. Ralph would not have needed to do this had not the execution of the division remained stalled.29 The precise chronology of the division is not easy to disentangle. It probably was not finalized till the end of 1207, over three years after the late Earl Robert’s death, and 18 months after Earl Simon’s arrival in England. Indeed, he had quite likely left England by the time the final division was made.30 It is clear that some sort of draft of the terms was already on the table when Simon arrived in June 1206. King John says in August 1206 he was waiting to hear what the terms actually were. The problem was that Simon would not accept what was proposed. Since Saher de Quincy had been in effective control of the entire earldom since October 1205, it is likely that the initial draft of the division was his work, especially as Simon complained later as to Saher’s over-generosity in his allocation of lands to Loretta, widow of Earl Robert IV. Simon would not accept the terms he was presented with as fair, particularly as regards Saher de Quincy’s claims in Leicester Forest and in the town itself, which Simon undoubtedly thought should be his alone. The crisis came to a head early in 1207, when the records of the town of Leicester tell us that on 20 February   Pipe Roll 8 John, p. 107; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 74. Simon appears in his own acts as ‘comes Leecestrie’ in his grant to the Victorine priory of St-Paul-lèsAunois, and as ‘comes Leecestrie et dominus Montisfortis’ to the abbey of Vaux de Cernay, both dated 1207, presumably after his return from England, Paris, Archives nationales, S 2125A; Montigny-le-Brettoneux, Archives départementales des Yvelines, 45 H 21 (liasse 2). Curiously the contemporary citizens of his town of Leicester preferred to call Simon, ‘count of Rochefort’ which may indicate serious antagonism there towards him, Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 1, pp. 19, 32. 29   Pipe Roll 8 John, 9. Ralph was undersheriff of Leicestershire in 1207 as well as a former seneschal of the honour of Leicester, TNA, E370/1/4, m. 2, ‘Robertus de Roppeslai vicecomes non venit sed Radulfus de Martiwas subvicecomes venit …’. For his Leicester seneschalcy, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Brackley C 52. 30   An act of Simon’s (as earl of Leicester) to Epernon priory dated December 1207 confirms he was back in France before the end of the calendar (rather than incarnational) year, Cartulaires de Saint-Thomas d’Epernon et de Notre-Dame de Maintenon, prieurés dépendant de l’abbaye de Marmoutier, eds A. Moutié and A. de Dion (Rambouillet, 1878), no. 135. 28

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‘Simon count of Rochefort was dispossessed of Leicester’. The reference tells us two things. There had been a division of sorts at some point between September 1206 and February 1207, since Simon de Montfort had been put in possession of the town.31 But it also tells us that he was protesting as to its nature. The reason Simon lost Leicester is to be found in a writ of 13 February 1207 which declared that the king was committing ‘the lands of Count Simon de Montfort in England’ to Robert of Roppesley who was to use the profits to pay what Simon owed the king. This can only have been an unpaid fine for executing the division whose terms he was disputing.32 By 11 March Simon had given ground under pressure, and the king duly issued a charter to both Earl Simon and Saher, now made earl of Winchester, generally confirming the terms of a division and reserving to Simon: ‘the third penny of Leicestershire, of which he is earl, the chief residence of Leicester and our seneschalcy’. The king’s charter talks of ‘the partition made before us and our barons by Simon de Montfort and Saher de Quincy, earl of Winchester’.33 What this would seem to have been was the king’s general confirmation of the division, made before both earls. It was not just Simon who was unhappy with it. Saher was still agitating at this point for some compensation for his wife’s claims over lands the late Earl Robert had held in Normandy, which Countess Amice had in fact negotiated away in 1204. This may be behind the reference in the division document to lands allotted Saher in the suburb of Leicester and other adjacent manors, in compensation for lands in Saher’s share granted out, and so inaccessible to him [c. 47].34 We have the text of a final-looking division. It cannot be the division proposed earlier by Saher in 1205 or 1206, as it calls him an earl, which he was not until 1207. Nor can it be the ‘partition’ referred to by King John in March 1207, as it says nothing of his presence. It records a very detailed division made before a team of royal justices, headed by Archdeacon Henry of Stafford, and   Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 1, p. 32.   Rotuli Litterarum Patentium, p. 68. 33   T. Rymer, Fœdera, Conventiones, Litterae et Acta Publica, eds A. Clarke and F. Holbrooke (7 vols, London, 1816–69), vol. 1, pt 1, p. 96. The seneschalcy was that of England and Normandy, conferred on Earl Robert II of Leicester in June 1153 by Henry Plantagenet, RRAN, vol. 3, no. 439. The right of the eldest daughter was according to Bracton to have the chief seat (capital messuage) of the paternal honour, S.F.C. Milsom, ‘Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, in Studies in the History of the Common Law (London, 1985), p. 242. However, see the case of the division of the Giffard honours in England and Normandy in 1189, where the two heirs divided the ‘ensecia’ at the Channel, Cartae Antiquae Rolls, 11–20, ed. J. Conway Davies, Pipe Roll Society, new series, 33 (1957), pp. 165–6. 34   Close Rolls, 1231–34, p. 19, alludes to this, see for comment Fox, ‘Honor and Earldom of Leicester’, p. 393. Saher’s son, Earl Roger, was still asserting claims to lands in Normandy by right of his mother in 1230, TNA, DL25/2336. 31 32

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several juries. It seems to be the record of a process which must have occupied some days, and it probably occurred in the town of Leicester. The fact that 14 of the citizens of the town and at least nine Leicestershire county knights were involved as jurors is one indication. Also there is the fact that their main business was to assess the value of Leicester itself, which had been assigned to the Montforts, and balance it against what was to be given to the Quincys. Another consideration was that the justices seem to have demanded warrant for the alms that various beneficiaries were claiming, most of whom were based in or near Leicester. They had to produce documentary evidence for what they were claiming. When did these juries meet? The best indication comes from a later exchequer memorandum relating to what Robert of Roppesley owed for the lands of Simon committed to him by the king in February 1207. It tells us that Robert – sheriff of Leicestershire since July 1207 – continued to hold the designated Montfort share until 6 December 1207, when it says, ‘the land was divided between Earl Simon and Saher de Quincy’.35 We can assume that this was the point when our detailed, binding division was concluded, the one whose text we have. The justices and Leicestershire characters mentioned in it are consistent with that date. Even in December 1207 Earl Simon’s attorneys were still agitating about ‘demands and claims’ outstanding against Earl Saher (‘Demande et calumpnie quas comes Leyc’ habet versus comitem Wynton’), which make up a long final section of the partition document. A large number of the complaints [cc. 72–6] relate to the division of Leicester Forest, of which the earldom of Winchester managed to secure a large share, though Leicester itself had been conceded to the Montforts. Earl Simon also complained about the way Earl Saher had manipulated the settlement to the advantage of Countess Loretta, claiming that she got a larger share of the dower lands than she was due [c. 77]. The remaining 11 items on the list include a pointed reference to Saher’s diversion at some time between 1204 and 1207 of property in the eastern suburb of the town of Leicester to ( Joscelin) archdeacon of Wells [c. 87]. Saher’s actual grant to Joscelin survives in two texts and tells us that the property was a plot of land and court attached to the prebendal church of St Margaret, of which Joscelin was then the occupant. Curiously it makes no allusion to the fact that the land was at the time in royal hands, but assumes Saher’s right to dispose of the estate in free alms. What it does do is assert that the land was Saher’s property though it once had been held by Bishop William de Blois of Lincoln, though whether as   Pipe Roll 11 John, 24, ‘compotus terrarum Simonis de Muntfort comitis Leircestr’ a festo purificationis anni viii. usque ad festum sancti Nicolai anni sequentis anni huius rotuli’, Pipe Roll 11 John, 26. At first sight these terms make no sense, as the Pentecost after 2 February 1207 was in 9 John, not 8 John. The most likely explanation is however that what was being alluded to was Pentecost 10 June 1207. The process of division had been finally signed off on the feast of St Nicholas which followed, 6 December 1207. 35

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bishop or as archdeacon of Leicester and prebendary of St Margaret is not clear. The property in question was part of an estate which had been in contention between the earls of Leicester and the bishops of Lincoln since the 1120s, and Saher may have been looking for ways to end the long dispute, which had recently resulted in a major feud at John’s court between Earl Robert IV and Bishop Hugh of Avalon.36 The history of the division of the Anglo-Norman honours of Earl Robert IV of Leicester is a complex but important one. As with the division of the Percy honour in 1175 the king was not neutral in his division. In 1175 the winner was the curial aristocrat Joscelin of Louvain, who reaped the richest assets of the Percy estates in Yorkshire: in 1207 it was Saher de Quincy. His relationship with the king and long association with the English curial bureaucracy allowed Saher effective enjoyment of the entire honour in England from November 1204 to August 1206. Montfort’s outrage on discovering this bias is clear from the record, nor was his anger unjustified. The Quincy discontent with the loss of any claim on the Norman lands of Earl Robert IV may well have fuelled Saher’s successful attempt to whittle away at the Montfort claims on the town and forest of Leicester, erecting an alternative caput and forest based on Groby, while assisting the Countesses Petronilla and Loretta to secure the maximum dower from the carcass of the Leicester honour as he could. The sisters and co-heirs, Amice and Margaret, played a very active part in the process. Amice was adroit and prompt in securing the best possible advantage in the division, bulldozing over her mother’s and sister’s rights in France. She was determined to secure the fullest share of the English inheritance that she could, despite the difficult Anglo-French political circumstances. Her son appears as little more than a cipher in her machinations. Perhaps her creativity was hereditary. Her mother was even more imaginative and ambitious in her response to Earl Robert’s death, manipulating history and the king’s sympathies with the overt intention of disinheriting both her daughters. -o0oThe text we have of the division of December 1207 comes from the records of the Hastings family sold to Henry Huntington in 1926, and deposited in the research library he founded in San Marino, California. It is a rotulet of three membranes featuring a fourteenth-century transcript of several inquisitions relating to the Quincy family inheritance, the originals of which must have 36   D. Crouch, ‘Earls and Bishops in Twelfth-Century Leicestershire’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993): pp. 16–18; Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, eds C.W. Foster and K. Major, Lincoln Record Society (10 vols, 1931–73), vol. 3, pp. 216–18.

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come into the hands of the Hastings family after 1277 as co-heirs of Earl Roger de Quincy, son of Saher, who died in 1264 leaving three daughters to divide his inheritance between them. What was being copied by the fourteenth-century clerk is not immediately obvious, as little attempt was made to divide out one from the other the several original documents being transcribed. But the final sections would appear to be extensive extracts – if not the whole – from the verdict of the inquisition fined for in the summer of 1206 and ultimately delivered in December 1207.37 There were certainly multiple copies of the original. When at the beginning of 1210 Simon de Montfort’s portion of the earldom was once again in the king’s hand, the text of the 1207 inquisition appears to have formed one of the sources for the half-yearly account which William de Canteleu submitted to the exchequer in September 1210 as keeper of ‘the lands of Simon de Montfort’, notably its list of alms payments and fixed renders.38 If so, that would likely have been the copy that had been given to the Montforts in March 1207, while our text derives ultimately from the Quincy copy. No attempt has been made to reconcile the mathematics of the valuations and totals, which were in places copied inaccurately by the fourteenth-century scribe, and often make little sense.

37   A useful but somewhat erratic English calendar is to be found in Report on the MSS of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Historical MSS Commission (4 vols, London, 1928–47), vol. 1, pp. 334–42. 38   Pipe Roll 12 John, pp. 96–7.

Appendix San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, HAM Box 58B/1, mm. 1–3 (s. xiv). Calendared, Report on the MSS of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Historical MSS Commission (4 vols, London, 1928–47), vol. 1, pp. 334–42. [m. 1.] [1] Inquisitio facta de valore legitimo per sacramentum militum et legalium hominum coram Will(elm)o de Watton’ Henr(ico) archidiacono Stafford’ Gilb(er)to filio Reinfredi Eusth(acio) Faconb(er)ge Walt(er)o Malch(ler)ci illuc missis per dominum regem. [2] Electi ex parte comitis Leyc’. Will(elmu)s Pigot Stephanus de Segraue Ric(ard)us de Keuelingworth Will(elmu)s de Quatremare Will(elmu)s de Keuelingworth Rob(er)tus de Wyuill’. [3] Electi ex parte comitis Wynton’. Will(elmu)s de Aubenny [blank] de Trumpenton’. Will(elmu)s Harecourt. Will(elmu)s de Knapwill’. Will(elmu)s Trenchefoyll. Ric(ard)us de Brakkele. [4] Electi villea Leycestr’. Ric(ard)us de Wyteby Rog(er)us Boun Simon Alecat Griffyn Cok Will(elmu)s filius Erdrici Rob(ertus) filius Ric(ard)i Rog(er)us Gonekes Regin(aldus) iuxta murum Rog(er)us filius Will(elm)i Henr(icus) Ferrator Geruasius Russell Galfr(id)us filius Nich(ola)i Will(elmu)s filius Pagani Walt(er)us Pykenot’. [5] De firmab prefecture Leycestr’ per annum cxvii li. x d. [6] De firma pontium Leyc’ per annum iiii li. [7] De valore molend(inorum) Leyc’ per annum xxxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. [8] De firma furnorum tam extra portam quam infra xxii li. xiii s. iiii d. [9] De valore quatuor caruc(atarum) terre in dominico per annum cum prato x li.

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[10] De redditu assise extra portam orientalem per annum xi li. ii s. ii d. obolum. exceptis cxii s. x d. assignatis abbati Leyc’. et exceptis xx s. assignatis Will(elm)o de Langeton’. [11] De redditu nouo feoffamenti in Leyc’ per annum, xvii s. vii d. obolum. De redditu gallinarum assise extra portam australem iiii s. ii d. [12] De redditu trium librarum piperis per annum in Leyc’ xviii d. [13] Summa cc li. lxiii s. v d. preter denarios assignatos abbati Leyc’ inde elemos(inis) confortit(is). [m. 2] [14] Canonicis Leyc’ in pretoria Leyc’ per annum vi li. per cartam Rob(erti) comitis primi. Eisdem canonicis de terra Rad(ulf )i Lutelchild in Leyc’ per annum ii s. per cartam Rob(erti) comitis vltimic. Eisdem canonicis de mesuagio Simon(is) clerici in Leyc’ per annum x s. per cartam comitis Rob(erti) vltimic. [15] Monialibusd de Pratell(is) per annum recipiendos ad scaccarium comitis x li. iii s. iiii d. per cartam Rob(er)ti vltimi. [16] Infirmis fratribus sancti Lazari in pretorio Leyc’ per annum x s. per cartam Rob(er)ti secundi. Eisdem fratribus de firma pontium Leyc’ per annum vi s. viii d. per cartam comitisse Petronill(e) et per confirmationem predicti comitis secundi. [17] Leprosis fratribus Leyc’ in pretorio Leyc’ per annum ix li. xviii s. iiii d. per cartam Roberti primi. Eisdem fratribus de exitu foreste per annum vii s. iii d. per cartam eiusdem comitis. [18] Hospitali Leyc’ per annum de exitu quolibet mense xiii parua quarteria bladi per cartam Rob(er)ti secundi. Et per confirmationem Rob(er)ti comitis vltimi per annum xvi li. xviii s. scilicet pretium cuiuslibet quarterium ii s. [19] Clericis sancte Marie de Castello per annum. xx s. recipiendos ad scaccarium comitis per cartam Rob(erti) comitis primi. [20] Fratribus sancte Marie de Vluescroft per annum xiii s. iiii d. de decimis seldarum Leyc’ per cartam.

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[21] Monachis de sancto Ebrulpho per cartam Rob(er)ti comitis primi per annum lxxiii s. iiii d. de decimis molendinorum de Leyc’ secundum quod molendina appreciantur ad lv marcase sicut superius notatur. [22] Rob(er)to clerico de decima furnorum extra portam Leyc’ habend(a) in vita sua per cartam Rob(erti) comitis vltimic et Gunfredo capellano de decima furnorum infra portas Leyc’ per monachos sancti Ebrulphi per cartam Rob(er)ti primi. Et est summa decimarum furnorum tam extra portam quam infra portam xlv s. iiii d. secundum quod omnes furni positi sunt ad firmam xxxiiii marcarum. [23] Simoni de Turuill’ et Ernaldo fratri suo per annum ___ x li. in feodo in prefectura Leyc’ per cartam comitis Rob(er)ti secundi. [24] Rob(er)to de Staunton’ in eadem prefectura per annum ___ xl s. per cartam Rob(er)ti comitis vltimi. [25] Priorif de Warra de decima prefecture per annum ___ x li. per cartam Rob(er)ti primi. [26] Fratribus hospitalibus de Estbrugge de Cantuar(ia) per annum ___ xiii s. iiii d. in predicta prefectura per cartam comitis Rob(erti) secundi. [27] Magistro Gilb(er)to de Aquila in eadem prefectura c s. per cartam Rob(erti) comitis vltimi habend(os) in vita sua. [28] Summa lxxix li. xi s. ix d. Quibus subtractis de predicta cc li. lxiii s. v d. remanet ad locandum in valore Leyc’ c li. xi s. viii d. -o0o[29] Terra assignata comiti Wynton’ contra valorem Leyc’ per sacramentum predictorum iuratorum. [30] Iurata dicunt quod deg Brackele posita fuit ad firmam tempore comitis Rob(er)ti et adhuc valet per annum xxxviii li. exceptis viuar(iis) et auxiliis et columbar(iis) sed per defaltam totius instaur(ationis) per commune consilium appreciat[a est] ad xxxv li. sed inde debunt [sic] subtrahi elemosine Et sciendum quod infra predictum valorem comput[atus est] exitus cuiusdam graue. [31] Item dicunt quod si Halso instaurat(us) esset de xxxv. vaccis et de ouibus et de xl. porcis, tunc valeret per annum ___ xxxviii li.

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[32] Item dicunt quod si Groby instaurat(us) esset de xx. vaccis et vno tauro et xx. ouibus et vno ver(ro), tunc valeret per annum xiii li. viii s. iiii d. quia molendinum quod valuit per annum tempore comitis Rob(er)ti iiii li., non valet modo nisi iiii. marcas. quia non habet sectam Leyc’ sicut habere solebat sed tamen per commune consilium extenditur ad xiiii li. ac si instaurat(us) esset set inde debunt [sic] subtrahi elemosinar(ia). [33] Item dicunt quod Schep(e) valet xix li. per annum vii s. iii d. cum quod(dam) prato pertinenteh ad dictum manerium quod valet per annum xl s. sed inde debent subtrahi elemosinar(ia). [34] Item dicunt quod Swythelond’ tempore comitis Rob(er)ti vltimi valuit per annum lxii s. vii d. sed modo non valet plusquam xxxii s. vii d. quia Will(elmu)s Falconar(ius) recuperauit seisinam totius terre de dominico per assisam post mortem Rob(er)ti comitis vltimi. [35] Item dicunt quod Merkenfeld valuit tempore comitis Rob(er)ti vltimi et modo valet per annum. lx s. [36] Item dicunt quod Whitewyk valuit tempore comitis Rob(er)ti vltimi et modo valet per annum ___ xxx s. preter viuar(ium). [37] Item dicunt quod Roteby valuit et modo valet per annum iiii li. xvii s. extra viuar(ium) et vno par calcar(ii) deaurat(i) de terra Petri de sancto Edwardo. [38] Item dicunt quod Ansty valuit tempore comitis Rob(er)ti et adhuc valet per annum ___ lxvii s. [39] Item dicunt quod Watton’ valet per annum xxiiii s. sed inde debent subtrahi elemos(inaria). [40] Item dicunt quod in Leiton’ sunt xx s. de redditu Galfr(id)i de Craunford’ et de Ph(ilipp)o de Wasteneys. v s. per annum. [41] Summa totius cxxiiii li. xxiii s. [42] Monialibus de Godestouwe in Brackeley xiii s. iiii d. Hospitali de Brakeley vi s. per annum. Canonicis de Leyc’ de decima eiusdem ville lxxvi s. per annum scilicet de xxxviii li. sicut posit(a) fuit ad firmam comitis Rob(erti). Eisdem canonicis de decima xii li. et iiii s. de redditu assisa in Halso xxiiii s. iiii d. per annum. Eisdem canonicis de decima veteris firme de Shepesheued scilicet de xvii

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li. vii s. preter pratum viii d. per annum. Eisdem canonicis de decima xxiiii s. de Whatton per annum ii s. iiii d. [43] Monachis de sancto Ebrulpho de decima iiii li. de valore molend(ini) de Groby per annum viii d. [44] Summa tocius viii li. Quibus subtract(is) de predictis cxxiii li. et xxiii d. Remanent cxxiiii li. vii s. iii d. [45] Allocantur comiti Wynton’ in terra assignat(a) ei contra valorem Leyc’ quibus subtract(is) de cxxiii li. x s. viii d. de valore Leyc’ sine elemos(inis) constitut(is) in Leyc’ remanent ad locand(um) comiti Wynton’ contra valorem Leyc’ viii li. xiii s. v d. Ex quibus substitutis iiii li. xv s. viii d. de superplusag(io) elemos(ine) quas comes Leyc’ reddidit in Hynkeley et de villa Will(elm)i de Seneuill’ vltra xxiii s. de elemos(inis) quas comes Wynton’ reddidit de Wyngeston’ et de molend(ino) de Thurmodeston’ remanent ad locand(um) comiti Wynton’ lxxvii s. ix d. ex quibus medietatem scilicet xxxviii s. x d. obolum. [46] Alloc(antur) eidem comiti Wynton’ in parte sua de terra forincec(a) que non sunt comput(ata) contra valorem Leyc’ vt habeat partem suam integram et de altera medietate alloc(ata) eidem comiti Wynton’ xxiii s. iiii d. in superplusag(io) valoris viuar(ii) que idem comes habet in parte sua contra Leyc’ vltra valorem viuarii que comes Leyc’ habet in parte sua. Et adhuc remanent ad loc(andum) com(iti) Wynton’ xv s. vi d. obolum ex quibus ix s. ii d. alloc(antur) eidem com(iti) Wynton’ in superplus(agio) quam habet in xl li. terre vltra medietatem com(itis) Leyc’. Et preterea vi s. iiii dj. obolum alloc(antur) eidem com(iti) Wynton’ recipiend(os) de xvi s. redditus quos comes Leyc’ habet ex parte sua in villa Wynton’ et est valor terrarum assign(atarum) com(iti) Wynton’ valorem per partes superius notatas exceptis elemosinis in predictis terris constitutis cxxiii li. x s. viii d. [47] Terr(e) assignat(e) com(iti) Wynton’ pro xl li. vltra medietatem com(itis) Leyc’ de terra forinceca que non sunt comput(ate) contra valorem Leyc’ scilicet in Wynterburnestok xx li. In Westam cxix s. vii d. In Clenfeld c s. ii d. In Belgraue ix li. x s. v d. Et habent de superplus(agio) vltra xl li. ix s. ii d. que alloc(antur) com(iti) Wynton’ in def(alta) terrarum suarum que ei assignantur. -o0o[48] Terre assignate comiti Leyc’ in terra forinc(eca).

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[49] In Hynkele cum Wyka xxvii li. xvi s. ii d. obolum. In Shelton’ xvi li. ii s. iiii d. obolum. In Belgraue ix li. ix s. v d. In Derseford xiii li. ii s. v d. In Bagworth xvi li. In Clenfeld c s. ii d. In Wethstan cxix s. que apprec(iantur) xxvi li. [50] Summa iiiixxxiii li. x s. iii d. obolum. [51] Contra hec remanent com(iti) Wynton’ Thurmodeston’ pro xv li. vii s. viii d. Wykyngeston’ pro xl li. Seueby pro viii li. ii s. i d. obolum. In manerio de Wynteburnestoke x li. quod apprec(iantur) l li. [In Westan xx li.k] [m. 3] [52] In Westan. xx li. v d. [53] Preterea residuum de Wynteburnestoke scilicet xl li. diuiditur ita quod xx li. remanent comiti Leyc’ et comiti Wynton’ ita quod ipse habet inde xxx li. cum predictis x li. [54] Milites assignati comiti Leyc’ vnde contentio fuit inter ipsum et comitem Wynton’. [55] Rad(ulf )us de Martiuall’ i. militem. Hamol de Hoiot i. quarterium. Will(elmu)s de Belgraue v. partem i. militis. Michael Bugetel i. quarterium. Iacobus et Robertus de Westan i. quarterium in Porebrigge de maritagio comitisse Gloucestr’. i. militem in Peniton’ de maritagio eiusdem. i. militem in Stratford’ in Wyltesire de maritagio Marg(er)i.e. de Toney. i militem medietatis de maritagio Alic(ie) Basset in Watton’ de xxiiii. virgatis terre vnde adhuc nullum facit seruitium. In seruitio Will(elm)i de Seneuill’ xx s. In Wupwynburne in seruitio Will(elm)i Cooc xiiii s. In Wynton’ medietatem redditus assise de feodo Leyc’ aduocationes ecclesiarum in Wynton’ de eodem feodo. [56] Seruientes assignati comiti Leyc’. [57] Ioh(ann)es de Netherhauene Rob(er)tus de Carlt’ Will(elmu)s falconar(ius) de Thurkeleston’ austurc(arius) et Gilb(er)tus aucepsm in Thorp Iuo de Leur’ Rob(er)tus filius Will(elm)i de Brumsthorp’ Rog(er)us de Pokyngton’. Rad(ulf ) us de Curton’ in Glenefeld’. Will(elmu)s de Belgraue Rob(er)tus de Sculton’. Ric(ard)us cocus de Hynkele Thom(as) Pynzoun. Will(elmu)s lardarius in Leyc’. [58] Milites assignati comiti Wynton’.

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[59] Will(elmu)s de Dyuan i. militem. Will(elmu)s Pycot i. quarterium Ric(ard)us filius Warini i. quarterium Hugo de Gundeuill’ ii. milites in Pympre de maritagio comitisse Glouc’. De maritagio matris Rog(er)i de Toney in Stratford i. militem. De maritagio Will(elm)i Lupp(e)lli in Munst(er)on et in Clecumbe ii. milites et dimidium. In Gleton’ quarta pars i. militis quam prior de Cristecherch’ tenet medietatem seruient(ierie) de maritagio Alic(ie) Basset. [60] Contra milites com(itis) Rog(er)i assignantur comiti Wynton’ iii. milites et i. quarterium scilicet de comite Sar’ i. militem de Ric(ard)o Basset i. militem de Briano de Insula dimidium militem de Michaele Rogerell’ iii partes i. militis. Contra milit(es) Will(elm)i de Casmnes assignantur comiti Wynton’ ii. partes militis de paruis feodis de Moret(onia) scilicet de Will(elm)o Turuill’ i. militem in Hamndenar’ in Greton’ Cantebrugge et Betton’ i. militem medietatem i. militis de Rad(ulf )o de Merlyng’ et alteram medietatem com(iti) Leyc’. -o0o[61] Demande et calumpnie quas comes Leyc’ habet versus comitem Wynton’. [62] Item petit elemosinas sibi alloc(ari) quas eum reddere oportet secundum tenorem cartarum antecessorum suorum scilicet leprosis de sancto Leonardo Leyc’ de redditu de Hynkeley per annum lx s. [63] Item leprosis predictis vii s. de decima foreste. [64] Item monialibus de [blank] [65] Item ecclesie beate Marie de Castello ii s. x d. de terra que fuit Littelchild’. [66] Item fratribus de sancto Lazaro de [blank] per annum de eodem scaccario x s. Et preterea dimidium inde de redditu prenominatoo. [67] Item hospitali sancti Thome de Estbrugge de Can(tuaria) per annum i. marcam. [68] Item monialibus de Wroxhale per annum x s. [69] Item priori de Hynkele per annum de decima soce de Hynkele iiii li. xii s. [70] Item hospitali sancti Ioh(ann)is baptiste de Leyc’ quolibet mense per annum xiii. quarteria bladi secundum minorem mensuram.

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[71] Item Rob(ertus) clericus habet [blank] de decima furnorum extra portam orientalem de Leyc’ quocumque modo affirmentur in tota vita sua. [72] Item comes Leyc’ petit partem suam de octo viuariis et de chacea de Wysele. [73] Item petit iiii. pueros scilicet duas filias Hugonis de Cla’ et heredem Will(elm)i de Trannsre et heredem Rad(ulf )i de Sapeyk. [74] Item petit rationabilem partem suam de foresta. [75] Item queritur quod homines sui manentes in foresta scilicet homines de Dirsford’ et Bagworth Clenefeld’ et Thurkeleston’ possunt habere communem pasturam et alia aysiamenta ad eos pertinentia sicut habere solent in foresta et in bosco vnde comes Wynton’ nichil debet habere nisi venationem. [76] Item idem comes quer(itur) quod comes Wynton’ vendidit et omnino destruxit quoddam alnetum de Hynghah’g et non pertinet ad liberam haiam de Hynghahg’ que pertinent ad partem dicti comitis Leyc’. [77] Item queritur de Laur(etta) que fuit [vxor comitis] Rob(er)ti plus habet in dotem quam habere debet per liberationem comitis Wynton’. [78] Item idem petit cxix s. vii d. in West [blank] [qui] assignat(i) fuerunt in parte sua et comes Wynton’ ei deforc(iauit). [79] Item [petit] partem suam de seruitio Nich(ola)i de Wyel in chacia de Vunburheg’. [80] Item petit medietatem xxviii s. de Will(elm)o Coco in Huppinburn. [81] Item petit partem suam de seruitio Treb’t in Netherhauene et partem suam de seruitio Will(elm)i Trenchefoill’ in eadem villa. [82] Idem petit medietatem [blank] de molen(dino) quod predictus Will(elmu)s tenet in predicta villa. [83] Idem petit partem suam de seruitio heredum Morini in Whatton’ et [blank] de seruitio xxiiii virgatarum terre datarum ei in maritagio in eadem villa. [84] Idem petit partem suam de seruitio Ade de Shepesheued de seruitio Ric(ard)i filii Nich(ola)i et Walt(er)i Walens(is) et Rog(er)i camerarii et Gilb(er)ti filii Edwyn(i).

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[85] Idem petit partem suam de seruitio Will(elm)i Framerii et Rob(er)ti de Belleston’ et Walt(er)i filii Ad(e) de Ansty et Bertrand(i) et Thurstan(i) de Thurmodeston’ et Rog(er)i Godberd’ et Thom(e) fil(ii) Ric(ard)i Fraunceys. [86] Idem petit partem suam de seruitio Rob(er)ti Gormond’ et Waleram(i) de vna vncea seric(e) et de seruitio Sweyn de i. libra piperis et partem suam de seruitio summentarii de Groby [blank] piperis et de seruitio Harald(i) de Spenc’ in eadem villa. Et de seruitio Iuonis Hurell’ de iii. virgatis terre in [blank] et de medietate terre quam Petrus de sancto Edwardo tenet in Rotby. Et de seruitio camerarii in Wyky [blank] de seruitio Will(elm)i Sheueby scilicet de vna libra cere. [87] Idem petit domos que fuerunt episcopi Lincoln(iensis) in suburbio quas comes Wynton’ dedit archidiacono Wellens(i). [88] Idem petit operationem terre militum in honore de Grentemel(nio) que comes Wynton’ ei deforciauit scilicet de parte sua ad reparandum viuarium et stagnum de Leyc’ sicut facere solebat. villa MS. bprima MS. cMS. dHomalibus MS. emaras MS. fprior MS. gsic in MS. hpertinent MS. ixxiii MS. js(olidos) MS. kduplicated in MS. lHamon’ MS. maceps MS. nAyua MS. oponom’ MS. a

Translation [1] Inquisition made into a lawful value by oath of knights and men experienced in the law before William de Warenne, Henry, archdeacon of Stafford, Gilbert son of Reinfrid, Eustace de Fauconberg and Walter Mauclerc, sent for the purpose by the lord king.39

39   With the exception of the baron Gilbert FitzReinfrid, lord of Kendal (d. 1220), most are royal justices known to have been active in 1207–08. The William of ‘Watton’ leading the list can only be an error for the baronial justice, William de Warenne of Wormegay (d. 1209), in eyre in 1198; he was a second cousin of Simon de Montfort, D. Crook, Records of the General Eyre (London, 1982), pp. 58–60. Archdeacon Henry of Stafford and Eustace of Fauconberg both appear as royal justices before whom concords were made at the end of November 1207, Feet of Fines for the County of Norfolk for the Reign of John, ed. B. Dodwell, Pipe Roll Society, 70 (1959), pp. 62–3; Feet of Fines for the County of Lincoln for the Reign of John, ed. M.S. Walker, Pipe Roll Society, 67 (1953), p. 116. Walter Mauclerc was active as a royal justice in 1208, Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 5, p. 304.

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[2] Selected on the part of the earl of Leicester: William Picot, Stephen of Seagrave, Richard of Kilworth, William de Quatremares, William of Kilworth and Robert de Wiville.40 [3] Selected on the part of the earl of Winchester: William d’Aubigné, [William] of Trumpington, William de Harcourt, William of Knapwell, William Trenchefoille, Richard of Brackley.41 [4] Selected from the town of Leicester: Richard of Whitby, Roger Boun, Simon Alleycat, Gruffudd Goch, William son of Edric, Robert son of Richard, Roger Gonekes, Reginald Atte Wall, Roger son of William, Henry the Ironworker, Gervase Russell, Geoffrey son of Nicholas, William son of Payn and Walter Pykenot.42 [5] From the farm of the provostry of Leicester, £117 10d. a year. [6] From the farm of the bridges of Leicester, £4 a year. [7] From the profits of the mills of Leicester, £36 13s. 4d. a year.   William Picot and Stephen of Seagrave were knight coroners of Leicestershire in 1206, which accounts for their leading position here, Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 5, p. 18. William de Quatremares and Robert de Wiville appear as knights of the Leicester county court in 1205 and 1207, Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 4, p. 33; vol. 5, pp. 5, 39, 69. Robert answered as a knight of the honour of Leicester to the king’s summons of 1213, N. Vincent, ‘A Roll of Knights Summoned to Campaign in 1213’, Historical Research, 66 (1993): p. 97. Richard of Kilworth is noted as party to a plea of 1207, Curia Regis Rolls, vol. 5, p. 98. 41   Most of these men were retained Quincy knights: William of Trumpington, William Trenchefoille, Richard of Brackley appear in his acts before he was made earl, William of Trumpington as his seneschal, Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 1, p. 12; Registrum Antiquissimum of Lincoln, vol. 3, pp. 217–18; BL, MS Harley 294, fol. 250r. William of Knapwell occurs in his acts after 1207, as Saher’s seneschal on occasion, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Evenley and Astwick 60, Brackley 11A; BL, Additional charter 47573(17); BL, MS Cotton Tiberius C ix, fol. 93r. 42   The survival of early lists of entry fines and defaults for the gild merchant of Leicester allow us to identify several of these burgesses. Robert, son of Richard, and Walter Pykenot were admitted in 1196, Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 1, pp. 13, 14. Reginald atte Wall and William son of Payn are mentioned in 1210, ibid., pp. 21, 32; Geoffrey FitzNicholas and Richard of Whitby in 1211, ibid., pp. 22, 23. Two ‘sons of Griffin’ were mentioned in 1219, ibid., p. 24. The curiosity of a Welshman called Gruffudd Goch (the Red) as a burgess of Leicester in 1207 has not previously been noted. Richard of Whitby and his son Alexander appear in an act of Saher de Quincy of 1204 x 7, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Brackley B 179. 40

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[8] From the farm of the ovens inside or outside the gate, £22 13s. 4d. [9] From the profits of four carrucates of land in demesne with the meadow, £10 a year. [10] From the fixed rents outside the East Gate, £11 2s. 2½d. a year, leaving out the 112s. 10d. assigned to the abbot of Leicester, and the 20s. assigned to William of Langton.43 [11] From the new rent of enfeoffment in Leicester, 17s. 7½d a year. From the fixed rent of hens outside the South Gate, 4s. 2d. [12] From the rent of three pounds of pepper annually in Leicester, 18d. [13] Total of £200 63s. 5d., apart from the cash assigned to the abbot of Leicester incorporated in the alms payments. [14] £6 annually to the canons of Leicester in the provostry of Leicester according to the charter of Earl Robert II.44 2s. annually to the canons from the land of Ralph Littlechild in Leicester, according to the charter of Earl Robert IV. 10s. annually to the canons from the land of Simon the Clerk in Leicester, according to the charter of Earl Robert IV.45 [15] £10 3s. 4d. annually to the nuns of Préaux payable from the earl’s exchequer according to the charter of Earl Robert II.46 [16] 10s. annually to the sick brothers of St Lazarus from the provostry of Leicester according to the charter of Robert III. 6s. 8d. annually to the same   William of Langton was a clericus of Earl Robert IV, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 11055, fol. 36r. 44   In this inquest the three earls Robert mentioned are described as ‘primus’, ‘secundus’ and ‘ultimus’. The ‘first earl Robert’ to the compiler is the one historians call Robert II (d. 1168), for the compiler omitted Robert (I) count of Meulan and Leicester (d. 1118) from his reckoning. 45   For the grant of Robert II of £6 to his abbey c. 1139, D. Crouch, ‘Early Charters and Patrons of Leicester Abbey’, in J. Storey and others (eds), Leicester Abbey: Medieval History, Archaeology and Manuscript Studies (Leicester, 2006), pp. 234–5. The charters of Robert IV referred to here are otherwise unknown. 46   For the grant to the nuns of Préaux which also mentions the exchequer, dated 1121 x 23, Arthur du Monstier, Neustria Pia seu de omnibus et singulis abbatiis et prioratibus totius Normanniae (Rouen, 1663), pp. 524–5. 43

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brothers from the farm of the bridges of Leicester, according to the charter of Countess Petronilla and by confirmation of the aforesaid earl.47 [17] £9 18s. 4d. annually to the leper brothers of Leicester from the provostry of Leicester, according to the charter of Robert II. 7s. 3d. annually from the profits of the forest according to the charter of the same earl. [18] Thirteen small quarters of grain to the hospital of Leicester annually at the end of every month according to the charter of Robert III. £16 18s. annually by confirmation of Earl Robert IV, namely giving 2s.48 for the value of every one of those quarters. [19] 20s. annually to the clerks of St Mary de Castro payable at the earl’s exchequer, according to the charter of Earl Robert II.49 [20] 13s. 4d. annually to the brothers of St Mary of Ulverscroft from the tithes of the bazaars (seldae) of Leicester, according to a charter. [21] 73s. 4d. annually to the monks of St-Evroult from the tithes of the mills of Leicester, according to the charter of Earl Robert II, according to a valuation of the mills at 55 marks, as mentioned above [7].50 [22] To Robert the clerk for the tithe of the ovens outside the gate of Leicester for his lifetime according to the charter of Earl Robert IV, and to Gunfrid the chaplain for the tithe of ovens within the gates on behalf of the monks of St-Evroult, according to the charter of Robert II: the total of the oven tithes whether inside or outside the gate 45s. 4d. according to a valuation of the ovens placed out at farm of 34 marks.51   Earl Robert III’s grant is to be found, Cartulary of Burton Lazars, BL, MS Cotton Nero C xii, fol. 110r. 48   It should be 2s. 2d. to reach that total. 49   The grant is noted in the earl’s charter to the college, Crouch, ‘Early Charters and Patrons of Leicester Abbey’, p. 243. For the Leicester exchequer, Crouch, Beaumont Twins, pp. 163–6. 50   A text of the earl’s charter recording amongst many other things the abbey’s tithe of the mills and ovens of Leicester survives, W. Dugdale and R. Dodsworth, Monasticon Anglicanum (3 vols, London, 1655–73), vol. 2, p. 967. 51   Robert and Gunfrid were known clerks of Earl Robert IV. Robert was ‘clericus meus’ in an act of the earl to Lyre, Evreux, archives départementales de l’Eure, H 438 (16). Gunfrid appears to have held the rectory of Waltham-on-the-Wolds, BL, Additional charter 47644. He was married to Petronilla, daughter of a burgess, Richard, son of Roger, and his control 47

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[23] £10 annually in fee to Simon de Tourville and Arnold his brother in the provostry of Leicester, according to the charter of Earl Robert III.52 [24] 40s. annually to Robert of Staunton in the same provostry, according to the charter of Earl Robert IV. [25] £10 annually to the prior of Ware from the tithe of the provostry, according to the charter of Robert II.53 [26] 13s. 4d. annually to the hospitaller brothers of the East Bridge of Canterbury from the tithe of the aforesaid provostry according to the charter of Earl Robert III. [27] 100s. to Master Gilbert de L’Aigle to enjoy for his lifetime according to the charter of Earl Robert IV from the same provostry. [28] Total of £79 11s. 9d.54 From which, subtracted from the aforesaid £200 63s. 5d., there remain £100 11s. 8d. for allocation towards the value of Leicester. -o0o[29] Lands assigned to the earl of Winchester in compensation for Leicester on the oath of the abovementioned jurors. [30] The jurors say that the [provostry] of Brackley was placed out at farm in the time of Earl Robert and is still valued at £38 except for the fishponds, aids and dovecotes, but for lack of investment it is actually valued by general opinion to be £35, not counting the alms payments needing to be deducted from it. Note that the profit from a certain plantation is included in the valuation. of ovens outside the south gate is mentioned in a charter of Countess Petronilla to his wife, Records of the Borough of Leicester, vol. 1, pp. 10–11. 52   Simon and Arnold attest as brothers to acts of Earl Robert III to Lyre abbey, MSS of the Marquise de Mathan, Collection Lenoir, t. 23, pp. 458–9, 474. The two brothers were members of the Tourville family of Weston Turville, Buckinghamshire, though it is not clear where they fit into its lineage, Crouch, Beaumont Twins, pp. 218–19. Arnold certainly held land in the county in 1180, which makes it possible he was a younger son of Geoffrey II de Tourville (d. c. 1173), Pipe Roll 26 Henry II, p. 129. 53   The tithe of the provostry of Leicester was conceded to St-Evroult, Ware’s mother house, by Robert II, and there must have been an assignment of it from the abbey to the priory. 54   It should be £80 11d.

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[31] They say that if Halse was fully stocked with 35 cows, sheep and 40 pigs, it would be worth £38. [32] They say that if Groby was fully stocked with 20 cows, a bull, 20 sheep55 and a boar, it would be worth £13 8s. 4d. because the mill valued annually at £4 in Earl Robert’s day is worth no more than four marks, as it has not monopoly of the Leicester tenants’ milling as it once did. General opinion values Groby as £14 if it were stocked up, but the alms payments need to be taken into account. [33] They say that Sheepy (Leicestershire) is worth £19 7s. 3d. with a certain meadow belonging to the said manor which is worth 40s a year, but alms payments need to be taken into account. [34] They say that Swithland (Leicestershire) was worth 62s. 7d. annually in the time of Earl Robert IV, but is now worth no more than 32s. 7d. because William Falconer recovered possession of all the demesne land by an assize after the earl’s death. [35] They say that Markfield (Leicestershire) was worth 60s. annually in the days of Earl Robert IV, and still is. [36] They say that Whitwick (Leicestershire) was worth 30s. annually in the days of Earl Robert IV, excluding the fishpond, and still is. [37] They say that Ratby (Leicestershire) was and still is worth £4 17s. annually apart from the fishpond, and a pair of gilded spurs from the land of Peter of St Edwards. [38] They say that Anstey (Leicestershire) was worth 67s. annually in the days of Earl Robert, and still is. [39] They say that Walton (-on-the-Wolds, Leicestershire) is worth 24s. but alms payments need deducting from that. [40] They say that there are 20s. in Laughton (Leicestershire) from the rent of Geoffrey of Cranford, and 5s. annually from Philip de Wasteneis. [41] The total of all this is £123 23s.56

  It may be that ‘pigs’ rather than ‘sheep’ was written in the original.   Given as £123 23d. (or £123 1s. 11d.) in [46]. It should be £123 2s. 10d.

55 56

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[42] To the nuns of Godstow in Brackley, 13s. 4d.; to the hospital of Brackley, 6s. annually. To the canons of Leicester [abbey] from the tithe of the town, 76s annually, specifically from the £38 farm Earl Robert placed it out as. To the same canons 24s. 4d. annually from the tithe of the fixed rents of Halse, £12 4s. To the same canons 8d annually out of the tithe of the old farm of Shepshed, namely £17 7s. apart from the meadow. To the same canons 2s. 4d. out of the tithe of 24s. for Walton-on-the-Wolds. [43] To the monks of St-Evroult 8d. annually from the tithe of the mill of Groby, its value being £4. [44] The total of all this is £8, which leaves £124 7s. 3d. when subtracted from the previous total of £123 23d. [sic] [45] There should be allocated to the earl of Winchester in land assigned against the value of Leicester, from which has been deducted from the £123 10s. 8d. of the value of the town, £8 13s. 5d. from which £4 15s. 8d. are drawn from the surplus of alms which the earl of Leicester owed from Hinckley and the village of William de Senneville,57 apart from the 23s. of alms which the earl of Winchester paid from Wigston and the mill of Thurmaston. There remains 77s. 9d. for allocating to the earl of Winchester, of which a half share is 38s. 10½d. [46] There should be allocated 23s. 4d. to the same earl of Winchester in his portion of granted-out land (which is not calculated against the value of Leicester as he ought to have his share intact) and from the other half allowed to the earl of Winchester surplus to the value of the fishpond he has in his share against that of Leicester. There still remains 15s. 6½d. to be allocated to the earl of Winchester, of which 9s. 2d. should be allocated to him surplus to what he has in £40 worth of land more than the earl of Leicester’s half. Besides this, 6s. 4½d. should be allowed to the earl of Winchester to be received from 16s. of rent the earl of Leicester has from his part in the town of Winchester. And the value of lands assigned to the earl of Winchester (the value of the portions noted above) apart from alms settled on them, is £123 10s. 8d. [47] The lands assigned to the earl of Winchester for the £40 beyond the half share of the earl of Leicester for granted-out (forinsec) lands which were not accounted for against the value of Leicester, namely in Winterbourne (Wiltshire), £20; in Whetstone, 119s. 7d.; in Glenfield (Leicestershire), 100s. 2d.; in Belgrave, £9 10s. 5d. He has £40 9s. 2d. beyond this allowed to the earl of Winchester to make up for a shortfall of lands assigned him.   Lockington (Leicestershire).

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-o0o[48] Lands assigned to the earl of Leicester from those granted out. [49] In Hinckley with Wyken (Leicestershire), £27 16s. 2½d. In Shilton (Leicestershire), £16 2s. 4½d. In Belgrave, £9 9s. 5d. In Desford (Leicestershire), £13 2s. 5d. In Bagworth (Leicestershire) £16. In Glenfield, 100s. 2d. In Whetstone, 119s. which should be worth £26. [50] The total is £93 10s. 3½d.58 [51] Reckoned against this there remains to the earl of Winchester, Thurmaston for £15 7s. 8d; Wigston, for £40; Shearsby (Leicestershire), for £8 2s. 1½d.; £10 in the manor of Winterbourne, which should be worth £50. [52] £20 5d. in Whetstone. [53] The £40 remaining from Winterbourne ought to be divided up, so that £20 goes each to the earls of Leicester and Winchester, so that Winchester has £30, counting the other £10 mentioned above. [54] These are the knights assigned to the earl of Leicester, over which there was a dispute between him and the earl of Winchester. [55] Ralph de Martinwast, 1 knight. Hamo de Hotot, ¼ knight. William of Belgrave, one fifth of a knight. Michael Bugetel, ¼ knight. James and Robert of Whetstone, ¼ knight in Purbeck (Dorset) from the marriage-portion of the countess of Gloucester.59 1 knight in Penitone60 from the same marriage. 1 knight in Stratford Tony in Wiltshire from the marriage-portion of Margaret de Tosny.61 1 knight from the half share of the marriage-portion of Alice Basset in (Long) Whatton, of the 24 virgates of which no service has been performed till   The total should be £93 9s. 7d.   The marriage between Earl William of Gloucester and Hawise, daughter of Earl Robert II of Leicester, occurred around 1148, her marriage portion being the Leicester lands in Dorset abstracted by Earl William’s father from the Leicesters in 1139, Crouch, Beaumont Twins, p. 85 and nn. 116–18. 60   There was a place called Bertona in the Leicester manor of Shapwick, Dorset, otherwise Penitone is unidentifiable, MSS of the Marquise de Mathan, Collection Lenoir, t. 23, p. 472. 61   Margaret, daughter of Earl Robert II, was married to Roger de Tosny as part of the settlement between Roger and the Beaumont faction at court in 1138 or 1139, Crouch, Beaumont Twins, p. 38 and n. 47, see also c. 59. 58 59

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now.62 20s. from the service of William de Senneville. 14s. in Wimborne from the service of William the cook. Half the fixed rents of the fee of Leicester in Winchester, with the presentation of the fee’s churches in the city. [56] Serjeantries assigned to the earl of Leicester. [57] John of Netheravon. Robert of Carlton. William Falconer of Thurcaston, the keeper of the falcons. Gilbert the hawker of Thorpe. Ivo of Leire. Robert son of William of Bromkinsthorpe. Roger of Pockyngton. Ralph de Curzon of Glenfield. William of Belgrave. Robert of Shilton. Richard the cook of Hinckley. Thomas Pinzoun. William the larderer of Leicester. [58] Knights assigned to the earl of Winchester. [59] William de Dive, 1 knight. William Picot, ¼ knight. Richard son of Warin, ¼ knight. Hugh de Gundeville, 2 knights in Pimperne (Dorset) of the marriageportion of the countess of Gloucester.63 From the marriage of the mother of Roger de Tosny in Stratford Tony, 1 knight. 2½ knights in Misterton (Leicestershire) and Claybrooke (?) from the marriage-portion of William Lovel.64 ¼ knight the prior of Christchurch holds in Gleton. A half of the serjeantry from the marriageportion of Alice Basset. [60] There should be assigned to the earl of Winchester to set against the 3¼ knights of Earl Roger:65 1 knight from the earl of Salisbury, 1 knight from Richard Basset, ½ knight from Brian de Lisle, ¾ knight from Michael Rogerell.

  A curious charter of one Alice Basset dated in the royal palace at Rouen 1196 x 99 with Earl Robert IV as first witness mentions her father William of Wharram and brother Adam, and conveys her lands in York and at Yokefleet (Yorkshire ER) to her daughter as her marriage portion, Durham, Dean & Chapter, ch. 2.2. Finc. no. 19. A connection between this Alice and the Leicester family would seem possible. 63   Hugh de Gundeville was a leading Gloucester follower and later royal justice. He died around 1181. This may refer to his heir (but not son), Hugh II (d. post-1212), N. Vincent, ‘Hugh de Gundeville, fl. 1147–81’, in idem (ed.), Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 125–52. 64   The Louvels of Ivry and Bréval were close cousins of the earls of Leicester, and William Louvel II had lands in Norfolk in 1194, Pipe Roll 6 Richard, p. 23. In 1258, Saher’s son, Earl Roger, called Sir Philip Louvel ‘cognatus noster’, TNA, E40/13417. 65   If this is Earl Roger Bigot (d. 1221), these might be the Norfolk and Suffolk fees conceded to the Bigot family in Stephen’s reign by Earl Robert II, D. Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154 (Harlow, 2000), p. 120. 62

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Against the knights of William de Cahaignes66 should be assigned to the earl of Winchester (being ⅔ knights67 from the small fees of Mortain): a knight from William de Tourville in Hamnedenar’,68 1 knight in Girton, Cambridge and Betton, ½ knight of Ralph de Merlying and the other half to the earl of Leicester. -o0o[61] Demands and claims which the earl of Leicester has against the earl of Winchester. [62] He seeks the alms to be allowed him which he ought to pay according to the terms of his ancestors’ charters, namely 60s. annually to the lepers of St Leonards of Leicester, from the rent of Hinckley. [63] 7s. to the same lepers from the tithe of the forest. [64] To the nuns of … [probably St Léger de Préaux from the earl’s exchequer] [65] 2s. 10d. to the church of St Mary de Castro from the land which was Littlechild’s. [66] 10s. annually to the brothers of St Lazarus from the same exchequer, and half the rent issuing from the same besides. [67] One mark annually to the hospital of St Thomas of the East Bridge of Canterbury. [68] 10s. annually to the nuns of Wroxall. [69] £4 12s. annually to the prior of Hinckley from the tithe of the soke there. [70] 13 quarters of grain every month to the hospital of St John Baptist of Leicester according to the lesser measure.   The Cahaignes fees which came to the earl of Leicester from the Domesday honour of Robert of Mortain were largely in Sussex, Liber Feodorum. Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (3 vols, London, 1920–31), vol. 1, p. 72. 67   Knights enfeoffed on the ‘small fees’ of the former honour of the count of Mortain in England were assessed equivalent of two-thirds of a knight elsewhere. 68   Possibly intended to be Amersham (Buckinghamshire) a dependency of the Tourville estate of Weston, Book of Fees, vol. 2, p. 895. 66

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[71] Robert the clerk has [blank] from the tithe of the ovens outside the East Gate of Leicester for his lifetime as they now say. [72] The earl of Leicester seeks his share of eight fishponds and the chace of Wysele.69 [73] He seeks four children, namely the two daughters of Hugh of Cla[ybrooke?], the heir of William de Trannsre and the heir of Ralph of Shapwick. [74] He seeks his reasonable share of the forest. [75] He complains that his men living in the forest (those of Desford, Bagworth, Glenfield and Thurcaston) should have common pasture and other easements which are their right in the forest or woodlands, where the earl of Winchester has no rights other than hunting. [76] The earl complains that the earl of Winchester sold and wasted an alder grove at Hynghah’g which does not belong to the free woodland of Hynghahg’ which is part of the share of the earl of Leicester.70 [77] He complains that Loretta, the widow of Earl Robert, has more in dower than she should have through the apportionment of the earl of Winchester. [78] He seeks 119s. 7d. in West’ which were assigned to his share and of which the earl of Winchester dispossessed him. [79] [He seeks] his share of the service of Nicholas of Wyel in the chace of Wimborne. [80] He seeks a half share of 28s. of William the cook in Wimborne. [81] He seeks his share of the service of [?] Robert in Netheravon (Wiltshire) and of the service of William Trenchefoille in the same village.   Wimborne Holt and Wysselay were confirmed to Robert IV as his free chace by King John in 1200, Calendar of the Charter Rolls i (London, 1903), p. 216. It may be identifiable with Ashley Heath (Dorset). 70   This and the previous entries reflect the successful attempt of the Quincys to build up their own forest jurisdiction northwest of Earl Simon’s forest of Leicester, of which a stretch was abstracted to make up the huge Quincy park of Bradgate, north and east of their castle of Groby, variously called ‘the forest of Groby’ or ‘the forest of Charnwood’ in Earl Roger’s time, see TNA, JUST1/454 m. 11d; KB26/175, m. 12. 69

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[82] He seeks half the share of the mill which William holds in the same village. [83] He seeks his share of the service of the heirs of Morin in Whatton’ and … of the service of 24 virgates given in marriage in the same village. [84] He seeks his share of the service of Adam of Shepshed, Richard son of Nicholas, Walter Waleis, Roger the chamberlain and Gilbert son of Edwin. [85] He seeks his share of the service of William Framer, Robert of Belleston, Walter son of Adam of Anstey, Bertrand and Thurstan of Thurmaston, Roger Godberd, and Thomas son of Richard Franceis. [86] He seeks his share of the service of Robert Gormond and of Waleran from an ounce of silk; of the service of Swein for 1 lb. of pepper;71 his part of the service of the packman of Groby …; of pepper; his part of the service of Harold of Spenc’ in the same town; the service of Ivo Hurell for 3 virgates in …; half the land Peter of St Edwards holds in Ratby; the service of the chamberlain in Wyken; … of the service of William Sheveby, namely 1 lb. of wax. [87] He seeks the houses the bishop of Lincoln once had in the suburb which the earl of Winchester gave to the archdeacon of Wells. [88] He seeks the customary service of the lands of the knights in the honour of Grandmesnil of which the earl of Winchester dispossessed him, namely his share of the repairs of the fishpond and millpond of Leicester.

71   This service is mentioned in a grant of Earl Robert III to his sister, Isabel, BL, Additional Charter 47383.

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Chapter 12

The ‘Loss of Normandy’ and Northamptonshire1 Daniel Power

In 1204, the Angevin Empire collapsed under the pressures of French invasion and aristocratic revolt. Within a few short months, King John of England lost his ancestral possessions of Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and much of Poitou, and the political union between England and Normandy, established by William the Conqueror in 1066, was broken: it was indeed ‘one of the great watersheds in Anglo-French history’.2 For over a century the Anglo-Norman aristocracy had been accustomed to dividing its time between the British Isles and the Continent, and although many lineages had divided into ‘Norman’ and ‘English’ branches, cross-Channel estates were still an important aspect of the political landscape. In 1204, however, most landowners were forced to abandon their lands on one or other side of the English Channel, and for the majority the division proved permanent; the resulting confiscations and redistributions formed a major part of both Angevin and Capetian royal patronage and politics in the first half of the thirteenth century. While the broad impact of this ‘loss of Normandy’ has received substantial historical attention,3 its consequences at a local level have yet to be fully worked   I am pleased to offer this chapter to Edmund King in token of our collaboration in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield between 1996 and 2007. Except where otherwise indicated, I refer here to Northamptonshire by the nineteenthcentury county, hundreds and parishes: see Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, ed. F.A. Youngs (2 vols, London, 1991), vol. 2 (Northern England), pp. 291–313. The following abbreviations are used: AD = Archives Départementales; CRR = Curia Regis Rolls, Richard I–Henry III (20 vols to date, 1922–2006); HKF = Honors and Knights’ Fees, ed. W. Farrer (3 vols, London and Manchester, 1923–25); RHF = Recueil des historiens de la France, ed. D. Bouquet et al. (24 vols in 25, Paris, 1738–1904). 2   N. Vincent, ‘Introduction: The Record of 1204’, in N. Vincent (ed.), Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. xiii–xx at p. xiii. 3   See the studies listed in D. Power, ‘The Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Aristocracy of England and Normandy’, in J. Burton et al. (eds), Thirteenth-Century England XIII (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 141–57 at p. 142 nn. 5–6. This article forms part of a larger 1

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out.4 The present article considers their effect upon the county that has figured most prominently in Edmund King’s work, namely Northamptonshire. It traces the history of a selection of families, both great and humble, whose estates were affected by the political rupture between England and Normandy, and in doing so it highlights the often tortuous fate that befell many of the seized properties, revealing how the end of the ‘Anglo-Norman realm’ was far from a straightforward process. By contrast, it will be seen that local memories simplified these events, in order to explain the eventual outcomes to the greatest benefit of the region’s surviving political elites. The Aristocracy of Northamptonshire before 1204 In order to understand the impact of the loss of Normandy upon Northamptonshire, it is necessary to consider the county’s tenurial geography. A comprehensive reconstruction of landholding there in 1204 is not possible, since its Victoria County History currently concerns only 9 out of 20 hundreds, and 121 of around 320 parishes. Nevertheless, detailed royal surveys help to fill the gaps, and although it is possible that small pockets of ‘Norman’ land escaped the notice of royal commissioners, it is likely that they recorded most affected places at some point in the thirteenth century. The distribution of lands in Northamptonshire reflected the county’s geography, topography and history. Its long, thin shape meant that it was not a geographical unity. While its western districts have normally been regarded as part of the great Midland arable belt, H.S.A. Fox has characterised them as ‘High Northamptonshire’, a ‘wold’ landscape that until the twelfth century supported a largely pastoral economy, with summer transhumance. By 1200, however, most of this region had been given over to arable agriculture. By contrast, in the north and far south, large tracts of woodland remained, much of it within the investigation into the fate of the Anglo-French aristocracy and their lands between 1204 and 1259; cf. The Lands of the Normans in England 1204–44 (http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/ normans). 4   Specific studies include N. Vincent, ‘Twyford under the Bretons 1066–1250’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 41 (1997): pp. 80–99; D.A. Carpenter, ‘A Noble in Politics: Roger Mortimer in the Period of Baronial Reform and Rebellion, 1258–1265’, in A.J. Duggan (ed.), Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 183–203; D. Crook, ‘The “Lands of the Normans” in Thirteenth-Century Nottingham: Bingham and Wheatley’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 109 (2004): pp. 1–7; T.K. Moore, ‘The Loss of Normandy and the Invention of the Terre Normannorum, 1204’, EHR, 125 (2010): pp. 1071–109; D. Power, ‘Cross-Channel Communication and the End of the “AngloNorman Realm”: Robert FitzWalter and the Valognes Inheritance’, Tabularia “Études”, 11 (2011): pp. 1–33 (http://www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/craham/tabularia/dossier3/textes/10power.pdf ).

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royal forests of Rockingham, Whittlewood, Salcey and Yardley Chase, while the far northeast around Peterborough was fenland. The county therefore embraced several distinct landscapes.5 Like its topography, Northamptonshire’s previous history contributed to its lack of political unity. Formed before 1011, the county was bisected by Watling Street, the notional division between English and Danish Mercia which was still significant for fiscal organisation after 1066.6 Not surprisingly, given the county’s elongated shape, several baronies based outside Northamptonshire had significant lands there; indeed, I.J. Sanders’ English Baronies lists only six baronies with capita in Northamptonshire.7 By far the most important was Fotheringhay, the chief barony of the earls of Huntingdon.8 Of the other five, only one, Rothersthorpe (alias Chocques), had significant connections with the continent by 1200, as the core of the English lands of the lords of Béthune in Flanders.9 Another important lineage in the county by 1200 was the family of Le Hommet. Its senior branch, the constables of Normandy, had built up a considerable estate in northeast Northamptonshire. Richard I du Hommet (d. 1180/1), constable for Henry II, had inherited Easton-on-the-Hill from his father, who had acquired it before 1130 through a squalid deal with an   H.S.A. Fox, ‘The People of the Wolds in English Settlement History’, in M. Aston, D. Austin and C. Dyer (eds), The Rural Settlements of Medieval England: Studies Dedicated to Maurice Beresford and John Hurst (Oxford, 1989), pp. 77–101. For the county’s landscape, land use and woodland, see Rockingham Forest: An Atlas of the Medieval and Early-Modern Landscape, eds G. Foard, D. Hall and T. Partida (Northampton, 2009); An Atlas of Northamptonshire. The Medieval and Early-Modern Landscape, eds T. Partida, D. Hall and G. Foard (Oxford and Oakville, CT, 2013). 6   For its formation, see The Northamptonshire and Rutland Domesday, eds A. Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (London, 1987), pp. 1–34: in 1086 it still embraced a large part of later Rutland. For the Danelaw’s impact upon hidage and geld assessment, see T. Brown and G. Foard, ‘The Saxon Landscape: A Regional Perspective’, in P. Everson and T. Williamson (eds), The Archaeology of Landscape (Manchester, 1998), pp. 82–92 at pp. 82–5. 7   I.J. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of their Origin and Descent (1086–1327) (Oxford, 1960), p. 22 (Bulwick), pp. 33–4 (Chipping Warden), 49–50 (Great Weldon), 94 (Weedon Pinkney), 118–19 (Fotheringhay), 141–2 (Rothersthorpe). 8   HKF, vol. 2, pp. 294–5: of 73 components of the honour, 33 (excluding the earls’ domain manors) were partly or wholly in Northants., in about 40 locations. 9   HKF, vol. 1, pp. 20–60, identifying 13 fees of the honour of Chocques in 13 localities in Northants. and 5 in neighbouring counties, but the Béthunes had other English lands. William, advocate of Béthune (d. 1214), acquired it as heir of Robert de Chocques (Rotuli litterarum patentium in turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835), p. 7). See E. Warlop, The Flemish Nobility before 1300 (2 vols in 4, Kortrijk, 1975–76), vol. 3, pp. 664–72. 5

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impecunious local landowner, Simon FitzRoland.10 Nearby, Richard received Duddington from Henry II and acquired Ketton (Rutland). By far his greatest acquisition from King Henry, however, was lordship of Stamford. This town occupied a curious geographical situation, for although most of it lay in Lincolnshire, the parish of Saint Martin Without (alias Stamford Baron), at the south end of the Welland bridge, was in Northamptonshire, while its western end, called Bredcroft, formed part of the Rutland parish of Tinwell.11 Richard acquired property in all three parts of the town: an agreement with Peterborough Abbey described his son William I du Hommet (d. c. 1204) as lord of the Lincolnshire portion of Stamford, but the agreement itself concerned the townspeople’s liberties ‘both beyond the bridge in Lincolnshire and on this side of the bridge in Northamptonshire’.12 Richard du Hommet had also acquired interests in mid-Northamptonshire at Mears Ashby (in the honour of Huntingdon) and Grafton Underwood;13 and his third son Jordan gained substantial property in southwest Northamptonshire through marriage to the daughter of William de Crèvecœur. Her dowry, which also included lands in Leicestershire and central Normandy, enabled Jordan to establish a cadet branch which followed a distinct course after the fall of Normandy.14 In addition, both Crown and Church had substantial estates in the county. Domesday Book records royal lands in 50 localities,15 and the town and castle of Northampton comprised one of the chief Midland centres of royal power. In contrast to its lack of temporal unity, Northamptonshire all lay within the same diocese (Lincoln) and with Rutland it formed a single archdeaconry, but the bishop held very little property there compared to elsewhere in his diocese.16 10   D. Power, ‘Aristocratic Acta in Normandy and England, c. 1150–c. 1250: The Charters and Letters of the Du Hommet Constables of Normandy’, ANS, 35 (2013) pp. 259–86, at p. 262 n.19. 11   The Place-Names of Northamptonshire, eds J.E.B. Gover et al. (Cambridge, 1933), p. 242; The Place-Names of Rutland, ed. B. Cox (Nottingham, 1994), pp. 167–8; C. Mahany and D. Roffe, ‘Stamford: The Development of an Anglo-Scandinavian Borough’, ANS, 5 (1983): pp. 199–219. 12   Cambridge University Library, Peterborough Dean & Chapter MS 1, fol. 286v: accord between Akarius, abbot of Peterborough, and William du Hommet, the king’s constable and lord of Stamford ‘ultra pontem in Comitatu Linc’’., concerning liberties in Stamford ‘tam ultra pontem in Comitatu Linc’ quam citra pontem in Comitatu Norht’’. (Stamford, dated 1 May 1172, but if authentic, it must be March 1200 x May 1204). See below, n. 86. 13   VCH Northants., vol. 3, p. 204; vol. 4, p. 130; HKF, vol. 2, pp. 338–9. 14  See below, pp. 222–3, 227; Power, ‘Aristocratic Acta’, pp. 267–9. 15   Northamptonshire and Rutland Domesday, fols 219a–20a. 16   Liber Feodorum. The Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (3 vols, London, 1920–31), vol. 1, p. 19, and vol. 2, p. 942, shows only one significant Northants. tenant of the bishopric, the Chacombe family.

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Monastic property was more extensive: most prominent was Peterborough Abbey’s estate in the northeast, but two Cluniac houses at Northampton (of monks at St Andrew’s and nuns at Delapré), the Cistercian monks of Pipewell and the Augustinian canons of Saint James, Northampton, deserve mention.17 Three French abbeys had priories in Northamptonshire, namely Bernay (Everdon), Bec (Weedon Beck) and Saint-Lucien de Beauvais (Weedon Lois), and other continental monasteries had property there thanks to the patronage of Anglo-Norman families.18 In sum, the county had no dominant landowner, although there were pockets of local hegemony, such as the abbot of Peterborough and Hommets in the far northeast and the earls of Huntingdon northeast of Northampton: a detailed inquest in 1242–43 listed members of more than 40 baronies and honours in the county, of which only a third enjoyed family links with France in 1204.19 As for the tenants of these honours, by 1204 the vast majority of the Northamptonshire gentry had no direct connections with France, although surnames show that most were descended from French immigrants. The Anglo-Norman connection affected them in other ways, such as war taxation, overseas military service and frequent absences of their lords abroad. Yet some minor landowners still retained lands on both sides of the Channel, and these connections were not mere relics of an earlier age, but were carefully cultivated. For instance, the manor of Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger near Towcester was the focus of a network of gentry families from northeast Normandy.20 Before 1167 Geoffrey de Mauquenchy granted land at Stoke to Saint James, Northampton; the grant was confirmed by Robert de Poissy, a Franco-Norman knight who had won Henry II’s favour and received the Northamptonshire manors of Nobottle and Blisworth in the honour of Peverel.21 Robert’s sons Robert and William inherited the Poissy rights at Stoke in turn, but after William’s death (c. 1192), his Northamptonshire properties reverted to the   In general, see VCH Northants, vol. 2.   For example, the abbey of Aunay-sur-Odon (dioc. Bayeux), which acquired Mears Ashby church from Richard I du Hommet. 19   Book of Fees, vol. 2, pp. 930–46. 20   In general, see HKF, vol. 3, pp. 413–14; VCH Northants, vol. 5, pp. 380–81. 21   Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Northants. C.5, pp. 400–401. For a further grant there by Geoffrey to the same house in 1189, see London, College of Arms, Charter no. 166, fol. 1r. For the Poissys, see D. Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 511–12; HKF, vol. 1, pp. 240–41. Blisworth is adjacent to Stoke Bruerne; Nobottle (in Brington), alias Newbottle (Nobottle Grove Hund.), held by the Poissys of the honour of Peverel (of Nottingham), should be distinguished from Newbottle (King’s Sutton Hund.), held of the honour of Leicester by the junior Hommet branch (Place-Names of Northamptonshire, pp. 80, 56; below, pp. 222–3). 17 18

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honour of Peverel, when his heir was under age.22 In 1200, the parson of Stoke, most probably at the presentation of Geoffrey’s son Gerard, was William de Rouvray,23 apparently the brother of John de Rouvray, a Norman rebel against King Richard I who would become the first Capetian bailli of the Pays de Caux in 1204.24 Meanwhile, Gerard de Mauquenchy made a fine in 1201 concerning Stoke and Shutlanger;25 but by 1204, Stoke and Gerard’s heir were in the custody of John de Préaux, a distinguished knight from northeast Normandy.26 Hence this Northamptonshire manor brought together at least four families from the same Norman region. The greatest baron of northeast Normandy, Hugh de Gournay, would also become involved in the manor’s fate after 1204, and he would use as his attorney there another knight from northeast Normandy, Odo of Brémontier.27 The overlapping rights of several Norman lignages chevaleresques at Stoke Bruerne are just one example how the county of Northamptonshire had intricate ties to Normandy in 1204. Consequently, the duchy’s fall to the king of France stood to have an impact upon a sizeable portion of Northamptonshire’s ruling class and churches. The Confiscations King John’s defeat in France in 1203–05 caused successive ripples through English local society over the next half-century. From the outbreak of war,   Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. Northants. C.5, p. 401, and London, College of Arms, Charter no. 166, fol. 1r (grants by William de Poissy and Gerard, son of Geoffrey de Mauquenchy, to St James’, Northampton, at Stoke Bruerne and at Hyde, in the neighbouring parish of Roade); HKF, vol. 3, pp. 240–41; Power, Norman Frontier, pp. 511–12. 23   BL, Add. Ch. 6109: judges-delegate resolve a dispute between William de Rouerio, parson of Stoke, and the canons of St James, concerning tithes at Stoke and Hyde (undated, with inspeximus of a letter of Innocent III, 27 June 1200). Gerard de Mauquenchy succeeded his father Geoffrey between 1189 and 1195 (London, College of Arms, Charter no. 166, fol. 1r). 24   D.J. Power, ‘Between the Angevin and the Capetian Courts: John de Rouvray and the Knights of the Pays de Bray, 1180–1225’, in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (ed.), Family Trees and the Roots of Politics: The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 361–84. William was called a clerk in an act of Richard I in 1190 and a Norman act in 1208 (Rouen, AD Seine-Maritime, 53 HP 32, 14 H 842). His eldest brother, Osbert de Rouvray, served in King John’s garrison of Rouen. 25   TNA, CP 25/1/171/5, no. 50, also concerning Alderton and Twyford (in Alderton). 26   Rotuli Normanniæ in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835), p. 135. For John de Préaux’s custody of the Norman lands and heir of Gerard de Mauquenchy, see Registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. J.W. Baldwin, i (texte) (Paris, 1992), pp. 271, 286. This heir was probably Gerard de Mauquenchy who held lands in northeast Normandy c. 1220, including at Fontaine-sous-Préaux, adjacent to John de Préaux’s castle (RHF, vol. 23, p. 613a). 27   Below, p. 221 and n. 43. 22

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the king’s officers were seizing properties from his subjects who opposed him in France. Hence in 1203 the king ordered his justiciar to commit the English lands of William, advocate of Béthune, to William’s brother Baldwin, count of Aumale.28 Presumably William was regarded as an enemy since many Flemings were supporting Philip Augustus, although the advocate himself was on the Fourth Crusade.29 As his control of Normandy crumbled, King John issued a general order for the confiscation of the property of lay and ecclesiastical landowners who remained in the duchy. A roll of confiscations in June 1204 names nearly 90 properties across 18 counties in central and southern England, of which seven lay in Northamptonshire.30 Five were connected to William du Hommet: his manors of Easton-on-the-Hill, Grafton Underwood and Mears Ashby, the property of Fulk Paynel at Duddington (held in right of Fulk’s wife, William’s daughter Agatha), and Blatherwycke, held by Odo pincerna, a tenant of the Hommets in the Cotentin. The other two properties were Wellingborough and Stoke Bruerne, taken respectively from Robert de Harcourt and John de Préaux.31 This list of confiscations was very incomplete, however;32 over the next few decades over 20 Northamptonshire properties came into royal hands because their owners were adherents of the king of France. In addition, many other manors were indirectly affected because their chief lord was supplanted. When King John seized the rights of the advocate of Béthune in Northamptonshire, they comprised not only his domain manors at Rothersthorpe, Gayton and Grimsbury, but also lordship over a dozen more. Although their tenants remained in place, this represented a profound change in their circumstances.33 Many of the tenants of the earls of Leicester must have had a similar experience. After the death of Earl Robert of Leicester in 1204, his lands were divided between his sisters Amice and Margaret, but Amice’s share was soon seized because her son, Simon de Montfort, was in the   Rotuli de liberate ac de misis et præstitis, ed. T.D. Hardy, Record Commission (London, 1844), p. 41. 29   J. Longnon, Les compagnons de Villehardouin (Geneva, 1978), pp. 145–6. 30   For an analysis of this roll, see Moore, ‘The Loss of Normandy’. 31   Rot. Norm., pp. 134–5. At Wellingborough, there were three main properties: a manor of Crowland Abbey, and tenancies of the honours of Leicester (which Robert de Harcourt held) and Huntingdon (VCH Northants, vol. 4, pp. 138–40; HKF, vol. 2, pp. 388–9). Mears Ashby was confiscated from William du Hommet, but his father had given its chief messuage to Odo pincerna (BL, Harley Ch. 83.A.6). 32   Moore, ‘The Loss of Normandy’, pp. 1088–90, demonstrates that the roll reflected baronial submissions in west-central Normandy in May 1204. 33   HKF, vol. 1, pp. 20–53; Béthune tenants of Flemish descent, including the Preston family and Saher de Quency, were firmly grounded in England by 1204, although Saher lost land in Normandy (RHF, vol. 23, p. 642g). William du Hommet held two fees (not identified) of the honour of Chocques. For Grimsbury (later Oxon.), see Place-Names of Northamptonshire, p. 63. 28

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French king’s allegiance. In 1242–43 the Montfort share of the honour included 21 properties in western Northamptonshire; although by then Simon’s youngest son Simon had become earl of Leicester, it must correspond in broad terms to Amice’s notional share in 1204.34 In total, royal seizures of property after the ‘loss of Normandy’ affected about 65 places in Northamptonshire. This sometimes happened long after 1204: Overstone became one of the ‘lands of the Normans (terre Normannorum)’ only at the death of Master Humphrey de Millières in 1241, when his heirs were in Normandy.35 These properties were only a small proportion of the estates in a county with over 300 parishes and many more smaller settlements. Yet each confiscation could have a great impact upon the affected family and their neighbours. Gerard de Mauquenchy’s Norman possessions consisted of little more than a domus fortis in the Pays de Caux,36 while Odo pincerna’s lands were restricted to the neighbourhood of Lestre in the Cotentin;37 the confiscations in Northamptonshire therefore deprived their families of a significant part of their inheritance. For the constables of Normandy, their possessions in the East Midlands could hardly match their extensive lordships in Normandy, but they represented a major estate to which they had devoted much attention. The collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm had beneficiaries as well as losers, however. By seizing the lands of those who remained in France, the English Crown enjoyed a vast windfall. For a couple of generations, the kings maintained the convenient fiction that all might be restored to their original owners when Normandy and England were reunited, and at first they usually granted the lands in custody rather than hereditary title. These ‘lands of the Normans’ formed a major aspect of royal patronage for decades.38 Some were granted to people who had abandoned their continental lands: William de Warenne, who forfeited the honour of Bellencombre in 1204, initially received Hommet lands at Stamford, and later Mears Ashby.39 In other instances, the kings of England used the terre   Book of Fees, vol. 2, pp. 939–40. See the chapter by David Crouch in this volume. In Northamptonshire Margaret’s portion included Brackley, henceforth the caput of her husband Saher de Quency (ibid., vol. 1, p. 17). 35   Power, ‘The Treaty of Paris’, pp. 148–9. 36   RHF, vol. 23, p. 613a. Geoffrey de Mauquenchy also held West Burton (Notts.): Calendar of Charter Rolls (6 vols, London, 1903–27), vol. 3, p. 298. 37   Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS lat. 10087, p. 129, no. 375; Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Coll. Mancel 296, fols 11r–13v. Odo also held 50 solidates in the honour of Berkhamsted, perhaps at Benington (Herts.): Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, ed. T.D. Hardy, Record Commission (2 vols, London, 1833–44), vol. 1, p. 217b. 38  For terre Normannorum, see works cited in nn. 3–4 above. 39   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, pp. 28, 37; Rot. Pat., p. 52b; Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et Rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840), p. 100; HKF, vol. 2, p. 339. Warenne also received Hommet land at Ketton (Rutl.) in 1224. 34

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Normannorum to win over continental magnates, reflecting the kings’ continuing aspirations to recover their lost French lands. The Flemish baron Adam Kieret received the lands of William du Hommet at Ketton (Rutland) and Mears Ashby in 1204, as King John attempted to woo the Flemish aristocracy.40 At Adam’s death in 1224, Henry III gave part of his land at Mears Ashby to William de Serland, who had fled Normandy in 1207.41 Hence Mears Ashby was used to compensate three men with continuing connections with France or interests in recovering continental properties – a royal policy seen elsewhere in England.42 Frequently the recipients had close connections with the dispossessed: in 1207– 08 the land of Gerard de Mauquenchy at Stoke Bruerne was held by Hugh de Gournay, who had been Gerard’s lord in Normandy before 1204.43 Many who tried to exploit the seizures were local landowners who suddenly saw their rivals dispossessed for remaining in Normandy. Before 1204 the abbot of Crowland was disputing the advowson of Easton-on-the-Hill with William I du Hommet, whose flight presumably ended the case in the abbot’s favour.44 Another claimant to the advowson, Simon of Lyndon, had been attempting for years to recover the whole of Easton, alleging, with some justification, that William du Hommet’s grandfather had taken Easton in pledge from Simon’s grandfather and had no hereditary right to it.45 When royal officers seized Easton in 1204, Simon proffered 300 marks to the king and secured five virgates there which William du Hommet had previously conferred upon Gerard de Camville and his wife Nicola de la Haye.46 Yet Simon had to go to some length to keep hold of this land. In 1208 he allegedly sent one of his men to spy on a certain Roger of Easton who was ‘wickedly (nequiter)’ carrying 20 marks to the king’s   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, pp. 8, 119b; HKF, vol. 2, pp. 338–9.   Recueil des jugements de l’Échiquier de Normandie, ed. Léopold Delisle (Paris, 1864), no. 31; HKF, vol. 2, pp. 338–9; S.D. Church, The Household Knights of King John (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 48–9, 72. 42   For example, Vincent, ‘Twyford under the Bretons’, pp. 92–4: Twyford (Bucks.) was used repeatedly to compensate or win over Anglo-Breton nobles. 43   CRR, vol. 5, p. 295 (cf. pp. 82, 271). Hugh’s attorneys at Stoke in 1207–08 included Odo de Brémontier, who had returned from Normandy to recover his English land earlier that year (Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 79). 44   CRR, vol. 2, pp. 191, 214, 227; vol. 3, p. 39, where Westun’ must refer to Easton-onthe-Hill. 45   Rot. Ob. Fin., pp. 199–200 (cf. Pipe Roll 6 John, p. 139, where ‘… de la Don’ must refer to Simon of Lyndon); CRR, vol. 2, pp. 191, 214, 227; vol. 6, pp. 85–6; HKF, vol. 3, pp. 281–5; above, pp. 215–16. See charters of Richard du Hommet and the Lyndon family for Crowland concerning Easton: Spalding, Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, Crowland cartulary, fols 207r–8r. Simon of Lyndon was the grandson of Simon fitzRoland. 46   CRR, vol. 6, 85–6; Rot. Ob. Fin., pp. 218, 272–3; a plea in 1254 put the sum at 200m., and stated that Gerard de Camville was compensated at Duddington (TNA, KB 26/152, rot. m.6d). See below, pp. 228–9. 40 41

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‘enemies’ in Normandy, named as William (II) du Hommet and his brothers. This bribe was intended to persuade the abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives to accept Roger’s homage – ‘wickedly to the disinheritance of Simon, his lord’ – for the five virgates at Easton. For his part, Roger claimed that he had travelled to Normandy with the royal justiciar’s permission in order to do homage to the abbot for the land at Easton that his father had held from the Norman abbey, and denied paying any bribe.47 This anecdote gives a brief but fascinating glimpse of continuing contacts between Normandy and the English Midlands after 1204, despite stringent surveillance by royal officers. Whether or not Roger did bribe the new constable into using his influence in Normandy so that Roger could secure land in England, the Hommets’ loss of Easton proved beneficial to both Crowland, which secured the patronage of the church, and the Lyndons, who gained the manor.48 It is unlikely that they would have had much hope of doing so if the constables had not been forced to abandon England in 1204. Not all were so successful in exploiting the sequestration of terre Normannorum. In 1201 a certain Robert FitzAlan had challenged Gerard de Mauquenchy’s fine concerning Stoke Bruerne. However, Robert failed to exploit Gerard’s death, the minority of his heir and the confiscation of his property, for King John gave the manor as compensation for lost lands in Normandy to Earl William de Warenne. In 1207–08, Hugh de Gournay was holding the manor from the Earl Warenne but was in dispute with him, but between 1215 and 1226 the earl conferred Stoke Bruerne upon the courtier William Brewer, whose family duly gave its name to the village.49 In 1204 many people on both sides of the sea did not regard the confiscations as permanent; King John’s own officers acted as if the ‘true heir’ to the seized properties might well return to lay claim to what they had lost. John, son of Jordan du Hommet, soon decided that he wished to return to England, for in 1205 he fined to resume his lands in Northamptonshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. This move cost him his Norman lands, although he may have recovered them for a while, perhaps when he briefly lost his English lands again

  CRR, vol. 6, pp. 85–6: ‘nequiter ad exheredacionem sui, qui dominus ejus erat’.   HKF, vol. 3, pp. 283–4; TNA, E 326/3740 (Simon of Lyndon, apparently Simon’s grandson, grants land at Easton to the nuns of Wothorpe (Northants.), mid-thirteenth century). 49   HKF, vol. 3, pp. 413–14; VCH Northants, pp. 380–81; Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals, eds L.C. Loyd and D.M. Stenton (Oxford, 1950), no. 70 (BL, Harley Ch. 57.E.28); CRR, vol. 2, p. 4. Book of Fees, vol. 2, p. 1401, recorded in 1247 that Stoke was then one of the terre Normannorum and had once been held by Gerard de Mauquenchy, but now belonged to Joanna Brewer (widow of William Brewer’s son William). 47 48

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in 1207.50 Finally he settled in England, where his inheritance passed to his daughter Lucy and her descendants, the Greys of Codnor (Derbs.). Meanwhile, King John gave custody of Robert de Harcourt’s share of Wellingborough to Philip of Worcester in 1205, but in 1216 the king, desperate for support against the rebels, conferred it upon Robert’s second son John de Harcourt.51 In 1220– 21 Wellingborough even came to Robert’s eldest son Richard, despite his French allegiance, and he retained it with few interruptions until his death in 1236.52 Hence the Harcourts defied the risks and difficulties of cross-Channel lordship for more than 30 years after the loss of Normandy. As late as 1260, Richard’s son John came to England and successfully recovered his Leicestershire property, but not Wellingborough.53 Another Northamptonshire manor which formed part of a cross-Channel inheritance for a generation after 1204 was Burton Latimer.54 It had belonged to the Breton magnate Alan de Dinan (d. 1198), but had fallen into royal hands in 1196. However, during the Magna Carta civil war, King John granted custody of Burton to Alan’s niece Joanna de Tillières and her husband, the royal knight Thomas Malesmains, as Joanna’s ‘right’, since her mother was Alan’s sister.55 Yet Joanna and Thomas retained property in Normandy: indeed, by 1224, their son Nicholas had inherited half of the important Norman lordship of Tillières.56 In 1225 Henry III’s government permitted Nicholas to visit his Norman lands for as long as he wished, and to lease Burton in his absence; but in 1228 Henry III stated that Thomas Malesmains had held Burton merely in custody, and granted the manor to Alan de Dinan’s daughter Gervaise and her husband Richard Marshal, brother of the earl of Pembroke.57 Richard Marshal had inherited his mother’s Norman lands and Gervaise held extensive lands in Brittany, yet as his brother was prominent in Henry III’s regency government, Richard and Gervaise were working to recover her family’s English estates. So Burton was now disputed between two men who were attempting to maintain cross-Channel estates, as so many Anglo-Norman landowners had done before   Rot. Ob. Fin., p. 259; Pipe Roll 7 John, p. 235; Rot. Pat., p. 69. RHF, vol. 24, part 1, p. 38, no. 287, may imply that John du Hommet was holding lands in Normandy in the early 1220s. 51   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, pp. 45, 250. For Philip of Worcester, see Church, Household Knights, pp. 22, 66. 52   W.B. Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy, 1204–59’ (unpubl. PhD. thesis, University of Leeds, 1974), pp. 420–25. 53   Power, ‘The Treaty of Paris’, p. 155. 54   For Burton, see VCH Northants, vol. 3, pp. 181–2; Book of Fees, vol. 2, p. 937. 55   Rot. Pat., p. 195b (29 Aug. 1216). 56  Power, Norman Frontier, pp. 522–4. 57   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 2, p. 73; Pat. Rolls 1216–1225, p. 532; Close Rolls 1227–1231, pp. 36–7, 42. 50

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1204. Even when Richard Marshal, now earl of Pembroke, perished in 1234 while in rebellion against Henry III, this merely returned Burton to Nicholas Malesmains.58 Nicholas was one of the last true Anglo-Norman lords, with an active career in both England and Normandy, but in 1238 he leased Burton to go on crusade.59 His failure to return from the Holy Land led to the division of his estates between his daughters: Joanna took Nicholas’ share of the honour of Tillières, while her sisters Rohese and Ela divided his English property.60 Nicholas’ death marked the end of the direct connection between this Northamptonshire manor and several families with lands in France – but only some three decades after the Capetian conquest of Normandy. At Wellingborough and Burton, direct links with the continent were reestablished during the Magna Carta crisis, and lasted thereafter until the late 1230s. Eventually, however, the difficulties of cross-Channel lordship broke the connection. By contrast, the Flemish advocates of Béthune retained lands in Northamptonshire until the Hundred Years War.61 Their greater success reflected the uncertain relationship of the Low Countries with the kingdom of England: in 1213–14, for instance, the count of Flanders joined the alliance against Philip Augustus, but the region was also subject to growing Capetian intrusion.62 Retaining their lands was nonetheless a delicate task for the advocates. William de Béthune returned from Constantinople in 1205,63 and by 1208 he was suing for the Northamptonshire manor of Wollaston, but although he recovered some English lands, in 1209 he took the precaution of conferring his chief manor of Rothersthorpe upon the royal justice Simon of Pattishall, a native of Northamptonshire, in return for an annual render of £10.64 In 1213, as William aged, his second son Robert ingratiated himself with King John. On   D. Power, ‘The French Interests of the Marshal Earls of Striguil and Pembroke, 1189–1234’, ANS, 25 (2003): pp. 199–225 at pp. 215–16, 223 n. 162. 59   Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–1247, p. 231 (cf. p. 178 for his visit ‘overseas’, 1237). He was in Normandy in 1238 (Évreux, AD Eure, H 322; Jugements de l’Échiquier, no. 637), but dead by 30 November 1240 (Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–1247, pp. 240–41). 60   Division of Nicholas’ inheritance and claims of his widow, sister and niece: The Oxfordshire Eyre, 1241, ed. J. Cooper (Oxford, 1989), nos 250, 360–62; The Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, ed. V.C.M. London (Devizes, 1979), nos 510, 512–15 (cf. nos 467–8, 472–3, 673); CRR, vol. 16, no. 2099; vol. 17, nos 527–8; RHF, vol. 24, part 1, pp. 9 (no. 54), 34 (no. 263), showing that Louis IX prevented Joanna’s succession to the full Norman inheritance. 61   For what follows, see HKF, vol. 1, pp. 24–9. 62   J.W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus (Berkeley, CA, 1986), pp. 207–19. 63  Longnon, Compagnons de Villehardouin, pp. 145–6. 64   CRR, vol. 5, pp. 180, 233, 307 (cf. HKF, vol. 1, pp. 25, 39–40); Rot. Chart., p. 184b. 58

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25 May, a few days before the English naval victory at Damme, the king ordered the sheriff of Northamptonshire to raise sergeants from the advocate’s lands to accompany Robert de Béthune to Flanders, and Robert simultaneously secured a licence for a Douai merchant to come to England.65 He thereby secured the Béthune lands in England when his father died in 1214.66 Robert managed to retain them throughout the civil war as a captain of John’s foreign knights, even when his elder brother Daniel joined Louis of France’s invasion of England,67 but at its conclusion, Daniel was allowed to take all their father’s English lands; in return, Robert received their mother’s lordship of Dendermonde, in imperial Flanders.68 In 1227 Robert succeeded Daniel as advocate, but the English lands fell into royal hands. In 1229 Robert sought a safe-conduct to come to England with his kinsman Count Baldwin III of Guînes, but it is unlikely that he recovered anything before war was renewed in 1230.69 In 1231, at the death of Simon of Pattishall’s son Walter, King Henry even granted the £10 fee-farm from Rothersthorpe to Creake Abbey in Norfolk, a sure sign that he regarded the confiscation of the Béthune lands as permanent.70 Yet as in 1215, a king of England’s military needs provided the Béthunes with an opportunity to secure their English property. In 1233, faced by the revolt of Richard Marshal,71 a desperate Henry III recruited foreign mercenaries under the count of Guînes, and Robert de Béthune had a safe-conduct to come to England on 10 October.72 He may have joined the count in the campaign against Richard Marshal, in which Count Baldwin was gravely wounded;73 certainly Robert recovered his English lands in December.74 For several years he acted as an intermediary

  Rot. Pat., p. 99; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 133b.  Warlop, Flemish Nobility, vol. 3, pp. 666–9; Rot. Pat., p. 113b; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 208b. 67   Histoire des ducs, pp. 127–70 (p. 166 for Daniel); Rot. Pat., p. 127; Church, Household Knights, pp. 113–14. 68   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, p. 329b; HKF, vol. 1, p. 26. 69   Pat. Rolls 1225–1232, p. 246. 70   Cal. Charter Rolls, vol. 1, p. 139; Close Rolls 1231–1234, pp. 96–7; N. Vincent, ‘Simon de Montfort’s First Quarrel with King Henry III’, in P. Coss and S.R. Lloyd (eds), Thirteenth-Century England IV (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 167–77. 71   See N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics 1205–1238 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 387–440. 72   Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–1247, p. 27; cf. p. 26, for the king’s appointment of a vicar to Gayton, in the advocate’s lands (30 September). 73   Matthæi Parisiensis Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard (7 vols, London, 1872–73), vol. 3, pp. 254–6. 74   Close Rolls 1231–1234, pp. 357–8; HKF, vol. 1, p. 27. 65 66

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between the English court and the Flemish nobles and towns.75 Yet in 1242, at a time of renewed Angevin-Capetian conflict, he transferred much of his English property, including Gayton and the fee-farm from Rothersthorpe, to his cousin Robert de Guînes, who in 1248 sold Gayton to another Anglo-Flemish lord, Enguerrand de Fiennes. Gayton remained with Enguerrand’s family until the Hundred Years War.76 Despite the threat of confiscation, the advocates of Béthune and their kinsmen had managed to retain English lands, meaning that several Northamptonshire manors kept a direct connection to continental lordships until the 1330s. How can we account for the varied fortunes of the ‘lands of the Normans’ in Northamptonshire? In all these cases, royal favour was crucial to the recovery and retention of lands in England by French landowners: although our reliance upon royal records may in part account for this impression, non-royal records tend to give a similar picture. It seems clear that certain groups received more royal favour than others: Flemings and Bretons had more chance of retaining lands than Normans, presumably because Flanders and Brittany remained autonomous counties after 1204 whereas Normandy was annexed to the Capetian domain. Nevertheless, the greater success of some families than others usually defies easy explanation. Influential contacts at court, no doubt sweetened by bribes, may help to explain the success of men such as Robert de Béthune and Robert de Guînes; John de Harcourt certainly recovered his family’s Warwickshire lands in 1260 by drawing upon his connections to Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, which helped to reduce opposition from the man who stood to lose from John’s installation in those lands, namely Simon’s close ally Peter de Montfort.77 The presence of powerful new tenants such as the earls Warenne and the Brewer family in a number of the Northamptonshire terre Normannorum may well account for the failure of many of the dispossessed Normans to recover them. Nevertheless, most explanations for the fate of individual Northamptonshire properties must remain speculative. The Memory of the ‘Loss of Normandy’ It can be seen that the loss of Normandy continued to have an influence for several decades after the fall of Rouen, but affected only a relatively small proportion of the landed estates in Northamptonshire. Its impact there is probably typical for much of England. In neighbouring Warwickshire, where there were perhaps 300   For example, Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–1247, pp. 168–70, 186.   Cal. Pat. Rolls 1232–1247, p. 322; Cal. Charter Rolls, vol. 1, pp. 340–41; HKF, vol. 1, pp. 27–8. 77   Power, ‘The Treaty of Paris’, p. 155. 75 76

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manors in 1200, the land seizures affected about 40 in some way.78 In Essex, only 36 of its 1,000 manors were terre Normannorum,79 although others lost their chief lord. The number of confiscated properties diminished the further north and west we look: very few are recorded for Shropshire, Lancashire, or Northumberland, for example. Yet it is striking how longlasting the consequences of such confiscations were. As long as the kings of England refused to accept the loss of the continental possessions, the loss of Normandy continued to affect the fate of certain English manors and their holders. By the time that the Treaty of Paris formally resolved Angevin-Capetian hostilities in 1259, Northamptonshire had lost all direct connection with France except for the honour of Chocques, which continued to be held by Flemish nobles with short interruptions. Otherwise, the finality of the separation of England and Normandy was underlined in 1260, when Lucy, daughter of John du Hommet, failed in her plea before the Paris parlement to recover her ancestors’ lands in Normandy.80 Yet the confiscations continued to be remembered in Northamptonshire: indeed, it was necessary to preserve a memory of the events, however confused and partisan, in order to defend rights and pursue claims to property. Public statements reveal that the local landowners of the East Midlands retained intriguing stories about the fall of Normandy, shaping them to suit their circumstances.81 In 1274–75, the Hundred Rolls for the wapentake of Ness, just over the Lincolnshire border, recorded a garbled version of the history of the Béthunes.82 The jurors stated that ‘A certain baron whose name we do not know but whose surname was Chocques in Picardy, whose ancestors came to England with William the Bastard, who gave that baron’s ancestor 1 carucate of land in the vill of Casewick, to perform the service of 5s. at Northampton Castle … when King John could no longer hold Normandy, the said baron withdrew into the region of Chocques, and then that carucate of land was an escheat of the lord King John’.83   This is based upon a preliminary analysis of VCH Warks.   Moore, ‘The Loss of Normandy’, p. 1079. 80   Les Olim, ed. comte de Beugnot (3 vols, Paris, 1839–48), vol. 1, p. 123, no. xiv. See Power, ‘The Treaty of Paris’, pp. 153–4. 81   It is not possible to discuss medieval ‘memory’ here in detail; see S. Foot, ‘Remembering, Forgetting and Inventing: Attitudes to the Past in England after the First Viking Age’, TRHS, 6th series, 9 (1999): pp. 185–200; E. van Houts (ed.), Medieval Memories. Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300 (Harlow, 2001); R. McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 2006). 82   For the early hundred rolls, see S. Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–80 (Cambridge, 2004). 83   Rotuli Hundredorum temp. Hen. III & Edw. I (2 vols, London, 1812), vol. 1, p. 344; cf. HKF, vol. 1, pp. 24–5, which suggests that these confiscations date from Richard I’s, not John’s reign; but it would be rash to link this account to particular events. 78 79

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This statement conveniently ignored the later return of the lords of Béthune, an omission which apparently favoured the then tenant of Casewick; but it also shows that the exact circumstances in which the Béthunes had recovered their English lands after 1204 were now forgotten. In 1293, jurors from the Northamptonshire estates of the constables of Normandy appear better informed. An inquest recorded the following history for Duddington: In the time of King John, two Normans came to England, one called Gerard de Camville and the other William le Humet, and they were in such favour with King John that the king made William chief justice of the land, and William received Duddington in farm from the king, and the village rendered him £15 p.a. for all services. Then it happened afterwards that William advised the king to go to Normandy, and, when the king came there, all the land was against him and he was defeated and taken, so he headed back to England. When the said William heard that the king had returned to England, he fled from the land. Then Gerard de Camville came and spoke so well with Robert le Mey, sheriff of Northampton and lord of Braybroke, that he did not take Duddington into the king’s hand, but left it to him in peace as William le Humet held it, and so he held it all his life, and hence by the treason of the said Robert and Gerard £15 of yearly rent have been lost until now.84

There is much that is demonstrably erroneous in this account, but its depiction of the rift between King John and William du Hommet when large numbers of Normans turned against their duke is compelling. The general tenor of the story corresponds to other accounts of the Normans’ desertion and   TNA, C 145/53, no. 24 (Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (8 vols, London, 1916), vol. 1, no. 1644): ‘Il estoit iadis en le tens le Roy Johan qe deus Noremaunz furent venuz en Engletere e furent si bien del Roy Johan. li vn aueyt a noun Gerard de Caunville e le autre Willam le Humet. issi auynt qe le Roy fyst Willam auant dit haut justice de la terre e memes cely Willam aueyt du Roy Dodingtone a ferme par purchaz e la ville auantdite rendit a ly. xv. libr’ par an pur totes seruises. pus en apres il auynt par cas qe le auantdit Willa(m) counsela au Roy de aler en Noremaundie e quant le Roy vynt en Noremaundie fust tote la tere en countre ly pur poy qe il estoyt descumfyt e pris e il se myst arere en Engletere. quant cely Willam oyit qe le Roy fust revenuz en tere il se myst en fuste hors de la tere. Puys vynt Gerard de Caunville e en parla si bel oue Rob(er)t le Mey adunk(es) vescunte de Northamton’ e seynur de Braybrok’ que il ne saysit point la ville de Dodyngton’ en la mayn le Roy mes qe il lessast a ly en pes si cum Willa(m) le Humet la tynt e issi la tynt a tote sa vye. e issint a le Rey par la tresun Rob(er)t le Mey e Gerard de Caunville dekes a ce jour perdu checun an xv. li’. de rente asise’. For Gerard’s property at Duddington in and after 1204, see Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204–27, vol. 1, pp. 1, 25, 79. 84

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John’s loss of nerve,85 but it related this national event to its impact upon one Northamptonshire manor. How often were such stories told across England, providing a simple explanation for the often bewildering seizures and grants in custody in the decades after 1204? Nearby at Stamford, an early fourteenth-century petition from the town added another detail to the account of William du Hommet’s desertion, which provides an appropriate episode with which to conclude this survey. The townsmen stated that when King John required the ‘Normans’ to choose between their English and Norman lands, William opted for Normandy and took Stamford’s charter of liberties with him. These liberties were now under grave threat from royal justices because the men of Stamford had no charter recording them.86 A century after the surrender of Rouen, the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm was still having a direct impact upon places which had lost their Norman lords, and informing legal and political claims. As the evidence from Northamptonshire and its environs demonstrates, King John’s loss of Normandy cast a very long shadow across local and national affairs in England.

85   Histoire des ducs, p. 97; Annales angevines et vendômoises, ed. L. Halphen (Paris, 1903), pp. 21–2; Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 482–4, 488–9; History of William Marshal, ed. A.J. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch (3 vols, London, 2002–06), vol. 2, lines 12521–920; Diplomatic Documents, i, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1964), no. 206. 86   The Parliament Rolls of England, 1275–1504, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (16 vols, Woodbridge, 2005), vol. 2, p. 633 (c. 1305?). In fact, thirteenth-century transcripts of statements of the customs and liberties of Stamford survived nearby at Peterborough Abbey, namely Abbot Akarius’ agreement with William du Hommet and two contemporary inquests (above, n. 12; Cambridge University Library, Peterborough Dean & Chapter MS 1, 126v–27r; London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 60, fol. 155r–v). No charter of Stamford liberties survives amongst the Hommet charters in Normandy.

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Chapter 13

The Twenty-Five Barons of Magna Carta: an Augustinian Echo? Nicholas Vincent

No study of rulership and rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World would be complete that did not at least glance at the events of 1215. The baronial ‘coniuratio’ leading to Magna Carta can be regarded as the culmination to all previous baronial rebellions, a turning point in relations between king and subjects of which we are likely to hear much more in the coming few years as the mountains heave and the great 800th anniversary celebrations of Magna Carta are brought to birth.1 In the wider scale of such things, 1215 has been portrayed as the dawn of an English political consciousness transcending the purely ‘selfish’ or ‘reactionary’. As Jim Holt put it, writing in 1961: Hitherto, if civil wars had been fought for any positive end, they had been fought on behalf of an individual, a Robert Curthose or a young King Henry, or in the interests of the participants in seeking land, office and power. Now a civil war was being fought for a cause, a programme, not for one individual or even several, but for a document, a simple piece of parchment.2

To this extent, the rebellion of 1215 was Janus-faced: the culmination of ‘traditional’ baronial resistance to ‘Angevin kingship’, yet at the same time anticipating the more truly ‘political’ movements of 1258, 1297 or 1311, all the way down to the Grand Remonstrance of 1641 or the Chartist agitations of the 1830s and 40s. No wonder that a series of ‘firsts’ have been claimed for the 1   For the rebellion as ‘coniuratio’ and for the barons as ‘coniurati’, see, for example, the Barnwell chronicler, in Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (2 vols, London, 1872–73), vol. 2, p. 220 (‘coniuratio valida’), and Roger of Wendover, in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard, Rolls Series (7 vols, London, 1872–83), vol. 2, p. 585 (‘coniurati et confoederati’). The Horatian metaphor (Horace, Ars Poetica, line 139) was first introduced by Matthew Paris who uses it to mock the baronial failure to lift the siege of Rochester: Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, p. 624. For particular assistance with what follows, I am indebted to Julie Barrau, Janet Burton, David Carpenter, Elizabeth HallamSmith, Tom Licence, Nigel Morgan, Henry Summerson and Tessa Webber. 2   J.C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961, 2nd edn, 1992), p. 1.

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barons of 1215. To Stubbs, Magna Carta, with its reference to ‘the community of the whole land’ (Magna Carta c. 61), was: The first great public act of the nation, after it has realised its own identity: the consummation of the work for which unconsciously kings, prelates, and lawyers have been labouring for a century.3

Stubbs’ judgment here combines the enthusiastic and the numinous in proportions appropriate to an Anglican bishop. Thus spoke Oxford. Under their sobriquet as ‘The Northerners’, the barons of 1215 have some claim to have constituted if not the first political party in English history, then the first such party to have attracted its own name or label. In Jim Holt’s words: ‘Northerner’ … quickly became the most popular nickname for the rebels. It was short. It was specific. It had, too, a graphic and perhaps derogatory quality, for it was used at the time by the King’s supporters, and it painted the rebels with that touch of barbarity which Englishmen south of the Trent are apt to attribute to their fellow countrymen of the north.4

Thus speaks Bradford. According to another authority, Magna Carta gave the barons temporary command of the whole of the eastern seaboard ‘and several adjacent counties including Northampton, which had at times under John become almost a second capital’.5 Thus speaks Northampton. More recently, and with echoes of that wariness of the state which looms so large in modern discourse, David Crouch has suggested that 1215 witnessed not only the first successful incorporation of baronial grievances into a political programme, but the first open struggle ‘between aggressive government and suspicious populace’.6 Thus is Stubbs’ ‘first great public act of the nation’ reborn as the ‘People’s Charter’, seven centuries in advance of Chartism and the Newport Rising. As for the leaders of this movement, there is no doubt that the O’Connors and Harneys of 1215 are to be sought amongst those twenty-five barons whose nomination and future role are specified in the so-called ‘security’ clause (clause 61) of the 1215 Magna Carta. Much has been written about these men, the

  W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1874), p. 532, cited only in part and from a later edition, by J.C. Holt, Magna Carta (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1992), p. 280. 4  Holt, The Northerners, esp. p. 8. 5   E. King, Medieval England 1066–1485 (Oxford, 1988), p. 109. 6   D. Crouch, ‘Baronial Paranoia in King John’s Reign’, in J.S. Loengard (ed.), Magna Carta and the England of King John (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 62. 3

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classic article being that by Christopher Cheney published in 1968.7 As Cheney acknowledged, the idea of the twenty-five first appears in the Articles of the Barons, generally dated to the period after the rebel seizure of London on 17 May 1215 and before the granting of Magna Carta itself on 15 June.8 Here, we find the same basic arrangements later incorporated into Magna Carta: that the ‘barons’ elect (‘eligent’ Articles c. 49, ‘eligant’ Magna Carta c. 61) twenty-five ‘of the realm’ to enforce the settlement, four of them being deputed to close observation of the king and his government, to guard against infringements and demand their redress, any such demand being backed by the threat of armed resistance by the whole twenty-five and the seizure of the king’s resources, excluding only personal injury to the king himself, his queen and children, anyone wishing to swear to join with the twenty-five being freely permitted to do so, the twenty-five nominating successors to any of their number unable to discharge their duties and determining any disputed business by the decision of the majority (‘maior pars’), all of the twenty-five taking an oath to observe these terms. By contrast to Magna Carta, where the security clause is incorporated within the main body of the text issued as a royal charter, the Articles supply a security clause that, in its physical arrangement on the parchment, has the appearance of a document intended to stand independently of the king’s undertakings: one of three such elements to the Articles (the king’s undertaking, the security clause offered in the name of the twenty-five and the reference to charters to be issued by archbishop and bishops undertaking to support the twenty-five in preventing the king from seeking papal annulment of the settlement) that together constitute what was in effect a tripartite peace settlement.9 This might even have been that ‘triplex forma pacis’ referred to by contemporaries including the papal commissioners in England, who in September 1215 implied that a ‘triplex forma pacis’, proposed by the pope, had already been rejected by the rebel barons before their public defiance of the king.10 Certainly the bishops’ agreement to exclude the pope from any future annulment of the terms of the settlement would have fitted the description later afforded the ‘triplex forma pacis’ as something that  7   C.R. Cheney, ‘The Twenty-Five Barons of Magna Carta’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 50 (1968): pp. 280–307, and cf. below nn. 22–8.  8   For the Articles, see Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 429ff., esp. p. 435 (c.25: ‘Si quis disseisitus … per regem sine iudicio … . tunc inde disponatur per iudicium xxv. baronum’, cf. Magna Carta 1215 c.52), 437 (c.37, ‘Ut fines qui facti sunt … iniuste et contra legem terre, omnino condonentur vel fiat inde per iudicium xxv. baronum vel per iudicium maioris partis eorumdem’, cf. Magna Carta 1215 c.55), 439–40 (c.49, the origins of the future securities clause, cf. Magna Carta 1215 c.61, and below).  9   Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 285–6. 10   For the ‘Triplex forma’, see Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 413–17, which does not consider the possibility that this might be synonymous with the tripartite settlement embodied in the Articles.

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would have redounded ‘to the ignominy of the whole church’.11 Hence perhaps the highly significant watering down of this provision, between the Articles and Magna Carta. Whereas in the Articles, the king undertook to secure episcopal charters supporting his promise not to seek annulment from the pope, in Magna Carta (c. 62) this had been weakened to an undertaking that the king would seek testimonial letters patent from the bishops concerning the security clause and the concessions that preceded it.12 In the event, of course, these episcopal letters, preserved in the Red Book of the Exchequer, offered nothing save an agreed standard text of Magna Carta.13 They certainly did not commit the bishops either to supporting Magna Carta or to excluding the pope from its annulment. As Cheney pointed out, both the Articles and Magna Carta itself refer to the twenty-five as a body that had yet to be elected, the nomination of its individual members being delayed until after the negotiation and official ‘issue’ of Magna Carta on 15 June.14 The insistence (Magna Carta c. 61) that their decisions be agreed by a majority (‘maior pars’) seems to have been fulfilled in the ensuing convention between the king on one side and Robert FitzWalter and twelve of his fellow barons on the other (technically, a majority of the twenty-five), governing the custody of London and the oaths to be sworn to the twenty-five before the coming feast of the Assumption (15 August).15 As for the lifespan of their corporation, the twenty-five seem still to have been operating collectively as late as 30 September 1215, when writs issued under their authority, albeit in the names of only three of their more prominent members, were sent into   The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri Papal Legate in England 1216– 1218, ed. N. Vincent, Canterbury and York Society, 83 (1996), pp. 113–14 no.144, where Gervase abbot of Prémontré informs the papal legate Guala that the ‘triplex forma’ ‘in totius ecclesie et vestram nichilominus ignominiam redundasset’. 12   Compare Holt, Magna Carta, p. 440 (Articles c.49: ‘Preterea rex faciet eos’ (that is, the twenty-five) ‘securos per cartas archiepiscopi et episcoporum et magistri Pandulfi quod nichil impetrabit a domino papa per quod aliqua istarum conuentionum reuocetur vel minuatur, et si aliquid tale impetrauit, reputetur irritum et inane et numquam eo utatur’), with ibid., p. 472 (Magna Carta c.62: ‘fecimus eis’ (that is, those promised the king’s peace) ‘fieri litteras testimoniales patentes domini Stephani Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, domini Henrici Dublinensis archiepiscopi et episcoporum predictorum et magistri Pandulfi super securitate ista et concessionibus prefatis’). The use of the plural ‘conuentiones’ supplies further proof that the Articles were conceived of originally not as a single document but as a set of mutually supportive conventions. 13   The address and corroboration to this inspeximus are conveniently printed in Acta Stephani Langton Cantuariensis archiepiscopi A.D. 1207–1228, ed. K. Major, Canterbury and York Society, 50 (1950), p. 24 no. 16. 14   Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 285–6. 15   T. Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae etc., or Rymer’s Foedera, 1066–1383, ed. A. Clarke et al., vol. 1 part i (London, 1816), p. 133, as noted by H.G. Richardson, ‘The Morrow of the Great Charter’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 28 (1944): p. 424n. 11

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Yorkshire concerning the custody of Knaresborough Castle, here said to have been adjudged to Nicholas de Stuteville ‘by the twenty-five barons’.16 That four (although not three) of the twenty-five should in effect serve as commissioners for all the rest is a feature already incorporated in the Articles of the Barons (c. 49) subsequently rehearsed in Magna Carta (c. 61). The twenty-five were perhaps operating even later than this, up to and including their role in the appointment of William de Aubigny as commander of the rebel garrison at Rochester.17 If so, then their collective existence must be assumed to have ended shortly thereafter, in part as a result of the general recognition that Magna Carta, as issued in June 1215, was a failed settlement repudiated by king and pope, in part following the dissension that overcame the baronial party in the aftermath of papal excommunication and the king’s recovery of Rochester, in part as a result of the baronial decision to ‘elect’ Louis of France as leader of the rebel party, a decision taken in the winter of 1215 and communicated to Louis in France before April 1216.18 Certainly, no mention of the twenty-five was allowed to pollute any future reissue of Magna Carta. 16   Writs printed by Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 499–500 nos 15–16, the first of these referring to adjudication ‘per viginti quinque barones’. First published by Richardson, ‘The Morrow of the Great Charter’, pp. 442–3, from London, TNA, SC 8/331 no. 15693, with Richardson (p. 437n.) noticing what may have been other such writs from the barons, reported in 1282 still to be amongst the archives of the kings of Scotland. As recently as October 2013, I had the good fortune to discover a further such letter of the twenty-five, previously unknown, now Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1213, p. 194, which will shortly be published in the English Historical Review. It is issued in the names of the first five barons in the London Treaty, and almost certainly supplies the text of the ‘litteras de duodecim militibus eligendis ad delendum malas consuetudines de forestis et aliis’ mentioned in that Treaty in fulfilment of Magna Carta (c.48). As such, it almost certainly dates to c. 19 June 1215. 17   Roger of Wendover, in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 621–2, 624, referring to collective decisions made by the ‘barones’ but without any specific mention of the twenty-five. 18   For Louis’ claims, as early as April 1216 that he had been ‘elected’ by the barons as successor to the criminal King John, see Roger of Wendover in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 650, 652 (reporting the claims of Louis’ proctor that King John having resigned his crown to the papacy, the barons were therefore in a position to elect Louis as John’s successor: ‘barones elegerunt dominum Lodowicum’). Substantially these same arguments are rehearsed in Louis’ own letters on the affair, addressed to the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury, claiming that King John had set out not just to oppress but to destroy (‘non tantum ut prius opprimere, sed potius penitus exterminare’) his barons, who therefore ‘de communi regni consilio et approbatione ipsum regno iudicantes indignum, nos in regem et dominum elegerunt’: Foedera, p. 140, and for these letters, see Letters of the Legate Guala, p. xl n. The same language of election is used both by Ralph of Coggeshall (Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, Rolls Series (London, 1875), p. 176, ‘elegerant’), and by the Barnwell annalist (in Walter of Coventry, vol. 2, p. 225, ‘elegerunt’, where we receive

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In the meantime, much effort has been expended, from the time of Blackstone onwards, in properly identifying the twenty-five.19 Their significance as a corporation deemed capable of receiving the oaths of the wider community of the realm, enforcing the terms of Magna Carta upon a reluctant or unco-operative king, has been widely recognized. This role was nonetheless mentioned by few contemporaries. Neither the Barnwell chronicler nor Ralph of Coggeshall refer to the twenty-five, even though they both report in detail upon the activities of the ‘barons’ or ‘magnates’ in the immediate aftermath of Runnymede. Roger of Wendover mentions the twenty-five only in passing, in his recital of a (carefully doctored) version of Magna Carta. Here he rehearses the security clause as a distinct entity and with an intruded passage, reported in no other source, perhaps derived from a draft rejected on the field of Runnymede, by which the constables of the four castles of Northampton, Kenilworth, Nottingham and Scarborough were to swear oaths to obey any decision made by a majority (‘maior pars’) of the twenty-five.20 The only other contemporary directly to refer to the twenty-five is the so-called Anonymous of Béthune, writing in the French vernacular of ‘li xxv baron’ or merely of ‘les xxv’.21 No surviving source written within 30 years of Magna Carta 1215 purports to name these men. Our first list of names is preserved in Matthew Paris’ revisions the clearest account of the breakdown in baronial unanimity following the suspension of archbishop Langton from office in early September). Cf. Richardson, ‘The Morrow of the Great Charter’, pp. 438–40 at p. 440n. noticing that, as late as October or November 1216, the ‘magnates’ of England were still capable of writing to the King of Scotland, inviting him to attend at Northampton ‘ad regem eligendum simul cum principe Northwall’. 19   See, for example, F.M. Powicke, ‘The Twenty-Five Barons of the Charter’, in idem, Stephen Langton (Oxford, 1928), pp. 207–13; Richardson, ‘The Morrow of the Great Charter’, pp. 422–43; Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 478–80, and the online study by Matthew Strickland, noted below n. 29. 20   Roger of Wendover, in Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 602–3, and for Wendover’s version of the charter, see J.C. Holt, ‘The St Albans Chroniclers and Magna Carta’, TRHS, 5th series, 14 (1964): pp. 67–88, esp. p. 76 ; idem, The Northerners, pp. 116–18; idem, Magna Carta, p. 345, and for the suggestion that these were draft proposals, E. King, England 1175– 1425 (London, 1979), p. 127. 21   Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840), pp. 150–51 (‘xxv baron fussent esliut et par le jugement de ces xxv les menast li rois de toutes choses … . li rois ne peust jamais metre en sa tierre bailliu se par les xxv non … . Un jor furent venu li xxv baron en la court le roi … si manda (li rois) as xxv que il venissent en sa cambre … . Li rois qui amender ne le pot, se fist porter devant les xxv la u il estoient’). Amongst later or derivative sources, see the brief reference to the twenty-five in the Stanley/Furness continuation to William of Newburgh (Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series (4 vols, London, 1884–89), vol. 2, p. 520), where John’s repudiation of Magna Carta is attributed to his refusal to allow that ‘xxv. barones essent inter ipsum et populum’.

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to Wendover’s chronicle, composed c. 1250.22 Matthew Paris also inserts a joke that he attributes to the foreign mercenaries of King John, that by the terms of Magna Carta, John had doomed himself to becoming ‘the twenty-fifth king in England’.23 This at least demonstrates enduring memory of the twenty-five. A second and slightly different list of the twenty-five appears in the margins of a late thirteenth-century copy of the 1215 Magna Carta, itself associated with the so-called ‘London’ collection of English laws.24 A third list, perhaps originally compiled in June or July 1215 but today known only from a later copy, is recorded in a Reading Abbey manuscript now in Lambeth Palace Library, again of the late thirteenth century, first printed by Cheney.25 Other such lists dating from the sixteenth century or later can be discounted as the products of derivative antiquarianism.26 Cheney’s purpose was to assess the reliability and significance of the three thirteenth-century lists. In the process, he established that all three stand independent of one another, that all three exhibit mistakes or misreadings, but that all three could perhaps be traced back to documents or oral testimony circulating in the immediate aftermath of Runnymede. The Lambeth list is supplied with quotas of knights set against the name of each of the twenty-five. These, Cheney suggested, represent not their feudal military service but the number of supporters the barons could field in the particular circumstances of June 1215.27 Cheney also raised doubts, subsequently dismissed by Holt, as to whether the Lambeth list, with its provision in the future tense for the mayor to surrender the city to the barons, should influence our dating of that surrender. Cheney was inclined to date to July 1215 the convention between the king and a majority of the twenty-five that agreed such a surrender. Holt places it firmly in June, as part of the negotiations at Runnymede.28

 Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 604–5, and for the various copies as preserved in manuscripts of Matthew’s chronicle, the earliest as an autograph addition to the margin of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 16, see Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, p. 283. 23  Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 2, p. 611. 24   BL, MS Harley 746 fol. 64r, for which see Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 283–4, 286–9. 25   Lambeth Palace Library, MS 371 fol. 56v, for which see Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 290–307. 26   BL, MS Lansdowne 229 fol. 96r (97r), noticed by Holt, Magna Carta, p. 479, and see the further such list of at least fifty ‘lordes which banded … against K(ing) John’, preserved in a copy by Scipio Le Squire (d. 1659), now Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS 312, between pp. 468–71. 27   Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 301–6. 28   Cheney, ‘Twenty-Five Barons’, pp. 293–301; Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 263–6, 481–3. For the treaty itself (Foedera, p. 133), see also above n. 15. 22

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Modern writers on the twenty-five have on occasion sought a form of words to incorporate them, most often by referring to them as a (or even ‘the’) baronial ‘committee’ of twenty-five.29 In reality, like the triumvirs or tetrarchs of the classical past, ‘the twenty five’ (or in the French of the Anonymous of Béthune ‘les xxv’) were a noun unto themselves, unqualified by any other save for the word ‘barones’. ‘Barones’ itself, let it be noticed, already enjoyed a more ancient pedigree as a term with which to describe the leaders of rebellion or negotiation with the crown, extending beyond its technical meaning of a tenant-in-chief holding by barony to include, for example, the body of men with whom, according to his coronation charter, Henry I in 1100 negotiated his accession (‘Sciatis me Dei misericordia et communi consilio baronum regni mei Anglie eiusdem regni regem coronatum esse’). The ‘barones’ (number unspecified) likewise feature in 1215, as those negotiating with the king both in the Articles of the Barons (rubric: ‘Ista sunt capitula que barones petunt et dominus rex concedit’) and in the (probably earlier) ‘Unknown’ Charter, where their approval of Henry I’s coronation charter is noted: ‘Hec est carta regis Henrici per quam barones querunt libertates, et hec consequentia concedit rex Iohannes’.30 So far, so good. There were twenty-five barons implied in the enforcement of Magna Carta. Their identities and purpose have been established. Their collective role was highly significant. What, however, of their number? Why should the barons of 1215 have determined to invest group decision-making in the hands of precisely twenty-five, rather than twenty-four or twenty-six or indeed any other number? Here one explanation has long held sway. The barons of 1215 were closely leagued with the men of London, and the Londoners transmitted to them not only their perception of English law but their particular tradition of supervision by twenty-five counsellors. Thus, the London chronicle, known as the ‘Chronicle of Mayors and Sheriffs of London’, surviving in its present form from a version copied early in the reign of Edward I, states that in 1200 ‘twenty-five of the wiser men of the city were chosen and sworn to counsel the city together with the mayor’.31 29   As revealed by a random search of internet sources. The ‘Committee of Twenty-Five barons’ occurs (7.i.13) in the Wikipedia entry to Magna Carta. It also appears in various popular works of history, including F. McLynn, Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest (London, 2012), p. 432. The twenty-five are referred to collectively as a ‘committee’ in Matthew Strickland’s article on ‘Enforcers of Magna Carta’, available as an online supplement to the ODNB, accessible at http://www.oxforddnb.com/ public/themes/93/93691.html. A ‘baronial committee’ is likewise referred to in Strickland’s printed ODNB entries on both Robert FitzWalter and William Longespée. 30  Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 427, 432. 31   De Antiquis Legibus Liber: Chronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Society, 34 (London, 1846), p. 2: ‘Hoc anno fuerunt xxv. electi de discretioribus ciuitatis, et iurati pro consulendo ciuitatem una cum maiore’.

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Holt was by no means the first commentator to suggest a connection here with the twenty-five barons of Magna Carta.32 Yet there is a difficulty. Beyond the London chronicler’s bald (and late) statement, we have little evidence for the day-to-day operation of such a council of twenty-five Londoners. They go unmentioned in any others of the city’s laws or law books. By the fourteenth century, the tradition was for the mayor and aldermen of the city to be joined to a select group of twenty-four (not twenty-five) elected out of the city’s Common Council, itself a body subject to regulation and restriction ever since the first emergence of the London commune in the 1190s.33 The number twenty-four coincides conveniently with the number of London’s wards, and the wards themselves, whenever regularity can be discerned from the 1190s onwards, were accustomed to elect at least two members each to Common Council, and to providing the London Hustings court with six members each for common pleas or twelve each for land pleas.34 Moreover, as J.H. Round long ago pointed out, an early collection of London laws preserved in the British Library preserves ‘an oath taken by the twenty-four in the seventh year of King John’ (that is, 1205–06).35 Round’s conclusion was that the figure twenty-four was derived from the customs of the city of Rouen (likewise governed by a council of twenty- four, elected from amongst Rouen’s 100 ‘peers’). In due course it was to be adopted not only at London but in the constitution of the Common Council of Winchester. London in the 1190s, Round argued, acquired a system of communal self-government already to be found in northern France and in particular at Rouen. In other words, the chronicler’s reference in 1200 to a council of twenty-five is a simple counting mistake for which, in Round’s words, ‘the authority is not first-rate’.36 This is possible. More likely, the twenty-four of 1205–06 should be distinguished from the twenty-five of 1200. Far from being constituted in imitation of the independent commune of Rouen, the London twenty-four of 1205–06 resulted from royal command. Letters of King John, dated 4 February 1206, refer  Holt, Magna Carta, p. 56: ‘The only obvious precedent for such a number is in the London council of twenty-five mentioned by the city chronicler, fitz Thedmar, under 1200–1’. 33   G.A. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), pp. 26ff., esp. pp. 37–8; C.N.L. Brooke, London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City (London, 1975), pp. 248–52. 34  Williams, Medieval London, pp. 36–8. 35   BL, MS Additional 14252 fol. 110r. 36   J.H. Round, The Commune of London and Other Studies (Westminster, 1899), pp. 237–42. For the London legal collection, see also M. Bateson, ‘A London Municipal Collection of the Reign of King John’, EHR, 17 (1902): pp. 508–9, seeking to overturn one of Round’s conclusions, in suggesting that the twenty-four of 1205–06 were not elected councillors (as at Rouen) but the aldermen representing the wards, co-opted without election to act together with the mayor. 32

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to the oath of the twenty-four of the more lawful, wise and discreet citizens, commanding the investigation of misgovernment in London, particularly in respect to tallages.37 The prevailing duodecimal system here is nonetheless worthy of remark. Meanwhile, there is one overriding problem that is by no means resolved by assuming London influence over the baronial twenty-five. Even if the Londoners had in 1200 experimented with a council of twenty-five (twenty-six when combined with the mayor), and even if this number was communicated from London to the rebel barons of 1215, where did the number itself originate? Why did Rouen (from the 1170s with its mayor and twenty-four councillors), or Winchester, or London (with its mayor, its twenty-four wards, and from at least 1205–06, its twenty-four councillors), like the rebel barons in 1215, opt for the number twenty-five? Here, two particular lines of enquiry are worth considering, both of which will swiftly carry us on to medieval traditions of numerology and the symbolic significance of numbers. The first lies with the jury. Whether a native English institution (already to be found in King Aethelred’s Wantage Code) or, as was at one time proposed, a Norman and royal interloper derived ultimately from the Carolingian tradition of royal inquest, the jury of twelve men was undoubtedly a feature of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman law.38 It is generally (though to some extent erroneously) assumed to inform the idea of judgment ‘by peers’ in Magna Carta c. 39 (where no details are supplied as to how such   Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 1204-27, ed. T.D. Hardy, Record Commission (2 vols, London, 1833–44), vol. 1, p. 64, as drawn to my attention by Henry Summerson. 38   Amidst a vast literature here, in defense of Heinrich Brunner’s thesis, first advanced in 1872, that the English jury derived via the Normans from the Frankish inquest as an exercise in royal proprietory right, see C.H. Haskins, ‘The Early Norman Jury’, American Historical Review, 8 (1903): pp. 613–40, reprinted with revisions in Haskins, Norman Institutions (New York, 1918), pp. 196–238, a viewpoint also adopted, albeit with caveats and reservations, by Maitland in (F. Pollock and) F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law (2 vols, new edn, Cambridge, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 140–43. This tradition has in recent years been championed by R.C. Van Caenegem. See, in particular, Van Caenegem, Legal History: A European Perspective (London, 1991), pp. 1–11, 32–4, 104–5. For a contrary view, asserting a degree of ‘English’ or ‘Scandinavian’ continuity between the twelve thegns of the Wantage Code and the juries established in the 1160s under Henry II’s new assizes, see D.M. Stenton, English Justice Between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter 1066–1215 (London, 1965), pp. 13–17; R.V. Turner, ‘The Origin of the Medieval English Jury: Frankish, English or Scandinavian’, Journal of British Studies, 7 (1967): pp. 1–10, reprinted in Turner, Judges, Administrators and the Common Law of Angevin England (London, 1994), pp. 35–44. The late Patrick Wormald intended to address this theme in the second of his two volumes on The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1999). For clear indications of his preference for the English over the Frankish model, see Wormald, Making, vol. 1, pp. 4–20, esp. p. 5, pointing towards Wormald’s uncompleted chapter 9. 37

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judgment might be obtained). It undoubtedly finds a place in Magna Carta c. 48, requiring that twelve sworn knights be appointed in each county to enquire into ‘evil customs’.39 Compurgation was likewise dependent upon the oaths of twelve men. On occasion such twelve-handed oaths could be raised to totals of twenty-four, thirty-six or even seventy-two.40 By the early years of King John’s reign, in cases in which the verdict of a jury was called into question, a procedure was available to summon a second jury of twenty-four men to pronounce upon the misdeeds (or ‘attaint’) of the original twelve.41 It had already informed such arrangements as those of 1213, by which twelve of the greater barons of England agreed to guarantee King John’s undertaking to preserve peace with the Church. Letters to this effect, issued in the names of seven earls and five others, are preserved both as a copy on the royal chancery Patent Roll and as an original single sheet in the archives of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, sealed with twelve distinct seals.42 Here too there was a duodecimal logic: in numerological terms twelve jurors were easily equated with the twelve patriarchs or apostles, and the twenty-four with a doubling of twelve, not least with the twenty-four elders described in the Book of Revelation (4:1–11) seated crowned around the throne of God. Just such definitions of the numbers twelve and twenty-four are to be found in the standard medieval numerological treatises, including those by Isidore and Bede, and in the Glossa Ordinaria’s interpretation of the twentyfour of Revelation 4:4 as combining the prophets with the apostles. They also underpinned the standard medieval computistical division of each day and night into a period of twenty-four hours.43 As early as 1101, according to the ‘E’  Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 464–5.   Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. 2, pp. 600–601, 634–6, at p. 601 noting the lack of certainty as to whether these totals of twelve or more were intended to include the principal compurgator as well as his oath helpers, or whether the total number of oaths sworn on such occasions would have been thirteen and twenty-five. Swearing ‘twelve handed’ (duodecima manu) is explicity referred to in The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill, ed. G.D.G. Hall (new edn, Oxford, 2002), p. 7. 41   Glanvill, ed. Hall, p. 36n. 42   Foedera, p. 112; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Chartae Antiquae C254. Of these twelve barons, only Robert de Ros was amongst the twenty-five of 1215. 43   Isidore of Seville, ‘Liber Numerorum’ cc.13, 21, in PL, vol. 83, cols 192–3, 196–7, also as Isidore de Séville: Le Livre des nombres, ed. J.-Y. Guillaumin (Paris, 2005), pp. 95–7 (with a list of the very few MSS, none of them English, at pp. xxxviii–xliii); Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. with commentary by F. Wallis (Liverpool, 1999), esp. pp. 14–18, 267–71, dividing the day into twelve hours in accordance with the relation of Christ (‘the day’) to the twelve disciples (the ‘hours’, who received his light). By extension, day is balanced by night to arrive at a total of twenty-four hours. Bede’s work circulated very widely in England, Isidore’s Liber only at second hand. Cf. Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, eds R.H. and M.A. Rouse, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues i (London, 1991), 39 40

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version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an attempt had been made to settle the differences between King Henry I and his brother, Robert Curthose, supported by oaths sworn by twenty-four leading men, twelve from either side.44 The treaty of 1110, negotiated between Henry I of England and the count of Flanders, together with its 1163 renewal in the name of Henry II, both contained detailed provision for twelve guarantors from each side to act as ‘hostages’, liable to fixed financial penalties if the terms of the treaty were breached.45 The total number of twenty-four guarantors, with the king or the count at their head, brings us to something very close to the number twenty-five so significant in Magna Carta. As with the jury or committee of twelve or twenty-four, similar arrangements had been arrived at in a large number of monasteries, canonically supposed to be founded for a bare minimum of twelve monks with an abbot or prior at their head. Such arrangements are recorded as early as the sixth century, in Gregory the Great’s report of the activities of St Benedict, and were clearly intended to mirror the relationship between Christ and his twelve disciples.46 In the grander foundations, a double or even triple contingent of twenty-four or thirty-six monks might be preferred. With an abbot at their head, twenty-four monks made for a corporation of twenty-five souls. In any system that might require voting by majority it was natural to look to an odd rather than an even number and thereby to boost the figure from twentypp. 97 (7.8), 105 (8.1, which is a pseudonymous work attributed to Isidore, distinct from the Liber numerorum). For the Glossa Ordinaria on John 4:4, see PL, vol. 114, col. 713, and cf. below n. 60. There is numerological lore collected in Medieval Numerology: A Book of Essays, ed. R.L. Surles (New York, 1993), and outline accounts of the significance of the numbers twenty-four and twenty-five in A. Schimmel, The Mystery of Numbers (New York/Oxford, 1993), pp. 235–7. 44   As noted by C. W. Hollister, ‘The Anglo-Norman Civil War: 1101’, in Hollister, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World (London, 1986), p. 91, a detail not included in the retelling of this section of the Chronicle by either John of Worcester or Henry of Huntingdon. 45   Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1964), nos 1–3. 46   For Gregory’s report (Dialogues, Book 2 c.3) of Benedict establishing 12 houses at Subiaco each comprising an abbot and 12 monks, see C. Waddell (ed.), Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses Studia et Documenta 9 (1999), p. 437, as drawn to my attention by Janet Burton. The Cistercians, from very early, required each new foundation to number twelve monks and an abbot, and as late as the Reformation, numbers in the English Cistercian houses tended to reflect a duodecimal bias towards 12, 24 or 36 monks: Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis, vol. 1, ed. J.-M. Canivez, Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique ix (Louvain, 1933), 15 (1134.12); D. Knowles and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses England and Wales (London, 1971), pp. 110ff., noting the particular cases of Beaulieu (p. 115, 36 monks in 1329), Coggeshall (p. 117, built for approximately 24 monks), Stanley (p. 125 ditto).

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four to twenty-five. Voting by majority was an ancient although by no means universal tradition, that finds a place both within English monastic election procedures and English law. The Leges Henrici Primi (5.6) for example, allow that dissension between equals might be settled by the decision of the majority.47 There is, however, an alternative explanation for the particular attractiveness of the number twenty-five to the barons of 1215. It derives from a source never before brought into conjunction either with Magna Carta or with the rebellion against King John. St Augustine’s tractate (or ‘homily’) on John 25.6, glossing St John’s Gospel (6:19, ‘When they (the apostles) had rowed therefore about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking upon the sea’), offers the following explanation of the significance of the number twenty-five: Let us examine the number twenty-five. Of what does it consist? Of what is it made up? Of the quinary. That number five pertains to the law. Thus are the five books of Moses, thus those five porches housing the sick ( John 5:2–3), thus the five loaves feeding the five thousand ( John 6:1–14). Accordingly, the number twenty-five signifies the law, because five by five, a fivefold multiplication of five, make twenty-five, or five squared. But this law lacked perfection before the Gospel came. Perfection is nonetheless encompassed in the number six. Therefore in six days God perfected the world, and the same five are multiplied by six, that the law may be fulfilled by the Gospel, that six times five become thirty. To those therefore that fulfill the law, Jesus comes.48   Leges Henrici Primi, ed. L.J. Downer (Oxford, 1972), p. 86: ‘Quodsi in iudicio inter pares oriatur dissensio de quibus certamen emerserit, vincat sententia plurimorum’. The need for a majority is the justification advanced by McKechnie for the choice of the number 25 in 1215: W.S. McKechnie, Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John (2nd edn, Glasgow, 1914), p. 470, citing F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols, Halle, 1898–1916), vol. 2, p. 575 (‘Sachglossar’ s.v. ‘Majorität’). For majority voting as one of several means for deciding disputed monastic elections, see A. Gransden, A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds 1182–1256 (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 156n., contrasting the majority voting procedures of thirteenth-century Bury with those of other convents governed by the ‘sanior pars’. 48   ‘Queramus numerum vigesimum quintum. Unde constat, unde fit? De quinario. Quinarius ille numerus ad legem pertinet. Ipsi sunt quinque libri Moysi, ipse sunt quinque porticus ille languidos continentes, ipsi quinque panes quinque millia hominum pascentes. Ergo legem significat numerus vigesimus quintus, quoniam quinque per quinque, id est quinquies quini, faciunt viginti quinque, quadratum quinarium. Sed huic legi antequam euangelium veniret, deerat perfectio. Perfectio autem in senario numero comprehenditur. Propterea sex diebus Deus mundum perfecit, et quinque ipsa per sex multiplicantur, ut lex per euangelium adimpleatur, ut fiant sexies quini triginta. Ad eos ergo qui implent legem, venit Iesus’, following the standard modern edition, Sancti Avrelii Avgvstini in Iohannis Evangelivm Tractatvs CXXIV, ed. R. Willems O.S.B., Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 36 (Turnhout, 1954), p. 251, also in PL, vol. 35, col. 1599, adapting the English translation 47

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Augustine here offers an interpretation of the number twenty-five entirely at odds with that offered by his contemporary, St Jerome. Glossing the twenty-five (ill-omened) figures with their backs to the Temple in Ezechiel 8:16 (and cf. Ezechiel 11:1), Jerome interprets the figure as a military formation or ‘square’, signifying the square of the five senses. This same interpretation was later incorporated into the Glossa Ordinaria.49 In his own commentary on Ezechiel, Stephen Langton follows suit, interpreting twenty-five as the square of the five senses, and the twenty-five of Ezechiel as representing ‘carnal priests’ and those, sunk in sensuality, who reject Christ. In other words, in Langton’s mind, perhaps even as late as 1215, twenty-five was a number of potentially sinister repute.50 What then of Augustine’s far more positive interpretation? Augustine on John was one of the most widely read books in the medieval canon. Copies were to be found across England, in all major monastic libraries, many still extant.51 available online at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701025.htm, with an alternative modern English translation offered by Edmund Hill, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1–40, ed. A.D. Fitzgerald (New York, 2009), pp. 434–5. 49   Jerome, ‘In Ezechielem’ 3:9, subsequently incorporated into the Glossa Ordinaria, as printed in PL, vol. 25, col. 84: ‘Significat autem viginti quinque viros qui in quadrum solida statione fundati sunt, et a quinque sensibus per quinquies quinque, quadranguli figuram efficiunt, non solum templum habere post tergum, sed instar idolorum applicare ramum ad nares suas: haud dubium quin palmarum, quas Graeco sermone “βαḯα” vocant, ut per hoc eos idola adorare significet’, and cf. ibid. col. 96, glossing the twenty-five of Ezechiel 11:1 as ‘desperantes salutem, et scelerum conscientia parati ad interitum, nec volentes per poenitudinem peccata corrigere’, and at col. 380 (glossing Ezechiel 40:13) once again referring to the number twenty-five as the square of the five senses. 50   Langton on Ezechiel (F. Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi (11 vols, Madrid, 1940–89), vol. 5, p. 282 no. 7834) here from Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 177 fol. 191v: ‘Ecce in hostio Templi etc. (Ezech. 8:16): Templum est Cristus vel vita eterna. Vestibulum est bona operatio. Altare est sacra scriptura. XXV viri s(unt) illi qui quadrati s(un)t et stabiles in volup(ta)te v. sensuum, et isti habent Templum Domini a tergo quia Cristum non ymitant(es)’, at fol. 191r interpreting the twenty-five of Ezechiel 11:1 simply as ‘prelati carnales’, and at fol. 196r offering no comment on the number 25 as deployed in Ezechiel 40: 1, 13, 21, 25, 29, 33, 36, where the repeated citation of this number in Ezechiel’s mystic vision of the Temple nonetheless confirms its numerological significance. 51   Willems’ edition (pp. viii–x) notes only the very earliest manuscripts, mostly before 1100, including two s.ix manuscripts from Würzburg now in the Bodleian Library (MSS Laud misc. 124 and 129) and BL, MS Additional 17289 (s.xiii, from the abbey of Le Parc near Louvain). For comprehensive lists of English copies, see Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke des heiligen Augustinus, vol. 2, ed. F. Römer, Grossbritannien und Irland, 2 parts, Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte 276, 281 (Vienna, 1972), esp. i, pp. 110–12, listing 53 surviving manuscripts in British libraries, at least 32 of them from before 1200, albeit in several cases of continental rather than English origin. Cf. Registrum Anglie, ed. Rouse, p. 26 (1.105). Amongst copies from before 1215 still surviving in England, note those now Aberdeen

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It enjoyed particular favour because of its use as refectory reading during Lent, the commentaries of Augustine being read on those days on which the lesson in Mass was taken from St John’s Gospel. Several surviving English manuscripts are marked up for such readings.52 The 24th of Augustine’s tractates would have been widely disseminated during the period of Lent 1215 (Ash Wednesday 4 March– Easter Sunday 19 April) since it deals with that passage in St John (6:1–14, the feeding of the 5,000) that formed the Gospel reading for the fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday (29 March 1215). So would at least part of the 25th tractate, covering John 6:15–44, including verses 27–35, ‘the bread of life’, the Gospel reading for the Thursday after the third Sunday in Lent (26 March 1215). In just this way, the twelfth-century Glastonbury copy of Augustine, now BL, MS Harley 1916, offers a marginal direction at the opening of tractate 24 (fol. 67r, ‘Dominica iiii.a XLe’, that is, the fourth Sunday in Lent) and to tractate 25.10 (fol. 69v, ‘Dominica iii. feria v.ta’).53 None of the surviving English manuscripts that I have examined draws any particular attention to Augustine’s explanation of the number twenty-five in tractate 25 (the conjunction of numbering here University Library, MS 219 (s.xii, St Paul’s London); Cambridge, St John’s College, MSS 9 (s.xii, Welbeck), 46 (s.xii, Hexham, incomplete); Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.4.2 (s.xi/xii, Christ Church Canterbury); Cambridge University Library, Ii.3.28 (s.xii, provenance unknown); Durham Cathedral, MSS B.II.16–17 (s.xi, Durham); Hereford Cathedral Library, MS P.9.v (s.xii, Winchcombe); Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 9 (s.xii, Lincoln); BL, MS Royal 3.C.x (s.xii, Rochester); London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 44 (s.xii, Llanthony); Oxford, Balliol College, MS 6 (s.xii, provenance unknown); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Auct. D.i.10 (SC 1936, s.xii/xiii, Missenden), Bodley 301 (SC 2739, s.xii, Exeter Cathedral), e. Mus. 6 (SC 3567, s.xi/xii, Bury St Edmunds); Oxford, Christ Church, MS 88 (s.xii, Buildwas); Salisbury Cathedral, MS 67 (s.xii, Salisbury); Winchester Cathedral, MS 2 (s.xii, St Swithun’s), and below n. 52. For other copies, now lost, see the at least 12 instances cited in English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe and others (London, 1996), index p. 828. 52   I owe this point to Tessa Webber, and to her forthcoming paper, ‘Reading in the Refectory: Monastic Practice in England from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century’, noting, in particular, the surviving s.xii copies from Glastonbury, now BL, MSS Harley 1916/5958, and of unknown provenance, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 17. 53   Both notes written in the same late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century hand. For the Sarum lections, see The Sarum Missal, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Oxford, 1916), pp. 76, 79. The Roman Missal also includes the reading from St John on Laetare Sunday, but substitutes a reading from St Luke (4:38–44) for the Thursday before, cf. Missale Romanum Mediolani 1474, ed. R. Lippe, Henry Bradshaw Society, 17, 33 (2 vols, London, 1899– 1907), vol. 1, pp. 92, 100–101. English Benedictine monasteries nonetheless followed Sarum rather than Roman use. See for example the case of Westminster Abbey, Missale ad usum ecclesie Westmonasteriensis, ed. J. Wickham Legg, Henry Bradshaw Society 1, 5, 12 (3 vols, 1891–97), vol. 1, cols 168, 181–2, prescribing St John for both the Thursday and the Sunday lections.

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being perhaps more than coincidental). John 6:19 was not a verse used as Gospel reading in either the Roman or the Sarum rite. The significance of the passage is nonetheless clear. It was rehearsed not only in Augustine’s commentary, but subsequently in glossed copies of John’s Gospel in which Augustine’s exegesis was adapted as a figurative exposition.54 Not only does Augustine define twentyfive as ‘the number of the law’, but he derives its meaning not from a duodecimal system (as, for example, in Bede or Isidore, adding Christ to a combination of the twelve patriarchs and apostles) but from a system based upon the square of the number five (the number of the books of the law). Did contemporaries remark this? Did this influence the decision as to how many barons should serve as guardians of Magna Carta? In recent years a long overdue realization has dawned that the thoughtworld of King John and his contemporaries was influenced not only by practical questions of government and English legal tradition, but by wider theological or philosophical concerns. English law itself is no longer to be treated as a closed system, immunized against influences from Rome or the canonists. Instead it is seen as fluid and evolving, in its earliest years moulded by authorities themselves familiar with ius commune, the combined learning of Roman civilian and canon law.55 With this has come a willingness to allow theological influences in the making of Magna Carta, whether or not transmitted via the particular person of Stephen Langton or more generally through the use of the Bible as a political treatise.56 Terms such as ‘necessity’ or ‘liberty’, even the definition of what might   See, for example, the glossed copy of John’s Gospel in Manchester, John Rylands Library MS 94 (glossing John 6:19 at fols 56v–57r), also in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 33 (at fol. 96v), both of uncertain English provenance c. 1200, also in Lincoln Cathedral MS 34 (fol. 142r), of perhaps Parisian origin c. 1200, obtained in the Netherlands s.xvii, offering glosses adapted directly from Augustine’s commentary: ‘Non sine causa estimatiue dixit viginti quinque aut triginta et non affirmatiue alterum. Quinquies v. sunt xxv. et est quadratus quinarius sig(nifi)cans libros legis cui deerat perfectio. In senario a(utem) qui constat de partibus suis notatur perfectio. Unde sex diebus fecit omnia Deus. Quinque ergo per sex multiplicantur u(t) lex per euangelium adinpleatur. His igitur qui legem seruant incipit adparere Ihesus, s(icut) per euangelicam gratiam proximus fit et calcat fluctus i(d est) omnes rumores mundi sub pedibus’ (‘calcat fluctus seculi i(d est) omnes timores mundi sub pedibus’ Lincoln)’. 55   For an introduction here, acknowledging the particular contribution of Richard Helmholz, whilst itself attempting a rearguard action against ‘Roman’ influence, see J. Hudson, ‘Magna Carta, the “Ius Commune”, and English Common Law’, in Loengard (ed.), Magna Carta, pp. 99–119. See also, A. Duggan, ‘Roman, Canon and Common Law in Twelfth-Century England: The Council of Northampton (1164) Re-examined’, Historical Research, 83 (2010): pp. 379–408. 56   Crucial here has been the influence of John Baldwin, most recently mediated via Philip Buc’s L’Ambiguité du livre: prince, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris, 1994). With particular reference to 1215, see J.W. Baldwin, ‘Master 54

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constitute a man’s ‘peers’, all of these have in recent years been opened to scrutiny from an ideological, not merely from an English legal perspective.57 In 1976, Christopher Cheney published a magisterial 433-page study of Innocent III and England whose index contains not a single reference to Joachim of Fiore, Jacques de Vitry or Amaury de Bène. In our search for the twenty-five barons of Magna Carta, we have already heard the voices of St Albans, Bradford, Northampton, Glamorgan, even of the Oxford of Bishop Stubbs. Cheney’s voice, however masterful, remained very much that of Manchester. If we are to hearken to the whispers that still reach us from King John’s Runnymede, voices from Paris or from Rome can no longer be ignored. Such voices may themselves carry faint echoes from more distant shores, perhaps even from that Syrian sea upon which Christ walked in miracles reported by St John, interpreted by St Augustine. Thanks to the events of 1215, and long after the text of Magna Carta had been transformed in its later reissues, removing all reference to enforcement by twentyfive barons, the idea of a commission of reformers retained its potency. In 1244, calling for the election of twelve councillors, in 1258 establishing a committee of twenty-four, or in 1259 of fifteen, the baronial opposition continued to seek incorporation of its demands within a body deemed capable both of negotiating with, and if necessary of resisting the king.58 The twenty-one Lords Ordainer of 1310 were themselves merely the latest of such attempts to incorporate the baronial will.59 In these experiments, memories of the twenty-five barons of 1215 were never entirely laid to rest. The twenty-four of 1258, indeed, composed of two panels of twelve baronial and twelve royal representatives, ultimately with the king at their head, represented a total governing body of twenty-five. As such Stephen Langton, Future Archishop of Canterbury: The Paris Schools and Magna Carta’, EHR, 123 (2008): pp. 811–46; N. Vincent, ‘Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury’, in L.-J. Bataillon, N. Beriou, G. Dahan and R. Quinto (eds), Etienne Langton: prédicateur, bibliste, théologien (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 51–123. 57   For ‘necessity’, D. D’Avray, ‘Magna Carta: Its Background in Stephen Langton’s Academic Biblical Exegesis and its Episcopal Reception’, Studi Medievali, 3rd series 38 part 1 (1997): pp. 423–38. For ‘liberty’, J. Crick, ‘“Pristina Libertas”: Liberty and the AngloSaxons Revisited’, TRHS, 6th series, 14 (2004): pp. 47–71. For ‘peers’, English, canonical and French, see R. Kay, The Council of Bourges, 1225: A Documentary History (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 123–6, most recently taken up by J.R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 117–19, noting further significance to the Council of Bourges at pp. 208–10. 58   For 1244, see Paris, Chronica Majora, vol. 4, pp. 362–3, and for the dating of this proposal, C.R. Cheney, ‘The “Paper Constitution” Preserved by Matthew Paris’, in Cheney, Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973), pp. 231–41. For the twenty-four and the fifteen of the 1250s, see Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion 1258–1267, ed. R.F. Treharne and I.J. Sanders (Oxford, 1973), esp. pp. 74–5, 90–91, 96–107, 110–11. 59   J.S. Hamilton, ‘Lords Ordainer’, in ODNB entry accessed 14.i.13 at http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/50153.

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they bore a striking resemblance to the description in Revelation (4:1–11) of the throne of God surrounded by the twenty-four elders. This was a text that we know to have been of particular fascination to the court of Henry III in the 1250s and 60s, lavishly illustrated in more than a dozen English ‘Apocalypse’ manuscripts, not least in the ‘Trinity’ and ‘Douce’ Apocalypses, directly associated with the patronage of Henry III and his close family.60 It was also a text that formed the opening reading in the Mass on Trinity Sunday, a feast that both in 1215 and 1258 fell in the very midst of political turmoil between king and barons. In 1258, Trinity Sunday fell on 19 May. In 1215, rather straining coincidence, it fell on 14 June.61 Twenty-five was not a number reserved only for baronial projects. Summoning his court to Winchester in the 1280s or 90s, in conscious imitation of King Arthur, King Edward I commissioned a great round table that in its later Tudor repainting and perhaps in its first Plantagenet construction was intended to seat the king and twenty-four knights.62 Similar arrangements were made in the 1340s, when King Edward III originally intended his new foundation at St 60   See here D. McKitterick, N. Morgan, I. Short and T. Webber, The Trinity Apocalypse (London, 2005), esp. pp. 3–22, 49, 56, plates 3, 5; N. Morgan, The Douce Apocalypse (Oxford, 2007), pp. 9–19, 50 (noting the loss of the pages of the manuscript most relevant to the twenty-four). Bede, Berengaudus and the so-called ‘Old French’ Apocalypse commentary (devised in the thirteenth century to accompany several of the illustrated manuscripts, including that now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS français 403, itself closely associated with the English royal family) all offer an exegesis expounded in common with that of the Glossa Ordinaria, here identifying the twenty-four elders as representing the patriarchs and prophets, or as gathering together the holy ones of the old and new testaments. See here Bede, Expositio Apocalypseos, ed. R. Gryson, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 121A (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 278–9 (identifying the twenty-four of Revelation 4:4 as patriarchs and apostles); PL, vol. 17, col. 795 (Berengaudus identifying them merely as ‘fathers’ of the Old Testament); Y. Otaka and H. Fukui, Apocalypse, Bibliothèque nationale fonds français 403 (Osaka, 1981), p. 135, also in L’Apocalypse en français au XIIIe siècle, ed. L. Delisle and P. Meyer (Paris, 1901), p. 18, ‘Par les xxiiii. maiurs, ke sunt les xii. patriarches et les xii. prophetes, sont signifié li saint del Viez Testament et del Euvangile, ke serront au jugement por les autres juger’. 61   A point that I owe to David Carpenter, and cf. Sarum Missal, p. 170. For 15 June as the correct date of Magna Carta’s granting, see D. Carpenter, ‘The Dating and Making of Magna Carta’, in Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (London, 1996), pp. 1–16. 62   See the various contributions to King Arthur’s Round Table: An Archaeological Investigation, ed. M. Biddle (Woodbridge, 2000), especially pp. 16–17, 24, 278–9 (noting that twenty-five was by no means a standard figure for the Arthurian knights, even though twice countenanced by Malory), 114, 116, 121, 417–18 (noting dendrochronological evidence that would assign the table to the mid- to late thirteenth century, perhaps first hung at Winchester by Edward III in 1348–49, built as twelve sections, repainted in Tudor times with twenty-five ‘seats’ from a lost original painting scheme). For an attempt to assign the first commissioning of the table to 1285, see M. Morris, ‘Edward I and the Knights of the

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George’s Windsor to accommodate a provost and twenty-three (sic) canons, this clerical body of twenty-four being matched to twenty-four poor knights, and in turn to the new order of knighthood, the embryonic Order of the Garter, on this evidence originally intended for the king and twenty-four knights-companion: a series of interlocking corporations each made up of twenty-four souls under the ultimate supervision of the king as twenty-fifth.63 Since it was the 1225 rather than the 1215 Magna Carta that informed political debates of the seventeenth century, Parliamentarians of the 1640s seem to have known nothing of the twenty-five. Even so, thanks to Roger of Wendover as recycled via Matthew Paris, to Holinshed’s Chronicles, to William Wats’ edition of the Chronica Majora (1644), and subsequently to Blackstone’s commentary on Magna Carta 1215, a memory of the twenty-five still lingered.64 As recently as 1770, we find the disgruntled Londoners of George III’s reign demanding that a committee of twenty-five barons be appointed to sit in judgment upon a king, like King John, deemed incapable of enforcing his own good laws.65 A century later, in 1873, the twenty-five barons were cited by Lord Redesdale, in a parliamentary debate, defending the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords on the grounds that, thanks to the twenty-five, the Lords could claim a more ancient establishment than the Commons.66 A century later still, again in the House of Lords, we find Lord Mowbray referring with pride to a statue of his ancestor, an earlier Lord Mowbray, displayed above the Gallery of Round Table’, in P. Brand and S. Cunningham (eds), Foundations of Medieval Scholarship: Records Edited in Honour of David Crook (York, 2008), pp. 57–76. 63   Key here are the orders for the new establishment at St George’s, first issued in August 1348: Calendar of Patent Rolls 1348–50, p. 144, and for discussion, noting the similarity with the slightly earlier ‘Order of the Star’ planned by Jean duke of Normandy, and the subsequent augmentation of the Order of the Garter itself into a body of twenty-six knights-companion, see H.E.L. Collins, The Order of the Garter 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2000), pp. 7, 13–14, 18, 29, 195; W.M. Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George: Edward III, Windsor Castle and the Order of the Garter’, in N. Saul (ed.), St George’s Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 21–2. 64   Using Paris as a base source, Holinshed, The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles (London, 1587), p. 186, lists the twenty-five barons ‘sworne to see the liberties granted and confirmed by the king to be in euerie point observed’, identical to the list in Paris (Chronica Majora, vol. 2, pp. 604–5) save that Holinshed transforms Robert FitzWalter into Robert FitzWalter ‘the younger’, William de Lanval into ‘Gilbert de la Valle’, and inserts the name ‘John constable of Chester’ where Paris merely offers ‘constabularius Cestrie’. He thereafter omits Paris’ joke about the king becoming twenty-fifth king in England. 65   A. Pallister, Magna Carta: The Heritage of Liberty (Oxford, 1971), pp. 61–2, and cf. p. 64. 66   Hansard, HL Debates, 1 April 1873, vol. 215, cols 394–6, accessed 14.i.13 at http:// hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1873/apr/01/referred-to-a-select-committee.

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the House; one of eighteen such statues that still stand there, made for Charles Barry’s new Palace of Westminster, fifteen of them decorated using what in the 1840s was the revolutionary procedure of zinc electroplating.67 Quite why only eighteen were commissioned rather than twenty-five remains unclear: perhaps because these were the only eighteen, displayed with their coats of arms, whose descendants continued to sit as parliamentary peers. A painting by James and George Foggo of the barons before the altar of Bury St Edmund’s solemnly swearing ‘to procure from King John the restoration of the Saxon Laws of Edward the Confessor as promised by Charter of Henry I’ had already featured amongst the exhibition of art for the new Palace displayed in Westminster Hall in 1847. Unlike ‘The Burial of Harold’ (by F.R. Pickersgill), or ‘Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes’ (by G.F. Watts), it won no prizes.68 From totem to relic, and from political reality to historical artefact, such has been the trajectory not just of the twenty-five barons but of Magna Carta itself. St Augustine of Hippo has in recent years come to occupy an honoured, though somewhat surprising role in English political history. It was the discovery of the hand of the principal scribe of Domesday Book in a copy of a sermon of St Augustine, now in Trinity College Oxford, that led Michael Gullick and Pierre Chaplais to their identification of that scribe as a member of the circle of William de Saint-Calais, bishop of Durham.69 It was through her analysis of the manuscripts of St Augustine’s Confessions circulating after 1066 that Tessa Webber first demonstrated the intellectual dependence of postConquest England, not upon some mythical ‘Norman’ mine of patristic texts, but upon the scholars, libraries and learning of Flanders and Lotharingia.70 It is fitting tribute to the honorand of this present volume to contribute yet another Augustinian strain to this already echoing choir. ‘In the context of the social history of England’, writes Edmund King: Magna Carta was an important document. It showed that a largely united baronage could extract permanent concessions from monarchy. For the rest of

67   Hansard, HL Debates, 17 July 1975, vol. 362, col. 1358, accessed 14.i.13 at http:// hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1975/jul/17/usa-bicentennial-celebrations. For my knowledge of the statues, I am indebted to Elizabeth Hallam-Smith, and cf. H.F. Westlake, The Palace of Westminster: A Descriptive and Historical Guide (London, 1918), p. 22. 68   H.G. Clarke, A Hand-Book Guide to the Works of Art now Exhibiting in Westminster (London, 1847), nos 17, 21, 28. 69   P. Chaplais, ‘William of Saint-Calais and the Domesday Survey’, in J.C. Holt (ed.), Domesday Studies (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 65–77, esp. pp.73–4 and plate 1. 70   T. Webber, ‘The Diffusion of St Augustine’s Confessions in England During the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in J. Blair and B. Golding (eds), The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford, 1996), pp. 29–45.

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the thirteenth century, it provided a text around which political debate revolved; and for the rest of the middle ages it remained an episode in baronial folk-lore.71

As I hope to have demonstrated here, such ‘baronial folk-lore’ may have been of more ancient lineage, and rather more extended posterity, than even the most distinguished of modern authorities has allowed.

 King, England 1175–1425, p. 127.

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A Bibliography of the Published Writings of Edmund King 1969 ‘The Peterborough “Descriptio Militum” (Henry I)’, EHR, 84: pp. 84–101. 1970 ‘Large and Small Landowners in Thirteenth Century England’, Past and Present, 47: pp. 26–50; revised reprint in T.H. Aston (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 141–65. 1971 Translator, J. Le Goff, The Town as an Agent of Civilisation, c. 1200–c. 1500 (London), 40 pp.; reprinted in C.M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 1. The Middle Ages (London, 1972), pp. 71–106. Translator, J. Bernard, Trade and Finance in the Middle Ages 900–1500 (London), 69 pp.; reprinted in Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 1, pp. 274–338. 1972 ‘Swaffham’s Cartulary’, Annual Report of the Friends of Peterborough Cathedral 1972, pp. 10–13. Review: Civil Pleas of the Wiltshire Eyre, 1249, ed. M.T. Clanchy, Wiltshire Record Society, 26 (1971), in Economic History Review, 2:25, p. 511. Review: J. Hatcher, Rural Society and Economy in the Duchy of Cornwall 1300– 1500 (Cambridge, 1970), in History, 57: p. 116. 1973 Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310. A Study in the Land Market (Cambridge), xiv + 208 pp. Paperback reprint, 2008. ‘Two Charters of Liberty’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 5/1: pp. 37–42.

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Review article, ‘Domesday Studies’: H.C. Darby, The Domesday Geography of Eastern England (3rd edn, Cambridge, 1971); idem. and I.B. Terrett (eds), The Domesday Geography of Midland England (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1971); R. Welldon Finn, The Norman Conquest and its Effects on the Economy 1066–1086 (London, 1971); idem., The Making and Limitations of the Yorkshire Domesday, Borthwick Paper, 41 (York, 1972), in History, 58: pp. 403–9. Review: J. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), in British Journal of Criminology, 13: pp. 406–7. Review: The Caption of Seisin in the Duchy of Cornwall, 1377, ed. P.L. Hull, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, NS 17 (1971), in Archives, 11: pp. 48–9. Review: D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford, 1971), ibid., pp. 101–2. 1974 ‘King Stephen and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy’, History, 59: pp. 180–94. ‘Debate: Politics and Property in Early Medieval England. The Tenurial Crisis of the Early Twelfth Century’, Past and Present, 65: pp. 110–17; revised reprint in T.H. Aston (ed.), Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 115–22. 1975 ‘The Origins of the Wake Family’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 5/3: pp. 166–76. 1976 Review: C. Platt, The English Medieval Town (London, 1976), in Times Higher Educational Supplement, 224 (6 February), p. 17. 1977 Review: Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K.R. Potter with new introduction by R.H.C. Davis (Oxford, 1976), in History, 62: pp. 99–100. Review: J.A. Raftis, Assart Data and Land Values: Two Studies in the East Midlands, 1200–1350 (Toronto, 1974), in Speculum, 52: pp. 730–31. Review: P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change (London, 1976), in Times Higher Educational Supplement, 286 (15 April), p. 19.

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1978 Review: D.A. Hinton, Alfred’s Kingdom: Wessex and the South 800–1500 (London, 1977), in History, 63: pp. 440–41. Review: Manorial Records of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, c. 1200–1359, ed. P.D.A. Harvey, Oxford Record Society, 50 / Joint Publications series, 23, Historical Manuscripts Commission (London, 1976), in Midland History, 4: pp. 258–9. 1979 England 1175–1425, The Development of English Society (London), xiv + 214 pp. Review: B. Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30: pp. 284–5. 1980 ‘The Parish of Warter and the Castle of Galchlin’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 52: pp. 49–58. ‘Mountsorrel and its Region in King Stephen’s Reign’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 44: pp. 1–10. ‘The Town of Peterborough in the Early Middle Ages’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 6/4: pp. 187–95. Review: An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northampton, vol. 2, Archaeological Sites in Central Northamptonshire, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (London, 1979), in ibid., p. 235. Review: M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (London, 1979), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31: pp. 381–2. 1981 ‘John Horace Round and the “Calendar of Documents preserved in France”’, ANS, 4: pp. 93–103, 202–4. Five maps in The Hamlyn Historical Atlas, ed. R.I. Moore (London), nos 24 (‘The World of the Vikings’), 25 (‘Normans, Angevins and Capetians’), 28 (‘The Medieval Economy at its Height’), 32 (‘Italy in the Middle Ages’) and 35 (‘The Economy of the Later Middle Ages’). Revised editions include, Chicago: Rand McNally (1982); Paris: Nathan (1982); Tokyo: Shoseki (1982); Stockholm: Forum (1983); London: Newnes (1983); London: Philip’s (1992). Review article, ‘On the Village Green’: Z. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270– 1400 (Cambridge, 1980); E. Britton, The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England

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(Toronto, 1977); C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980); B. English, The Lords of Holderness 1086–1260: A Study in Feudal Society (Oxford, 1979); P.R. Hyams, King, Lords and Peasants in Medieval England: The Common Law of Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1980); C.J. Dahlman, The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution (Cambridge, 1980); M.W. Beresford and J.K.S. St Joseph, Medieval England An Aerial Survey (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1979), in History, 66: pp. 426–35. Review: A. Young, William Cumin: Border Politics and the Bishopric of Durham 1141–1144, Borthwick Paper, 54 (York, 1978), and J.E. Burton, Yorkshire Nunneries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Borthwick Paper, 56 (York, 1979), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32: pp. 115–16. Review: An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northampton, vol. 3, Archaeological Sites in North-West Northamptonshire, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (London, 1981), in Northamptonshire Past and Present, 6/5: pp. 297–8. 1982 Review: Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, ed. V.C.M. London (Wiltshire Record Society, 35, 1979), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33: p. 325. Review: J.A. Raftis (ed.), Pathways to Medieval Peasants (Toronto, 1981), in History, 67: p. 466. 1983 Editor, A Northamptonshire Miscellany, NRS, 32, vi + 167 pp. Published online

‘Estate Records of the Hotot Family’, ibid., pp. 1–58, 147–67. 1984 ‘The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign’, TRHS, 5/34: pp. 133–53. ‘Medieval Wall-Paintings in Northamptonshire’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 7/2: pp. 69–78. 1985 ‘Waleran, Count of Meulan, Earl of Worcester (1104–1166)’, in D. Greenway, C. Holdsworth and J. Sayers (eds), Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall (Cambridge), pp. 165–81 + plates 3 and 4.

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Review: K. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, 1152–1219: A Study in AngloScottish History (Edinburgh, 1985), in Northamptonshire Past and Present, 7/3: pp. 203–4. Review: Wallace Humphrey, The Cistercian Abbey of St Mary, Garendon (Loughborough, 1982), in Midland History, 10: p. 100. Review: M.C. Coleman, Downham-in-the-Isle: A Study of an Ecclesiastical Manor in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Woodbridge, 1984), in ibid., pp. 100–101. 1986 ‘Peterborough, Northamptonshire, mid- or late 14th century’, in R.A. Skelton and P.D.A. Harvey (eds), Local Maps and Plans of Medieval England (Oxford), pp. 83–7. ‘England. H. Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’, Lexikon des Mittelalters (10 vols, Munich, 1977–99), 3, cols 1975–89. Review: R.B. Dobson and S. Donaghey, The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery (The Archaeology of York, 2/1, 1984), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 37: p. 154. Review: Stoke by Clare Cartulary, eds C. Harper-Bill and R. Mortimer (3 vols, Suffolk Charters, 4–6, 1982–84), in ibid., p. 156. Review: M. Chibnall, Anglo-Norman England 1066–1166 (Oxford, 1986), in History and Archaeology Review, 1: pp. 43–4. Review: P.D.A. Harvey (ed.), The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England (Oxford, 1984), in EHR, 101: pp. 424–6. 1987 ‘The Making of the Rutland Domesday’, Rutland Record, 7: pp. 231–5. ‘The Knights of Peterborough Abbey’, Peterborough’s Past (Peterborough Museum Society), 2: pp. 36–50. Review: R. Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History (London, 1985), in History, 72: pp. 506–7. 1988 Medieval England (Oxford and London), 272 pp. 2nd revised edition (Stroud, in association with the British Library, 2001), 224 pp. + 32 pp. of colour plates. 3rd revised edition, Medieval England: From Hastings to Bosworth (Stroud/British Library, 2005), 287 pp. + 16 pp. of colour plates. 4th revised edition (The History Press/British Library, 2009), 287 pp. + 16 pp.

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of colour plates. Japanese edition, trans. K. Yoshitake, A. Takamori, and Y. Akae (Tokyo, 2006), vii + 461 pp. + 32 pp. of colour plates. ‘Round, John Horace’, in J. Cannon (ed.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians (Oxford), pp. 360–61. ‘Stephenson, Carl’, ibid., p. 392. Review: J.A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 39: p. 143. 1989 ‘Grundherrschaft. England’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 4, cols 1748–9. Review: B.A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986), in EHR, 104: pp. 460–61. Review: W.L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England 1086– 1272 (London, 1987), in Albion, 21: pp. 89–90. Review: R.W. Kaeuper, War, Society and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), in Economic History Review, 2:42, pp. 422–3. Review: N. Saul, Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex 1280– 1400 (Oxford, 1986), in History and Archaeology Review, 4: pp. 76–7. 1990 ‘Holderness, Lordship of ’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 5, col. 88. Review: J.H. Tillotson, Monastery and Society in the Late Middle Ages: Selected Account Rolls from Selby Abbey, Yorkshire, 1398–1537 (Woodbridge, 1988), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 41: pp. 157–8. Review: Jocelin of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, eds D. Greenway and J. Sayers (Oxford World’s Classics, 1989), in ibid., pp. 519–20. 1991 ‘The Occupation of the Land: The East Midlands’, in E. Miller (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 3, 1349–1500 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 67–77. ‘Farming Practice and Techniques: The East Midlands’, ibid., pp. 210–22. ‘Tenant Farming and Tenant Farmers: The East Midlands’, ibid., pp. 624–35. ‘Estate Management and the Reform Movement’, in M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Thirteenth Century, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 1 (Stamford), pp. 1–14. ‘The Foundation of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire’, HSJ, 2: pp. 167–77.

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‘Hull’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 5, col. 185. ‘Landesausbau und Kolonisation, III. England’, ibid., cols 1647–8. Review: H.E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), and M. Aston, D. Austin and C. Dyer (eds), The Rural Settlements of Medieval England: Studies dedicated to Maurice Beresford and John Hurst (Oxford, 1989), in EHR, 106: pp. 942–4. Review: The Haskins Society Journal, vol. 1, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 42: pp. 336–7. Review: D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1990), in ibid., pp. 644–6. 1992 ‘Dispute Settlement in Anglo-Norman England’, ANS, 14: pp. 115–30. ‘Merchant Adventurers’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 6, cols 534–5. 1993 ‘William Cade’, in Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons, ed. C.S. Nicholls (Oxford), pp. 111–12. Revised reprint, ODNB, 9, cols 399–400. 1994 Editor, The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford), xxiii + 332 pp. Digital reprint 2001. ‘Oxford Scholarship Online’ title, 2011. ‘Introduction’, ibid., pp. 1–35. 1995 Review: E. Amt, The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored 1149–1159 (Woodbridge, 1993), in Economic History Review, 2:48, p. 181. Review: Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, eds G. Lambrick and C.F. Slade (2 vols, Oxford Historical Society, NS 32–3, 1990–92), in EHR, 110: pp. 445–6. 1996 ‘Economic Development in the Early Twelfth Century’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1–22. ‘Statute of Labourers (1351)’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 8, cols 69–70.

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‘Statute of Merchants (1285)’, ibid., col. 70. Review: R.H. Britnell and B.M.S. Campbell (eds), A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300 (Manchester, 1995), in Agricultural History Review, 44: pp. 235–6. Review: G. Garnett and J. Hudson (eds), Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt (Cambridge, 1994), in EHR, 111: pp. 950–52. 1997 ‘Benedict of Peterborough and the Cult of Thomas Becket’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 9/3: pp. 213–20. 1998 Editor, with trans. by K.R. Potter, William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella: The Contemporary History, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford), cxiv + 143 pp. Digital reprint 2006. ‘Yeoman’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9, cols 411–12. ‘York, Statute of (1311)’, ibid., 9, col. 423. 1999 Review: J.P. Huffman, Family, Commerce, and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Emigrants, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge, 1998), in Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 94: pp. 934–7. 2000 ‘Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne’, EHR, 115: pp. 271–96. 2004 ‘The Memory of Brian fitz Count’, HSJ, 13: pp. 75–98. ‘Benedict, abbot of Peterborough (d. 1193)’, in ODNB, vol. 5, pp. 63–4. ‘Blois, Henry de, bishop of Winchester (d. 1171)’, ibid., vol. 6, pp. 238–42. ‘Brian fitz Count, magnate (d. c. 1149)’, ibid., vol. 7, pp. 538–40. ‘Caux, John de, abbot of Peterborough (d. 1263)’, ibid., vol. 10, pp. 585–6. ‘Eustace, count of Boulogne (d. 1153)’, ibid., vol. 18, pp. 649–50. ‘Hugh Candidus, monk of Peterborough (d. c. 1160)’, ibid., vol. 28, pp. 620– 21. ‘Ingulf, abbot of Crowland (d. 1109)’, ibid., vol. 29, pp. 294–5.

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‘Peterborough, William of, theologian (fl. c. 1190)’, ibid., vol. 43, pp. 870–71. ‘Peverel, William, baron (d. after 1155)’, ibid., vol. 43, pp. 968–9. ‘Ranulf, earl of Chester (d. 1129)’, ibid., vol. 46, pp. 52–3. ‘Round, John Horace, historian (d. 1928)’, ibid., vol. 47, pp. 943–6. ‘Stephen, king of England (d. 1154)’, ibid., vol. 52, pp. 408–16. ‘Swaffham, Robert, monk of Peterborough (d. c. 1271)’, ibid., vol. 53, p. 420. ‘William fitz Alan, baron (d. 1160)’, ibid., vol. 59, pp. 113–14. 2005 Review: S. Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–80 (Oxford, 2004), in EHR, 120: pp. 820–21. 2006 ‘The Gesta Stephani’, in D. Bates, J. Crick and S. Hamilton (eds), Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge), pp. 195–206. ‘1141: A Turning Point in British History’, BBC History Magazine, 7:6 ( June 2006), pp. 46–9; revised repr. in The Great Turning Points in British History: The 20 Events that Made the Nation (London, 2009). pp. 30–38. Review: D. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France 900–1300 (Harlow, 2005), in Medium Aevum, 75: p. 351. Review: M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225–1360, New Oxford History of England (Oxford, 2005), in Antiquaries Journal, 86: pp. 442–3. 2007 ‘The Accession of Henry II’, in C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (eds), Henry II: New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 24–46. Review: Charters and Custumals of Shaftesbury Abbey 1089–1216, ed. N.E. Stacy (British Academy: Records of Social and Economic History NS 39, 2006), in Economic History Review 2:60, pp. 596–7. 2008 ‘A Week in Politics: Oxford, Late July 1141’, in P. Dalton and G.J. White (eds), King Stephen’s Reign (1135–1154) (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 58–79. (with N. Karn) ‘The Peterborough Chronicles’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 61: pp. 17–29. Review: M. Staunton, Thomas Becket and His Biographers (Woodbridge, 2006), in Catholic History Review, 94: pp. 797–8.

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2010 King Stephen, English Monarchs Series (New Haven and London), xvii + 382 pp. + 16 pp. of plates. Paperback edition, 2012. Review: Charters of Peterborough Abbey, ed. S.E. Kelly (British Academy: Anglo-Saxon Charters, 14, 2009), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 61: pp. 818–19. 2011 Editor, with J. Canning and M. Staub, Knowledge, Discipline and Power in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of David Luscombe, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittalalters, 106 (Leiden), xv + 281 pp. 2013 ‘Deeping, John (d. 1439), Abbot of Peterborough’, ODNB, online edition. 2014 ‘King Stephen and the Empress Matilda: The View from Northampton’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 67: pp. 17–30. In Course of Publication ‘Henry of Winchester: The Bishop, the City, and the Wider World’, Allen Brown Memorial Lecture 2014, ANS, 37 (2015). Editor and translator, The Peterborough Chronicles, vol. 2: Robert of Swaffham and Walter of Whittlesey, Anthony Mellows Memorial Trust, Dean and Chapter of Peterborough / Northamptonshire Record Society.

Index of Manuscripts Aberdeen, University Library 219 244n51 Angers, Bibliothèque municipale 837 127n4 Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Collection Mancel 296 220n37 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 16 237n22 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 17 245n52 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 33 246n54 Cambridge, St John’s College 9 245n51 Cambridge, St John’s College 46 245n51 Cambridge, Trinity College B. 4. 2 245n51 Cambridge University Library, Peterborough Dean and Chapter MS 1 216n12 Cambridge, University Library Ii. 3. 28 229n86, 245n42 Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Chartae Antiquae C254 241n42 Chartres, Archives départementales d’Eureet-Loir H 2338 (6) 182n13 Durham Cathedral B. II. 16 and 17 245n51 Durham, Dean and Chapter, ch. 2. 2. Finc. no. 19 208n62 Essex Record Office D/DBa T/2/1, 3 and 4 104 Essex Record Office D/DJ 1/1 105 Essex Record Office D/DPr 149 92n9 Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure H 91 182n12 Evreux, Archives départmentales de l’Eure H 320 183n15

Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure H 322 224n59 Evreux, Archives départementales de l’Eure H (438) 181n9, 203n51 Glasgow University Library, Hunter U. 2. 6 107 Hereford Cathedral Library P. 9. v 245n51 Kew, National Archives (TNA) C 56/16 180n6 Kew, National Archives (TNA) C 145/53 228n84 Kew, National Archives (TNA) CP 25/1/171/5 218n25 Kew, National Archives (TNA) DL 25/2336 188n34 Kew National Archives (TNA) E 40/13417 208n64 Kew, National Archives (TNA) E 326/3740 222n48 Kew, National Archives (TNA) E 370/1/4 187n29 Kew, National Archives (TNA) JUST 1/454 210n70 Kew, National Archives (TNA) JUST 1/455 186n27 Kew, National Archives (TNA) KB 26/152 221n46 Kew, National Archives (TNA) KB 26/175 210n70 Kew, National Archives (TNA) SC 8/331 235n16 Lambeth Palace Library 44 245n51 Lambeth Palace Library 371 237n25 Lambeth Palace Library 1213 235n16

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Lincoln Cathedral Library 9 245n51 Lincoln Cathedral Library 34 246n54 London, British Library, Additional charter 6109 218n23 London, British Library, Additional charter 47383 211n71 London, British Library, Additional charter 47573(17) 201n41 London, British Library, Additional charter 47644 203n51 London, British Library, Additional MS 14252 239n35 London, British Library, Additional MS 17289 244n51 London, British Library, Cotton, Domitian viii, 21-2 47n11 London, British Library, Cotton, Nero C v 56n60 London, British Library, Cotton, Nero C xii 203n47 London, British Library, Cotton, Otho B xiv 183n15 London, British Library, Cotton, Tiberius C ix 201n41 London, British Library, Harley 294 201n41 London, British Library, Harley 746 237n24 London, British Library, Harley 1916/5958 245n52 London, British Library, Harley 3688 108 London, British Library, Harley 3697 108, 109 London, British Library, Harley, Charter 57. E. 28 222n49 London, British Library, Harley, Charter 83. A. 6 219n31 London, British Library, Lansdowne 229 227n26 London, British Library, Royal 3. C. x 245n51 London, College of Arms, Charter 166 217n21, 218n22 London, College of Arms, Glover 2 185n20

London, Metropolitan Archives CLC/313/A/005/MS25, 272 107 London, Society of Antiquaries 60 14n14, 229n86 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments 938 106 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments 2182 110 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments 3551 109 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments 3747 110 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments 4444 105 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, Book 5 106 London, Westminster Abbey Muniments, Westminster Domesday 110 Manchester, John Rylands Library 94 246n54 Manchester, John Rylands Library 312 237n26 Marquise de Mathan, Collection Lenoir, t. 23 204n52, 207n60 Montigny-le-Brettoneux, Archives départementales des Yvelines 24 H 16 183n15 Montigny-le-Brettoneux, Archives départementales des Yvelines 45 H 21 187n28 Oxford, Balliol College 6 245n51 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. D. i. 10 245n51 Oxford Bodleian Library, Bodley 301 245n51 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley, Berks. Ch. 295 138n57 Oxford, Bodleian Library, e Mus. 6 245n51 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. misc. 124 244n51 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. misc. 129 244n51

Index of Manuscripts Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. misc. 625 180n7 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 103 182n11 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Top. Northants C. 5, 217n21, 218n22 Oxford, Christ Church 88 245n51 Oxford, Magdalen College, Brackley B 179 201n42 Oxford, Magdalen College, Brackley C 52 187n29 Oxford Magdalen College, Brackley 11 A 201n41 Oxford, Magdalen College, Evenley and Astwick 60 201n41 Oxford, Queen’s College 367 47n11 Paris, Archives nationales J 216 (Evreux), nos. 2-4 182n11 Paris, Archives nationales J 217 (Conches et Breteuil), no. 2 183n14

265

Paris, Archives nationales S 2125A 187n28

Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 177 244n50

Paris, BnF, français 403 248n60 Paris, BnF, latin 10087 220n37 Paris, BnF, latin 11055 184n18, 202n43 Rouen, Archives départementales, Seine Maritime 14 H 842 218n24 Rouen, Archives départementales, Seine Maritime 53 HP 32 218n24

Salisbury Cathedral 67 245n51 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, HAM Box 58B/1, mm. 1-3 192 Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, Crowland Cartulary 221n45 Winchester Cathedral 2 245n51

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General Index Note: Persons are listed by their first name. Some entries may conceal separate identities; likewise some entries may refer to the same person and place. ‘Fitz’ and ’son of ’ are both used. Some frequently used names such as England and Normandy are not listed. Abbess Roding 95n24 Abingdon Abbey 69, 131, 138 Abingdon A 58 chronicle 70, 137 Adam, brother of Alice Basset 208n62 Adam, forester 97, 98 Adam, justiciar 118 Adam Kieret 221 Adam, son of Robert Truite 165 Adam of Shepshed 199, 211 Adela, countess of Blois 79, 82, 83, 85, 87 Adelard de Guerris, constable 94, 96, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110 Adeliza 93 Adrian IV, Pope 160n108 Aeldred/Ealdred, archbishop of York 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 129 Ælfthryth, queen 40 Æthelnoth, abbot of Glastonbury 29 Aethelred/Æthelred, king 29, 33, 240 Agatha, daughter of William du Hommet 219 Agatha, mother of Edgar the Ætheling 32 Ailwin 101, 106 Airic, prior of Hurley 109 Akarius, abbot of Peterborough 216n12, 229n86 Akeman Street 27 Alan, son of Ansfrid 138 Alan de Dinan 223 Alan IV Fergant 132 Alan, earl of Richmond 134n36, 139, 145 Alan Rufus 126n4 Alan of Shepreth 97, 104

Alan, son of Count Stephen 125n1, 126 Alderton 218n25 Aldgate, see London Alexander, clerk 152 Alexander, son of Richard of Whitby 201n42 Alfred of Benneuill, Prior 109 Alfred, brother of Ern’ of Hurley 109 Alfred the Great 30, 61, 62, 130, 250 Alice Basset 197, 198, 207, 208 Alnwick 163, 177 Alresford 52 Alured de Benneuille 108, 110 Alured of Hurley 110 Alward, dean 125 Amaury de Bène 247 Ambrose, St 159 Amersham 109, 209n68 Amice, countess of Montfort, sister of Robert IV, earl of Leicester 7–8, 181, 219, 220 Amice de Gael, wife of Robert II, earl of Leicester 179 Angers 125, 135 Anglesey 122 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 3, 27–32, 38, 41, 55, 242 and n44 Anjou 6, 84, 125, 213 Anselm, abbot 97, 100 Ansfrid FitzRuald 125n1, 126, 136, 137, 138, 139 Ansgar 35, 36, 42 Ansketil FitzUnspac 51 Anstey 180n6, 195, 205 Antipater 144

268

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

‘Apocalypse’ manuscripts 248 Apostle, the, see St Paul Apostles 241, 243, 246, 248n60 Aquitaine 163 Aragon 88 Arduin 80n15 Arganchy 88 Aristotle 158n98 Arnold of Échauffour 80 Arnold, brother of Simon de Tourville 194, 204 Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux 155n80 Arthur, king 248 and n62 Articles of the Barons 8, 233 and n8, n10, 234 and n12, 235, 238 Asgar, see Ansgar Ashley Heath 210n69 Assize of Clarendon (1164) 133 Assumption, feast 234 Aston 135 Aston Rowant 135, 138 astrology 6, 143, 152 and n70, 154 and n78 astronomy 154 Aubrey II de Vere 92n9, 93, 99, 104 Augerville 81 auguries 153 Augustine of Hippo, St 9, 31, 154n78, 159, 243, 244, 245, 246 and n54, 247, 250 Aunay-sur-Odon 217n18 Avella, Avellino 159 Avray, D. d’ 11 Aylesbury 131 Aynho 109 Bagworth 197, 199, 207, 210 bailiffs 115 and n19 Baldwin, J.W. 246n56 Baldwin, count of Aumale 219 Baldwin de Breburg 105 Baldwin de Boulogne 68n34 Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury 147 Baldwin III, count of Guînes 225 Baldwin de Redvers 128, 139 Barenton 97

Barking 40, 43 Barkly, Sir Henry 47–8, 50, 57 Barnwell chronicler 231n1, 235n18, 236 barones 235nn16–18, 236n21, 238 Barrau, J. 231n1 Barry, Charles 250 Bartholomew, archdeacon of Exeter 156n86 Bartholomew de Glanville 173 Basinc 52 Basingwerk 124n66 Bates, D. 13 Bath 128 Bath A 58 Baudri of Bourgueil 35 Bayeux 166, 217n18 Baynard’s Castle 100, 169 Beaulieu 242n46 Beaumont 207n61 Beauvais 78, 85 Bec 133, 135, 136, 183n15, 217 Bede 9, 241 and n43, 246, 248n60 Bedford, Bedfordshire 127, 176n59 Belby 52 Belchford 112, 116 Belgrave 196, 197, 206, 207 Bellencombre 220 Benedict, St 242 and n46 Benedict’s, St, Ealing 11 Benedictines 124n66 Benfleet 106 Benington 220n37 Benson 137 Beorhtric 131 Bepton 131 Berengaudus 248n60 Bering 109 Berkeley 50, 56, 57 and n65 see Eustace, Roger, Roger II Berkhamsted 26, 27–8, 30, 32 and n55, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 129, 172, 176n59, 220n37 Berkshire 57, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 138 Bermondsey Priory 185n20

General Index Bernard, Cardinal 156n87 Bernard the Scribe 126 Bernard, abbot of Tiron 81 Bernay 217 Bertha, heiress of Conan III 127n6 Bertona 207n60 Bertrade of Montfort 86 Bertram de Verdun 166n13 Bertrand of Thurmaston 200, 211 Béthune 215 and n9, 219n33, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228

Béthune Anonymous 236, 238

Betton 198, 209 Beverley 31 Biddlesden Abbey 137 Bigod castles 176n59 Bigods 95n24 Biller, P. 11 Blackstone 236, 249 Blatherwycke 219 Blewbury 134 Blisworth 217 and n21 Blois, counts of 77, 87, 163 Boddington 57 Bohemond, prince of Antioch 79 Bolingbroke 123 Bolsover 173n43 Bonsmoulins 89 Bordesden 109

Bordesley Abbey 73 Bosham 131 Botulph, St 174 Boulogne 65, 67n27, 68, 100, 101, 163 Bourges 247n57 Brabançons 175 Brackley 180, 194, 195, 204, 206, 220n34 Bracton 188n33 Bradford 232, 247 Bradgate 210n70 Brand, abbot of Peterborough 41, 42 Braybroke 228 Bredcroft 216 Breteuil 7, 179, 181, 182, 184 Breton, Bretons 8, 125, 126, 134, 137, 171, 221n42, 223, 226

269

breve(s)/breve(s) 46, 49, 51, 52 and n39, 54, 55, 56, 57, 173, 174, 175 Brewer family 226 Brian or Brien FitzCount 5, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138 Brian de Lisle 208 bribery 6, 154, 155 Brice of Tours, St 159 Brien, see also Brian Brien of Cornwall, count 127n6 Brien, canon of Waltham 109 Brington 217n21 Bristol 65, 128, 170, 171 Brictric Walensis 126 Brittany 127n4, 132, 135, 152, 177, 223, 226 Broadwater 131 Bromley 107 Brooke, C.N.L. 141n1, 155n84 Bruis 49n19 Brundage, J. 87 Brunner, H. 240n38 Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, Bucks. 96, 131, 136, 137, 138, 176n59, 204n52, 209n68, 221n42 Buildwas 245n51 Bulbourne, river 27 Bulwick 215n7 Bull, M. 83, 84, 86 Bungay 173n45 Burgred of Mercia 50 Burhs 130, 131 Burton, J. 231n1, 242n46 Burton Latimer 223 and n54, 224 Burton Lazars 203n47 Bury St Edmunds 97, 100, 243n47, 245n51, 250 Bushey 98, 108 Cadfael 18 Cadwaladr 122 Caerleon 152n69 Cahaignes 209n66 Caiphas 160

270

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Cambridge, Cambridgeshire 11, 12, 18, 54, 96, 97, 126, 174, 209 Campania 159 Canewdon 95n22 canon law, see law canons, see Chartres, Courville, Leicester, London (Holy Trinity Aldgate, St Martin le Grand, St Paul’s), Trentham, Wallingford, Waltham Canterbury 25, 43, 53n46, 142, 147, 148, 152, 158n100, 160, 194, 198, 204, 209, 235n18, 241, 245n51 and see Excerpta; St Thomas Capetian 179, 213 Capuans 149 Carlisle 121, 165 Carmen de Hastingae Proelio 22, 23, 35, 36, 38n90 Carmina burana 142n7 Carpenter, D. 15, 231n1, 248n61 Casewick 227, 228 Castle Cary 128 Castle Donington 115n19 Castle Rising 102n66 Cerney 128 Chacombe family 216n16 Chalgrove 137 chancery 65n17, 114, 241 Chaplais, P. 250 Charlton, A. 92 Charnwood 210n70 Charruel 81 Charter of Liberties, earldom of Chester 112, 119 Chartists 231 Chartres 4, 79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 183n15 canons 86 Saint-Père Abbey 80, 81 Cheney, C.R. 233, 234, 237, 247 Cheshire, Chester 5, 111–24, 148, 153, 156n86, 171 St Werburgh 113 and see Charter of Liberties Chibnall, M. 11, 17 Chichester 131

Childs, W. 11 Chilterns 26, 27 Chinon 163 Chippenham 109, 131 Chipping Warden 215n7 Chishill 109 Chocques 215, 219n33, 227 Christ, see Jesus Christchurch Priory 198, 208 Christina 32 Chronicle of Mayors and Sheriffs of London 238–9 Chronicon Petroburgense 14 Chuisnes 80, 82, 83 Cicero 158n98 Cistercians 124n66, 217, 242n46 Clapton 14 Clare family 93, 100n55, 169 and n21 Clarendon 185 Clark, T. 11 Clarke, P. 11 Clarreaus 169 and n21 Claybrooke(?) 208 Clémas 81 Cluny 70, 71 Clwyd, river 111, 122, 124 Cnut, king 30, 59, 62, 130 Codnor 223 Coggeshall 235n18, 236, 242n46 Colchester 96, 105, 173, 176 Coldstream, N. 11 Colham 131 Colnbrook 131 Colne Priory 92n9 Combermere 124n66 common law, see law Compostella 177 Compton 109 Conan, archdeacon 125 Conan, 2nd earl of Richmond 137, 176 Conan III, duke of Brittany 127n6 Connecticut 18 Constance, daughter of King Philip I 79 Constance, daughter-in-law of Queen Matilda 68n38, 100

General Index Constantinople 224 Constitutio Domus Regis 144 Constitutions of Clarendon (1166) 150n61 consul 88 Copsi 40 Corfe 128 Cornwall 126, 127n6, 139 Cossus 157 Cotentin 219, 220 Courville-sur-Eure, lords of 4, 77–90, and see Giroie, Ivo I, Ivo II, Philippa canons of St Nicholas 80

Coventry 114n18, 116, 124, 145 Creake Abbey 225 Crediton 52, 56 Cromhall 57 Crouch, D. 7, 14, 89, 92, 179–211, 220n34, 232 Crowland Abbey 219n31, 221n45, 222 Crowland Domesday 58 Crowmarsh 128n14, 138 Croxton 186n27 crusaders, crusades 179, 182, 186, 219, 224 Culham 137 Cumberland, Cumbria 112, 121, 165 curialis 6 Cyprian, St 159 Daimbert, archbishop of Sens 79, 84, 85, 86 Dalton, P. 1–9, 21–44 Damme 225 Danelaw 215n6 Danes 44, 250 Daniel, monk 103 Daniel de Béthune 225 Daventry Priory 17 David, son of Geoffrey de Gerponville 107 David, king 153 David, king of Scots 5, 88, 121, 122 Davis, R.H.C. 91, 92 Dee, river 116, 118 Dendermonde 225 Derby, Derbyshire 114n14, 115n19, 120, 120, 176, 223 Descriptio Militum 12, 14

271

Descriptio terrarum, see Peterborough Desford 197, 199, 207, 210 Devizes 134, 135, 136 Devon 52, 126, 136, 138, 170 Dialogue of the Exchequer, see Richard FitzNigel Dickinson, J. 145n31, 146, 159n105 Didcot 135 diffidatio 3–4, 77–90 Digest 156n87 Digswell 109 Dionysius, St 186 Dodbrooke 125, 138, 139 Dol 171n31, 177 Domesday Book 2, 9, 11, 45–60, 63, 112, 113, 130, 209n66, 216, 250 Domesday Monachorum A 53n46 Great Domesday Book (GDB) 46, 58, 59, 60 Liber Exoniensis (Exon) 46, 54, 56, 58 Little Domesday Book (LDB) 46, 58 and see Inquisitio Dorchester-on-Thames 41 Dorset 115n19, 130, 170n30, 197, 198, 207, 208, 210n69 Douai 225 Douglas, D. 27n34 Dover 24, 25, 43, 65 Duddington 216, 219, 221n46, 228 and n84 Dunham Massey 171 Dunois 83 Duntisbourne Abbots 53 Dunwich 176 Durham 52, 113, 167, 168, 245n51, 250 Ealdgyth 27, 130, 131 Ealdred, underking of the Hwicci 50 and see Aeldred East Anglia 54, 93, 173 Easter 109 Easton-on-the-Hill 215, 219, 221 and n44, 222n48 Ebrard 80n15 Ebrard de Beche 174

272

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Edgar, King 40 Edgar the Aetheling/Ætheling (Cild) 22, 23, 26, 28–35, 40, 41, 129 Edith/Matilda, Queen of King Henry I 62n4 Edith, Queen of King Edward 25, 131 Edith, daughter of Robert (II) d’Oilly 136–7 Edith, wife of Robert (II) d’Oilly 136 Edith, wife of Wigan 136 Edmonton 98, 109, 110 Edmund Ironside, King 24 Edric, reeve of Hurley 109 Edward the Exile 30 Edward the Confessor, King 25, 30, 33, 45, 48, 56, 61, 62, 66n25, 130, 250 Edward I, King 238, 248 Edward III, King 248 and n62 Edward of Shelford 107 Edward Watcombe 109 Edwin, earl of Mercia 28, 29, 31, 32, 34n66, 40 Ela, sister of Joanna de Tillières 224 Ellis, A.S. 57 Ely 54, 93, 101, 102, 103, 109 Ely D 58 Emmilina 53 Enedehithe 61n1, 74 Enfield 109, 110 Enguerrand de Fiennes 226 Epernon 182n13, 187n30 Eric, reeve 109 Erkenwald, St 37, 40 Ermesindis 82 Ermington 126 Ern’ of Hurley 109, 110 Ernald de Bosco 171 Ernald, royal forester 110 Erneis de Burun 120 Ernulf de Mandeville 93, 98, 105, 108, 109, 110 Ernulf Orphan 110 Ernulf, physician 107 Ernulf de Riplemundo 105 Esau 149n55

Esgar or Esger, see Ansgar Esger, see Ansgar Essex 36, 52, 68, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101n60, 104–10, 156, 171, 173, 227 Estrée, L’, Abbey 183n15 Étampes 86 Eudo the steward 94, 96 Eugenius III, Pope 156n87 Eunuch, The 155 Eure-et-Loir 79–80, 81, 131 Eusebius of Caesarea 151 Eustace of Barrington 97, 98, 99, 104 Eustace of Berkeley 48, 50 Eustace de Fauconberg 192, 200 Eustace FitzJohn, constable of Chester 118 Eustace of Shellow 104 Eustace, son of King Stephen 6, 24, 64, 66, 68, 101, 136, 143, 144 Eustace of Walden 97n36 Everdon 217 Evesham Abbey 119, 131 Evesham A 53, 56 Evesham F 53n46 Evreux 181 Excerpta of St Augustine’s, Canterbury 58 exchequer royal 3, 63 and n8, 69–74, 144, 164n4, 172, 181, 184, 186, 187, 189, 191, 202n46 Chester 112, 120 Leicester 193, 203n49, 209 Exeter 56, 125, 127, 128, 139, 245n51 Exon, see Domesday Book Eynsham 136, 137 Ezechiel 244, 244n49, n50 Favril 81 Fenland, fens 11, 99, 215 fitz Thedmar 239n32 Flanders 9, 67n27, 163, 166, 215, 224, 225, 226, 242, 250 flattery 6, 154, 155 Flemings 8, 68, 99, 169n22, 173n45, 174, 219 and n33, 221, 224, 226, 227

General Index Foggo, James and George 250 Fontaine-sous-Préaux 218n26 Fordingbridge Hundred 45 forests, foresters, forest laws 98, 150, 151n61, 215 forgery 48, 92, 109 Fornham 7, 169n22, 170, 177 Fotheringhay 215 and n7 Fougères 152 Fox, H.S.A. 214 Framlingham 173n45 free will 31 Frodsham 114 Fulbrook 136 Fulfen 109 Fulk Bruning 110 Fulk de Nuers 104, 105, 108, 109, 110 Fulk Paynel 219 Gaimar, see Geffrei Gaimar Galo, bishop of Paris 79, 85, 86 Gals, earl, see Gilbert FitzRichard, earl of Hertford gambling 148 Gamlingay 69 Ganelon 80 Ganshof, F. 89 Garston 119 Gaufridus de Heroumuilla 143n12 Gawsworth 115, 118 Gayton 219, 225n72, 226 geld 215n6 Geffrei Gaimar 42 Geoffrey of Anjou 71n49 Geoffrey Boterel 137 Geoffrey, chancellor 126 Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres 78, 82, 156n87 Geoffrey of Cranford 195, 205 Geoffrey FitzNicholas 192, 201 Geoffrey FitzPeter 184 Geoffrey the forester 97 Geoffrey de Gerponville 98, 105, 107, 108 Geoffrey, archdeacon of London 156 Geoffrey I de Mandeville 95, 96

273

Geoffrey II de Mandeville, 1st earl of Essex 4–5, 6, 36, 68, 91–110, 145, 157n97, 168n19 Geoffrey III de Mandeville, 2nd earl of Essex 92n9, 98 Geoffrey Martel 95n24 Geoffrey de Mauquenchy 217 and n21, 218 and nn22, 23, 220n36 Geoffrey of Monmouth 151, 152 Geoffrey, vicomte of Porhoët 126 Geoffrey of Quarrendon, chamberlain 94, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110 Geoffrey of Tilty, steward 94, 110 Geoffrey II de Tourville 204n52 Geoffrey, son of Walter 104, 105 George III, king 249 Gerald of Wales 142n6 Gerard de Camville 221 and n46, 228 and n84 Gerard de Mauquenchy 218 and nn22, 23, 26, 220, 221, 222 and n49 Gerbald de Escald 174 Gerberoy 27, 131 Gerin 74 Germany 30 Gerold 94 Gervaise de Dinan 223 Gervase of Blois 66n25 Gervase of Canterbury 73 Gervase of Cornhill 68, 69, 102, 166n11, 171 Gervase, abbot of Prémontré 234n11 Gervase Russell 192, 201 Gervase of Tilbury 153n70 Gesta Stephani 102, 127, 136 Gherbod the Fleming 111n4 Giffard honours 188n33 Gilbert de l’Aigle 194, 204 Gilbert Becket 101, 102n63 Gilbert de Clare 145 Gilbert, son of Edwin 199, 211 Gilbert FitzGilbert, earl of Pembroke 94n15, 104 Gilbert FitzReinfrid 181n8, 192, 200 Gilbert FitzRichard, earl of Hertford 93, 100n55, 102, 105, 107, 109, 110

274

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Gilbert FitzRichard, earl of Pembroke 93, 94n15 Gilbert Foliot 152, 155 Gilbert the hawker 197, 208 Gilbert, bishop of London 100 Gilbert de Mandeville 104 Gilbert de Montfichet or Munfichet 100n55, 169 Gilbert Pipard 117, 139, 170, 174 Gilbert Prudfot 101, 102n63 Gilbert of Sempringham 149 Gilbert the sheriff 106 Gilbert de Ver 135 Gilduin, viscount of Chartres 80 Gillingham, J. 89 Gilston 109 Giroie of Courville 80 Girton 198, 209 Gisors 169 Glamorgan 247 Glastonbury 245 and n52 Glenfield 196, 197, 199, 206, 207, 208, 210 Gleton 198, 208 Glossa ordinaria 9, 241, 242n43, 244 and n49, 248n60 Gloucester, Gloucestershire 47, 51, 52, 55, 57, 59, 65, 99n50, 115n19, 131, 132, 168n17, 170n30, 171, 176 St Peter’s, Gloucester 2, 45n1, 47–8, 50, 51, 53, 59 Gnatho 155 Godescalc 105 Godstone 100n52 Godstow 134, 137, 195, 206 Godwine, Earl 23n6, 56 ‘Goliardic’ poetry 142n7, 160 Good Easter 96, 106 Gordon, P. 17 Gosce ( Jocelin) de Dinan 134 Gotzo ( Jocelin) of Dinan 134 Grafton Underwood 216, 219 Grandmesnil 7, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 200, 211 Grandpont 129 Grand Remonstrance 231

Grantham 120, 121n51 Great Torrington 139n61 Great Weldon 215n7 Green, J. 4–5, 91–110 Greetham 114, 115n19 Gregory, clerk 106 Gregory the Great, Pope 159, 242 and n46 Gregory, steward 94, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110 Greys of Codnor 223 Griffin 201n42 Grimsbury 219 and n33 Grimsby 120 Groby 190, 195, 196, 200, 205, 206, 210n70, 211 Gruffudd ap Cynan 113, 122 Gruffudd Goch 192, 201 Guala, cardinal 234n11 Guido L’Estrange 174 Gullick, M. 250 Gunfrid, chaplain and clerk 194, 203 Guy 107 Guy, bishop of Amiens 22, 36 Guy of Le Puiset 86 Gwent 168n17 Gwynedd 113, 122 Gyrth 23n6 Hadley 109 Hall, D. 17 Hallam-Smith, E. 231n1, 250n67 Halse 194, 195, 205, 206 Halton 118 Hamelin, chamberlain 94, 105, 109, 110 Hamnedenar 209 Hamo de Hotot 197, 207 Hamo de Masci 171 Hamo, son of Ruald 125n1 Hampshire 45n2, 72n56, 164n3 Hannibal 149 Hants., see Hampshire de Harcourt, see John, Richard, Robert and William Harmondsworth 131 Harneys 232

General Index Harold II Godwineson, King 22, 23, 30, 131 Harold of Spenc’ 200, 211 Harptree 128 Hart, W.H. 47–8 Hartsholme Priory 116 Hasculf de Tany 100 Hastings, battle of 1, 22, 23, 28, 43, 44, 61 family 191 Hatfield 97, 98, 104 Haughley 165, 173 Hautes-Bruyères 181 Havering 98 Hawise, countess of Gloucester 198, 207n59, 208 Helmholz, R. 246n55 Heming 49 Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester 13–14, 16, 54, 65, 66, 68n34, 100, 142, 148n48, 156 Henry, archbishop of Dublin 234n12 Henry of Essex 173n44 Henry de Ferrers 94 Henry FitzGerold 94, 95, 105, 109, 132, 137, 138n59 Henry de Fougères 126

Henry of Huntingdon 66, 145n27, 157, 242n44 Henry the Ironworker 192, 201 Henry I, King 1, 38, 62, 65, 82, 88, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99n49, 100n55, 106, 111–13, 115, 118, 121n51, 122, 132, 133, 134, 135, 158n101, 184, 231, 238, 242, 250

see also exchequer, royal

Henry II, King 1, 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 54, 71, 72, 73, 74, 111, 113, 120, 122, 123, 126, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148n43, 151n61, 152, 153, 157, 163–77, 188n33, 215, 216, 217, 240n38, 242 Duke of Normandy 24, 33, 35, 71, 121, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139

see also exchequer, royal

275

Henry III, King 62, 167, 221, 223, 224, 225, 248 Henry VIII, King 133 Henry of London 186, 188, 192, 200 Henry d’Oilly 132 Henry of Oxford 136, 137, 138 Henry, son of King Henry II 6, 153, 163, 167 Henry, son of Riulf 135 Henry, archdeacon of Stafford, see Henry of London Henry de Tracy 139n61 Henry Tuschet 118 Herbert the chamberlain 63n11 Hercules 128 Hereford, Herefordshire 52, 102, 113, 170, 174 Hertford, Hertfordshire 36, 93, 98, 173, 179, 185 Hervé de Léon 134n35 Hervey de Stratton 172 Hexham 245n51 Heyford 137 hides 215n6 High Easter 96 Hillingdon 131 Hinckley 197, 198, 207, 209 Hincmar 83n30 Hogshaw 136 Holinshed’s Chronicles 249n64 Hollister, C. Warren 91 Holt, J.C. 231, 237, 239 Holy Spirit 153, 159 Holy Trinity, see London, Aldgate Hommet, Le, family 215, 217nn18, 21, 219, 220 and n39, 222, 223n50, 227, 228 and see John du Hommet, Jordan du Hommet, Richard du Hommet, and William I and II du Hommet Hook Norton 131 Horace 231n1 Horncastle 175n51 Hotot family 14, 17 Hough-on-the-Hill 134

276

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

housecarls 130 Howick 119 Howlett, D. 88 Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln 150, 180n7, 190 Hugh d’Avranches, 1st earl of Chester 111, 113, 122 Hugh de Bar 167 Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk 93, 173, 174 Hugh Candidus 13 Hugh FitzBigod 115, 118 Hugh II (de Kyvelioc), earl of Chester 113, 117, 119, 123, 177 Hugh of Claybrooke 199, 210 Hugh de Cranunauilla 108 Hugh of Die, archbishop of Lyons 84, 85 Hugh, earl 51 Hugh of Eu 98, 99, 105, 107, 108 Hugh FitzMilo 139 Hugh FitzRichard 134, 135, 138 Hugh FitzUlger 101, 102, 106 Hugh, forester 108 Hugh de Gournay 218, 221 and n43, 222 Hugh de Grandmesnil 184 Hugh de Gundeville 198, 208 Hugh II de Gundeville 208n63 Hugh Malbanc 124n66 Hugh de Mara 135 Hugh de Payens 95n30 Hugh de Port 45 Hugh of Le Puiset, viscount of Chartres 4, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87 Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham 167 Hugh, son of Ulger see Hugh FitzUlger Humber, river 120, 124 Humphrey of Barrington 94n15, 98, 99, 104, 108 Humphrey de Bohun 7, 128, 132, 134, 135, 175, 176, 177 Humphrey de Millières 220 Humphrey de la Rochelle 104, 105, 109, 110 Hundreds 214 Hundred Rolls 19, 227 and n82 Hundred Years War 224, 226

Hungary 30 Hunsingore 120 hunting 102, 143, 149, 150, 210 Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire 58, 59, 155n86, 174, 176n59, 215, 216, 217, 219n31 Huntington 18, 190 Hurley 96, 109, 110 Hwicci 50 Hyde 218, 218n22 Hynghah’g 199, 210 Hyrcanus 144 Hywel 168n17 Ickenham 131 Icknield Way 26, 27 Ilger 125 India 159 Ingelric, priest 41, 42 Innocent II, Pope 66n25 Innocent III, Pope 218n23, 247 Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis (ICC) 54, 55 Inquisitio Eliensis (IE) 54, 58 inquisitio geldi 55, 56, 57, 58 Iorwerth ab Owain 168n17 Ireland 169, 174n50 Isabel, sister of Richard FitzGilbert de Clare 182n11 Isabel, sister of Robert III, earl of Leicester 211n71 Isidore 9, 152n70, 241 and n43, 242n43, 246 Israel 153 Iver 131, 135 Ivo, bishop of Chartres 4, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84–7, 90 Ivo Cotella of Courville 82 Ivo I, lord of Courville 80, 81 Ivo II, lord of Courville 4, 78, 79, 82–90 Ivo de Grandmesnil 184 Ivo, knight of Hugh of Le Puiset 82 Ivo Hurell 200, 211 Ivo of Leire 197, 208 Iwod, physician 107

General Index Jacques de Vitry 247 Jaeger, C.S. 147 James, St 174n46 James of Whetstone 197, 207 Jean, Duke of Normandy 249n63 Jerome, St 143n12, 244 Jerusalem 79, 84, 151 Jesus 9, 159, 241n43, 242, 243 and n48, 244 and n50, 246, 247 Joachim of Fiore 247 Joanna Brewer 222n49 Joanna de Tillières 223, 224 and n60 John, chamberlain 116 John de Harcourt, son of Robert 223, 226 John de Harcourt, son of Richard 223, 226 John of Hauville 154n79 John du Hommet 222–3 and n50, 227 John, King 1, 6, 7, 132, 137, 164, 167, 180, 181, 183, 184–9, 190, 210n69 and the loss of Normandy 8, 213, 218 and n24, 219, 221–5, 226, 227–9 and Magna Carta 232–5, 236 and n21, 237 and n26, 238, 239–40, 243, 246, 247, 248, 249 and n64, 250

John of Netheravon 197, 208 John, bishop of Norwich 138 John de Préaux 218 and n26, 26, 219 John, son of Ralph FitzEbrard 99n50 John de la Rochel 108 John de Rouvray 218 John, St 9, 159, 242n43, 243, 245, 246 and n54 John of Salisbury 6, 141–61 John, dean of Salisbury 164n3 John the Scot, earl of Chester 119n42 John of Worcester 27, 32, 38, 242n44 Johnston, R.C. 169n21 Jonas 159 Jordan Fantosme 168, 169n22 Jordan du Hommet 216, 222 Joscelin of Louvain 190 Joscelin, archdeacon of Wells 189 Josephus 86 Juliana 93 juries, jurors 9, 51, 240–2

277

justices, see justiciars justiciars 117, 222, 228 and n84, 229 Keats-Rohan, K. 5–6, 45, 125–39 Keefe, T.K. 18, 132 Kemerton 57 Kenilworth 175n55, 236 Kent 6, 23, 25, 68, 99n50, 166, 171, 176 Kerner, M. 146 Ketil Friday 47n11 Ketton 216, 220n39, 221 Kibworth 109 King, E.J. 9, 11–19, 22, 24, 41, 77, 98, 111, 121, 127n5, 136, 145n28, 168n19 King, J. 19 Kingham 109 Kingston Blount 135 Kinley 48, 50, 59 Knaresborough castle 235 Kyme family 117 Lally, J. 156n88, 157 Lamballe 127n4 Lambeth Palace Library 237 Lambourne 134 Upper Lambourne 135 Lancashire, Lancaster 7, 114n18, 115n19, 121, 123, 166, 176, 227 Latham, R.E. 88 Latimer, P. 6–7, 163–77 Laughton 195, 205 Lawson, M.K. 130 Lavelle, R. 130 Lavington 135 Leges Henrici Primi 243 Leicester 174, 176, 177, 190 canons 193, 196, 202, 206 earls of 114, 165, 190, 219

and see Robert II, III, IV honour of 7–8, 123, 179–211, 217n21, 219n31 Leicester Abbey 181 and see Biddlesden Abbey; exchequer; St John Baptist; St Leonard

278

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Leicestershire 46, 114n14, 115n19, 166, 167n13, 171n34, 216, 223 Leinster 169 Le Mans 71 Leofstan 101, 106 Le Parc Abbey 244n51 Le Squire, S. 237n26 Lestre 220 Letcombe Regis, manor 70–1 Lewknor, manor 69 Liber Exoniensis, see Domesday Book Liber Vitae 15 Licence, T. 231n1 Lincoln 70, 114, 116, 121n51, 190, 245n51, 246n54 battle of 65, 68n38, 89, 122, 136 bishops of 190, 200, 211, 216 and see Hugh of Avalon, Robert de Chesney cathedral 116 diocese 216 earl of 123 Lincoln Record Society 16 Lincolnshire 5, 46–7, 58, 59, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115n19, 116, 117, 134, 175n55, 176, 216, 222, 227 Lindsey 46 Linehan, P. 11 Littlechild 198, 209 Little Dunmow 95n24 Little Hallingbury 95n24 Little Ogbourne see Ogbourne Little Waltham 109 Llandaff 88 Llanthony 245n51 Llywelyn ap Iorwerth 119 London, Londoners 2, 3, 8, 23–4, 25–6, 27–8, 30, 32, 34–6, 39, 40, 42, 43, 61–75, 95, 96–7, 99–102, 106, 121, 127, 130, 131–2, 152, 164n4, 168, 169n21, 170n30, 174, 233, 234, 238–40 Aldgate, Holy Trinity Priory 96, 100, 107 Common Council 239 Commune 239

Hustings court 239 London chronicle, see Chronicle of Mayors and Sheriffs of London ‘London’ collection of laws 237, 239 and n36 St Martin le Grand 42, 68n34, 96, 100, 101, 105, 106 St Paul’s cathedral 37, 49, 52, 66n25, 94n15, 96, 100, 102n63, 107, 245n51 Tower 3, 34, 36, 65n16, 68, 69, 96, 100, 101, 106, 107 Treaty 235n16 Longditch 74 Longtree 51 Lords Ordainer 247 Loretta de Briouze 7–8, 179, 185–6, 187, 189, 190, 199, 210 Lotharingia 9, 250 Louis VII, King 163 Louis VIII, King 225, 235 and n18 Louis IX, King 224n60 Louvain 244n51 Louvel family of Ivry and Bréval 208n64 Low Countries 224 Lucy, daughter of John du Hommet 223, 227 Lucy Meschin 111, 112, 114, 124n66 Ludlow 134 Luffield Priory 17 Luke, St 245n53 Luscombe, D. 1–9, 11, 141–61 Lyndon, family 221n45, 222 Lyre 179n1, 203n51, 204n52 Mabel of Bellême 80 Macclesfield 118 Madog ap Maredudd 122 Magna Carta 1, 8, 9, 112, 223, 224, 231–51 Maine 213 Mainfelin 136, 137 Maitland, F.W. 240n38 Maldon 106 Malmesbury 128

General Index Malory 248n62 Malpas 171 Manasser 94n19 Manchester 247 Mandrogerus 144 Manichee 159 Map, see Walter Map Marcellinus, Pope 159 Marcigny, nunnery 82 Margaret, sister of Edgar Ætheling 32 Margaret, sister of Robert IV, earl of Leicester 7–8, 181–4, 186, 188, 190, 219, 220n34 Margaret de Tosny 197, 207 Marianus 56n60 Markfield 195, 205 Marlborough 131, 136 Marmoutier Abbey 80, 81 Martel family 95 Martin, J. 17 Martin, St 159, 216 Martin le Grand, St, see London Matilda, daughter of Ansfrid FitzRuald 138 Matilda de Chesney 137 Matilda, Empress 5, 65, 66, 71–2, 97, 99, 101–3, 122, 128, 134, 135–6, 138, 139, 143 Matilda, Queen 3, 64–9, 100, 101 Matilda of Wallingford 133 Matthew Paris 99n51, 231n1, 236, 237 and n22, 249 and n64 Matthew, St 159 Mauduit 74 Maurice, son of Geoffrey of Tilty 94, 104, 105, 106, 108 Mazilia of Bushey 96, 98, 108 Mears Ashby 216, 217n18, 219 and n31, 220, 221 Mellows, W.T. 13 Melton Ross, manor 120 Mercia 215 Merleswein, sheriff 41 Merlin, see Prophecies of Merlin Mersey, river 118, 121, 123

279

Meulan family 182 Michael Bugetel 197, 207 Michael de Buseuille 108 Michael Rogerell 198, 208 Michigan 18 Middlesex 36, 131, 174 Miles le Bret 174 Miles de Cogan 174 Miles Crispin 131, 132, 133, 139 Miles, earl of Gloucester 128, 134, 145 Miles, earl of Hereford 102, 150n58 Miller, E. 11 Mimms 98, 105, 109, 110 Minting 124n66 Missenden 96, 107, 138, 245n51 Misterton 198, 208 Mold 117 Montfichet’s castle 100 Montfort-en-Yvelines 181, 182, and see Simon de Montfort, husband of Amice Montmirail 153 Morcar, earl of Northumbria 28, 29, 31, 32, 40 Morey, A. 155n84 Morgan, N. 231n1 Morin 199, 211 Mose 109 Moses 243 and n48 Motte-Rotrou, La 78n8 Moulins 89 Mount Gilboa 153 Mountsorrel 123, 184, 185 Mowbray, Lord 249 Nantes 135 Nathaniel 73 Nederman, C.J. 146 Ness 227 Netheravon, see John of Netheravon; Robert in Netheravon Netherlands 246n54 Nettlestead 137 Newark-on-Trent 121n51 Newbottle 217n21

280

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

King’s Sutton Hund. 217n21 Nobottle Grove Hund. 217n21 Newcastle-under-Lyme 121, 123, 124, 172 New Forest 150 Newnham 42 Newport 96, 106 Newport Rising, the 232 Nicholas Malesmains 224 and n60 Nicholas, St 189n35 Nicholas de Sigillo 155n86 Nicholas de Stuteville 235 Nicholas of Wyel 199, 210 Nicola de la Haye 221 Niermeyer, J.F. 83, 88, 89 Nigel, clerk 108 Nigel, bishop of Ely 73, 102, 103, 164n4 Nigel de Longchamp (Nigel Wireker) 151n61, 158n100 Nigel d’Oilly 131 Nimrod 149 Ninivites 159 Nobottle, see Newbottle Norfolk 51, 52, 165, 173, 176, 208n64, 222, 225 Northall 109 Northallerton 168 Northampton castle 216, 227, 236 Delapré 217 St Andrew’s 217 St James’ 217, 218n22, n23 town 132, 145, 163, 185, 216, 217, 232, 236n18, 247 Northamptonshire/Northants., 8, 12, 115n19, 119n42, 164n3, 175, 176, 180, 213–29 Northamptonshire Past and Present 16 Northamptonshire Record Society 16 Northerners, the 232 North Barningham 51 North Marston 136 Northumberland 118, 121, 165, 166, 167, 227 Northumbria 23n6, 30 Norton 106, 118

Norwich 173 Nottingham, Nottinghamshire 114n14, 115n19, 120, 121n51, 132, 173n43, 175, 176, 217n21, 236 Nympsfield 2, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57 Ockendon 109 O’Connors 232 Odo, bishop of Bayeux 29 Odo de Brémontier 218, 221n43 Odo, pincerna 219 and n31, 220 and n37 Ogbourne, Great and Little 133, 135 Okehampton 132, 136, 138, 139 Orby 119n42 Order of the Garter 249 and n63 Order of the Star 249n63 Orderic Vitalis 26, 33, 34n66, 40, 49, 80 Orford 173, 176 Orm 52 Orne 89 Orwell 174 Osbern, bishop of Exeter 52 Osbert of Clare 66n25 Osbert, clerk of William the archdeacon 106 Osbert Huitdeniers 99 Osbert de Rouvray 218n24 Oseney Abbey 136 Osmund, chaplain 109 Overstone 220 Owain Gwynedd 121n55, 122, 153 Oxford, Oxfordshire 66, 71, 127, 129, 131, 134, 135, 137, 138, 145, 232, 247 All Souls College 17 Balliol College 11 Linacre College 45n1 Trinity College 250 Pacy-sur-Eure 179, 182 Pandulf 234n12 Paris 9, 85, 163, 246n54, 247 parlement 227 Treaty 227 Parisis 181 Parliamentarians 249

General Index Paschal II, pope 79, 86, 87 patriarchs 241, 246, 248n60 Patrick, earl of Salisbury 72 Patten, C. 11 Paul, St 159 Payn of Montdidier and the Temple 95, 107, 109, 110 Payn of Thorley 97, 99, 108 Pays de Caux 218, 220 Peak 173n43 Pembroke 223 Penitone 197, 207 Perche 87 Percy honour 190 Peter Abelard 154n78 Peter of Blois 147, 151n61, 155n86 Peter Boterel 135, 137, 138 Peter de Mara 135 Peter de Meulan 182n12 Peter de Montfort 226 Peter, St 70, 159 Peter of St Edwards 195, 200, 205, 211 Peterborough 11, 12, 13, 17, 41, 215, 216 and n12, 217, 229n86 Black Book 14 Descriptio Terrarum 53n46 Petronilla, countess 7, 179, 183, 184, 186, 187, 190, 193, 203, 204n51 Petronilla, wife of Gunfrid the clerk 203n51 Peverel, honour 217–18

Peveril castle 173n43

Philip, chamberlain 116 Philip (II) Augustus, King 7, 8, 180, 182, 183, 184, 218, 219, 220, 224 Philip of Hastings 173n45 Philip de Kyme 117 Philip Louvel 208n64 Philip de Orreby, justiciar 119n42 Philip de Wasteneis 195, 205 Philip of Worcester 223 and n51 Philippa of Courville 80 Philistines 153 Picardy 227 Pickersgill, F.R. 250

281

Picot 45 Pike, J.B. 146, 147 Pimperne 198, 208 pipe rolls 6–7, 70, 72n54, 73, 113, 117, 126, 138, 163–77, 186 Pipewell 217 Pleshey 98, 101 Plympton 139 Poissy, family 217n21 Poitiers, see William of Poitiers Poitou 213 Policraticus, see John of Salisbury Portchester 63n8, 132 Postan, M.M. 11 Potter, K.R. 14 Powderham 126 Power, D. 8, 213–29 Powys 122 Préaux 193, 202 Preston family 219n33

Prestwich, J. 91, 92, 101 Prophecies of Merlin 151–2 Puiset, Le 84, 86, 87 Purbeck 197, 207 Pushull next Wormesley 135

Raban, S. 11–19 Raby 118n32 Radulf Brito 173n44 Ralf, justiciar 118, 119 Ralph de Berners, steward 94, 104, 108 Ralph of Coggeshall 235n18, 236 Ralph de Criquetot 107 Ralph de Curzon of Glenfield 197, 208 Ralph Damarrell 138 Ralph FitzGerold 94 Ralph Foliot 139 Ralph of Fougères 152 Ralph de Hairon 97, 108 Ralph Littlechild 193, 202 Ralph de Mandeville 104 Ralph de Martinwast 187, 197, 207 Ralph of Shapwick 199, 210 Ralph, canon of Waltham 109 Ralph, brother of William son of Alured 105

282

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Ramsey 103 Randulf de Lench 172 Rannulf de Berners 105 Ranulf I (Meschin), earl of Chester 111, 112, 124n66

Ranulf II (de Gernons), earl of Chester 4, 5, 6, 111–24, 145 Ranulf III (de Blundeville), earl of Chester 112, 113, 116, 117, 119 and n42, 123, 124, 171 Ranulf, son of Ernald 105, 109, 110 Ranulf de Glanville 7, 156n90, 176, 177 Ranulf Higden 148 Ratby 195, 200, 205, 211 Raveningham 47n11 Ravensmeols 114n18 Raymond de Bi[ ] 104 Reading 131, 134, 237 Red Book of the Exchequer 234 Red Earl 17 Redesdale, Lord 249 Reginald Atte Wall 192, 201 Reginald of Bailleul 89 Reginald, earl of Cornwall 132, 139, 170, 177 Reginald de Courtenay 132 Reginald de Lucy 173n43 Reims 142 Reiner de Deupa 108 renunciation, see diffidatio Repton 116 Revelation, Book of 9, 241, 248 and n60 Rhys ap Gruffydd 167 Ribble, river 118, 121, 123 Richar 109 Richard Albus or Blunt 138 Richard of Anesty 156 Richard Basset 198, 208 Richard de Boulogne 68n34 Richard of Brackley 192, 201 Richard, archbishop of Canterbury 147 Richard, 2nd earl of Chester 111, 122 Richard, earl of Cornwall 133

Richard Fitton, justiciar 119n42 Richard FitzGilbert de Clare 93n14, 168n17, 169, 174n50, 182n11 Richard FitzRoger de Clare 169 Richard FitzNigel 46, 48, 53, 54, 61, 73, 74, Richard FitzOsbert, constable 106, 109 Richard FitzRainfrid 138 Richard de Harcourt 223 Richard the cook of Hinckley 197, 208 Richard I du Hommet 215, 216, 217n18, 221n45 Richard of Kilworth 192, 201 Richard I (Lionheart), King 65n15, 74, 164n4, 218 and n24, 227n83 Richard (de Belmeis II), bishop of London 158n101 Richard de Lucy 6, 7, 68, 144, 164n3, 173, 176, 177 Richard de Mandeville 108 Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke 223, 224, 225 Richard, son of Nicholas 199, 211 Richard de Rane 109, 110 Richard, son of Roger 203n51 Richard, sacrist 138n59 Richard Talbot 105 Richard, son of Warin 198, 208 Richardson, H.G. 192, 201, 235n16 Richer of L’Aigle 90 Richmond 7, 123, 126, 127, 134, 137, 176, 180 Rillaton 126 Riulf the constable 135 Riulf Brito de Seissun 131, 134, 135, 136, 137 Roade 218n22 Roald, son of Harscoit 125n1 Robert, brother of Ailwin 102n63 Robert of Bellême 84, 89 Robert of Belleston 200, 211 Robert de Béthune 224, 225, 226 Robert Bloet 157 Robert de Buellis 105 Robert of Carlton 197, 208

General Index Robert de Chesney, bishop of Lincoln 155n86 Robert de Chocques 215n9 Robert the clerk 194, 199, 203, 210 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy 1, 33n60, 158n101, 231, 242 Robert FitzAlan 222 Robert FitzBernard 170 Robert FitzGerold 94 Robert FitzRoy 136 Robert FitzSewin 164n3 Robert FitzWalter 234, 238n29, 249n64 Robert, earl of Gloucester 3, 4, 66, 77, 88, 89, 90, 134, 135 Robert Gormond 200, 211 Robert de Guînes 226 Robert de Harcourt 180n5, 219, 223 Robert (I), earl of Leicester 184, 185n20, 202n44 Robert (II), earl of Leicester 1, 22, 144, 147n38, 168n, 179, 183, 185n20, 188n33, 193, 194, 202, 203, 204, 207n59, 208n65 Robert (III), earl of Leicester 7, 170, 173, 177, 180n7, 183, 193, 194, 202 and n44, 203 and n47, 204, 211n71 Robert (IV), earl of Leicester 7, 179–90, 182, 183 and n15, 187, 188, 190, 193, 194, 195, 199, 202 and n43, 203, 204, 205, 208n62, 210, 219 Robert, bishop of London, see Robert de Sigillo Robert of Losinga, bishop of Hereford 49, 55, 56 Robert de Lucy 172 Robert Malet 52 Robert Mantel 173 Robert Marmion 145 Robert Mauduit 135 Robert le Mey 228 and n84 Robert de Montalt 117 Robert, count of Mortain 126, 127n6, 209n66 Robert in Netheravon 199, 210

283

Robert, duke of Normandy, see Robert Curthose Robert (I) d’Oilly 27, 129, 130, 131, 137 Robert (II) d’Oilly 95n25, 131, 136 Robert, son of Payn of Thorley 97, 108 Robert de Poissy 217 Robert de Ponte 101, 106 Robert, son of Richard 192, 201 Robert, son of Robert de Poissy 217 Robert of Roppesley 186, 188n29, 189 Robert de Ros 241n42 Robert of Selby 159n104 Robert of Shilton 197, 208 Robert de Sigillo, bishop of London 100, 107, 126 Robert of Staunton 194, 204 Robert de Stuteville 7, 165, 176 Robert of Swaffham 13 Robert de Thibouville 186 Robert of Vieuxpont 81 Robert de Vitré 126 Robert of Whetstone 197, 207 Robert, son of William of Bromkinsthorpe 197, 208 Robert de Wiville 192, 201 Rochefort 181, 187n28, 188 Rochester 231n1, 235, 245n51 Rockingham 215 Roding, river 40 Roffe, D. 2, 45–60 Roger, Mandeville tenant 94n19 Roger of Berkeley senior 2, 47, 50, 53, 56, 57 Roger II de Berkeley 50n27 Roger Bigod 52n39 Roger Bigot, earl 208n65 Roger Boun 192, 201 Roger the chamberlain 199, 211 Roger, clerk 105, 108, 109 Roger, earl 198, 208 Roger of Easton 221, 222 Roger, son of Eudo 105 Roger FitzReinfrid 181n8 Roger, earl of Gloucester 134 Roger Godberd 200, 211 Roger Gonekes 192, 201

284

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Roger, son of Ilger 125 Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury 113, 131 Roger of Pockyngton 197, 208 Roger de Poitou 121 Roger de Quincy, son of Saher 188n34, 208n64, 210n70 Roger, son of Ralph 51 Roger, bishop-elect of St Andrews 182 Roger, bishop of Salisbury 65, 67, 69, 134n35, 145, 164n4 Roger, king of Sicily 159 Roger de Tosny 198, 208 Roger of Wendover 231n1, 235nn17, 18, 236 and n20, 237, 249 Roger, son of William 192, 201 Roger, archbishop of York 154n74 Rohese, wife of Geoffrey II de Mandeville 93, 94n15, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110 Rohese, sister of Joanna de Tillières 224 Rolland, son of Ansfrid FitzRuald 138 Roman rite 245n53, 246 Rome, Romans 9, 103, 127, 246 and n55, 247 Rothersthorpe 215 and n7, 219, 224, 225, 226 Rothley 120 Rotrou, count of Mortagne 4, 78, 79, 81–90 Rotuli Hundredorum 133 Rouen 62, 71n53, 89, 134, 136, 154n79, 163, 208n62, 218n24, 226, 229, 239 and n36, 240 Roumare family 123 Round, J.H. 3, 4, 15, 16, 17, 48, 50, 69, 77, 91, 92, 93, 101, 126, 239 and n36 Ruald FitzWigan 125, 126, 139 Ruellant 138, 139 Runnymede 236, 237, 247 Rutland 215n6, 216, Saher de Quincy (or Quency) 7, 182, 184–90, 192, 194, 196, 197, 198,

199, 201, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 219n33, 220n34 St Albans 145, 157n97, 247 St Benet Hulme 52n40 St Botulph 174n46 Saint-Denis of Nogent-le-Rotrou 83 St Edmund’s, see Bury St Edmund’s Saint-Evroult Abbey 179n1, 184, 194, 196, 203, 204n53, 206 St James see Northampton St John 245n53 St John Baptist, hospital, Leicester 198, 209 St Lazarus 198, 209 hospitaller order 180n7, 193, 202 St Léger de Préaux 209 Saint-Léger-en-Yvelines 182 St Leonard, leper hospital, Leicester 180n7, 198, 209 Saint-Lucien-de-Beauvais 217 St Margaret’s 189 St Martin le Grand, see London St Mary de Castro 193, 198, 203, 209 St Mary of Ulverscroft 193, 203 St-Paul-lès-Aunois Priory 187n28 St Paul’s, see London

Saint-Père Abbey, see Chartres St Peter’s, Gloucester, see Gloucester Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives 222 Saint-Quentin 78, 85 St Sergius and St Bacchus Abbey 125, 127n4

St Swithun’s, Winchester 245n51 St Thomas, hospital, Canterbury 198, 209 St Werburgh, see Chester Salcey 215 Salisbury 132, 172, 245n51 earl of 198, 208 Salmacis 157 Samuel 153 San Marino, California 190 Sanders, I.J. 215 Sandwich 176 Sarum rite 245n53, 246 Satan 153 Saul 151n66, 153, 160

General Index Savigny, Savigniac 88, 124n66 Sawbridgeworth 93, 97, 105, 108, 109 Saxons 250 Scarborough 236 Scotland 7, 122, 163, 165, 167, 174n49, 177, 235n16, 236n18 Seine, river 182 Serlo, Abbot 2, 47, 48, 50, 53, 56, 57, 59, 60 Shaftesbury 130 Shapwick 207n60 Shearsby 197, 207 Sheen Priory 183n15 Sheepy 195, 205 Shenley 109 Shepreth 97n35 Shepshed 195, 206 Shilton 197, 207 Shorham 73 Shrewsbury 113, 114n18, 118, 119 Shropshire 114n18, 168n17, 174, 227 Shutlanger 217, 218 Sigar 97n35 Sileham 176n59 Silvester, Abbot 158n101 Simon, chamberlain 94, 109 Simon Alleycat 192, 201 Simon Bloet 157 Simon the clerk 193, 202 Simon FitzRoland 216 Simon FitzWilliam de Kyme 117 Simon of Lyndon 221 and n45, 222 and n48 and grandson 222n48 Simon de Montfort, husband of Amice, countess of Montfort 181 Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester 7, 186–90, 191, 200n39, 201, 219, 220, 226 Simon de Montfort, son of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester 220 Simon, earl of Northampton 145 Simon of Pattishall 224, 225 Simon, reeve 172 Simon de Tourville 194, 204 Smalley, B. 147 Smithfield 107

285

Snowdonia 153 Somerset 170n30 South Charford 45 South Mimms, see Mimms Southampton 73 Southwark 100n52 Spain 87, 89 Sparke, J. 13 Spileman, chamberlain 116 Sporus 144 Stafford, Staffordshire 114n14, 115n19, 120, 168, 172, 176, 186 Staines 132 Stamford 114, 216 and n12, 229 and n86 Stamford Baron (St Martin Without) 216 Stanley/Furness 236n21, 242n46 Stapleton, T. 14 Stenton, F.M. 27, 169n21 Stephen, King 1–6, 13, 24, 33, 34, 35, 41, 54, 64–6, 68–9, 71, 72, 74, 77, 82, 89–90, 91–4, 97, 99–101, 103, 104, 110, 111, 114, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125–8, 134, 136, 138, 139n61, 142, 143, 144–5, 156, 158n101, 164, 166, 167, 170, 177, 179, 208n65 Stephen Langton 234n13, 236n18, 244 and n50, 246 Stephen, son of Riulf Brito 135 Stephen of Seagrave 192, 201 Stigand, archbishop 26, 27, 29, 32, 35, 38n94, 129 Stoke Bruerne 217 and n21, 218 and nn22, 23, 219, 221 and n43, 222 and n49 Stortford 37, 97, 107 Stratford Tony 197, 198, 207, 208 Streatley 109 Strickland, M. 236n19, 238n29 Stubbs, W. 91, 232, 247 Subiaco 242n46 Suffolk 126, 137, 165, 173, 176 Summerson, H. 231n1, 240n37 Surrey 68, 100n52, 131 Sussex 131, 209n66 Swegn (Forkbeard), king of the Danes 30

286

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

Swein 200, 211 Swein of Essex 95n22 Swinehead 51 Swithland 195, 205 Sybil 135n38 Sylvester of Saint-Calais 89n56 Syston 186n27 Tattenhall 118 Templars, Temple 95 Terence 146, 155 Thames, river 25, 26, 40, 42, 126, 129, 130, 132, 139 Thenford 138 Theobald, count of Blois and Chartres 81, 82 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury 6, 142, 143, 145n29, 156n86 Thomas 109 Thomas, Apostle 159 Thomas Aquinas 149n48 Thomas Becket 6, 142, 144, 146, 148, 151–4, 155, 160, 167 Thomas Malesmains 223 Thomas Pinzoun 197, 208 Thomas, son of Richard Franceis 200, 211 Thomas of Thurrock 98 Thompson, K. 3–4, 77–90 Thompson, S. 11 Thorley 97, 108, 109 Thorney 15, 114n18 Thorpe 197, 208 Thurcaston 197, 199, 208, 210 Thurmaston 197, 206, 207 Thurstan of Thurmaston 200, 211 Tickhill 120 Tillières 223, 224 Tilty Abbey 94 Tinwell 216 Tiron Abbey 70, 71, 72, 74, 81, 82, 87 Toki 27, 130, 131 Tolleshunt 106 Tope 41 Torksey 120 Totnes Priory 125, 126

Toulouse 151 Touraine 213 Tours 81, 135 Tourville 209n68 Tovi the Proud 36 Towcester 217 Treasury 3 Trent, river 232 Trentham 124n66 Tring 27, 42 Trinity Sunday 248 Trowbridge 128, 132 Turgis d’Avranches 95 Turk, E. 146 Turold 52, 109 Tutbury 168 Twyford 221n42 Uhlig, C. 146 Ulceby, manor 120 Ulf, son of Tope 41 Umfridus 139n61 ‘Unknown’ Charter 238 Upper Lambourne, see Lambourne Usk 168n17 Valerius, Bishop 159 Van Caenegem, R.C. 240n38 Vaux-de-Cernay Abbey 187n28 Vegento 157 Vendôme 84 Vikings 30, 44 Vincent, N. 8, 94, 231–51 Wace 22n3 Wake family 13 Wake, J. 17 Walchelin, Abbot 137 Walchelin Maminot 134 Walden 92, 96, 97, 101, 103, 105, 108, 109, 157n97 Waleran 200, 211 Wales, Welsh 5, 111, 113, 117, 122, 124, 153, 167, 174 Walkingstead 100n52

General Index Wallingford 5–6, 24, 26–8, 34, 36, 42, 43, 125–39, 175 Walter, son of Adam of Anstey 200, 211 Walter, archdeacon 157 Walter de Bolbec 138 Walter, chaplain 104, 109, 110 Walter of Chatillon 142n7 Walter of Compton 109 Walter FitzRobert de Clare 100n55, 169 Walter Foliot 135, 137 Walter, bishop of Hereford 28 Walter de Lacy 53 Walter Longus 106 Walter Map 140, 150 and n61 Walter Mauclerc 192, 200 Walter of Pattishall 225 Walter Pykenot 192, 201 Walter Waleis 199, 211 Walter of Whittlesey 13 Walter, brother of William, archdeacon of London 101, 106 Waltham 99, 102, 109, 110 Abbey and canons 92, 102, 109 Chronicle 36, 92 Waltham-on-the-Wolds 203n51 Waltheof, Earl 29 Walton 173 Walton-on-the-Wolds 195, 205, 206 Wantage Code 240 and n38 Ware 179, 185, 194, 204 Wareham 128 Priory 183n15 Warenne, earls 226 Warin de Bassingbourn 174 Warin FitzGerold 94, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 136, 137 Warminster 135 Warren, W.L. 169 Warwickshire 114n14, 115n19, 166, 171n34, 176, 226 Watling Street 27, 215 Wats, see William Wats Watts, G.F. 250 Waugh, E. 15 Webb, C.C.J. 158n101

287

Webber, T. 231n1, 245n52, 250 Weedon Bec 217 Weedon Lois 217 Weedon Pinckney 215n7 Welbeck 245n51 Welland Bridge 216 Wellingborough 219 and n31, 223, 224 Wendover, see Roger of Wenlock 114n18, 116n21 Wessex 61, 130, 132, 136, 139 West’ 199, 210 West Burton 220n36 West Saxons 30, 62 Westminster 2–3, 24, 28, 35, 61–75, 105, 117, 131, 132, 181 Abbey 2–3, 27, 43, 61, 96, 100, 106, 109, 110, 245n53 Charter 41 Hall 3, 62, 73, 250 Palace of 250 Westmorland 165 Weston 110, 209n68 Weston Turville 204n52 Wethersfield 98 Whatton 196, 199, 207, 211 Whetstone 196, 197, 206, 207 Whitchurch 137 White, G.J. 5, 111–24, 145n24 White Roding 95n24 Whittlewood 215 Whitwick 183, 195, 205 Widford 185n20 Wigan of Wallingford 136, 137 Wigod of Wallingford 26, 27, 130–2, 133 Wigston 197, 207 William, son of Alured 105, 109 William, earl of Arundel 173n45, 177 William d’Aubigny 102, 192, 201, 235 William Bardulf 173 William des Barres, the elder 181, 183n15 William des Barres, the younger 181n10 William of Belgrave 197, 207, 208 William, advocate of Béthune 215n9, 219, 224 William de Blois, bishop of Lincoln 189

288

Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216

William Boterel 135, 136, 137, 138 William de Braose 170, 174 William de Breteuil 180n7 William Brewer 222 and n49 and son 222n49 William de Cahaignes 198, 209 William de Canteleu 191 William the chaplain 108, 110 William de Chernet 45 William de Chesney 136 William the cook 197, 199, 208, 210 William de Crèvecoeur 216 William Cumin 126 William de Dive 198, 208 William, son of Edric 192, 201 William, son of Ernald 105, 109 William, earl of Essex 177 William of Eu 98, 104, 108 William Falconer 195, 197, 205, 208 William FitzAlan 134 William FitzHamo 134, 135 and n38 William II FitzNigel 118 William FitzOsbern, Earl 29, 57n65 William FitzOtuel 108 William Framer 200, 211 William, son of Galio 108 William, earl of Gloucester 169, 170, 177, 207n59 William de Grandmesnil 183 William, son of Guy 107 William de Gweres (Guerris) 94n19 William de Harcourt 201 William, son of Henry of Oxford 137 William I du Hommet 216 and n12, 219 and nn31, 33, 221, 228 and n84, 229 and n86 William II du Hommet 222 William, son of John, bishop of Norwich 138 William of Jumièges 22n3, 35 William of Kilworth 192, 201 William I, King 1–2, 21–44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 61, 97, 111n4, 113, 129, 131, 158n101, 213

William II, King 1, 38, 48, 50n27, 62, 65n15, 150 William I, King of Scotland 7 William of Knapwell 192, 201 William of Langton 193, 202 William de Lanval 249n64 William the larderer of Leicester 197, 208 William, archdeacon of London 101, 106, 107, 109 William, bishop of London 37 William of London 170 William Longespée 238n29 William Louvel II 198, 208 William de Luvetot 98 William Malet 41 William of Malmesbury 3, 14, 35, 65n15, 77, 88, 89, 101n59 William de Mandeville, earl of Essex 92n9, 108, 173n45 William de Mara 135 William Marshall 180 William Martel 68, 95 William the mason 109 William de Montfichet 98, 100n55, 104 William of Mucking 106 William of Newburgh 100n57, 103, 236n21 William, son of Odo 139n61 William Pagenel 134 William Patric 171 William, son of Payn 192, 201 William de Percy 181 William Picot 192, 198, 201, 208 William of Pleshey 108 William of Poitiers 23, 26, 32, 33, 38n90, 39, 40, 42, 43 William de Pont de l’Arche 65 William Pulcyn 109 William de Quatremares 192, 201 William, brother of Ranulf 109, 110 William, son of Robert de Poissy 217, 218n22 William de Rouvray 218 and n23 William of St Calais, bishop of Durham 113, 250

General Index William of Salisbury 145 William de Say 93, 105 William of Senneville 196, 208 William de Serland 221 William Sheveby 200, 211 William, son of King Stephen 24 William de Trannsre 199, 210 William Trenchefoille 192, 199, 201, 210, 211 William of Trumpington 192, 201 William Turpin 105 William, prior of Walden 110 William de Warenne 95n25, 192, 200 and n39, 220 and n39, 222 William Wats 249 William of ‘Watton’, see William de Warenne William of Wharram 208n62 William of Windsor 172 William, archdeacon of York 126 William of Ypres 68, 145n29 Williams, G. 22n1 Wiltshire, Wilts. 72, 131, 133, 134n35, 135, 171, 196, 197, 206, 207, 210 Wimar the Chaplain 173 Wimborne, Wimborne Holt 197, 199, 208, 210 Winchcombe 245n51 Winchester 2, 3, 24, 25, 43, 48, 49, 61–75, 101, 127n6, 130, 131, 132, 188, 189, 208, 240, 248 and n62 Common Council 239 Windsor 63, 132, 138n59 St George’s 248, 249 and n63 Winterbourne 196, 197, 206, 207 Wissant 65

Wollaston 224 Wolverton 137 Woodchester 51 Woodstock 62, 88, 132 Wood Walton 98 Worcester, Worcestershire 172, 176 Cartulary 49 Worcester A 53n46, 132 Wormald, P. 46, 240n38 Wothorpe 222n48 Writtle 97, 98, 104 Wroxall, nunnery 198, 209 Wulfwig, Bishop 41 Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester 28 Wulfstan I, archbishop of York 30 Wulfstan II, archbishop of York 29, 30 Wuluric, neighbour of Wuluric Trace 110 Wuluric Trace 110 Würzburg 244n51 Wycombe 137 Wyken 200, 211 Wysselay, Wysele 199, 210 Xerxes 149 Yardley Chase 215 Yokefleet 208n62 York 28, 121, 152n69, 153, 208n62 Yorkshire 7, 17, 38, 42, 46, 52, 58, 118, 120, 121, 123, 165, 176, 235 Yoshitake, K. 2, 61–75 Yvelines 182 Yvo, engineer 176n59 Zebedee 159

289